The Universe's Newest Puppet

by phoenixyfriend

Fate's strings are really more of a garotte at this point. - In which an SI OC ends up as Uchiha Sasuke's twin sister, and commences planning because this is either a seriously entertaining coma or her unfortunately permanent new reality.

4. Childhood is Almost Over

Satomi really didn't want to be here.

She wanted to see her brother, yes. She wanted to see him safe and undamaged.

What she was seeing here was not 'undamaged.'

"Imouto…" Sasuke was only a few minutes older, but the age had cemented itself in how they referred to each other anyway. His voice was rough, like he'd been screaming, and the room had the washed-out greyish feeling that hospitals got when they tried and failed to combat the harsh white electric bulbs with open windows and sunlight.

Satomi hesitated, and then walked over to sit next to Sasuke. The chair was metal and plastic, and not very comfortable, but it wasn't really supposed to be. Wordlessly, she took Sasuke's hand into her own, trying to swallow past the lump in her throat that had been building up since she left school.

"They told me it wasn't a dream." Sasuke finally said. "Itachi really killed everyone except us."

Itachi. Not Aniki. That was… telling.

"Yeah." Satomi could feel her grip tightening around Sasuke's hand, and forcibly relaxed it. Her hands were even stronger now than they had been before, and she'd hurt people in her old life without meaning to, when stressed and holding hands. There was no need to break his fingers here and now, just because she couldn't control herself. "He did."

"Why?" Sasuke asked, as though this was something she could answer.

She could, in the sense that she knew the truth and was capable of speech. She couldn't, in the sense that everything she knew could get her killed if people found out it wasn't as secret as they'd hoped.

"Being a shinobi is a life made of sacrifices," She said instead, looking out the window and away from Sasuke's broken eyes. "You give and you give and you give, and sometimes, there's nothing left inside and you just… crumple in and stop thinking like a person, because everyone treats you like a weapon. I don't…"

She took a deep breath and soldiered on with the not-quite-lie. "I think Konoha took a lot from Itachi when couldn't fill himself back up as easily as the adults can. And nobody noticed when he crumpled. And so he was just… people break sometimes, Sasuke. They snap. Brains and hearts, especially young ones, can't always take the strain of being a shinobi. A lot of people died, and I think it's because nobody noticed Itachi breaking until it was too late."

"…You don't blame Itachi."

"Everyone's responsible for their own actions," Satomi said, "But you can't discount that which drives them to make the choices they do. A person's upbringing and society have more to do with their choices than anything else in most cases."

Sasuke frowned at that. "So blame Itachi… but also blame Konoha?"

Blame the old geezers that put him up to it. "Blame the fact that Itachi was pushed into war at a young age and then forced into the shinobi life on fast-forward instead of being allowed to grow up, exposed to violent events and traumatized consistently enough by the negligence of adults who should have known better for the better part of his childhood, driving him to the point where he just… broke."

Sasuke blinked at her.

"…Sorry." Satomi realized she was standing. Huh. When had that happened? She took her seat again. "I just… have a lot of opinions about the psychological stress that young shinobi undergo."

That… that made Sasuke frown. "You're talking weird."

Satomi flinched. He'd noticed the expanded vocabulary. "I… there's a reason that happened. I can't tell you why, though."

The frown deepened.

"When you're a genin." Satomi decides on the fly. "When you've graduated the Academy and I know you can keep secrets, I'll tell you the stuff I've been hiding."

"Like why you're always weird?"

"…yes, actually." Satomi bit her lip, and then came closer to the hospital bed. "Scooch over. I'm climbing in, and then we're going to hug it out."

"I don't need a hug."

Yes, you do, Sasuke. "Okay, but I need a hug."

He seemed to accept that, at least.

o.o.o.o.o

"We can't just do that, Satomi!" Sasuke slammed a fist against the table in their kitchen a few nights later, looking angrier than she'd ever seen him. "That's… that's our family. Our clan! How can you just—?"

"Stop."

Sasuke stared at her, taking in the clenched jaw and uncomfortably white knuckles that showed just how hard her grip on her arms was. The calm voice was a mask, after all.

"Fine." Sasuke crossed his arms, too. "Convince me."

That was… she could work with that.

o.o.o.o.o

Satomi knew that the academy teachers had been considering moving her up another year. She was already a year ahead of Neji and two ahead of Sasuke and Hinata, and this would have bumped her up even further. She'd have been on track to graduate at nine, just a year and change away.

This was… complicated by the massacre.

Nobody wanted another Itachi, after all.

On the other hand, the paperwork had all be finalized before the massacre, and while Satomi's parents couldn't actually force the issue anymore, for obvious reasons, Satomi herself could.

It was just… so much easier to force the teachers to understand that she was ready to move on. Understanding the material wasn't an issue anymore. She wasn't having trouble reading or understanding the lectures anymore. She hadn't had that problem for over a year. She could memorize all the information necessary for any given class in a single weekend, and that was assuming she hadn't been putting in the effort all semester to learn the normal way, and even that was without the Sharingan, incomplete though it was.

And she had, if nothing else, the maturity that held most geniuses back. She was… unsure of how to count those first few years since she hadn't been properly awake until three or so, but even if she didn't count them, she was over twenty-five years old.

(And as strange as she was, as much fun as she had playing the oddball, it showed.)

(It showed in petty fury and meticulous details and laughter at jokes she was too young to understand.)

"On one condition," the Hokage finally allowed. "You have to go to therapy for the massacre and other pressures."

Satomi pursed her lips. She hadn't gone to therapy since she'd died. It might be useful. "How often?"

"Once a week," the Hokage said, "and convince your brother to go as well."

That would be harder. "He's stubborn."

"I'm aware."

It wasn't a bad plan, but it felt unfair. Her ability to progress in the ranks and in school should have been partially predicated on her mental health, yes, but Sasuke's relative stability shouldn't have been an influence on her in this way.

Then again, ninjas.

And desperation.

"I'll see what I can do." She said, forcing her hands to remain relaxed instead of digging her nails into her palms or something else that would show the Hokage how unstable she could be.

o.o.o.o.o

She managed it. Sasuke wasn't happy about going to therapy, but the doctors had already been pushing it, and if Satomi was going, then it wasn't as much of a slight against his emotional strength or however he'd been reading into it.

"I'd feel guilty about holding you back," he said, and Satomi felt her heart clench up for a moment.

She'd known that her existence would affect him somehow, but she hadn't expected to hear her own phrases parroted back at her. Not like this.

She'd always had a bit of a good girl complex, and the power of guilt was heavily featured in that.

She wasn't sure how she felt about Sasuke apparently absorbing some of it.

o.o.o.o.o

"Is it true your entire family died?" A girl at school asked, like it was water-cooler gossip and this was somehow acceptable.

I don't know, asshole. Is it true that you have no tact or discretion, and are clearly going to grow up to be the worst kind of gossip and fail as a ninja, you little piece of shit?

"Yes," Satomi said instead, because saying her first reaction was a terrible idea, "I'd prefer not to talk about it."

She hoped Sasuke wasn't dealing with the same problems. He had neither the same disregard for children being tactless assholes nor the same ability to cover up said disregard with politeness as Satomi did. On the other hand, he was far more capable of starting and finishing a fight if he chose to.

(Satomi was still struggling on that front. With older sparring partners, she had less trouble making herself aggressive, but they were also larger and more experienced in taijutsu than she was.)

"Why not?" The girl asked, and really? Okay. Children were the worst.

"Because the whole 'everyone I love is dead except my evil older brother and my twin' thing kind of puts me into a bad mood." She smiled, closing her eyes and letting out a tiny hum of a laugh. "I'd appreciate it if you left me alone."

"But—"

"Please leave me alone."

"But—"

"Do you have anything relevant to say or are you just going to keep asking me about something I'm clearly not interested in talking about?" Satomi pressed. It wasn't that she was bad at listening to people talk about things she wasn't interested in (she was, in fact, strangely good at pretending to care), but that was for things that weren't personally painful.

The girl pouted. "Geez, I just wanted to ask a few questions."

"A few questions that were incredibly rude. Please leave me alone."

Satomi watched as the girl's face colored in and she rushed off, probably to talk to classmates closer in age and temperament to herself. Satomi sighed to herself. Being pushed up so much, useful as it was in the long term, was causing her trouble in regards to connecting to classmates. They either looked down at her for being a three years younger, or resented her for being better than them at almost everything except taijutsu.

(She wasn't better than everyone at everything, but she wasn't stupid and she wasn't a child. The few that could probably outpace her were either keeping their heads down for whatever reason, like that one civilian-born who seemed like she'd be sent to pre-ANBU as soon as she was out of the Academy, and was making herself seem average to prove she could be discreet, or were simply too lazy to do more than the bare minimum.)

