Chapter Eleven
Glass
Itachi readied herself, and opened her eyes.
The world shifted, and the canopy of deciduous trees above her were thrown into sharp relief. A gentle breeze rustled the branches of one, and Itachi could see the individual branches twisting as the force from the gust of wind buffeted the leaves strongly enough to bend them out of shape. Like tiny kites, pulling wooden strings, set in a collage above her.
Absently, she noted that the tree just past it was slowly dying — there was an infection or disease that had stunted its ability to feed itself, and it would starve to death within a decade.
"Itachi," Fugaku said, and she looked up at him. "Prepare yourself."
Itachi barely had time to register her father's hands flash in sequence, his eyes still averted, before she was suddenly elsewhere, standing on an icy plateau, a trio of giant, frozen swordsmen slowly marching towards her through the falling snow. Their cloaks flapped in the wind, the only noise in the otherwise resounding silence of the winter storm.
She gritted her teeth, and gust of air escaped her mouth as she began to shiver in the sub-zero temperature. The wind picked up, and the angle of the snowflakes changed, and the swordsmen still lumbered forward. Itachi looked around, half-panicked, until another violent shudder nearly broke her concentration.
If there was a key, it was probably the giants — the most obvious and immediate threat. Itachi let loose a few kunai, but they clattered away harmlessly and the ice protected any viable weak point in their armor.
Itachi broke into a run, prepping the handsigns for a fireball. A few quick strides, and she was up in the air, a deep breath in her mouth and fire on the tip of her tongue.
The middle giant's sword arced through the middle of her jump, intending to separate her body right above the nipples, but she gathered chakra to her spine and leaned back, twisting so she was looking at the ground.
The sword passed overhead, and Itachi whirled back into position, spitting out a gout of flame and flipping around to land an axe kick on the apex of the swordsman's forehead. He crumbled, and Itachi plummeted after him, through the wake of her jutsu. It was the first time she had been warm in the genjutsu, and, in that shining moment, the technique became obvious — it was a paralyzing cold.
As she touched down, she summoned chakra to her eyes, and a white-hot beam of flame shot out from her eyelids, searing through a second giant completely. A quick 180, and the second plummeted in half, too.
And then she found herself facing Fugaku, in their training spot beneath the canopy of trees.
"Very good," he said. "The March of the Glaciating Frost is a totally immersive genjutsu. It clouds the target's mind and evokes despair, but is defeated by heat and light, and is halted by motion. Your defense of it, then, was nearly impeccable. More so because this is your first introduction to this particular technique. Well done, Itachi."
Itachi bowed her head. "Thank you, Father."
"Your skill with the sharingan has come a long way, my son. But — did you use a technique to avoid the attack in the genjutsu?"
Itachi chuckled, feeling a smile form. Her pride at her new jutsu far outweighed any amount of Fugaku's particular brand of compliments.
"I did, actually."
Her father's raised eyebrows prompted her to continue.
"I don't have a name for it yet, but I developed a way to increase flexibility in my joints and muscles using chakra. It builds on the system of training that Katsu-sensei uses — pushing us beyond all reasonable endurance. Instead, I've pushed my muscles, joints, and tendons beyond all reasonable flexibility, and used chakra to make up the difference."
Fugaku's eyebrows were still raised, but this time from surprise. "Impressive. Show me."
Itachi gathered chakra to her spine again, and then calmly stood perfectly straight, bending backwards and stretching her arms over her head until they touched the ground. The comfortable burn of stretching returned, and she gripped the ground, pushing off with her legs until she was doing a handstand.
Then, she concentrated again, this time on her thighs and hips, and then, legs perfectly straight, stretched one out in front and one out in back. A perfect split, upside down in midair.
Itachi held it for roughly twenty seconds, and then straightened up, and flipped back onto her feet. Fugaku's mouth had parted slightly in surprise, and his sharingan pulsed at her.
"You augment your natural flexibility with chakra, then. A useful, if chakra-intensive, ability."
Itachi nodded. "I've noted something. The more I use the technique, the less chakra it takes to use. Using it actually improves my natural flexibility."
Fugaku nodded, and then cocked his head at Itachi. "Your hips are wider."
"What?" Itachi said, feeling her mouth fall open in shock. "How?"
He nodded. "Would wider hips not improve your flexibility?"
"I don't — would they?" Itachi considered that. They probably would. Her fingers twitched, so she clenched her hands. "But how did I not notice?"
"I observed this only through use of the sharingan," Fugaku said. "It likely will not significantly impact you without long-term use of this technique." Itachi nodded, almost dumbly. "I would consider, then, what is worth more to you."
Itachi stared at him, slowly moving her hands across her hips to check, deliberately attempting to conceal her excitement. "How so?"
"Wider hips might allow you to perform this technique more easily, but would come with their own drawbacks, as well. You are a ninja and, in the eyes of any official record, an adult. I trust you will consider whatever choice you make — all jutsu have drawbacks, and an intimate knowledge of yours is by far the best way to become strong."
