so maybe taking a detour into the notorious deer-death forest with your half-dead brother isn't a good holiday plan
The people of the Nara clan are terrible, terrible gossips. Ro is reminded of this as she sits at attention at the edge of the engawa, brows furrowed in concentration, with a peanut gallery of hushed whispers and bettings at her back.
“Should we do something?”
“There’s no fucking way an outsider can get here .”
“But they’re still moving! Pretty fast, too!”
Her head hurts.
“I think one of them is dying.”
She blinks out of her focus on the dots at the edge of her awareness and looks to her side. Inoue, unlike her useless, annoying, frustrating clansmen, looks just as concerned as her, because, uh,guys? This is kind of a big fucking problem? Inoue tilts his head slightly and says, “Look, the one with the wispy chakra. They’re running too low.” At her blank stare, he places his hand on her shoulder and all but guides her senses to it:
Where she saw only blurry dots, Inoue shows her a pair of signatures that resonate a deep, deep crimson, straining against the weight of the surroundings; one a steady blaze, and the other trailing a wisp of smoke, minutes away from snuffing out altogether.
Inoue pulls his hand away, and all that remains is a persistent throbbing in her head and a pair of dots.
“Huh.” If only one of the two intruders is likely to survive till their estimated time of arrival in two minutes, then… “Lucky.”
Inoue scowls.
“Bet this is one of Tsune’s pranks.” The murmuring of the crowd behind her returns alongside a dull crash. “Lure them in, give them a sense of peace, leave them to slowly die. Classic.”
No, they just crossed Tsune, and she had been… unsteady. Confused, just like the rest of them.
The forest granted these outsiders passage, heedless of its guardians’ wishes. Another crash, a low hiss, a burst of anger. She shares a glance with Shikahiko.
“I want pie if they make it here alive.”
“Oooh, me too. Been a while since ya baked for us.”
“Wha- no! I’m not feeding you lazy moochers!”
“Oh, the irony.”
Tsune pauses. Through her, Ro hears the forest’s unintelligible whispers, muted and calm. Placating. Around the forest, the deer stir, restless.
“Hey, Hime? Aren’t they, uh, way too close?”
“I think they’re gonna get here.”
“Pie time!”
All at once, the forest stills, and with it, the Nara. Tsune’s cry pierces through the silence.
Ro rises. The dots are close enough that even she can define them: and they are both very alive, though for how much longer is anyone's guess. Inoue moves closer to her, half-hidden in her shadow, while Shikahiko steps off the engawa and kneels with his hands in the trigger seal for a quick shadow possession.
As if on cue, they stumble out of the treeline, trailing blood after them, both breathing heavily and their movements stilted. One of them is bearing the full weight of the other, his arm thrown over his shoulders; a shock of white hair over squinted eyes, armor-clad and broad, leaned on dull, nondescript brown hair and a small, lean frame.
Imprinted on their clothes and headbands is the bold, unmistakable symbol of the Senju clan.
Inoue’s breath catches.
The Senju have no alliances with any of theirs, but what they do have aplenty are grudges. And for two of theirs to stumble into their home, past the forest that repels any unblessed by her, the answer can only be retaliate. And if the Senju bite back, so be it; to let any of theirs roam so close to her people is unthinkable, injured or otherwise.
If she finishes this quick, she can pretend it never happened. Leave her father to clean up the mess. It is his job, after all.
“Hime?”
But, no. Tsune had said, peace. The forest had calmed around her voice, the wild returning to its usual unfettered, unconcerned state.
“Peace,” she announces. “Let them enter.”
The final barrier holding them back is a flimsy seal built up by the students of fuuinjutsu, layers upon layers of unsteady matrices that through some strange luck coexisted without imploding by the second. Shikahiko drops both hands to the ground and the shadows at his feet dart forward to cut a single, straight path through it.
The brown-haired boy casts a curious look at the shadows that nip at his feet, urging him forward, and hesitantly steps over the barrier. His companion hisses as the seal springs back behind them with a tangible burst of chakra and brown-hair flinches, wide-eyed and fearful again as he realises there is no turning back now.
Ro sits on the engawa once again and waits. The gathering behind her has no such patience.
“So what the fuck’s a pair of Senju doing here?”
“Hey… there aren’t, like, a ton of albinos in the Senju clan, right? Or else…”
“Oh. Oh, shit. Hime, can we kill him? Please? At least a little? I want a war hero on my kill list.”
“I don’t think I’d call him a hero, but yeah, me too.”
A pleasant welcome, all things considered.
On closer inspection, the two are fairly young. No older than herself, with brown-hair looking around Inoue’s age. And by the others’ commentary… white-hair is none other than Senju Butsuma’s honoured second son.
