Knitting Fate (Canon Patchworking with Uchiha Ren Part II)

Thirty-First Thread

Warning - an intense, pretty negative and anger inducing chapter ahead. Some canon characters are also pretty OOC in this.

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  "The intelligence of that creature known as a crowd is the square root of the number of people in it."
― Terry Pratchett, Jingo

Ren has been back in the village for a grand total of ten minutes.

She's going to murder somebody.

Preferably a dozen nameless civilian nobodies.

There is Kiba, lip split, Akamaru snarling from his position on top of his head, as much as a puppy can snarl, anyway. There's Sakura, on her knees with arms spread as she leans over Naruto, lying on the ground and completely motionless, trying to shield him from the stones being hurled at them. There is also Sasuke, sitting on the chest of one of the civilians, his tiny hands gripping the struggling man's neck. His eyes are red, like he's a demon from hell.

Coincidentally, red is the only thing Ren can see right about now. Her heartbeat is deafening in her ears, the adrenaline making her heart beat louder and faster. Had she not been this mad, she would perhaps worry about the pace alone reopening her healed wound.

But, she doesn't. They should worry.

She charges forward before anyone can make a move to intercept her, a blur of black, red, and green, with a splash of white from the white-red fan stitched onto one sleeve. She reaches the mob before they can blink, and launches herself at them without a word. Some might argue that they are defenseless civilians. That she shouldn't do it.

Frankly, for Ren, a ninja attacking a mob of civilians is very much equal to said mob attacking a group of children. All of whom she holds dear to her.

She leaps, a mess of claws and teeth, punches and kicks. Her goal: to cause as much pain as possible. Her strikes break bone. Chakra-hardened nails split skin. Her breath, transformed into fire, sears faces.

Absentmindedly, she notes that Hana is right next to her, for once in sync with her in her fury. The murderous look on her friend's face is enough to stop a lesser man. And they're all lesser men.

One tries to grab Ren's shoulder. She grips his hand instead, so hard she's certain she crushes his wrist, if the scream is anything to go by, and throws him over her shoulder, slamming the body into the ground. She's already at the next vermin by the time he hits the ground.

There are screams and cries, but she doesn't care. She doesn't even know for how long she's at it, until she blinks and suddenly she's kneeling in front of Sasuke, gently coaxing him out of murdering his victim. Sasuke looks at her, face unreadable, but when she smashes her heel onto the man's arm, eliciting an anguished scream, he seems content.

She doesn't care when ninja arrive, horrified by the sight before them. She swats away the hand someone tries to place on her arm, just now noticing Gai's shocked, paper-white face as he stares into her eyes, red and glowing and bleeding. She doesn't speak. She doesn't know if she can. She wants to murder those people, put their heads on the palisade around her house as a warning to all of Konoha's so-called civilians.

She doesn't. Somehow. But, for that short, little second, the shinobi gathered get glimpses of massacre, carnage, and blood. For a second there, they don't see Ren. They see a demon. A second coming of Itachi.

But that is dispersed instantly when she kneels by the tiny blond, taking his unmoving form into her arms as gently as one would a newborn. When she allows Sasuke to climb onto her back and whispers sweet nothings at him, maybe to soothe herself more than him. When she places an arm on Hana's shoulder, motions towards the general direction of the hospital, and helps Kiba onto his sister's back as she cradles the half-conscious Sakura to her chest.