Chapter 11
Fresh off the press, people!
Thank you for all your kind words and support – exams are done (phew) and I sat down and started typing right away. As you know, combat isn’t my strong suit, but I gave it my all.
Haku stares at her.
The mask is a blank slate, unreadable and impenetrable, but Hisana knows. He seems hesitant suddenly – not as startled as she’d hoped, but caught off guard nevertheless. He’s taken pains to get a read on Sasuke, feel out his skills, before deciding to spring his trap. And Hisana went ahead and screwed it all up. He has no idea what to expect from her. “You – “ he starts, leaning out of his mirror like something out of a bizarre horror movie, but then seems to think better of it. “I’m very sorry,” he says instead.
“Yes,” she agrees placidly. “Me too.”
He truly is fast. Senbon scrape by her neck guard, hitting her earring with a tinkling noise; one might have possibly gotten stuck in her hair. She understands, frighteningly so, how Sasuke could have lost to this boy who must be, no doubt, also a genius. But Hisana has a few things Sasuke doesn’t have, and also quite a few that Haku doesn’t.
Doukushin is by no means a fancy blade, but it’s still a good one. Durable, most of all. And no weapon forged by Goya Madoka breaks in the face of a little ice, chakra infused or not. Evading the constant onslaught and blocking whatever gets too close is … not easy, but doable. But turning this into a battle of stamina might not be the best idea. Hisana has no doubt that this technique is draining the boy at a rapid pace, but probably not quickly enough if she still wants to be useful in the rest of the battle.
She kicks off the ground, and slams her heels into one of the mirrors. It vibrates unnaturally, more like an actual mirror than ice, but doesn’t even crack. Hard as steel – as Konoha steel, she thinks wryly. She dodges another shower of senbon, before kicking off one for the second time. This time when she lands on the mirror, Haku seems to brace for it. There’s no give anymore, only dull ‘thud’. Breaking them must be easier from the outside. Or maybe destroying them only works before they fully form.
She twists backwards, hands hitting the ground, and her leg kicks out against Haku in the mirror behind her. Her foot finds its target with luck rather than skill, driving the breath out of her opponent. Aha – so he’s not entirely invulnerable. This time she sticks to the mirror, and when Haku’s face appears at the other side of the circle, she merely kicks off to drive her blade into the mirror. Blood splatters, barely a few drops – still too fast.
Suiton techniques are useless here and Hisana knows that Katon does precious little to melt this ice. She just needs to be faster. The Sharingan flare to life with a crackle of chakra. It feels like relief, like righteous anger is finally bubbling out of her. For a moment she fixates on the other ninja, the urge to just kill him stronger than expected. But the dark red of her own eyes blinks at Hisana from all around and she hesitates. She looks … vicious, not like herself. She jolts, very nearly walking into Haku’s next attack. Hisana blinks again, this time the image of her reflection actually hitting home. A smile tugs at her mouth as the disturbing feeling fades into giddy realization. Of fucking course.
“A kekkei genkai,” she hears Haku murmur from above. “I haven’t seen another one like me for … a very long time.”
There’s a certain breathless quality to his voice, as if he can’t quite believe that such a thing should still exist.
“You’ve been living under a rock,” she says, thoughts whirling. “We are many.” The genjutsu rolls off her in gentle waves, crashing into Haku’s mirrors and reflecting back at her. For a moment Hisana can see herself, bleeding more than she should be, panting and tired, close to collapsing – it’s the way he sees her. A fist finds its way into Haku’s face. He flails, startled; spidery cracks run through the porcelain of his mask, splinters and ceramic dust trickling to the ground. And he’s caught. The last of the illusion settles around him like a cloak, taking advantage of his pain and shock to skink its hooks deeply into his brain.
The next senbon miss her spectacularly, but Haku is already too far gone to notice. “I’m sorry,” he says again, staring at her, through her. He steps out of his mirror, shoulders hunched and steps sluggish. Chakra deprivation. Maybe even guilt.
She could kill him right now, run him through with her sword. Spit a wad of acid into his face … but she doesn’t. Instead she suppresses the violent urge and patiently waits for him to release the jutsu. Maybe this time nobody has to die.
It’s fall; the sun in Wave brings neither heat nor much light, but Hisana is still glad to see it as the mirrors start to turn into glittering, frosty mist around them. She takes a deep breath, feeling the first tendrils of relief tug at her.
