A/N: Thank you, as always, my lovely reviewers! It's your comments that get me inspired when I get stuck, and I really got stuck this time! Hope you like the chapter; it's a little longer than my average for this story, but I didn't want to cut the last scene from you guys just to keep it even ;3

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Hold On (be strong)

Chapter 11

It didn't happen often anymore, but when I'd first learned the henge and took on my Cat-shape, I would occasionally get hit with disorienting moments of 'wait, what?'. Sometimes from the feel of repurposed muscles pulling on the large, mobile ears atop my head, or the very immediate sensitivity of the whiskers on my face, but never more frequently than when I dropped down into a quadrupedal stance for whatever reason.

Those moments were passé, now. After all, I'd adjusted alright to suddenly being in a body so much smaller than I was used to living in; what was one more shape? A shape that I had created?

The stance felt more natural under the henge, yes, but I used cat-style taijutsu regardless of my shape, and that obviously resulted in my hands coming in contact with the ground fairly frequently—an unexpected boon, with how my Mokuton liked to work on plants. And it was faster to run on four paws as Iwazaru, even if it meant Mirai had to use her claws to cling onto the dark green fabric of my yukata because she couldn't keep up with me, murmuring directions into my ear.

The trees changed the farther south we went, growing taller and leafier and just…more. I hadn't even touched them with my vines, but every time my paws landed on a branch –no matter how briefly– I had a flicker-echo of that expanded sense. Snapshot pulses like echolocation. These trees wanted to talk—it would probably be pretty amazing to sleep beneath one.

(Maybe I should ask Mirai to take a seedling home for me? I could plant it in the glade at the very center of what Hisoki had dubbed my 'deathtrap'.)

Then, I began to sense the ninja, and the difference between them and the people in Umeko's caravan was unmistakable. They shone, and in a completely different way than my Clan or the ninneko. I barely remembered what a ninja felt like, and then it was only of Orochimaru's menace and the terror-pain tainted sensations of his victims.

I wasn't particularly worried about them detecting me. For one, none of the moving clusters –patrols? Was patrolling a normal thing for ninja?– ever made to intercept me, so I tentatively decided that I was probably outside their sensory range. For another, while I wore Iwazaru's shape, my chakra was a lot closer to feeling like a Summon than a human—at least, according to the ninneko. I figured it wouldn't hurt to gamble on the chance that any ninja that detected me would think I was a Summon.

"We're getting close, I think," Mirai said, and instead of leaping to the next branch I dropped to the ground a good twenty feet below, standing upright and looking around curiously as the calico clawed her way up to my shoulder. I couldn't honestly say any of it seemed familiar…but I hadn't exactly had much opportunity to look around, with the condition I had been in.

Although…

There, on the edges of my un-augmented senses, like the glow of the sun just below the horizon, was what could only have been a huge mass of chakra presences. It wasn't even that I could distinguish individuals, just that there were so many, so close together, that it bled into the air like the pale glow of a distant wildfire. There was no doubt in my mind that what I was sensing was in fact Konohagakure. It really only raised more questions, because I definitely hadn't felt that before the Cats spirited me away.

Then, there was the more subtle feel of a long, steady, cool-not-cold water source, and almost without thought I found myself moving towards it. Lo and behold, there was a river, deeper than I was tall and with a current strong enough to create eddies at the irregularities along the bank. I still couldn't say I recognized it—all I had anymore was the blurred sense-memory of digging my fingers into mud, the thick smell of blood and rotting, waterlogged grass. And stars; maybe I would have recognized this place after dark.

Mirai yowled a low protest when I leapt directly to the center of the river, sending up a fine spray of refreshingly cool water even while the chakra in my paws kept me from falling through; despite the speed of the current, I caught a brief reflection in the water, the contrast of long black and white fur. The main body of the river didn't seem to flow directly from the Village's direction, but close enough; a drainage system had to connect to it somehow, for me to have washed up on its bank. I just had to find it.

"Yu-, ah, Iwazaru, do you have to be on the water?" Mirai whined, having migrated to the center of my back, where she clung like a furry loaf of bread. The smirk that grew on my face was completely involuntary. The calico didn't mind me carrying her when I traveled through the earth, but water was another matter completely: she had tolerated the practice it took for me to learn how to create an air-bubble for her to breathe with, but hated that I couldn't keep her dry.

Almost none of the Cats tolerated water well, especially not the fire natured ones like Mirai. Hisoki, being wind natured, didn't mind the water as much, but as he was still larger than I was, carrying him through the water brought about a completely different set of complications.

