Chapter ONE

She blinked, and the world slowed around her. The lifeforce of the trees and leaves and animals around her all called to her and she embraced their presence.

A flash of life streaked through her vision and she instantly latched onto it.

A mother rabbit.

The girl waited patiently for the rabbit to vanish, then waited a little more just to be safe. She didn't know long that exactly was, but she decided it would be fine as the chakra trail slowly began to fade.

She willed herself become a part of the scenery, a part of the trees, and that masked the footsteps she lacked the experience or training to hide.

She clambered over a small ledge and at the top. The rabbit sniffed the air, then vanished down a hole at the foot of a large tree. The rabbit was a mother to three little baby rabbits. They were very young, too young to run, but their faint presences had helped conceal them.

But they couldn't hide from her.

She quickened her pace. The mother rabbit, having noticed her approach, shot out of the burrow and hopped around her feet, trying to chase her away.

She ignored it.

Nothing could hide from her.

She could see the chakra belonging to the rabbit's spike in fear. She ignored that too. She sent out chakra strings, snaring her dinner.

A few minutes later, she was gnawing on her first meal in days. Sure, she could see all the sources of food in the forest, but she couldn't eat if she couldn't catch them. Once done, she buried the remains at the foot of a tree.

Everything around her called to her, and she finally decided on a direction to continue her trek. The chakra wrapped around her, welcoming her, as she lightly brushed past the lower leaves.

She had lost track of the time it had been since she last saw a fellow human, though the trees told her it had been close to a human year. The only reason she survived all this time was because she was different, she knew. Her eyes let her see things others could not, and chakra whispered into her ears secrets only for her to know.

She had been drinking from the river, quenching a day worth of thirst, when the calming tunes of the forest became rapid. She slowly stood up and snaked her senses through the trees. A group of humans, (shinobi, my mind told her), had settled not too far away from where she was. They were calm and relaxed, and she decided they did not know where she was. Their chakra signatures were compressed and well concealed, though not as well as hers, and she suspected they had a lot more than what she was currently able to see.

Still, the trees seemed to fear something she could not see, and they began to try and usher her in another direction. She slowly got to her feet and followed the calling of the chakra. What remained of her human-like chakra signature faded away to melt in with the environment. The world around her became brighter as the chakra signs became all the more clear.

From the firm, sturdy circulation of the chakra from a tree, to the skittish, rapid circulation coming from an animal, to the steady, occasionally spiking chakra of a person, she knew them all, and she allowed the forest to lead her down a path away from the humans.

Chakra spoke as clearly as words, she knew, and she who could hear their language knew all there was to know within its forest borders.

'Come, human child, come,' the trees sang. 'Away, away.' Branches quivered, shifting with the wind to clear her a path, and she followed without hesitation.

Once, when she had been surrounded by clanmates instead of trees and she had lived in a manor full of her kind instead of a forest, she had heard rumours of those quite similar to them, with eyes that allowed them to glimpse into a world of truth.

Chakra did not lie, after all.

But they were selfish, her clanmates had said, for they wanted one foot in their world and one foot into another, and so, their entry into the world of chakra was nothing but a peek into what they truly could have had. They could see, but seeing was only one part of it.

'Away, away.'

She glanced over the gradually shrinking human camp. They had set up something in the middle of the clearing, she noted, something dead and black and reeking of nothing. Triangular, she noted, and one of the humans were lying down inside of it, holding up something just as dead above them.

'Away, away.'

She turned back to what was in front of her, not that it mattered, really, and her world once again flooded with life. The black hole created in her vision by the chakra-less object the humans had built was once again replaced with the life of everything around her, and while she could see it within her vision range and it tickled the back of her head as something unnatural. and out of place, the calling of the rest of it pushed it further and further into the back of her mind. She brushed past more trees, and they quivered under her touch.

Chakra was life, and it spoke more words than anything else could ever hope to. Soon the humans and their lifeless objects were flickers, then dots, then specks in the furthest parts of her sight, before they faded altogether and the nothingness they brought was no more, and with it also faded the urgent ushering of the trees.

'Death,' they whispered. 'Colours of death.'

"What colour is that?" She asked curiously.

'Colour of nothing, colour of death.'

She decided that made sense. Dead things could not let out chakra, after all. Did that mean the humans were death?

Their clan had had merchants visit from time to time, she remembered them well. They were different, and the first time she had seen them she had not known what to make of them.

They were alive, of course, evident in the chakra running through their veins, but they reeked of nothing in the things they brought with them. The things on their horses, (saddles, if she recalled), had been an unfamiliar nothing to her, and the carriages they pulled was a disturbing thing somewhere in between, something that had once been a tree, but was now long dead.

She wondered what colour that had been. Did they look as dead and nothing to the humans as they did to her?

Others might call it a price, but to her and her kind, it had been a gift.

A gift to see truth.

And so, the price was an offering and a trade they had willingly made. In a world where people yearned to hide everything, their eyes, for a small payment, gave them an insight into truth.