And then Sasuke makes a noise. Her head snaps to where team 7 is, not thirty feet away. Sakura is still shielding Tazuna with her body, but not from Haku. Her back is turned towards them, kunai braced against a completely different opponent. A handful of Gato’s men have arrived, weapons drawn and eerie smiles on their faces. Naruto’s hand is raised in a block; he, too, seems too distracted by his enemy to see or hear anything around him. But Sasuke is sitting on the floor, eyes glued to her and Haku. There’s a look on his face that she’s never seen before. Wide-eyed, helpless, disbelieving. He reaches out for her, nonsensically, too far away to touch. His mouth is open but no more sound seems to come out.
Idiot, she thinks, what about your fight? Her eyes flicker towards the mercenary that slips through Naruto’s defenses and makes a grab for her cousin – but Sasuke downs him with a thoughtless punch to the head. The crack of the man’s skull is deafening and for a moment both Hisana and Haku just stop to look at the two of them: a dead man and a heaving, shaking genin with bloodied knuckles. And when Sasuke lifts his eyes from the ground they’re blood-red.
Oh. Haku flinches as he recognizes them, as if just now realizing he’s facing two clansmen, and Hisana uses the moment. “Dokugiri.”
The memory of Hanada’s poison gas technique is forever branded into her brain. It’s one of those techniques that made true impression on her – so much that she wanted it, to keep it and master it. Hanada’s price for it was … inconsequential in comparison, as if the girl herself didn’t quite realize what she was giving away. A different sort of poison wells up in her mouth; gentler, more insidious than Hanada’s preferred irritant. It’s unperfected, still smells of opium, but Haku simply isn’t present enough to put one and one together and come up with two. And so he merely blinks at her sleepily before sinking to the floor.
“Sweet dreams,” she tells him as the last of his mirrors melt gracelessly into sludge around them.
“Nee-san!” Sakura’s voice shatters the last of her battle deafness and the noise of the fighting around her comes rushing back in. The girl looks dazed, blinking her eyes rapidly as if shaking off the vestiges of a very weird day dream. Almost like… – genjutsu. She turns around to where Haku’s mirrors stood only moments ago; the sludge circles her like a bizarre, icy Stonehenge. Perfect, polished reflectors, throwing back the image of her eyes tenfold in every direction. Oh.
Sakura stares at her, relief and confusion warring on her face, only vaguely cognizant of the scene that must have played out only seconds ago. But Sasuke’s eyes are bleeding with the echo of grief. Hisana pulls one of Haku’s wayward senbon out of her hair and flicks it off the bridge. Well, she thinks a tad numbly, at least the problem of the Sharingan has been solved. Then her eyes flicker to the last of the missing-nin, and comfortable numbness turns into something darker.
Tsunami and Inari look decidedly worse for wear. Hostages, both of them. Frightened and roughed up they huddle together, Inari’s eyes unerringly fixed on his grandfather. How did this happen? The details of the Wave mission are fuzzy at best, but Hisana is pretty certain that nothing of the sort was supposed to happen.
One of the mercenaries grabs Tsunami, shaking the woman roughly. “You better stay back – I’ve been itching to cut something up!” He brandishes his sword, first in their general direction, then at Tsunami directly. Hisana balks.
“Sasuke,” she barks, effectively snapping him out of his funk. “Head in the game!”
And then she pumps chakra into her legs and goes for it. She races past a startled Sakura and into the fray, scattering mercenaries like startled birds. It takes only a precious few seconds before the boys are at her side. It’s the first time she actively works together with team 7 and it’s very nearly as glorious as she suspected. Give it a few years, she thinks to herself, knocking out a man that Naruto trips into her path. She can barely wait.
“That’s enough!”
The voice is deep and strangely croaky, and it manages to halt absolutely everyone in their tracks. On the water, even the sound of Zabuza’s ninjutsu has fizzled into nothingness.
Gato is a short man. He’s dressed very western, in a suit and sunglasses that make him look like a mafia boss rather than a business man. The sketchy looking body guards that surround him only strenghten the impression. He pointedly takes a drag from his cigar – exhales. Smoke curls up over his head. The entire scenario is completely bizarre. The broken bodies of his men surround him; he doesn’t even give them a second glance.
“That’s quite enough,” he repeats, this time a little calmer. “Zabuza! There I went hiring you – going out of my way to seek you out – because of your excellent reputation, and now look at this. You haven’t managed to kill even a single person on this damn island.” The former Kiri-nin snarls at him, but Gato merely takes another drag from his cigar. “All that fuss for nothing. Oh well. If I’d planned on paying you even a single ryo, I might have been more annoyed.”
Stunned silence. “What was that?” For any other ninja it would have been exceedingly foolish to dismiss Kakashi like this, but Zabuza drops his sword, all fight gone out of him, and it only makes the Konoha-nin drop his guard in turn. Kakashi is frozen by the turn of events. His eyes dart back and forth between the two men, hand cautiously reaching up to cover his Sharingan back up.
