Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Faith of the Heart ❯ Chapter 5: Legacy of the Nii, Part 1 ( Chapter 6 )

Faith of the Heart

 

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Chapter 5: Legacy of the Nii, Part 1

 

“What do you mean it wasn't the first time Kumo tried to kidnap Hinata? I don't remember hearing anything like that before?” Sakura asked.

 

“That's because it was covered up, and I said `Kumo shinobi,' as in shinobi from Kumogakure, not `Kumo,' as in the village itself.” Kakashi answered

 

Sakura and Temari looked at Kakashi with confused looks on their faces.

 

“The first kidnapping was actually carried out by a single clan from Cloud without the permission of the Raikage. It was slightly less that three months after the Kyuubi attacked Konoha. About a third of our forces had been wiped out and the village's fortifications were in shambles. As you can imagine, a lot of people outside of Konoha saw our weakness as their opportunity. We had to deal with raids by groups of missing nins and the other shinobi nations testing our defenses for months after the attack. That's the natural way things work in the shinobi world, after all. When you find weakness, you exploit it. Konoha was weak and everyone knew it, since we couldn't exactly hide the fact that the most powerful demon known to mankind had decided to go on a rampage through the village. The Cloud's Nii clan was among those who decided to take advantage of the situation.”

 

“Wait a second,” Temari interrupted. “I've been to Kumogakure half a dozen times, and I've never heard of a Nii clan.”

 

“There's a good reason for that,” Kakashi said before pausing and pulling out his book. Drawing angry glares from both kunochi. Kakashi ignored them as he searched for his page.

 

“The Nii clan doesn't exist anymore,” Kakashi continued just as Temari was about to jump down his throat for stopping in mid explanation to read. “The Nii lost a lot of people in the Cloud's war with the Mist that was going on at the time, and they were never a large clan to begin with. At the time of the Kyuubi attack, there were only ten or twelve members of the clan left.”

 

“So, the Nii tried to kidnap Hinata to gain her bloodline and help rebuild the clan?” Temari asked, still somewhat irked at the jonin.

 

Kakashi chuckled at something, whether it was Temari or something he read, Temari and Sakura couldn't tell. “That's part of it. The main reason though was that the Nii had fallen out of favor with the Raikage. A little over two centuries ago the head of the Nii clan managed to seal the Nibi no Nekomata inside his daughter. From that point on, the Nibi was passed down through the Nii clan from generation to generation. Much like your village has done with the Shukaku, Temari. The difference is the Nii kept the Nibi within their clan, because controlling a jinchuriki meant the Nii had more political power in Kumogakure than a non-bloodline clan of their size normally would. However, during the war with the Mist, the Nibi's previous jinchuriki, a teenage girl by the name of Yugito Nii, was mortally wounded in a battle with the Mist's own jinchuriki. Unlike with the Kyuubi, you can seal some of the `weaker' bijuu inside inanimate objects temporarily, so the Nii were able to extract the Nibi from Yugito before she died and seal it within a statue.”

 

“Yeah, we had to do something similar with Shukaku,” Temari added. “ One of the village elders sealed him inside a teapot for almost six years before he was transferred to Gaara.”

 

“A teapot?” Sakura asked.

 

Temari sighed. “Let's just say the village elder who did the sealing has a weird sense of humor. Granny Chiyo continued to use the teapot after she sealed the Shukaku in it. I think she got a kick out of seeing how people reacted when she told them they were drinking tea brewed in a teapot with a demon sealed in it. Now that I think of it, I've even heard her call Gaara her `little teapot,' a time or two.”

 

Kakashi and Sakura just stared at Temari for a moment.

 

“Not to his face, though. She's not that crazy. Most of the time,” Temari hurriedly added, mumbling the last part.

 

“Oookay then, back to the story,” Kakashi said. “The problem the Nii had was there were no newborn infants or pregnant women in the clan when Yugito died, so the Raikage was pressuring them to allow the Nibi to be sealed in someone from outside the clan. The head of the Nii clan refused, and, as a result, the clan fell out of favor with the Raikage, losing most of its wealth and political influence in the process. However, the Raikage had also been trying to obtain the Byakugan for years. So when the Nii clan learned the head of the Hyuuga clan and his wife were expecting a baby, they saw it as the perfect opportunity for the Nii to get back in the Raikage's good graces by obtaining both the Byakugan and a new host for the Nibi. A couple of nights after Hinata was born, the Nii raided the Hyuuga compound.

