"Your daughter? Lucky us. How's this for a trade then? You let us go with the jinchūriki, and we give you these two other kids back."
There was a pause.
"Very well," said a male ANBU's voice.
...
The bruising hold on Mayu slackened, and the other rogues began to retreat, taking Naruto's limp body with them. Tears and slime streaming down her face, Mayu ran into her mother's tight embrace.
For a moment, all was well. She could hear her mother breathing in her ear, and she breathed back in hers.
One of the ANBU stepped up to them, sounding worried. "What're we going to tell Hokage-sama?"
"That we were unable to rescue the jinchūriki," said the male. "This is our chance to get rid of that thing. We'll be lucky if they kill it."
Mayu wished with all her heart that she could get out of that horrible dark tunnel. She wanted to sleep in her mother's arms that night and forget that this had all ever happened. But she couldn't stop thinking about how Naruto had smiled up at her.
"What...what about Naruto?" she said in a small voice.
Her mother's hold on her body tightened. Mayu felt her heart beating rapidly against hers. And then her mother pulled away and stood up.
"I'm going after them."
"What are you talking about?" The male ANBU sounded confused. "You, of all people? This is what you've always wanted. Just leave the creature."
Her mother shook her head—and looked straight at Mayu. "What kind of ninja are we, if we abandon a child here?"
The male ANBU scoffed. "He's a monster!"
Her mother didn't say anything. Instead, she drew her sword, and then she was gone, swallowed up in the darkness of the tunnel.
Mayu was never sure about what happened next.
The other ANBU took Rai and left, but Mayu refused to leave without her mother. The male ANBU was on the verge of dragging her out of the tunnel, when he suddenly froze. She wondered what had happened—when it hit her, like a wave. She'd never felt chakra like this before. It was the most overwhelming, terrible thing she'd ever felt. It choked her, it covered her.
And then she saw him.
It was Naruto. He was coming back, alone. But there was something strange about him. There was a bright red shroud covering his entire body, and he walked on all fours like an animal.
Mayu hesitated. "Naruto...?"
The male ANBU shouted, "Get away from him! He'll kill you!"
She flinched back, and the male ANBU raced forward, holding his sword before him. He was going to kill Naruto—but then, faster than she could follow, a blur of red jumped into the air. There was a loud, terrible cracking sound, and she realized with a jolt that Naruto had bit into and broken the ANBU's neck. The man gurgled, his hands grasping belatedly at his ragged neck. His body twitched a few times, before slumping down.
The thing landed back in the water with a splash. Letting out a sob, Mayu tried to step back, but fell over instead.
It was drawing closer. The red shroud around its body swung back and forth like a tail. There was something dark dripping off of its face—it was the ANBU's blood.
"Where's my mom?" she cried. "What did you do?"
It was right before her now, and she could see its red, slit eyes. It looked at her, and she looked at it and she knew in her heart that she was looking in the face of a monster.
Something heavy struck her in the head and she felt herself fall over. She could hear muffled shouting in the distance. Her body was sinking into something warm and thick. And then everything turned black.
When Mayu opened her eyes again, her mother was dead, and her entire world had changed.
Rai couldn't remember anything. Having been knocked out, he'd missed the entire thing. The only indication that something had ever happened to him was a long, ropy scar on his face.
Ironically enough, Mayu escaped the incident physically unscathed. During her short stay in the hospital, she found herself surrounded by members of the Intelligence Division who asked her questions after questions. She didn't say much, only responding that she couldn't remember what had happened, until the Hokage himself came to her room and made them leave.
The day she was discharged, when she arrived at her house door, she stopped and knocked. Nobody answered, and after a while, she let herself in. Izumo wasn't there; she hadn't seen her brother since he'd visited her, red-eyed, in the hospital. The only thing left in the house was a stale cake.
It rained for days afterward, as though the skies themselves were crying. But Mayu couldn't cry anymore. The whole world had turned grey, and she didn't shed a single tear.
Years passed in that way.
Izumo stopped coming home, using his work as an excuse. It rained, and rained.
Eventually, Mayu graduated from the Academy. She was placed in the same team as the monster, and she knew that she was being punished by the heavens.
Their jōnin sensei gave them a test, and Mayu would have been content to fail if it meant she wouldn't have to be around the monster anymore. But the monster brought to her and Rai a plan, and it worked.
Their team began going on missions. Even though Mayu often lost her concentration in the monster's presence, it never lost its patience with her. It was intelligent and strong, and sometimes, she had to stop herself from admiring it.
One day, on a bodyguard mission, the monster killed several bandit men. It was expressionless about it, its face dripping with blood. Mayu had expected as much. Later that night, she passed by its wagon and heard a sound. Pulling out her kunai, she went inside—and saw the monster shaking in its sleep. It was having a nightmare. Its face looked younger than usual, more vulnerable.
Mayu wasn't so weak, however. She didn't let it deceive her.
But soon afterwards, the monster had to go and save someone. A young civilian boy. Without any regard for itself, the monster jumped in front of the boy and was hit by a shard of metal. It would have died, if it had been normal.
It turned out that Kakashi-sensei knew about the monster as well. He told her about how the monster was something called a jinchūriki and how a tailed beast had been sealed inside it as a baby.
That night, Mayu knelt by the monster's side. She could tell it was awake, and she heard their breathing synchronize in the darkness. She looked at its face for a long time. She held its hand, and she decided to give into the deception.
Things got easier after that.
It became he. The monster became Naruto.
She stopped flinching every time Naruto was near her. When Naruto praised her, she began to feel proud, and when he seemed disappointed in her, she trained harder. She started wondering about how Naruto was eating. She baked him a birthday cake, and she could tell that he didn't like it, but he ate it all without a word of complaint.
And then one evening, she found herself sitting at Ramen Ichiraku with the others. Kakashi-sensei was reading his adult books. She and Rai weren't arguing for once, and the three of them were digging into their bowls. Mayu finished first, and when she looked up, she caught sight of Naruto smiling faintly into his ramen.
Her chest throbbed.
Ichiraku buzzed with the sound of customers, and the store's glowing lanterns bobbed in the night breeze. The rich smell of miso ramen wafted out through the hanging flaps. Something wet and hot dripped down her face.
The world wasn't so grey after all, she thought.
...
As always, Rai was the first to notice.
They had reached the last of the trees, and the seemingly endless marshlands spread out before them. The others had already landed on the marsh ground, and right as Naruto was about to jump down, he saw Rai come to a screeching stop.
"Wait!" he cried out.
And then Naruto saw it—a blue feather, floating down through the air. When he reached out for it with his hand, the moment it touched his palm, a sudden influx of images rushed into his mind's eye.
The sound of wings flapped in the air above him, and he looked up just in time to see a bluebird soaring past the treetops, into the sky.
He blinked, and then it was gone.
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