[AGMF] Prologue: Whirlpool of Fate (Patreon)

Prologue: Whirlpool of Fate

The heart-stopping scream that pierced the night startled five-year-old Uzumaki Kushina awake just the same as it did everyone else in the neighborhood, and her first, groggy thought was, Are we under attack?

Seconds later, once her brain had a second to catch up with her, she buried her face into her pillow, groaned long and low and tired, and thought, Not again.

Around her, the rest of the house snapped awake as well, and it wasn’t long before her door opened and her father’s urgent voice asked, “Kushina, are you okay?”

Kushina groaned even louder into her pillow, then lifted her head long enough to say, “I’m fine!”

Her father, of course, did not take her word for it. He glanced over her with a long, hard look, then strode across the room and checked the window and the street outside, and only then did he allow himself to relax a little and heave out a sigh.

A moment later, her mother appeared in the doorway, worried, and asked, “Kushina — ?”

“Is fine,” her father said tiredly. “No intruders or anything. The one who screamed. Was it…?”

Her mother’s lips pressed into a fine line. “Takeru again, yes.”

“That boy,” her father said in the same tone that made it clear he wanted to say the sort of words that Kushina wasn’t allowed to say. As though remembering she was there, he turned to Kushina and ordered, “Go back to sleep, Kushina.”

“Can’t!” Kushina whined. “Too awake now, ya know!”

Her father gave her that look, the same look he gave her when she ate cookies before dinner, but after a moment, he gave up and shook his head with a sigh. “Fine,” he said. “If you’re up anyway, you might as well come and see what your cousin is screaming about this time.”

Kushina groaned, but pulled herself up out of bed and followed her parents as they padded down the hallway to Takeru’s room, rubbing her eyes and yawning the entire way. Several other Uzumaki were up and about, too, rushing up and down the hallway and whispering to each other, muttering about how this was “the eighth time this month,” and whether Takeru was “cursed” or if it might be “a side effect of the Mind’s Eye.”

Kushina thought it was just Takeru being a worrywort. He’d been that way for as long as she could remember, always nervous about something or overthinking something else. When the other kids wanted to play ninja, he was there watching and wringing his hands about what would happen if one of them tripped and poked an eye out.

By the time they reached Takeru’s room, it seemed as though half of the compound had woken up to see what was wrong and make sure no one was being violently murdered, and several lights had been turned on up and down the hallways. Like an anthill that had been kicked, Uzumaki scurried about, checking seals, checking sensor barriers, checking doors and windows and every crack or crevice an enemy ninja might use to break into the Uzumaki’s inner sanctum in the middle of their very own village.

The next day, of course, everyone would tell everyone else that there hadn’t been anything and it was just another false alarm. At that moment, however, no stone was left unturned and no possibility was overlooked. All because that dummy had another nightmare.

At least the screams had ended, but they had been replaced by the buzz of activity and, in Takeru’s room, the hiccuping sobs of five-year-old Takeru as he clung to his mother as though she was a lifeline. Aunt Ashina held her son gently and whispered soothing reassurances in his ears, but Takeru didn’t even seem to hear her. Big, fat tears rolled down his chubby cheeks, but his eyes stared, unblinking, at the wall as though he was seeing something else there entirely. His mouth moved around the same words over and over again, although Kushina couldn’t quite tell what he was saying.

Uncle Tenazu, who stood off to the side with a frown on his face, glanced over at the door and grimaced.

“Another nightmare?” Kushina’s father asked.

Uncle Tenazu nodded. “Seems like it.”

All this over a nightmare? Kushina thought, irritated. She had just gotten to sleep before this all started, it felt like, and now, she was probably going to be up for hours and hours. She just wanted to go back to sleep.

“Could it really be he’s awakening some variant of the Mind’s Eye and that’s what’s causing him nightmares?” asked Kushina’s mother.

Uncle Tenazu didn’t seem to believe it, but he didn’t immediately say so. “Maybe. Maybe he’s just having some anxiety about leaving the village next week. He’s always been the sensitive sort, and this will be the first time away from home.”

Kushina’s father sighed and wiped a hand down his face. “You don’t see Kushina having nightmares every night, and she’s the one being sent to Konoha to be Lady Mito’s successor. Takeru’s just there to monitor the seal when…it happens.”

Kushina’s mother pressed her lips together again, but didn’t comment. Kushina was too tired to feel nervous about it herself or to wonder if maybe her mother and father had some kind of disagreement about whether or not she should be the one sent to Konoha to be Lady Mito’s successor. That was something for Future Kushina to do, a Future Kushina who had gotten a lot more sleep and had the energy to think about such things more deeply.

“Then maybe it is a reaction to the Mind’s Eye,” Uncle Tenazu said flatly. “In any case, it won’t be solved here and now, and there’s no point in everyone else causing a fuss. You might as well go back to sleep.”

Kushina’s father shook his head. “You’re right, of course,” he said ruefully, and then added, “Not that most of us will be getting back to sleep very easily now, not after a scream like that.”

Uncle Tenazu only gave a helpless shrug.

Kushina’s mother wrapped an arm around Kushina’s shoulders. “Come on, Kushina,” she muttered. “Let’s get you back to bed.”

“Fine,” said Kushina, aggrieved. “That dummy better not wake me up again.”

Kushina’s mother let out a strained chuckle and steered Kushina around, back in the direction of her own room. Kushina chanced a single glance back at Takeru, still wrapped up in his mother’s arms, still clutching Aunt Ashina like she was the only thing real in the entire world, still mouthing the same words over and over again. 

It was only much later that Kushina realized what he was saying back then.

“You’re all dead. You’re all dead. You’re all dead.”

Some advice I received recently went something like, "A prologue should only be a couple of pages long. If it's more than a couple of pages long, you don't have a prologue, you have chapter one." In that spirit, here we have this, an old idea of mine repurposed, retooled, and resurrected.

I might still take a hand at tackling the Danmachi idea, too, but for now, that quick, informal poll I posted on the Discord said you guys like Naruto more, and as a result... Tada! You know?