"Wow Amaterasu-chan, you're walking already? That's faster than Itachi-kun you lil' genius you!"
A wry grin spread across the baby's pudgy face, reaching out for her red locks. As always, the woman didn't complain no matter how hard she yanked at it.
"Ama-chan!"
Ama turned to see twinkling grey-violet eyes and a flash of red before warm arms embraced her small body, the scent of pine surrounding her comfortingly. It had been a week since the refurbishment of the orphanage and a full few months since the last time she had seen the redhead.
"I haven't seen you in ages you little rascal!" she mumbled into her shoulder, before adding quietly. "You must have been scared all alone, ne? I'm sorry baby."
"K-Kushina." she stuttered, surprise welling up inside her at the sincerity of the woman.
"Hey, you want to do some calligraphy with me today? It's been so long hasn't it!? Minato's home from the war finally, so you can meet him sometime too. I've missed you a lot ya know? You better have missed me too! Hey, look how skinny you've gotten! Shall we get some of your favourite tempura on our way home?" she continued, walking down the street with Ama now in her arms.
Amaterasu had never felt safer and wanted than she had in that moment.
Despite being the leader of one of the five strongest military villages in this world, Minato Namikaze was currently kneeled in front of her with his dishevelled blond hair and casual clothes, gently cleaning the scrapes on her legs.
"You're the Hokage." she whispered in awe, and he chuckled warmly.
"I am." he replied, glancing up at her with those cerulean eyes before they crinkled into a genuine smile. "And as a citizen of Konoha, you're part of my family."
"Oi Minato, she's mine!" came a jokingly angry shout from the kitchen, and soon after came the woman herself, brandishing a ladle with narrowed eyes.
Ama couldn't resist a wide smile at the sight of her.
"Come on, Su-chan. You're going to have to choose now. Who do you like better: me or Minato?"
Despite herself, Ama giggled.
"Of course I like you more, Shina. You're like my mother." she said sincerely. She deliberately tried to smother the hurt at the way the two adults stiffened at that statement, but Kushina abandoned the ladle to scoop her gently into her arms and plant a loud kiss on her forehead.
"Damn right am I your mother, and I'll always be here for you if you need me, ya got it?" she said cheerily and whisked her off to show her how she made the soup.
She didn't realise how much Ama's heart hurt at those words.
"So what I don't get is how chakra pulses can be inked out onto the floor...but just with chakra. But then it can do stuff. But it's ink. Or is it chakra?" the confused Uchiha mumbled, glaring down at her blueberry flavoured shaved ice in frustration.
"Oh come on! Forget about it for once, we've come out of the house for the first time in ages!" She caught the child's pointed look and corrected herself. "Well, I've come out of the house for the first time in ages."
"I just don't understand." Ama whined. Kushina's chuckles faded, before she quietly asked in a sombre voice "Hey Su-chan, no matter how smart you get, promise you won't forget about little old me, alright?"
Amaterasu frowned around a spoonful of her treat, staring at the thoughtful redhead curiously.
"You're pretty big to forget, Shina." she replied with a wry smile.
"Oi! It's the baby 'ttebane! I'm not big!" the woman protested, immediately wrapping her arms around her abdomen protectively with a mock glare. Ama laughed and the jinchuriki's face softened.
"You should do that less and less nowadays, Su." she told her quietly. At the child's enquiring gaze, she ruffled her shoulder-length, curly, raven locks. "But it's okay! I vow to make you laugh at least once a day until the day I die 'ttebane!"
Ama felt the redhead's gaze on her as the she prodded her swollen stomach warily, trying to feel little Naruto's kicks. Despite trying hard not to, Ama's face fell. She knew what this meant.
"Hey baby, what's wrong?" Kushina murmured softly, lifting up the child into her arms despite her probably very sore back.
Ama spent a few moments just scanning her face, lost in her thoughts, before she reached out a small hand to the woman's cheek gently.
"Are you excited?" she asked her weakly, and received a bright grin in response.
"Of course I am, dattebane! You won't be so lonely anymore with Naruto around. You're going to have to help me when we first bring him back, as I'll be too tired to do anything! You've gotta stick with me though, no leaving me for months at a time, got it?"
