Itachi was doing some reading of case reports for cranial trauma when a series of rapid knocks on his front door interrupted him. He hesitantly slid it open after determining who it was, but before he could say anything, the person pushed past him with a languid stretch and a yawn. He shut the door and turned to face the intruder, eyebrow raised as they sprawled themselves out on the rug in the middle of the living room.
"I haven't been in this house for like…three years and yet apparently I've been crashing here when I'm not home." Amaterasu commented lightly, eyes shut as she rolled onto her back. Itachi said nothing as he leaned against the doorway, observing her silently.
"I've been back for two weeks, but I've only seen you four times Itachi. Why did you lie to Shisui?" she asked curiously - not angrily, he noted as she opened her eyes and stared at him.
He gazed at her silently, eyes unwavering as he tried to work out how to say this in a way that wouldn't end up with him losing his composure. Had it been anyone else he would have simply avoided the situation altogether... but it was Ama. Said girl on the floor opened an eye, managing to make that simple gesture show her impatience and he frowned.
"I thought it would be better than him knowing that you slept in the middle of a training ground." he replied stonily. He was not at all happy when he had found her passed out in his genin team's allocated training ground at the crack of dawn. "Not even the Uchiha training grounds Amaterasu, you decided to sleep in the village training grounds. The ones which are open to just about anyone."
Amaterasu's eyes widened in genuine surprise at his tone.
"The reason I haven't been seeing you is because you were mad at me? You avoided me because you were mad and then told my brother I was sleeping over to prevent him from finding out the thing I was doing to make you mad?" she said confusedly and Itachi felt his anger simmer at how silly she made it sound.
"He didn't need to know because I was dealing with it - "
"No, you're missing the point, Itachi." Amaterasu interrupted, sitting up to glare at him. "Had you talked to me, or even just approached me, you would have known that I wasn't sleeping, I was meditating. Kin was always there."
Itachi paused.
"I meditate there because it's the place with the highest concentration of natural energy in the village." she continued, looking exasperated. "Which you would have known if you had decided to do something about it."
"You meditate lying down." Itachi murmured slowly. "Natural energy… it's to do with the training you've done with your summons, I assume? To do with the mind, which is probably why you leave your physical body behind. Like the Yamanaka."
Amaterasu tensed at the mention of the mind-reading clan before shaking her head.
"So you were the 'secret admirer' Kin was going on about." she muttered. "You stayed each night to watch over me?"
At Itachi's silence she groaned, slapping her forehead.
"You're an absolute idiot." she huffed.
"I didn't sense Kin." he defended.
"Of course you can't sense Kin, it's Kin."
"But Kin could sense me? Even while meditating with you?"
"Of course, Itachi. He can exist in both my mental realm and the physical one at the same time. That's his job."
Itachi fell silent once more, face carefully blank.
"…I'm not apologising."
"No, you won't because you're cranky since you've spent at least ten nights out of fourteen pulling night shifts for me."
Itachi glared and Amaterasu smirked.
"See? Cranky." she commented amusedly. "I honestly don't understand why you didn't just wake me up, or approach me when I woke up to ask me what I was doing."
"Because every morning you woke up yelling that you were late and disappeared. I couldn't talk to you any other time of the day because you were busy until midnight, by which time you would pass out at the training grounds."
Amaterasu continued staring at him for a long while before she sighed, getting up from the floor and reaching to give him a hug.
"Of course you don't need to apologise. You're amazing for looking out for me and I missed you a lot. I'm the sorry one. Thank you." she mumbled. "Now let's have an actual sleepover because Shisui's picking me up from here tomorrow morning for my new training schedule. Y'know. Got to make your story believable."
Itachi rolled his eyes and half heartedly punched her shoulder.
"You're on breakfast duty tomorrow."
"Amaterasu-chan - "
"Mikoto-san! It's been so long, how are you?" said Uchiha girl exclaimed as she animatedly waved her chopsticks around. The woman was staring at her with a slightly apprehensive expression, but she held herself with as much grace as ever. Her navy tinted hair was neatly brushed and hung at the usual length by her shoulders, and her dark eyes were exactly as Ama remembered them to be: calm, with an undertone of steel. It seemed amplified seeing as she was dressed in standard Jōnin attire, with loose pants and a green flak jacket over a long sleeved turtleneck. The only thing that was different was the fact that she was no longer holding a toddler, because said child was currently hiding just behind her right leg with a wary gaze at Amaterasu.
