This chapter worked against me. So I am dearly sorry if it is not up to its usual standards.
I swear on my honour the next chapter will be better! *fist bumbs Naruto and Zuko*
.
"What you got there?"
"Swatches."
"I can see that but what for? Use your words Sasuke-kun. Words."
"Tch….My apartment."
An excited gasp, "You're doing it yourself?"
Sasuke finally – after Ino's numerous attempts at conversation - glances up at the girl. She's practically lying on the front counter as she stares at him. Turquoise eyes wide with interest.
As though she truly cared.
[Yamanaka-san shows no signs of deceit]
For a moment Sasuke pauses, wondering how to respond. He wasn't good at talking to people. He spent too much time studying and running after Itachi's shadow to learn. Spent too much time plotting. Training.
The only person he feels comfortable speaking to is Genos.
His veins tingle, and Sasuke feels his insides relax.
"Of course."
She hums, body angled as though attempting to see what colours he was considering. Sasuke hides them.
"I can help, if you want."
He arches an eyebrow.
"Ho~ Such distrust, Sasuke-kun." Getting no response, she flippantly turns away. Heaving a put upon sigh. "Fine then, do it alone. It's not like I work in a florist shop and do colour arrangements. Or read my father's findings about colour therapy. Or decorate my own room. Repeatedly. Obviously you know what to do, being our class Genius and all. Don't mind the fact that you haven't taken kunoichi classes where we're taught about hues afflicting mood..."
There's silence on both Genos and Sasuke's end.
[…Colour therapy?]
Dammit.
Sasuke glares at Ino's smug look.
She's gone and got Genos interested.
.
In a terra cotta pot on Sasuke's balcony table, sits a tiny Aloe Vera plant. It's thick, bald leaves stretch towards the sun - green chloroplast radiating ominous power.
Genos is very pleased.
.
[Saitama-sensei, would have liked you]
.
Sasuke's yellow-rimmed gaze glows from the Academy rooftop.
Before Itachi, and the blood, and the nightmares, he would sit with a group of his Uchiha cousins.
Nobody interacted with him, either filled with jealousy at his fast accomplishments (never quite enough though, never quite put a smile on his father's face and utterances of 'well done, Sasuke' 'I'm proud of you, Sasuke'), or too intimidated of being the Head's son. It wasn't friendship, what they had, but it was something akin to companionship. A comfortable feeling of knowing where to sit, who to trade extra rice with for extra tomatoes, and being surrounded with conversation about family members.
He stares at his classmates below; ash in his mouth as memories filter in.
A part of himself yearns for someone to sit besides.
He hates it. It wasn't Uchiha.
[Do not be ashamed of desiring friendship, Asset-san. A name and legacy does not dictate what you can and cannot feel.] Genos reminds, and Sasuke scrubs a hand over his face.
Sometimes he wished he could brood in privacy without a cheesy pick-me-up from his delusion.
Weren't second personalities supposed to be bad for people?
[Purely media nonsense. DID is a psychological disorder wrought from trauma, mostly found in childhood. The 'split personality' is simply the brain's way of coping with it. The personality does not intend to harm their original, rather shield it from the pain.]
Sasuke finds himself chuckling in disbelief and slight hysteria as he connects the dots.
[You do not fit the dia-]
Genos is cut off by Iruka.
"I was just trying to get Mizuki-sensei to lighten up, Sensei!"
"You do that with jokes not paint bombs, Naruto!"
.
"I've noticed you've been bringing paint swatches with you lately, Sasuke-kun," Inoichi deliberately eyes Sasuke's jacket breast pocket. "Are you redecorating?"
Sasuke wants to unkindly inquire as to why he's asking, considering the man's been eavesdropping on his and Ino's conversations since day one.
He bites it back with a grimace.
"…Maybe."
"Saa~," Inoichi reclines in his chair with an amiable smile; almost symmetrical to the one Ino has. "I heard from my daughter you were. She hasn't stopped talking about it. I think I caught word of you considering pink?"
"She said it helps heal grief," he quickly explains.
"I wasn't implying anything," Inoichi placates. "Merely asking out of curiosity and hope for discussion."
"Well," Sasuke chuffs.
His smile simply grows. "Tell me, how is it going with redecorating? Are the plants doing well?"
.
For a small moment, all Chōji can do is blink.
"…Shikamaru… "
"I know."
Above the growing awkward silence, Sasuke seats himself down on a tree branch and opens his bento box.
