(Tim Seltzer, seltzer@seltzerbooks.com) Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I do not own Wedding Peach.
I do not own any great quantity of money or property. I'm a STUDENT; that's
why I'm poor, okay?
Potamos squirmed uncomfortably as she walked through the high grasses.
The hairs of the plants around her tickled her exposed legs. As the trio
of Sakura, Minoru and Potamos traveled further, the environment grew more
dead-like. The grass was turning yellow, and the tree-leaves wilted brown.
"I don't understand," Sakura said. "We're supposed to be getting nearer
to the Tree of Life, aren't we? It's a wasteland here."
"The Tree of Life is in danger," Minoru breathed. "Who knows what Dryad
is doing. The unicorn left us his horn, which is an item jam-packed with
healing magic."
"Who's going to do the healing, Mino-chan?" Potamos asked.
"Probably the best healer in Frida Village — or at least, the most willing,"
the elf commented. "If no one comes, then I shall perform the task. Sakura-san
could do it, if it came to that."
"Don't kid me," Sakura huffed. "I don't even know if I can. I can heal
slight wounds on animals, sure. But I've never healed a plant before —
and the Tree of Life must be huge."
"With the horn, you can," Minoru said. "Unicorn horn is one of the densest
extracts of healing ki, amino acids, and enzymes. With the right user,
that horn is enough to heal at least two-hundred wounded soldiers."
Sakura halted. "What? Then... why didn't the unicorn use it, then?"
she asked. "Couldn't he have used it on himself?"
"The unicorn wanted to save Dryad's presence in the Rifts," Minoru explained.
"Even though he was a servant of Lumina, the creature also respected the
balance of power between the different guardians. Apparently, every curve
and curl of the horn was needed."
Potamos sniffed the air. There was a slight change in the atmosphere.
"Mino-chan, I smell something."
Minoru and Sakura noticed it as well. "It smells of rotting flesh,"
Sakura commented, wrinkling her nose.
Minoru closed his eyes. Probing his incomplete mind, he looked for signs
of another soul nearby.
There was none. Unless...
Sakura shoved Minoru away, and drove Tennyo into a tall something that
rose up from the ground behind him.
Minoru glanced back, and he nearly collapsed from shock. Potamos had
her hands over her mouth. She seemed paralyzed, with her yellow cat-eyes
wide from awe.
It felt like an eternity for Sakura: she was looking directly in the
face of a zombie. Tennyo was imbedded in a walking, dead body.
The half-covered skull grinned at Sakura. She immediately pulled the
katana out of the body. The forcible yank brought crumbs of corpse flying
into her face. "Get away!!" she screamed, hacking off an arm in one clean
swing.
The being made an incoherent sound. With its still-intact arm, it threw
a punch at Sakura. She blocked it with her wrist — and then realized it
was nothing but bone, held together by random pieces of corrupt tendons,
sinew and skin. She was touching it. Sakura pushed it away in horror.
Minoru chanted some lines, and a massive wall of vines caught the corpse
and raised it up, like a crucifix. One spiked vine went through the zombie's
chest, making it droop in total lifelessness.
The elf cursed as he looked around. "Devil-child, behind you!!"
Potamos glanced back, and saw an even larger corpse raise an axe behind
her. She screamed as she jumped away.
Sakura flicked her hands into the sequence. With a glowing sword in
hand, she sliced the zombie's head off before it attacked Potamos again.
Meanwhile, the elf was trying to detect the main controller of the undead
soldiers. Whoever it was, the caller was far away, and powerful. 'He must
be at least a hundred meters away from us,' Minoru thought. 'I thought
that the rock golems were something to be reckoned, but this is even more
difficult...'
A hand crawling with maggots shot out of the earth. It grabbed at Sakura's
heels, trying to pull her down. She kicked it away, and then realized that
more of them were growing out.
"Oh, my, God..." Sakura panted.
An army of corpses erupted around them. There were at least one hundred
in number.
"A graveyard..." the elf hissed. Minoru shouted a few powerful lines,
and his ivy grabbed a handful of zombies. About a third were forcefully
pulled back into the grave. "Where in God's name is the caller?!" he asked
in frustration.
"Junpuu no Shihougiri!!!" Sakura yelled, making a green cross in the
midst of undead. "Minoru-san, what do you mean, 'caller'?" she asked.
"There's a necromancer somewhere," Minoru explained. He punched some
zombies away, while trying to scry the surrounding area for the culprit.