"I'll be diving as soon as I find what I'm looking for," I said airily, and was completely unsurprised when she disappeared from my back in a puff of white smoke, taking my travel-bag with her. That was fine. I wasn't even sure I wanted an audience if I found my way back into Orochimaru's lab. Granted, the Cats had never asked me about where I had come from, but I didn't know if it was because they thought I didn't know, or they just didn't care. I wasn't curious enough to ask, yet. Maybe one day.

Still.

I walked against the current, my eyes turned down and nose as close to the water as I could manage without going cross-eyed, chakra spread out into the body of the river. I felt the way it moved around the debris at the bottom, the tree roots intruding from the banks, what made the water slow and what made it form little whirlpools. I couldn't call it sensing, especially compared to what I got from tapping into the trees, but doing this gave me something like a map of obstacles to work with. Mostly, I'd only ever used it during night-training at the lake with Kaida, lugging boulders around the lakebed on moonless nights, surrounded on all sides by pressure and black water.

(If nothing else, that was one hell of a way to inspire the development of another 'second sight', not to mention a way to breathe.)

I paused and turned my head to scrutinize a cage-like tangle of thick roots emerging from a steep portion of the bank, the huge tree they belonged to casting shade over the river—my curiosity piqued by the stream of slightly warmer water flowing from them. It was one of those trees, and it only took the touch of one black and white paw, a slight push of chakra, for the moss-speckled roots to creak farther apart, revealing a dark hole beneath. It would've been a tight fit for a fully grown adult human, but it was more than wide enough for me to get into.

More than large enough for a toddler, even with floats attached, to come out of.

It was good enough for me; I cut the chakra from my paws and dove.

.

The drain had turned from mud to stone less than a dozen feet inside, and I had to heavily abuse my ability to control water currents just to keep from being washed back out the way I came; somehow, the stone resisted chakra-sticking. I was also more grateful than ever for Kaida's thorough training, because it was black as pitch, and there was no air above my head for a good fifteen minutes of stubborn swimming. I much preferred the technique of 'grabbing' air from the surface, but I could filter oxygen from water if pressed—it took a lot of concentration, though. And if I messed up, I got water in my lungs, which was awful and hard to get rid of if I couldn't surface immediately.

(Ambush potential, though. I liked being sneaky too much to pass up learning a technique like that just because it hurt sometimes.)

As soon as I felt the void of air above me, I stuck my nose out and took a deep, silent breath. Gritty wet stone smell, and it was still darker than a moonless night. When I cautiously lifted the rest of my head above the water, my ears were filled with the weird, echoing slosh of moving, contained water. I could feel both my eyes and pupils dilate, trying to see anything and failing. More jarring than the dark was how absolutely alone I felt; at some point, my ability to sense the growing pressure of Konoha's ninja had been quashed, and I couldn't even say when. Just that I was alone in an echoing stone tube –wide enough now that I could walk on fours instead of having to swim like an otter–, and the stale smell of the air was making the soaked fur on the back of my neck stand on end.

I kept on. I only wanted to do this once, and like hell was I going to let a smell chase me away.

Eventually, incredulously, I saw light. Orange light.

It was dim, flickering, but above my head…the shape of an irregular oval, the silhouette of bent bars. I braced my legs against the current and tilted my head, twitching an ear up to listen, but there was nothing but the sound of moving water, the faint droning buzz of a dying lightbulb. I didn't…it didn't feel like there was anyone up there. Probably. Had it always felt like this, not sensing every living thing around me? I couldn't remember.

I shifted and got my hind legs under me, slowly, cautiously standing until I could poke my head up through the hole…nothing. Well. Not nothing. I could see the remnants of the items I had scavenged from the attached room, all spread out across the floor. The pile of blankets lumped together, abandoned in the corner. I squeezed my upper body passed the bars and hauled myself the rest of the way into what had once been my cell, then paused, dripping noisily.

This was…a little unreal, honestly. Not exactly unpleasant, but being here made me feel distinctly…uneasy. I definitely should not have been here.

I used one of the blankets as a towel, wringing out a considerable amount of water from my long fur and sodden yukata before I went into the small, doctor's office type room; the solid metal door was still wide open, exactly how I had left it. I didn't even try the light, knowing it had mostly burned out even before I escaped, but my eyes had changed since signing the Contract, and I could see well enough with what little light the orange bulb cast. The open cabinet, thoroughly scavenged by my hand. The metal base of the sink, dented with a number of tiny baby handprints. The filing cabinet in the corner—inert. Open.