Chōji stops staring when his neck begins to cramp. Choosing instead to direct a questioning look to his friend. Sleepy brown eyes peek at Chōji for a minute, as though deep in thought.
"Eh, it's cool."
The rest of lunch is filled with slightly awkward silence, but Genos knows it will get better.
It did with him and Saitama-sensei when he moved into the apartment.
.
It takes a while to notice that his chakra doesn't flow the way it used to. The gushing stream is now shaped with rocks and storms. Crashing and rolling and roaring and wrong.
Sasuke can't liken it to water anymore.
He doesn't know what to call it.
He just knows that it wasn't right.
It didn't fit.
[Fragments of myself appear to be slowly manifesting themselves within you, Asset-san] Genos had first informed him of this not long after Itachi shattered his psyche. Sasuke still can't fully comprehend what that means. He's a delusion.
He shouldn't be able to manifest anything.
(Sasuke ignores the yellow around his eyes. Nobody's shows signs of noticing it or questioning it, so maybe he's just imagining that too.)
[Scans report a 5% increase in surface area across chakra pathways since initial scans began]
Five months.
What's the total percentage?
[10%]
"What."
Immediately, Sasuke is met with annoyed huffs and stares from classmates. The leaf he had struggled to stick to his forehead flutters down and drifts away in the wind.
"Is there a problem, Sasuke-kun?" Mizuki asks from where he's knelt besides someone.
"Nothing, sensei. Sorry for interrupting."
"No apologies necessary, Sasuke-kun," he smiles the same smile Genos once informed him was fake. "Just remember to keep it down, hm? Other's are trying to concentrate."
"Hn."
Sasuke closes his eyes, ignoring the wary glances and wonders.
Does this 'transfer of Genos' mean his mental health is worsening? Sasuke remembers hearing about a phenomenon like this in class. That trauma wrought from a powerful Genjutsu user can often result in 'poisoning' a chakra system.
Is that what happened to Sasuke?
"Trouble, Uchiha?" Shikamaru asks, not in mockery, but in genuine curiosity. Sasuke glances over. Idly noticing the Nara's leaf resting on his forehead.
Sasuke harrumphs and picks one up from the grass. Throat too dry to answer.
.
He forgets to notice that those were the first words Shikamaru had ever spoke to him.
.
Weeks tick by.
[12%]
[15%]
[19%]
[24%]
Sasuke starts skipping chakra lessons.
.
He stands on the edge of a convenience store roof, calmly listening to Genos list off the name and profile on their recent ANBU babysitter, when Kiba drops down besides him. A knee bent to rest on while the other swings freely off the roof. He stares up him, slurping on a chocolate milkshake.
"So, what's you're damage Uchiha?"
Sasuke doesn't meet his gaze. "Damage?" he repeats tonelessly.
"Yeah, like, why're you suddenly skipping with us?"
"No reason."
"Tch," Kiba turns away to kick both feet out. "Fine, keep your secrets. Not interested anyways."
"Then why did you ask?"
"No reason." Kiba jeers.
Somewhere behind them, splayed out in the sunshine, Shikamaru snorts.
.
Genos lurks in the forefront of his mind, gently pressing against the wall that separates them as he experiments with his chakra.
I'm not going to implode, Genos
A frustrated whirr is all he gets.
.
When Itachi learns about the destruction of the Uchiha compound, he finds an empty space in the forest.
Kneels underneath moonlight.
And prays to his ancestors for forgiveness.
He kneels until his bones loose warmth and his lips turn blue - but all that he's met with is silence.
.
"From today onwards ANBU will no longer be guarding you, Uchiha-sama." Crow informs him a morning before school.
Sasuke pauses in watering a recent addiction to the plant family – wisteria named Flashy Flash, showing early signs of creeping its vines out the tartan pot he was housed in – and grows from his crouch, head cocked.
"Uchiha Itach – "
"Not an Uchiha anymore," Sasuke calmly corrects Hayate before squatting again. "I'm going to erase him from the Official Clan registry when I graduate and become Clan Head."
Crow nods. Filing that information away to report to the Hokage later on. "Itachi has shown no signs of returning to Konoha in the past seven months we've been tracking him. After careful consideration, the Hokage and Jōnin Commander deem it safe to release us off guard duty."
Huh. His voice was off again.
[Just as predicted, Hayate-san is continuing to show signs of developing asthma.]
"Hn." Sasuke turns around to the doorway where Crow stood.