"I can't kill 'em!!" Potamos screeched. Sakura looked back, and noticed
that their attacks did not really kill the zombies. Her Shihoukiri merely
dismembered the living dead for a split-second before they clumsily knocked
the limbs back into their proper places. Potamos could only freeze them,
until they cracked away the layer of ice. Only Minoru's vines seemed to
be effective, and he was now panting from the effort.
"Slice them apart, while I'll try to find the source," Minoru ordered.
Sakura gulped, and looked around at the herd slowly advancing on them.
She cleared her mind, as the initial panic had already died. 'I feel anger...
and bitter sadness...' she thought. True, Sakura was scared. Who wouldn't
be, being attacked by soldiers who were supposed to be dead? But something
was amiss.
She remembered reading about zombies: these things had souls that never
fulfilled themselves while they were still alive. As they did not do anything
useful in their life on earth, they had little hope at an afterlife. Necromancers
gave them something of a second chance, and the living dead usually accepted
— to prove themselves useful. Useful to someone. Anyone.
Sakura pulled out a scroll from a case, hung by strings around her shoulders.
She tried to remember where she had put her jutsu-equations that related
to spiritual matters. 'Where did it say something about spirit-sealing?!'
she frantically asked herself. 'Wait a sec, sealing is too complex; I need
something more suited to my level...'
Fumbling with the scroll, the kunoichi rolled part of it out over her
left arm, now and then pausing to slice apart or kick away the undead puppets.
For a while, she did well holding back the zombies while looking through
her notes.
As if on cue, the wooden holder broke, and the entire scroll rolled
apart on the ground like toilet paper. An obscenity escaped Sakura's lips.
"Sacchan, we don't have TIME for that!!" Potamos yelled. As anybody
who was not a bookworm knew, a battle was hardly the best condition for
studying. The water-demon threw a shower of icy water in one direction,
making the zombies freeze into statues.
One arm burst out of the ground and grabbed at the scroll. The hand
instantly was stabbed through by Tennyo. "Don't touch my notes!!" the pink-haired
girl snarled. Sakura crouched down and quickly gathered the scroll back
together, forcing the rotting hands back underground where they belonged.
"Ugh," Sakura exhaled, evading another swing. 'These poor bastards,' the
kunoichi thought to herself as she rolled the papyrus back together. 'Talk
about fate worse than death. At least I came up with a basic jutsu to calm
down spirits.'
Sakura's hands performed a total of seven hand-seals. A warm, pink aura
began to radiate from her body.
What was remaining of the standing zombies raised their fists and weaponry
against Sakura's still form — and hesitated. Some were repulsed by her
presence. A few simply stayed.
Minoru's wristband began to pulse over a crack in the ground. It was
here. The elf reached down in the hollow and pulled out a grayish, fruit-like
object. Within three seconds of holding it, the elf dropped it with a wince.
It was too powerful. 'Now that was rather stupid of me,' he inwardly scoffed.
Minoru then attempted to thrust the object through with a vine. It was
too dense. He growled. 'So necromancers are making anti-elf toys. How smart
of them.'
The blond elf then noticed the lack of fighting going on around him.
Did Sakura and Potamos cut the rest of them down, at least temporarily?
Minoru saw what state the kunoichi was in. Sakura had her hands folded
together in a seal, a pink glow outlining the frame of her body.
An idea occurred to him. "Sakura-san!" Minoru yelled, making her green
eyes open. "Use that charm on this object here — it's controlling these
corpses! I think it's some sort of new invention of a necromancer!"
"Be right with you, Minoru-san!" Sakura performed a spinning roundhouse
on the still zombies around her, and put a burst of chakra into her legs.
As she ran, her hands flicked into the sequence again — but this time,
she focused the aura into her hands.
'Oh, I PRAY to the gods that this works,' Minoru thought to himself.
Sakura put her hands together into the final hand-seal. Slowly, she
unfolded it to reveal a crackling wisp of pink light. The girl knelt down
to the pulsing rock, and directed the aura to flow into it.
The rock gave an angry zap at Sakura. She cried out.
A black aura sprouted out from the rock, and enveloped the girl in a
wave of ghastly coldness. Minoru was pushed away from the blast, while
Sakura was trapped inside.
The elf yelled in pain as his body was shot away. "SAKURA-SAN!!!"
He attempted to run back and pull Sakura away from the cursed talisman
— but he was blasted away again from the force. "Damn my elfin body!!"
he snarled.
Sakura, meanwhile, felt as if all of her nerves were grated all at once.
An image of a terrible nothingness flashed through her mind. It was a total
emptiness: no emotions, no images — not even memories.
Then, inhumane screeches rung in her ears. A few random phrases shot
towards her, like sounds of ice stabbing into her ears.
'Get out, you lowly human!!'