I froze where I stood, down to my tail, and cautiously edged closer, vines sprouting thorns under my henge. That cabinet had always buzzed with volatile chakra, always, and I remembered that because unlike the door or seal-tags, the power of it had never seemed to wane over time. It had been closed when I escaped, deemed too much of a risk to mess around with.

And now it was empty. But who had done it? There were too many possibilities.

Damn it all. I had really wanted to know what had been in there, too. For years, it had been a nagging, distant curiosity, if only because of what I suspected it may contain. Why else would Orochimaru keep a highly protected case of papers in the same place he kept an isolated experiment? It was either really important information, or it had to do with me. Maybe what he had done, or what he had been trying to do.

Rather than dwell on the disappointment, I turned my attention to the empty stretch of wall that lead to the main lab. While I was here anyway…

.

Moving through solid stone was actually really, really difficult. I shouldn't have even been surprised. Having actually tried to walk through hip-deep mud before, I could safely say that moving through solid stone was harder.

The main lab was also pitch black, and I didn't remember where the light switches were—if this place even had power. (Unlikely.) It still smelled, very faintly, of death, which only made my brain insist more adamantly that I was standing in a crypt. I knew that already. I had seen a lot of people die here; I had felt a lot of people die here. How many? I had counted once, right? Maybe I had stopped counting.

Light. I needed a light.

Blindly, I felt around under the clinging material of my yukata for the pouch strapped to my thigh until I found the firestarter Umeko had given me, tucked amongst my shuriken. I couldn't have appreciated the gift more, because no matter how hard they tried, the Clan still hadn't managed to teach me the smallest spark of a fire technique. After the flint came the tightly-wrapped bundle of oil-soaked fuel, and—

The small fire flared to life, a sad little pile against the wall that would burn for maybe ten minutes; even if I found something, I wouldn't feed it anything obtained in Orochimaru's lab. That was just asking to be poisoned.

The place looked ransacked, even beyond damage that must have come from jutsu usage, cabinets thrown open and tables overturned. There weren't any bodies. There weren't even any bloodstains, not even ones I remember coloring the ground before.

I skulked around the room silently, casting strange, flickering shadows in a place I had never seen lit in anything but steady, clinically white light. It was…weird. And unpleasantly similar to a past-life experience; coming back to a house I lived my earliest years in, a decade later. I was a lot smaller, the last time I was here.

I hadn't been alone, then, though. I was, now. I was trapped, then. I'm not, now.

There was a door. Out? I had never seen it opened before, had I?

My paw made contact with the door and it flared, a seal exploding bright and vicious against both my eyes and restrained senses, spreading out to cover the walls at lightning speed. I reacted completely on instinct, leaping back towards the dying fire and forcing my way back through the wall and into the other lab, then my cell and down.

I could still feel the seal, a bright red emergency flare on a dark road, and I urged the water to carry me faster. Shit, I really should have expected something like that. My heart pounded loud in my ears, even louder than it should have been, submerged once more.

The trip out was much faster, working with the current, and I felt it when my senses bloomed back to usual, the fire of Konohagakure at my tail. Orange light shined bright through the glassy veil of water over my eyes, so different from the dying light of the cell's bulb—a literal light at the end of the tunnel.

I twisted sharply and briefly surfaced for air when I was ejected into the main body of the river, swimming back just enough to grasp a root and nudge them back to their previous shielding cage. It took seconds, and then I was diving again, my only desire to get away.

I couldn't sense anyone chasing me, but my body was flush with adrenaline, my limbs feeling jittery and too-light. If I'd had to stand right now, I knew without a doubt that I would be shaking. Damn, but did I hate being startled like that!

I twisted in the water and kicked off a thick root in frustration fuelled strength, squinting my eyes against the sudden increase in pressure. That could have gone so much better: I hadn't even got anything out of it for the effort. Only the knowledge that someone had been in that secret room, someone had Orochimaru's files.

It probably wasn't even safe to sneak in that way again, with the attention I must have drawn to Orochimaru's lab. I had left the fire right there; unless they were chronically stupid, someone was going to check it out, find my old cell, find the escape route. Damnit.

(It could have been worse. I could have actually been caught. I could have been ambushed, and then where would I be, hm?)

I couldn't have been free from the drain for more than ten minutes when I felt it—barely. It was hardly even a ping on my chakra sense, something fast, and I twisted inhumanly to avoid swimming straight into the line of sharp steel breaking the water before me. Well, shit, that was a ninja, then. Guess I hadn't managed a clean getaway.

