The Black Leaf (Part 1)

Chapter 9: Heartbreak

The next day I woke up and Itachi was gone, I didn't realize when he left, but it was nice having him around. I got up and got ready to go to the Interrogation force building, I was going to be assigned a new long-term mission in the Hidden Valley Village.

I met with Ibiki and my team and we went over our assignment and the objective of our mission. There were rumors about the Land of Rivers working with the Land of Wind together to try to attack the Land of Fire. We had to find out exactly all we could regarding this issue, our mission was classified a top-secret S-Rank mission. "Go rest," Ibiki said as he handed me the scroll with details, "you will need to leave early in the morning, so prep to stay away for at least three to four weeks."

"There is nothing really for me to prep," I said as I took the scroll from him. "Plus, I'm working on Shisui's flickery jutsu, I want to make sure I perfect it soon," he smiled and dismissed me.

I went to the training grounds and I found a place where I could train alone and in peace. I thought about the last time Shisui, and I trained together, he was teaching me how to add clones to his flickery jutsu. Now, I had a large chakra reserve, so adding three or four clones was easy, but Shisui could add more than 10 to his jutsu. "I have to start somewhere," I said to myself. I threw five kunai at some trees ahead of me and I bolted towards them, I added clones and simultaneously we grabbed the kunai and returned to the starting point. I trained all day until sundown, I started feeling hungry and decided to start walking home before it was too late.

Walking home from training, I felt something awful in the atmosphere. I felt agony, cries, pain, suffering... death. Something I hated about being a sensory ninja was that I could sense others pain as well. I wanted to go see what was happening, but something told me to go home. I went inside my small apartment and locked the door. I pressed my forehead on the door and clenched my necklace with both hands. "What in the world is going on?" I whispered. I was about to open the door and go see what was it that was causing so much pain when I heard someone draw a sword behind me. My eyes widened and I gulped loud.

I turned around slowly and he was there waiting for me. He glared at me with no emotions, just a cold-blank stare. I looked at his bloody hands and clothes and chills ran down my spine. I gasped and in an instant he was standing in front of me. The air left my lungs as I felt a pain that went in the side of my abdomen and exited in my back. It took me a while to realized that he had just stabbed me. My eyes immediately filled with tears as they searched for his, he kept his eyes closed.

"Itachi.... why?" I asked, my voice breaking and tears running down my checks. I slowly put my hands over his in the handle of his sword. He gasped and opened his eyes in surprise and look at me. "You..." he finally said in a cold voice, "y-you are not Uchiha enough to die." His gaze, however say something else, he seemed tormented like if he was suffering. I let go of his hands and he retracted his sword. I whimpered slightly and grabbed my stomach. I took a step back but I felt cornered when my back touched the door. I felt the warm liquid leaking from in between my fingers, quickly running down my leg... blood.

He brought his hand towards me and yanked the necklace off my neck so hard that I fell on my knees. All I could do was hold my stomach as tight as I could. A great amount of blood was leaving my body through the deep cut. He squatted in front of me and with one hand he lifted my chin. I looked right into his eyes confused, disoriented... scared. I started to shiver, I was cold, and everything around me was beginning to get blurry. He looked at me for a second, he opened his mouth to speak but said nothing. I clearly saw tears run down his face, he was crying, but why? He moved his hands to my face, then up to my forehead. I could swear I heard him muttered something as he used his two fingers to jabbed me in the forehead before I lost consciousness.