Fighting With One's Self

Chapter 20 - Home

 After Yume-chan and I left Pein's room last night, my head was left buzzing with questions more than ever. To be honest, the conversation raised more questions than it answered. Now, we finally know why Pein chose us, but we still don't know how his reasons were true. How would a gateway open to another world, and how on earth is it possible that we are the descendants of native Konoha citizens?

"You should stop asking questions, and let your mind rest for once, un," Dei-kun tells me. We are sitting on a window-seat on the third floor, outside one of the training rooms. I just told him everything.

"My mind can only rest when I'm dead," I say, "Geez, what is with me? I seem to attract any type of weird."

"It makes you who you are, un," he says, caressing my cheek, "I'll see if I can go to Konoha and into their filing cabinets within the following few days. There's bound to be some information on those two brothers there."

"What makes you say that?" I ask.

"Every Hidden Village keeps everything on their shinobi in files, un," he explains, "Didn't you know that?"

I suddenly remember a particular episode where Naruto takes a bizarre photo of himself just when he became I Genin, and I struggle to keep my face straight, "I forgot ... but wouldn't Orochimaru have stolen those files when he kidnapped the brothers?"

"If he had their files, he most likely wouldn't have needed to kidnapped them to know their secret, un."

"Makes sense."

"In the meantime, keep your strength up, and see if you can connect your chakra with Yume. It would be difficult without the theory or any knowledge of the technique, but you're clever enough to figure it out, un," he says with a wink. I roll my eyes, smiling.

"While you're busy breaking into Konoha's private supply of files, would you mind checking how we're connected to those brothers?"

"I'll get everything on them that I can. Don't worry, un." He stands up, kisses me on the forehead, and disappears.

I also get up and go to our personal library on the first floor. Pein has his own private collection of documentation on ... well, everything. I went in there one time, and never again. The amount of books was just too overwhelming, even for someone like me, who loves reading. I wouldn't know where to start. And I still can't figure out how he moves them from hideout to hideout every time.

But now it's an emergency.

I spend the entire day in the library, and most of the following, going through the gigantic racks filled with books of all shapes, sizes and colours. I didn't even sleep: instead, I brought the coffee machine and placed it beside me when I read, drinking directly out of the coffee pot. Some of the books are even in the strangest of languages, and one knocked me off balance with a blast of white chakra every time I tried to open it. 

Finally, when my nerves were driving me to start chewing my nails, I find it. I don't know the name of the book, and I couldn't care less. All I care about is the small paragraph in front of me:

There have been many theories depicting the possibilities of alternate dimensions all around us, but most believe that places of brutal death are referred to as 'hotspots' for portals to another world.

"That's it!" I say, my voice echoing eerily from the walls.

I run out of the library and up two flights of stairs and into mine and Kisame-sensei's training room. As I hoped, he is busy training. He turns around when I enter the room.

"Yoku?" he says with a frown.

"Kisame-sensei," I say, "Is there a jutsu that can transfer people from one dimension to another?"

"If there is, I don't know about it," he replies, "Why do you ask?"

"Just think about it for a minute," I say urgently, "You're one of the strongest shinobi I know of. Do you think it's theoretically possible to create such a technique?"

"For someone as insane as Orochimaru, perhaps, yes. Or for a strong and well developed Doujutsu, like Itachi's Mangekyou Sharingan."

"Thank you, sensei!" I say, running from the room again. As I run, everything fits into place, like a puzzle, and I only just found all the pieces. They seem to fit into each other by themselves.

I run down one staircase, down the corridor and burst through mine and Yume-chan's bedroom door. Predictably, she's not training, but lying on her bed with an open magazine in her hands. She jumps and throws the magazine into the air when I burst into the room.

"What the hell is wrong with you?!" she yells, "Haven't you ever heard of opening a door decently?"

"Your old house," I say, out of breath, "Did anyone ever die in it?"

"What? Why?"

"Just answer me!"

"Yeah, I told you before, there used to be a torture chamber under the house. But they sealed it with concrete when they rebuilt our house," she says.

"Of course!" I say, remembering, "The chamber was directly underneath your bedroom, and people died extremely brutally there ... ... I just remembered something!"

"You're scaring me, bitch! What's wrong with you?"

"The place where we appeared when we just came here, it's close to where Kakashi made that one explosion disappear with his Mangekyou, when he was fighting Dei-kun! It all makes sense now!"

"What makes sense? What are you going on about?"

"Don't you see?!" I exclaim, waiting for her to realise the obviousness of what I am telling her. When she continues staring at me as though I've gone insane, I explain, "Lookit, both of us were adopted, right? From the same orphanage, you remember? Our guardians told us. No one could find either of our parents. It's because our parents weren't in that world. They were here somewhere. Don't you get it? We never belonged there in the first place! We're Konoha nin by blood. Kisame-sensei just told me that it is possible to develop a technique that would transfer people to another dimension. Something similar to Kakashi's technique. Our parents, for some reason, must have sent us to that other world when we were babies. Maybe they wanted to keep us away from all the violence in this one."

She keeps quiet for a minute. Her expression still hasn't changed. I mean, come on! Can't she see how obvious it is?

"Ok, say your theory is true - and I'm not saying it is - how did we get back, and why?"

"I don't know the 'why', but I know the 'how'," I reply, "Your house is always open to things from other dimensions, because of all the people that died there. That's why there were forever things that creaked and bumped like a freakin' haunted house. That battle with Dei-kun and Sasori must have taken place not long before we came here. That would mean that Kakashi unlocked the door to this world, and we were sucked back."

"Geez, it's like something out of a movie," she says, "And you're the Hermione of it all. I hate to say it, but it makes sense. Our entire lives have been lies."

"Yes, but one good things came from it all," I tell her.

"And what's that?"

"We're home."