Chapter 39 Preview

Author’s note: Sorry it’s been so long! Happy to be back on schedule posting again though! Here’s a preview of the upcoming chapter. Big things to come!! 😉

39 — Transformation

Author’s note: In the earlier chapters I did not name the members of Katsuro’s team, particularly the ones who gave him such trouble on the way up to the temple, after they’d ambushed Sakura. I have since named them — Raiden and Fumio — as they make an appearance here.

Katsuro moved stealthily through the dark camp. Soft fires glowed and voices threaded around tents, but he was alert as to them as if he were moving through enemy encampment. 

It had been three days since his return and the waiting was getting under his skin, making him jumpy and irritable. Itachi had left to confer with the Akatsuki leader and he had forbidden Katsuro from leaving, fighting, discussing anything that had happened, and especially letting even a shred of the demon’s chakra escape. He said it was central to his plan. His new plan. 

Katsuro growled under his breath and turned away from a cluster of men walking between the tent rows.

All that was left to do was wait. And the longer he waited the harder it was to control his temper.

The loss of his team was barely noticed in the camp. Some men were too new to have known them. Others cast Katsuro looks of quiet pity. Both rubbed him the wrong way. It all felt wrong, and he didn’t want either.

But what really stoked his smoldering anger was the return of some familiar faces to the camp. Raiden, Fumio and the band of thugs that had accompanied him to the mountaintop temple with Sakura years before. He had gone out of his way to avoid them. And it had worked…so far….

Katsuro turned away from the main camp toward the treeline where his tent sat alone. But instead of dark woods, a low fire glowed ominously beyond the line of trees. Deep laughter carried up the footpath. 

Katsuro swore. This was the result of Itachi’s waiting. Having to tangle with these fools.

He stomped up the path, gritting his teeth and pushing down the fire sparking in his gut.

The men standing around the fire turned in unison at the approaching footsteps, snickering, coughing and nudging each other. 

Katsuro stopped at the treeline. “You shouldn’t be back here,” he said, voice quiet with leashed anger.

The group parted, revealing its big, bushy-headed leader, Raiden, standing across the fire. He had gotten even bulkier over the ensuing years, and by the looks of the nasty grin, illuminated now by the orange firelight, he knew it. Beside him stood Fumio, his closest comrade. Fumio was just as wiry as he was before, with the cords of his muscles stretching down his arms to his thin, cruel hands. Only a new scar rippling across the meat of his cheek showed the progress of time.

Katsuro swung his eyes over the group, recognizing many of the thick-necked thugs from his previous pairing with Raiden. Katsuro tightened a fist.

Seeing the gesture, the Raiden laughed.

“You’re not happy to see us? Little Kat-su-ro,” he lilted.

Katsuro kept his expression stony. “I knew you were here.”

They all laughed then, firelight adding a malicious glint to their hooded eyes. 

“We heard about your little friends getting killed,” Fumio sneered and Raiden added, “Yeah, but what I want to know is how a scrawny thing like you made it out, and the others didn’t—”

Katsuro felt a deep fury well inside him, threatening to spill over like a boiling pot. 

“Look at him,” another man echoed. He threw his mop of hair away from his eyes, but Katsuro didn’t recognize him. “He’s all skin and bones, a little runt if ever I saw one. Bet he’d squeal just like that pig we stole last night.” He flashed his gaze toward the rest of his group, proving his was more interested in their attention than Katsuro’s.

It worked. The group laughed, nodding and acknowledging him, all except Raiden. He stood watching Katsuro, arms folded across his barrel chest, frowning. “You are still a little runt, aren’t ya. How is it you look just the same since then, when you was trippin’ over yourself for that girlie—“

The smiles of the men quickly dissolved, replaced by narrow-eyed suspicion.

“That’s right, you threw us over for that girl,” one said, jabbing a meaty finger at Katsuro. “Your own team!”

“Your best team!” Raiden added, grinning cruelly now. “That wasn’t a smart thing to do. ‘Specially since we’re still here, and she ain’t….” He popped his knuckles as he spoke. “And what I want to know is was she worth it. But don’t answer me yet—“ He pulled a metal chain out of his pocket and and wrapped it over his knuckles, making a tight fist.

