New chapter after two months hiatus. Enjoy if you haven't forgotten about this
On the night that followed the return of his team from their dreadful assignment, Shiko decided to turn in early. He had spent the better part of the afternoon in deep slumber. When he arose, he filled his belly with some takeout food, which made up for not being very tasty by being very cheap, and threw himself into writing up a full report of the Akakuma mission. This took a good while. After sending the document to the Hokage via a messenger ANBU, the Black Scorpion rewarded himself with another nap. When he awoke again by nightfall, he fed on some more takeout and began the final task of the day.
It was currently eight PM and the Nara was seated at his usual, dull mahogany desk, in his dull, quaint residence, scribbling certain things in an inscrutable shorthand, on the clear white pages of a dull looking diary, whose leaves were thick with previous entries. Although the fluorescent bulb hanging on his ceiling bathed the room with white light, the yellow lamp at his desk was also lit, casting its lurid glare on the young yet aged looking face, and giving a gleam to his otherwise dull and listless eyes.
There was no sound in the room, save for the rapid whirling of the blades of his ceiling fan. Apart from the hum of this electrical appliance, there was a deathly stillness about the cramped looking room. IT was a clear display of Shiko’s absolutely languid disposition. The bed was not made, but the blanket and the sheets were bundled up in an unsightly heap, while the pillow tottered at the edge of the foot of the bed. Beside his digital alarm clock, there was a night lamp sitting on the dresser on the right side of the bed, but it was clearly broken and the homeowner was simply too lazy to get it fixed. The trash bin on the far left of the room was now surrounded on both sides by crumpled paper, empty plastic bottles, discarded wrappers for chocolate snacks and other forms of refuse, which it could not accommodate due to already being filled with crumpled paper, empty plastic bottles, discarded wrappers for chocolate snacks and other forms of refuse. The Black Scorpion could not be bothered with taking out the trash.
Even the desk was a complete mess of scrolls, books, files, folders, all pushed back in an untidy pile to make space for the diary which Shiko was currently updating. These and other forms of disorder; dirty clothes sticking out from under the bed, cobwebs spread over the top corners of the walls, a rat nibbling on the dregs of takeout food sitting on the windowsill, marked the Nara’s abode.
Normally, he didn’t usually let himself go this much. It was only when his mind was occupied with severely weighty matters that he became so utterly indifferent to the principles of hygiene and it was clear that with the new data he had obtained from the Akakuma mission, the Nara would be too busy with in-depth thought to clean up his room anytime soon.
After about two whole hours of writing, during which he frequently paused to scratch his goatee in thought, the dry looking book was clamped shut with a quiet thud. He extracted a piece of paper from a certain book on his desk and laid it on the front page of the diary. Immediately, a Kanji symbol appeared on this parchment, the lines of ink spreading over the whole book, securing it with what was no doubt a powerful seal. Shiko also meticulously unrolled a scroll which was sitting on the desk, weaved a few seals and sealed the diary into the scroll. The parchment was then rolled up and placed in the desk’s bottom drawer, which was subsequently locked and tagged with a similar paper as the diary, only this time, four of the seals were placed. He proceeded to weave certain hand seals which invoked a technique that rendered the seal tags invisible.
Shiko took his security very seriously.
The lamp was turned off and Shiko, in a tight-fitting, faded, blue shirt along with a large pair of green khaki shorts, yawned like a man deprived of sleep for weeks, and swung open the glass panes of his windows to tempt in that cool night breeze that usually followed the blazing hot days of Konoha. The rat had quickly scampered out of sight on his approach. The wind caressed his worn looking face and played with his long hair, which was presently not in its usual high ponytail fashion, but falling freely over his back. The Nara sighed that deep sigh for which he and his kinsmen were known, grumbling to himself about having to sleep late after all. He dragged himself towards the bed and collapsed on top of it immediately. The light switch was conveniently located on the wall where the bed was pushed up, and with a flick of an index finger, the room was reduced to a sea of blackness and silence save for the ceiling fan still roaring above.
