Chapter 28
A week later.
Uzushiogakure.
Bathed in the early morning rays of Uzushio, Mikasa lay sleeping in her bed. But her expression was contorted in pure agony.
"Live. Mikasa…. live…."
Mikasa jolted violently awake. She was sweating profusely, her breathing ragged and her entire body shaking.
She tightly clenched the bedsheets in her fists. After a long minute, her racing heart began to calm down. She brought her trembling hands to her face, wiping away the steady stream of tears flowing down her cheeks.
"That dream again…." she whispered into the quiet morning.
She glanced at the clock and slowly pushed herself out of bed. She had to meet Saki for today's training.
As she began dressing herself, a vivid image of her mother and father flashed across her mind. Her fingers paused, tightening painfully around the button of her shirt.
She could still perfectly remember that day. It had been a quiet evening when, suddenly, strange shinobi appeared one after another, violently breaching their home.
Her father had tried to protect them, but an ordinary man was nothing compared to trained killers. Then, the slaughter began. First, they pinned her father to the ground, driving a sword straight through his body. Throughout it all, Mikasa had stood paralyzed in the corner, sheltered behind her mother as the woman begged them for mercy.
But mercy never came. Their eyes were emotionless as they grabbed her mother by the hair and slit her throat. Mikasa watched the life fade from those dark, loving eyes as her mother looked back at her apologetically. She remembered her father's agonizing wails.
Then, one of the shinobi turned his attention toward her.
They didn't kill her immediately. Instead, they grabbed her and began dragging her toward the door.
"No! No! Don't take her!" her dying father screamed, while Mikasa could do nothing but cry in terror.
Then, her father looked her dead in the eyes, his voice slicing through her panic.
"Mikasa, fight. FIGHT WITH EVERYTHING YOU HAVE."
In that exact instant, something deep inside her mind snapped. The last thing she remembered was seizing the bloody sword from the shinobi who was dragging her.
After that, her memory went completely blank. Everything was painted in red.
When she finally came to her senses, she was standing amidst a pile of mutilated corpses, completely drenched in blood. Her dying father had dragged himself across the floor to lay beside her dead mother.
She dropped to her knees in front of them.
"....So, you finally awakened it," her father breathed in a frail, fading voice.
"....Yes." Her throat tightened painfully as she stared at the massive pool of his blood.
"Good…. Remember what we told you, and never forget," he rasped, pulling her mother's lifeless body into his arms. "Live, Mikasa… live a happy life."
He raised a trembling, bloodstained hand and gently caressed her cheek. "Mikasa, you are our most precious treasure… and we love you more than anything in this world…. Remember…. tha…."
His hand slipped from her face, hitting the wooden floorboards with a heavy thud.
She sat alone in the silence with their bodies, her fresh tears mixing with the blood pooling on the floor.
Knock. Knock.
The sudden sound snapped her out of the memory. She hurriedly wiped the fresh tears from her face.
"Mikasa, we're going to be late!" Kushina's voice muffled through the door.
"Yes, I am coming…" Mikasa called back, trying to steady her voice.
"Hey, are you alright in there?" Kushina asked, her tone shifting to genuine worry.
Mikasa finished buttoning her shirt, her grey eyes softening in the mirror.
"Yes. Just had a bad dream."
*****
In the afternoon.
Kenji sat behind the desk in his office, accompanied by Shōto and Saki.
Resting on his desk was a freshly compiled intelligence report on Mikasa.
"Kenji, this decision of yours will either be a massive boon to Uzushio, or we just invited two dangerous unknowns directly into our village," Shōto stated flatly.
"Ugh. Don't chew me out over this right now," Kenji whined, rubbing his temples.
"I am not chewing you out. I am stating a fact."
Kenji sighed, his gaze dropping to the file once again.
"Konoha… huh?" he muttered.
"From the intel I gathered from the scouts who found her, yes. The attackers were Konoha shinobi."
"And she might be from an unknown noble lineage?"
"Yes. We found a crest carved into the skin of her right hand. It functions identically to a clan symbol, much like yours and Kushina's. And it is not a low-ranking one, either. Based on what we have, I am ninety percent sure the girl is nobility, and her family was on the run." Shōto said seriously.
Kenji and Saki both raised their eyebrows in surprise.
"How could you possibly tell that?" Kenji asked, genuinely curious.