Amaterasu's smile faltered at the innocence in his gaze.
"Kaa-san, why is she burning the eggs?"
A hand gently took the chopsticks from her grip and took control of the pan, shifting the sizzling mess into the bin in one smooth swoop.
"I see your culinary skills are as non-existent as ever. Are you planning on getting married at any point, Amaterasu?" Mikoto gently chastised, eyes dancing with mirth as she quickly cracked some more eggs into the pan.
Ama chuckled sheepishly, stepping out of her way.
"Well… I guess that would depend on whether the potential husband minds having a wife that can't feed the family." she chirped back, reaching out to ruffle Sasuke's long fluffy hair. "Yo, Sasu-chan! Did you miss me?"
"I don't even know who you are!" came the retort and Ama gasped dramatically, clutching her chest.
"You wound me deeply, little prince." she replied blandly, squishing his cheeks with a little more force than necessary. "I tidied up your dirty nappies thirty four times exactly... not that I was counting or anything."
"Stop bullying my otouto, Amaterasu. He's not going to be smaller than you for long."
With a joyful shout of 'Nii-san!' the little bundle of trouble ripped his chubby face out of her hands and went bouncing up to his elder brother with a beaming smile. Before Amaterasu could reply, the mother spoke up.
"Right children, I'm off first today. The eggs are ready and we have rice and leftovers from last night." Mikoto said briskly, slipping on her sandals at the door. "Sasuke, I don't have to remind you to pick up Naruto-kun on your way to the Academy, right?"
"Hai hai, kaa-chan." came the mumbled reply.
"Good. Have a lovely day and I'll see you all soon."
With that, she disappeared and Amaterasu gaped at the five eggs that were presented on three plates. Two each for herself and Itachi, and one for Sasuke. They were perfectly round with the yolks still intact! Itachi took each plate and scooped some rice onto them while Sasuke reached for the neatly packed boxes of leftovers on the counter.
"Wow, I'd forgotten what a proper breakfast looked like." the girl commented, impressed at the range of side dishes in front of them. She only received identical raised eyebrows from the brothers however.
"It's just leftovers and some eggs." Sasuke replied snootily.
"And yet it's more than what a lot of other people have to eat in a whole day." she wondered quietly, before putting her hands together and muttering a thanks for the food. She ignored the look Itachi pinned her with while Sasuke peppered him questions asking if that was really true.
"Yes, Sasuke. We are very lucky to be able to call this a normal breakfast." he said patiently, making his baby brother settle down thoughtfully as he chewed on his food.
The rest of the meal went by quickly and without much conversation and soon Sasuke was being seen off at the door.
"Nii-san, will you be here when I get back?"
Itachi's gaze seemed to portray the answer but the little boy didn't give up.
"Can we train before dinner?"
"Not today, Sasuke."
"Can we train after dinner?"
"Still no, Sasuke."
"Can we make dinner together?"
"Maybe next time."
"Can we - oof! Ow, what was that for?"
The cute little Uchiha rubbed his forehead and squinted up at not his brother, but an amused Amaterasu.
"I always wanted to do that." she mumbled to herself, and Sasuke glared. "Off you go. You're going to be late." she added, making a shooing motion with her hands.
He stuck his tongue out at her.
"You can't tell me what to do!" he retorted, crossing his arms haughtily.
"Sasuke. You're going to be late."
The haughtiness drained from his form at the stern statement and he trudged to the door.
"Hai, nii-san." With a last goodbye, he was finally off.
"He's going to be a problem in the future. I can sense it." Amaterasu stated as they walked back inside, her conjuring up a few shadow clones to take care of the housework. Itachi looked offended.
"He's just being a kid."
"Pfft. You skipped that stage." she replied off-handedly, entering his room to fold up the extra futon he had lent her.
"We all did." he murmured. "So that kids like him don't have to."
Amaterasu had nothing to say to that, brushing her hair and deftly plaiting them into her two usual braids. She strapped on her pouch and stretched.
