Chapter 1.3 [3]

Want to read ahead? Head over to Patréon [eternalyujin], the link is on my profile too.

Note: Everything on there will be public eventually.

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There was a chill in the air. A distinctly sharp hint of danger. Its possibility rested on a knife's edge, where a tip in any direction would spell catastrophe.

She couldn't quite manage to rest. Oh, she could fall asleep, but would wake not too long afterwards, every instinct buzzing in the back of her skull.

Something was wrong, but what exactly that was danced outside her grasp.

She lay perfectly still in the darkness of their bedroom. Despite her glasses lying on the bedside table (just beside his), she could barely make out the countless ridges and bumps running across the ceiling.

The mattress sank under the weight of a rumbling snore. She rolled over; but not too fast, else the bed would groan with the anguish of a thousand souls. Nose to his back, she slipped her arms around his torso.

She hoped his warmth would bring some much-needed calm. The steady beat of his heart warded off the strange sting in the air. Before she knew it, her shallow breaths matched his… until it didn't.

He stiffened, grunting as he sat up.

She forced her eyes open. "...What is it, Junpei?"

"Fujino...this chakra. It's… way too large to be human. It's almost like—!"

His voice was completely dominated by the deafening blare of the civil defence siren. An electrical jolt coursed down her spine, both energising and terrifying. Moments later, she stood facing her husband, worry reflected on his face.

He frowned as he pulled his sheath over his back, fastening it. His lips parted, unsaid words shimmering in his eyes before his head snapped behind him. Junpei pulled back the blind, revealing a masked shinobi.

ANBU, Fujino's mind supplied. From the slender figure, they were a woman. Her long purple hair fell behind and around the pale, feline mask.

He opened the window.

"Jonin Kikuchi. You have orders to join Lord Third at the base of Hokage Mountain." She turned to Fujino. "Chunin Shimizu, your orders are to aid in the evacuation efforts and then join the battle."

Her heart pulsed. She glanced at Junpei. Horror had flushed the blood from his face and his eyes remained rooted to the window

Swallowing, Fujino asked, "What's the fight?"

The ANBU was silent for a moment. "...The Nine-Tails has escaped its seal."

The words passed through her, tearing her heart out. Suddenly – too suddenly – her flak jacket felt light. The tools and weapons concealed within would be completely useless. When she had gathered enough of her fear-jolted mind to process the here and now, the ANBU was gone.

Junpei growled, grabbing a fistful of his black hair. "What the hell am I supposed to do against a goddamned Tailed Beast!"

Fujino reached a shaking hand towards his shoulder. He blinked, and then his face fell as if he had only realised that she was still there.

"Shit," he said.

The world shimmered. Fujino smiled wetly, not bothering to wipe away the frustrated tears.

Ever the optimist, Junpei was quick to rein in his fear, hiding it behind a quick grin. But she saw through it. She always did, no matter how well he hid it.

"I reckon this might go better than I think," he said as he rubbed his shoulder. "Everyone above Tokubetsu Jonin will go and fight the Nine-Tails with Lord Third. Not terrible odds, right?"

Fujino didn't agree. She wanted to tell him how felt. How afraid she was that she would find him, hours later, his body mauled and broken. Or how he might find her. But with those green eyes boring into her… she couldn't bring herself to move the words up her throat.

Because doing so would force her to admit that she could lose him.

"...Be safe," was all she could manage.

Junpei sighed with a fond smile. "'Be safe' is all you can manage, huh? Where's your declaration of undying love, hmm? Better yet, where's my good luck kiss?"

At that, she smiled. "Like I told you on your first A-rank, come back alive and I'll give you all the kisses you want."

They shared a brittle laugh.

The room fell silent again – but not with fear. She focused on a single nostril, pulling in all the air her lungs could hold, and expelled it in a long, drawn-out breath. Despite the fear clamped around her lungs, her mind was as sharp as ever.

The muted instincts buried under her relaxation had come to the surface. Her chakra answered the call, its familiar heat banishing the block of ice lodged within her chest. In an instant, they were on the roof.

The Nine-Tails' roars were louder than even the siren

One swing and it levelled the north-western side of the village. Towering apartments were culled like blades of grass. Dozens of bodies cut through the air, with dozens more flitting across the village towards the beast.

"Hey."

Fujino flinched.

"I'll be back soon," Junpei said with damp resignation in his eyes. He nodded once and his resolve hardened. "Prioritise the children but don't ignore the others. As cynical as it sounds, we're going to need a lot more shinobi after this."

A sickly tendril wormed across her heart – but Junpei was right. For each shinobi that would die tonight, another would take their place. This was what life in a hidden village was like in all its glory.

All she could do was hope that the genin were strictly forbidden from anything but evacuation attempts.

She blinked and Junpei was gone, leaving the ghost of his smile behind – alongside the promise of his return. Whether or not he would fulfil that promise, she didn't know.

She had her duties and he had his, and as shinobi of the Hidden Leaf, they were contractually bound to fulfil them.

