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“We won that round.”
“Eh? Then how come we’re in the dungeon?” Naruto glared at his sister over the top of Hinata’s head. He was leaning against the stone wall while she leaned back against his chest, his arms around her waist.
“Hey, we didn’t had to fight against all the warriors in the Kaze.”
“That’d be better than rotting away here!” Naruto yelled. Hinata winced and shushed him, rubbing his arm to try and calm him down. He grumbled and held her tighter. “I don’t get all this stuff about the ‘purity’ of the Kaze.”
He felt, rather than heard, Hinata sigh, and pulled away enough to look at her face. “You understand?”
She sighed again. “It sounds like something my father would say. That the strength of the clan lies in the purity of each member.” She shook her head. “In fact, I’m almost positive he’s said just that.”
“And in a way he’s right,” Sora said.
“What! You mean you agree with that woman!” Naruto shouted, gesturing wildly with one hand.
Sora shook her head. “When I said that the strength of the Kaze used to lie in their character, I didn’t just mean their reputation. Their strength of character actually made their taijutsu better.”
“What do you mean?” asked Naruto
“You have a friend back home named Lee who doesn’t use ninjutsu or genjutsu, right?” They nodded. “But would you say that he’s an easy mark?”
Naruto thought back to the fight between Lee and Gaara. He shook his head.
“Taijutsu is the use of chakra in a different way from ninjutsu. After generations of working only on that method, the Kaze were experts, much in the same way that I’m guessing your friend Lee is. They could do things that you would have thought impossible. They moved faster than anyone I have ever seen, could slow their enemies’ movements down or even completely stop them. There were times I swore they could fly.”
“What happened?”
“Well, the Kaze attributed their ability to do this to clear-sightedness. Basically, because their intentions were good, they were able to focus without clouds of anger or aggression distorting the view. The old Lady, Nori’s mother, thought that they could keep the clouds at bay while learning to use ninjutsu; that the purity of the Kaze’s intention could be kept.”
“And the bitch upstairs didn’t think so?”
Sora shrugged. “I’m not sure what the bitch upstairs thought. As the leader of the branch family, she stood to lose a lot of power if the old Lady continued her reforms into the political structure of the Kaze. Nori’s mother was good friends with Nanashi, and so it wouldn’t have been out of the question for her to be at least considering political reform.”
“So that’s why she hates my mother so much,” Naruto said darkly.
“Well no one can be universally liked. In any case, shortly after Nori’s mother pleaded her case, she began to introduce small, beginning jutsus into the ranks. Transformation, substitution; things that could be easily integrated into battle. She knew that it was going to cause trouble among the ranks, but she was positive that is was the right thing to do.
“Less than six months later, Nori snuck into the girl’s dormitory and woke me up. His mother had been killed and they were searching for him. Nori had never wanted to lead the Kaze, and now that his only living relative was dead, he was leaving. He only took me because he knew his mother would have wanted it.”
They stared at her and she looked away. She knew it sounded cold; the two of them simply running away without avenging her death, Nori only taking her because he knew that it was what his mother would have wanted. But they hadn’t been the same people then that they were now, and she didn’t know how to explain that.
As if sensing that she wasn’t going to understand the answer, Hinata didn’t ask the question that was hanging in the air. “Why did Nanashi send you here if things were so unstable?” she asked instead.
Sora winced. It was actually a trickier question than “How could you do that!” she thought had been coming. “Nanashi wanted me somewhere where I could learn taijutsu without having to learn ninjutsu, at least for a while.”
“Why?” Naruto asked.
“Because of my bloodlimit,” she said, and there was so much shame in her voice that it brought Naruto and Hinata up cold. They knew that she hadn’t used her bloodlimit in the first few years she had been with Yasu, but they had always assumed it was because the nature of her ability had always needed to be kept secret from the general public. But then why the shame in her voice?
“In any case,” Sora continued, “the important thing is that it sounds like the Lady is starting to waver and loose support.”
“What makes you say that?” asked Hinata.
“The fact that the guards were willing to support my position and call for a council. With the addition of some jutsu use she opens herself up to accusation of hypocrisy. With any luck, we won’t have to fight the whole clan to walk away free. Best case scenario, they just let us go and don’t pursue us.”
Naruto snorted. “Best case scenario she keels over dead.”
“But then who would take her place? What would keep it from being someone just as bad as her?” Hinata asked, looking up over her shoulder at him.
“Raoul could,” Sora said softly. They both turned to look at her. She scowled. “I’m not saying we should get involved. In fact, overall I think that getting involved in the political life of the Kaze would be a bad idea. I’m just saying that potentially Raoul could take over.”