Does he know?
[18% possibility]
"Are there any last requests, Uchiha-sama?"
"I've noticed your voice is a bit wheezy," Sasuke says, tone detached. "You should get that checked."
"Thank you for your care, Uchiha-sama," Hayate bows. "Have a good day at the Academy."
"You'll know if I do."
Crow vanishes in a gust of leaves.
Sasuke looks up at the cloudless sky and imagines the stars beyond the blue.
.
Iruka leans back on his sofa, pondering.
Uchiha Sasuke's workbook is lied open on his coffee table. Pages and corners dotted and marked.
When lined together, connected, Iruka could make out the beginnings of shapes and figures.
In some areas they were marked with measurements. Similar to latitude and longitude. But the numbers didn't make sense. When calculated Iruka discovered them to exceed mountains. They reached far into the sky at impossible heights.
Then there were the zeroes and ones. Iruka leans forward on his knees and flips to a page filled with the bizarre pattern.
He sighs.
What was going on in Uchiha Sasuke's head?
.
There's an extra weight on his branch.
The words that follow are so softly spoken neither Chōji or Shikamaru take notice.
"Your pollen is very nice."
Sasuke looks up from his bento-box to stare Aburame Shino. Utterly unsurprised with his 'sudden' presence.
Genos had detected him minutes earlier. What are his intentions, Sasuke wonders. That would make him hesitant to speak?
[Perhaps Asset-san's unapproachable demeanour]
Not fair, he was working on it.
"Why?" Shino continues, "because the bees I interact with at lunch tell me so. They are extremely attracted to your recent flowering balcony. They used to be drawn to my cousin's garden, that is not so anymore."
Sasuke thinks that's the longest he's heard Shino speak.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"My…cousin would like to know how you got your pollen to be so pleasant."
Sasuke narrows his eyes and studies what little of Shino's face he could. Trying to gauge whether he was joking or not.
[No lies detected. Only slight embarrassment from heat copulating in cheek regions.]
His eyebrows fought for gravity.
"You're not joking."
"Regrettably not. Why? Because I'm incapable of such a thing."
Sasuke feel's his lips twitch as he realizes what's going on here.
Was an Aburame jealous of the attention Genos's plants were gaining from bees?
Bees.
His veins and chest tingle in second-hand pride and embarrassment.
"Nothing but love and care," he answers through a stifled snort.
"Certainly, my cousin gives it her all. The reason being she's extremely passionate about gardening."
Tch. So is Genos.
"Not passionate enough by the look of things."
[Insects inside Aburame-san have increased in volume 2%] Genos relays the same time Sasuke hears a small buzzing sound emerging from Shino's coat.
Huh. Did he step on a nerve?
He didn't know Shino had those.
[Noted]
"I understand." Shino sags.
[1.5% insect volume reduction.]
The buzzing pacifies.
"As a gardener and shinobi, you do not wish to divulge your secret techniques."
Oh no, Sasuke minutely shakes his head, that wasn't it at all.
Genos, should I let you take over so you can -
[And loose the competition?] his insides bristle [Asset-san, cannot comply with request]
Somehow, Sasuke is able to keep a still face.
"Ah, so I am correct." Shino bows, "Many apologies, Uchiha-san. Enjoy your lunch – oh, I see you like tomatoes. Why do I say that? Because my cousin, who is now your rival, grows them. I'll gift you some tomorrow on behalf of her as compensation for these intrusive and dishonourable questions."
"I would expect nothing less," Sasuke oddly agrees.
"I'd like to take this opportunity to also compliment and question you on your chakra. Why? Because whenever I go near you my kikaichū react in a similar manner to approaching lightening storms."
Both Sasuke and Genos tense. Glancing down to his acquaintances. "Oh?"
Shino hums. "If my deductions are appropriate, you appear to be internally conducting electricity with your chakra. Very peculiar."
"…Hn?"
Inside, Genos was positively thrumming.
[Logic is sound. Aburame-san appears to have a mind similar to Child Emperor in his deductions. He will be a helpful ally in the future. Asset-san, should take time to befriend him]
"You've gone quiet. Does this information surprise you? It should not unless you did not know beforehand. Surely this Kekkei Genkai runs in your family or had or…or it does not and you are the first generation in your Clan to manifest it."
[…Asset-san - ]
"You cannot tell anyone about this, Shino-san." Yellow rimmed eyes glance down, "Nobody."
