Curse These Old Bones - Chapter 57

Chapter 57

The deck was alive with noise and movement. Ropes creaked, sandals thudded against wood, and the film crew’s frantic chatter rang over the sea breeze in bursts of disorganized urgency. A director bellowed at an assistant who had somehow lost two crates of fake snow, and someone else—maybe the costumer—was shouting about silk sleeves and salt air. The scent of ocean salt and sweat clung to the railings, mingling with the louder tang of anxiety that always came with civilians packed together under a mission’s shadow.

The sea stretched in every direction, a brilliant blue sheet beaten gold by the noon sun. The water shimmered like it might catch fire. The wind was lazy and warm, tugging at cloaks and loose hair. It should have felt peaceful.

It didn’t.

Pakura leaned against the rail, one foot braced on the lower beam, eyes scanning the edge of the horizon out of sheer habit. She hadn’t forgotten what Sura had said before they left port: “Easy mission.”

That alone had made her keep a kunai under her pillow.

There was no such thing as easy with Sura. Not really.

She glanced sideways—and there he was, of course. Laughing.

Anko had draped herself across the railing opposite him, her body language a study in weaponized relaxation. One leg crossed loosely over the other, shoulder tilted just enough to draw the eye, her grin sharp enough to draw blood. Her voice cut through the ambient noise like a whip: “So, Boss—tell me, is that your natural grin or did someone happen to make you this smug?”

Sura didn’t miss a beat. “Only around people I like,” he said, with a smile that was too easy, too practiced—and still, somehow, genuine.

Anko snorted. “So I’ve earned it? I’m flattered.”

“I said ‘like,’ Mitarashi, not ‘want to be strangled by while I sleep.’”

“That’s flirting, sweetheart,” she replied, baring her teeth.

Pakura let out a slow breath through her nose. She didn’t envy Anko’s confidence—no, admired wasn’t the right word either. It wasn’t really confidence. Not in the way it looked. It was armor, sharp and gaudy. It laughed so you wouldn’t hear it scream. Pakura had read the files in Sand, had heard the whispers long before they became history. Orochimaru’s old experiments. His apprentice. The things done to the kunoichi who didn’t break, only bent at angles no human should. Anko didn’t carry her trauma quietly—she carried it like a banner.

Pakura had just buried hers deeper. She’d had less time to practice.

She straightened slightly, eyes flicking across the deck again. Escort mission. That was the official designation. Guard the actress. Watch the crew. Get them to the Land of Snow and back with as few bodies on the way as possible. Easy.

Sure.

She hadn’t seen Zabuza in the last half-hour—probably prowling below deck with that slow, methodical menace he carried like a scent. Good. Paranoia suited a shinobi far better than jokes did. He’d almost certainly be inspecting ballast, routes, and sabotage points. She respected that. Trusted it, even.

Sura? Sura was still smiling, hands loose at his sides, posture as casual as if he were leaning against a ramen stand and not under the blazing sun on a ship headed toward what would definitely not be a calm diplomatic escort.

She had no idea who he really was—no last name, no record, just rumors and scars and that maddening sword strapped to his back like it belonged there before he was born. But he was strong. Scary strong. And clever. And far too relaxed.

No one that competent smiled that often without hiding something.

She remembered the mission in the Land of Stars. Supposed to be a logistics op. Walk in, check the orphanage, make sure supplies were delivered. Instead, they’d found a meteorite that whispered in dreams and a half-mad Kage trying to swallow his own soul.

And then there was Zabuza’s infamous “C-rank” that had ended in the man switching sides and Leaf taking over an entire trade route.

Routine, her ass.

Sura turned his head slightly, catching her looking. His grin shifted, something sly curling at the edge of it. “You good, Pakura? You’ve been staring. I’m flattered.”

She didn’t blink. “Just waiting for the part where this mission explodes in our faces.”

Anko snorted. “Sweetie, you’re a little early. That’s not until act three.”

Pakura didn’t reply. Her eyes were already drifting, caught by a disturbance on the far side of the deck.

It wasn’t shouting—yet—but voices rose in sharp, clipped exchanges. The kind of conversation you could pretend wasn’t an argument if you wanted to save face. Most of the crew was pretending exactly that, turning away with forced busyness, their movements just a little too brisk, a little too rehearsed.

The director, who Pakura vaguely remembered being introduced as something like “San-something,” stood with his arms crossed and his jaw tight. Across from him was Yukie, posture coiled, lips pressed in a line that looked too familiar.

Pakura shifted slightly, tilting her head to listen.

“You knew this was part of the agreement,” the director said, voice low and firm. “We passed the point of choice weeks ago.”

