After years of being kept in the dark of her past and of her family, Kari Yamada finally knows the truth. However, there's something still missing, something detrimental to gain the peace she strives to find. With the Akatsuki breathing down hers an...
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At this point into our search, I'm confident that there would be no subsiding the emotions I'd been currently feeling. Fear, frustration, rage -- they had begun to overwhelm me to the point where my eyes had been clouded over with my tears. As Sai and I run, I can only just make out the dark figure he makes with his monochromatic attire, and the edges of each wall. And as we reach the end of another hall, leading to a new intersection, Sai has knelt down after having peered around the corner, and deeming the coast to be clear, he pulls out his inkwell and a blank scroll.
"Naruto is stalling Orochimaru," he says, "and I'm confident Captain Yamato and Sakura have gone to back him up." He dips in a clean brush into the inkwell and begins to draw... tiny mice? Once the scroll has been filled with them, he raises a single hand to his face, making a single-handed sign. "Ninja Art: Super Beast Scroll."
I don't believe I've seen his ability firsthand yet. The day Naruto and I first met him, we had been "attacked" by a large ink tiger. This must have been the Jutsu he'd used to bring it to life, too. One by one, the solid black mice raise from the paper, becoming three-dimensional creatures, who then begin running in all opposite directions away from Sai and his scroll.
His eyes shut and seemingly focused on casting his Jutsu, I don't bother to ask about the details on the technique. Besides, in the way and mannerism he appears to be using them in, he must be trying to find Sasuke. And by the blank-as-usual, but now-open-eyed expression on his face, it looks like he has.
"Sai," I say. His name comes out broken, like someone who had been crying for a while, only to finally speak for the first time. Which, I had been, but I just wish it didn't sound like I had.
Sai, having signed his inkwell, rolled up the same empty scroll, and packed them away, he stands.
"He's this way," he says, and he begins running down the hall to the right. My anxiety welling back up inside me again, my chest starts to feel heavy once more as I run after him.
"You know..." I start to say. "Sasuke and I are related."
Mid-run, he glances back at me momentarily.
"Not many people know that. Naruto does. Mm... maybe Kakashi-sensei. And Sasuke found out when I did. We weren't exactly brought up with familial normalcy, so we never had the proper chance to talk about things together. When we bring him home... that's the first thing I'd like to do with him. Having family... is nice."
In the three years I had been away from the village and for the majority of those years, stuck with the other Yamada, I'd had the privilege during the beginning of my sixteenth year of travelling. I'd honed my Sensory abilities to the fullest of its extent; I'd learned a medical Ninjutsu technique; I'd even developed a couple of my own Ninjutsu. It was all for the sake of trying to hunt down Orochimaru, who seemed to be much easier to find versus trying to find Sasuke. Compared to Orochimaru, he hadn't made much of a mark on the earth quite yet.