About five minutes later, he sat up on his bed suddenly, flipped on the light switch and saw about ten individuals standing in front of his bed, their faces veiled with animal-themed porcelain masks, their hair covered by the hoods of their ankle length, long-sleeved yellow cloaks. They did indeed appear to be ANBU not only in attire but also in their manner, as they stood with that coolness and placidity which belied razor sharp instincts and deadly battle skills, for which Konoha’s most elite soldiers were well known. But, as Shiko’s discerning eye easily determined, they were not ANBU, but were rather the personal soldiers of Konoha’s most influential and sinister war veteran and councilman, although they claimed to serve Konoha under the banner of ROOT. It seemed they had appeared out of the darkness like cockroaches were apt to do.
“Oh great,” griped Shiko in an exasperated tone, shaking his head in annoyance, “just great.”
“Nara Shiko, we’ve been ordered to escort you to Danzo-sama.” said one of the Root shinobi in a deep, clear, commanding voice. This tall and burly looking fellow cut an assertive and intimidating figure with his two gloved hands folded at his back, his chest puffed out and his feet apart. It was obvious that this was the leader of the pack.
Shiko took his time to yawn and stretch his arms before he replied;
“And if I refuse?”
“We have been authorized to use force”
ANBU’s Black Scorpion cracked his knuckles and threw his hair back with one hand, then leaned back on his bed, supporting himself on an elbow with his head cocked to one side and a sly smile playing on his lips.
“I’d like to see you try.”
The troop of masked ninja extracted tantos—swords with blades so short that they could almost pass for knives—from within their cloaks, simultaneously raised the weapons high and charged at the thin figure on the bed. At this exact moment, among the sea of trees which spread over the whole terrain on the outskirts of Konoha, there was a small, wide eyed squirrel with golden fur and a fluffy tail, who, perched near the apex of a particularly tall tree, sniffed some food nearby. The creature scampered out of its hole in the bark and hadn’t descended down two feet on the tree before it was caught between the overstretching jaws of an anaconda which was coiled around one of the many branches that sprouted from the great tree. By the time the squirrel was entangled by the folds of the snake’s large, scaly, limbless body, Shiko had already paralyzed the ten Root Shinobi with his Shadow Bind technique.
“How…” marveled the leader of the squad in a strained voice as he struggled against the immaterial binds of dark tendrils that had coiled round his body, and the bodies of his teammates, much like the snake had wrapped around the squirrel. The Snake in this situation, had however subdued his foes while still lying on his bed, his head slightly inclined to the right and his face alive with a coy and devious smile. He hadn’t moved at all nor weaved a single hand seal and the whole Root team was already at his mercy.
“The ‘how’ is not your concern. All you need to know, ” said Shiko, who had stood up from the bed, and was now walking leisurely towards the company of shinobi, yawning, stretching and scratching his disheveled long hair as he did, “is that I can kill you without difficulty if I so wished. Now, take me to your leader.”
Shiko kept the ten fellows loosely bound by his shadow as they led him through the dark corners and crevices of Konoha to where undoubtedly Danzo was waiting. Under the dark shadow of the night, with only glittering stars to light their way, the party proceeded until they reached the wire mesh fences of Konoha’s Training Grounds and quickly and quietly leaping over it, ambled through the grassy area of the Third Training Ground, finally encountering Danzo at the smooth blue stone sculpture erected in honor and recognition of all Konoha’s fallen shinobi. The jutting stonework reached DAnzo’s waist and he was tapping its fine surface with a wrinkled bony index finger, when the team stopped just a few feet behind him.
The wind was quite frigid and fierce, sweeping the grasses this way and that; compelling the surrounding trees to sigh and swoon; causing the feeble flame in the lamp sitting on top of the blue epitaph—their only source of light—to sputter; also stirring Shiko’s hair and sending a chill down his spine. He cursed under his breath at being out at this time of the night while dressed so sparsely as he hugged himself to stave of the cold. The only reaction which the wind could engender in the Root shinobi that had accompanied the Black Scorpion here, was to cause their cloaks to billow violently.
The figure which stood before them all, garbed in a long black robe, cane aloft, shock of unkempt dark hair made more haggard by the white bandages that wrapped around his face and forehead, was as indifferent to the cold air as his subordinates. The elder’s only visible squinted right eye opened narrowly as he eyed Shiko, his hard, craggy, wrinkled face stolid.