Yukie’s eyes narrowed. “I agreed to a location shoot. Not… this. You know what I think of…this.”

“You always say that,” he replied, exasperated. “But it’s not just about the role anymore. It never was. You know that.”

Pakura’s gaze sharpened. Not just about the role?

Yukie looked away, toward the ocean, her expression tightening as though the sea itself was judging her. “Maybe you forgot, but I walked away from that life. A long time ago.”

The director’s voice dipped, almost a whisper—but the tension made it carry. “You didn’t walk. You were pushed. And now it’s time to go back. You’re needed,” he added after a pause, and there was something quieter in it now. Not pleading, but tired. Resigned. “Whether you want to be or not.”

Yukie turned slowly, her face unreadable. “And you think dragging me into this with a crew and a fake script is going to make me forget how it ended last time?”

“Maybe I hoped it would remind you who you were.”

Pakura’s brow twitched. Who was she?  She didn’t look like a kunoichi. Didn’t carry herself like one, either—not quite. But her defiance wasn’t theatrical, and her tension wasn’t the kind that came from bad script notes. And the director—if that’s what he really was—watched her not like a man managing talent, but like someone trying to coax a fugitive back across a burning bridge.

Pakura exhaled slowly through her nose. Obviously there was more to this than Sura had bothered to mention in the briefing. Sura had called it a “soft” mission. Yeah, sure, her muscular, tanned ass. Escort a film crew, keep the star happy, watch the ports.

And then Yukie reached up, fingers brushing the delicate crystal pendant at her neck.

Her hand tightened.

“You all want me to be something I’m not anymore,” she said, almost to herself. “But this—this was never mine to begin with.”

And before anyone could stop her, she tore the necklace off and flung it into the sea. The sunlight caught it mid-arc—a glittering blur of glass and memory—before it vanished into the waves with barely a splash. The quiet that followed was louder than any scream.

No one moved. The director didn’t speak, didn’t argue. Just stared at the water like something sacred had been thrown away. Pakura’s eyes stayed on him.

He looked gutted.

She turned her attention back to Yukie, who was already walking away—back straight, shoulders squared, spine stiff with the kind of pride that said I am not looking back. Pakura recognized that posture. It was the kind you wore when you refused to acknowledge how much the past still clung to you. When admitting the weight would mean collapsing beneath it.

Then, almost imperceptibly, she felt the shift in the air.

Not sound, exactly—Zabuza didn’t make noise when he moved, not unless he wanted to. But she caught it anyway: a soft scuff against the deck, the faintest drag of sandal on wood. Intentional. A courtesy, in his language. He acted like he did not like them, but Pakura knew better.

She didn’t turn until he spoke.

“What’s the shitshow?” Zabuza asked, his voice low, dry, like the gravel in a riverbed that had forgotten the sound of water.

Pakura turned toward him, studying his face for a beat longer than necessary. He looked… not good, but less dead. The pallid shark-skin tone he carried when they first met had warmed slightly under the sun, and his eyes, while still sharp and cold, no longer carried that permanent, sleep-starved fury. His bandaged jaw twitched faintly beneath the cloth, as though part of him was resisting the urge to smile—or maybe grinding his teeth at the world. He still moved like a man ready to murder half a village without raising his heart rate. Still had that slow, lethal composure that made people mistake silence for peace. But there was less bone-deep tension in his stance. Less bitterness in his silence. He wasn’t soft, not even close, but he’d lost the scent of blood. He looked, for the first time, vaguely like someone who belonged to a village again—even if his eyes still read like a Mist-man’s obituary.

She probably looked better too. Not long ago, she’d been dying in Mist, bleeding out from wounds she hadn’t seen coming, betrayed by the Kage she’d once sworn her life to protect. The betrayal had carved something out of her—left a silence where faith used to sit. The burns were healed now, skin patched and chakra steady, but she could still feel the echo of it when she closed her eyes. The rage didn’t surface as often. It just simmered quietly, waiting. But she was stronger now, leaner in her thoughts, sharper in the ways that mattered. A few weeks ago, she hadn’t been sure if she’d ever walk again. Now she was standing on a sunlit deck, arms folded, exchanging dry observations with one of the most dangerous men alive. Not a bad arc, all things considered.

