Some Time in The Future
The Land Formerly Known as Hi no Kuni
Katsumi was angry.
He usually was, though, so this was no surprise.
The war was not going well. It was never going well. Their enemies were unrelenting. Their supplies were diminishing. Their morale was low.
And his brother was reading a book!
"Eiji, that had better be about strategy," he said, glaring at his younger sibling's prone form.
"No," replied Eiji. "It's about wizards."
Katsumi shrieked. They didn't have time for this! They never had time for this!
"You'd better be at the meeting tonight, with actual ideas," said Katsumi, before stomping off so he could actually DO some actual WORK.
The meeting was not going well. The meetings were never going well.
Tahei, who was possibly missing multiple important parts of his brain, was screaming. Katsumi hated Tahei, but he was, inexplicably, good at fixing guns, so he didn't bring up the proposal of kicking him out. Magoemon was still pretending to be a samurai. Who approved a budget that involved buying him historically accurate armor reproductions! And Eiji was absent. As usual.
"Arin," he said, to the woman on his left, who was looking at her computer intensely. She glared. Whatever.
"You want something?" she asked, sneering.
"Yeah, you know where my brother is? Seeing as you spend so much time together and all."
She glared even more. "He's sick."
Sure he was.
The secret meeting—the one with only the people that actually mattered—was better. It was in the sub-basement. The walls, untouched by sunlight, had ancient paintings of ancient hand-held fans on them. An old woman had told Katsumi once that fans like that were the symbol of his clan. He was skeptical.
Karashini was at the front of the room. His uniform was rumpled. There was never time for ironing. There was never time for anything at all, matter of factually, except war.
"The campaign is not going well," he said, with a calm demeanor that was only a front for the bitter man that lay beneath. "Nothing is going well."
The other people in the room nodded. They knew this. This was the way Karashini started off every meeting. It was true. It was always true.
"We have even bigger issues than usual."
This was also the norm. It was a ritual of sorts, these meetings, but they were soothing in their own way.
"This time, though...we have an idea that will fix everything." And he stepped away from the front.
This was surprising. He never did that. The room tittered nervously.
"Please be quiet," he said, narrowing his eyes. The room quieted immediately. He was not a man you wanted to upset.
Arin walked to the front of the room. Her glasses were held together with electrical tape. It marked her as someone from the Western regions, where the hospital system had broken down long before everyone else's—anyone from this area would've had corrective eye surgery at 15 or 16.
"Continuing the war is an exercise in futility." She paused. Had this been in better times, she would've taken a sip of water for emphasis. But they did not have enough water for that. They never had enough water.
"I have developed a time-stop room. If we are in this room, any changes made by time travellers will not affect us. The reason for this is that the only way to ensure peace is for someone to go back and kill Uchiha Itachi."
There was a collective gasp. They had trained themselves to gasp collectively.
Uchiha Itachi was a shadowy, almost mythological figure. He had been considered a hero, once. Which was odd, because he was no hero. Now, though, he was seen as the harbinger. He had committed some...act of evil…and that act was the beginning of the end for society. Whatever it was had lead to the spiral downwards that resulted in their current war.
"Eiji has volunteered for this," she said. There was more tittering.
Katsumi's heart dropped. He was unsure of how this method of time travel would work (Arin's department was strictly off limits to him), but he knew it meant he would never see Eiji again. No…
His younger brother walked into the room, wobbling anxiously. His borrowed hakama trailed against the floor, too long for his short frame.
"Hi," he said, gulping. He had never been allowed in here before, due to his...tendencies. Among other things.
"Come here," said Arin, looking down her glasses. He obeyed, almost tripping. She put her hands on his shoulders and turned him to the audience.