"She possesses an unnatural strength that borders on a bloodline limit, if that wasn't already obvious. She—" Shōto hesitated slightly, searching for the correct words. "—she is also almost entirely immune to genjutsu. More specifically, anything that attempts to alter or mess with her mind. That is also a reason that I believe she might be a runaway royalty herself."
A ripple of shock ran through the room, before Kenji's eyes suddenly narrowed into a harsh glare.
"Did you try to force your way into her memories?" Kenji demanded. There were certain moral boundaries he was strictly unwilling to cross, especially with traumatized orphans.
"No. I was running a baseline genjutsu resistance test," Shōto replied calmly, respecting his friend's boundaries.
Kenji's tense shoulders instantly deflated.
"Sorry about that," Kenji apologized, waving a hand. "And what do you mean by almost immune to genjutsu?"
Shōto accepted the apology with a nod and continued. "I mean standard illusions simply slide right off her mind. I don't know how she would fare against a high-level dōjutsu, however."
"Hmm. So we might have a runaway princess on our hands. Did your scouts find anything else in her previous house?"
"No. The scouts that found her burned the house and the bodies within it to ash before leaving," Shōto explained flatly. "They couldn't risk leaving any clues behind about what happened there, or who survived. But from the team I sent there, they found something odd, the villagers didn't even know anyone was living there until much later. Like one day the family simply appeared out of thin air and began living in the forest."
A heavy silence blanketed the room as Kenji leaned back to think.
"Just ask the girl," Saki interjected seriously. "There is no need to drag this out with espionage. Ask her when she is comfortable, and she will answer."
"Hmm. You are right; sometimes it's better to just be direct." Kenji nodded in agreement. "And what about the second one?"
Shōto rubbed the back of his neck in frustration.
"Hiyuki is a complete mystery. She clearly possesses Ice Release, but she doesn't use chakra to manifest it. She operates on an entirely different power system. She can use chakra, but her primary abilities stem from somewhere else. I tried asking her about it, and she said something about a 'Tacet Mark'... which completely flew over my head."
"I will personally handle Hiyuki and Mikasa," Saki volunteered from the side.
Shōto nodded. "Medori has already taken Konan and Tenka as her personal students. I will train the twins; they have shown a remarkable talent for chakra control."
"So, we have an unknown princess and a mysterious ice user on our hands. Any suggestions on how we should deal with them?" Kenji asked.
"Let them be. They are living with Medori now. She will be the first to notice if they try anything dangerous," Saki said firmly.
"Hmm… you are right." Then, as if suddenly remembering something, Kenji pointed a pen at her. "On that same note, Saki, you will also be living with Medori from now on in her new compound."
"Why?" Saki asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow.
"Well, you were awfully attached to—"
Saki narrowed her eyes at him. Kenji coughed into his fist.
"Ahem. I mean, it will be much safer if our strongest kunoichi is stationed there to protect Haruto," he quickly corrected himself.
"...What about Medori? Did you ask her?" Saki pressed. She wasn't against the idea; she just wanted to be sure she wasn't intruding.
"Actually, it was Medori who suggested it."
"Hmm… I will think about it," Saki replied casually.
The other two men nodded. It was a yes.
They spent the next hour hashing out the logistical details of how they would handle the orphans' integration into the village.
An hour later, Kenji stretched his arms over his head, exhausted.
"Alright. That should formally conclude the orphans' matter."
He waited for them to stand, but a few seconds passed, and the two seasoned shinobi remained firmly seated in their chairs, staring at him.
Kenji blinked. "What? Don't you two have anywhere else to be?"
Shōto let out a long, grave sigh. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.
"Kenji, I think I have given you more than enough time. What is the deal with that Mask? And what's that 'everything' meant?"
Kenji sighed in exhaustion.
"I was hoping you had forgotten about it."
Shōto narrowed his eyes.
"Kenji, what you told me about that thing was no small matter. If that Mask holds that much power, we, as the elders of this clan, have the right to know," Shōto said seriously. "Or is it that you don't trust us?"
Kenji slammed his palm on the desk.
"No! I trust you both. You are my childhood friends. I grew up with you," Kenji stated fiercely. "After Kushina, you two are the people I care about the most."
After a tense second, Kenji deflated. He reached down and retrieved the mask from a hidden compartment within his desk.
It was a plain, white wooden mask. It looked completely ordinary. But the moment Saki's eyes landed on it, her seals violently reacted. They activated on their own.
