21

"Papa!" the child hobbled eagerly to greet his father. He just turned two years old and had learned to take his first few steps. The sitter bowed politely after receiving her fee and then quietly headed out.

"What did you do today?" the father asked the boy affectionately.

"Wan!" came the excited reply.

"Wan?" he asked as he took the paper from the boy's hand. His eyes widened as he could distinctly make out the image of a dog drawn with red crayon.

"Wow!" he blurted out in awe. Could it be possible, he asked himself. But then remembering the high hopes placed on him by his parents only to get crushed by his own incompetence, he immediately checked himself. Whatever he turned out to be is fine. He doesn't need to be a shinobi. He could be just an artist. Anything is fine.

"That is a really good picture!" he said rustling the boy's hair tenderly.

~元~

He bolted straight up from his sleep. He felt his chest to check if it was because of his irritating cough. No. It was something else. He turned to his son who was lying motionless beside him. The surroundings were dim. He waited until his eyes adjusted to the dark while he tried to remember if it was a dream that woke him.

He spotted an old roll of parchment by the corner of the hut. It was the deer painting that she left them. Above it was a small cabinet where he kept his ink and brush. He had also placed a few scrolls inside just for writing. Without thinking, he walked over and took his implements out and a scroll. He unrolled it and started painting.

He stood up and inspected the finished work, his brush still in hand. It was a crow, a black crow staring at him imposingly from the paper. Why did I draw this, he wondered. His chest was pounding hard. A crow signified an omen, a bad omen.

His attention turned to the window and felt something odd was out there, a soft rumbling like a distant thunder but different. The thumping was too even. He ventured out and walked a little further away from the hut. They had been living by the edge of the Land of Fire for two years. Outside its border was a vast desolate land. He would sometimes stare at it and wonder what was beyond.

When he reached that point, he took no time to linger. He ran back to the hut and grabbed his son. Somehow, he took the scroll with him and stuffed the ink and brush inside his pocket. He ran as fast as he could, as far away from there as possible.

22

"Papa," his son cried in confusion. The boy was suddenly roused from sleep and was lugged in his father's arms. They were traveling fast, as fast as his father's long thin legs would allow.

"There's something out there, son," he said. "Don't worry, you'll be safe. Papa will protect you."

He didn't know what he saw. He just knew that it was big and it was slowly but most assuredly headed toward Konoha. To him it looked like a giant fox but it had multiple tails. He didn't stay long enough to count how many.

She's in danger, he thought. How can I warn her? I'm too far from the village.

He tried to run faster but he tripped and he clasped his arms protectively around his son as they fell. The scroll tumbled out of his grip. They were by Konoha's wall by then but still quite a distance from the gate.

"Are you okay, does anything hurt," he asked with concern. The boy shook his head but his lips were quivering. He looked like he was about to cry. He hugged the child tightly, assuring him all the while. "It's okay, I'm here."

He coughed hard. Not now, he pleaded. He coughed harder. He calculated the distance of the monster behind him and realized he wouldn't make it to her in time at his pace. He was struggling to breathe normally as it was.

His eyes strayed to the scroll that got unrolled when it fell. It revealed the crow that he had painted earlier. He sighed. How he wished then that he was an artist nin like his ancestors that could bring art to life.

"Ninpo chouju giga!" he muttered in remembrance of the jutsu that he tried so hard to activate but failed.

"Ninpo chouju giga," he heard his son mimic while his face was buried in his father's chest. And then it occurred to him to try. Why not? What do I have to lose?

He released his son from his embrace and crawled on all fours toward the scroll. "Son," he called. His son hobbled slowly toward him. "Can you do this?" He lifted two fingers together in front of his face. The boy tried to imitate but he still didn't have a firm control of his fingers. He helped form the little hand to the seal formation he wanted. "Now look at the bird and say ninpo chouju giga."

"Ninpo chouju giga," the boy said.

The crow winked and very slowly emerged out of the scroll to his amazement.