He stepped forward. “Now that Itachi’s gone, we can talk about it…man to man.” His voice dropped a notch. “You are a man now aren’t you? What with you having a girl and your own team….” 

The rest of the men stepped back, forming a circle, just like the fighting rings they used to have in camp.

Raiden spit on the ground and began to circle him. “Oh that’s right, your team’s dead. And your girl’s long gone.” He shook his head, swinging his hair and loosening up his muscles.

Katsuro stood perfectly still, seething with rage. The kyuubi answered with hot licks of promised power. He hooked his hand over the curved handle of the Captain’s Rain dagger as Raiden crossed behind him. 

Raiden didn’t miss the threatening movement. “Oi, you got a new weapon?” He laughed meanly. “Stole it, more like.”

“What?! I fought with him! He—“

“That’s not what I heard,” Raiden taunted, coming around to the front. “If that’s so, then how’d you get back here without a scratch?” The group backed him with a low grumbles of acknowledgement. “Nah, I figure the Captain knew you couldn’t handled it, so he took the hit for the Big Boss’s boy.” Raiden stopped directly in front of him. “So what I want to know is…when you finally came out of hiding…was the old man’s body still warm when you took it off him? Or was he already cold and stiff—”

Katsuro’s eyes flashed red. Screw everything he’d promised Itachi.

The forest wavered around him as if it had been engulfed in a blazing heat. His teeth ached, wanting to grow. He could feel the power surging through his arms, roiling around his fists. The black woods began to bleed red….

He wanted this. He’d tear Raiden apart. He’d had it coming for so long—

“Come on then, let’s see what you can do with it,” Raiden said, coming towards him, his bulky form towering over him. 

“Ka-Katsuro!” 

A tremulous voice arrested their movements, but neither Katsuro nor Raiden took their eyes off the other. The rest of the men turned their heads toward the voice coming up the trail and slowly opened their ranks.

“Ka-Katsuro!? Is that you?” A new recruit hovered at the edge of the circle, his gaze nervously darting around the sneering men. “Itachi wants you. I-Immediately.”

With a low growl Katsuro turned — almost daring Raiden to take a shot as his back, just to give him a reason to tear into him — and shouldered his way out of the circle to follow the young recruit.

Raiden blustered and bellowed, yelling threats at Katsuro’s retreating back, but the rest of the group was already loosing interest and beginning to wander back to the smuggled plum wine and betting games in main camp.

With each step Katsuro’s anger receded. He realized how nothing had changed. At all. And it never would. He would always be at the the lowest man. He would always be on the the outskirts. And men like Raiden and Fumio and the rest of them would always be around, waiting to be pound him into the ground.

He wanted to be done with this, more than anything. He was suddenly glad that he hadn’t revealed anything to the men and messed up his part of the plan.

Ahead of him lay the softly glowing campaign tent, Itachi and the future he so desperately desired.

But when he pulled back the canvas flap, he found Itachi readying to leave again. Angry chakra flared in Katsuro’s chest, and Itachi turned to him as if he could feel it. But he was uninterested. He turned back to the scrolls piled in front of him, each time-worn and marked with fading Uchiha fans, and carefully arranged them at the bottom of the pack.

“Get ready,” he said over his shoulder. “We leave tonight.”

Katsuro blinked, his fiery anger doused. 

“Uh…. Where are we going?”

“You want to transform right? Shed your skin, as it were?” 

“Yes, but—“

“Well you cannot just walk in here as Katsuro and walk out as Naruto,” he said quietly. He dropped a sack of food stuffs down into the pack.

“No, but—“

Itachi finally lifted his black eyes. “Katsuro must die,” he said, his voice as even and toneless as if it wasn’t even worth mentioning. Just something on his list to be checked off.

Katsuro sucked in a breath and shook his head, numb with shock.

Itachi moved on to other supplies, leaving Katsuro standing in the middle of the tent to work through his thoughts.

He slowly realized Itachi was right. There was no other way. Naruto and Katsuro couldn’t co-exist. He had to give up one to become the other. 

And it was past time to let go. Everyone saw that he wasn’t changing, wasn’t growing. From the men in camp to infinitely more dangerous creatures. Like Sasori. 