(Stereotypes for clans didn't always hold true, but the Nara were… usually pretty laidback and a little lazy.)

(Or just playing everyone.)

(Usually the latter, actually.)

She didn't foresee any positive, workable team setups, honestly. Most of the class disliked or dismissed her by too much for her to be accepted by them as a teammate, and the ones that didn't were almost all spoken for already in one way or another.

Jumping out of Sasuke's year had put her in the very unenviable position of being surrounded by unknown variables.

She couldn't graduate any earlier than she was already on track to. She couldn't connect to her classmates. She couldn't connect much with most people.

So she focused on other things.

o.o.o.o.o

Sasuke had to deal with crushes, instead.

Satomi's life, as awkward as it was with the age groups she regularly studied with, at least had the positive side of not involving any romantic overtures. She would have blankly and bluntly rebuffed them without any ambiguity if someone had asked her out, after the first few times when she'd used Neji as a buffer, but it was a moot point since no one did anymore. She was too young for her year-mates, too weird for her age-mates, and already engaged to boot. Uchiha or not, she just wasn't an attractive option for most people yet.

(That wasn't to say she wasn't attractive. She'd worked damn hard to love and accept herself over the years, and even though she was a child, she could say with certainty that she'd grow up to be a classic beauty by Uchiha standards, thank you very much.)

(Sasuke called her vain. Neji just rolled his eyes, and Hinata tried to hide so that Satomi didn't start complimenting her instead, trying to help the younger girl's self-esteem.)

"Why don't you just tell them that you're not interested in anyone, and that the more they try to force the issue, the less likely you'll be to ask them out when you do start looking?" Satomi asked when Sasuke explained the problem one night.

He looked embarrassed, and a little uncomfortable. "Mom always said to be polite to girls."

Wow, that was… that was a very sad reason for him to put up with their bullshit. They'd almost all grow out of it eventually, but still. It was annoying now. "Do you have any friends in class?"

"That's the problem." Sasuke stabbed at the food on his plate with his chopsticks. Satomi wasn't a very experienced cook, but she could do rice and fish, and Sasuke was learning as well. He was better than her at it, actually. "I usually sit with Hinata, but all the girls that like me decided that means she's their rival now, and they're making her cry."

Sasuke and Hinata as best friends. She'd made the oddest changes, really.

"Did you tell them that it's because of me and Neji? They might believe it if you say that you're friends because of the engagement, or because you're both future clan heads and want to establish strong relations now instead of later." Satomi suggested.

"I don't think they'd buy it." Sasuke said, stabbing at his food again.

Satomi tapped her chopsticks against her chin. "I have an idea."

"…Okay, so tell me what it is. Don't make the dramatic pauses, they're stupid."

"No, they're not, shut up." Satomi stuck out her tongue at Sasuke, garnering some rolled eyes in return. "No, I'm serious. Tell them what you'll actually look for when you need to find a partner in the future. Someone strong enough to defend any children you have. Someone loyal. Someone capable of discretion. Someone that your friends approve of. And most importantly…"

Sasuke looked a little worried at this.

"If they want to ask you out at all, they have to go through me, because if I don't approve, then you won't approve, and I won't approve unless you've told me you like someone."

Sasuke frowned. "This isn't some weird attempt at… match-making, is it?"

"Not in the slightest! If I think you should get together with someone," if I ship it, "I will tell you straight out that I think you'd make a good couple even if I have absolutely no evidence whatsoever, and you are under no obligation to agree. I am simply offering myself up as a willing sacrifice to be your fangirl deterrent. Rawr. I'm a scary monster."

Sasuke dropped his head into his hands and made a strange whining sound. "Don't do that. It looks stupid."

"Oh no, I looked stupid in front of my brother." Satomi deadpanned, voice completely flat. "Whatever shall I do?"

"Stop." Sasuke picked up his head just enough to glare at her, and she looked as unimpressed as she could manage in return. After a few seconds, he sighed. "You really think that would work?"

"Won't know until we try!"

Satomi almost thought that was the end of it, and then Sasuke shook his head.

"No. I'm not going to hide behind you."

(He dealt with the fangirls his own way. It didn't seem nearly as effective, but Satomi caught some rumors about Sasuke having said that he wouldn't date anyone until he was chuunin, and that anyone he dated had to also be at least chuunin at that time.)

(It had… some effect.)

o.o.o.o.o

The Phoenix Corporation, she called it. It was an old inside joke that no one would understand, save perhaps Itachi, but that didn't matter. She understood it, and that was enough.

(She was occasionally tempted to make a silly reference and go with "Bishop Publishing," but she had a feeling that cross-dimensional copyright infringement was a thing, and she wanted no part in it.)

It wasn't even a corporation, especially not now in the planning stages. She was earning money and such, yes, but that was solely through the management of the Uchiha estate, which was mostly clan money, save for that which went to her for the time she put in. Most of the rent went into clan holdings, and some went to the lawyer, financial advisor, and real estate agent that she hired when she ran into places where she needed help. There was a lot of that when she first started off. She handled most of it on her own, nowadays. The lawyer had drawn up some contracts that she could reuse. The financial advisor came in and helped her with her accounting when she needed it, which was less and less as time went on. And the agent kept the available rooms and properties listed at the prices that Satomi requested, for as long as they were available.

This was not the future Phoenix Corporation. This was clan business.

(Official clan accounts manager was a position. She'd stepped into it by accident, but given that Itachi and Obito weren't coming back anytime soon and that Sasuke wasn't interested, it seemed she'd be staying there.)

(She… minded a little, but not as much as she probably would have if money weren't already of interest to her.)

No, the Phoenix Corporation was her plan. Satomi would, until her twentieth birthday, receive a stipend from clan holdings no matter how much money she was earning otherwise, as a shinobi or through other means. She was also earning money through the relatively small salary that she was assigning herself for running the estate every month. And when she graduated the academy, she would be earning money from missions as well, though 20% of each mission's pay would be going to clan accounts (until she made chuunin, at which point the percentage would grow, and so on).

Some of that money was immediately reinvested into night courses on finance and accounting, dreary subjects, and more enjoyable classes like management of multinational corporations and intercultural communications. She was, according to clan law, also allowed to partially subsidy these classes with clan money as well, which she did, of course.

The Uchiha had been very insistent on providing for their orphans and providing an education. It was very nice to have these policies in place, because Satomi didn't want to use a ryo more of clan money than she had to when she started up her own business.

That was the crux of it, really. If she used more than a certain amount of clan money to start the business she eventually wanted to have, it would be an Uchiha Clan-held company.

And she wanted this to be hers.

She wanted to start a company of her own. She wanted to run a company and grow it with principles she'd learned at school in her old world and the ones that existed in her new one. She wanted to build it up and own it, all by herself. Clan money wasn't really a copout, but it would be considered a clan investment, not a loan, and she refused to let this be a clan-owned company.

So she saved and she saved and she saved, and she knew in her gut she was going to make this work.

Satomi started looking into publishing companies.

o.o.o.o.o

"Satomi."

The sun was shining in that strange way that spring and autumn sometimes brought, where it didn't glare down and burn, and didn't just trick you into thinking it was warm when it was actually freezing outside, but rather… pooled.

The sunlight pooled.

"Satomi."

Neji's voice broke her out of her musing, and Satomi looked away from her window to see her friend (her best friend, which was a little sad) holding a newspaper and crossing his arms.

"Neji?" Satomi frowned. "How did you get into my house?"

"Sasuke let me in." Neji waved it off. "That's not important. Remember when you used to complain about that man running some shipping company in Wave Country?"

"I still do that, why?" Satomi had a feeling she knew exactly why he was asking, but she hadn't seen the paper in his hands and couldn't be sure. Besides, she did complain about Gatou. A lot. He was a dick and, more relevant to her discussions, prone to making poor business decisions that should have sunk his company years ago if it weren't for the illegal practices.

(Actually, it wouldn't have. Satomi didn't like admitting it, but after the initial setup was taken care of, a shipping company was much easier to keep afloat than industries that relied on constant creativity and marketing. All you had to do was prove you had better rates or speed than the competitors or something, at least in this world.)

"He's been arrested by Kirigakure."

Satomi's jaw dropped open.

How the fuck.

The newspaper landed on her desk, and she picked it up and scanned through it. A Kirigakure merchant had suspected he was being fraudulently charged, some vague hints about unhappy drug dealers among the civilians and unhappy drug lords with the money to hire someone, and oh. Yes, Kirigakure had definitely sent a paperwork ninja in with a team of Chuunin and a professional accountant to do a secretive audit of Gatou's activities and then arrested him the next time he set foot in their country.