And the forest let them in.
The notoriously picky, often mean-spirited forest that rejected more Yamanaka and Akimichi than it allowed, that sometimes left the Nara that made home at its center stranded in the middle of nowhere for the fun of it, let a pair of Senju in.
No… led them in.
“We…” Brown-hair starts to speak, only to lose his nerve when the weight of half a dozen sharp-eyed Nara gazes are forced upon him. White-hair hisses something, twisting in the other’s grasp as if to get away and leave, but brown-hair holds firm and shakes his head. “I… I am Senju Kawarama, and my brother, Tobirama. We come in peace. We just… please, he is hurt.”
Inoue snorts. He has the sense to feel embarrassed when the Senju boy, Kawarama, flinches. “ Hurt is putting it lightly,” he says, voice gentle. Ro almost laughs at his tone that's as if soothing a child. “It’s impressive that he’s still alive.” But it inevitably falls flat, with far from soothing words.
Kawarama exhales. “We’re not asking for much, I just…” He grits his teeth. “As you said, it’s… he’s dying. I don’t want him to die.” He looks at her and she knows he heard the others call her hime. “Please help us.”
Disbelieving mutters rise up around her. Ro pays them no mind, casting her attention over to the forest and searching for Tsune. She does not respond; nor do any of her kin.
Shikahiko’s voice draws her back. “Did the forest speak to you?”
The forest hums its assent alongside Kawarama’s nod.
Shikahiko stands. “And what did it say?”
“It… it said here is safe.”
“For you.”
His eyes snap to her, her first words spoken to him a promise of security, but with an edge that makes him pull his brother even closer. By the image Inoue showed her, Tobirama should have died by now. The smoke should have clogged his pathways, choking the small, enduring spark. And yet, when he lifts red eyes to meet her black, they come into steady focus and answer her half-phrased threat with a wordless one.
With the pressure of the forest lifted, his chakra is already beginning to restore itself. How ironic that the trek to safety did him more damage than whatever hit him in the first place.
Or perhaps the fact that he survived this long, hanging on to his weak little spark and throwing his weight over his baby brother, blessed by the forest…
“The forest does not vouch for your brother,” she says. “He cannot stay.”
“Please-”
“And yet Tsune would have my head if I left a corpse in her garden.”
Kawarama’s mouth snaps shut. His eyes go wide and glassy with relief.
At her nod, Inoue steps off the engawa towards the Senju brothers, Shikahiko at his heels. Ro rises, turns to the quieted gallery. “Senju Kawarama and Tobirama are our guests. So, no, you can’t kill either of them.” She rolls her shoulders and shoots the brothers a grin.
“For now.”
Three months after the arrival and departure of the Senju brothers with a promise of a well-remembered debt, nothing has changed.
At least, it hasn’t for the Nara.
Inoue tosses away a bloodied shirt with perhaps more force than necessary, scowling as he runs his hands over the wound. Green light drifts from his palm, his chakra urging the bleeding to stop and the wound to close.
“Every time,” he seethes, “every single time, you have to walk through the town full of civilians who start crying about war and enemies, and who has to deal with that mess? Who has to deal with an outcry of public terror when you waltz into our territory dead on your feet and broadcast your existence? Huh? Learn some basic first-aid if you’re gonna get yourself half-killed every day! Stop showing up so often! This isn’t some kind of resthouse! Are you even listening?!”
The Hyuuga winces as Inoue pulls the bandages tight, nodding in time with his speech. “Of course, we are very grateful.”
“Grateful? Grateful? Your gratitude isn’t dealing with the PR disasters you’re creating! On purpose! I know you can get here without causing a scene in the town!”
“Actually, given the extent of our injuries-”
“You have a cut on your arm, how is that impeding your stealth ?”
“Well, for starters, there’s the problem of the blood trail, and there’s also the overeager sentries around town, and the, um.” The Hyuuga glances past his shoulder and immediately looks away. “Your friends are a bit… discomforting.”
The Yamanaka standing sentry at Inoue’s back smiles. The scar across his face ripples with it, makes the Hyuuga suppress a shudder. There are few born and bred warriors among the neutral clans, so inevitably they carry a different weight - the weight of one who’s given up their life to bloodshed and expected to die with it, but somehow, impossibly, found peace. And they would do anything to keep it that way, to keep their young free from the terrors that haunted them.
With his wound tended to, the Hyuuga hastens to his feet and gathers his shirt, frowning at the dried blood on the sleeve. With a few words of gratitude said, he all but runs away, leaving nothing but a closed scroll as payment.
Inoue huffs. “This is all Ro’s fault.”
The clansman at his back laughs.
The forest’s whims have changed things for all of them.