AC_D4:Undead Horde (Part 2)

Today's post is a continuation of this idea. It's more a scene than an actual chapter, but it was a scene and situation that I really wanted to try writing out to see what it was like. I think it's got potential for serious expansion!
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

“Ahh!” Naruto yelled and pointed at the man at the Nara's front gate. “You.”

Harry startled at the sudden yell and rubbed his ear as he looked between his cousin and the Nara.

“You look like one of nii-san's creepy puppet people.”

“They're not my... wait, what?” Harry squinted at the Nara to get a better look at his face. “Oh no,” he said with horrified realization as the man's features lined up and matched perfectly with a face that Harry had purposely kept out of his mind since his time Suna. “Did you have a twin?”

The Nara stilled, surprised at the question, but nodded after a long uncertain moment.

“You... we need to talk to Nara-san about this,” Harry said with a grimace. The short walk to Shikaku's house didn't give Harry any ideas on how to respectfully broach the topic of the revived puppet being a dead Nara. There was no way to make break this news gently. As he sat in front of Shikaku, Harry couldn't even find the words to broach the topic. Because now that he knew that one of the puppets was a Nara, Harry felt that Shikaku shared some of the puppet's facial features as well.

“Nii-san?” Naruto broke Harry out of his thoughts.

Harry turned away from Shikaku with a bit of relief and asked Naruto, “Can you just summon that one that's...”

Looking equally uncomfortable with the situation, Naruto unrolled the scroll that Harry had given him. With a deep look of concentration and a puff of smoke, Naruto summoned the zombie puppet.

Harry still wasn't sure what to call the thing. All the names, or combination of names, he thought of seemed disrespectful especially now that there was a personal connection.

Harry felt awful that he hadn't even thought of the zombie puppets having families who'd want to know about them.

Shikaku flinched away with pained breath, his lips pressed into a thin line.

But the other Nara, the one who looked like an older version of the zombie puppet, stepped forward with a raised arm. His trembling fingers hovered inches away from the zombie puppet's face, as though debating whether to touch what had once been his twin. He pulled his hand away and looked up at the sky instead.

Naruto shifted and looked down at his hands.

It took a few tries for Harry to find his voice. “I'm sorry. I didn't know that...”

“This isn't your fault,” Shikaku said in a low voice. “You had nothing to do with my brother's misfortune of fighting Sasori. Anyone would have been hard pressed to defeat that man on their own.”

“Your brother,” Harry said as he looked at the undead puppet with renewed horror. “I don't know how to fix this,” Harry admitted, “I tried to change them back when they told me they used to be people, but...”

“I know,” Shikaku said, turning back to the puppet with tired eyes. “I read the mission report.”

“It's an empty...vessel,” Harry said, desperate to improve the situation. “There's nothing inside.”

“How can you be sure?” Shikaku asked.

“The dead's presence is hard to miss,” Harry replied.

Everyone turned to Harry, even the zombie puppet's living twin.

Realizing what he said, Harry cleared his throat. “Even before I made them like this, there was nothing in the puppets.”

“But you don't even know what you've made them into now. No one knows,” Shikaku said. “You called them undead.”

“For lack of a better term,” Harry replied. “Look, if your brother was still in there, he would have made his presence known.”

“Like a ghost?” Shikaku said with a forced chuckle.

Naruto twitched at the mention of ghosts.

“Yes,” Harry replied, keeping his gaze fixed on Shikaku. “Like a ghost.”

Shikaku shifted, unhappy at this turn of conversation and his tone was sharp as he said, “Ghosts don't exist.”

In the silence that followed, Harry considered his options. He could remain secretive or he could reassure Shikaku that this really wasn't his brother anymore. The decision was easier to make. “I've talked to a few ghosts over the years.”

Shikaku's cheek clenched while the other Nara turned to look at Harry.

Naruto's uneasy breathing was loud beside Harry.

“One of the ghosts told me that the only reasons a person would come back as a ghost was if they were afraid of Death or if they had a strong connection to the place they haunt. In your brother's case, if he came back as a ghost, he would have used this puppet body to haunt the person who killed him.”

No one spoke. Shikaku's eyes were torn between disbelief and hope that Harry was telling the truth. 

The other Nara's eyes were wet with unshed tears as he stood next to the remains of his dead twin.

Though wide-eyed with fear at the topic, Naruto didn't show any disbelief at Harry's words.

With a deep breath, Harry said, “Your brother is not in there. If he was, I would have met him. Just like I met the ghost of my Uzumaki relative in the ruins of Redpool.”

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

I like this AU for the zombie army. But I also appreciate the potential for all the character pain. [Your relative was killed and made into a puppet. But now they're a mindless zombie... so, how does that make you feel?]

Konoha ninja might eventually be okay with having those zombies protect their Jinchuuriki, but what about foreign ninja? How would they feel seeing their dead relatives used like this? 

That's hopefully what this AU is leading up to, foreign problems for Harry- I just have to write it. I also have to edit the previous part to make things flow a bit better, but that's a job for another time. 

Polar