A few more lines made it obvious why they hadn't just assassinated him, too; they got to confiscate the entire company until such a time as the matter was resolved, which meant never, which meant more money and resources for Kirigakure.

Satomi closed her eyes and breathed deep, because this wasn't an outcome she had quite prepared for, and because she was definitely why this had happened.

Not even in a butterfly of doom way, but directly responsible for this.

o.o.o.o.o

"And this?" Itachi asked, "Gatou and Wave?"

"…take him out before he can hurt an entire country like that, aniki. I don't care if Team Seven needs it to work together; that can always be handled some other way. It's not worth that many ruined lives."

"Butterfly effect, Satomi. You don't know how this will affect the future."

"…if he gets taken out of the game now, that's hundreds of lives saved and hundreds of people kept from extreme poverty and oppression, and that's in Wave Country alone. We don't know how many will be hurt if he's gone now, but I'd wager that it's much, much less than the people he'd hurt in the long run."

"Are you willing to shoulder the responsibility for that risk?"

"…yes."

o.o.o.o.o

But she hadn't expected him to go to Kirigakure. Not the Bloody Mist. She expected Kumo, actually, since Lightning Country was notoriously hard-assed about drugs coming into the country and corporate transparency, but wasn't as terrifyingly severe in punishments as the other countries that Gatou operated in. Kiri also seized the assets, and with Yagura still in power, she wasn't actually sure how they'd be put to use in a positive way. That was part of what made this not quite a worst case scenario, but at least a very bad one.

Satomi wondered how he'd done it. It was a larger change to the timeline than she'd wanted to admit, but she'd given him enough information to, hopefully, handle some of the fallout on his own. Maybe he'd blow up all the confiscated ships. That would be useful.

"Satomi?"

"I'm fine, Neji." She bit her lip, scanned the article one last time, and then picked up the phone. "I have to make a call."

Neji took a seat, clearly not interested in leaving until he knew what was going on. He'd taken her promise to explain everything when he made genin very well, especially after she told him she'd made the same promise to Sasuke. That didn't change the fact that he was doing everything in his power to figure her out.

"Hello, is this the International department at the Hokage tower?" She waited a few seconds for a positive answer, and then continued, a fake smile coloring her voice even over the phone, "Thanks. I'd like to see if I can get some current and projected employment statistics for the Land of Waves. Yes, I'll hold."

She wouldn't be able to pull this off immediately, especially since she wanted to start domestically, but it was always good to get a look at the terrain ahead of time, right?

o.o.o.o.o

"We can totally do this." Satomi promised to Neji, hand on his chest, right over his heart. Her other hand was over her own heart, the position just as full of almost sarcastic reassurance as her voice. "I trust you."

"I don't trust you." Neji said, following it up with a, "not with this," when Satomi made her eyes big and shiny and her lip pouty and wobbly.

She was good at overdone facial expressions. They were funny.

"You're both going to die." Sasuke said, falsely casual. He'd been trying to get back into the casual dark humor that he'd occasionally used before, where death and injury were jokes instead of a horrifying reminder of what he'd lost. "And nobody is going to be surprised."

"We're not gonna die, silly. Just horribly injure ourselves."

Satomi was helping, mostly.

(She figured it was some kind of exposure therapy ordered by the doctors. It seemed like the sort of thing they'd do.)

"Fine," Neji eventually said. "I'll give it a shot. We've done the basic part before, and it would be an interesting thing to practice."

"I-I'm going to get a medic." Hinata said quietly. "Just i-in case."

Neji ignored her, which was better than the glare he'd have sent a few years ago. Instead, he positioned himself in front of Satomi on one knee, facing away. She came up behind him, put one hand on his head, and one hand in his when he held it up. With a deep breath, she jumped up enough to put herself into a handstand that was partially on Neji's head, and partially on his arm.

Then she lifted her hand out of his, ever so slowly, until her weight was entirely resting on Neji's head. Had she known anything about yoga, she'd have called her own position a one-handed tree pose.

(Those acro duo videos had always been impressive, and with ninja balance, everything was so much easier.)

(She'd have actually broken something if she tried this before. Or at least torn something important.)

(And she knew for a fact that Neji was using chakra to lessen possible strains and unhealthy pressures on his head and neck.)

"Okay," She breathed in. They'd done this part before, if rarely and only with adult supervision. Now came the hard part. "I'm ready when you are."

Slowly but smoothly, Neji got out of his genuflecting position and up onto both feet. Out of the corner of her eye, past the swinging mass of her ponytail, Satomi saw Sasuke staring at them, a look of barely-hidden worry on his face.

Silly boy. They had medics for any damage that was done, and even that was likely to be unnecessary, because if she fell, she'd catch herself.

Ninjas.

"Ready?" Neji asked, and Satomi almost nodded before she remembered what position she was in.

"Yeah."

Neji began to run through one of the simplest kata he knew, all while Satomi balanced on his head. Halfway through, as she began feeling more confident, she began to twist her torso downwards, until she was almost upright again, legs spread in a wide V that pointed forward.

There was a small noise from Sasuke, and Neji froze beneath her. Satomi's field of vision wasn't quite as good as Neji's, and she wasn't in a position to twist around and check much either. "What's wrong?"

"It may be a good time to get off," Neji said stiffly.

…Probably Hiashi, then.

Satomi took the hand that Neji brought up for her, and used it as extra balance for the dismount. She turned around, and… yep. Hiashi.

"So, we're in trouble, aren't we?" Satomi asked. Hiashi technically couldn't do anything to her and Sasuke besides banning them from the compound for a few weeks, but that was still an undesirable option.

"I told you all not to experiment in this manner without an adult or a shinobi with chuunin or above rank present." Hiashi said.

Satomi opened her mouth. Then she closed it.

She actually didn't have an answer for that.

(Oh hell.)

(Oh hellity hellity hell.)

(Fuck.)

"I guess I was just impatient, sir."

(Her brain was still, physically, that of a child. Her body and hormones, too. She could usually tamp down childish urges and impulses, but they sometimes crept up on her without warning. It was usually fine, because it made her seem like an actual child to those that were suspicious.)

(Sometimes, though, she found herself making a mistake that she didn't even realize until it was over.)

"Neji," Hiashi said, and the boy stood straight at attention, hiding the omnipresent hatred and anger at his uncle behind a blank, polite façade. "Satomi. While you are both still young, I expect better of you. You have both shown constant maturity, and that is why I leave you to your own devices so often. To betray that trust will have consequences."

We're totally in trouble. Satomi thought.

(She needed to work on tamping down the childishness that still threatens to overcome her sometimes.)

(She had to.)

(She was not a child.)

"That trust will be indefinitely retracted. An adult Hyuuga will accompany you or your brother whenever you come to visit Neji and Hinata, until such a time as I consider that trust earned once more."

Hiashi turned on his heel and left, and the Branch House medic that had been hovering behind him rushed forward to check over Neji's neck.

"I'm fine, Chiyome-oba-san." Neji grumbled irritably, but he let her fuss.

Satomi moved to sit on the porch of the building next to the tiny training grounds behind Neji's house, and plopped down, shoving her chin down into her hands as her elbows landed on her knees. She resolutely did not think about what her hands had been touching in the last hour or so while training.

"You have a twig in your hair," Sasuke told her as he took the seat next to her.

"Thanks." Satomi rolled her eyes, but nonetheless ran her fingers through her hair to find the offending particle. Her fingers caught in her hair too many times for comfort, the waves from the top tangling even more as they got curlier and curlier towards the bottom. Unbound, her hair reached midway down her back, which was about the length she intended to keep it forever, honestly. Long enough to satisfy her aesthetics, but short enough to not get in the way.

Sasuke was still staring at her when she finally found and ditched the twig, and by that point, Hinata had joined him.

"What?"

"Just making sure you don't get all gloomy again because an adult got mad at you." Sasuke said, which almost startled a laugh out of her because wow, did he really have a leg to stand on in terms of moodiness?

(He did. He wasn't always happy, but he didn't get the same kinds of mood swings that Satomi did, even in canon.)

Instead, she turned away and glared at the ground, because they… well, they weren't wrong. If she hadn't been a bit distracted by the problems she saw creeping up on her from having a body below her mental age, she'd have probably done just that. Honestly, she'd have probably done it anyway as soon as she moved past the brain stuff.

"It's okay," Hinata said, getting her attention. Oh. Neji was standing behind her. When had he gotten here? "I-I do the same thing, if I'm alone."

Sasuke stared at them both, and then looked at Neji, whose face was blank of emotion.

"An adult being angry or disappointed shouldn't be enough to make you cry," Sasuke said, apparently in lieu of anything else to say. "How the hell did—"

"Language," Satomi reprimanded on reflex.