"Got it." the little Uchiha replied in a whisper.
Pale eyelids parted to show dead, coal black eyes framed by dark thick lashes.
She didn't move for a long time, just blinking and breathing mechanically, because that's what she knew she needed to do. She felt empty and numb, but she was alive.
Alive. Did she deserve to be alive?
An image of a laughing redhead flashed through her mind.
No. Definitely not.
A few minutes, maybe hours, passed and something by her side that she hadn't noticed before shifted, and two arms stretched up to show the face of a young boy. Shisui.
It took a few seconds as he blinked blearily at her before he focused on her face, and his face froze in shock before crumpling as he started crying silently. Two hands pressed desperately against the sides of her face, and Ama's heart tugged at the raw emotion he was showing.
"Amaterasu. Imouto." he mumbled, wiping his tears with a sleeve before he disappeared, probably to summon a nurse.
Everything was a blur after that. People came and went, signed forms, checked her wounds, remedied her drugs and soon it was quiet again. They didn't seem too bothered about her health despite the fact that she wouldn't talk. The only movement she had tried and succeeded in was gripping her brother's hand. That was all she could manage at that present time, and she was alright with that.
A few days passed, Shisui had been removed from her side, and she eventually began to set her mind working again. Slowly. She recognised that she was in a private ward of the hospital, and that there were intricate seals spreading out around her bed, a stark contrast with the white tiled floor.
A sudden image of a huge beast and the feeling of its chakra washed over her, and she shuddered, realising that she was hyperventilating and in pain as she shifted her injury. Immediately a masked ANBU appeared, and it only took her a second to recognise the tuft of silver hair on top of the mask. He placed a gentle hand on her shoulder as she wheezed, promptly disappearing once she had calmed down.
So she wasn't alone. She knew that if she was in her right state of mind she would have felt comforted by that. But she wasn't. She didn't want anyone to fill her in on anything that had happened yet. Not knowing, being naive was a good feeling. Ignorance is bliss, as they say. She didn't know of any problems, so she wasn't going to address them. She didn't need to worry about them.
It didn't stop the pain though.
Torturous bliss.
'What have I done?'
"She won't talk."
"I've noticed."
"It's been three weeks since she's woken up."
"I've noticed that too."
"She was unconscious for fifteen days!"
"Yes I noti-"
"Senpai!"
"Sorry."
Kakashi Hatake removed the porcelain mask from his face and ruffled out his hair, sighing as he leant back onto the mountainside. The Uchiha he had slowly become quite fond of was sitting with his back ramrod straight, looking out over the village from their perch on the Second Hokage's head. Kakashi knew Shisui was hurting, but he wasn't sure what to do about it. It wasn't something you could just patch up, give a bit of time to rest and spring back from. This was emotional hurt, something he knew quite well.
It ate up at you from the inside and he knew that Shisui was blaming himself for everything that had happened to his sister. Telling him it wasn't his fault or getting him a therapist wasn't going to help. The only way to heal him would be to get little Ama back to normal...but that was seeming very unlikely.
The girl was in her own world. She wouldn't eat or even move most of the times that he was watching over her on his shifts. She spent her time staring blankly at a spot on the wall directly in front of her, ignoring anyone that tried to speak to her. Sneaking a look at his frazzled kohai he sighed.
Kakashi had had quite enough of sitting back and letting things happen.
"Training's cancelled. Go to your sister."
Perhaps it was time he started being more proactive.
Jiraiya the Gama Sennin (Toad Sage), member of the Densetsu no Sannin (Legendary Three Ninja)...was very confused.
"And why on earth would you want to do that?" he asked slowly, with a fake grin. The man in front of him looked as impassive and as cold as ever.
"The Uchiha head directly disobeyed my orders. If that isn't treason I don't know what is." the elder replied smoothly, thumb brushing along the top of his cane (that Jiraiya knew he definitely didn't need).
"That clan head is dead now, and four other Uchiha jōnin were lost whilst defending the village. Surely we should be grateful for that, rather than moving them to the furthest corner from the village and surrounding them with surveillance? " the Sage mused.
