The holy master said we’d go to heaven if we died for Shigetsukyodan. I wonder if I will. I’ve lived my whole life, all these years, caring for nothing but Shigetsukyodan. The holy master and the brethren hate me. They think I’m a traitor. But I was trying to do what’s best for us all. I wonder if God will understand. Or will God send me to hell like the master would? Either way’s fine. At any rate, I’ll know soon enough.
When she opened her eyes and saw water cutting diagonally across the gloom before her, Lily understood that she was in neither heaven nor hell. It wasn’t the water that was diagonal, but her, lying not on a bed but a wall. To her right, a broken fluorescent light on the ceiling was close enough for her to touch if she reached for it.
She had leaped into the sinking ship, and yet she had somehow managed to survive.
I know I have terrible luck, but this is ridiculous.
“You awake?”
“Ah!” Lily jumped at the sudden voice. She turned to see the cheery blue eyes of Uzumaki Boruto. The person she had lied to and taken advantage. “You saved me?”
“Yup,” he replied casually. “Don’t move too much. It could bring half the ship down on our heads.”
She surveyed their surroundings. They appeared to be inside an air pocket in the upper part of the skewed cabin.
“The water level hasn’t changed for a while, so we’re maybe done sinking for now,” Boruto said. “If we just sit tight, Old Man Sasuke’ll come rescue us.”
“You really trust him, huh?”
“He is my master, after all.”
They fell silent again.
Lily bent her knees to sit in the small space between the water and the wall and stared absently at container fragments and chunks of wood. Next to her, Boruto was feigning indifference, but she knew he was watching herlike a hawk. Why did this kid rescue me?
“Hey, why’s it called Shigetsukyodan?” he asked, out of the blue.
“Huh?”
“I mean, the moon’s usually silver, right? But shigetsu means ‘purple moon.’ How come?”
“Because that’s how it looks,” Lily replied, not looking at him. “In the fall, in the water around the island where I grew up, the plankton multiply all at once, and the sea turns this reddish color. When it does, the reflection of the moon in the water has this purple tinge to it. The purple full moon’s so beautiful, shimmering on the surface of the sea, cloaked in white waves… Our ancestors saw the presence of God in it. That was the start of Shigetsukyodan.”
She clamped her mouth shut. In her joy at being asked about her home, she’d let herself go into far too much detail.
“Wow! Is that what happened?” Boruto’s admiration sounded so innocent. “Huh. So you guys like the night sky.”
“What?” Lily frowned.
“Your piercings are like a constellation,” he pointed out.
Saying nothing, she turned her palm upward and lowered her hand into the water. The surface shimmered and moved, lapping gently at her hand. The skin on her fingertips was twisted in a spiral shape like burn scars.
Boruto had seen that spiral shape before. He’d once read that this sort of scar came from the heat generated by electrical current passing through the body. It even had a name. “Lightning crest,” he muttered.
Lily glanced his way before nodding slightly. “Yeah. You probably already guessed it, but my specialty is controlling other people with bioelectrical current. That’s how I snuck out of house arrest, too. I got these crests during my training.”
“Is the ability hereditary?” Boruto asked.
“It’s learned.” She pulled her hand from the water and waved it lightly, sending droplets scattering. “To acquire the technique, though, you need to practice actually sending current into a human being. Every single day, day after day, I fired electricity at my master. I was nine when I started training, and by the time I finally mastered it, I was fourteen.”
“And your master?”
“My dad. The leader of Shigetsukyodan. My teacher.” Even now, her very core grew dull and heavy when she remembered those days. It had been such extreme training.
Firing bolts of electricity at her own father had made little Lily cry. But her iron-fisted teacher had forced her to train, hitting her over and over until her tears stopped. He’d happily offered up his own body for the sake of his daughter’s growth. For five years, she lived immersed in this daily hell. She was too inexperienced to properly control Lightning Style. She would sometimes even stop her teacher’s heart with too strong a current. But even that pleased him.