“Who’s Raoul?” Naruto asked. His brain was becoming a mess of Kaze names and faces.
“Shweta’s son and Shivani’s older brother. My guess is that he was the guard who questioned the Lady’s orders. He has his father’s looks about him. Their family was typically the Captains of the Guard”
Naruto was about to question her some more, when a guard appeared at the door of their cell. “You,” he pointed at Sora with a stubby finger, “Stay here. The two of you come with me.”
“Like hell I’m going to stay here while you take the two of them away!” Sora said, almost snarling at the guard.
“Oye, Nee-chan, don’t worry about it. We can take care of ourselves,” Naruto said, standing and helping Hinata to her feet.
Hinata was far from convinced that leaving without the only person who seemed to understand what was going on was a good idea. However, defying the guards seemed to her to be an even worse one.
“The Lady wishes to speak to them,” the guard growled, “without your presence. What YOU wish is of no consequence.”
“Well, she is just going to have to learn to listen to my wishes!” Sora yelled through the bars.
The man snorted. “You must not have trained them very well if you are so afraid to let them go for a few minutes.”
Sora’s blood boiled. “How dare you! They are better trained than all of your stupid little Kaze warriors combined! You would think that a past-its-prime, fading clan would be a little more-” She stopped abruptly as she realized that while she had been screaming at the guard, Naruto and Hinata had slipped out through the door and into the hallway.
“NARUTO! You get your ass back here in this cell right now!”
He waved at her and stuck out his tongue. “Hang tight Nee-chan, we’ll be back.”
“HINATA! Don’t you let him drag you away, I
know that you are more sensible than this! Damn it you two GET
BACK HERE!”
“I have been advised by my council that perhaps simply killing you is not the best policy.”
Oh, well that was nice.
It was now almost four in the morning. Neither of them had slept any, and having just finished coming through the mountains that morning, it was only sheer adrenalin that was keeping them going. The couple stood next to each other in front of the Lady, who was now surrounded by what they assumed was the council she had spoken of earlier.
Hinata fought the urge to grab for Naruto’s hand. She was a fighter, stronger now than ever before; she could stand on her own two feet; she didn’t need to hold on to him for comfort. She shook slightly, but she held her ground.
Naruto glared at the Lady. “That’s because we did nothing wrong, you stupid old hag!”
Both of them expected the woman to explode, but instead she was strangely calm. In a way, it was more frightening than her explosive behavior before with Sora. Something had changed since the last time they had seen her.
She smiled cruelly. “Instead, you will be asked to prove the intentions of your teacher.”
“What do you mean?” Naruto asked.
The Lady smiled again and started studying her nails. “Well, Sora claims that she has been thinking about what would strengthen the Kaze since the day she left. Therefore, it would only make sense that her apprentices, blood relations or otherwise, would be raised as Kaze.”
Hinata got a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach. “We did not become her apprentices until a little over eighteen months ago. We were raised in the Leaf.” A vague sense of panic was rising up within her. She took a deep breath and continued to hold her ground.
Naruto kept staring at the woman as almost palpable tension built up between the two of them. He had just found the scattered remains of his family, and now this woman wanted to insult his mother, call his sister a traitor, and kill all three of them.
He was not going to stand for it.
“That does not change the fact that she has obviously been teaching you at least some of the Kaze trainings. The question is, did you receive enough?”
“What do you mean ‘enough’?” Naruto yelled.
The guard, whom Sora had identified as Shivani’s older brother Raoul, stepped forward to speak. “Having been taken on as students by a member of the Kaze, you are currently considered to be whites. Tomorrow, you test for your blacks.”
Naruto’s mind raced as he tried to remember what Sora had said about the testing and ranking process for the Kaze. You wore a white uniform with a white sash until you tested for your blacks. You still kept your white sash though until you tested for your red. But the tests themselves he couldn’t remember much about.
Dear lord, he hoped there wasn’t any history on them.
The Lady of the Wind smiled, but it was a smile full of mockery. “And if you can pass the test, all three of you will be considered members of the Kaze.”
Hinata realized that there was something going on here that she didn’t understand. The Lady was acting as if this was a victory. She swallowed hard. Was there something about this test that they could not pass?
“Ha! We can pass any test you give us!” Naruto shouted.
The Lady arched one eyebrow. “Really? It will be interesting to see how the students fare when the teacher herself couldn’t pass.”
Hinata paled. “What do you mean?”
“We reverted the requirements to pass to blacks back to the original requirements a few years ago. Despite the fact that Sora passed to blacks before she left, she doesn’t know all of the requirements. You both have to know all of your sets, both the individual ones and the partnered ones. Sora never learned all of them.”
