Naruto : Path of Wind

"Break for camp!" Kakashi calls. Never have I heard a more beautiful sound.

I stagger off the path we've been beating to death for the past twelve something hours, allowing my backpack to fall off of my aching shoulders and thump onto a nice enough looking patch of grass. I perform a bleary and admittedly pitiful sweep of the area and quickly choose a spot to go take a leak at. I nearly collapse against the tree I end up using I'm so beat.

I'm making my way back to my spot when I trip over something squishy on the ground, which turns out to be Sakura, who offers little more than a pained moan in response. I consider crawling the rest of the way to my backpack, but unfortunately it seems Sasuke has rubbed off on me and my pride forces me back on my feet.

Setting up my single tent is a painful experience, but at the end of it I feel loose enough to join Sasuke by the small fire he's started up on a grassless patch of earth.

I slump into a cross-legged position and relish in the warmth of the chakra flames as night falls around us. Kakashi takes up a spot leaning against a nearby tree, happily reading, while Team 9 puts together their own camp and throws down some traps I spend a few seconds trying to commit to memory before giving up.

I fall back, cross my arms behind my head, and stare up at the emerging stars. The trees of Fire Country's forests, though a far cry from those in Konoha, stand tall, dark brown, and dense above us, chopping the night sky up into slivers. My eyes droop.

"Hey, Kakashi," I say, quietly for no other reason than I'm feeling far too lazy to raise my voice.

"Hm?"

"How far are we from the village?" I ask.

"Only a couple more hours from here, at the pace we kept today."

I yawn. That's something, at least. "Are we going to have a guard rotation tonight?"

Kakashi leans into view above me, shaking his head. "That's what Gai's team is for. I'll probably spend some time around here as well before I turn in. Besides, I don't think I can trust you to watch over me just yet." He says, his upside down eye crinkling into an upside down crescent.

A stray voice in the back of my head insists that I've just been grievously insulted as a shinobi, but the much bigger, sleepier voice asserts that a lack of guard rotation can only mean good things for me.

"What's the plan for tomorrow?" I press, however. "Scout the place out? Send in a couple of us in to take down the big guys and open things up from the inside out?"

"Nope!" Kakashi says cheerfully. "If Hokage-sama wanted that to happen he'd have sent a scouting team or an infiltration specialist. We're just going to blow their door off their hinges and crush them under our feet."

"... Oh."

"Get some sleep, Naruto," Kakashi suggests, snapping his book closed and sitting down himself in front of the fire. Sitting up, I notice Team 9 and Sakura have disappeared into their tents. Gai is nowhere to be seen. Something occurs to me, and I glance over at Sasuke.

"Hey, you wouldn't happen to have a spare sleeping bag, would you?" I ask, as I asked him just about every single Academy training trip we ever went on. Sasuke sighs, but nonetheless reaches into his backpack and pulls out a scroll, taps a glowing blue finger to it, and throws me the navy blue sleeping back that appears from within. "Thanks."

This time I don't even bother with pride. Everyone I care about judging me is either asleep or gone, anyway. Why bother? I crawl over part the opening of my tent and slip through, unroll the sleeping bag with one flick of my wrists, and shimmy in. Warmth envelopes me, my eyes drift closed, and my last thought before sweet unconsciousness claims me is one I've thought a dozen times before.

The Uchiha may be jerks by and large, but they make a damn good sleeping bag.

...

I'm standing in a ruin.

The sun bleeds crimson red light over the shattered village, shrouding half of it in shadow and illuminating the other in a bloody glow. It had been a magnificent village.

The remains of tall, intricately built stone buildings and towers riddle the land. A long wooden bridge lays crushed and half submerged in the waters separating the two halves of the village. There isn't a single building to be found not covered in beautiful spiralling seals. Broken seals.

I'm shaking. Whether it's in anguish or fury or both I can't tell. My eyes sweep across the village, hoping to see a seal flicker and die and reveal that they'd managed to hide, that they were still alive. Something. I step carefully into the village. There's nothing left to break, a bitter voice in the back of my mind observes, but I'm careful nonetheless.

I walk through the street, desperately searching for a survivor amongst the corpses. I arrive at the edge of the outlying portion of the village with nothing to show for. I have never taken the bridge before, but even still the sight of it torn asunder nearly robs me of my senses for my rage. My search through the main half of the village is even less fruitful. I find twice as many corpses, and no survivors.

Finally, I find myself standing in front of the remains of the tallest building in the village. Even now, broken in two, it rises high above the rest of the ruin. I peer into each of the windows, and in each I see nothing but broken furniture and broken people. I collapse into a sitting position, shaking harder.

They're gone. They're all gone.

My last chance, and they killed them. I close my eyes, and for a moment I can feel a reassuring hand on my head, hear an old, wizened voice in my ear. Grief crashes against me harder than the tallest wave.

But anger wins out.

I lurch to my feet, snarling, and sprint north, across the waters separating the dead village from the rest of the world, until I can see nothing but endless blue on all sides. I sprint on and on and on, past the endless sea, into the land of boiling springs. I find them there, in the remains of another broken village, mocking and shouting and laughing.

They've ruined everything and they're laughing. They've forsaken themselves and all the rest of their kin, and they don't even care. I see red. My control, the control I've held where my brothers and sisters failed one by one, slips, writhes, snaps.

I descend upon the first of them, hear them scream, feel the metal slab carved with the likeness of two overlapping rocks shatter under the weight of my fury.

I grow angrier still. Crimson floods my vision.

Nothing.