On her forehead, the crimson spider lily bloomed, illuminating her entire body. She vaulted backward from her seat. The other two instantly followed suit, leaping back. They knew from long experience that Saki possessed supernatural instincts for detecting danger.
Saki landed a few meters away, her heart hammering wildly against her ribs.
After a breathless second, Kenji scanned the room for an enemy.
"What? Are we under attack?" he asked in confusion. Then he noticed Saki's dilated pupils, locked entirely on the mask resting on the table.
"It seems we may have underestimated that thing far too much," Shōto said gravely, his eyes shifting to the mask. He still couldn't sense anything abnormal about it, but he wasn't going to question Saki's instincts. They had saved their lives too many times to doubt now.
"What happened, Saki?" Kenji asked, his shoulders tensing.
Taking a few deep breaths, Saki forced herself to calm down.
"I don't know. That thing is dangerous. These seals are screaming at me…. Where did you get that?" Saki demanded.
"Let's just sit back down, alright?" Shōto sighed, rubbing his forehead. "And Saki, deactivate those... things."
Shōto called them things instead of seals because, after weeks of relentless research, they had discovered Saki's markings were something entirely out of their league. It was a power that mimicked fūinjutsu, but wasn't actually fūinjutsu at all.
It was perfectly merged with her biology. It could function independently, or change its nature depending on her needs without any conscious effort. All in all, it was a total unknown that they had simply left for Saki to figure out on her own.
A minute later, they retook their seats, though Saki kept a very respectable distance from the mask on the desk.
Their entire focus was on the mask.
"As you know, we have many relics like this—masks that hold immense power, created by our ancestors through generations of hard work and research. One of them is our prized Reaper Death Seal, which binds our contract with the Shinigami," Kenji stated seriously, intertwining his fingers.
His gaze lowered to the plain white mask.
"But this one was not made by us. This mask was gifted to our founder after he helped someone. Our founder documented exactly what this thing could do... and the cost we would have to pay to use it."
A palpable silence blanketed the room as they waited for him to continue.
"This mask can rewrite reality itself and manipulate cause and effect."
Gasps echoed around the room.
"It—it can do what?" Shōto asked in absolute disbelief, while Saki's wariness spiked tenfold.
"Yes, it can rewrite reality," Kenji confirmed. "But nobody could use it, many tried but nothing happened. So, It was eventually declared completely useless, but we still kept it heavily guarded as a relic belonging to our founder."
Shōto took a deep, steadying breath. "And what is the cost of using it? You said it would cost everything. What does 'everything' mean?"
Kenji replied defeatedly, his shoulders slumping.
"Exactly what it sounds like. Everything. The user's entire existence will be completely erased from this world. From the memories others have of them, to every single action they have ever taken in this life. Everything."
The room froze in stunned disbelief.
"But you can use it?" Saki asked.
"Yes. It reacted to my call. My hands were moving entirely on their own, weaving the signs and completing the jutsu," Kenji said, his eyes glistening slightly in the dim light. "But right as I was about to finish the final set of hand seals, I saw it. I saw glimpses of the dire consequences of my actions."
He gritted his teeth, his voice trembling under the crushing weight of the memory. "I would not have been born. Mito would have been my mother's only child. There would be no Saki, no Shōto… and Kushina would not have been born to Hiori. She would just be another low-ranking clan member with a unique chakra and no royal blood to protect her from being used as a living tool."
"In that split second, I felt Kushina's pain. Her crushing loneliness, and her profound grief as she stood completely alone, looking out over the burning ruins of Uzushiogakure."
"Uzushio would still be destroyed?" Shōto asked, his jaw tight.
"Yes. It would be. If not now, then a few months or a few years later. It was destined to fall. At least, from what the Mask showed me. And I think the vision was right. If Uzushio didn't have the three of us here to hold the line, it surely would have been wiped out. Using the Mask would have only bought them a few years of borrowed time, and nobody would have even remembered the original invasion."
Kenji spoke with an unnatural calmness. His tone carried the heavy, haunting wisdom of someone who had lived through the grief of an entire alternate lifetime.
Then, his gaze landed softly on Saki, who was visibly disturbed by the horrific revelation. Kenji's tense expression slowly broke into a small, genuine smile.
"So, when Saki appeared in front of that Bijuu-dama…. She gave me hope. A hope that I simply couldn't ignore. I broke the jutsu, put the Mask away, and got ready to fight to the bitter end."