A different voice rung — instead of rage, it was full of despair. 'Help
us, for the love of God!!' There were other voices crying. 'Please... have
mercy on us,' someone else pleaded. 'We just want to rest...'
'What?' Sakura thought. But before she could listen more carefully,
another zap of chakra drowned out the voices, replacing them with the first
demonic shout of laughter. 'You're nothing but a weakling! Get out before
your soul joins them.'
Sakura ground her teeth: that voice must have been the necromancer's,
playing through his new remote control. Little did he know that she was
not one to give up on a fight.
Sakura kept her hands over the object, holding on with every drop of
will in her veins. The energy she used was slightly different than what
she created in her other jutsu. This was a calming technique. It worked
in a similar manner to a genjutsu, except that instead of creating disturbing
images, it cleansed them out.
"Let them go," Sakura whispered harshly. Her bright green eyes locked
onto the cursed rock, which seemed to morph into the shape of a human skull.
'Don't even try, girl, or I SHALL KILL YOU!!'
Righteous indignation rose in Sakura. Fear banished from her. "I'm telling
you... leave these bodies in PEACE!!" she shot back.
The power in her increased in strength, overcoming the foreign energy.
The stone cracked. The energy dissipated into thin air.
Sakura's aura glowed downed. Clutching her chest, she took in breaths
of fresh air. She glanced up to witness the spell's effect.
The zombies lowered their weapons. They turned toward Sakura. The kunoichi
nervously grasped the hilt of her sword.
Instead of attacking her, the undead beings gave her toothy grins, and
began to walk back into the earth. The kunoichi sank on top of the crumbled
ground in exhaustion.
Minoru ran to her side, taking hold her shoulders. "Sakura-san?!" he
asked, lightly shaking her.
The elf heavily breathed as he observed the tired look on her face.
Even after that, she was worried about the devil-child. Even after her
soul was in danger of joining the ranks of those undead puppets, threatened
with a living death, Sakura could still...
Tears began to form in his blue eyes. He had almost lost Sakura. Without
hesitation, Minoru embraced her.
"From now on, I'm your big brother," he whispered into her ear.
Sakura was confused. "What?"
'You're growing up too quickly,' Minoru thought, 'just like that damnable
bastard in your own world.'
Potamos coughed as she staggered towards the two, nearly gagging. "That's...
what a rotting corpse looks like?" she weakly asked.
Minoru looked at her. "You've never seen one before?" he stated. He
was very surprised that she had a look of horror on her face. "I thought
you liked blood," the elf commented.
"I like killing FRESH. Just not... that stuff..." Potamos mumbled.
Minoru remembered that the purple-haired girl was a demon, whose kind
melted into nature at the moment of death. Celestials were familiar with
the concept of death, but not necessarily its image. A rotting corpse could
register negatively to an angel or demon's psyche if they had little experience
in seeing them. No wonder Potamos seemed rather scared and immobile during
the fight with the slow-moving monsters.
"Well: that confirms that something normal is in you after all," Minoru
sighed. He pulled out a piece of cloth from his supplies, and wrapped it
around the broken pieces of the necromancer-rock. He chanted some words
over the bundle — a net of golden ki wove itself around, magically sealing
it.
"We have to show this to the village elder in Frida," he stated, putting
the bundle in his bag. "Such an active item so near the Energy Spring of
Dryad — it's almost ludicrous. Something definitely is wrong."
Sakura coughed. She moaned in pain.
"Sacchan, are you okay?!" Potamos asked in worry.
"Her spiritual energy reserves are drained," Minoru said, cradling Sakura
closer to him. "We need to get to Frida."
Sasuke turned over uncomfortably on his bed. His curse seal was itching
again. He ordered himself to calm down.
'You are Orochimaru's beloved servant,' something whispered.
Control.
'Go to him, now!' it further urged.
Control.
'You will regret it if you don't.'
What control?
Sasuke gulped. That stupid urge to go crawling to Orochimaru fascinated
him whenever his curse seal acted up. Thankfully, there was one absolute
defense against this.
He thought of the one person who started this hell for him: Uchiha Itachi.
A flash of Sharingan eyes and a long trenchcoat crossed Sasuke's mind.
With a renewed sense of hate, the discomfort of the black mark went away.
The prodigy, now fourteen, touched the strange mark on the side of his
neck. He sighed in relief: it was stable again. Good God, was he really
thinking ten seconds ago that he just MIGHT want to serve Orochimaru all
his life?
It so was bizarre: the same hate which drove him to survive Orochimaru's
bite, successfully tempted him to achieve its second level, and join the
Sound — that hate protected him from the full effects of the curse. Itachi's
memory was his trump card for sanity.
