Naruto : Monsters

AN:

sorry guys there was a mistake, this is chapter 61

...

"See, earlier me and the boys were talking about genjutsu and how it works. So with you being a shinobi and all, you could answer a few things about it for us."

"Actually I can't," I replied curtly, hoping that the annoying man would take the hint and leave me alone. "Hyuugas can't use genjutsu."

...

Well, that wasn't precisely true. We could use genjutsu just as easily as anyone else, especially the simple ones like the basic clone techniques. It's when we attempted the more complex ones that difficulties start to crop up.

The heart of the problem lies ironically with our clan's greatest strength, the Byakugan. Simply put, our eyes were too perfect. While it is well known that the Byakugan granted its wielder 360 degrees of vision with a range of miles, what was less known was that even in its inactive state the Byakugan was superior to normal eyes, granting it's user a perfect clarity of vision that could never be matched by ordinary eyes.

And I do mean perfect. There never existed a Hyuuga that was born colour blind or needed prescription lens and even in their passive state, our eyes can see farther and with far better clarity than the eyes of the average ninja.

And there lies the crux of the problem, none of us knew what the world looks like with normal eyesight.

How could we craft an illusion of the world when we don't know what the world looked like through normal eyes? Whenever we tried casting a genjutsu, our target immediately realised they were in an illusion and would try to break out of it. And that's not because our genjutsu were badly crafted but the opposite, they were too well made.

While most ninjas failed to add in enough detail to their illusions, we added too much to ours. The colours in our illusion were far richer compared to what a normal person would see while objects in the distance appear far clearer than they were supposed to, and that's because that's how we saw the world through the Byakugan.

In short, whenever we tried to create an illusion of the world around us, we inadvertently created an image of what we would see through the Byakugan instead of normal eyes. And that's because no Hyuuga – with the notable exception of me – knew what the world looked like through normal eyes.

Which is why, with very few exceptions, my clan tended to avoid genjutsu entirely. There was, however, an upside to all this. The very thing that prevented us from using genjutsu also made us resilient to them even with our Byakugan dormant.

Just like how we Hyuuga had no idea how the world looked like through normal eyes, the average ninja has no idea how the world appears through ours. And when they had no idea how we saw the world, how could they ever hope to trap us in an illusion?

"Oh?" The man's head bobbed drunkenly as he stared ahead. "So it is true that it's impossible for a Hyuuga to fall for one."

"Yes." I lied through my teeth. There was a way to snare us in a genjutsu, at least when our eyes were inactive, there was no way I was going to bring it up to this drunkard. Even if it was common knowledge, it was the clan's policy to always deny any weaknesses that our eyes may hold, true or false. "No would you please leave me alone."

"Aww~~, come one." The man drawled out in his seat, still facing ahead instead of towards me, and from the way his head kept bobbing up and down he honestly looked like he was about to tip over and fall asleep any second now. "Fine, fine," He whined, and I meant that literally, "Just one last question. One more and I promise I would leave you be after. Alright, kiddo?"

Stifling a sigh I just nodded resignedly, and he must have caught the motion out of the edge of his eye because he started speaking.

"Well, it's like this kiddo." He waved a hand lazily before him as if swatting away a fly. "If it's so impossible for a Hyuuga to get ensnared by a genjutsu, then why the hell haven't you realised you're in one?"

The young lady on the stage playing the koto, her dexterous fingers plucking its strings skilfully and producing the beautiful melody that had constantly filled the room ground to a stop, plunging the entire restaurant into silence, her fingers hanging still in their place above the instrument.

And the hunger gnawing in the pit of my stomach, the one that filled my thoughts with an almost overwhelming need to eat, disappeared like mist before the dawn's rays as if it was never there. And along with the hunger, I felt my mind begin to clear as the fog that had been clouding my thoughts, so subtly that I never noticed it was there until then, was lifted.

