Whispers of Rebirth | Naruto SI Fanfic |

Chapter 3 | A Fleeing Crescendo |

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We crept through the quiet village, Kaa-sans face covered by the ANBU headpiece and carrying me efficiently on her back. It was tense, the Kazekage could notice their disappearance at anytime, he wasn't Kage for nothing. He had to have noticed our odd behavior around him at some time, he wasn't thick-headed.

Kaa-san weaved in and out of shadows with practiced ease, eyes scanning her surroundings as she cautiously slunk from building to building, while I stayed perfectly silent. Both of us were suppressing our chakra, though she was better at it then me, being an ANBU.

We were tense, backs clenched, ready for a sudden attack, but surprisingly, none came, and we made it safely to the massive cliffs that served as a natural defense against enemies on the ground.

"Ok Michi-chan, use your chakra to stick to my back, I need to focus on scaling the cliff." She said, just above a whisper. I nodded into her back, and did as she told, it would be exhausting, but I could maybe last until we got over the sandstone mountains and into the actual desert.

Honestly, to think my mother was doing all of this for me... becoming a missing-nin, sending me to a village hostile to Suna just so I won't be forced into the gory life of an underage ninja prodigy, just because she loved me... it was hard to comprehend the love a mother has for a child.

As we started climbing up the cliff, I could feel gravity pulling down on us, trying to drag us back to the Kazekage's clutches. I may have miscalculated how long I would last, but by Kimi I will not force my mother into Chakra exhaustion because of my own incompetency.

The climb was tedious, and to make it worse we had to look over our shoulders to see if all Suna was bearing down on us from behind. It felt like I should be holding my breath, grabbing my weapons, fully alert, but every time I looked back, I just saw the quiet village, asleep, unmoving.

You may be wondering why we're scaling the side of the village's natural walls instead of going through a gate, but that was near impossible.

You see Suna only has two entrances, the rest is enclosed in the cliffs, and seeing as how there is only two entrances, they're both swarming with guards. There would've been no way me and Kaa-san could've gotten through them without risking getting caught, and that is a risk my mother is not willing to take.

Knowing this, my mother took the safer, but more exhausting rout.

I glanced back once more over my shoulder as mother climbed over the lip of the first incline of the sandstone mountains, two more to go before we climb down and run through the desert.

"We'll take a break after every incline, you don't have enough chakra to keep going without breaks yet," she said, not even seeming to be out of breath. The only indication of even slight exhaustion was a sheen of sweat just on her right brow.

I nodded as she shifted me off her back and into her arms, cradling me close to her chest as if I could disappear at any moment. I didn't resist, instead, resting my head on her arm and cuddling closer to her. We stayed like that for a few minutes, before she moved, and grabbed a canteen of water, letting me take a drink of it before she did. She handed me a piece of her rations bar, and after we finished the brief snack, I was back on her back.

We ran for a couple feet, before we were back scaling a cliff. Luckily, this one wasn't as high, and after about twenty minutes of climbing, we reached the top, and took a shorter break.