Itachi’s elaborate jutsu was not adjustable for age. Katsuro wondered for a moment how that detail had slipped by. Itachi was always so careful, so precise…it didn’t make sense….

But it didn’t matter now.

“I understand,” Katsuro said firmly. “I’ll do whatever needs to be done.”

Itachi nodded without turning. 

“Good. We leave in an hour. You can’t take anything with you. Everything that yours, Katsuro’s, must remain here. Untouched. I will remove the jutsu tonight.”

The corners of Katsuro’s mouth curved up. Finally.

Katsuro crossed the camp back to his tent, skirting the big campfire surrounded by men. They laughed and Katsuro thought he’d avoided notice, but Raiden’s deep voice carried above the rest. “I should’ve hauled that pink-haired girl up the mountain. I’d have taken care of her just fine—“

They all laughed louder. He took a loud swig of something in a bottle then muttered, “Eh, he’s nothing special.” There was a chorus of agreement. But Katsuro kept going.

None of it mattered. None of it could touch him. Not even the biting comments about Sakura. He didn’t feel it.

Picking his way through the darkness toward his silent tent, Katsuro realized belatedly that the mention of Sakura barely rippled his emotions. In fact the anger that her name provoked wasn’t over her. Instead he wanted to rage at the men for daring to try to control him with something from his past.

His past…. That’s all she was now. 

Rosy embers glowed from the deepest parts of the blackened fire pit in front of the tent. Katsuro ducked his head in and looked around. 

Leaving it all was the work of a moment. There was nothing there that belonged to him. And even the things he lost in the ambush weren’t really his. Just spare blankets, bowls and weapons that had been assigned to him. There was nothing in there he needed. 

However, there was something he couldn’t take with him. 

He stood and touched the spot just below his collar bone at the thought, feeling the oblong shape of the necklace through his shirt. His necklace.

He drew it out slowly, fingering the cool smooth stone. That would be a problem.

Who knew what would be required of him when Itachi removed the jutsu. Attachment to a piece of jewelry would earn Itach’s scorn, and he wasn’t entirely certain the Uchiha wouldn’t dispose of it while he was unconscious.

And once the jutsu was removed, who knew what path his life would take.

He pulled it over his head and studied in the dim light. It swung in front of him, glowing soft and green. Her face came swimming into his mind for moment. But he hardened himself to the memory. 

This was no longer a memento of her. This was a symbol that he’d survived. He’d survived the demon, and that village that locked it inside him. And he’d survived her and her green eyes. He’d survived all of it. And if he ever needed to be reminded, it was right in front of him.

The necklace belonged to him and no one else. It was the only thing in his life that had ever truly belonged to him. It was his only possessions in the world…and now he needed to find someplace else to hide it. He couldn’t take it with him and he couldn’t leave it here. 

He’d bury it, he decided. He’d get a box from old man Masato in the supply tent, then bury it beneath one of the ancient oaks, marking the spot so he could find it again later. 

Katsuro flipped up the pendant, caught it in his fist and dropped it into his pocket.

The supplies tent sat nearly as far away from the main camp as Katsuro’s tent, just on the opposite side. Katsuro took a forest path shrouded in darkness, watching the cluster of tents and smoking fires of main camp grow ever smaller as he veered around it. When the main camp was nothing but a dim glow in the woods behind him, he knew he was getting close. And at the next turn of the footpath, a lone campaign tent suddenly hung before him, grey and phantomlike among the dark columns of trees.

The supply tent was manned by Masato, a wrinkled old Rain soldier. Older than the captain, he had been a soldier and a scrollmaster in the glory days of Rain, in charge of correspondence and other secretive affairs of state. But now, wrinkled and withered, he whiled away his days managing supplies for Itachi. He was seen as something of a doddering old fool on the rare occasions when he did surface from the old tent.   

Katsuro paused at the weathered canvas flap of the tent, wondering belatedly if the old man was even awake at this hour—

“Come in, young soldier,” a voice carried from inside. 