It still burned—violently, sometimes. The betrayal hadn’t dulled with time; it had sharpened, turned cold and serrated. Pakura could still see the smug calm on the Kazekage’s face, hear the silence of the council that let it happen, the way her own comrades had looked away as she was handed over like a defective tool. They hadn’t just discarded her—they’d chosen to. And that choice, that rot at the heart of her old village — she was konohan, now, and she would not forget it—, sat with her every night like a second spine. But now, there was something else. Not forgiveness—never that—but direction. She remembered what Sura had told her to persuade her when they met. Sura leaning against that cracked training log, Samehada resting like a beast asleep at his side, smirking like he’d already won. She remembered what he had told her would happen during the invasion. Back then, she’d half-laughed, half-hated him for saying stuff so ridiculous. But now,  now that she knew him, know that she had seen what he was capable of, with the sun on her skin and blood in her limbs and in her heart again, she didn’t laugh. She believed.

“Not a full shitshow yet,” she answered Zabuza, keeping her tone even. “But the star just tossed some sort of sentimental artifact overboard. Probably symbolic. Or dramatic. Or both.”

Zabuza snorted faintly. “They always snap when they get too close to the past. These types. All silk and trauma.”

Pakura’s eyes tracked the glittering horizon, her arms tightening across her chest. “She’s not just a diva. You saw that argument.”

“Yeah,” Zabuza said, his voice unreadable. “I heard enough. Sura is being naughty again.”

— —

There was something wrong with the air.

Sasuke stopped mid-step, one foot suspended over the leaf-carpeted ground, as if the forest itself had whispered something inaudible and he’d instinctively turned his ear to listen. It wasn’t a sound. Not chakra either—not in the way he’d been taught to detect it. It was something quieter, older, a shift in atmosphere that crawled beneath the skin and made instinct stir.

He lowered his foot, slowly, silently.

Around him, the woods were thick with pine and fog. Shafts of dying afternoon light filtered through the canopy in broken columns, pale and uncertain. A crow screeched once in the distance, then fell silent. Even the insects seemed to have gone still.

He’s watching me, Sasuke thought. I can’t hear him. I can’t feel him. But he’s there.

Somewhere, just beyond the edge of reason, his master and kin—the one he called Dove—was moving. Sasuke knew it the way a prey animal knows the shape of the predator even when it can't see the teeth. Dove wasn’t a ghost. Ghosts made noise. It would be easier if he had the Sharingan. He’d come close twice now, he could feel it—once during a failed training mission in the eastern borderlands, once during that week he didn’t sleep at all—but he’d resisted, even when his nerves screamed for it. Dove had forbidden it. Not out of cruelty, but something worse: principle.

"Don’t rely on tricks you haven’t earned," Dove had said, his voice dry, almost amused. “You’re not a true Uchiha until your eyes are yours by merit. If you use them too early, you’ll think you see—but you won’t understand.”

So Sasuke had obeyed. Begrudgingly. And now, half-blind to the truths just beyond his grasp, he stood motionless in a place that felt suddenly ancient. Then came the scream. Thin. Young. Cut off mid-breath. He didn’t hesitate.

Three kilometers east.

He ran.

Branches blurred past, slapping against his flak vest and drawing thin cuts on his cheeks. The wind whipped through his hair, dragged through the hollows of his lungs. The forest tore itself open before him—he leapt through thickets, vaulted fallen trunks, never once breaking rhythm. The smell of fire hit him halfway there, acrid and sharp with burning pine. Then the sound of fighting. Not chaotic. Rhythmic.

By the time Sasuke reached the edge of the clearing, the trees had begun to blacken with ash and scorch marks, their trunks gouged by errant strikes and clawed by lightning. He dropped low, slid silently into the underbrush, and pulled the hood of his ANBU vest up to shadow his face.

And what he saw held him in place like a genjutsu. Raiga Kurosuki was unmistakable. Even without the bingo book sketches, even without the briefing, the sheer madness of him was enough. Twin blades crackling with lightning hung from his hands like jagged wings, and the chakra that rolled off him came in pulses—erratic, electric, foaming at the edges. His coat was already smoking. His face twisted in a grin wide enough to tear skin. He fought like a lunatic, but even Sasuke could see it—he was being pushed back.

There were two women, one moving like a brawler in a thunderstorm, the other like a glacier with a blade. The red-haired one was a blur of dark skin and burning chakra, her mesh bodysuit doing little to hide the taut lines of muscle coiled along her thighs and arms. She didn’t dance—she lunged, pounced, drove forward with fists wrapped in fire and rage. High-Chunin level, at least.

“You call that lightning?” she snapped, as Raiga’s blade missed her shoulder by an inch. “I’ve been hit harder by bad weather!”

A gout of flame followed her words, blooming from her mouth like dragon’s breath. It lit up the clearing, sent sparks scattering into the underbrush. Raiga snarled, swung wildly—but she was already gone, skidding under his guard, laughing. Her partner was the opposite.

