Reise zu Reinkarnation

V.

They were watching him now. They’d stopped arguing to watch and Sasuke was growing increasingly upset about their silence. Oh, he never spoke of it, nothing is face changed to belay the fact his brain was silent as a grave. He knew that hearing voices was never a good thing, but being three souls in one body wasn’t good either. In the week after his incident with Uchiha’s want to kill Hinata, he’d managed to become stronger and force the other two away from the body’s controls. But both Uchiha and Orochimaru knew something Sasuke didn’t, which worried him. Right now, he was fighting not to fidget as Kakashi’s eyes fell on him. Naruto was spectating somewhere, along with everyone else Sasuke had grown up with. Well, everyone who’d become an ANBU, in any case. This was ANBU initiation, a sequence of events that tested one’s strength, stamina, resolve, ingenuity, and most of all, the will to kill. The last test Itachi had told him about was the killing. Itachi had been pitted against a friend of his, given fake weapons that could very well cut if the right force was applied, and forced to fight. The objective was to score a killing blow first. Sasuke knew what to expect, but buried his own expectations somewhere deep inside his subconscious. A void came over his mind, leaving him blank and calm and most of all, collected. With silence of mind and body, he was ready to undertake this challenge. Naruto had practiced with him in the sanctity of their home, and had on one occasion punched a hole through the wall into a guest room. After staring at each other for a long while, they had started laughing and came up with the idea to knock out the rest of the wall to create a rumpus room with an extra door, leading to the hall.

The thought made Sasuke want to smile.

His face didn’t move. He stood still at the beginning of his trial as Ibiki stood up and addressed those gathered. The speech was long, a customary thing that was required to be said time and time again. It was boring, and by the time Ibiki was done, Sasuke saw quite a few people asleep. The lights flashed bright and the sleepers were woken as the lights illuminated the course for Sasuke. The first test was a walk through a maze. Stamina then, maybe strength. Sasuke took a breath and moved into the maze. The path wasn’t linear, so Sasuke took a moment to gauge his surroundings. He moved left, creeping silently like a shadow. If there were any obstacles, he needed to take them out as quietly as possible. His first turn brought him face to face with a kunai turret. He dove beneath the spray of blunted and padded weaponry, rolled to his back and launched himself to his feet, executing a rising mid-air roll to get him facing the turret. He ran forward then, and before the thing began to reload, broke away the cover and pulled several wires. Sparks burned his hand but he was already moving before the searchlight caught the little flames that indicated someone’s passing. Itachi had explained to him the searchlight’s function once before. It was used to spot ninja who had created some sort of revealing position, and if that ninja was caught, he or she was disqualified. So Sasuke avoided the light and used it as a reminded not to make thinks explode anymore. As he walked through the maze, he nursed his burned hand, tearing some strips of cloth off his pants to wrap the hurting flesh. He’d heal it later; right now, he couldn’t afford to expend the chakra. He kept moving through the obstacles – another kunai turret, a tunnel put, a murky water filled pit that seemed to be hundreds of feet deep – and paused to take a breath and catch his bearings. He’d been in here near to two hours and he knew he wasn’t alone. He heard voices and heartbeats of those nearby and had done his best to avoid them. Some ninja sometimes formed alliances to get to the end of the trial; others, like Sasuke, preferred to steer clear. It wasn’t because of mistrust that Sasuke avoided the others taking the test; he was avoiding them because he didn’t want to fight them. Itachi had told him of the final test that wasn’t told to the test-takers. In the maze everyone was a potential ally and enemy and you were expected to discern which one the potential ally – or enemy – was. Jounin paranoia made everyone the enemy. Sasuke paused to listen to his parasites, trusting them a tiny bit more than he would someone he encountered. But Uchiha and Orochimaru remained silent and Sasuke continued on. He paced himself to keep from getting tired and took breaks only to determine his position and who was left. He heard four distinct heartbeats beside his own and that he slowed until it was only a dull thump-thump every few seconds. The other hearts were racing – excitement, adrenaline, fear – giving Sasuke insight to their positions. He continued on, passing more traps and solving little puzzles that opened new passageways. He was careful about which puzzles he chose because the searchlight had been attracted to the small fire that had started without Sasuke’s knowledge. He’d made it away long before the searchlight revealed him, but he learned from that little mistake.

Three heartbeats nearby.

Sasuke paused and looked up to see the searchlight frozen over to his far left. There were shadows in the light, the ANBU proctors and their victim, Sasuke supposed. He continued on as the searchlight began another sweep of the floor. He rounded a corner and dove for cover as a kunai turret let fly a barrage of its weaponry. Sasuke huddled behind his cover until it was over and rolled into the open, leaping for cover just before another barrage began. Just as the last blunted kunai struck Sasuke’s cover, he was moving, low and quick, leaping onto the turret and pulling off its covering panel again. This time he chose his wires more carefully, pulling them systematically instead of all at once. The machine fell quiet and Sasuke rolled off it, smiling a little at his handiwork.

He ducked an incoming kunai, rolled as he went down and came to his knees, grabbing the hilt of the weapon and throwing it back at who had attacked him all in one motion. The kunai barely missed slicing the throat of a pretty young kunoichi who stared at him wide-eyed. She hesitated; Sasuke didn’t. He got to his feet and charged her, weaponless as he was. It didn’t matter; the movement was so sudden that she didn’t have time to react anyway. One moment Sasuke was ten yards away, the next, ten inches, in her face, grabbing her wrist and twisting it behind her back. She retaliated with another kunai, aimed at his side this time. Sasuke jerked back and realized that these kunai weren’t blunted, the kind each ANBU applicant received before they entered the testing area. The weapons she was using were sharp and meant to kill.

Orochimaru’s sudden surge of giddiness and Uchiha’s anger confirmed Sasuke’s suspicions. So they had infiltrated even this far.
“I’m not going to die here,” Sasuke whispered to himself as much as he whispered it to his parasites and the kunoichi.

“Yes you are,” the kunoichi replied in the same whisper. “You’re going to die right here and Orochimaru-sama will take his rightful place as our leader again.”

Kill her, Uchiha growled and for once he and Sasuke were in complete agreement. If she lived, she would go back to her cohorts and plan an attack on Sasuke’s former friends, if only to get them to believe he was the one behind the attacks. That wouldn’t do.

Sasuke jerked up on the wrist he held, twisted it around as far as the bones could twist and forced her arm out wide. He heard bone grate and snap, felt agony shudder through her body before he shoved her away from him. Despite the broken limb the kunoichi came at him, another kunai in her unbroken hand. He didn’t want to kill her painfully. It seemed, though, with her persistence, he would have to. When she came into his set radius, he lashed out with his foot, connecting with her sternum. She fell, breathless, dazed and Sasuke took the moment to disarm her. She was helpless, but overriding that thought was the fierce need to protect. Sasuke knelt, thinking to finish her off with his stolen kunai when she lunged at him, up off the ground, broken and whole hands latching around his neck. It was instinct, then, to lash out with his right hand, index and middle finger crooked for a jab. The snake-fangs slid out of their sheaths into her pulse, delivering a fatal dose of venom. Sasuke was gone before she let out her first bone-chilling agonizing scream, muted only because Uchiha had sent a small burst of chakra to her vocal chords, snapping and tearing them until all she could do was gurgle on her own blood as the poison stilled her heart.
Sasuke never glanced back.

The protection of the village was worth more than one life. Especially an enemy’s.