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Her lungs burned. Tears that had long since dried lined her face but she couldn't stop – not now.

Slung across her back was a sleeping child. He had screamed until he was hoarse, fighting her every step of the way until exhaustion had claimed his tortured consciousness. The sight of his parents brutalised across the remainder of their home was not one she would forget anytime soon.

Nothing she had seen tonight would leave her mind.

She winced. Orphaned children. Childless parents. Grieving husbands. Widowed wives. Fujino thought the end of the third war was bad but this… the sheer amount of senseless death… it trumped any mass funeral she had attended in her childhood.

She leapt from roof to roof. Her bird's eye view of what was once a bustling village, teeming with life, had been thoroughly ripped apart by the claws and tails of a monster. She passed the street where Mr Banri would pull his taiyaki cart. A few blocks away, genin pulled sobbing children away from the quickly cooling corpses of their parents.

The apartment block rumbled, and she wasn't even able to cry a warning before it collapsed atop those too slow to avoid the falling concrete. She watched, helpless, as a genin abandoned the elderly man she was carrying, leaping away from the descending rubble.

Fujino cursed, turning away. She had seen enough death tonight.

The weight on her back stirred.

She sighed but maintained her speed. The faster she got to the orphanage, the better it would be for the both of them.

His hot breath spread across her ear, but the words chilled her to the bone. "...It wasn't a nightmare."

All his choked sobs made it past the blaring siren, chipping away at her soul.

A haggard woman stood watch at the orphanage's front gate with dozens of children assembled around her. The younger ones were crying into the legs of children not much older than themselves. She swallowed the cold, dead remains of her heart.

"M-Miss Shinobi?" the matron asked. "Another child?"

Fujino nodded, wordlessly releasing the little boy. He stared at her with soul-crushingly empty eyes.

"Why did you save me?" he asked, voice quiet enough that only she could hear him. "Why didn't you save Ma and Pa?"

"I-I…"

She scrambled for an answer. He took one last look at her and slipped into the small crowd.

That wretched howl raked its claws through her. Fujino shook her legs out – she had more than enough chakra left to join the fight. Enough chakra to carve out a pound of flesh for the dead families she'd had the misfortune of encountering.

Making a few shaky hand signs, she flickered to the orphanage rooftop and took off. She registered a blur in her peripheral vision and slowed down.

A vested shinobi pulled up beside her. "We've orders to join the fight! Head to the eastern exit!"

She nodded. "It's about time we avenge the innocents that monster has killed."

"Damn right," the chunin growled, vanishing in a burst of speed.

Fujino stopped and laughed weakly. It was a hollow lie. The truth was, she was sick and tired of seeing people die for no reason at all. Of seeing the viscera of helpless civilians, unable to lift a finger against that which wanted them dead.

At least there was more purpose in her existence confronting the thing responsible.

She gazed forlornly at the Nine-Tails and the countless ant-like figures swatted aside by its writhing tails.

Somewhere in that direction, her husband was fighting, and at long last, she could join him. The thought alone warmed the raw wound that her heart had become.

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Death had come, shrouding the village in a menacing light. They stood in a ring of fire, caged with a beast that had turned their home into a graveyard.

For close to an hour, the village's shinobi had fought – every single jutsu imaginable hurled at the gargantuan beast's hide. One by one, they were ripped apart by its tails, scattered across the razed village, or slammed against the masses of shinobi crowding it.

To them, it was a life-or-death battle. A struggle for survival. For the Tailed Beast, it was nothing but a game.

Fujino could see it. Even in the face of her imminent death, she could see it.

Its unsettlingly human-like eyes flashed with perverse glee like it could taste the fear heavy in the air. The abyssal orb stretching its maw continued to grow, forcing the Nine-Tails further and further outside of the village's eastern walls.

Not that there were any walls left to break.

Fujino was teetering dangerously close to chakra exhaustion. Her weapons were lost in the vast masses of orange fur, save for the single kunai clenched in her quivering hands.

"T-This is it…" a chunin muttered nearby.

He might have been a jonin for all she knew. In front of the walking disasters known as Tailed Beasts, there was no difference between genin, chunin, and jonin.

"Fuck!" a young-sounding man yelled. "This can't be how we go out! We never even had a chance against it!"

The sound of weapons clattering to the ground followed one after the other. The Nine-Tails' blood-red eyes curved up at the sight. The sides of its lips twitched into a manic grin.

Fujino's fingers twitched. Was there any point in raising her weapon? It would do nothing. Just as the slew of her fire-release jutsu had done nothing. Her grip slid to the very bottom of the hilt, the rest of the weapon swinging back and forth.

Her flickering resolve followed each swing of the kunai.

It swung right.

The mourning cries of dozens of children punished her for her cowardice. Her face twisted at a pain felt deeper than the throbbing ache in her tired limbs.

It swung left.

Her swimming vision cleared, taking in the monstrous glory of a tailed beast bomb. If good fortune was with her, Fujino would have never seen it in her lifetime. From the very little she had read, a single one would turn the entirety of the Hidden Leaf village into a smoking crater.