 

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Konoha, The Night of December 29th, 15 Years Earlier

 

Michiko cupped her hand behind the flickering flame as she blew out the last candle lighting the nursery. She took one last look at her sleeping daughter before quietly slipping out into the hallway.

 

“Lady Hyuuga,” a Branch Family member said with a bow as Michiko turned to go to the master bedroom across the hall from the nursery.

 

“Emi, for the last time, you don't have to call me that when it's just the two of us,” Michiko said in a kind-hearted voice as she playfully wagged a finger at the seventeen year old girl her husband had assigned to help her around the house. “Lady Hyuuga is Hiashi-kun's mother. Just call me `Michiko,' okay?”

 

“Sorry, Lady Michiko,” Emi replied.

 

“Don't worry about it,” Michiko sighed as she gave up on getting the teen to quit being so formal. “Would you mind keeping an eye on Hinata-chan for an hour or so while I take a shower? She's been fed and I just got her to sleep, so she shouldn't give you any trouble,” the slightly older woman asked.

 

“I do not mind at all, Lady Michiko,” Emi replied.

 

Michiko gave the teen a quick hug. “Thank you, Emi. I don't know what I would have done without you these last few weeks. You've been a God-send.”

 

“You are welcome,” Emi said after a moment, having been caught off guard by the hug.

 

With that Michiko entered her bedroom and grabbed a change of cloths out of her closet along with a towel, washrag, and her other toiletries out of the master bathroom. She then proceeded to the Hyuuga estate's bathhouse on the other side of the estate from the Main House.

 

A little over an hour later, Michiko exited the bathhouse wearing a standard black Hyuuga training uniform, one of the few outfits she owned that fit right at the moment, while silently saying her thanks for the century old system of oil-fired water heaters and spring fed cisterns that had allowed her to enjoy one of the few working hot showers in all of Konoha. Although she couldn't wait to be able to bath and shower in her own bathroom again, a short walk was a small price to pay to feel human again. `Besides it's a nice night for a stroll through the gardens,' She thought with a relaxed smile.

 

However, the further Michiko got from the bathhouse the less relaxed she felt. Something seemed off. It was nothing specific that she could put her finger on. Instead it was more of a gut feeling that something was wrong, and she had learned to trust her instincts. It was something her former sensei had drilled into her as a genin. “Better to feel foolish about being worried when nothing was wrong, than to be dead because you were worried about feeling foolish,” Jiraiya had always told them. `Sensei actually said some wise things when he wasn't being a lecher,' Michiko smiled to herself.

 

With Jiraiya's lesson in mind, she veered off the path she had been following when one of the guards patrolling through the garden came into view. As she got closer to the guard, Michiko noticed that he was one of the younger genins from the Branch Family who had just graduated from the academy three weeks earlier. “Saburou,” Michiko called out as she motioned for the twelve year old to meet her halfway.

 

The young genin jogged over to Michiko. “Lady Hyuuga, how may I serve you,” Saburou said with a deep bow.

 

Michiko returned the bow while resisting the urge to tell the young genin not to call her `Lady Hyuuga.' “Who's on watch tonight?” she asked, thinking she would first make sure there were experienced guards on duty and then urge, Ichirou, the watch commander to be extra vigilant tonight. Ichirou was an experienced jonin and would understand her concerns.

 

“Taro, Minoru, Shou, Arata, and myself. Arata-sama is in command, my Lady,” the young genin rattled off the names.

 

This information startled Michiko; not only was there someone besides Ichirou in charge, but normally twice that many Hyuuga were supposed to be on watch at all times. She was also certain that out of all the names she had just heard, only Arata was even a chuunin.

 

Michiko noticed the young genin nervously shifting his weight back and forth from foot-to-foot as he stood at attention. “Saburou,” Michiko said gently not wanting the make the boy any more nervous than he already was, “what happened? There are supposed to be ten guards on duty, and isn't Ichirou-san, not Arata-san, supposed to be in charge of the watch?”

 

“I'm sorry, Lady Hyuuga! Haru-sama ordered Ichirou-sempai and the four other jonin and chuunin on watch to accompany him to inspect the Hyuuga on sentry duty at the breach in the village's outer wall! Ichirou-sempai didn't want to leave his post, but Haru-sama activated his seal for refusing and threatened to do the same to the rest of us,” Saburou shot off nervously.