Yes, sanity. Although Sasuke did slightly become mental when he thought
about Itachi, at least he remained in control of his own will. The thought
of his brother's existence in this world banished ideas of suicide and
self-torture, or to submit completely to Orochimaru's will. There was one
goal of Sasuke — to kill that man — and it kept him going.
Sasuke tried to avoid thinking about the aftermath of his ambitions.
If he succeeded in killing Itachi, and impregnated some random girl — he
would have no more reason to live. He wanted to die in peace when it was
all over. He would be tired of living an empty life.
Thanks to Itachi, Sasuke had a reason to live. It was a low existence,
yes. But it was AN existence. Carrying out justice, and striking down a
dangerous criminal: what better duty could a ninja ask for?
"Shit," the raven-haired boy breathed. There was a tiny hint of dreaming
overcoming him. This seemed to happen whenever he was having trouble falling
asleep. The hope might possibly coincide with his ambitions. But it was
a low possibility indeed. Sasuke thought that maybe... he could be more-or-less
content with life. To be happy.
But that hope was immediately squelched out as he logically pondered
it. Why should he hope for happiness, when it was impossible by definition?
He was Uchiha Sasuke, for crying out loud.
Besides, plenty of people were unhappy. One did not need a murderous
sibling to be incurably miserable.
'I have to invest all my work and luck in killing Itachi,' Sasuke resolved.
'That is my duty towards the Uchiha clan. It is my EXISTENCE.'
Sasuke added as an afterthought: 'It would take a miracle to make ME
happy.'
Up above the mountain, a tengu chuckled quietly. 'This will be more
interesting than I first thought,' he mused before he warped out of the
air. 'Man, what a screwed-up family, to say the least.'
A guard yawned. He stood in front of Frida Village, facing the sunset.
The man was glad that he had this side of the high fence. The opposite
side of the village faced the increasingly gloomy depths of the Rifts —
in the direction of Shadow, which had strengthened unnaturally over the
past years.
The human saw a small traveling party come down over the hills. He was
about to shout out, when his elfin colleague put a hand on his shoulder.
"Look closely at them before you welcome them," the elf quietly said.
He possessed straight, platinum-blond hair, slicked back over his head.
The human guard observed them from a distance, confused at his companion's
rather cold demeanor. "A blond elf... with two girls. I can't tell their
races."
"Beware the one with lavender hair," the elf crisply said. "She looks
like a demon."
"A demon?!" his human friend asked nervously.
"Pardon us, please!" Minoru yelled from afar. "We seek food and lodging.
There is also something important to discuss with the head elder."
The elfin guard put on a grim face. "Travelers?" he asked in a cool
manner, as the party clumsily walked up to the gate. "What business do
you have in these dangerous parts?"
A weak smile crept over Minoru's face. "Dear God. Brother, have you
already forgotten me?"
Realization dawned on the guard's face.
"Minoru?" he croaked out after a long silence.
He was answered with a sheepish grin.
"Oh, my, god — Minoru, you're safe!" the elf laughed, grabbing his younger
brother's shoulders in order to embrace him.
And then, he stopped. He carefully observed Minoru. He let go calmly,
and opened his mouth to say something — but nothing came out. For a while.
Before Sakura and Potamos knew it, Minoru was punched directly in the
forehead by his older brother.
"YOU COMPLETE IMBECILE!!" he screamed. "DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH
FATHER HAS WORRIED ABOUT YOU THESE PAST THREE OR FOUR DECADES?!?"
"Bro, please be reasonable..." Minoru said, rubbing his forehead.
"SILENCE!!!" the older elf roared. "All these years, and you give just
a passing message through the mirror whenever you feel like it! Honestly:
joining a gang after the war was already a crazy stunt in itself, COMPLETELY
DISGRACEFUL FOR AN ELF, but then you have the NERVE to live in Minerva
without any mention whatsoever of what's happening to you!"
"Nothing that was WORTH MENTIONING happened!" Minoru argued.
"Um, excuse me," Sakura said, interrupting with an annoyed cough. "If
you two elves could kindly do your family-bonding later, I kind of need
some aura help. And we're on official business regarding the Tree of Life."
Minoru's brother grimaced. "Is this true?" he hissed towards the elf
with wavy, blond hair.
"Very true. I can even speak it in ancient elvish if you are still drowned
in skepticism," Minoru chirped.
"Fine, fine," the guard mumbled. "However," — he pointed to Potamos
— "SHE stays out of the village."
Notes:
If you have questions, comments, or suggestions, please tell me! If
I suck, by all means tell me. In an intelligent manner.
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