With a choking gasp, she surrendered her weapon and her will to fight, shutting her eyes tight in wait for what she could only hope to be a painless death.

"Shinobi of the Hidden Leaf," Lord Third boomed. "Hear me!"

Fujino looked behind her. Lord Third, caked in debris and blood, was perched atop a demolished roof, resting against his famed Adamantine Staff. Her childhood had been filled with stories of his famed exploits as the God of Shinobi but this night – tragic as it was – had kindled a newfound respect for the former Hokage.

An hour against the Nine-Tailed Fox and he had cast nothing but the highest ranked elemental jutsu. He was the sole reason that the vast majority of them had survived so far – Fujino included.

Momentarily taking her eyes off him, she chewed her bottom lip in worry.

The brief reprieve from her still imminent death brought a worrying thought to mind. Where was Junpei? She hadn't seen a single trace of him in the battle. Not the tell-tale howl of his wind-release jutsu, nor had she heard his incessant habit of yelling the name of his jutsu over his lungs.

Not once.

"Tonight, you stand against insurmountable odds, braved by our village's first and greatest Hokage: Hashirama Senju! All is not yet lost. Raise your weapons and look forward!"

Vast torrent of chilling air swept across the village. It took all she had and more to stand her ground, digging her heels in deep. Blinding garnet light slipped between her raised arms.

The earth itself thrashed under the Nine-Tails' attack. Panic-filled screams and harsh curses exploded forth all around her. Fujino shrieked out a hurried prayer to whatever god would hear her. Her only wish was to be reunited with Junpei in the Pure Lands.

When the pressure on her eyelids receded, she hesitantly blinked them open to a hazy golden barrier.

"W-What happened?"

"Ar-Are we… dead?"

Fujino slowly reached a probing finger towards the barrier. Miniscule ripples flooded around her finger. She tracked swirling paths on the face of the barrier, squinting through its golden light.

She leapt back at the earth-shattering howl from the other side.

"Just as each of you must protect the village and its inhabitants," Lord Third smiled, walking up to the barrier. "The Hokage has a duty of care to their shinobi. Now, please stand back, everyone. I may no longer wear the hat, but I am still the Hidden Leaf's Third Hokag—!"

He stumbled back, ashen-faced.

"Minato…"

He raised his staff, slamming it against the barrier. It shuddered once, pulsing. A stuttering light surged across it. He slammed the barrier again but it remained strong.

"He's keeping us out," Lord Third growled as his staff vanished in a puff of smoke. He slammed his bare fists against the barrier. "Minato!"

Fujino retreated, Lord Third's cries growing distant.

Her feet felt weightless. She drifted across the ruined remains of the eastern gate. Her eyes scanned the corpses of deceased shinobi with desperate ferocity. The pit in her stomach grew at every unfamiliar face she saw. One at a time, the corpses mounted, with Junpei nowhere to be found.

It was not until hours later that she found his mutilated body at Konoha Hospital. Her feet would not move. Her eyes remained fixed on his unnaturally pale face. His unmoving lips and those closed green eyes that would never open again.

Junpei would never wake again.

Her mind – no, her being itself – simply shut down in the face of that reality. Years later, she still had not fully moved on. Not mentally, or physically. More than five years after the fact, Fujino still lived in the same home.

In their home.

Their pictures were mounted in the entry hallway and framed in their – her – bedroom.

Her tired purple eyes flickered over to his bright grin. She sipped from a mug of coffee. Over the last few hours, she had made a sizeable dent in her marking. The third and second years' had been finished hours ago and only half of the first years' remained.

She slid the marked paper onto the pile of completed first year essays and palmed a new one. Seeing the name at the top of the next paper made her pause.

"Naruto Uzumaki…" she muttered.

A storm of emotions broiled within her.

Fear, not of the boy, but what he could become. No, what the Nine-Tails could become. He was smart – smarter than any child she had seen. What she was afraid of was what the Nine-Tails could become with the knowledge he would acquire.

The village could not take another slaughter. She could not take another slaughter. Not after she had barely cobbled together the remains of her life.

Fujino began to mark his paper. Each slightly misspelt word that she encountered and credited twisted a chilling knife into her chest. No matter her feelings about his circumstances, she could admit that Naruto gave nothing but his best efforts in her class. Not just her class, but every class in the Academy.

But where she should feel pride, she felt the distant prickle of fear – of danger. The same chill in the air she felt on that night. Her training as a shinobi warred with her choices. Her integrity as a teacher warred with her choices.

The memory of Junpei warred with her choices.

Frowning, Fujino continued. She hadn't completely botched his chances at learning proper reading and writing skills, she tried to tell herself. Only enough that he would begin to doubt his prodigious capability. Only enough that he would not reach full bloom. He could still become a resourceful shinobi.

She snorted derisively. The words didn't even have to be verbalised to feel void to her. Regardless, she continued. Because the alternative would mean accepting the distinct possibility of danger once again.

That, she refused to do.