Zabuza’s gaze first flickers back towards Copy-nin – hesitant but watchful – then towards the team 7 – sweating and shaking – and finally to Hisana. For a second he looks distinctly displeased, but a few feet away Haku’s chest is obviously rising and falling with his breathing, and so she too is dismissed as a threat. “So,” he muses, adjusting his grip of his broken hand on Kubikiribocho, “you’re double-crossing me?”
Gato scoffs. “You’re a missing-nin. Don’t act so offended. Boys, put him down.”
“Well then. Seems like we have no quarrel with each other anymore, Kakashi of the Sharingan.” And when he throws himself at Gato, nobody can think to stop him. Panic breaks out. Come on guys, Hisana thinks. Do something.
They’re fighting the same battle now, if for different reasons. Shouldn’t they be fighting together? Hisana casts Haku’s unconscious form a furtive look. She didn’t keep him alive for nothing, did she? Because if Zabuza dies, she’s reasonably sure Haku will just end himself anyway.
“Executive decision,” she announces, just loud enough to draw Kakashi’s eyes. Punching a random mercenary out of her way, she runs over to Haku, hands already searching her pockets for an antidote and the good Uchiha Soldier Pills. She peels the mask off the boy’s face and forces a little wake-up pill down his throat, roughly squeezing the muscles to make him swallow. For a moment Hisana allows herself to be impressed by the pretty face while the pill does its job. He does look like a girl; no wonder Naruto was confused. It’s almost a shame to slap him. She does it anyway, hard.
Haku startles awake with a yelp. The last traces of poison still have him cross-eyed and confused; he struggles in her arms, apparently still awake enough to recognize her. It’s an uncoordinated effort and subduing him is easy, but he still manages to hit her in the nose. “Fuck! Calm down, you twit.” They grapple on the floor, before she can manage to forcefully turn his head to the erratic scene at the edge of the village. Sakura and Sasuke managed to drag Tazuna away from the struggle, while Kakashi has Tsunami thrown over his shoulder and Inari tucked under his arm like a bag of potatoes. He’s watching them carefully, but there’s not disapproval on his face yet, so Hisana turns her wary eyes back to the panicking boy under her.
“The situation has changed. We’re not the enemy anymore.” He blinks forcefully, as if trying to ascertain if his eyes deceive him. “I have a soldier pill with your name on it,” she adds. “I thought you might want to help him.”
“Why?” Haku’s voice is raspy from her rough treatment and definitely not feminine anymore.
“Because … it’s unnecessary to fight anymore and I prefer not to make enemies if I don’t have to. Also, you’d be doing our work for us.”
His mouth twitches into something that might have been a smile. She presses two pills into his hand and folds his fingers around it. “Your choice, doll face.”
Of course it’s not really a choice. Haku has barely swallowed the pills before he’s already stumbling after his partner.
It’s a massacre. Hisana isn’t sure if team 7 has dealt out any more lethal hits than Sasuke’s little accident, but it doesn’t matter – they’re going to need counseling after this. While the genin may at least try to go for simple knock-outs, nobody else seems to have such compunctions. Zabuza’s sword is a menace even to his allies, slicing through rows of men and leaving nothing behind. Kakashi’s kills are a bit less conspicuous, but there are only so many ways to interpret a bleeding, glassy eyed body falling at your feet – dead is dead. Haku is a bit more elegant about it, but the Sharingan makes it clear that it’s one hit, one kill with him too.
Hisana jumps over a falling body, barely pulling Naruto out of the way of a particularly nasty blow. The boy’s eyes are glued to Haku’s face, obviously conflicted. Hisana shakes him like a misbehaving puppy.“Concentrate, or get out of here,” she hisses, a tad more viciously than intended. The blond flinches.
“B-but nee-chan - …” “No! Do you want to get injured? Do you want your team to get distracted because your head’s somewhere else?”
He swallows thickly. The question should have been ‘Do you want to die?’ but no matter how angry she is, Hisana can’t bring herself to say it. Naruto seems to have realized it anyway. Ripping him out of the fight was a mistake, she thinks, watching as his limbs start to tremble. There’s such a thing as thinking too much about it, and he’s definitely getting there. He’s still a genin, a child; he shouldn’t even be here.
A roar rises up behind them and it startles them both. The first thing she registers are the honest to god pitchforks – then the bound and beaten men that the angry villagers are carrying along. “Well, shit,” someone says. Not too far away, Tazuna starts to laugh.