I do not own any Naruto characters or settings.  I only own my OC, Musei Shiro.

This chapter contains some descriptions of blood.

I hope you enjoy the story of Shiro, the Weeping Samurai of the Land of Iron!

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“What have you done…?” Shiro cried, her strained voice ringing in Itachi’s ear.

“What do you mean, Shiro-san?” the shinobi asked, confused.  “I saved your life.  Shouldn’t you be thanking me…?”

“What have you done!” the samurai shrieked, pushing the shinobi away from her embrace.  “Let me die!  Let me die already!”

“Shiro-san –!” Itachi reached out for the girl, but she slapped his hand away.  Her own hand, with a deep slice opening her palm through to the back of her hand, smeared a thick glob of blood on his.

She didn’t even wince in pain.

“You revived me with the yang Chakra inside these blades?!” she screeched.  Her hand snatched the sheathed katana swords from Itachi’s grasp.  “Do you have any idea what you have just done?!”

Itachi sat there, his black eyes stern.

“I saved your life,” he growled simply.  “You were dead; but I brought you back.”

“It would have been better if I stayed dead!” Shiro snapped, yelling in the shinobi’s face.  “Baka!  Now I don’t have any ounce of yin Chakra in my system anymore!  I’m like a ticking time bomb, ready to explode because you poured the yang Chakra from these to me!”

Shiro shook the katana scabbards in front of Itachi’s face.

“Baka!”

The girl lost the grip on the sheaths, her nerves connecting from her brain to her fingers obviously damaged from the piercing wound.  The slick blood made her grip slacken and the lack of control in her fingers resulted in the katana to tumble down on the floor next to her.  Shiro stared at the blood-streaked sheaths, more hot tears cascading down her cheeks.

“Baka!  Now Yoru will never be saved…!”

“If you died, your sister would have had zero chance of escaping Orochimaru!” Itachi snapped back at the distressed samurai.  The girl ignored him, crying her salty tears into her ever-bleeding hand wounds.  “Do you think I don’t want to die, either?!”

Shiro’s face snapped up to confront Itachi’s, her black eyes, now rimming in a silvery white, widened in horror.

“You have so much to live for…” she murmured, her voice wispy.  “Your otouto…Sasuke-san…you still have to explain everything to him…”

“And you have your own things to explain to Yoru-san,” the shinobi retaliated sharply.  He took a deep breath, evening out his voice once more, before facing the girl again with narrowed eyes. “Now, since your entire body is overwhelmed in yang Chakra, how much time to you think you have to…live?” His voice caught at the last word, his mind seeming to refuse the fact that her death was inevitable.

“Otousan said that Okaasan was always sickly, because she had a little too much yang Chakra inside her system…he said that about sixty percent of her Chakra reserves was yang; the other forty was yin.  Since her body was dominated slightly by the white Chakra, Otousan said that her lifetime would be cut back by fifteen years…”

Itachi’s scarlet eyes widened, scanning her body up and down; Shiro lifted her solemn silvery, dark graying eyes to the shinobi and uttered softly.

“It would seem…that my lifetime has been cut back by seventy-five years.” Her voice quivered.  She lowered her gaze, avoiding the horrified dark eyes that pierced her cowering figure.  “We must get moving now…”

Itachi grasped her arm as she started to stand, his scarlet orbs widened in an open fear.

“How long do you have to live?” he repeated the question, now desperate for an answer.

Shiro lowered her gaze in shame, gulping as the blood dripped down her fingertip in a massive blob.  The drop of gore splattered on the soil, the samurai feeling more blood trickle from the gaping wound.