"—you end up with this kind of reaction?" Sasuke steamrolled right past it.

"Um…" Hinata pokes her fingers together, "Father is very strict. And I don't cry much, I just hide and f-feel bad."

Satomi shrugged. "I'm just bad at people and the crying is probably a defense mechanism I picked up when I was young to induce sympathy in a way that would make the lecturing end or something. I can't stop it even when I want to, now."

The other three stared at her.

"What?" She asked, feeling defensive. "I'm not doing it on purpose. It just happens."

They all seemed to keep a closer eye on her after that.

(I am not a child. She thought. And I am not a maiden in need of defending.)

o.o.o.o.o

A little while later, after a snack of watermelon that one of the women from the Branch House had brought over, Neji and Satomi were alone. Hanabi, still just four years old, had come over to ask if she could play too. Hinata had, of course, acquiesced, and Sasuke had followed along. Neji and Satomi had, instead, gone to sit in one of the gardens, sharing a child-sized bench. Satomi's head had landed on Neji's shoulder, which was surprisingly comfortable so long as she remembered to move the hair out of the way.

(Hanabi had once seen them sitting like that and asked if that meant they were in love. Neji's answer had been a short "No." Satomi's answer had been offended sputtering that didn't really have any words, because ew, gross, he was a kid and she was old enough to be his mother, and besides, she wasn't straight enough for this anyway.)

(It had devolved into a playful spar that resulted in a tickle fight between Hanabi and Satomi, which only ended after Satomi had gotten Hanabi to promise that she'd never try to imply that there was anything romantic about Neji and her again.)

"Satomi?" Neji said after a few minutes.

"Mm?"

"I need to ask you something somewhat personal."

"Can't promise an answer, but go right ahead and ask, buddy." Satomi's eyes were on a leaf that she was slowly spinning by the stem between two fingers. She was… very sleepy, in the way that food frequently made her.

Neji took a few seconds to gather himself, and then asked, "You have activated your Sharingan, correct?"

Satomi froze.

When he didn't get an answer, Neji continued. "I noticed that there was slight expansion in the chakra pathways to your eyes, indicating regular, if infrequent, usage of a doujutsu."

"…You need to talk more like a kid." Satomi said, grasping for words. "Does this mean all the Hyuuga know that I've been practicing?"

"Anyone that took the time to examine your chakra system in detail, yes." Neji shrugged, jostling Satomi a little. "Certainly anyone you've sparred with."

Fuck. "That's unfortunate."

"I don't think Sasuke knows." Neji offered, like a consolation prize.

"He's not the one I'm worried about." Satomi muttered. "I didn't even consider that it might be obvious if I didn't use it around you guys."

"You don't know the secrets of the Byakugan." Neji said. "There are clan secrets you will never be privy to."

"No, really? I thought I could just waltz right in and grab them." Satomi rolled her eyes and sat up straight. "Seriously though, this is a problem. I can't just… I can just hope the wrong people don't find out, now."

"Hm." Neji made a small noise of agreement, but didn't elaborate. After several more minutes of silence, where Satomi only ran through contingency plans for what to do if Danzo found out, he spoke up again. "How many languages do you know?"

"Ah… why?"

"I've heard you speak in several when you're frustrated or distracted. And during sleepovers, you sleeptalk. It's rarely intelligible, but some of it is recognizably not Continental Standard." Neji raised an eyebrow, which, no, not fair. He was better at that than she was. Boo.

"Four. Or, well, three and a half. Continental Standard, Rural Lightning, Traditional Waterfall, and a language that's only spoken in a single province in the Land of Earth. I'm still working on the Waterfall, though. That's the half." Continental Standard was, of course, Japanese. Lightning was English, Waterfall was Spanish, and Serbian was just rare. Other countries had other things, when she managed to check on them; Tagalog was surprisingly common in Water, for instance. It hadn't been as thoroughly overridden as so many other languages due to the geography of the area, so a number of islands still spoke in predominantly Tagalog. Wind Country, similarly, had pockets of people that still spoke primarily in Arabic, the dialects strong due to the geographic isolation that some of the groups experienced. Fire Country actually had a minority that still spoke Mandarin Chinese or Korean, or, in still smaller populations, other languages that Satomi would have once associated with East Asia. She still couldn't figure out how the languages had ended up thrown about the way they had, since the Germanic languages somehow made a hop-skip-and-jump from Lightning to the land of Rain, despite the Land of Fire between them, along with a handful of countries that spoke either Romance languages or Hindi. It honestly made no sense whatsoever from a linguistic standpoint since there wasn't enough geographic separation to enforce that kind of diversity in language, but…

"Only spoken in one part of Land of Earth?" Neji asked, brow furrowed.

There was also the Land of Earth.

"The language family that exists in the Land of Earth is known as the Slavic languages. The most common one is Ruski, and there are smaller groups peppered about. The one I speak is one of the smaller ones, Srpski. There's… maybe thirty thousand speakers, total, for the latter. They also all speak Continental Standard fluently and often know more than one of the smaller languages." Had there been a non-Japanese overarching language while preserving the 'certain areas speak certain languages as well' facet, she'd have compared it to China. From what she remembered, while either Mandarin or Cantonese (or both? She couldn't remember) were spoken by the majority of the population, each city or province had its own regional dialect or language, and people were generally fluent in both. Well. Not all the cities. A few cities did, and the provinces were more of a general guideline to the dialects than a hard-and-fast rule.

That said, the entire continent ended up feeling a lot like that sometimes; people knew Japanese too well and needed it too much for daily life in any large city, as a rule, for it to be like English or another attempted global overlord language back home, but the strength of the remaining languages was too much for the situation to be like the Americas or Australia, where local languages had been stamped out with a vengeance.

Of course, other aspects of population and culture vs. geography didn't make sense either. Of the five largest shinobi villages, Kumo had the largest population of black people, despite being in a city that was largely dominated by cloudy skies and cold weather. Conversely, the people of Suna were abnormally pale for living in a desert country. It implied a large amount of nomadic movement, probably explained by the Warring Clans era, but the continent was so massive that that kind of mass movement could only take place over centuries.

"And you know it… why?" Neji asked, snapping Satomi out of her musings and back into the present.

"Um," she scrambled for a few seconds. "Remember when I said there were some secrets I'd be keeping until you made genin, and then I'd tell you? This is one of them."

Neji pursed his lips, but nodded.

"Why were you asking, by the way? Just curiosity?" She looped her arm through his, lacing their fingers together. He was warm. Good, she didn't feel like putting up with chilliness because of silly old weather patterns anyway.

"I have been trying to understand the political environment that lead to my father's death." Neji started, which, okay, that made sense. "You've spoken about cultural and societal impact on politics and economics often enough that I've taken it upon myself to begin studying it, at least a little."

"And? Do you want me to translate political literature or something?" She knew that the Land of Earth had something similar to the Communist Manifesto floating around out there, but that probably wasn't something Neji was interested in, and her Russian was basically nonexistent anyway.

"I want you to teach me Rural Lightning." Neji said, turning to look her straight in the eyes. "I've learned of how common it is in the Land of Lightning, to the point where their ranking system is partially based on the alphabet and some names are derived from their words. If I ever want to engage in the political process so that I can prevent something like this from happening again, then I need to be able to know if someone's talking behind my back."

(Fugaku hadn't been completely accurate in his explanation of just how many people spoke the supposedly dead languages.)

Satomi stared.

Neji wanted to be a diplomat.

To Kumo.

To keep something like his father's death from happening again.

That was. New.

"Sure!"

o.o.o.o.o

The school year ended as it always did, with graduation tests for the top three years (optional for the lower two, mandatory for the top one) and placement tests for everyone else. Satomi was not allowed to take the graduation test.

She spotted, as she waited for Sasuke outside the testing room, a little blond head on the swings, going back and forth and watching the other students morosely. She ran the numbers through her head, but Naruto wouldn't be trying the graduation exam for another two years.

(Sasuke, much like Satomi, wouldn't be allowed to take that exam either. There were often very special requirements in place for who could take which exam when, and Satomi wasn't entirely sure why Naruto would be allowed to take the exam three times at all. Maybe it was just because nobody expected him to pass anyway.)

She made her way over.

"Hey," Satomi said, stopping in front of Naruto. "What's up?"

Naruto stared at her, and then whipped his head to the side to glare at the ground and pout. "What do you want?"

"…to know why one of the Academy's students looks so sad when summer vacation is coming up, normally a reason for students everywhere to be happy as they get a few weeks of sweet, sweet freedom?"

She was going to be studying for civilian business exams during that time, but Naruto didn't need to know that. It was also shorter than the summer breaks she was used to, but she didn't know if that was a facet of being in ninja society or a facet of Japanese schools that had carried over. She'd never learned enough about Japanese schooling to know for sure.