And for the first time since I stepped into the restaurant, no, since I heard the koto being played as I walked down the street, my thoughts formed with crystal clarity and my mind raced as I realised what had happened to me.

What the-?

I spun in my seat and stared at the Koto player, the lady in blue who knelt on stage, who was staring back at me with a face so expressionless I felt as if I was staring at a doll.

The brown eyes that met mine were like orbs of ice, so very cold. No, not cold, they were empty, hollow. When I looked into them it felt like I was gazing into the eyes of a corpse instead of a living person, and the empty look on her face only reinforced that impression.

It soon dawned on me that I couldn't hear anything, that when the playing of the koto was silenced so had everything else. I couldn't hear the rest of the diners, who just seconds earlier were chatting and laughing merrily as they drank the night away.

The entire restaurant had fallen silent, and as I looked around I realised why.

They were all staring at me, each and every single last one of them. From the diners, men, women, and even the handful of children, all of whom were sitting perfectly still in their seats, to the waiters who held up trays of food in the arms, all of them, the heads of every soul in here had swirled around to face me, watching me, their blank hollow eyes never blinking. Not even the children's.

And just like the koto player on stage, the hundreds of eyes that gazed at me from around the room were dead, empty things. Not a flicker of life burned in any of them. They all watched me with blind sightless eyes of a corpse, and I felt my skin crawl as those dead eyes bored into my soul.

"Let this be a lesson to you, Hyuuga Hikaru." The drunken man spoke from behind me, the only sound in the restaurant, but he didn't sound drunk anymore.

His voice had turned hard, harsh and unforgiving.

The sound of it caused the hair on the back of my neck to stand on end and I felt an abject terror grip my soul, all of my instincts urging me to run, to get the hell away from the thing that stood behind me. It felt as if I was a rabbit that was about to be caught by a tiger, so close to dying that I could feel it's breath on the back of my neck as its jaws were about to clamp down on my skull.

Killing Intent, my mind supplied helpfully, but even knowing what it was didn't help make it any less horrible to experience. The malevolence I felt coming from behind me was on a scale beyond anything I felt before. Unlike Kakashi's which had been fuelled with the passion of rage, this one was devoid of passion entirely though was no less deadly for it, it was like the uncaring cold cruelty of winter's breath.

It took every ounce of will I had in me to fight that fear, to push my instinctive urge to flee back down, and I forced myself to turn around so I could face the man that might be here to kill me.

He hadn't moved since I had last laid my eyes on him, he was still sitting on his stool and still facing the counter instead of me, so even now I could only see the left side of his face. But instead of his slouched form that kept swaying unevenly, his back now stood iron straight while all signs of weakness had bled out from his body.

And for the first time, I noticed the strip of white cloth that circled around his head, almost entirely hidden within his black hair.

A bandage.

"No matter how much confidence you hold in your prowess, no matter how certain you are in your safety," the man pulled his bandaged right arm from out his coat and used it to push himself toward me, steadily revealing more of his face to my eyes, "you must never allow yourself to lower your guard young Hyuuga. Because there does not exist a place where you are truly safe. This world holds no place that can keep you away from harm for you are always, always in danger of getting killed."

As he turned to full-face me, I got my first proper look at his face and the first thing that stood out to me were the bandages that covered most of the right side of his face. More precisely, they completely covered his right eye.

I finally realised who I was talking to.

And when I did, I wished that I had listened to my instincts and ran while I still had the chance.

"Hello, Hikaru." The voice was devoid of any warmth, cold as the single eye that watched me. "I have been meaning to speak with you for quite some time though this will be our first actual meeting."

Oh, Shit!

The man gave me a brief nod in greeting. "Allow me to introduce myself."

Shit! Shit! Shit!

"My name is Shimura Danzo."

I'm dead! I'm so fucking dead!

He must have read the fear on my face because he gave me a firm nod. "I see you have heard of me."

The monster hidden beneath the leaves has finally come for me.