Hinata breathed a sigh of relief inwardly. No, Sora hadn’t known all of them. But Nori had, and he had been a stickler for technique.
Naruto resisted the urge to shove the fact that they knew them into the woman’s face. Nori didn’t want the Kaze to know he was alive, so until they could figure out how they were going to cover for the fact that they knew all the sets, they were going to have to keep it a secret.
The Lady yawned and they could both tell that it was just for effect. “And then of course there’s one other thing.”
“Which is?” Naruto ground out.
“Why, the fight of course. A traditional Kaze
duel to the death.” She smiled. “Without any jutsus.”
Sora sat with her back up against the wall of the cell. Stupid little squirts. When she got her hands on them...
She sighed, and absent-mindedly drummed her fingers on her knee. She wondered what that bitch upstairs was planning. The council could advise and put a lot of pressure on her, but they couldn’t actually force her to do anything. She was the sole ruler of the Kaze.
She could hear talking amongst the guards at the end of her cellblock. She peered through the bars towards the exit. The door opened, and she was shocked to see Raoul walking down the hall towards her.
“I don’t have much time,” he said, his voice low and rumbling. “Shivani is standing watch for right now, but if anyone sees her, they’ll be suspicious.”
“Why?”
He smiled ruefully. “She’s something of a fan of yours.”
Sora groaned. “You’re kidding me.”
“She got in huge trouble a few months ago for putting a big red stripe in her hair. She has been following the attempts to make the movie for months.”
Sora’s heart stopped. “What movie?”
“The one about the end of the dGra Klesha. Sora, most people think you and Yasu died. There’s only been the occasional sighting of you and none of her in the past four years. Where have you been?”
She sighed. “Yasu got married, then she had a kid and then I started training those two upstairs.” She looked at him, clearly apprehensive. “What are the bitch’s plans?”
Raoul shook his head. “The council was able to convince her that it would be a bad idea to just execute the three of you. Unfortunately, what we managed to get was not much better.”
“Which was?”
“They test for their blacks tomorrow. If they pass, you are all considered members of the Kaze. If they don’t, you are all traitors and executed.”
“Shit!” Sora breathed and rubbed her hands over her face. They were going to keep her locked up in here. She wasn’t going to be able to do anything; it was all going to rest on them passing the test. She hated being useless.
“The Lady has put them into a sealed training room for the day. Shivani thinks she can get them out and I can bust you out of here. We’ll get the three of you through the wall, and from there you should be able to...”
“Why would we leave?” Sora asked.
Raoul stared at her. “Sora, you left the Kaze after only training here for three years. You yourself just barely passed the test for your blacks and the standards have increased since you were gone. There are things they need to know that you couldn’t possibly have taught them.”
Sora grinned. “Those two could pass the test for their red sashes. They’re good. They took down two of your Kaze warriors each.”
“Using ninjutsu. If there is so much of a hint that they are using ninjutsu, genjutsu, bloodlimits; anything that is not straightforward taijutsu, they are going to be disqualified and killed. Plus, they need to know sets and patterns that you never learned.”
“They know all the sets, they’re partner trained they can handle this.”
“How the hell would they-” Light dawned in Raoul’s head. “Nori. Dear lord,we all thought he was dead.”
“Keep thinking that. The last thing he wants is for people to decide that he is the right person to take over the Kaze.”
Raoul ground his teeth together. “He’s willing to hide away somewhere while the clan that his ancestor’s built goes to hell?”
Sora shook her head. “My understanding is that he thinks that putting him in charge would just send things to hell faster. Come on, Raoul, you know as well as I do that he wouldn’t want to be Lord of the Wind.”
Raoul sighed. “It’s been eleven years. I had hoped he had changed.”
Sora shrugged. “Those who want to take charge of a whole clan for the right reasons are a rare breed. Most of us aren’t that insane.”
He took a deep breath. “How green are those kids?”
“What do you mean?”
He looked her dead in the eye. “The Lady restored what she called the original requirements for the test, although I can’t find any historical references to it.”
“Meaning?”
“The final part of the test is duels between those potentially moving to blacks and a new blacks pair. Individual if their not partnered yet, pairs if they are.”
Sora rolled her eyes. “That’s nothing new.”
“It’s to the death.”
“WHAT!” Sora grabbed the bars in front of her, pulling herself in close. “But that’s ridiculous! Every time you test, you loose half your young fighters!”
“She was adamant on the issue; said it was going to keep us on our toes and in top form. It was one of the first things she did when she assumed power.”
They were silent for a second. Then it dawned on Sora. “She used it to weed out the last of those who she wasn’t sure were loyal to her.”
