Sasuke sat on a rock, staring up at the full moon. His hair was no longer spiked, it fell down in front of his pale face, cut and scratched from several days of traveling. The moon light reflected off his messy, ebony locks. I could see his breath. I approached him slowly, he heard me but pretended not to. I sat down next to him and brushed the hair from his eyes. He was fighting back tears. I wrapped my arms around him, nuzzling against his warm chest. I could hear his heart beat. He held me, gently stroking my hair. I looked up, his black eyes gazed into mine, and our lips met softly. At that moment, all was right in the world.
The old men sat around a wooden table, squabbling about their usual business. Health care, military funding, tax payer money, welfare, etc. None of them could have suspected what would happen. The man in black approached them that night. He was casual, calm, and laid back, yet what he proposed was radical beyond all reason. The old men stood up and raised their voices. They would not stand for such injustice, or so they thought. The man in black, still cool and collected, argued that they were using children in their military anyway, and that his proposition could save lives. One of the old men, the Chief of the Financial Committee, said that the fire country would never, ever support, nor fund such inhumanity. That it was cruel to the children they were already asking so much of. The man in the black chuckled. He told them how wrong they were, that every board in the nation had already signed his project. The national science committee was very anxious to get started. Even the Hokage agreed, in fact, he seemed rather fond of it. The Head of the Financial Committee began to sweat. The man in the black smiled a diabolical grin, one every old man in that room would take to their grave. He leaned forward and said, “Everyone’s behind me, except for you. All you got to do is say the word, and it’s done.”
The Head of the Financial Committee gulped as he reluctantly agreed to fund his project.
As he shook the cold, icy hand of the man in black, he whispered to him self, “May god forgive me.”
Fifteen years later.
Dear Project Valkyrie Director,
My first act as the new Chairman of the Financial Committee is to review every single project that our city has been funding over the last twenty years. As you may imagine, that is quite a lot, so I have most of the reviews done by my interns. However, I would like to review your City-Funded Project personally. Do not be alarmed. You are not in anyway under investigation, or at risk of losing your funding. This is simply a precaution I am taking with all City-Funded Projects to make sure that no penny is unnecessarily spent. I have merely taken personal interest on your project out of curiosity, and not suspicion. I know that your project has been receiving a very large percentage of tax money without having any more then one vague document on what your project actually does. I know that you have been enjoying your privacy over the past decade or so, and I do not wish to impose scrutiny upon you. I only wish to make sure that possible welfare money isn’t going into a project that may no longer be necessary. The worst-case scenario is you will receive a slight budget cut, but only if your project is over funded. We wish only a plan where we can co-exist with the benefit of the people as our top priority. I would like to thank you for your time and cooperation.
~ Chairman of the Financial Committee of Konoha
Uchiha Sasuke sat on the rooftops of Konoha. High up, everything made sense. He didn’t have to worry about work, or training, or his family, or his dying relationship. Up there, it was just he and the clouds. His soft, black hair swayed in the calm breeze that swept over him. The wind was a baptism to him, it made him new, it made him at peace. His rest was interrupted by a woman with long, dark silky hair that shone like a black mirror in the sunlight. Sasuke turned to face her dark blue eyes. He really did love her, and he wanted things to work out, they just didn’t, they couldn’t.
“How much time do we have?” He asked her in the sweetest voice he could muster. He leaned in to kiss her, but she turned away.
“I don’t have long, if my dad finds out I’m here he’ll kill me.”
“I’ll kill him first.”
“God damn it Sasuke!” she cried, “It isn’t that simple. That’s what your problem is, you think everyone should be easy and don’t understand when they aren’t.”
“I don’t think everything is easy.”
“No! I said everyone Sasuke. EveryONE! You’re good with everything except people.”
Sasuke let out a frustrated sigh and stroked his hair out of stress. “Look,” he said, “I want this to work out, I really do, and maybe I don’t know what to do to make it work, but you’ve got to tell me what it is. You have to tell me what I can do to make this work!”
There was desperation in his voice. She couldn’t look into his eyes anymore.
“There is nothing we can do to make this, us, work anymore. Nothing.”
She got up and climbed down the fire escape. Sasuke wanted to shout her name. He wanted to call her back to him. He wanted to tell her how much he loved her. He wanted to hold her in his strong arms and tell her that everything is going to be all right. He wanted to relieve her pain. But he didn’t. He just sat there and let her leave. He thought to himself, “Was there anything I could do?”
Sasuke reported to the Hokage’s office early, as he had nothing better to do. The Eighth Hokage sat at his desk shuffling papers with a blank look on his face. He could tell that his mind was elsewhere. “Lord Hokage. Uchiha Sasuke, reporting for duty, sir.”