"Do you want him to caw son? It would be nice if he could caw, couldn't he?"

The boy nodded excitedly.

"Wish him to caw."

The boy smiled and looked at the crow. And it cawed once.

"Now make him fly son, make him fly over the wall and caw as loud as he can all over town."

The boy jumped with glee as the crow went past the wall cawing at the same time.

He realized he had to work fast. One crow wasn't enough to get attention. He stooped down on his scroll again and painted small crows, as many and as fast as his hands would allow.

"Now son, let's do the same thing, okay? Let's wake everyone up!"

The boy laughed and stretched his hand out so his father could help him form the thing he did earlier with his little fingers.

23

An inexplicable phenomenon happened in Konoha that night. A flock of crows went circling over the village making so much noise and waking everyone up.

Sarutobi, who was in charge while the Fourth was away, stared from the Hokage's tower and contemplated on the scene in the sky with foreboding. The crows were warning them of something. He quickly dispatched ANBU to investigate.

Soon enough, the kyuubi was spotted some distance away and it was heading straight to Konoha. An alert was raised and all jounins were ordered to take up their positions.

*Young Itachi stared at the sky as he held his little brother Sasuke.* The crows were still flying over the rooftops. *They were left alone in the house. His mother was promoted to jounin that year so both his parents were called to duty.* "Don't worry Sasuke," Itachi said. "Nii-san will protect you." He kept his eye on the crows above him and witnessed how they suddenly disappeared into thin air.

Outside the gate, a boy was crying. His father wasn't moving at all. They were laughing together earlier. He saw many things from the crows' eyes. They flew over the village and they cawed. People were shouting at them and he thought it funny. And then he turned to his father as he laughed. He then saw that he had his arms planted on the ground. He was panting and coughing. Something was oozing from his mouth. Something dark and he didn't like it because his papa didn't seem to feel well.

The man struggled to lean against the wall outside Konoha's fortress. He wasn't sure if their effort made any difference until he saw dark flashes above them. Shinobi, he noted. They're headed for the monster. Everything will be okay now. She'll be safe.

He coughed again and he realized he wouldn't live through the night. Years of neglect had taken its toll on his body. He feared for his son. Who would take care of him? Then he remembered what the boy did. The artist nin legacy was not dead. It just skipped a generation. And they were just outside a hidden shinobi village, his son's mother's village. He just had to make sure the boy got to her somehow.

He motioned to the child to bring the scroll to him. The boy readily complied without understanding what was going on. His little face had a look of concern for his father. The man tried desperately to raise his hand holding his brush. He needed to write something, a letter introducing the boy. But his strength failed him. He had exerted too much effort first in running and then in making the crows.

He loosened his grip on his brush and waved to the boy to come nearer instead. The boy leaped to him and gave him a tight embrace. He stroked the boy's back gently.

"Son," he started in soft halting speech. "This will be your new home, okay?"

He felt the boy shake his head in protest.

"Don't worry. I'll always be with you. You may not see me, but I'll be with you." He coughed but it came out weaker now.

"They'll probably train you hard in there but you'll do great. I know you will."

He gently pushed the boy away from his chest and looked him straight in the eye. Those eyes, he got to see her again through those eyes.

"Listen to me," he said. "When I was younger, people told me things and I believed them. But now I know that I wasn't so bad. If I got to have you then I wasn't so bad. So when they tell you to do stuff that feel wrong, don't do them. Remember, you can be who you want to be. You make your own decisions, okay? I believe in you."

And he cried then as he embraced his son for one last time. He cried hard because he knew a two-year old would never recall any of those words. He died worrying about what would become of the only treasure he'd ever known.

24

"It's coming!" Someone shouted. People scrambled as the kyuubi became visible.

"Hey, hey look!" A shinobi pointed at a dark-haired child leaning beside a man who appeared to be dead. The shinobi approached and poked the boy who in turn opened his eyes in fright.

'He's alive!" the shinobi declared.