 

Michiko felt a sinking feeling forming in the pit of her stomach. Not only had Haru disobeyed her husband's order that no one in the Main Family was allowed to activate a Branch Family member's seal except in self-defense or to protect another from harm, but he'd essentially left the estate defenseless. There was simply no way four genin and a chuunin could properly guard or defend the estate without leaving major holes in the perimeter. What did Haru think he needed five escorts for anyway? One, maybe two, she could understand, but five! And to take away half the guards away tonight of all nights when she and the guard force were the only shinobi on the grounds of the estate was sheer lunacy!

 

Michiko forced herself to calm down when she noticed the poor genin before her trembling like a leaf, probably expecting to be punished. “It's not your fault Saburou-san,” she said to the boy in what she hoped was a reassuring tone of voice. Saburou calmed noticeably, but still appeared rattled. “May I borrow your radio?”

 

“Yes, Ma'am,” Saburou answered as he handed over the earpiece and throat mike of the radio all the guards wore.

 

“Thank you, Saburou-san,” Michiko replied gently.

 

“Ichirou-san, come in. Over,” Michiko said as she held the mike to her throat. She heard nothing but static come out of the earpiece in reply. `That's odd, he should be in range.' Michiko tried again, “Ichirou, it's Michiko, do you copy? Over.” She still heard nothing but static. Michiko tried to contact the other guards on watch. “Status check. All guards report in. Over.” Again, She received no reply. `Please, let me be wrong about this,' Michiko silently prayed as she switched to the ANBU frequency. “This is Sparrow to any ANBU patrols in the vicinity of the Hyuuga Estate. I have a possible code orange; I say again, I have a possible code orange. Please, respond. Over.” Once again, only static came out of the radio's earphone. That was both good and bad. It was good, because it might mean she was being paranoid and the only things wrong were a Hyuuga council member being a pompous ass and a guard with a busted radio. It was bad because if the radio wasn't broken it meant the frequencies their radios used were being jammed and there were most likely intruders inside the walls of the estate.

 

“Saburou, come with me,” Michiko ordered as she headed toward what appeared to be a large garden shed a short distance away.

 

Once they were inside the shed, Michiko opened a fuse box on the wall and flipped a circuit breaker switch. This caused Saburou to stare in confusion since the Hyuuga estate, with the exception of the guardhouses that had backup generators, had been without electricity since the Kyuubi attack nearly three months earlier. He was about to ask what she was doing when the stone floor beneath his feet began to slide open. The young genin hopped out of the way as the opening widened to reveal a set of stairs leading underground. Michiko headed down the stairs and motioned for Saburou to follow. Like most bloodline clans, the Hyuuga had built a number of hidden escape tunnels and shelters built into their estate, so the mere existence of the tunnel at the bottom of the stairs didn't surprise Saburou. What did surprise him was that he hadn't known this particular tunnel was there.

 

Seeing the confused look on the genin's face, Michiko said, “There are several tunnels and shelters that are kept a secret from all but a select few in case someone from within the clan betrays us.”

 

“What's going on? Do you think Haru-sama betrayed us?” Saburou quietly asked. It made him nervous the Lady Hyuuga believed she had reason to even consider revealing this tunnel to him.

 

`That's a good question,' Michiko thought as she turned down a side tunnel a few feet from the bottom of the stairs. While Haru had his faults, to the best of her knowledge he had always been loyal to both the clan and the village. `Still it is odd that he'd take half the guards with him like that.' When Michiko reached the end of the short side tunnel, she flipped a switch that activated the emergency lighting revealing a small armory room with racks of weapons and equipment.

 

“I'm not completely sure yet,” Michiko answered truthfully as she grabbed a katana; an equipment pouch full of kunai, shuriken, and other basic ninja supplies; and another radio out of the armory's racks. “There may be nothing wrong except for a problem with your radio, but my gut tells me it's something more. As far as what Haru did, the timing is rather suspicious if there really is something happening, but it could easily just be Haru acting like a baka. He is prone to doing that.”

 

“Tell me about it,” Saburou groaned in a very un-Hyuuga like manner, before he remembered he was talking to a member of the Main Family, and the clan head's wife at that, and quickly slapped a hand over his mouth.

 

Michiko giggled at the boy's reaction. “Thank you, Saburou-kun. That's the first time one of you has acted like a normal person around me since I married Hiashi-kun.”

 

The boy gave Michiko a strange look as he uncovered his mouth and said, “You're welcome…I think.”

 

Michiko affectionately ruffled the genin's hair as they headed back to the stairs. When they reached the garden shed, she turned on the radio she had retrieved from the armory and once again tried to contact the guards and the ANBU patrols. The result was the same as before. “I was afraid of that; there's nothing wrong with your radio. What can you see outside with your Byakugan?”

