Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ The Shinobi and The Miko ❯ Water Lilies ( Chapter 22 )

A/N: This chapter is for PossiblyInsane213, who was my only reviewer last time (save Beth, who knows that she's half the reason this story ever gets updated anyway lol). Please enjoy, and obviously I don't own Naruto. If I did, Kaguya would actually exist, and Sasuke would have kicked Madara's tail-end a long time ago.

 

Pain tore at him, threatening to rend his body apart, cell by cell. Sasuke felt the pain intensify as his chakra slowly ebbed from his body. Perhaps, if the battle had ended with Gaara and the Raikage, he would have lived. But it seemed that they and the Mizukage combined had just taken too much time, too much strength.

 

******

Naruto ran, breathing coming in staccato gasps as his feet pounded the ground. He wasn't going to be too late again. Not this time. This time, he would save Sasuke. This time, there was no other choice.

 

******

Kaguya's stomach turned, and she abruptly stopped. Tuning her senses as best she could, she reached for something on the fringe of her consciousness. Something was wrong, yet she could not tell what. Her kunai fell from limp fingers as she diverted all her energy outwards. This was dangerous; she was forgoing self-awareness to sink into the world around her entirely. She thrust her consciousness, her essence, to the ground, allowing herself to become part of the trees and grasses outside, and extended herself further still. All the while, she allowed her thoughts to focus on one thing only: the chakra signature of someone dear.

 

*****

Sasuke fell to one knee, watching the acid mist slowly roil around the barrier created by Susano-o. It won't hold for much longer, and once it falls… No. He struggled to his feet once more, ignoring whatever the Mizukage was saying. His body protested fiercely and at its most fundamental level. The woman began to level another attack, but was swiftly interrupted.

 

*****

Kakashi's eyes narrowed. From what he could see of the structure ahead, a fierce battle was taking place. One side of the building had already been completely destroyed, and samurai and ninja alike were picking themselves up off the ground, or at least trying to. This on its own was somewhat surprising; he would have expected most of them to be dead. Still, he couldn't shake a sense of foreboding that lingered and grew as they got closer.

 

*****

 

The wind rustled through Kaguya's branches. She felt a slow-moving contentment as her roots dutifully drew sustenance from the earth beneath her and ferried it upward. Tiny parts of her sprung to life each moment; others fell into nothingness. She stretched her wings and reveled in the leap into nothingness that always precedes true flight. Her hunter's ears took in the sound of her thunderous heartbeat under her slender, graceful reeds. She was all of these things, and more. And yet, she was as nothing. A sublime peace overtook her in this state, and for a moment she wondered why she had ever hesitated to become this way.

 

*****

Karin could hardly believe it. Everything was going so terribly wrong, and it seemed that she at least was powerless to do anything about it. Juugo and Suigetsu were alive…somewhere. Sasuke was too, for now at least. She cursed the part of her that reveled in the fact that she, at least, was not being targeted. She didn't do so well in fights, really. Her specialty was finding things. At least when they got out of this the boss wouldn't be able to say she'd failed. That was assuming they got out of this at all. She bit the inside of her cheek. Snap out of it! Sasuke needs you, damnit! With that, she rose unsteadily to her feet.

 

*****

The girl's body was completely still. Her soul was rather happy in its new form, what need she for a body anymore? Relishing the sensation, she stretched further outwards, expanding herself as far as she could reach, seeping into every blade of grass or woodland creature she could find. She reached a pond and flowed into the water, finding frogs and fish and… water lilies. For some reason, this was strange. She was vaguely concerned. Why, wondered the forest, should these lilies trouble me?

 

*****

Madara sat back with some satisfaction. Things were working as they should. Really, people were easy to manipulate once you had them figured out. Not just as individuals, but as a species. One of a select number of things was enough for any of them. Honor, duty, material gain, or even just an idea of “right” and “wrong.” If you could figure out which of these was most important to someone, they were clay in the palm of your hand. Take Sasuke, for example. Never had anyone been so concerned with familial duty as that one. His blond friend was even easier. Arbitrary distinctions between good and evil held sway over him far too easily. Yes, they were all dancing in his palm, save one.