Nori nodded grimly. “Some of them. Other’s she poisoned. I’m pretty sure that’s what happened to my mother. Shivani and I have had to fight to keep alive. She passed the first test, but just barely. Her partner is very good, but if she gets up against someone much stronger than her, I’m not sure what’s going to happen.”
“Raoul! Someone’s coming!” Shivani whispered.
Sora smiled. “Don’t worry about us, we’ll make it out just fine.”
He frowned. “That’s not all that I’m worried about.”
Apprehension began to unravel in Sora’s chest. “What do you mean?”
He looked at her hard. “Unless the Lady changes the rotations, Shivani and her partner are going to be your kids opponents.”
Sora paled and her eyes went wide.
“Raoul!” Shivani whispered.
Raoul took one last look at Sora, shook his head and headed back down the hall. She leaned against the bars of her cell.
Dear gods, what had she gotten them into.
Author’s Notes: I have lots of notes this time, so skip them if you like.
First of all, check out the drawings of Sora and Yasu that Courei did at (http:courei.deviantart.com). These are the one’s I raved about earlier, but somehow didn’t get posted. Check them out; they’re really good. (TS – very nice, though Sora looks creepy; I couldn’t deal with my sister looking like that!)
Second, people have emailed me asking to use parts of my story they liked or post art based on the story. You really don’t need to, the answer will always be yes. I certainly don’t ask Masashi Kishimoto permission to use any of his stuff, so why would you have to ask me? Just put a note the way all fanfiction have. Although, I do really like to know about it after the fact so that I can check it out, especially the art because I can’t draw to save my life. Hopefully, I’ll have my own site up and running in a few weeks and I’ll be happy to host anything there.
I got the first review that really annoyed me with the last chapter. I am unfortunately unable to email him directly because he submitted without being logged in and didn’t leave an email. So all of you get to here my rant. (TS – and me as well!) Just so we were all on the same page, here was the review:
I can’t help but notice, but most of your OCs (Who are either strong, powerfull, or both) are women. Now this may sound like a sexist comment and maybe it is, but that really isnt realistic.
If it sounds like a sexist comment and you think it might be, why would you make it in the first place? Personally, up until the addition of Tsunade, I felt that females were sadly underrepresented in Naruto. (TS – True, true.) Hinata was really shy, Sakura and Ino were ditzy teenagers and Kurenai and Tenten had almost no character/personality at all. I know that it’s a fact that most of the time men are more physically powerful than women (I used to grapple with ex-marines, I learned that lesson the hard way). (TS – you grappled with ex-marines?! Remind me to never piss you off!) However, if you actually watch men and women fight, it is not as uneven as everyone seems to think it is. Technique does more to make your kicks powerful than muscle does. Plus, there is no indication that women shouldn’t be able to produce and use chakra just as well as men. (TS – True; Sakura has the best chakra control out of the genins.)
According to the rules of the Naruto universe, there should be plenty of powerful females, but they never get brought to the foreground of the story. Plus, there’s Nori and Raoul who are strong men and Shivani and Miki who weak females. The Lady of the Wind is just barely holding on to her power and there hasn’t really been a real female villain (Temari is borderline villain material in my book). (TS - I don’t count her as evil anymore, since she saved Shikamaru’s life in the latest manga chapters) I know there are a lot of females and I know that they are more powerful than most of the women seen previously in Naruto, but when you look at the entire cast, my character and the canon ones, I don’t think things are out of balance. (TS – I personally think the females in Naruto are overlooked; I admit, Tenten hasn’t proven herself to be really strong, but she has the best aim of any genin. Ino and Sakura aren’t “strong” either, but when given a reason, like fighting each other, or in Sakura’s case, protecting her unconscious teammates, they’re a lot stronger than they let on. And Hinata may act shy and weak, but when Naruto was cheering her on, she was on par with Neji at least for part of the fight and that’s something to brag about, considering she doesn’t know Kaiten or the 64 Hands of Hakke!)
Sorry that had to be so public. Flames, really harsh critiques, or people who just plain old don’t like my work I can handle. But comments like that where someone tried to hide a basically derogatory comment inside an I’m-just-trying-to-be-realistic shell, especially when pertaining to a fantasy world, is just plain irritating. (TS – I agree completely! Just because I’m a guy doesn’t mean I think I’m better than women at everything; hell, I know plenty of women stronger than me, and I’m not afraid to admit that!)
In any case, hope ya’ll enjoyed the chapter. I’m trying to get one more to my beta before I start school on Monday, but it’s a long one, so we’ll see. (Also thanks to TimeShifter for editing! He does something really nice; he highlights all my errors and then gives me options for the final copy. Man, I didn’t realize how MANY I had! Sorry about that.)
This site is published by Samizdat Express, Orange, CT info@seltzerbooks.com
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