He looked up at him, and waved his hand, signaling at ease. Sasuke relaxed, the Hokage motioned him to sit, he did. He looked down at his papers, then back up at him. He looked at them the same way, with bored, uncaring eyes. “You have been transferred to a different team. Not only that, it is a privatized company called the Valkyries.”
“Yes sir.” Sasuke replied promptly, “May I ask why, sir?”
He looked back down at her papers, “Popular demand apparently. Several members of the team, as well as several other Jounins, have recommended that you join this group.”
“…I see. Thank you, Lord Hokage.”
He simply waved him off.
Sasuke went home to change. His parents were yelling. He liked it when they yelled, because they were so busy hating each other, they didn’t have enough time to hate him. He always knew they weren’t his real parents, even if they wouldn’t admit it. He would often have fantasies about what his real parents were like. He would like to believe that they were both great ninja’s, who died in battle soon after he was born. Or that the Akatsuki was after them, and they had to give up their only child for his protection, and that they would come back for him soon. Sasuke looked out the window and wished he could fly.
He met his new teammates at a park later that evening. He met with the team captain first, Epsilon. He was a fairly rugged man. He had a more buff and bulky build then Sasuke, who had a sleek yet muscular body. He wore baggy clothes. He ran his hand through his hair, cropped short, like a monks. His skin was every well tanned. His face looked like it had been next to a mirror that had blown up, as small scars exploded from the center of his left cheek. His voice was loud and strong. He seemed like a stereotypical action movie Sergeant. He looked about eight years older then Sasuke. He asked him, “Why did you put me on your team?”
“I need your abilities, Sasuke.” He said, sitting down on a bench, “I read your profile, how you can leap from body to body, how you can control them if you want to, or just hid inside their minds. I even read that you can animate machinery in certain situations.”
“Yes… and?”
“Well, I’m going to be straight forward about one thing and one thing only. I forged all those letters to get you here, on my team.”
“I suspected as much. Why?”
“Have you ever heard of Project Valkyrie?”
“Valkyrie? No, never, why?”
“It’s a government funded project. They made twenty-three Valkyrie scrolls and gave them to randomly selected ninjas. They gave me number five, Epsilon.”
“So Epsilon isn’t your real name?”
“My name’s Shogo Kawada, nice to meet you.” They shook hands.
“I still don’t know what this has to do with me.”
“Just wait. All of these Valkyries were based on a real person. A living human being.”
“And.”
“In order to make a Valkyrie, they have to kill the person they're basing it on. So they used criminals on death row. Well, they still had some fragments of personality left. They messed with our heads. You couldn’t imagine how horrible it is, to not know which thoughts are yours and which thoughts are its.”
“I still don’t see how I fit into all this.”
“Well. Some of us, we snapped. Bad.”
“How bad?”
“Your worst nightmare on steroids bad. Number twenty-four was based off a serial killer."
"I thought you said there were only twenty-three?"
"...There's no number one. Once they realized that the personalities carried over from the Valkyrie to the subject, they pulled out the crazies. But they got to him too late. The greed and blood-lust of Omega had taken over him. I’ve seen him. He isn’t even human anymore.”
“I still don’t-”
“-Just wait. Once the personalities redevelop, they gain abilities exactly like yours. It is our job to neutralize number twenty-four, Omega. Omega is the murderer, the host he’s controlling is just a kid, like you or me, who never asked for this abomination inside of him. I think you have the power to get inside his head and eliminate Omega without killing the host.”
“And if I can’t?”
“Then we kill them both if we have to. I just want to try this first.”
Sasuke looked at Epsilon in the eyes. “You’re hiding something from me.”
“As I said, I can’t be straight forward with you, I’d like to, but I can’t.”
“Then how do I know I can trust you? How do I know you aren’t being controlled by an insane Valkyrie?”
“They already took mine out. It still had all of its memories, and it destroyed my mind from the inside out.”
“Then why do you still work for the Valkyries?”
“We can talk about that later.” He paused, “After we defeat Omega.”
Dear Chairman of the Financial Committee of Konoha,
I would like to thank you for wasting my time with trivial investigations that serve no purpose other then to help ease your paranoia. I will let you know that the Sixth Hokage Himrself promoted this project. In fact, I have a long list of great and famous ninja’s and warriors who gave us such freedoms. And I will not allow some kid to infringe upon these freedoms. So please, investigate as much as you want. Poke your nose wherever you want, fine, I have nothing to hide, and you will see that you are wasting your time. So long as you know your place and never, ever get in my way.
~ Project Valkyrie Director
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Story notes: My other account died, so I have to republish all my stories. :(
Chapter end notes: I know it's pretty plotty, but don't worry, romance soon.