Katsuro warmed under the epithet, making him miss the captain all over again, and pulled back the flap. His eyes immediately caught on the flash of identical movement across the tent. A cracked old hand mirror hang from a hook. It looked innocent enough, but Katsuro knew it was an old Rain trick that helped the non-shinobi soldiers keep watch.

Katsuro stepped fully inside, letting the flap whisper closed behind him.

The supply tent was as just as big as Itachi’s, but for some reason Katsuro always felt the need to duck when entering this space. Towers of crates lined the walls, floor to ceiling, and fading into the darkened corners. Only someone as rail-like and nimble as Masato could disappear in between the stacks and come back out with what he needed. The red kanji for Rain country was splashed over the wooden crates, and long black lines spelled out the contents: tents, blankets, and weapons. Lots of weapons. Enough to outfit a small army. At the end of the rows sat barrels of dried meats and fruits, and clay jars brimming with scrolls, some full of writing, some clean and new. 

At the center of the darkened tent, the supply crates closed ranks around an ancient desk, lending it an air of cloistered secrecy. It was lit by a single lamplight and piled high with scrolls and parcels, red wax and spools of string. 

Katsuro took a moment to marvel at the sight, and the clamp of anger that had gripped him that last few days slowly released its hold. No matter where they were, how new they were to the camp, to Katsuro it always felt like the supply tent had been rooted in that spot for ages.

The old metal lantern flickered at the shift in the air, casting strange patterns over the parchment flattened in the center of the desk and distorting the long lines of writing. Old Masato smiled up from his perfect circle of light, a secret smile that rippled up his face, and the shifting shadows turned the wrinkles at the corners of his mouth into deep trenches.

Katsuro had always liked the old man. He was always ready with a smile and a solution to any need. But in the golden glow, he looked older than ever, with his head as bald and spotted as a brown egg and just a stringy fringe of white hair trailing over his collar. But in spite of his age, he sat comfortably on a cushion on the floor, one leg tucked under him and one knee pulled up to his chest, spry as a child. 

Katsuro tipped his head in surprise at his appearance. He’d never seen him in anything other than his old Rain fatigues. But tonight over his fatigues Masato wore a ragged old kimono, the faded silk patched and repatched with scraps of old cotton. He caught up one sleeve and held it cautiously over the parchment and sighed softly. Moving the curtain of his sleeve, Masato revealed a calligraphy brush and several wet lines of running down the page. 

It was only then that Katsuro notice the rack of hanging brushes at one side of the parchment and a long ink-stone at the other, the black ink still still shimmering in the deepest end. A lone moth swooped and dove at the lantern, adding its own shadow to the patterns on the parchment.

Still holding back his sleeve, Masato wiped the extra ink from the brush and set it in the inkwell before offering Katsuro an almost embarrassed smile. “You caught me.”

Katsuro’s hand instantly went to the back of his neck. “Oh! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt—“ but Masato stopped him. 

“No you are not interrupting anything. I was just…indulging in an old past time.” He turned the scroll so Katsuro could see, and Katsuro was surprised to discover that it wasn’t like anything he’d ever seen before.

Mists of color — pale blue, sandy brown and moss green — drifted across the background. Only flecks of bright gold illuminated the dreamy scene. Long streams of ink-black writing tumbled vertically down the page, tracing a path like a falling leaf down each line. 

Katsuro crumpled his mouth into a frown, knitted his brows together and tipped his head nearly upside down, but no matter how he looked at it, he couldn’t decipher a single word. Finally giving up studying it, he glanced up at Masato with questioning eyes.

Masato exhaled deeply. “It is old writing,” he said, turning the document back to him. “Very old. It is Rain country poetry. There are very few who still write it.” He ran his fingers down a line, letting his hand linger on a few phrases. “And fewer still who can read it.” 

With one last long look he slid the parchment off the table and onto the reed mat beside him to dry. He gently straightened the paper, then spoke as softly as his movements. “I do not know why I persist. But something inside me calls out, even though all the ones I cared about are gone. It is nonsensical really, to write poems that no one but me can read. But something calls out…and I must answer it. I suppose that somehow it brings us closer to what we’ve lost.”

He turned back to Katsuro and folded his hands on the desk. Katsuro watched the moth spiral closer and closer until it was throwing itself at the lantern again. The lyrical pattern of the parchment was replaced with the moth’s endlessly fracturing shadow on the table.