Naruto turned his glare to her, but it was softened, cleared, until she was only looking at the very confused and admittedly still somewhat belligerent eyes of a young boy. "Because they all have parents, okay?"

"Maa, not all of them." Satomi said, leaning against the tree. "I don't. Neither does my brother, and he's in your class, even. Hyuuga Neji and TenTen, in the year above you are both orphans, but only TenTen's clanless. I'm sure there's more speckled around, here and there."

"What happened to your parents?" Naruto asked, apparently yet another person who'd never heard of 'tact' in his life.

"That's a very rude question." Satomi said. He probably hadn't been raised to know better, but that didn't mean she shouldn't tell him when he messed up.

Naruto pouted and turned to stare at the ground again. Satomi sighed and answered anyway.

"They were killed in the Uchiha massacre. My twin brother and I were the only survivors, save for the perpetrator. My twin is in your class."

Naruto turned to stare at her, studying the pale skin and fine bone structure and finally connecting the dots to the name she'd given. "You're related to that bastard Sasuke!"

"Pretty sure our parents were married when we were conceived, so no, that's not a descriptor that applies." Satomi said, crossing her arms and raising one eyebrow halfway, which was about as far as she could get it. "Also, again, very rude."

Naruto squinted at her. "You don't seem to be as much of an asshole as he is."

"Again, rude. Please stop insulting my only remaining family." Satomi put a hand on her chest. "It makes me sad. Right here. I'm crying inside right now, I swear."

Naruto's eyes narrowed further, to the point where Satomi wasn't sure he could see anything at all. "You're being sarcastic."

"Oooooh yeah. Totally." Satomi smiled brightly at him. "And hey, let me remind you: summer vacation. You can, I don't know, hang out with your friends or practice your techniques or study or go swimming or anything. The world is your oyster. Grab that pearl."

"Don't have any friends." Naruto said, returning to staring at the ground.

How the fuck did he hear only that part? I mean, yes, I understand why, but there was so much else to talk about there. He didn't even ask me about the oyster thing.

"Now I know that's not true." Satomi said, snorting a little. "My brother's complained enough about you playing pranks with that Inuzuka kid and the Akimichi and the Nara often enough that I know you've got a little posse. I'm not even sure how you managed to motivate Shikamaru into helping, since he seems to be about as interested in moving as a dead fish, but hey, you did it."

"They're not friends!" Naruto protested, "I've never been over to their houses or met their parents or nothin'!"

"Did you ask to?" Satomi tilted her head. Was that really Naruto's only measure of friendship? She'd wondered why he said Sasuke was his only possible friend as a kid in canon, when he'd clearly been skipping class with Kiba and Chouji and Shikamaru whenever he felt like it.

"No, 'cause the orphanage lady said that would be rude when I asked her, and I don't want their moms or dads telling them not to talk to me anymore."

"Depends on how you phrase it." Satomi countered, ignoring the second part for the moment. She knew that Shikaku, at least, wouldn't react too negatively. Chouza would probably be the same, and she wasn't entirely sure about Tsume, but her instincts leaned towards positive. She wasn't sure if it would be rude, but she wouldn't put it past Naruto to phrase something badly, get a negative answer for that specific thing, and then assume it was a blanket ban that he didn't want to touch out of fear that he'd lose the friends he did have. Given that he'd moved out of the orphanage… a year or two ago, she'd forgotten exactly, then she really wouldn't be surprised if the lessons he'd learned there hadn't begun to fade yet.

"Whaddaya mean?"

"Well, don't just go over there and ask 'hey, can I come to your house' or 'hey, can I meet your mom' or something. Be indirect. Ask if you can hang out during the summer, and then they'll probably ask their parents, and then you can hang out. And before you say anything…" Satomi held up a hand, and then leaned in close, "Do you really think Kiba or Chouji would stop hanging out with you just because their parents said no?"

Naruto blinked. "Wait, what about Shikamaru?"

"I'm pretty sure he's terrified of his mom, and he'd use it as an excuse to sleep instead of play. Shikamaru doesn't count. He's more like a plant than a person."

She managed to startle a short laugh out of Naruto with that.

"And anyway, I don't think his parents will hate you. So go on, go ask one of your friends," she stressed the word, widening her eyes just a fraction to make sure it stuck, "if you can hang out over the summer. Maybe mention something they said they have at their house that they talk about a lot, and mention that you want to see it, since they've been talking about it so much. I don't know, maybe Kiba's been talking a lot about some puppies that were born recently or something? That seems like plausible."

Naruto made a face like he wasn't sure what to do, and then nodded vigorously and ran off. Satomi noted that all the parents they'd been talking about caught sight of him before he actually chose someone to approach, so they all caught him in the moment where he looked nervous and scared before he slapped his happy mask on and charged over the Kiba, shouting something that Satomi couldn't quite understand.

There was a moment where Tsume gave Naruto a noogie, but as the group parted ways, Satomi saw their faces well enough to know it had gone well. The process repeated itself with minor differences with Chouji and Shikamaru, whose parents were all standing in a group (no noogies, for one), but that seemed to end well in turn. Satomi was fairly certain, as Naruto was bundled away by the group, that the Akimichi had decided he was too skinny and were dragging him off for a good meal, with the Nara following along as usual and, once she checked, the Yamanaka bringing up the rear.

Naruto turned and gave her an excited wave as he left, in a manner he probably thought was pretty stealthy.

"What did you do?" Sasuke's voice came from behind her, and she turned to see him looking between her and the entrance that Naruto had disappeared through in what was probably surprise.

"What do you mean?"

"You made friends with the idiot!" Sasuke pointed to where Naruto had left.

Satomi blinked at him, and waited.

"…fine, you made friends with Naruto." Sasuke amended after he realized what the problem was. He was rolling his eyes, but it was a work in progress.

"I gave him advice and helped him figure out that he has friends." Satomi shrugged. "I'm not planning on interacting with him in the future very much. I know that, outside our conversation, he's probably very loud and obnoxious, in a manner that I would personally not find very enjoyable, but he looked sad."

"Did you hug him?" Sasuke asked suspiciously. "Because that seems like a thing you'd do."

Satomi blinked, and then looked up at the leaves of the tree above her as she thought back through the conversation. "I was planning on it, but now that I think about it, I didn't. Hm."

She turned to Sasuke, widening her eyes into a ridiculous doll-like look. "Give him one for me when you see him in class again?"

"No." Sasuke deadpanned. "Now let's go home."

Satomi followed behind him, humming to herself.

Okay, so maybe children weren't that bad after all, even if they didn't have any tact.

o.o.o.o.o

Sarutobi Hiruzen was used to dealing with psychological profiles. Every time one was completed for an active shinobi, it crossed his desk. In the case that it was marked as abnormal or unstable, he would read it in depth, which was more often than not. With profiles that were marked as unchanged or stable, he simply skimmed.

The profiles he was being handed today were not for active shinobi.

"Sasuke is handling things about as well as can be expected." Yamanaka Santa was, at the age of twenty-one, old enough to know what he was doing, but still young enough to not be deemed intimidating to highly traumatized children. He also always began with Sasuke when Hiruzen asked for a report on the twins, because Sasuke was, if not easier to handle, less complicated. "He still seems uncomfortably fixated on the idea of hunting down Itachi and getting some answers out of him, but the revenge has been coming up less. He's also told me that the nightmares are dying down."

And was telling the truth was implied, there. A Yamanaka who couldn't tell when an Academy student was lying was either very poor at the clan's most common specialty, or dealing with a very, very interesting Academy student. Which lead into…

"And Satomi-chan?"

The man seemed to fight the urge to close his eyes or sigh or exhibit a similar sign of frustration. "She's mentioned nightmares when I ask, but only very normal ones, and rarely are they intense enough to wake her; if you listen to her tell it, her sleeping patterns are entirely unchanged from before the massacre."

"Santa-san…"

"I've tried, Hokage-sama." The man shrugged. "She doesn't try to hide things like Sasuke, and if I ask a question, she answers directly. She's got a surprisingly thorough grasp on the way she thinks and deals with things, and every time I ask about an issue she's admitted to having, she tells me it was around since before the massacre, and her brother corroborates the story. She's not a recalcitrant patient at all, just… very much not reacting as a child should, and very much boxing away the trauma in a way that leaves me worried."

Hiruzen motioned for Santa to continue.

"My guess at the beginning was that she was simply extremely traumatized, engaging in high-level compartmentalization and possibly repressing the memories, but in the time since then…" He shrugged helplessly again. "All signs point towards the initial reaction being precisely what it seemed to be. She was using the projects she set up as a way to distract herself and got most of her grief out in the first week or so, and then went more or less back to normal after that. I can't say for sure what's going on there, Hokage-sama. If she were an adult with previous experiences of large-scale loss, I would understand, but in a child, it's concerning, confusing behavior."