My hind legs touched the silt-y bottom of the river and I leapt, aimed towards the bank opposite from the ninja, and even before the water cleared my eyes my left paw was tucked full of shuriken, my right pressed to the thick branch I crouched upon. The ninja was also standing on a tree, and it was almost like looking at him from three different angles without even using my eyes—and then I actually did see him with my eyes.

"Ha, let me guess. You're a catfish, right?"

Hisoki's training meant the first thing I focused on was the kunai held in the ninja's right hand –the same projectiles that had driven me from the river–, then to the forehead protector—the Leaf, and really, anything else would've only made me wonder. His hair was a riotous mess of short black curls, pretty face, maybe in the end of his teen years and—

Well, I should have given more credence to Kaida's stories, because Sharingan eyes really did glow. Then I had another sharp spike of adrenaline course though me because, shit, could he see that I was under a henge? One of the older Cats would have mentioned that, surely?

Then—oh hell, Uchiha. They were still alive, because that definitely wasn't Itachi or 'Tobi'…grinning at me? Wait, did he make a pun at me? What the hell?

The Uchiha rocked on his heels, as unbothered by his position on a tree branch as a Leaf ninja should be, but despite his lighthearted air he kept his weapon in hand, his chakra smoldering hot just beneath his skin. His eyes continued to glow eerily in the light of the setting sun—three tomoe in each eye. I never really had liked holding eye contact unless I was making a point, but Sharingan eyes? Nope, not happening. I chose to look at the space over his shoulder, instead.

"Wow, I almost thought you were an otter or something! I've never heard of a cat that likes water. Not even a Summon."

The loud patter of water falling from my soaked fur onto the ground below was my only answer to the ninja's waiting silence. I was too used to the weird sensation of my fur being plastered flat to be bothered by how ridiculous I had to look, all of my spare attention focused on the potential threat before me. He hadn't asked a question, and I was an irredeemably contrary son of a bitch; it wasn't in my nature to just offer things, even knowing that a lot of the Cats really would like to make contact with the Uchiha again. It would have been so much easier if Mirai had still been here, or Hisoki. But I was stuck: I didn't want to summon them now, because then it would give away that I was the Summoner, and given my recent escapade… I would rather not be connected to what probably counted as a botched attempt at infiltration.

"You…can speak, can't you?" The Uchiha asked, and somehow I got the feeling that if he hadn't been so on-guard, he would've been rubbing the back of his head. I couldn't say I remembered a lot about pre-Massacre Uchiha behavior, but this couldn't be normal. Right?

"I can," I told him, not moving otherwise because the Sharingan tracked the tiniest of movements, and I was holding a handful of sharp steel like I knew how to use them (I did). I didn't have any desire to fight an Uchiha, one that was probably well outside my experience level to fight, given the stage of his Sharingan alone.

"Okay, that's good!" the ninja smiled, and I felt my ears fold back, because he was trying to make eye contact again, and he needed to knock that shit off. "I need you to tell me what you were doing, because no one in Konohagakure has held the Cat Contract in years." The abrupt switch from cheery to deadly serious made my fur try to stand on end, cautious. Yikes. Someone was feeling edgy. How likely was this ninja to accept a line of bullshit? I mean, I didn't even need to lie, exactly. Talking sideway had practically been my hobby, back then.

"I was looking around," I told him bluntly, and it was true. "My family wants an Uchiha to sign our Contract again." Which was also not a lie, even if it was so not the point. The Uchiha gave a little laugh, and even before he spoke I knew he knew I was avoiding the subject. Ah well.

"That'll make a few people very happy," he said, either honestly or fantastically faked. If he didn't stop trying to stare me down, I might have to make his tree eat him, consequences be damned. Who the hell tried to stare down a cat that was larger than most dogs? "Who summoned you?"

"No one," I said waspishly, and continued before his raised eyebrows tried to wing off his forehead. "The Clan Head sent me out to find someone to sign."

"You're awfully grumpy and evasive for an emissary." The ninja said after a brief pause. "And you were swimming away from the Village."

"No one told me where your village is." Which was also true –Umeko showed me on the map, and Mirai had guided me in the general direction–, and also complete bullshit. I knew it, the Uchiha knew it, and my expression dared him to call me on it.

He dared. Of course he did. One would think that a clan that had signed with the Cats for so long would know better. Then again, it had been, what, twenty years since the last one had died?

"Really," he said, sarcasm thick enough to cut. I flicked my tail at him, spattering drops of water onto the river's surface, and he sighed…but didn't actually seem annoyed? "Yeah, alright, fine. Do you want to come with me and find someone to sign?" That was way too quick of a turn around, and besides that—

With him? Emphatically no. Too much attention, too much of a chance of the henge –no matter how good it apparently was– being discovered. (Was that his intent?) I wanted to nose around Konoha –hell yes was I curious!– but not while I was being watched. Now, how did I get out of this without seeming suspicious? I could try to just cut and run, but that was the opposite of subtle…

Oh! Well, that just might work.