“I am sorry about your team.” Masato’s words were measured and soft, but they carried the weight of someone who meant them, who understood. “And I am sorry about the captain. He was an old friend.” 

Katsuro pressed his lips into a thin line, gripping the necklace in his pocket. He had created a believable enough story, but suddenly the words felt hollow. Lying to the old man, even burying his only possession in the middle of an ancient forest, it all felt wrong.

He drew out the necklace in his hand and looked at it for a moment before revealing it. Maybe some things were too important to be buried away forever.

“I…uh…. I’m going on another mission soon, and I need a safe place to keep this. I don’t want anything to happen to it.” 

Masato took it, nodding sagely. He admired it a moment before passing it back. “Yes, yes…I have just the thing….”

He disappeared behind the low table and dug his hand through a nearby crate, pushing it away unsatisfied before clawing through another one.

“Ah! Here it is!”

He laid a small wooden box on the table and popped open the hinged lid so Katsuro could inspect the empty inside. 

Leaning over the table, Katsuro glanced up skeptically. But before he had time to ask what was so special Masato swiped of his thumb over the base and a hidden drawer popped out. Katsuro blinked. Masato motioned for Katsuro to drop his necklace it into the drawer. 

Katsuro watched it disappear, and Masato grinned up at him. “Problem solved. I will send this to our contact at the edge of the Rain country who holds all of our supplies until we’re ready for them. He’ll take care of this too.”

Masato wrapped the box in clean parchment, making tight locking folds at the sides, and tied it tightly with string. He wrote the intended destination on several sides and stamped one empty corner with a red wax seal. It now looked like a package from any country. Completely hidden in its normalcy.

Masato passed over his wet brush to Katsuro and he wrote the characters for his name across one side. It was only as he was swiping the brush through the last character that he realized that he would not go by Kat-su-ro much longer. But it didn’t matter now, he decided. He blew on the shiny black letters, committing them to the paper, then handed it back.

“Almost forgot,” Masato said, taking up the brush again. He wrote something beside the seal in the same flowing movements as the poetry. It looked more like a beautiful design than actual letters. “My name. That way he will know what to do with it.” 

Masato turned around and placed the small box at the very top of a pyramid of scrolls and crates sitting beside the table. “It will be waiting for you there.”

Katsuro glanced once at the box, it’s writing and wrapping looking so much like everything else under the flickering golden light, as if it had instantly taken on a patina of age. He committed the sight of it to memory, sincerely hoping this wasn’t the last time he saw it. But he couldn’t worry about that now. Whatever happened, it was safer there than with him. 

Katsuro turned back to the old scrollmaster and bowed deeply, but the Masato waved him on. He was already pulling out another painted parchment — this one with delicately swooping cranes threading through the grey-green mist — rolling his brush through the black ink and gathering up his patched sleeve.

At the door, Katsuro stopped and turned back, struck with a sudden thought.

“I…. I would like to read some of your poetry, one day,” he blurted out, then stopped, feeling awkward in the lengthening silence. He didn’t know what made him say it. He’d never read poetry in his life. But the thought of old Masato, after a lifetime of war and loss, somehow making sense of it was…intriguing to him. 

Masato paused, brush over paper. The shadows pooling under his eyes suddenly made him look very tired. “I would like that too,” he said quietly.

It took Katsuro work out that his tone was not of hope, but of a wish. He realized too late that perhaps Masato was speaking of things he knew could never be. 

Unable to think of anything else to say, Katsuro thanked him and bowed again, deeply. When he lifted his head and looked again, Masato’s brush was already dancing a long black ribbon down the page. A new poem had begun. Katsuro exited quietly.

“Fair winds, young man,” Masato’s voice followed him through the door. It was an old Rain farewell. Katsuro hadn’t heard it in years. He paused, turning back to see the canvas flap closing behind him. It was hard to believe there was an old man in there writing poetry. It was like a different world. It gave him a little bit of comfort, thinking that perhaps with him the necklace would be safe with him…. 

Katsuro turned into the clear night, readjusting to his eyes to the harsh lines of the forest, and set off for Itachi’s tent.