"Children are resilient, and Satomi-chan's teachers intimated that she did claim to have some memory problems."

Santa understood the sentence for what it was; not a slight against his skills or an attempt to teach him about something he was an expert in, but a prompt to explain what these facts meant in relation to the situation

"Children can bounce back easily from a lot of things, yes, but psychological damage is much harder to heal than physical damage. You can use healing chakra on bumps and bruises, on broken bones and failing organs, but the mind is… harder to deal with. Healing chakra can, at best, deal with some issues caused by physical problems like chemical imbalances or tumors. It can't do anything about trauma, Hokage-sama, and Sasuke's a much better example of how you'd normally expect a child to react to an event like the massacre."

"And the memory problems?"

"Aren't particularly extreme, from what I've seen. She has some problems with visualization that I noticed, and she described those in ways that make me wonder if she's just describing how everyone visualizes things or if it's actually an abnormality, but her memory is only a little spotty and it's mostly in regards to information she deems relatively unimportant anyway." Santa explained. "At best, I think she may have shoved the Uchiha clan into that box of 'unimportant' to dim the pain and move on faster."

Hiruzen took a deep breath from his pipe and sighed. "Will her handling of the massacre cause problems down the line or lead to another Itachi situation?"

(He knows that trauma didn't make Itachi kill the Uchiha, but that's…)

(Well.)

(S-Rank secrets don't stay that way by being told to everyone, unless the Kyuubi's involved.)

(He still doesn't know how that secret hasn't leaked to the younger generation or other villages yet.)

"…Doubtful. She doesn't seem all that committed to the shinobi lifestyle anyway, simply keeping with it because she believes she'll need to defend herself and her brother in the future, and I wouldn't be surprised if she retired to a civilian lifestyle the second Itachi died." Santa shrugged. "Sasuke is more committed to being a shinobi, but he's also more committed to Konoha itself."

"And the two in relation to each other?"

"Satomi clearly leads the two, even though I think she'd prefer to let someone else make decisions much of the time." Santa bites his lip before continuing. "Sasuke has shown some resentment over how quickly she's been going through the academy, but not by much; he's more worried about her insistence that she's an anomaly in the universe and that she's not supposed to exist, but whenever I ask her about it, she starts talking about existentialism and dimensional theory. I've decided to leave it alone for now since that belief doesn't seem to be putting her in danger. They've spoken about splitting chores and such, though Sasuke spends his free time outside of that training, while Satomi… may be over-reaching a little."

"Oh?"

"She's running the Uchiha Estate already, and while not many people want to live in the scene of a recent massacre, there are enough takers that she has to spend a significant amount of time on that alone. She also has training for the academy, homework, business classes that she convinced the civilian college to let her take, planning for a business she wants to establish herself at some point, and even hobbies, somehow."

"…She's going to burn herself out." Hiruzen sighed.

Santa raised one hand and wobbled it a bit. "She delegates or hires out for much of the estate handling, and she's admitted to have very little trouble with the Academy work. The hobbies seem to be her way of preventing that sort of problem, so while I'd keep an eye out for the potential burn-out, I suspect she has it handled."

"And when she graduates the Academy and begins taking missions?"

"I suppose we'll see."

o.o.o.o.o

She was so bored.

Okay, so she had homework for both the Academy and the business courses, but the first was easy enough to finish, and she wasn't allowed to take more than two classes at a time at the civilian college because…? She wasn't sure, but it probably had something to do with her age. Even at that pace, she was running out of courses to take; Konoha's business college was really just a small satellite campus for the larger school in the capitol. She'd have to switch to correspondence courses soon if she wanted to get any kind of degree.

("You're eight," Hina-sensei had told her with a frown. "You don't need to graduate the civilian college by twelve, Satomi-chan. You can slow down.")

And she had hobbies, sure, but there were only so many books she could import from Lightning Country that were written in English, and she hadn't gotten into the groove of reading fiction in Japanese yet. Writing was even more of an issue, because if she didn't read fiction in Japanese, then she wouldn't be able to get a feel for how to write it either.

Also, fanfiction communities either didn't exist, or were completely beyond access for her. The second the internet gained traction, she was hiring a web developer and building a fanfiction site, come hell or high water. Sure, she'd have to write for completely new fandoms, but that was hardly the point.

She also had training, but there was only so much training a person could do in a day before it began to do more damage than help, and she'd quickly found her limits in that regard.

Running the estate, after she handed off the parts she wasn't qualified for to people who were (and would do as she asked so long as she paid them), also didn't take all that much time up. It was mostly just fielding requests for repairs and some paperwork.

Basically, while she had plenty of things to occupy her time, the gaps between them were boring as hell, because the internet didn't exist. She had even gotten a sketchbook and started drawing again. She had even gotten embroidery thread and started knotting bracelets again. She had even bought some fabric and tried to learn how to sew again. That was how bored she was.

(She tried cooking, too, but most of that was better left to Sasuke. Satomi could make crepes and banana bread and a handful of simple dishes, but once Sasuke started learning recipes, they'd both realized he was better at it than she was.)

(Satomi wasn't that insulted that an eight-year-old was a better cook than she was.)

(…really.)

If Neji and Hinata were free, the twins would visit them, and Neji was usually pretty amenable to dancing with her. If they weren't free, Sasuke was occasionally willing to dance with her. She was normally alone on that front, though.

At least she could have her music, now. Itachi had taught her how to access memories she'd thought lost, and while it didn't really help much in day-to-day life, she could pull back songs if she meditated a bit first. Even playlists were possible. It was kind of awesome to actually, sort of, play music in her head properly, instead of the basic melody and probably-not-correct words and snatches of bass or drums or whatever else was in the background.

Still, though.

Sometimes she just wanted to go on a wiki walk on TvTropes or something. Read some fluff. Chat with a friend on tumblr about social justice or fictional characters. Things that didn't take effort the way non-internet things did. It wasn't that she didn't enjoy non-internet things. It was just that there were only so many times she could do them before they got boring too.

"Stop brooding."

Satomi yelped and maybe jumped a little, turning around in her seat to look at Sasuke. Satomi was sitting on a porch chair, and Sasuke had just come out of the front door.

"I was not brooding."

"You need to have more situational awareness, and yes, you were." Sasuke made a slightly pained expression, apparently mimicking her. "You had that look on your face."

"I wasn't brooding," Satomi repeated. "I'm just bored."

Sasuke's brow furrowed. "You have, at minimum, eight hobbies."

"Not in the mood."

"Training?"

"Already ran and did strength training and practiced taijutsu, yes." She made a face.

"Ninjutsu?"

"Did or tried both of the ones I've been taught twenty times. Haven't done henge yet."

"Okay, what about the Katon we learned before the… what about the Katon that father taught us?"

"Did it, like, twice. I'm not risking chakra exhaustion without a good reason."

"Chakra control excercises? The ones that don't eat up your reserves."

Satomi paused. "Um… no, not really. I guess I could work on that. My control's pretty good, though."

"No excuse to slack." Sasuke said as he pulled the door shut behind him.

"Where are you headed?" Satomi asked, already running through which control exercises she could try.

"Hinata wants to go see a movie called Princess Fuuin. Her dad won't let her go alone, Neji obviously refuses, and none of her usual official escorts are available. Hanabi found out and decided to call me, since she thought Hinata wouldn't want to be a bother." Sasuke said, fastening a bag over his shoulder.

"You like princess movies?" Satomi tilted her head.

"I don't mind them, and if Hinata wants to see it…" He shrugged. "She's basically the only person in class that I'm actually friends with."

"That's kind of sad."

"Name one friend you have that isn't Neji or Hinata."

She opened her mouth to answer.

"I'm family, I don't count." He cut her off.

She pouted at him. "Rude. You are rude, my good sir. And besides, I have… acquaintances."

Sasuke raise an eyebrow. Asshole.

"Stop mocking me, Sasuke. I'll set your hair on fire, don't think I won't."

Sasuke rolled his eyes and left. Satomi watched him leave, a small smile playing on his lips. Having a sister and friends had definitely helped keep him… not happy, per se, but less sad. Less revenge-filled, certainly.

She turned her attention back to the matter at hand. Chakra control. Right.

Basics was just… attaching a leaf to each fingertip and holding it there with chakra, or spinning one on the forehead. Satomi had gotten both of those down a year or so ago, but if she started with them and water-walked or something…

She didn't know enough control exercises, to be honest. Oh well.