"I agree with Danzō-sama."
Jiraiya's head whipped around to stare at his student seated behind the desk. His eyes were as blue as ever, but the dark circles under them dulled their usual shine. He knew that despite performing the sealing of the Kyūbi in two bits, he still had to return to the office the day after the attack to deal with the aftermath.
He hadn't even been able to grieve the loss of his wife. Jiraiya had never imagined that he would miss such a catastrophe, nor that he had been so far from the village and so deep in his business that he only arrived three weeks after it. Watching how his student was acting, it seemed as though that had been a mistake.
"Minato." Jiraiya intoned warningly.
"We will have a proper discussion for this during our next meeting. If you would excuse us, I will see you then." the curtness of the statement seemed so unlike Minato that Jiraiya felt very uneasy. He caught the swift signal for the hospital and frowned slightly before following the Hokage's shunshin.
"Before you ask, the Uchiha had foreknowledge of the attack that they didn't share."
The white-haired man stared at the blond, who was now walking briskly off into the hospital.
"What?" he asked incredulously. "They had foreknowledge? What does that even mean?! You said the attack -" he stopped himself at the sight of all the ninja around him - this was undoubtedly confidential information. "We'll discuss this later." he muttered instead, frown now settled permanently on his face.
"We're visiting the source now."
What.
They walked purposefully to the top floor of the hospital, the one reserved for special isolated cases, before reaching a heavily manned door. The hallway seemed empty but of course Jiraiya could feel the number of men stationed around here. He did not miss how his student hesitated at the door and thumped a large hand on his shoulder before ruffling his hair.
"Minato." he murmured quietly, meeting his eyes. "We're talking later."
There was a pause before a very small nod, and Jiraiya remembered when the shoulder that he was leaning his hand on had been much smaller, and the face looking up at him hadn't been so grief-stricken.
"Treat her like an adult until she gets used to you." Minato mumbled as his sensei put his hand on the handle. "Or she'll treat you like a child."
With a twinge in his heart, he watched Jiraiya slide open the door and shut it behind them.
What the Sage saw in front of him made everything click.
Isolation, child, seals - this was the second jinchuriki...but the foreknowledge bit he had to investigate further.
He watched carefully, however the only reason he could tell that the little Uchiha was alive was because she was blinking once every now and then. There hadn't been a reaction to his entrance.
"Jiraiya the Toad Sage is here!" he bellowed, grinning widely as he loomed over the hospital bed. The girl definitely jumped, eyes wide, but they were lifeless and seemed to contemplate him for a while before sliding back to staring back in front of her.
"Sensei, I really don't think that was necessary." came a tired sigh from the doorway, and what was interesting was that the child's back straightened like a rod, head whipping around in shock. Her mouth gaped open and shut but no sound was coming out, although her expression seemed to be a strange mix of horror, surprise and...hope?
"Now now Minato, you can't say that I haven't taught you to make an impression when you first meet a lady..." he glanced back at the child dwarfed by the hospital bed. "...no matter how little the lady might be."
Another tired sigh filled the room and Jiraiya took in the ruffled form of his favourite student in a new light.
"K-Kushina...?" came a hoarse voice from behind him and the Toad Sage's heart plummeted at the pure hope in that word. He saw how Minato's face shadowed dangerously at the name for a split second and he decided to drop the act. Clearly the time for jokes was over.
"We're going to look at your seal, and then we'll talk." he said calmly.
There was complete silence as both teacher and student examined the expanded seal. There were a few amendments made, a couple tweaks added but they still worked with minimal talk.
Jiraiya knew that Minato was being overworked. He had his duties as Hokage, dealing with the aftermath of the attack, but he also had a newborn son to look after. That was two full-time jobs already, and yet he still made time to see this girl personally.
"You've heard about Fugaku Uchiha, haven't you?" he asked just as they finished recompressing the seal.
There was a pause, then a barely noticeable nod. She was staring into the opposite wall with such fervour that it seemed as though she wanted to sink into it.
"Who's keeping you updated?" he asked again.