Itachi thought for a second. What he said made sense — and it was very flattering. He was basically trusting Itachi to know what was best for herself — telling her that she had reached the point where he felt comfortable entrusting the decision of how best to train herself up to her.
"Thank you, Father."
"I think that will be all for today, Itachi. You are dismissed." Whether he had been planning to do that all along, or whether it was a recent development because of her new jutsu, Itachi didn't care.
She sketched out a quick bow to her father, lingering exactly low and long enough to be respectful. Then she was dashing away, out of the training ground and towards her house, located in the more centralized part of the Uchiha District. It was a run that she had done before, many times, and her feet fell into a disappointingly familiar cadence against the ground.
If her hips were wider, she didn't notice.
She redoubled her pace, flying through an alley, across a street, past a stoop-backed Uchiha Teyaki sweeping in front of the senbei shop, down another alley. Her house popped into sight, and she sprinted up the front path, in the door, halting very briefly to check to make sure she was alone. The family room, the garden, and the kitchen were all clear. Sasuke's room and her parents' room were similarly empty.
She dashed to her own room, and shut the door.
Itachi then kicked off her boots, and ripped off her shirt, then the undershirt underneath it. She then ripped off the loose shinobi pants and underclothes, leaving her standing in only the bandage wrap she wore around her chest to evoke the feeling of having breasts. She turned, holding her breath, and stared at herself in the mirror, sharingan whirling.
She still looked like a boy.
Her hips were wider by a small fraction, but that was because her bones were shifting slightly to make herself more naturally disposed to flexibility. The only thing staring back at her was a thin, pale, red-eyed boy, his reflection growing blurry even as she stared.
Itachi threw herself on the bed, choking back a sob. It was stupid, to get herself so worked up over the possibility. Of course she wouldn't look any different. She hadn't even noticed a difference running, and Fugaku had needed the sharingan to spot it in the first place.
She'd been perfectly fine before he'd said something and gotten her hopes up — the flexibility jutsu was an intermediate step to a hormone one. Her body was still young — she was nine, still solidly in pre-adolescence, with plenty of time to work it out before puberty.
So why in the name of everything and anything was she crying? There was no reason to. It was just a body — it didn't matter, not really. Not in the long run. Itachi had bigger fish to fry — getting into ANBU, making sure that she wasn't put into a situation where massacre was her only option, and the eventual confrontation with Obito and the Akatsuki.
She could do all of those things the way she was. Those things were the things she should be worrying about, not this. Appearances were superficial, so it was vain and selfish to focus more on them than on the lives of everyone in the clan.
Itachi rolled to her side, feeling tears soak into the pillow. She hated this, this feeling that it was both completely unbearable and all in her head.
She was working on it. It was something she was confident she could do, in a few years, in time to avoid the crushing ennui of puberty.
In a few years. She'd waited four, since truly coming to awareness. Nine, if she counted being young enough to know something was off but not enough to identify it. Thirty-one, if she counted that other life.
Thirty-one years spent horrified, half-revolted, and trapped in her own skin, as if she'd been standing up and letting someone walk by in the movie theater, desperately pushed against the seat in an effort to make up as little room as possible.
In a few more years, she'd be back as far as she'd ever gotten, purposefully overwhelming her endocrine system to achieve of a facsimile of what half the population had freely given to them.
And then she'd be free to pursue embodied habitability, without fear of crushing depression or puberty making her too masculine to pass.
In a few years.
Itachi closed her eyes, and took a deep breath.
She stood up, mostly naked, and went to her discarded clothing. A kunai might be a better blade for what she wanted, but her fans were sharper. Her hand quivered slightly, drawing the lacquered wood from her pocket. A sharper blade would give that split second before the pain and the blood, meaning that she had the split second she needed to cauterize the wound before applying a medical jutsu.
A flick of her wrist opened the fan. The red and white uchiwa of her clan stared back at her, accusing. The fan was a gift from her mother, custom-made for her. What would Mikoto think? She would undoubtedly be horrified, if she knew.
Itachi moved back to the mirror. Staring back at her was that pale, blurry boy, the sharingan swirling.
A thin, long-fingered hand reached down, and grasped fleshy, bulbous appendages. A palm pushed back the shaft against a pelvis, and fingers held testicles up in the air, exposing the loose skin of the scrotal sac and the ductus deferens.
The sharingan was a peerless tool for taijutsu, allowing the bearer to instantly calculate force, strength and speed in way that looked to the any reasonable observer like clairvoyance.
A single, surgical strike would cut through the scrotum and sever the ever-important vessel beneath it. Nimble fingers would then grab the now-loose testicles and discard them. Two handsigns, aided by the sharingan and done with a closed fan in the same hand, would produce a searing heat that would instantly seal the wound shut. It would be terrifically painful, but a basic healing jutsu would take the edge off and prevent major scarring.
Itachi closed her eyes, and took a deep breath.
Blood splattered the floor.
a/n: Hi! If you'd like to talk about this story, I made a discord. Feel free to bug me on there, if you have questions or want to leave feedback more personally. Here's the link: discord . gg / brR55CP