Satomi took a deep breath and shunted her reticence regarding germs to the back of her mind, boxing it up until such a time that she could deal with it. The leaves wouldn't do any immediate damage. She could wash her hands as soon as she finished. She just had to avoid touching any of the openings in her face.

She opened her eyes and made her way over to a bush, quickly picking off ten leaves and beginning with the fingertips exercise. She made her way over to a tree and began pacing up and down, trying to see if there was a way to actually challenge herself. Maybe if she tried spinning the leaves? That would involve the pushing of chakra the way that…

Oh.

She… she had been meaning to try. The teachers always told them not to practice a technique they didn't know unless they had a responsible adult nearby, or were judged competent by such. But this wasn't a technique, though, was it? It could be utilized as a technique, but at its base, it was just an applied chakra exercise, like wall walking.

Satomi carefully fed some chakra into her finger, trying to balance the push and pull and stick that the chakra needed. The leaf fluttered out to half an inch from her fingertip, held in the air for but a second, and then her control wavered. The leaf fluttered to the ground and lay there, taunting her.

For a second, though, she'd had a very, very short chakra string.

There was a new project for Satomi to work on.

(She had plans.)

o.o.o.o.o

Flashback:

"Everyone's mind manifests differently. Mine tends to end up looking like the Uchiha compound." Itachi told her. "I don't know how yours will appear.

"Naruto's was a sewer." Satomi told him. "So I know there's a pretty wide variety. For all I know, we'll have to navigate the entirety of New York City. Or Manhattan, at least."

Itachi shot her a look of confusion, clearly feeling safe enough to not hide his emotions.

"The city I lived in during college. Total population was about eight million, and for Manhattan alone… two million, maybe less? I don't remember, but there were five boroughs and Manhattan was the smallest geographically, but had the highest population density. I'm not sure how big a chunk of the total population for the city it got." Satomi looked over at Itachi. "What?"

"That is… a very large city."

"Mm… well, Tokyo was bigger. So were lots of places. My old world had an overpopulation problem." Satomi shrugged. "We had… a lot of problems, honestly, but it wasn't all bad."

Itachi nodded, and then they came to a white door that stood out against the rest of the landscape. It smooth and looked like plastic, and there was a keypad next to it. Itachi stared at it.

"The path from one mind to another when connected by Sharingan is always different. I think you need to be the one to put in the code," he said after a few seconds. "Are there any that come to mind?"

"Using just numbers? A few. With only four digits? Only two. It's probably the code I used to unlock my phone." She punched it in, and the little number pad beeped. Bingo. A hissing noise alerted them to the door sliding open.

"Alright, let's see where this takes… us…" Satomi trailed off as she ducked through the door, finding an empty white space with no visible end. Itachi stepped through after her, and the door closed behind them. From this end, Satomi saw, it looked like any door you'd find in Konoha, with the Uchiha symbol painted on at eye level.

"What's that?" Itachi asked, drawing Satomi's attention back to the front.

"Wait, so this isn't just some in-between space?" Satomi made a face. "Okay, I'm going to come up with some really cool reason my mind is apparently just boring white space instead of something cool and interesting."

"Satomi." Itachi said, and then repeated himself, "What is that?"

She looked to wear he gestured, and saw a silvery cylinder standing in the empty space, maybe four feet tall, with a sloping surface like someone had cut it in half diagonally and turned the flat side to face the door.

In the center of the flat oval that was the surface, there was a small red button.

"I'm going to go out on a limb and say we should press that to find out." Satomi said after a few seconds of staring. "Gotta push the big red button, you know."

"It's only two centimeters across."

Satomi rolled her eyes and walked over to the cylinder. Really, it was like a circular podium, more than anything. She hesitated only slightly, and then went ahead and just pushed the button.

What looked like a holographic screen glitched into being at eye level, and what seemed to be a similarly holographic keyboard did the same just a little in front of the podium. There was only one word on the screen in question.

Search: _

"…You know, I'm not sure what I expected, but somehow I'm not surprised."

o.o.o.o.o

Satomi knew that Itachi wasn't evil. Not many other people did, but that was alright. She knew.

She also knew that, Itachi being Itachi, he'd probably run through almost all of the memories she'd pushed onto him by now. There had been the odd hiccup (like the fact that they found he couldn't understand the memories as soon as they moved the 'files' from her mind to his, and would apparently need to learn English from scratch since distinct skills and knowledge couldn't be transferred as easily as memories, which just… what), but Itachi was a fast learner, and Satomi was sure that he'd worked through enough of the important bits to make it to the pile of references she'd handed over. The references were plans for how they'd confirm one another's identity if they ever met in life, since none of the source material seemed to exist here.

She knew Itachi had gotten to that point, because she was interrupted during breakfast on the morning of her ninth birthday, partway through her final year in the Academy, to knocking on the front door. She exchanged looks with Sasuke, and then went to get the door. "Yes?"

"Are you Uchiha Satomi?" The deliveryman asked, looking somewhat harried.

"I am."

"Is Uchiha Sasuke there as well?"

"Yeah, just give me a second." She turned to yell over her shoulder, "Sasuke! You're needed too!"

She turned back to the deliveryman. "I'm sorry, what is this about?"

"Got some packages for the residence." He hefted over a box as Sasuke appeared. "Uchiha Sasuke, this one's for you, and you'll need to sign here. Uchiha Satomi, yours is too big to carry, and I was instructed to leave it in the side yard."

Satomi blinked and signed for her package as well once Sasuke was finished, listening as he opened the package. The man handed her a paper. "Any issues pop up, call this number."

"Will do." She was so glad phones existed, even if landlines were the only common ones.

"It's a sword." Sasuke said, staring down at the package once he'd opened it. "It's… from a really famous make, too."

"Is there a card?" Satomi asked. She didn't really know who would send them something quite this expensive for a gift, but given the general attitude from the villagers (and a card from the Daimyou, who apparently took interest when powerful clans that belonged to his contracted village suddenly went almost extinct), she wouldn't be surprised if it had come from a complete stranger).

"Yeah, it's…" Sasuke trailed off, face paling. "It's from Itachi."

Satomi let that thought process for a few seconds, and then frowned. "Wait, how? He's been an S-rank nukenin for a year now, and that's not a lifestyle that lends itself to a lot of well-paying missions since so many of the potential clients are too terrified to hire him. I mean, I guess he could have stolen the sword or the money for the sword, but I still find it incredibly unlikely that he could have both afforded this and sent it to you."

Sasuke turned to stare at her. "You're not even a little suspicious?"

"…You're right, he totally stole this."

"That's not the point, Satomi! Why did he send it at all?" Sasuke demanded.

"He feels sorry? He's not mentally stable? He wants to mess with you? Take your pick, based on your interpretation of his motivations and sanity." Satomi shrugged. "C'mon, I wanna see what I got if he sent you that nice of a sword."

Sasuke stared at her for a few seconds, and then sighed, "Fine, but if something goes wrong, it's your own fault."

"Meh. If he wanted to kill us, we'd already be dead. He wouldn't be doing something like this. He's way too efficient to waste time on mind games if he doesn't have to." Satomi waved off Sasuke's concerns as she walked around the corner of the house. "Seriously, he's not…"

It was big.

"Satomi?"

It was blue.

"Satomi."

It was a box.

"Satomi." There was a hand waving in front of her face. She grabbed it and shoved it away.

It had four little windows that she could see from here.

"Seriously, Satomi—"

It had doors and a little light at the top.

"—what are you—"

And along the top,

"—even looking at—"

in boxy white capital letters,

"—what is that—"

were the words:

POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX

"Sasuke?" Satomi cut him off.

"What?" He sounded relieved. That was good. "Why are you smiling so much?"

"He got me a TARDIS."

"He… he what?"

"I don't know how or where, he probably just hired a carpenter or something, but the point is, he got me a TARDIS."

"Satomi, I don't know what that is."

"Time and Relative Dimensions in Space," Satomi said in English, sing-song, "Yes, that's right. Names are funny, aren't they?"

"Can you please explain?"

"He got me a TARDIS." She breathed out, a little laugh in her words. She could feel her grin growing again.

"Satomi."

"He got me a TARDIS!" Satomi squealed, finally breaking and giving in to the urge to be giddy. There may have been jumping on the spot and dancing and more squealing. She ran forward to hug the box. "I got my box."

Sasuke seemed to have given up on figure out what the hell was going on.

"It's my box I love it I'm keeping it forever." Satomi said in a rush. She took a step back and pulled the door open. The inside was plain wood with what looked like mock-circular Gallifreyan written all over it in gold paint. She closed the door behind her, latching it and ignoring Sasuke for a moment, and closed her eyes as the sigils began to glow. Okay, that was worryi—

The glowing stopped, but there was a light now. She opened her eyes, took in the sight, and held out a hand. It looked like the inside of Eleven's TARDIS, the golden version that he had when he was with Amy and Rory, with natural light seeming to filter in through the windows, shifted over proportionally, but her hand came to a stop in what seemed like solid air. It felt like the wood of the inside of the box.