There was another, longer pause, and Jiraiya remembered the hoarseness of her small voice. She probably hadn't spoken a word since she had gotten up.
"My brother." came the whisper.
"Shisui, is it?" he mused aloud. Another small nod.
"Well. Minato here is pretty busy, so we'll get on with it." Jiraiya sighed, before locking eyes with the girl. The blackness of the irises caught him off guard. They were haunted and felt a lot older than they should have been.
It couldn't be helped - this girl had seen a lot.
"You are now the Kyūbi's jinchuriki." he started, scanning her face for any reaction. "But only half of it. This is an S-rank village secret, so I trust that you know what it means, yes? This is very serious."
He missed the sad smile on Minato's face at that statement.
"You have been given the Yang half, while another has been given the Yin."
"Naruto." she intervened blankly. She wanted them to know that she knew... well, there went that piece of top secret information. With a brief nod, he continued.
"You'll be heavily monitored for the next few weeks, simply so that we know that the seal isn't destabilising. It was a risk to seal it into you but you seem to be coping with it well considering your strangely large chakra reserves and strong pathways."
"My pathways were made from my mother's chakra." came the monotone reply and he blanched, just for a fraction of a second.
"Right. That's unusual. Anyway. Don't use chakra until we give the all clear." he tried awkwardly, sharing a glance with his student, who looked like he was going to fall asleep on his feet. "And finally, we're going to have you enrolled into the Academy this year."
Both the younglings in the room reacted to this, his student's eyes flicking over to him in evident surprise. It also brought out a small frown in the girl, but he was glad she was becoming a little more expressive. He wasn't a medic but even he knew it wasn't good to keep emotions and thoughts bottled inside.
"What will the village know?" the girl asked quietly. Jiraiya didn't expect that and mentally floundered for a moment.
"They will be told that you are the only jinchuriki." his student replied truthfully.
Jiraiya was surprised at the honesty in that statement. That gave the little one some leverage.
"If there aren't any more questions, we're off." he said, reaching out a large hand to shake the tiny Uchiha's one gently. "Lovely to meet you."
"Could I talk to Minato?" came the quiet voice just as he reached the door. Jiraiya turned to see his student looking rather pained before giving him a stern look. From what he had inferred, they needed to talk this out. This situation was a lot more complicated than he had originally thought.
"Of course. Don't take too long." he said finally before closing the hospital door behind him. And since privacy meant nothing to a ninja, he leant on the opposite wall with a sigh, simultaneously summoning chakra to his ears to hear better.
"Fugaku told you didn't he? That I... know stuff now."
Silence.
"I-I'm really sorry."
Sorry? Well that's not what he had expected. What could the four-year-old have done?
"I know I-I have no chance of being forgiven, and I know it won't ever be enough and I won't e-ever forgive myself but I just want you to know that I really r-really am sorry."
Jiraiya frowned at the long pause that followed, before there was an almost inaudible sigh.
There was the rustling of bed sheets and a creak - Minato had presumably lifted up the child onto his lap to sit on the bed himself. This theory was further cemented at the sound of tears dropping into fabric.
"Why didn't you tell me? We could have... done so much."
The toad sage tensed at the hurt in Minato's voice - this kid had gotten soft and his guard was strangely down. Maybe he was just that tired.
"I-I don't know. I just know stuff now and I don't know if it's true or not but now after that I don't know what I'm going to do! All this knowledge is there but I don't know who to trust now that you hate me and -"
"I don't…hate you."
There was a pause.
"How?" came the quiet response. "I killed your wife."
Jiraiya's blood ran cold. That was some accusation to make about yourself for a four year old.
"My wife who loved you and trusted you no matter how much evidence there was against you. I'm sure you're hurting, Ama. There's no need to worry about me hating you on top of that, alright? We can…work things out. We both know..." a deep sigh. "We both know that Kushina would want us to."
Then the true sobs started. Jiraiya stopped enhancing his hearing and frowned deeply before walking slowly away.