“Good evening Danzo,” greeted Shiko in a surly tone, “your timing is almost as horrible as you are. I see you’re looking well; old and sinister as always. Tell me, what terrible deeds have you been up to? Destroy any lives? Turn any helpless orphans into mindless tools?”
“Enough pleasantries, boy,” the elder said briskly with a wave of his cane free hand, “the reason I called you here—”
“By the way, next time, pick a place indoors, you know? With a nice fireplace and some hot cocoa…or tea.”
“—is to ask a few questions about your last mission.” The elder finished without minding the interruption.
“Well, my mission report is probably sitting on the Hokage’s desk right now. I’m sure with permission, you could be allowed to peruse…”
Danzo had taken out a beige document from the folds of his dark cloak. He held it up for Shiko to see his own handwriting on the front page of it. “This mission report—”
“You little thief!” Shiko gasped in sarcastic display of shock and anger.
“—is merely jargon. Empty paperwork. You’re hiding something. Whether Hiruzen knows this or not is his own business. I need to know the hard facts. What happened?”
“We beat Akakuma. Plain and simple.” the Nara answered coolly.
“How exactly?” Danzo asked in a voice even more placid than the Black Scorpion’s.
“Teamwork.”
“Elaborate.”
“Didn’t you read the report?”
“I did. The boy, Itachi…he used a Sharingan genjutsu?”
“That’s exactly what happened. Akakuma fell to the illusion.”
“But that’s impossible!” hollered Danzo, his normally sedate face livid and his tone harsh and brusque. Quickly, the elder recovered from the sudden outburst and composed himself, sinking into silence.
Shiko frowned deeply.
“Impossible, you say? Now how exactly would you know that? Were you, perhaps, already informed about Akakuma’s resistance to genjutsu and did you purposely withhold that information from my team and I before we set out on our mission? Could it be that you planned for Akakuma to eliminate us all? ”
“Now, you’re talking nonsense.” the elder countered with a serene voice.
“Am I?” Shiko shot back with a scoff.
“How did Akakuma fall?”
“I can tolerate covert attempts on my life, Danzo. I know how to deal with those. But when you try to kill my soldiers, then you’ve crossed a line.”
“You can’t prove anything.”
“I don’t need to. I don’t have any desire to tell the Hokage anything. I will deal with you personally. I’m sure you haven’t quite forgotten what I’m capable of.”
At that moment, Shiko tightened the hold of his shadow on the necks of the Root ninja standing behind him. They began to gasp for air and their bodies twitched and trembled as they struggled helplessly against the dark bonds that held them. The Nara’s eyes were aflame, flashing and flaring with unbridled rage as they stared into the deadpan look on the wrinkled face of Shimura Danzo, a tense silence falling over the scene, punctuated only by the choking and writhing of the Black Scorpion’s ten victims.
“Enough.” Danzo stated simply.
“I don’t take orders from you.” Shiko responded. “Next time, they’ll be corpses lying at your feet.”
Shiko released the ten shinobi from his restraining technique and turned to leave as they all fell to their knees at once, coughing and retching. Danzo watched the shrinking figure as he walked further and further away with an imperious stride, hair dancing in the breeze, until the Black Scorpion vanished in a haze of white smoke, which was immediately blown into nothingness by the wind.
“My apologies, Danzo-sama. We failed to subdue him.” spoke the commander of the ten shinobi as he fell on one knee with his head lowered, right in front of his master. Danzo regarded the fellow with an apathetic glance of his only visible eye as he sighed heavily.
“Shiko is a dangerous element. I never really expected your team to actually capture him. I might have to deal with him personally.” Danzo replied as he slowly began to walk away from his soldiers.
“Do you mean using Shisui’s genjutsu?”
The Darkness of Shinobi stopped in his tracks, standing silently and rigidly with his face turned upwards to the cloudy, star-spangled night sky, the wind throwing his garments and tresses every which way. The cold expression on his craggy, drooping face, the grim, black robe that shrouded his frame, the bandages that added an element of grotesqueness to his mysterious and sinister visage; all these, by the weak lamplight and with backdrop of the dark night, seemed to transform Shimura Danzo to a shadowy, ghoulish phantom, as he replied calmly;
“If at all it becomes necessary. Dismissed”
To Be Continued.