She unlatched the door and the sight faded.

Genjutsu.

Really, really cool genjutsu, linked to a bunch of seals that were mocked up to look like circular Gallifreyan.

She turned to leave and noticed an envelope taped to the inside of the door, just above eye level. Opening it, she found a short note in Itachi's handwriting.

I had to bribe Sasori, but here's your "timey-wimey" box. Take good care of it, and I'll see if a few years of research might yield seals that'll actually make it bigger on the inside.

(By the time she was fifteen again, Satomi would have given up on seals that gave her a properly bigger-on-the-inside box, but it was the thought that counted, and even then, she had her own TARDIS. The only TARDIS, in this world.)

"I'm going to live in here forever."

"Satomi, no."

o.o.o.o.o

Graduation was just around the corner by the time Satomi was confident enough in her usage of chakra strings to start trying them out in practice. She didn't use them that way around anyone, preferring to keep them a secret for the time being, but she had a feeling Hiashi might have guessed. Sasuke only thought that she's been using chakra strings to move stuff without having to touch it, which.

Well.

He wasn't wrong.

The idea of being able to do things without using her hands to touch stuff was more of a factor in her original interest in chakra strings than she would have liked to admit.

But the point was that she was competent. Not as competent as a Suna puppeteer, maybe, but she wasn't a puppeteer, she was self-taught, and she was technically nine, so she had her excuses. She was good enough that she'd started experimenting with attaching the chakra threads to other parts of her body, seeing if she could latch on to something with a string from her hand, and then transfer the string to a tenketsu on her hip without letting go of whatever it was attached to.

She, er, had ideas. Plans, even. Plans that may have eventually needed Neji or Hiashi or Hinata, but were currently just fine.

(Satomi had very, very little practice using the tenketsu on her hip. It was a learning experience. She doubted she'd ever be able to aim anything from anywhere other than her hands, given how only Sasori had shown the ability to do so, and that was only after destroying his body too thoroughly to have hands at all. Still, being able to 'anchor' the strings there? Useful. Currently very weak and unstable, but eventually useful.)

But in testing out her competence, she had remembered that she had once heard that chakra strings were used to hold ANBU masks in place. She couldn't remember if it was canon or not, but it certainly seemed plausible, and finding out how ANBU managed to keep the strings in place without losing so much focus that they lost their fights would have been useful in the aforementioned plans.

This information and these skills would all become useful once she graduated. At the moment, however, she was a little preoccupied by something else.

There was a wig store in Konoha that she'd never seen before.

She wanted a lot of things from a wig store. Clip-in colored streaks. Really cool, fun colors of wigs in general. Clip-in bangs. A lot of it could be fun, and some of it could be useful for undercover work, but her eyes landed on one specific thing that would almost definitely be useful in battle, and she smiled.

She went into the store.

o.o.o.o.o

Graduation was easy, comparatively. She aced the written section easily, and while her Kawarimi was still a little shaky and her henge required some very careful manipulation in her mindscape, or something in her line of sight to use as a reference (she was shit at visualization, it was fine, everything was fine), she was more than good enough at them to pass the ninjutsu section as well. Weapons and taijutsu could have gone better (she was ranked third or fourth in the class in those, last she checked, while Sasuke was currently top of his own year), but much like ninjutsu, she was good enough to get through.

She was also asked to wait outside the room until the teachers were finished with testing everyone, even though everyone else was allowed to leave as soon as they got their headbands. She looked down at hers; it was on black fabric, not navy, which boded well for future fashion choices, at least. People did tend to vary their outfits a bit more than Naruto himself, though they still tended to limit their choices more than in her old world. Satomi was not fond of this trend; she wanted to wear all the cool stuff. She'd even gotten those clip-in colored streaks she'd been eyeing at the wig store.

"Sensei?" She asked when the testing was finally over. "Is there a reason I was kept back?"

"Ah, yes, Satomi-chan." Hina-sensei said, looking up from the papers she'd been sorting. Keisuke-sensei nodded to her as he left the room. "We had a full complement of teams before you were moved up into our class, so we had to make some alternate arrangements for you when it comes to teams. There was another young graduate this year, privately trained, so you haven't met him, and the two of you will be on a team with an older genin and her Jounin-sensei, since the two teammates left and they need to fill the gaps."

Satomi doubted that they actually had to fill any gaps, but she wasn't really going to question what was going on. She was more curious about the "other young graduate," right now.

"When will I be meeting them?"

"I had the paper somewhere," Hina-sensei said with an apologetic smile, turning to dig through a drawer; dark purple hair obscured her face for a moment. "Ah, here. You'll be meeting them in Training Ground Twelve. Do you know the way?"

"I can find it." Satomi assured her. There was a map in the Hokage Tower next door, so it wouldn't be too hard to make her way there. She bowed before she left the room, "Thanks for everything, Hina-sensei!"

"Ah, it was a joy to teach you, Satomi-chan!" Hina-sensei said, waving cheerfully as Satomi left. "I look forward to seeing what kind of kunoichi you become."

o.o.o.o.o

Satomi's initial meeting with her team could have gone a lot better.

The other new genin was there, and Satomi was struck with a sense of recognition as soon as he turned to look at her.

"Hello," he said, with a painfully fake smile. "I am Sai."

"Uchiha Satomi," she replied, bowing. "It's nice to meet you. Please take care of me."

(She still didn't add the last part as instinctively as she was sure most people did.)

"Do you know when our sensei will arrive?" She asked, taking a seat next to him and leaning back to rest against a tree, eyes closed. "I only got a place, not a time."

"Five minutes from now." Sai answered, and then left it at that. He didn't seem to have many ideas in the way of small talk. That was fair. She didn't expect him to, and she wasn't big on small talk herself.

"I'm going to nap," she declared after a short period of thinking. "I trust you'll wake me when they arrive."

"Understood."

Satomi didn't quite manage to nap (which, okay, this was a Thing, and she did indeed take the opportunity to nap away short periods whenever she had nothing better to do), but she did manage to doze enough that she missed the arrival of her new team until they were practically on top of her.

She opened her eyes when Sai poked her shoulder, and immediately screamed.

It was very high-pitched and not at all befitting of a shinobi.

She also scrambled out of the way with a small whimper, eyes wide and fixed on the very large dog that had been looming over her, its snout only half a foot from her face.

It took a confused step closer, and Satomi scrabbled against the ground to put a few more feet between them.

"Um," came the voice of a teenage girl, and Satomi dared to take a quick glance in her direction. Oh god, there were more dogs. "Is… is there a problem?"

Satomi's eyes were already fixed on the dog nearest to her again, and she let out a small whine, because it was still looking at her. She opened her mouth and closed it. She did that several times, actually, and finally managed to say, "I don't do well with dogs. Or large animals. Or just animals in general."

"I see." The girl, an Inuzuka (obviously, a voice in Satomi's head laughed mockingly) didn't seem to understand at all, but whistled. "Haiichi, over here, please."

Satomi relaxed as the dog left, and with the immediate threat gone, suddenly realized how much of a fool she probably looked like now. She could feel her cheeks heating up, and looked over to the Inuzuka girl to apologize. The apology died in her throat as she laid eyes on her new teacher, who had a particularly amused look on his face, eyebrow raised and everything. Satomi was pretty sure her own face was a bit more 'deer in the headlights' than anything.

(Sai's face was completely blank, head tilted to the side as he watched.)

(The Inuzuka's face was mostly just curious with a hint of concern, petting one of the dogs as she watched.)

"Well," Shiranui Genma said, "Looks like we're going to have a lot of team-building exercises on our hands."

o.o.o.o.o

A/N: Tell me if there was anything in particular that you liked!

Hina-sensei is just an OC I had to add, because there needed to be a teacher and Iruka is teaching Naruto and Sasuke's grade; she may be showing up again, since I realized I liked how I was writing her, but probably only in minor roles when I need an OC for a role that a canon character can't take, for whatever reason. The Inuzuka girl, in case you hadn't guessed, is Hana (and we'll find out what happened to her teammates next chapter). Yamanaka Santa is also canon; he was the only Yamanaka other than Inoichi that's old enough fit the job.

I promise I'll lay off the linguistic world-building in the future. We've finally got the basics down, so it should be fine from here on out.

Regarding the acro duo stuff:
This is my favorite: Duo Act - Ali and Klodi (under the Youtube channel "Syndicate Circus")

This one has the head-balancing thing at around 2:25: Adagio - Acrobatic Duo (under the Youtube channel "jswanners")