"It was actually really nice to have a lie in. It's mid morning already and I haven't run a single set of suicides." she wondered, peering out of the window as she absentmindedly stuck a decently sized pebble from one of his potted plants to her forehead. It was like the leaf exercise, but with something much more dense and heavy. As soon as she let go, the strain of the weight against her chakra was noticeable and she stilled, having to focus on keeping it there.
"Where's Shisui?" her companion asked, not at all weirded out by the fact that she was actively willing a rock to stick on her forehead and instead checking through his scroll storage supplies. Apparently he had a mission out of the village but wasn't sure how long it was going to take. Amaterasu had naturally read between the lines within a second, but she could understand why it wasn't supposed to be openly known. It was the very first international Chūnin exams after all.
"Probably on his way to our genin training ground. I lied, he's not picking me up. Apparently he's taking over control of both my team and clan training." she said distractedly, concentrating on keeping a steady stream of chakra fluxing between her skin and the surface of the rock.
"I thought he only wanted to teach specialist tracking..."
Amaterasu made a questioning noise - Itachi wasn't one for trailing off sentences. He correctly interpreted the noise as wanting more information.
"It's classified."
Amaterasu hummed at that and managed to raise an eyebrow while slowly beginning to shift the rock on her forehead to the one side, inching it along with minute push and pulls of her chakra. She felt pretty impressed with herself, even as the concentration strain started leading to a faint headache.
"How does the fact that Shisui started training as a sensei lead to what you were about to tell me being classified?" she asked quizzically, having to pause the chakra control exercise to ask. "Actually, don't tell me. He must have taken you and your team on some sort of training trip, which didn't end well. Wait, your team wants to specialise in tracking?"
"No."
"Then it was just you that went on that training exercise, because you like to be good at everything."
"Amaterasu." Itachi said warningly and she huffed.
"You're no fun, Itachi. Must have been interesting if ANBU were involved." she attempted off-handedly.
Itachi couldn't hide his surprise at that, eyes darting up from what he was doing to pin her with a hard stare. It was exactly what she was hoping for.
"Aha! Called it." she grinned cheekily, making him glare heatedly. "You can't hide anything from me." she sing-songed, and he looked heavily disturbed... Well, as heavily disturbed as Itachi Uchiha could look.
"Always nice to chat, Tachi. I love how detailed your descriptions are and how I never have to work out what you're actually saying." she chirped sarcastically, before shooting him a small smile. "I'll see you around. Good luck for the exams and talk to me instead of assuming like an ass, alright?"
With that, she cut the chakra connecting to the rock and disappeared before it dropped back into the pot.
The young Uchiha hit the ground running as she appeared on the rooftop, gently warming her muscles up with chakra and massaging her forehead. She hummed as she rolled the energy around, feeling comfortable with it being such an intrinsic part of her now. It was strange to try and think back to a time when she didn't think it actually existed. She just got it now, particularly after training with the lynxes, and she wasn't exactly sure why but she loved it.
When she arrived at the training ground, she saw that Chen was already there, running through taijutsu drills on a wooden training post. He looked like he had been there for a while since he was sweaty, the water bottle was empty and his jacket discarded. The kata were the final year academy techniques though and although his execution of them was perfect, with good speed and strength, he needed a new style that was adapted to him if he was actually going to use it against other shinobi.
Chen was an interesting development. She didn't know whether he had existed in canon, but all things considered he probably had. He could have died early on and that was the reason for him never being relevant, although Tenten had basically been a background character even as a member of Gai's team, so perhaps he had been alive, as a shinobi or not. Either way, he was relevant to her life and now that she didn't have a ridiculous clan schedule to worry about, she was going to make sure that he did not remain as a liability to their team for long.
A kunai whistled past his ear and slammed into the post in front of him, making him jump and whirl around in shock. Amaterasu frowned at that. He had no awareness of his surroundings whatsoever and his reaction had been to simply gape offendedly at the assaulter.
Ignoring whatever exclamation he was running his mouth through as background noise, she simply gave him the polite gesture of presenting the pointy weapons she was about to throw at him before actually doing so. His volume actually increased for a few seconds, until he realised she wasn't going to stop and promptly shut up, desperately concentrating on not being hit by the very real, pointy weapons.