I jerk awake, gasping and shivering, covered in a cold sweat. Thrashing out of the suffocating hold of my sleeping bag, I stumble out of my tent. Cool air kisses my skin as I rush past Sakura's tent into the forest, until I come upon the small stream I'd noticed while relieving myself. Falling to my knees, I dip my cupped hands into the icy water and splash my face over and over and over.

I'm still attempting to chase any remaining drowsiness from my eyes when Sasuke sits down next to me, regarding me with solemn, bloodshot eyes. I lean back, blinking the excess water out of my eyes, and shudder.

"Crimson dream?" Sasuke asks quietly. I nod.

It's been months since I've had what Sasuke has taken to calling the crimson dreams, and I haven't missed them. I remember every single one in terrible detail when I wake up, and they never fade. Every one is monstrously violent, and in the dreams I'm so furious I can't even string together a proper thought. It's frightening.

"Different," I say hoarsely. And it was.

They've forsaken themselves...

"How?" Sasuke presses.

"It started different. I was still angry, but I was sad, too. And I was thinking, but they weren't my thoughts, and they don't make any sense-" I exhale shakily. "There was a village. It had been destroyed by a bunch of shinobi. Iwa nin, I think. I don't know when, though. I don't know why." I clench my eyes tightly shut.

"I felt it happen, Sasuke. I felt myself go insane under the weight of it all. I was so angry. It was unreal." He doesn't respond to that, probably because he doesn't know how. I can't say I blame him.

So we sit there, in the final hours of the night, silent. Sasuke contemplates the sky while I stare blindly at the clear waters of the softly murmuring stream. After a while, when I've regained a precious sliver of my composure, I try to connect tonight's crimson dream with all the others. They don't match up, of course. They never do.

The sun begins to rise. I watch its rays reflect off the stream, watch a myriad of shapes come to life, and wonder what it would look like in the bloody light of the sun from my dream. Shaking my head, I lurch to my feet.

The cold finally hits me then, sending goosebumps prickling along my bare torso. I turn back to camp, Sasuke following silently behind me. I don't thank him. It wouldn't be enough.

I throw my t-shirt and sandals on, dismantle my tent, triple check my weapons, and finally sit down with a rations bar and wait.

The girl from Team 9 is the first to awake, midway through my third bar, emerging from her tent with a rations bar of her own held between her teeth while her fingers work at the buttons of her shirt.

She doesn't dismantle her tent when she's finished eating, instead taking a large bite out of the bar and walking over to the tent beside hers. She reaches an arm in and heaves Lee out sleeping bag and all. The odd genin doesn't even twitch when she throws him down, just snores loudly.

"Looks like all that enthusiasm took its toll," I say wryly.

"You don't even know," she responds ruefully, wolfing down another bar and kicking her cocooned teammate sharply. "Wake up, you idiot!" Despite her best efforts, it's the Hyuuga that rises next, nodding shortly at the girl and sneering at Sasuke before turning to his tent. Lastly comes Sakura, rubbing at her eyes with one hand and fussing at her hair with the other.

Kakashi drops down from a tree, looking his usual pleasant self, and Gai soon follows, appearing at the edge of the forest with a couple rabbits in hand and a cheerful grin on his face. It isn't until the rabbits are all cooked and the delicious smell of them is wafting through the air that Lee wakes up, just in time to catch a sandaled foot to the face courtesy of his female teammate.

"Alright, here's the deal," Kakashi says while we tear into the freshly caught meat. "The objective is only a couple hours away from here at a brisk pace, so we're going to iron out the details now so we can jump right into the fun when we get there." He pulls a kunai from his weapons pouch and crouches in the middle of the dirt path we'd traveled by, gesturing for us to join him. Sasuke and Sakura take up a spot over each shoulder, and Team 9 follow suit after an encouraging nod from Gai.

"This is the village," Kakashi says, carving out a rough representation of the outer walls and a few houses in the dirt. Next he carves a jumbled mix of Ds, Cs, and a few Bs inside of the walls. "If our intel is correct, we can expect fourteen to sixteen bandits and rogues in all. Most will be D-ranked, a couple will be C-ranked, and three will be B-ranked." Then he draws two As.

"These are their leaders, a couple of nukenin from Kiri. Gai and I will be taking care of them and the three Bs." He draws a K and a G outside of the walls along with two arrows heading into the village. The he scuffs out the letters and redraws them, the Ds and Cs firmly on one side of the village and the Bs and As on the other.

"We're going to separate the small fry from the annoyances for you, and take care of the latter ourselves." Next he draws an S and an L, an S and a T, and an N and an N, all in pairs side by side. "Sasuke and Lee are going to pair off as the heavy hitters of their respective teams, Sakura and Tenten as the long range strikers, and Naruto and Neji as the precision fighters."

"I'm sorry, what?" I blurt. "Did you just call me a precision fighter?"

"Relative to your teammates, of course." He smiles widely. "Don't worry, you'll always be a reckless idiot to me."

That one's going to cost you, Hatake. I fall silent under the weight of my comrades snickers and smirks, defeated for now. Kakashi gives me one last evil eye crinkle and turns back to his illustrations in the dirt.

"As I was saying, Sasuke and Lee are going to lead the opening assault on the bandits. Sakura and Tenten will provide support and hopefully break whatever ranks they manage to form entirely. From there, Naruto and Neji will come in to clean things up. Sound good?" I nod grudgingly along with everyone else, and Kakashi swipes his hand back and forth across the picture, obscuring it into nothingness.

"Then let's get started."

...

 PS : don't forget to write a review and throw power stones for the story :)

...

if you want to read ahead of the public release you can join my p atreon :

 p atreon.com/CarriePoppins