He was so small. The low collar of his shirt revealed his upper ribs, clearly visible under his pale, nearly translucent skin. Barely one-and-twenty, and yet…
"Eiji's unique talents make him particularly suited to his task," she said, smiling thinly. They all knew what that meant. She didn't have to explain what she meant by talents. Some of the people in the camp, Katsumi included, had magical eyes that turned red in battle and improved their vision. Eiji's eyes, though, were...like that, but also, not like that. He knew why. He did not say why. The things he did with those eyes were...ridiculous. Seemingly impossible. And yet…
"Yeah," he said, attempting to grin. "I'm gonna...um...go back to when he was a baby and, um, remove him from existence."
"This will be occurring next week. Please kindly assist your comrades with moving objects into the time-stop room. It's in..."
Katsumi couldn't focus. His brother! His last remaining family...no, this couldn't be. No. He wouldn't believe it. But he had to. And he knew this was what must be done.
The meeting was dismissed. Eiji walked up to Katsumi, his blue-green eyes watering.
"I'm sorry, onii-san. I should've told you earlier."
"You should have," Katsumi replied. And that was that. They walked back to their quarters in silence.
"I...I think I can come back, though. 'Cause it's not...time travel, exactly, really? It's more like dimensional travel. I can't explain. But..."
"But what?"
"But I don't want to. I hate it here."
"Well, after you've killed Uchiha Itachi, it will be better, I'm sure, as we phase into the new reality." That sounded right, right? Katsumi was unsure. He hoped he was right.
The day of Eiji's departure came quickly. Everyone had been resettled into the time-stop room. It was crowded. Rations had been carefully doled out. The plaster was crumbling in some places. The bunker had been...repurposed.
Eiji himself could not enter. He stood just beyond the doorway. The door was heavy. Once it was closed, he would go. And they would wait until Karashini had determined a safe amount of time had passed.
"One minute left," said Arin. The seals were not quite yet finished powering up. Katsumi had heard snippets of how it worked. He was not sure he wanted to hear the whole details.
"Goodbye, Eiji," said Katsumi.
"Goodbye, onii-san," said Eiji. His eyes were red, and only partly from the magic.
And Katsumi closed the door.
He was not one for hugs.
Eiji had to act quickly. The normal magical defences that kept out enemies had been taken down, except for those surrounding the time-stop bunker. They required too much energy to maintain.
He wanted to see the sun before he left, though. One last glimpse of his homeland. He wended his way through the compound, the thin walls and canvas offering hardly any protection.
Outside. The land was scorched earth. He had read there had been trees here, once. Eiji had never seen a tree. In the distance, smoke. That was bad. He scooped some of the dirt into his pocket.
And then, in a flurry of hand motions, he was drawn into the void.
It was a strange place, of shadows and blocky shapes. He forced himself to go farther and father. His stomach churned. He wasn't even sure where he was going. And then...he knew. Somehow. He allowed himself to exit.
Eiji's jaw dropped.
Was this really the place he had been before? It was not supposed to transport him across distance. But this was so unlike anything he'd ever seen before. He was standing on pavement, and it looked new. The air was good. Clean. He took a few deep breaths. There were sturdy buildings all around, built in the way he'd only ever seen in fading books before. How could Uchiha Itachi have wanted to destroy a place like this?
"Turn off your Sharingan, boy," said a passing man, hobbling by on his cane. His what? Did he mean his...eyes? Maybe. He turned them off.
He had been unsure what people wore in this time. Magoemon gave him a shorter hakama, and Eiji had awkwardly fashioned an approximation of the top half of a kimono out of the largest fabric scrap he could find and some thin rope. It was not a good look, and it seemed to be out of place. He hoped that didn't give him away. Ah, well.
But how to find Uchiha Itachi? He didn't expect this. The stories spoke of him as a mercenary who roamed the lands finding more people to kill. Eiji had assumed this meant a world similar to his, maybe a slightly different landscape, different clothes, different weapons, not…a city.
He was also not super feeling the whole 'killing a baby' thing. A baby couldn't really be evil, could it? They just kinda...sat there. Evil was made, not born.