She was blonde, tall, and built like every regulation code of conduct had given up halfway through writing her description. Her open flak vest clung to the sides of a chest that strained against the mesh beneath—full, heavy, and utterly unapologetic. Her waist cinched tight into hips that curved wide and powerful, every step shifting the taut fabric stretched over her ass like it owed her money. Thighs thick with muscle moved with unhurried confidence, each stride a lesson in balance and intent. She was the kind of woman who didn’t need to flaunt what she had because her silence did it for her—unbothered, unreadable, lethal without ever raising her voice.

Where her red-haired partner fought with wildfire and fury, she was the blizzard that followed—cold, disciplined, inevitable. Her sword moved in narrow, efficient lines, slicing the air like she was carving the edges of an answer Raiga hadn’t figured out yet. She didn’t react to the chaos around her; she predicted it. Fire passed by her cheek without a twitch, and Raiga’s lightning snapped too slow to catch her. She read his body like a map she’d already memorized—shoulders, hips, grip. Maybe she wasn’t stronger than him. Maybe. But strength didn’t matter when you moved like consequence.

And then there was the other one.

Off to the side. Not fighting.

Lazily leaning against a broken tree trunk, one foot propped up, arms folded. White hair tied back in a ponytail. He held a popsicle between his teeth, half-melted and gleaming. Sasuke blinked. The man wasn’t even watching the fight. He was watching a child.

Thin. Pale. Unarmed. Standing there with an expression that looked eerily blank, as if the fight unfolding ten feet away didn’t concern him at all — if not for the concern in his eyes, those strange eyes, when he looked at Raiga.

The white-haired shinobi moved. Not fast. Just... clean. One step forward. One hand lifted. The child dropped like a puppet with its strings clipped.

No hesitation. No cruelty. Just efficiency. And then he took another bite of his popsicle.

Back in the center, the fight had shifted. Raiga was bleeding now—from his lip, from his shoulder. His strikes were still savage, still fast, but something in them was frantic. The cadence had slipped. The redhead saw it first.

“Ohhh, you’re panicking now?” she jeered, fire licking along her forearms as she surged forward again. “Didn’t expect two kunoichi to shove your swords up your ass?”

Raiga roared, electricity exploding outward in a jagged, uncontrolled pulse that tore a tree in half and sent birds scattering for kilometers. It didn't matter.

The blonde was already there. Her sword arced once.

Raiga froze, eyes wide.

Then his right arm hit the ground, severed clean at the elbow.

His scream split the trees.

It didn’t buy him a second.

The redhead was already moving, chakra igniting in a burst of fire along her knuckles as she launched forward with a snarl. “Let’s see you channel lightning now, asshole!” Her fist connected with his ribs—hard—and something cracked. He staggered, half-turning to defend himself with his remaining blade, but the blonde followed in silence, her sword slipping under his guard again, this time leaving a long, shallow gash across his thigh. No wasted movement. No flourish. Just pain.

The man with the popsicle finally deigned to act. He stepped forward without hurry, flicked the wooden stick aside, and exhaled like someone mildly inconvenienced. Then he was gone—a flicker of movement, a low vibration of chakra, and Raiga’s back arched as a strike caved in the base of his spine. Raiga could have dodged — if not for the blood loss, the tiredness. The man was also high-chunin, but not a Jonin. Not yet, but he had the potential, clearly. A bone-jarring impact without any warning at all. The swordsman’s knees buckled.

He was screaming again, but now it was wet, gurgling. Blood foamed from his mouth, lightning leaking out of him in thin, uncontrolled arcs, snapping uselessly against the ground like dying snakes. The redhead caught him by the collar before he could fall completely. Her eyes were narrowed, mouth curled into something that might’ve been a grin if it hadn’t been so full of hatred.

“Not so loud now, huh? Too bad for you Bee told us to kill you and take those swords for training!” she hissed, and then, with both hands alight in chakra, she drove them into his chest. There was a pulse, a burn, a crack of heat that sent sparks flying.

Raiga’s eyes rolled back. His body jerked once, twice—then stilled. The blonde stepped up beside her, calm as ever, wiping blood off her blade with a flick of her wrist and the indifferent grace of someone dusting dirt off a coat. The man cracked his neck once, lazily, and looked around the clearing like he’d just finished sweeping.

And then the blonde’s gaze shifted. Her sword didn’t rise, didn’t point—but her eyes tracked east, straight through the trees. Straight to where Sasuke crouched, heart thudding like a war drum, still hidden in the undergrowth.

Her voice was calm, quiet.

“There’s one left to take care of.”