Amaterasu relished the burst of flavour from the watermelon she was being fed, chewing contentedly as she heard Shisui babble on about his training. It seemed he was working on his speed, and he kept going on about how offended he had been when someone told him that relying on an D-rank technique so often was stupid. But apparently it was okay because her brother had smashed him in the next spar.
Bleeding chakra, feeling the burn of overused chakra pathways as she jumped as far as she could, as fast as she could just to reach Fugaku. Panic and pain her only companions.
"The Shunshin..." she murmured quietly, not missing how her brother perked up so happily at her voice. "How does it work again?"
"It's usually spreading out the chakra around as much of the body as you can so that you move with really enhanced speed for a short time, but I find it's better to just focus it on certain muscle groups since it works just as well but with less chakra."
She hummed.
"I worried you, didn't I?" she asked softly. She felt her brother stiffen before relaxing into a grin.
"Nah. I knew you'd be alright." Liar. He caught her deadpan gaze before saying, "I'm sorry I wasn't there."
"You were on a mission outside of the village, you couldn't have known." she said matter-of-factly.
He didn't say anything to that.
"Shisui. You're my brother, not a god. You can't blame yourself for every little thing that happens to me."
"Little?"
The pure venom in that statement caught her off guard and she was even more surprised to see that he had snapped the chopsticks in his grip.
"Hey now..." she started uncertainly, feeling how his chakra rolled agitatedly in his coils. She was pretty attuned to his signature and from this distance she couldn't miss the signs.
"You can't say that. Don't you ever say that." he uttered with barely controlled anger, and if Ama hadn't been as mature as she was, then she would probably have been offended. But she understood.
"Okay." she agreed. "Not little. Really big. I mean, the fox was pretty huge, right?"
Shisui paled but kept his cool.
"Yeah. And, you know. Fugaku-sama. That's not little either."
Oh yes. Another thing she had completely fucked up. The list was going to be pretty long, wasn't it? Her wry thoughts were interrupted by a strange pain in her chest. She hadn't realised how attached she had gotten to the cold clan head, who was now dead because of her. Perhaps Zetsu was involved. Probably, if Fugaku had decided to share his research and call out Obito's identity.
Two children had lost a father because of her.
There was a sombre silence, and the panic loomed threateningly within her once more.
She smothered it down.
"Ah. Did you know I'm enrolled into the Academy this year?" she asked.
"Yeah, I had to sign the papers." her brother said through a mouthful of fruit. "Kakashi-senpai thought it was to keep you out of trouble and keep you occupied. Itachi's joining this year too, so at least you won't be alone."
"Was it fun?" she queried curiously. Shisui grimaced.
"I didn't spend much time there, but it was pretty boring because you're with the civilian students too. They have to go over everything."
Ama huffed.
"Oh, and you have to travel further than I did, so you have to wake up earlier." he added cheekily. "The compound was smashed so we're moving."
The smile on Ama's face froze.
"Where?" she asked tentatively.
"Not sure yet, but there were rumours that we'll be moving somewhere closed off with large training grounds. Sounds perfect, don't you think?"
Perfectly shit, yes. Amaterasu was feeling the beginnings of the stabs of pain in her temple.
Life was slowly, but definitely, moving on.
"Right, so we've put the girl in the Academy to keep her out of trouble and give her things to focus on other than that trauma, we've found Naruto some milk, we've gone over both their seals and stabilised them, and now all we have to do is figure out if we like this new Uchiha clan head."
Minato rubbed his eyes blearily and tried to stifle a yawn.
"Oh. And you need to tell me how the hell that girl got so involved that night. That takes priority because I've made scenario after scenario in my head and none of them make a lick of sense."
Minato didn't need to open his eyes to know that his sensei was leaning over the table, eyes glaring frostily as he tried, and failed, to deal with not figuring something out. He turned his chair around instead and watched as the first rays of sunshine began to peep over the horizon. The Hokage then reached into his drawer and activated a silencing seal, waiting a few moments before continuing.
"Fugaku Uchiha talked to me in a strange genjutsu." he started slowly. "I say strange because, even though I remember talking with him for at least half an hour, only a moment passed in real life."
"This was during your fight with the masked man." his sensei intervened, eyebrow arched. Minato nodded.