 

Saburou activated his bloodline limit. He was slightly annoyed with himself that he hadn't thought to do so earlier. “I can't see anyone outside, not even the other guards.” He looked shaken up by something after he focused his vision in a single direction to look at the main guardhouse that was slightly further away. “I-it's A-a-arata-sama. He's laying face down on the floor of the guardhouse. I, I th-think he's dead.”

 

“Okay, Saburou-kun, that means there are intruders inside the estate,” Michiko said in a voice that was much calmer than she felt. “What I need you to do is follow the escape tunnel and get help. It comes out about half a mile away on the edge of Training Area 8. When you exit the tunnel start broadcasting on the ANBU frequency. Tell anyone you can get in touch with that the Hyuuga compound is under a stealth attack by an unknown number of shinobi. Then I want you to run to the village council chambers and get my husband. Can I depend on you to do that?” Michiko looked the genin straight in the eyes.

 

Saburou took a deep breath to steel his nerve before speaking, “It's my duty to defend the clan and our home. I want to stay here with you and fight.”

 

Michiko smiled at the boy's bravery. The most dangerous mission he'd probably been on so far was catching the Daimyo's wife's cat, but here he was prepared to stay at his post and defend his family even knowing the intruders had already killed one of his comrades. “Saburou-kun, you will be doing your duty and defending the clan by going to get help. Besides, I'm a big girl; I can take care of myself,” Michiko said with a wink as she lifted her sleeve to show him the ANBU tattoo on her upper arm. The genin's eyes bugged out in surprise at the sight of the tattoo. The identities of the members of ANBU were kept secret, so few inside the clan knew she had been one before marrying Hiashi.

 

“So can I count on you?” Michiko again asked Saburou. The genin nodded. Michiko leaned forward and gave the boy a quick kiss on the cheek, “That's for luck.” Saburou's face invented two new shades of red before he turned to run back down the steps to get help.

 

Michiko shook her head in amusement, `I thought I was the only one who blushed like that.' It was something Minato, and her best friend Kushina, had always enjoyed teasing her about, dubbing her the “blushing beauty of Team Jiraiya,” which of course only made her blush more. In fact, when she joined the ANBU shortly after her former teammate became Hokage; Kushina decided to have a little fun with her by having bright red blush marks painted on the cheeks of her ANBU mask. `Too bad I'll never have the opportunity to get her back for that one,' Michiko thought sadly before she realized she was letting her mind wander from the task at hand. `Snap out of it girl, you've got a job to do. You don't have time to be reminiscing about lost friends,' Michiko chided herself. With that, Michiko Hyuuga silently slinked out the door of the shed and vanished into the shadows.

 

`It has to be Cloud shinobi doing this. They certainly want the Byakugan badly enough, and they've got that weird raiton jutsu that can block radio signals with electrical interference. They're probably working to take out the estate's security and secure their escape route before they move on to their main objective, so I should have enough time to make sure Hinata-chan is safe before I deal with them,' Michiko thought as she tried to plan out a course of action. Despite what she said to Saburou earlier, Michiko wasn't sure how'd she fair in a real battle at the moment. She may have been a former-ANBU, but she was a former-ANBU who hadn't done any serious training in months and had just given birth fifty-one hours earlier. Her chakra system was still realigning itself now that it no longer had to supply chakra to both her and her unborn baby, and she had no idea what would happen if she tried to perform any jutsus.

 

`Damn it! They're already this far inside the estate,' Michiko thought as she spotted the first of the intruders. `Guess I'm going to have to do this the old fashion way.' She drew a kunai and silently closed the distance between her and the much larger man who had his back to her. With a surprising amount of strength for someone her size, Michiko drove the kunai into the man's body at the base of his skull cutting upward to sever the spinal cord before slicing into his brain stem. The man was dead before he had time to react to the pain of the kunai's razor sharp point piercing the skin of his neck. Michiko caught the corpse before it could hit the ground and dragged it out of sight behind some shrubbery. The man's forehead protector confirmed her suspicions that the intruders were indeed from Kumo. “One down,” she whispered to herself as she slipped back into the shadows to begin working her way toward the Main House.

 

Michiko peaked around the corner of a house just down the path from where she killed the first Cloud shinobi, only to quickly pull back. Six missing-nins and two more Cloud jonins were in the garden between her and the Main House where Emi and her daughter were located. She frowned. `Why would the Cloud hire missing-nins for this kind of mission? Something doesn't add up.'