 

*****

She heard a voice (if you could call it that) reverberate through her consciousness. Remember, it whispered, though it might have shouted; the echoes alone caused her pain as she was thrust from her peace and into a tumult of memories.

 

*****

“You shouldn't be housing one of them,” Touya told her sternly. But at the young girl's clenched jaw and immovable demeanor, he had sighed and relented. “As soon as he is well, he must leave.”

 

She nodded and left, humming pleasantly to herself. It was nice to have someone to talk to who didn't treat her differently. Even if he wasn't much for speaking at all, being only intermittently conscious. Of course, she had plenty of friends amongst the acolytes, but it was she alone who had undergone the ritual of second sight, she alone who had given up her eyes for her duty as miko. For some reason that the twelve-year-old could not have understood, this placed her at a distance from others.

 

Her patient was taciturn as usual when she entered the room. She hoped he would wake soon. Dipping a cloth in herbal water, she went to place it on his brow when he stirred, trying to move his head.

 

“Shh…” she had assured him. “You shouldn't try to move yet.”

 

The next two weeks had seen him gaining strength rapidly indeed, and she was almost sorry, for it meant that he would soon be gone.

 

One day, she returned to her room to find him disappeared. She had thought to go look for him, thinking that perhaps he had wandered off into the temple, but had stopped when a whiff of something caught her attention. The flowers in the bowl she kept by her window had been changed. She walked over to it and touched the petals lightly, inhaling the delicate scent. Water lilies. And she had understood.

 

Her young heart had turned the flowers into a promise. A promise to meet again, someday, somewhere. And she knew that she would keep that promise, even if it was her effort alone. She would see her friend again.

 

*****

Sasuke. His name leapt into her mind, wrenching her from her existence as the forest. Sharpening her will, Kaguya extended her thoughts in one direction, searching. All at once, she felt a pulsing, steady, slow, like a heartbeat. It was accompanied by an onrush of pain that caused her physical body to cry out. She was overcome by a feeling of dread and almost recoiled back into herself then and there.

 

Resolving to face this pain with all the strength she could muster, she gritted her teeth, and the pulse became a thunderous hammering in her ears.

 

*****

Madara hated surprises. Needless to say, when the usually demure and polite girl burst into his office, he was quite surprised indeed. More shocking, however, was her claim that Sasuke was in trouble. He had left a certain member of the Akatsuki there to deal with any possible trouble. Perhaps he had been unable to avoid all-out battle with the Five after all.

 

He studied her carefully. She was holding herself tall, maintaining her posture, but he could tell the decorum cost her effort. She seemed about to fall apart; it was not hard to tell that her every limb trembled as though her muscles might collapse at any moment. Half her attention was clearly diverted elsewhere, doubtless to whatever tenuous connection she shared with the embattled Sasuke. The older Uchiha sighed inwardly, frustrated at his decendant's inability to carry out the assigned task. Then again, he'd expected about as much. This might just work in his favor after all. Smiling under his mask, he teleported away, leaving the girl to her vigil in his wake.

 

*****

Sasuke had a new respect for his brother. How Itachi had managed to maintain a nearly-perfected Susano-o for as long as he had was beyond the teen's ken, at least for the moment.

 

But he had slightly more pressing issues. The Tsuchikage had taken the ring when the Mizukage had proven incapable of dealing with him fast enough. The old man wasn't going to waste any time either. Sasuke braced himself for the attack…

 

*****

Kaguya felt the pulse shudder. No!

*****

…and collapsed.

*****

And there was naught but silence. Kaguya's hand went to her mouth, and she fell to her knees in Madara's office, shoulders heaving with violent, wracking sobs.

 

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