“A week or so…” Shiro murmured.  “Ten days at the most…”

~~~*~~~

There was a dark anticipation in the group’s movement from then on.

Kisame now didn’t whine or complain when the trio would pass by a village, rather, he’d actually run faster to shorten the time it would take to pass the town.  They were so close to crossing the border to arrive at the Land of Grass.  Still, they still had to trek across two more countries when they reached the Grass Country.

The two shinobi took turns carrying Shiro, who seemed to be robbed from her own energy with every passing hour.  Itachi started to worry for her health even more, and even insisted she take it easy on herself.  However, Shiro demanded to see her sister; she wanted to set things right, to tell Yoru the truth and not leave her in the dark with her death.  Shiro had only one thing occupying her scattered mind and one only:  Tell Yoru.  Show Yoru.  Save Yoru.

Itachi had taken the liberty to bandaging her hands, which had eventually stopped bleeding soon enough.  The enormous loss of blood though made the mad samurai’s mind go even fuzzier.  All the while she was hung over on the shinobi’s shoulders, her head toddled and teetered, her eyes narrowed to slits as her breathing slowed down to shallow inhales and exhales.

Her very existence, not only her mind, was beginning to fade also.

She could feel her innards burning from the white Chakra coursing through her veins like icy bleach, sucking the life essence from her body and turning her pale skin an even whiter shade; the skin surrounding her weakening body drained to a sickly white and grew thin like paper.  Her white hair shimmered under the cruel sun’s rays like snow, fluttering in the light breeze as the shinobi carried her further on.

The sun wasn’t completely cruel though, as it was a source, a very pitiful source however, for yin energy.   The very minuscule amount of yin Chakra blasted from the burning sun kept the yang Chakra from completely taking over her mind, resulting in Shiro gaining at least a little energy to grip onto the white scabbards of her katana.  As hesitant Itachi was for giving Shiro the freedom to have physical contact with the katana again, he knew he had no choice, as she would rampage once more if she was ever separated from it again; and this time, she might charge after him until she dropped dead from the overexposure of yang Chakra.

The Land of Grass, a relatively small country, flashed by within a day’s worth of nonstop running; the lush hue of the blades that sprouted from the ground flew by in streaks of green, the clear blue sky contrasting with the color that carpeted the ground.

Shiro admired the cerulean sky, her silvery eyes narrowed and her lips slightly parted.

“Hurry up, imouto!” a young Shiro called, her twinkling black eyes round and wide as she bolted towards the cliffs that separated the village of Umi Gai from the shimmering ocean.  “The geese are migrating again!”

“Hold on, Nee-chan!” a smaller girl with black hair and gray eyes stumbled after her elder sister.  “Nee-chan!”

“Too slow, Yoru-chan!” Shiro giggled as she continued to run, her short white hair rippling behind her like the waves that crashed onto the shore at the base of the cliffs.  “Hurry up, already!  You’re gonna miss them!”

“Mate! (Wait!)” Yoru squealed.

"Beat you!” Shiro laughed as she came to an abrupt stop at the very edge of the cliff, the ledge dropping down a hundred meters below her.

Yoru stumbled behind her elder sister, huffing for breath as she clung onto Shiro’s arm.

“Look!” Shiro called, pointing up to the sky.

One of those rare days where the sky was almost clear; large wispy clouds drifted across the turquoise backdrop, a large triangle of gray-feathered birds flapping their large wings.  Shiro pointed to the flock with an excited finger, to which Yoru stood up straighter and widened her eyes in a wondrous curiosity.

“Whoa…” she gasped.  “There’s so many…”

“We have the best view here!” Shiro laughed, gazing up at the geese as they flew by.  “The geese are on their way to the Land of Fire for the winter!  I know it’s only early autumn, but they have a long way to go!”

“Nee-chan…” Yoru murmured, her gray eyes still glued onto the endless blue sky.

“Hmm?  What is it, imouto?” Shiro mumbled, her own black orbs stuck on the seemingly infinite blue sky.

“I wish I was a geese…”

Shiro’s gaze snapped down at her young sister of four, bursting out into laughter as she shed tears of jest.

“A goose?” Shiro giggled, clutching her stomaching with her free arm; she felt Yoru’s grip tighten on her other arm.  “Is that what you mean?”

Yoru twisted her lip in embarrassment.

"H-hai…” she mumbled.  “A goose…”

Shiro just snickered.

“Well, why do you want to be a goose, Yoru-chan?” she asked, pulling the smaller girl into a loving, tight hug.

Yoru’s face brightened, a smile stretching across her young features.

“They’re close to Heaven,” she explained simply, burying her face into Shiro’s thin cotton dress.  “They can fly, so they’re close to Heaven!”

Shiro furrowed her brows in confusion.

“Why are you thinking of Heaven now, Yoru-chan?”

“Okaasan says she’ll be in Heaven soon,” Yoru piped, clearly unaware of the actual meaning of the words.  “She says she’ll be up in the sky in a place called Heaven, and she’ll watch over us from up there just like she does down here!”

Shiro flinched at the words, blinking a few times at the beaming Yoru, who gave her onee-chan a wide, close-eyed smile.

The elder sister just sighed and force out a small grin.

“Okaasan will always be near us.” She drew out a long breath.  “Whether you’re a goose or not!”

Yoru giggled, her tiny body shaking from laughter.

“I’m not a goose, silly!”

Shiro’s silver eyes flashed open, the blinding white light of the sun beaming down on her limp figure, dangling from Itachi’s strong arms.  The ninja’s scarlet stare bore down on her still figure in with a concerned air.

“Shiro-san,” he murmured.  “Are you feeling alright?”

The samurai, who gripped her two katana tightly in on clamped hand, let her graying eyes lose themselves into the clear blue sky, picking out a tiny black figure above.  Its long wings flapped the air, singular and alone from any other of its kind.

“Okaasan…” the girl murmured softly, surprising the shinobi that held her.  “Are you watching over imouto right now…?”

~~~*~~~

Ahh things are gonna move fast from here on!!

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