On the night that followed the return of his team from their dreadful assignment, Shiko decided to turn in early. He had spent the better part of the afternoon in deep slumber. When he arose, he filled his belly with some takeout food, which made up for not being very tasty by being very cheap, and threw himself into writing up a full report of the Akakuma mission. This took a good while. After sending the document to the Hokage via a messenger ANBU, the Black Scorpion rewarded himself with another nap. When he awoke again by nightfall, he fed on some more takeout and began the final task of the day.
It was currently eight PM and the Nara was seated at his usual, dull mahogany desk, in his dull, quaint residence, scribbling certain things in an inscrutable shorthand, on the clear white pages of a dull looking diary, whose leaves were thick with previous entries. Although the fluorescent bulb hanging on his ceiling bathed the room with white light, the yellow lamp at his desk was also lit, casting its lurid glare on the young yet aged looking face, and giving a gleam to his otherwise dull and listless eyes.
There was no sound in the room, save for the rapid whirling of the blades of his ceiling fan. Apart from the hum of this electrical appliance, there was a deathly stillness about the cramped looking room. IT was a clear display of Shiko’s absolutely languid disposition. The bed was not made, but the blanket and the sheets were bundled up in an unsightly heap, while the pillow tottered at the edge of the foot of the bed. Beside his digital alarm clock, there was a night lamp sitting on the dresser on the right side of the bed, but it was clearly broken and the homeowner was simply too lazy to get it fixed. The trash bin on the far left of the room was now surrounded on both sides by crumpled paper, empty plastic bottles, discarded wrappers for chocolate snacks and other forms of refuse, which it could not accommodate due to already being filled with crumpled paper, empty plastic bottles, discarded wrappers for chocolate snacks and other forms of refuse. The Black Scorpion could not be bothered with taking out the trash.
Even the desk was a complete mess of scrolls, books, files, folders, all pushed back in an untidy pile to make space for the diary which Shiko was currently updating. These and other forms of disorder; dirty clothes sticking out from under the bed, cobwebs spread over the top corners of the walls, a rat nibbling on the dregs of takeout food sitting on the windowsill, marked the Nara’s abode.
Normally, he didn’t usually let himself go this much. It was only when his mind was occupied with severely weighty matters that he became so utterly indifferent to the principles of hygiene and it was clear that with the new data he had obtained from the Akakuma mission, the Nara would be too busy with in-depth thought to clean up his room anytime soon.
After about two whole hours of writing, during which he frequently paused to scratch his goatee in thought, the dry looking book was clamped shut with a quiet thud. He extracted a piece of paper from a certain book on his desk and laid it on the front page of the diary. Immediately, a Kanji symbol appeared on this parchment, the lines of ink spreading over the whole book, securing it with what was no doubt a powerful seal. Shiko also meticulously unrolled a scroll which was sitting on the desk, weaved a few seals and sealed the diary into the scroll. The parchment was then rolled up and placed in the desk’s bottom drawer, which was subsequently locked and tagged with a similar paper as the diary, only this time, four of the seals were placed. He proceeded to weave certain hand seals which invoked a technique that rendered the seal tags invisible.
Shiko took his security very seriously.
The lamp was turned off and Shiko, in a tight-fitting, faded, blue shirt along with a large pair of green khaki shorts, yawned like a man deprived of sleep for weeks, and swung open the glass panes of his windows to tempt in that cool night breeze that usually followed the blazing hot days of Konoha. The rat had quickly scampered out of sight on his approach. The wind caressed his worn looking face and played with his long hair, which was presently not in its usual high ponytail fashion, but falling freely over his back. The Nara sighed that deep sigh for which he and his kinsmen were known, grumbling to himself about having to sleep late after all. He dragged himself towards the bed and collapsed on top of it immediately. The light switch was conveniently located on the wall where the bed was pushed up, and with a flick of an index finger, the room was reduced to a sea of blackness and silence save for the ceiling fan still roaring above.