"Get him away from there!" His companion ordered.

"Papa! Papa," the child wailed as he was wrestled away from his father.

"He's gone, kid. Sorry."

~元~

Konoha's walls were smoldered in fire when the kyuubi attacked. There would be no trace left of the artist who at one time wandered into the village to offer his paintings for sale.

So many incredulous things happened that no one would ever remember about a flock of crows that flew around the village to warn of impending danger. That is, except for a young boy who kept his eyes on the sky while holding his baby brother.

A lot of children lost their parents that day. The orphanage overflowed with children without any other living relatives. One of them was a dark-haired boy with dark eyes and pale skin. His record would show his birthday as November 25th because it was the day he was formally recorded in the orphanage log book, more than a month after Konoha was in flames.

About four years later, he would be taken in by an important man called Shimura Danzo and trained as one of his prized assassins. He was broken but not completely. Despite all the mind-conditioning they made him go through, a time came when he managed to act on his own conscience just as his father wished he would do. If he were alive, he'd be really proud.

As for his mother, she searched desperately for father and son soon after the kyuubi attacked. She had become a jounin after all and she had more freedom to venture out on her own. The hut was no longer there when she arrived. It was part of the kyuubi's trail and the place was leveled beyond recognition.

Part of her heart disappeared that day on that solitary piece of land by the edge of nothing. She wondered if it was the same feeling as being a widow even though she wasn't really a widow yet. She also grieved the loss of a son she only got to hold for a brief period after his birth. In one careful moment, he remarked that the baby had her eyes. She didn't say anything then but she knew it was true. Her eyes were as dark as the baby's. His wasn't so.

Among the hut's ruins, she found a frayed piece of parchment containing what was once part of a beautiful painting of a deer prancing along a meadow under a sparsely cloudy sky. She burned that fragment as if to ceremoniously burn, in a funeral pyre, the remains of a family that never was.

She shed no tears for them as she stood there alone. She left just as quietly as she came. She returned home the next day to her first and only family left. She would devote her time to them from then on. But she would not forget. Never.

25

It had been a difficult existence for her since. After everyone recovered a little from the devastation, her clan was forced to move a little farther away from the main village for some reason. Her clansmen became rather abrasive toward the other people of the village after that.

Her husband too seemed to have reverted back to his old temperamental state. She knew it was because of having been ordered to move. She harbored resentments against the village too. But she also wondered if her husband's disposition was about something else.

While they were packing, sheets of paper with ink drawings slipped from a kitchen drawer she had opened and they fell on the floor. Her husband stared at them from where he stood and then he looked at her. And she saw his eyes change.

Her husband was a smart man. He was head of the clan and things did not slip by him lightly. It was possible he knew. Ten months of training was too long. A young man asking around for her in town just to give back something she'd dropped seemed contrived. And yet her husband at that moment opted not to speak. He just looked at the sheets of art on the floor, and then at her before carrying on with their move. But there was a hidden meaning to his gaze.

Eight years after the kyuubi attacked, the orphaned boy truly became an orphan without his knowledge. The Uchiha massacre occurred. His mother died at the hands of her first born for reasons then unknown. The killer had a trademark jutsu that seemed to have been influenced by crows.

But the boy with his own trademark artist ninjutsu did not care about such trivial matters. He was trained to exist behind the shadows, without identity, without emotion, his origin unknown.

~end~

Naruto and Characters © Masashi Kishimoto

Notes: I wrote this in three days. By the time I finished part 23, I had second thoughts about pursuing Sai's connection with Sasuke. I felt the story could probably stand alone without it. There were other twists that seemed sufficient. But I had already built up all the stuff about Mikoto and there was a possibility some would figure out that initial idea from the first paragraph. I had given away too many strong hints so I went on with it. (Decided later to give her identity as a spoiler in the summary)

Oh and just to be clear, I don't believe Sai will ever be revealed as an Uchiha. It was just fun to explore the possibility. Cheers!