Morino Ibiki was a shinobi recognized if not by his name, then certainly by his face.

He could feel the way people flinched away at his scars, and if it bothered him once, he couldn't remember.

Or, he couldn't remember the time he had showed that it bothered him.

He had been sent out on a mission with an ANBU team to interrogate some missing-nin who had been scouting around Konoha for a while. Said missing-nin had escaped Konoha a few days ago but had been captured by an ANBU team. The missing-nin had attempted suicide, but he had failed to die. However, he was close to death and the ANBU team couldn't risk moving him.

So, he and Shizune had been sent out to try and stabilize him and extract information from him if the wounds were too fatal.

Ibiki didn't really care, to be honest. The target had been disillusioned from pain and blood loss, and what he did manage to get from him was information they could have gotten from him anyways, had they properly searched his possessions.

Honestly, these people were ANBU, couldn't they have done the basis before having him be called out?

They were on their way back to Konoha and had decided to rest for the night. The village wasn't that far away, but the ANBU team, led by Hatake Kakashi, and once the mission was over (ish), the Hatake had decided to let out the laziness he had been suppressing during the mission.

His team, consisting of Uzuki Yugao, Tenzo, and a recently promoted Uchiha Itachi, didn't object.

Or maybe they had just given up.

Shizune was too busy running around collecting herbs that grew in the area.

And Ibiki was in a bad mood because he didn't get to move onto any real interrogation before the man had spilt and died.

He shot Kakashi a look to see that the man was lying down in their tent, reading his orange book. He was sure ANBU didn't set up tents, but he guessed this mission in itself had been impromptu, and the only real reason the ANBU team had been sent after a lowly thief was that they had been the closest to him. He sighed and got to his feet.

Maybe he should go cool down.

'Up, up.'

The urgent calling of the forest had her shooting up in her sleep. It was night, she could tell, from the dormant life forces around her.

And then she sensed the single outsider, the chakra signature so clearly out of place despite its best efforts to mute its signature, slowly making its way towards her.

'Death, death, death.'

She quickly scrambled to her feet, not knowing if she could run without being caught, and the leaves numbly ushered her behind a bush.

Trees slept at night too, that was probably why no one had noticed until it was so close, and she was grateful for the warning regardless.

The human, (he, she noted), approached then walked right past. She could see the anger swimming within him as he did so. And something else.

Not death, she decided. Lonely.

Ibiki heard something behind him before he sensed it and it was the absurdity of that fact that had him whipping around, weapon in hand.

A young, pink-haired girl stood there, at the foot of a large tree, eyes wide and unblinking. Her eyes roamed over him and if he had been anyone else, he would have snapped a sharp 'what?'.

But he was not, and his first thought was that the girl was possibly an illusion. After all, what little girl appeared in the middle of a forest without a chakra signature?

He then changed his mind, because the girl was strangely detailed for the works of an illusionist that was not skilled enough to give her a present.

"Who are you?" He asked.

The girl jumped, as though not having expected him to speak. She glanced over her shoulder. as if contemplating running, and he saw her mouth move.

Ibiki tensed because if there was one girl who could mask her chakra like it did not exist, there might be others, just like her, and much older. He subtly flared his chakra to alert the rest of the team.

The girl jumped and scrambled backwards as though he had burnt her. She tripped on something and landed heavily on her backside and a hand went up to her head as though it hurt, face scrunching up in pain. Ibiki could sense the ANBU team approaching. He slowly lowered his weapon and slowly began making his way over.

"Who are you?" He asked again.

She hadn't expected the sudden wave of chakra. It washed over her vision and momentarily everything was so bright.

'Away, away.'

The trees that had denounced her approach the moment the thought had settled in her mind increased in urgency.

Perhaps she had made a mistake.

The brightness slowly faded away and finally, she could once again make out the outline of the trees. There was a river behind the man, and a small patch of rocks separating him and her.

She could also see the rest of the humans rapidly making their way towards them. Had the wave of chakra been an alert? Had he called his friends?

She shook her head and scrambled to her feet. Her head still rang from the overload of chakra and she stumbled to straighten herself.

She forced herself to see.

The people approaching from behind were panicked, she could tell, and they were ready to fight. The man in front of her, though, he was not. He was calm, less shocked than he had been earlier, and he was hesitant too.

He would not hurt her, not right now.

She made her decisions. She quickly made her way towards him, as swiftly as she could with her world still spinning, and she ducked behind the man just as his friends burst out from the trees.

Ibiki stiffened when the girl gripped his shirt, but the lack of killing intent made it so that his mind did not deem it a threat and instinctively shove her away. He slowly turned to face Kakashi as he emerged from the trees. None of them had their masks on and Ibiki decided his flare had made them panic because it was him, specifically, that had let out notice.

"Morino-san?" Kakashi asked softly, and Ibiki knew what the man was looking at.