Silence engulfed the room once more.
Suddenly, the office door flew open with a loud bang.
Everyone snapped their attention toward it. There stood Kushina, tears streaming down her cheeks, before she practically lunged at Kenji.
Kenji's eyes widened. He hurriedly caught her, wrapping his arms around her as she buried her face into his chest, bawling her eyes out.
"Dad… please never use that thing… please. Promise me, Dad," Kushina begged between her heavy sobs.
Hearing her pure desperation shattered Kenji's heart. He pulled her even tighter into his embrace, resting his chin on her red hair.
"I promise, Princess. I will never use it."
Saki and Shōto watched the tender scene fondly as Kenji comforted his daughter. However, underneath the warmth, they were both shocked. Neither of them were dedicated sensors like Medori, but they were still elite, battle-hardened shinobi. They should have sensed someone standing right outside that door, even if they were not actively trying.
Then, their eyes landed on Kushina's right hand. A complex, freshly drawn seal rested against her skin. Kenji noticed it too.
"So, you finally perfected your presence concealment seal?" Kenji asked, a distinct hint of fatherly pride bleeding through his concern.
Right after the invasion, Kushina had come to him frustrated over her incomplete concealment formula. He had given her a few minor pointers but ultimately left her to figure the rest out on her own.
"Yes… hic… I came to surprise you," Kushina mumbled between her sobs.
*****
Unknown location.
In a realm of complete, suffocating darkness, two clear white eyes with a pale lavender tint snapped open. They had felt a strange ripple in the fabric of the dimension. As her vision adjusted, her gaze landed on a… child?
Then, something clicked in her mind.
"I will fucking kill that bastard," Kaguya murmured in suppressed fury.
Unfazed by the terrifying aura of the sealed goddess, the infant was looking everywhere with his curious, crystalline emerald eyes. Then, his gaze finally landed on her.
The baby immediately began to drool, staring right at her. Kaguya felt a massive headache begin to throb behind her eyes.
With sheer, unblinking determination, Haru charged forward on all fours.
Kaguya wanted to kill that white bastard so badly right about now. She took a deep, steadying breath and looked down at the infant crawling toward her with ridiculous intensity.
With a lazy wave of her hand, the child lifted off the ground.
He floated up until they were entirely face-to-face, her glowing lavender eyes meeting his bright emerald ones.
"What are you doing here?" Kaguya demanded, narrowing her eyes. "I hate children, you know."
In return, she received a burst of childish babbles as Haruto excitedly extended both of his chubby hands toward her face.
"No, mister, you will not. Did your mother not teach you how to behave in front of a lady?" Kaguya scolded with a slight reprimand.
Haru babbled right back in his baby language, stubbornly keeping his hands outstretched.
"You are one persistent child," Kaguya sighed heavily. Slowly, she molded a dense, pure sphere of her chakra into the palm of her hand. "Here, have it. Whether you survive absorbing this or not does not concern me."
Haru's eyes sparkled. He grabbed the glowing ball of chakra and immediately began sucking on it like a piece of candy.
Kaguya raised a delicate eyebrow when he completely finished the dense chakra orb in under a minute.
Then, Haru's massive emerald eyes looked up at Kaguya again, expecting more.
"No. I already gave you more than enough. Now go. Shoo. Shoo," Kaguya scoffed, waving a hand to swat him away.
Haru's lower lip wobbled, and his big eyes began to glisten with unshed tears.
"Ah—don't you dare try that on me."
.
One minute later, Haruto was happily munching on a much, much bigger chakra orb.
"I hate kids," Kaguya muttered to herself.
A few minutes after that, Haruto was sound asleep directly in Kaguya's lap.
Kaguya stared down at the infant with dead-fish eyes. Finally, she let out a long, defeated sigh and snapped her fingers.
The entire environment instantly shifted. The once dark and oppressive atmosphere dissolved into a vibrant blanket of lush green grass that stretched as far as the eye could see. Above them, a clear blue canopy opened up, with soft white clouds floating lazily by.
"You are #@##'s son, alright," she murmured. A fond smile graced her lips as she began gently caressing his soft crimson hair.
*****
Uzushiogakure.
Inside Medori's compound.
Haru lay soundly asleep tucked into bed beside Medori. Silently, a strange crescent moon symbol appeared directly on Haru's right palm, shining briefly in the dark room for just a second before seamlessly merging into his skin.
End of volume 1.