Although he knew Katsumi would disagree.
Well, Katsumi wasn't here.
Maybe…
He had an idea. It was bad. But it was an idea.
First, to find the baby of doom. Or whatever.
He began to walk around. There was absolutely nothing familiar. People were a lot taller than he was used to. A well-fed city, then. A little boy ran down the street, being chased by a...man? Boy? He was about the same height as Eiji, but he looked very young.
"Shisui, come back here!" he shouted. "Why do you always do this!"
Shisui? What kind of name was that?
He vaguely recalled seeing a mention of a 'Shunshin no Shisui' in a book, once, but it was such an odd phrase he had never been able to figure out quite what it meant.
The feeling of walking on pavement was odd. It was smoother than the hard sands and dirt of his homeland, but not in the same way as concrete. All the people he saw seemed to have shoes. He had none. Eiji was fairly sure he'd never owned shoes.
"Did you see Itachi? He's so cute!" said a woman going by. Oh! He tried to turn toward her as much as possible without being obvious.
"No, I'm going over there right now," the other woman replied. This was good. He could follow her, and pretend he too wished to see the baby. Perhaps it was brand new.
She walked off to a narrow road between two buildings. There was a word for that, but he was unsure what it was. He'd never had to use it before. Eiji trailed one hand on the side of the building, feeling its smooth wood. It was nice.
The narrow road ended, and they were back in the light. The woman turned around. Oh dear.
"You going to see the baby too, hun?" she asked.
"Yeah," he said, smiling weakly.
"You an Uchiha? I've never seen you before, but there's no reason for anyone else to be here unless you were." And she flashed red eyes at him while raising her eyebrows. They looked just like Katsumi's. Was he an Uchiha? He had never had a family name of any sort. He flashed red eyes back, and she smiled. He was uneasy.
The woman walked into a house. Eiji followed. She took off her shoes. She looked at him, ask if to ask why he wasn't taking off his.
"Ah...I haven't got any shoes," he said. "Unfortunate accident." He had used that to explain a lot of the weird things he did, and people usually believed it, because he was a mess. She rolled her eyes.
The house was nice. It looked not quite like those in the books, but almost. He reminded himself he was in the past. It was odd.
And then he heard the baby.
Uchiha Itachi.
The harbinger.
Oh dear, how was he going to hold a baby and make hand motions at the same time? Very carefully, he supposed. He put his hands together so his sleeves covered them and flipped through the motions. He could do this.
The baby.
He saw it.
It—he—was being held by a woman. His mother? What was her name? He didn't know. He didn't know if he had ever known. She had long, dark hair, but it was decidedly...blue. Strange.
The woman he had been following stepped into the room, and he went after her. There were quite a few other people, all women. Eiji felt self-conscious.
"Come to see the baby, hm?" asked the mother. Yes. His head was spinning. He felt like he was about to throw up.
"Gather round, gather round," she said. Everyone moved into a circle. Had they been doing this before he came in? Had they been doing this all day? Eiji was confused. He wanted to go home. But he really didn't have a home anymore, did he?
He was in the middle of the impromptu circle. His palms were sweaty. The baby was passed, cooing a little each time. Eiji had never held a baby before. What if he dropped it? They were all holding it in a very particular way.
Three people. Two people. One person. He turned on his eyes (his Sharingan?). The baby was handed to him.
"Aww," he said.
And then he put his hands together awkwardly underneath the baby and made the hand motions. He could see the people lunging at him. But it was too late. Eiji was already on the other plane.
The space was even more disorienting than usual. The baby started to cry. He walked—in a sense—to his destination. It wasn't quite walking, per se, and he also didn't quite know how to get there. His mind would pull him to the right place if he concentrated enough. It was in a different dimension entirely, so it was much harder than simply going backwards. His arms felt like jelly. The baby's wails grew louder. Where was it? Then he knew. And he exited the plane.