"He told me that roughly a week ago Amaterasu told him that she thought someone with a Sharingan was going to attack the village, taking advantage of Kushina's childbirth to extract the Kyūbi. She originally confronted him because she had suspicions that it was going to be an Uchiha from the village."
The white-haired man in front of him scratched his chin thoughtfully.
"And Fugaku believed her because...?"
"She affirmed information about himself that he had never told anyone."
A lecherous grin plastered itself over his sensei's face before Minato stared seriously at him.
"She knew that Fugaku Uchiha had a Sharingan capable of manipulating the Kyūbi."
The grin was wiped off Jiraiya's face.
"When did this 'knowledge' begin? And did you say she confronted her own clan leader, accusing him of treason?"
At Minato's nod, the Sage huffed amusedly. "Kid's got spunk." he admitted gruffly.
"Knowledge started after she activated her Sharingan, apparently. But what confuses me is that she never came to Kushina or I about this, even though she knew that something bad was going to happen."
Minato couldn't keep the bitterness out of his voice, not in front of his teacher.
"Minato."
"I know I shouldn't feel so angry but I am. If she had just told me - maybe she didn't trust me enough? She's a good kid, sensei. She's just been forced to grow up quickly. It's just..."
There was a pause.
"I know." his sensei nodded. And that was it. That was all the consoling they were going to do, because they were shinobi.
"And you sealed it in her because..."
"It almost ripped her in half. It was going to be the only thing that would heal her." A pause. "Kushina told me to."
His sensei nodded in understanding.
Suddenly they felt a chakra flare and both simultaneously turned to the door where there was a single knock before a familiar little girl tumbled inside. She performed a perfectly executed Shunshin, repositioning herself behind the Hokage's desk just in time for the Chūnin on duty to come thundering in after her.
"Hokage-sama, we are so sorry but there seems to be a girl -"
"Haven't seen one I'm afraid!" Jiraiya cut in swiftly, before giving them a dangerous smile. "Didn't you feel the silencing seal?"
They disappeared immediately after closing the door in a hurry. The white-haired Sage chuckled.
The heavily panting girl collapsed on top of the Hokage's impeccably clean desk.
"Sorry, I just... haven't been training... really unfit." she wheezed.
"What did we say about chakra usage?" Minato sighed, receiving a shameless smile in return.
"It works fine!" she chirped. "I'm actually here on some important business."
Jiraiya was definitely amused. "Go on." he ushered, sitting himself down. It was time something fun happened.
"You can't move the Uchiha compound there."
Both sensei and student blinked.
She calmed her breathing, intelligent dark eyes surveying them and reading the atmosphere carefully.
"Fugaku told you." she said, nodding to the blond. "And you most probably told him." She nodded towards the oldest man in the room.
"Told me what?" Jiraiya asked testily.
"That I know things now." she watched as he opened his mouth to question her further but she interrupted him. "Don't act clueless. I already know that you know."
Um. How.
She rolled her eyes.
"Your face. You looked at Minato when I said that I know things so it obviously means you've talked about me knowing things, as opposed to just knowing things like everyone else. You guys were probably just talking about it, judging from the silencing seal. Speaking of which, how long do we have left?"
Jiraiya tried very hard to keep an emotionless face, suddenly feeling rather wary.
"Around five minutes?" Minato didn't look surprised at her deductions. So this was normal then. What a strange child. Damn Uchiha and their prodigious spawns.
"Okay. I need to tell you." she began. "I knew things about this attack. I know it's going to be painful for us to talk about it for a good while from now, but I want to start by saying that I'm sorry that my mistake had such a cost. I panicked, and it had bad consequences."
"Learning from this, I want to confide in you with what I know. Don't ask me how it works, because I haven't figured it out yet. Just to get you to trust me, I'm going to try something and you can tell me if it's true or not."
She focused her gaze on the white-haired Sage and paused, before the black shifted into a red with three spinning tomoe.
The fully matured Sharingan was out of place on such a young face, but now Jiraiya knew. She was sincere about her apologies and the pain she had suffered was displayed in front of him with the three tomoe in a sea of crimson. He was starting to feel bad for the child - it seemed she really had been forced to grow up quickly.