The pink-haired girl stiffened and pulled her head behind from where she had been peeking out.

"Since when did you have a kid?"

Ibiki scowled, but he knew the Hatake boy, as well as the rest of his team, had noticed something was very wrong. Even Yugao, the sensor, hadn't noticed her until they had seen her.

Ibiki decided to grab the little girl, but she suddenly pushed away from him as though she had sensed his intent.

She saw the man's hand freeze midrise and she hurriedly put distance between them.

There was still no killing intent, and even his friends had turned from panic to confusion at the sight of her.

They would not hurt her. She reached out with her chakra again, frowning. The man had friends, why was he lonely?

"Who are you?" He asked for the third time.

Sakura kept a careful eye on all of the people present. The chakra of the forest called out to her in panic but there was nothing they could do for her. She swallowed. "Sakura," she told them.

"What are you doing out here all by yourself?" This time the woman asked.

Sakura wanted to go back to the trees, where she could feel them as well as sense them. "I live here."

She could feel the confusion in the air.

"Where are your parents?"

That one was easy. "Dead."

Ibiki sensed Yugao move over the Kakashi and begin speaking in hushed words. He waited as the woman stepped forward, carefully. "Why don't you come over here, Sakura-chan?" She asked gently. "We're not going to hurt you, I promise."

The girl eyed her just as she had eyed him not too long ago, then nodded. "Okay."

Sakura's willingness to simply take the hand offered to her might not have been surprising, because she was a kid, but the wariness Ibiki had a sense from her earlier, whatever it was that had urged her to hide behind him when the ANBU team had arrived, told him there was a layer of thought behind the action, one that went beyond childish naivety.

Yugao hadn't lied when she had made her promise, and something told him the girl knew.

They wordlessly made their way back through their trees back towards their camp, and Ibiki noticed with interest that the girl became warier the closer they got. She stared at the tent like she had never seen it before and when Yugao gently told her to sit by the fire, she walked around it so that she was as far away from it as possible. The woman brought over a blanket which Sakura declined with rapid shaking of her head and she eyed the energy bar handed to her like they had handed her a poisonous mushroom. She tugged at the wrapping, then wrapped her hand around it to feel the bar inside.

Yugao glanced up at them, eyes uneasy, and when Kakashi nodded she moved over to help her.

As Ibiki watched, the Hatake moved over to stand beside him. "What happened?"

Ibiki shrugged. "The brat wasn't there, then she was," he said. "Appeared out of nowhere. I didn't sense her until I heard her."

"We didn't know what to expect when you flared your charka," Kakashi said. "She was hiding behind you."

It wasn't an accusation or anything, just a fact, and Ibiki shrugged. "She seemed to know you were coming."

By the fire, Sakura finally began to eat. Yugao watched her for a moment before she stood up and made her way towards them as well. "What should we do with her?"

"Bring her back with us," Kakashi said. "Something definitely happened, and we need to know what. Not to mention, a forest is no place for a kid."

The energy bar left dry on her tongue and hard down her throat. She took small bites and it took her a few swallows to get it down.

Sakura shifted her vision onto the woman, Yugao, when she crouched beside her again. "We come from a village nearby," she said. "You might have heard of it. Konoha?"

Sakura nodded. The clan with similar eyes to her hailed from Konoha.

"We'll be going back soon," she continued. "Would you like to come with us?"

Sakura sensed no question from the woman. "I don't have a choice, do I?"

The woman's chakra flinched in shock and she could sense the rest of the people leaning in towards them, curiously and in surprise.

Humans who could not see truth fought and killed to make a truth they could see. These people all seemed genuine, but she could feel the concealed intent beneath their light words and the soft smile Yugao was showing her.

It was the ability to see that had let her and her clan know there end was close even before the grim reaper had arrived. Death, the man, had swept through the beautiful forest with his dead followers and slaughtered them. Their village was a forest and their clan lived within the trees. The strings of chakra controlled the dead weapons as though they were alive and they could not fight what they could not see.

That was when she had found out, that sometimes enough lies and fakery could overwhelm truth.

As a last stand against the man almost made to kill them, she had learnt to shoot out chakra strings from her fingers. She had fled, the only one able to do so as far as she knew, to another forest that called to her as welcomingly as the one of her previous home.

Thoughts slowly put themselves together in Ibiki's mind.

The girl did not look up when addressed, did not turn to look when someone moved. It reminded him of a Hyuuga with their Byakugan activated.

"Sakura," he called. The girl perked, letting him know she had heard, but she did not look up.

She did not look up because she saw him just as clearly if she did not. She did not glance around when someone moved because she already knew.

The tales of a massacred clan, of the people who could see chakra just like they saw the green in the trees and the blue in the sky, floated to the front of his mind

"What is your last name?"

"Haruno."

The girl, like any other Haruno, couldn't see.

Like the AN said, this is chapter one of the rewrite! Raven's real busy, what a sad boi, so it's just me right now. Much sadness.

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