It was just like in the books. There was a swaying house on one side of him, looking like it was about to collapse. He wasn't going there. There was another house, up the hill. It was stone and very strangely shaped.
"That's your new home, Itachi-chan," he whispered, quietly. Eiji really hoped they accepted him, or at least didn't kill him. Keeping Itachi alive and yet incapable of carrying out his horrors was his sole goal, and this seemed like the best way to accomplish it. He walked up to the house. The hill was a struggle; Eiji was unfamiliar with any terrain other than flat. The stairs were normal, at least. He set the baby down on the top step.
He pulled a piece of paper out of his bag. Itachi was clearly an unsuitable name for this region, so he had written down a new one: John. It was the name that came up most frequently in the books of the people here for male characters, so it seemed like a good choice. But...hm, what was his birthday? It was definitely in some of the histories he had read. It seemed better to write down his actual birthday and not just give him a new one.
The sixth month. What was it in this language? June. June...6th. That's right. He knelt down so he would have a flat surface to write on. His pen was nearly out of ink; he couldn't even see any left in the barrel. Hopefully it would work for this. Ahh, just indentations! He tried scribbling a bit to see if that restarted it. Success! Should he write something else? He was not very good at writing in this tongue. Maybe if he put it in his, they could have it translated.
I'm very sorry for leaving you this baby. I couldn't think of anyone better to take him. Please don't kill him.
That seemed good enough. He put the paper on Itachi's small form and poked one of his small cheeks.
"Good luck, kid," he whispered.
Then he ran.
Xenophilius Lovegood was sitting on the settee looking for errors in the draft of tomorrow's Quibbler when he heard crying. Was that Luna? No, it couldn't be, Selene had taken her to see her mother. It sounded like it was coming from outside. Maybe Molly had given birth early? But surely she would've gone to St. Mungo's. He decided to get up and see.
The surprise he felt when he saw a baby on his doorstep was...honestly not that high. He was mostly sad, knowing that surely another set of wizarding parents had been killed. The Lovegood family home was sufficiently in the middle of nowhere and sufficiently valueless that it was fairly safe. He picked up the baby and the piece of paper that had been lain on top of it and brought it inside. Xenophilius rocked it gently, knowing that it wouldn't help much to soothe the poor infant, who had probably already seen something horrifying in its first few weeks of life.
He was not soon gone when he heard the distinctive, high pitched keen of a newborn child. Eiji turned around. He could just barely make out the house in the distance. Someone was opening the door. They stepped outside. They picked up the baby and brought him inside. Success.
Now what?
He ran some more.
A/N: Now you might be saying: That's the most convoluted, garbage plot I've ever seen! Yes! You shoulda seen the original idea, which was Harry (after 5th year) and Sasuke (while at Orochimaru's lair) somehow manage to meet in the Magical Other Plane, use some sort of probably-illegal blood magic thing to understand each other, and go on adventures into other dimensions. The other dimensions were all cliche fanfic ideas, and one of them was 'abusive Fugaku', so naturally they steal baby Itachi and bring him to the Lovegood's. This was pretty bad, but I've already written little John a lot of life in my head, so I thought I'd publish it with a slightly less bad backstory.
Now you might also be saying: We didn't want this! We wanted Anko-sensei and/or Twirl! Yes I know, I'm sorry. I'm currently at college with my nice new laptop, which unfortunately means I don't have access to my computer with the partially finished next chapters of both of those stories. I considered asking my dad to install TeamViewer on my PC or something so I could look at those files, but honestly I'd rather not explain why. But I promise, before the end of November they'll both have new chapters, and I've already got an idea for Anko-sensei that involves everyone's favorite missing nin showing up. Also going to try to finish my zombie apocalypse fic and maaaaybe get some Halloween themed Shi/Ita fanfic up but no promises on either of those.
Also this site wrecked my formatting I promise I understand the concept of paragraph indentations.