Amaterasu was hit with a sudden feeling of déjà vu as she flitted around the clearing, loosely aiming kunai and shuriken at the older boy, close enough to make him jerk away. Her original reactions to this kind of training had been exactly the same as his, in response to Fugaku who had introduced the method to her when she was three.
That felt like a lifetime ago.
"You started this training when you were three?!" Chen yelped as one sliced into his sandal.
"Ah. Did I say that out loud?" she replied, aloof, still basking in nostalgia. A clang startled her out of her daydream a few moments later and she blinked out of her reverie to see Shisui crouched over Chen... who was bleeding from a gash on his shoulder.
"Oops." she mouthed, catching the eyes of a confused looking Kabuto who had just entered the clearing. Despite being the medic, he didn't immediately run over to get to work on mending the wound. Shisui had to ask him to heal it before he moved to do so. Amaterasu didn't really know why she noted that but she did.
Her brother walked over to her, looking faintly exasperated but not particularly angry that she had been assaulting her teammate.
'Ninja.' she reminded herself internally.
"It was his first time, Ama. Your aim must be slightly off, not dead on, or he'll be injured enough to be excused from training." he advised knowingly, completely serious.
'...Uchiha.' Amaterasu reasoned to herself once more. She refrained from snorting, instead walking over and asking her teammate if he was alright. He looked a rather interesting shade of green, but was still alive and not particularly upset. Things were chill.
A few minutes later and everything was back in order, the three of them seated comfortably on the grass in a semicircle while Shisui stood in front of them.
"I hope you've enjoyed your lie in today, because we'll meet here at dawn every day starting from tomorrow." he informed them. "We'll warm up together then split off into developing each of your personal skills till noon. We may take a mission in the afternoon or we could work on something else team based. Once a week we'll have sparring matches a bit out of the village so we can go all out. Whether it's versus each other, me or another team will be determined at the time."
Shisui paused to stare critically, his gaze shifting over them one at a time, before he crouched to be more on their level. He then let out the purest, most reassuring smile Amaterasu had ever seen and she blinked, taken aback at his expression and his next words.
"My name is Shisui Uchiha and my promise to you as a part of this team is that I will never betray you." he promised quietly, and her brother let that hang for a while before stretching to his full height once more. "If you need help of any kind, you can come to me. Be it something to do with training, teammates, the village - if it's affecting you then it'll be my business and I will help you, because we're a team."
Amaterasu let her brother's charisma wash over her in waves and was honestly surprised that she was experiencing this side of him for the first time.
It clicked why this boy was made jōnin despite his age. Not just because of his abilities or experience, but due to this skill to make his team trust him enough to willingly follow him to the ends of the earth. Such a skill was a god given gift, and it was affecting her teammates. Chen had stars in his eyes and even Kabuto seemed a little shaken at the sincerity of the leader in front of them.
"My job as captain of this team will be concluded the moment you'll apply this exact philosophy with each other. Trust and believe in each other and yourselves. Fight for each other and let the others fight for you." Shisui continued, his words sure and unwavering.
"I am this team's captain. I will oversee your training and teach you everything I can, but if I think you can benefit from someone who specialises in what you're struggling with, I won't have any qualms with asking them to help you. I will go through my best efforts to get you learning opportunities because your development as individuals contributes to the development of our team. I expect you to give that same dedication. Have I made myself clear?"
There was a slight pause as the three genin gathered their wits, but they slowly shared a look and chorused a firm "Hai Taichō!".
Shisui smiled.
"Let's begin by evaluating each other's levels. Kabuto, you sit this one out with me while Amaterasu and Chen spar."
Chen paled.
Amaterasu let Chen warm up to it, dancing around and trading blows at a languid pace, letting him showcase his clean, basic taijutsu. She picked up the pace slightly once it was clear his nerves had begun to settle and he kept up.
"Do you remember our very first spar, Amaterasu?" he asked as he scrambled for a kunai to swipe at her, making her flip backwards to gain distance. She tilted her head at him curiously.
"Yes, of course." she replied, taking out a kunai of her own and absentmindedly twirling it around her finger.