About five minutes later, he sat up on his bed suddenly, flipped on the light switch and saw about ten individuals standing in front of his bed, their faces veiled with animal-themed porcelain masks, their hair covered by the hoods of their ankle length, long-sleeved yellow cloaks. They did indeed appear to be ANBU not only in attire but also in their manner, as they stood with that coolness and placidity which belied razor sharp instincts and deadly battle skills, for which Konoha’s most elite soldiers were well known. But, as Shiko’s discerning eye easily determined, they were not ANBU, but were rather the personal soldiers of Konoha’s most influential and sinister war veteran and councilman, although they claimed to serve Konoha under the banner of ROOT. It seemed they had appeared out of the darkness like cockroaches were apt to do.
“Oh great,” griped Shiko in an exasperated tone, shaking his head in annoyance, “just great.”
“Nara Shiko, we’ve been ordered to escort you to Danzo-sama.” said one of the Root shinobi in a deep, clear, commanding voice. This tall and burly looking fellow cut an assertive and intimidating figure with his two gloved hands folded at his back, his chest puffed out and his feet apart. It was obvious that this was the leader of the pack.
Shiko took his time to yawn and stretch his arms before he replied;
“And if I refuse?”
“We have been authorized to use force”
ANBU’s Black Scorpion cracked his knuckles and threw his hair back with one hand, then leaned back on his bed, supporting himself on an elbow with his head cocked to one side and a sly smile playing on his lips.
“I’d like to see you try.”
The troop of masked ninja extracted tantos—swords with blades so short that they could almost pass for knives—from within their cloaks, simultaneously raised the weapons high and charged at the thin figure on the bed. At this exact moment, among the sea of trees which spread over the whole terrain on the outskirts of Konoha, there was a small, wide eyed squirrel with golden fur and a fluffy tail, who, perched near the apex of a particularly tall tree, sniffed some food nearby. The creature scampered out of its hole in the bark and hadn’t descended down two feet on the tree before it was caught between the overstretching jaws of an anaconda which was coiled around one of the many branches that sprouted from the great tree. By the time the squirrel was entangled by the folds of the snake’s large, scaly, limbless body, Shiko had already paralyzed the ten Root Shinobi with his Shadow Bind technique.
“How…” marveled the leader of the squad in a strained voice as he struggled against the immaterial binds of dark tendrils that had coiled round his body, and the bodies of his teammates, much like the snake had wrapped around the squirrel. The Snake in this situation, had however subdued his foes while still lying on his bed, his head slightly inclined to the right and his face alive with a coy and devious smile. He hadn’t moved at all nor weaved a single hand seal and the whole Root team was already at his mercy.
“The ‘how’ is not your concern. All you need to know, ” said Shiko, who had stood up from the bed, and was now walking leisurely towards the company of shinobi, yawning, stretching and scratching his disheveled long hair as he did, “is that I can kill you without difficulty if I so wished. Now, take me to your leader.”
Shiko kept the ten fellows loosely bound by his shadow as they led him through the dark corners and crevices of Konoha to where undoubtedly Danzo was waiting. Under the dark shadow of the night, with only glittering stars to light their way, the party proceeded until they reached the wire mesh fences of Konoha’s Training Grounds and quickly and quietly leaping over it, ambled through the grassy area of the Third Training Ground, finally encountering Danzo at the smooth blue stone sculpture erected in honor and recognition of all Konoha’s fallen shinobi. The jutting stonework reached DAnzo’s waist and he was tapping its fine surface with a wrinkled bony index finger, when the team stopped just a few feet behind him.
The wind was quite frigid and fierce, sweeping the grasses this way and that; compelling the surrounding trees to sigh and swoon; causing the feeble flame in the lamp sitting on top of the blue epitaph—their only source of light—to sputter; also stirring Shiko’s hair and sending a chill down his spine. He cursed under his breath at being out at this time of the night while dressed so sparsely as he hugged himself to stave of the cold. The only reaction which the wind could engender in the Root shinobi that had accompanied the Black Scorpion here, was to cause their cloaks to billow violently.
The figure which stood before them all, garbed in a long black robe, cane aloft, shock of unkempt dark hair made more haggard by the white bandages that wrapped around his face and forehead, was as indifferent to the cold air as his subordinates. The elder’s only visible squinted right eye opened narrowly as he eyed Shiko, his hard, craggy, wrinkled face stolid.