"You agree that I've never seen you in my life." she started, and Jiraiya nodded. "You said your name was Jiraiya, and I know you're Minato's genin sensei."
The man's face fell. "Is that the kind of knowledge you get?" he asked, slightly disappointed.
"No." came the deadpan reply. "I heard Minato call you sensei earlier, and the genin bit was a probability-based guess."
Minato 'coughed'.
"You have a summoning contract with the toads, your sensei was Hiruzen Sarutobi, and your team ended up as a complete disaster. I won't go into the details...for your sake."
He knew that that information wasn't by any means classified, since he introduced himself as the Toad Sage. A couple reasonable assumptions and she could make people believe what she wanted them to. Nonetheless, the smirk faded and he felt strangely vulnerable, particularly at the end of her statement. How much did she know?
Ama turned her Sharingan-clad gaze onto the Hokage.
"You were a childhood genius who regularly uses two jutsu of your own. Hiraishin, which is based on Tobirama Senju's own technique, and Rasengan, which is your original technique based on the Bijuudama (Tailed Beast Bomb). You have been trying to add your wind-nature to it for a while with no success."
"Are you being selective in what you're telling us?"
She frowned, deactivating her Kekkei Genkai.
"Not intentionally. It kind of feels like remembering pieces of information, so certain things come and go. They're completely random. I mean, I don't get it at all from some people while from others I get a lot."
"You said something about not moving the Uchiha." Minato mentioned.
"Oh. That's has nothing to do with foreknowledge. I don't want to move and I thought it was quite rude of you to suggest it."
Minato heard Jiraiya choking on his own spit at her bluntness but he ignored it.
"The Uchiha helped by sending every Uchiha jōnin on the front lines defending against the Kyūbi, while the others, including genin, helped escorting civilians out of danger. You even sealed the Kyūbi into one of us - I know it was to save my life - but it's still a burden. People are looking at me weird." her glare dampened at this point. "We're not asking for anything for this service, no rewards or mentions, because this is our village and it's our duty. But we, I mean I, am not going to stand by while you discriminate against us for some strange suspicion an old man with bad fashion sense has."
Was this child talking about...
"How do you know that Danzō -"
"So it was him." she mused aloud, before smiling innocently at the white-haired shinobi. Jiraiya was starting to find this kid quite annoying.
"Ama-chan, I'll keep what you said in mind but I think it's bath time now." Minato told her quietly, and she groaned.
"Only if you promise to take a nap with me after." she challenged, and they stared at each other for a while before Minato gave in.
"Alright."
The girl grinned widely before waving and trotting out of the office.
Jiraiya watched her go before turning to meet his student's gaze with an appalled expression.
"Sensei, it seems the real Amaterasu Uchiha is back." Minato said, dare he say it, fondly. His blue eyes shimmered with a new brightness that had been empty before. "That's the child Kushina loved."
As glad as he was that Minato was feeling better, he was still uneasy with the child. She was not normal, and it worried him. Anyway...
"Minato darling, I think it's time for your nap."
Yo y'all we're BACK! AND WE'VE REACHED 500 FOLLOWERS CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?!
WELL BELIEVE IT! ALSO SIMONE AND I HAVE SO MUCH PLANNED LIKE GUUYS IT'S GOING TO BE SO GREAT. Thanks to Simone as always you absolute bae.
Just a few things about this chapter - Ama was given the Yang because having the Yin would cause some complications of unbalance between her already concentrated Yin chakra (from her old life). Also, for people who think that Ama recovered way too quickly, I kinda agree but Ama's emotional state is very fragile at the moment I tried to show that her cheer in the last parts of the chapter mostly come from her compartmentalising/suppressing what happened in order to deal with it over time.
I NEED TO KNOW WHAT YOU THINK OF THIS. So many things have happened, you know so much more now, and I NEED reactions! You guys are seriously the best. You're all so smart and your theories are usually so spot on I wonder if i'm being too predictable.
Hope you enjoy!
Till next time,
Lei and Simone xx