 

A woman's scream followed immediately by her baby's crying made Michiko's head jerk up. At the same time, lights began to switch on across the estate as the Hyuuga civilians, awakened by Emi's scream, got out of their beds. Michiko silently cursed; she was out of time. Taking a deep breath, she drew her sword from its sheath and rounded the corner to face the eight intruders.

 

The nearest missing-nin charged Michiko with his sword at the ready. She sidestepped to her left using her own blade to deflect her opponent's weapon. Quickly spinning around as they passed each other, Michiko's katana slashed at the missing-nin's neck. She didn't even spare her first opponent a second glance as she turned to face the remaining seven. The sound of the missing-nin's head hitting the ground followed a second later by the louder thump of his body told her all she needed to know. “Two down,” She growled at the ninja that blocked her path.

 

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Saburou reached where the escape tunnel ended at a flight of stairs that seemed to terminate at a stone panel in the ceiling. Seeing nothing else in the tunnel but a large lever mounted on the wall next to the bottom of the stairs, Saburou pulled the lever. There was a creaking sound as the panel slid back to reveal the night sky above. Saburou let out a sigh of relief as he started up the steps. About halfway up the flight of stairs, a masked and gray-haired head appeared upside down right in front of the genin's face and said, “Yo.”

 

Saburou let out a startled cry and fell backwards down the stairs he had just climbed up.

 

“That's just sad. How do you let someone surprise you when you have bloodline limit that gives you nearly 360-degree vision?” Kakashi asked with a sigh when he saw the slightly younger Hyuuga boy sprawled out on the floor at the bottom of the stairs.

 

“Kakashi! Quit tormenting that genin and find out what's up with the tunnel,” a girl's voice called out from the road on the other side of the bushes.

 

`Okay, Rin, don't get your panties in a knot!” Kakashi yelled back after sitting up.

 

The only response from Rin was a rock that sailed over the bushes and beamed Kakashi in the head.

 

“Hey! That hurt!” Kakashi whined.

 

“GOOD!”

 

While Kakashi was distracted, Saburou managed to make his way back up the steps. As soon as he was face-to-face with the fourteen year old jonin, He blurted out, “TheHyuugaestateisunderattackIneedtofindtheANBUandLordHyuugapleasehel pme!”

 

“Say again?” Kakashi asked as he rubbed the side of his head where the rock had hit.

 

“The Hyuuga compound is under attack and you need to find the ANBU and Hiashi-sama. That's what you said, right?” a brown haired girl with red tattoos on her face said as she stepped through the bushes.

 

Saburou pointed at the girl and nodded excitedly.

 

“Oh, why didn't you say so? I don't know where Hiashi-sama is, but if you give me that radio I'm sure I can help with the ANBU,” Kakashi added as he nodded toward the radio the young genin had momentarily forgotten he still wore.

 

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Kakashi and Rin speed through the trees on their way to the Hyuuga estate. They had radioed the ANBU only to discover that all the available patrols were responding to a raid by a group of missing nins on the other side of the village. The two older teens sent Saburou on to the council chambers to find Hiashi while they proceeded to the Hyuuga estate to help Michiko and any of the guards that might still be alive. They decided to travel through the trees of Training Ground 8 instead of taking the safer but slower route provided by the escape tunnel. The decision nearly cost them their lives.

 

“SUITON: DAIBAKUFU NO JUTSU!” a woman's voice screamed out from within the Hyuuga estate. A giant waterspout rose at least two hundred feet in the air before it came crashing through the outer wall of the estate. Kakashi and Rin were barely able to scramble out of the way of the swirling vortex of water before it tore into the tree whose branches they had just been in.

 

“I think sensei's friend is pissed,” was all Rin could think to say as they watched the waterspout pass a few feet away from where they landed.

 

When the jutsu dissipated, the two young Konoha shinobi spotted a Kumo ninja literally embedded in a boulder and two missing-nins who had been driven into a pair of trees with such force that the hundred-year-old oaks snapped in half like toothpicks. The path of destruction lead from the three downed shinobi back to a gaping hole in the stone outer wall on the other side of which was the large garden that surrounded the estate's Main House.

 

“Well, at least she made it easy for us to find her,” Kakashi shrugged before he took off in the direction of the breach in the estate's wall. Rin paused for a moment to look at the three victims of the jutsu. Even from a distance she could tell it was too late for her skills to do them any good. She turned and ran to catch up with her teammate.

 

End of Chapter 5: The Legacy of the Nii, Part 1