“Good evening Danzo,” greeted Shiko in a surly tone, “your timing is almost as horrible as you are. I see you’re looking well; old and sinister as always. Tell me, what terrible deeds have you been up to? Destroy any lives? Turn any helpless orphans into mindless tools?”
“Enough pleasantries, boy,” the elder said briskly with a wave of his cane free hand, “the reason I called you here—”
“By the way, next time, pick a place indoors, you know? With a nice fireplace and some hot cocoa…or tea.”
“—is to ask a few questions about your last mission.” The elder finished without minding the interruption.
“Well, my mission report is probably sitting on the Hokage’s desk right now. I’m sure with permission, you could be allowed to peruse…”
Danzo had taken out a beige document from the folds of his dark cloak. He held it up for Shiko to see his own handwriting on the front page of it. “This mission report—”
“You little thief!” Shiko gasped in sarcastic display of shock and anger.
“—is merely jargon. Empty paperwork. You’re hiding something. Whether Hiruzen knows this or not is his own business. I need to know the hard facts. What happened?”
“We beat Akakuma. Plain and simple.” the Nara answered coolly.
“How exactly?” Danzo asked in a voice even more placid than the Black Scorpion’s.
“Teamwork.”
“Elaborate.”
“Didn’t you read the report?”
“I did. The boy, Itachi…he used a Sharingan genjutsu?”
“That’s exactly what happened. Akakuma fell to the illusion.”
“But that’s impossible!” hollered Danzo, his normally sedate face livid and his tone harsh and brusque. Quickly, the elder recovered from the sudden outburst and composed himself, sinking into silence.
Shiko frowned deeply.
“Impossible, you say? Now how exactly would you know that? Were you, perhaps, already informed about Akakuma’s resistance to genjutsu and did you purposely withhold that information from my team and I before we set out on our mission? Could it be that you planned for Akakuma to eliminate us all? ”
“Now, you’re talking nonsense.” the elder countered with a serene voice.
“Am I?” Shiko shot back with a scoff.
“How did Akakuma fall?”
“I can tolerate covert attempts on my life, Danzo. I know how to deal with those. But when you try to kill my soldiers, then you’ve crossed a line.”
“You can’t prove anything.”
“I don’t need to. I don’t have any desire to tell the Hokage anything. I will deal with you personally. I’m sure you haven’t quite forgotten what I’m capable of.”
At that moment, Shiko tightened the hold of his shadow on the necks of the Root ninja standing behind him. They began to gasp for air and their bodies twitched and trembled as they struggled helplessly against the dark bonds that held them. The Nara’s eyes were aflame, flashing and flaring with unbridled rage as they stared into the deadpan look on the wrinkled face of Shimura Danzo, a tense silence falling over the scene, punctuated only by the choking and writhing of the Black Scorpion’s ten victims.
“Enough.” Danzo stated simply.
“I don’t take orders from you.” Shiko responded. “Next time, they’ll be corpses lying at your feet.”
Shiko released the ten shinobi from his restraining technique and turned to leave as they all fell to their knees at once, coughing and retching. Danzo watched the shrinking figure as he walked further and further away with an imperious stride, hair dancing in the breeze, until the Black Scorpion vanished in a haze of white smoke, which was immediately blown into nothingness by the wind.
“My apologies, Danzo-sama. We failed to subdue him.” spoke the commander of the ten shinobi as he fell on one knee with his head lowered, right in front of his master. Danzo regarded the fellow with an apathetic glance of his only visible eye as he sighed heavily.
“Shiko is a dangerous element. I never really expected your team to actually capture him. I might have to deal with him personally.” Danzo replied as he slowly began to walk away from his soldiers.
“Do you mean using Shisui’s genjutsu?”
The Darkness of Shinobi stopped in his tracks, standing silently and rigidly with his face turned upwards to the cloudy, star-spangled night sky, the wind throwing his garments and tresses every which way. The cold expression on his craggy, drooping face, the grim, black robe that shrouded his frame, the bandages that added an element of grotesqueness to his mysterious and sinister visage; all these, by the weak lamplight and with backdrop of the dark night, seemed to transform Shimura Danzo to a shadowy, ghoulish phantom, as he replied calmly;
“If at all it becomes necessary. Dismissed”
To Be Continued.
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