[By law he cannot]
"Of course. The reason being I am in no position to decide what you can and cannot do about it. I will relay your wishes to the rest of my Clan though, as they too have noticed the mixed reactions our insects have towards your chakra."
"…You are still tense. Are you alright?"
Alright? Sasuke's gone from thinking Genos was a delusion brought on by trauma to discovering evidence that points towards him being real.
Or Sasuke had developed a secondary kekkei genkai like Shino said and Genos was it.
Or Genos was a cyborg from a different planet/universe/realm and part of
himself was manifesting inside of him.
None of the options helped Sasuke feel less insane.
"Are my eyes outlined in yellow?"
Shino sits opposite him and their eyes connect through his one-way glasses.
"Curious, I did not notice this before. The reason being we have not aligned our gaze in the past. This is a most unique effect of a Kekkei Genkai. What function or purpose it serves will conceivably develop as you start exploring your new talents."
Sasuke looks to the sky.
"… Does this bother you?"
"Somewhat."
"This is an understandable reaction."
.
Genos re-introduces himself as a cyborg that died protecting Earth and his sensei from an invasion of monster toads.
Sasuke throws his head back and laughs.
.
He adapts.
Because once again
that's all he can do.
.
"You're a cyborg."
A confirming drone.
He sighs. Resigned and ever so tired.
"How'd that happen again?"
.
Sasuke watches the sun disappear behind Konoha on his and Genos's balcony (because it is theirs, he now realizes), surrounded by plants named of people from another world.
He listens to the impossible story of an impossible voice and impossible world.
.
Practice spars are when it first happens.
A foreign entity inside his chakra coils rush from the recesses of his mind and slam against the spidery fractures of control.
Like a crack that breaks the dam, his coils flood with something - and Sasuke's head is washed white.
Genos screeches.
[As001-san - M1ss10n o010011 - ]
A blink and Sasuke can blearily make out his opponent on the ground. Eyes rolled to the back of their skull and still as a corpse.
He can do nothing but stare. Body thrumming uncomfortably and mind unnervingly silent.
…G-Genos?
Nothing.
He's alone.
Sasuke feels a wash of cold horror nearly drown him. He reaches out in his mind, trying to find that familiar space, whirr, feeling but – no one answers.
Genos?
"Sayu-chan!" Iruka appears besides the girl, expression a mixture of concern then horrified shock as she starts jerking. "Mizuki get a medic-nin! It looks like a seizure! You, Kenta-kun, help me hold her down!"
"On it!" - "Y-Yes, Iruka-sensei."
A circle stars to form around the two and Sasuke is shoved to the back.
"Uchiha-san," Shino emerges from the crowd. Voice soft as to not be heard. "My Kikachū sensed what had just occurred."
Sasuke tries to breathe. Panic later. Think now.
"It was an accident."
"I believe you. Why? You've been avoiding attention like a cockroach eluding sunlight. This," Shino swipes an arm at the building chaos, "is attention."
"Abura – " his voice catches itself as his coils start to tingle like a thousand needles were washing through them.
Shino visibly tenses. "Uchiha-san."
Something vicious snaps inside of him.
A singular blue spark flickers around him that make his ears pop and crackle.
[010111– E – #0 - stablished contact]
Sasuke is able to breathe again.
Never disappear like that again you damn bastard.
[Asset-san you appear to be under emotional distress]
He laughs. It's airy and sounds wrong but the tightness around his heart loosens.
"Uchiha-san."
"What?" He feels his lips stretch to Shino in a crooked smile.
"…Are you alright?"
"Heh."
Shino is silent for five beats before admitting in a candid tone, "Your chakra shows to be more harmful than it looks. How fun. I recommend to refrain from attending practice spars until you gain control over this kekkei genkai. If a single zap is all that it takes to caused a seizure, I'm weary to see what else it could inflict in two zaps."
.
On a convenience store's roof, a boy with a cyborg in his head and electricity in his veins tries to stick a leaf to their forehead.
.
Shikamaru knows something's not right about Uchiha Sasuke. Knows it the same way he knows the sky's blue and which seasons of Konoha are the best to cloud watch.
It's both jarring and utterly bothersome.
Because with Uchiha Sasuke…
"Sometimes it's like there's two of them," he whispers in terrible understanding.
And oh.
.
Thank you so SO much for all of these beautiful, wonderful, heart-warming reviews about this story. I'm beyond relieved to see you're enjoying it so far.
Your support is immeasurable for writers. Love you all.