"We had someone in mind," I said, making a point of giving him my full attention, ears forward and almost making brief eye contact. "The son of our former Contractor, named Uchiha Obito. Can you bring him to me?"

I then had the pleasure of watching the curly-haired Uchiha's face go thoughtful before he visibly winced. On second thought, it was also interesting, because Obito had been the black sheep of the family, hadn't he? And about a decade 'dead'? Yet this one knew of him immediately?

"Ah, that's…Obito died on-mission during the last war."

"Hm," I hummed shortly, staring at him with watchfully narrowed eyes as I tucked my shuriken away, and then turning my head dismissively away. I couldn't have broadcasted my intent any more clearly without actually saying it.

"Wait! That's it? You're just leaving?" The incredulity in his voice did a lot to soothe away the irritation he'd caused me with his incessant challenge. (Oh, wait, was that a cat-only thing? What even were human eye contact rules?)

"I want to talk with Kaida-sama about this, first," I said, acutely aware of his position even if I didn't look it, because if he really wanted to keep me here, disengaging would be the most dangerous part. "What is your name?"

"What's yours?" He shot back, twirling the kunai around his finger by the loop with an absent air that I didn't believe for a second.

"Iwazaru." The Uchiha snorted out a surprised, amused sound, and I bared my teeth at him, like a grin but really not.

"Shisui." He relented, and, hmm, that sounded familiar somehow. Why did I know that name? It was important, it had to be important, if only because so many people weren't named, and the Uchiha were all killed off before the 'story' started. So why did I know that name? "Are you going to come back after you talk to your…Clan Head?"

"Previous Clan Head," I corrected distractedly, probably watching him too closely while being deeply irritated with the sense that I'd forgotten something relevant. His wasn't just a name a lot of fanfic authors chose to pull from the depths of minor characters, was he? I shifted subtly, even though I was positive his Sharingan-red eyes hadn't missed anything. "And it depends." I said, but didn't elaborate. The sun had almost set, fiery orange light gone dusky purple; I must have spent a long time underground.

"That's it? You're going to leave, just like that? I know of at least five ninja that would sign your Contract in a heartbeat." He sounded serious and completely honest, but really, who could tell with ninja?

'That's not the point,' I didn't say.

"Not you?" I challenged, and Shisui shrugged a single shoulder, wry smile turning his mouth.

"I put my name on the Crow's Contract a few years ago."

Yeah, alright. I flicked my tail dismissively and made sure I was facing away from Konoha –and there were so many ninja in there, touching the trees, beneath their branches, and the trees wanted to show me more– when I readied myself to leap away. West was a good direction; River Country was west from here, wasn't it? Umeko made it sound like an interesting place.

"Iwazaru-san," Shisui called, and he had my full attention even before he landed on the river than had been our very clear line in the sand. "Is there any way that we can reach your Clan, in the future?"

I bit down on the first, unfairly snippy response –"Offer your chakra to the Clans, like everyone else who needed,"– and thought about it for a minute. The ninja waited easily below me, his feet not even making ripples on the water's surface, face the picture of earnest patience.

Well. What could it hurt? The family did want an Uchiha.

"You know of Sora-ku?" I asked, and Shisui nodded, not a trace of humor in his expression. "There is a fortress of ninneko nearby, led by Nekomata. Nekomata hates humans, but if you find a way to convince him, he can pass messages to my Clan Head, Kana-sama." I paused, and thought, what the hell. "You can use my name; it might help."

"Thank you," the Uchiha said sincerely, and I nodded shortly, a little uncomfortable, before leaping away in a burst of chakra-assisted speed.

For nearly an hour, Shisui stayed on my tail –distant, but I felt the banked heat of his chakra, anyway, even without the ever-helpful trees–, fast, occasionally flickering and seeming to vanish when he began to fall behind, only to reappear much closer. He never made any move to engage, however, and eventually broke off his pursuit. Probably, I thought, just making sure I wasn't going to double back; he did have some sense to him, as I suspected.

Huh. All told, not a bad first experience with a Konoha-nin. (Orochimaru didn't count.)

Next time, I might even find my way in without being discovered.

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A/N: Well? Let's hear it, lol. *claps hands together* Hmm, now, who will Yukito run into next... Suggestions? I'm still keeping that list.