You have a talent for Lightning Style. It is a gift from God so you can be of use to Shigetsukyodan. As he spoke, his face was free from care, even innocent. He had probably already been planning the attack on the neighboring Land of Fire.
Maybe he hasn’t been in his right mind for a long time now, she thought. Or maybe all that Lightning Style I poured into him made him lose his grip.
“After I learned how to manipulate bioelectrical currents, it was decided that I would be sent to the village of Konohaga-kure. That was my break with my teacher. I insisted that the best strategy was for me to first make myself a part of the village and gain some position of influence, like as a manga artist or an actor or an idol. Once I had the ears of the people, I could teach them about Shigetsukyodan. But my master, he—” Her voice grew quieter. “He wasn’t interested in spending any time on a real mission. He didn’t want to send me to the Land of Fire as a missionary, as someone patiently building an audience and winning people over to our cause, but as a spy to inflict immediate damage. We argued about this over and over and over until finally…I fled the island alone.”
“So you really did come to Konoha to become an idol?” Boruto asked. “Then that explosion on the Thunder Train…”
“They targeted the train because I was on it. With my master personally leading an elite squad. But that attack didn’t end with my death, but my master’s instead.”
“He died?” Boruto furrowed his brow.
“When he was fighting your master, he got caught up in a comrade’s technique,” she told him.
Forced out of the carriage by a member of Shigetsukyodan, Lily had been rescued by Sasuke. Then she had seen the body skewered on the ceiling. The man pierced by the steel pillar, the man with the bib—Lily’s master.
Lily’s father.
“I knew they’d come for me again, so I figured I’d use that.” She shrugged. “And that’s when I asked you to be my bodyguards.”
“Because you thought we’d mess it up?” he asked.
“No. Because you’re the Hokage’s son.”
A mix of emotions flitted across Boruto’s face.
“I was going to take control of you and then show the audience you were a stand-in. The fans wouldn’t be mad at me, the innocent idol, if the Hokage’s son made a mess of my concert. I thought if I got the brunt of the outrage focused on a ninja protecting the village, it would do more to make the Land of Fire look bad than indiscriminately killing civilians, given that your country’s supposed to be a symbol of prosperity and development.”
“So that was your plan all along?” he asked.
“The concert was a failure, so I wanted to take you down this time for sure. I came after the ship, but I knew you’d scan the inside with the Sharingan first. So I glued myself to the hull for a while. Once I saw you all moving, I came inside.”
“And then you controlled me again.”
She shrugged.
Boruto let out a sigh and looked at her in exasperation as he grumbled, “Did you guys seriously think you could crush Konoha with such cowardly methods? If you’ve got the time and energy to attack others, use it to make your own island better.”
“You’re right.” Lily lowered her eyes. “But, like, people are motivated by emotion, you know? I don’t think I was right or anything. But the one thing I inherited from my master is a loyalty to my home. In the end, I couldn’t walk away.”
“Even when that master tried to kill you?” Boruto asked, incredulous.
“No.” The strength drained out of her suddenly, and she leaned back against the wall. She felt like it was harder to breathe now, maybe because she had confessed her guilt. Even still, Lily continued to explain herself to Boruto as she took shallow breaths. “Education is important. We’re basically monkeys when we’re born. The fact that we’re able to live rich, cultured lives is because we’re educated. We’re taught everything our ancestors learned before us. For better or for worse, we’re slaves to the education we get from our parents and our society.”
“Could you kill your comrades if your group told you to?” he asked.
“Of course,” she replied without hesitation. “We think death is honorable. If you die fighting to spread the teachings of Shigetsukyodan, you go to heaven.”
“I don’t really get it.” Boruto felt creeped out by Lily’s words somehow. “But it’s like… I dunno. Like, leaving your life or death to the group, it’s just…not fair.”
Not fair? Lily cocked her head curiously to one side.