"I went easy on you then because I thought you were a kid." he continued, taking out a scroll from his pouch. "And you went easy on me because you thought I was just shit at taijutsu."
Amaterasu tensed, studying him and their surroundings with a contemplative gaze. He was stalling for time. Did he have a clone somewhere setting things up? He said he could only do the academy jutsu so unless he lied that couldn't be the case. What was he playing at?
"I am shit at taijutsu, but that's not all I can do."
The younger girl watched as he unraveled the scroll, and before he did anything else she spoke up, simultaneously molding chakra in preparation for what was going to happen next.
"You're going to have to come at me with the intent to kill if we want to show Shisui-taichō anything worth his time. We need to trust the team. Taichō won't let us die." she coaxed, rolling her shoulders back as her skin buzzed from the unrestricted chakra seeping into her muscles.
His eyes widened slightly at that, shivering from the new sense of something in the air. Chen smirked.
"Fine." he concluded, and with a spark of chakra, smoke puffed and a barrage of kunai shot at her. She dodged most of them, blocking a few before running straight at him. Only pure instinct and the faint whistle of weapons flying from behind made her dodge with a sharp jump to the side, making another barrage of kunai sink into the dirt where she had been milliseconds before.
'Where the heck did that come from?'
Her eyes widened at the large log that was hurtling towards her at an alarming speed and she unconsciously shuffled through handseals, the previously idle chakra she had molded heaving from her stomach. It was converted into concentrated heat, into unrestricted, raw power -
'Katon: Gōkakyū no Jutsu (Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique)'
The fireball burst from her lips and impacted the log, forcing the charred wood away from her despite its original momentum. In the time it took the log to hit the ground she had landed crouched on a nearby tree trunk, completely unharmed.
The sneaky shit had laid traps all over the clearing before they all arrived! Her realisation made a positive emotion swell in her - Chen did not want to look like a pushover. She scanned the clearing but he had disappeared, making her frown.
'Kage Bunshin no jutsu'
Her chakra took the form of another her, her reserves now alarmingly half of what they were. It made her breath hitch slightly at the sudden loss, something she had never really got used to. The replica jumped off the trunk and back into the clearing, where it was promptly forced into a certain section through tactically placed barrages of weapons. Once positioned, it only took a bout of rapid taijutsu, courtesy of the newly reappeared Chen, for the clone to slip into the genjutsu covered hole. It was deep enough that the clone promptly dispelled upon hitting the bottom. The memories flowed back, showing Amaterasu the dimensions of the hole, along with the clone's chakra that smoothly but quickly filled her reserves to what they were before she used the jutsu. Again, a sensation Amaterasu did not particularly enjoy.
The Uchiha had spent the time her distraction afforded her scanning the clearing with her Sharingan to unveil the extent and locations of the traps set. Chen had returned into hiding after seeing that it was a clone, and Amaterasu let him, preoccupied with thinking up an effective strategy.
There were a lot of traps and without Chen on her side to explain what the precise triggers were she had no idea when they would be set off. She could theoretically summon a veritable horde of clones and charge at Chen straight on, Naruto style, but she really didn't like the influx of their memories, or the feeling of sudden draining/refilling her of her chakra reserves.
'Fūton: Daitoppa (Wind Release: Great Breakthrough)' she intoned instead, applying nature transformation to alter her chakra into a churning blast of cool wind, laden with power. Upon leaving her mouth, it took the form of a miniature typhoon which screamed through the trees where most of the traps had been based. The sound of kunai ejectors going off and logs slamming to the ground were clear and she persisted until Chen tumbled out of hiding, scratched arms crossed against the strong gust.
Amaterasu wasted no time, cutting off the jutsu and leaping forwards to reach Chen before he could recover. However, just as she got close, her Sharingan highlighted the explosive tags lining the scroll he was holding. He chucked it at her and jumped the other way, evidently having set it off when in hiding. Amaterasu barely had a moment to latch on to a nearby log in her peripherals before the explosion invested her position.
Thank fuck she had trained extensively on how to perform the Kawarimi no jutsu without handseals. Chen really had prepared a lot more than she expected.
They stood at opposite ends of the clearing once more, breathing heavier than at the beginning and with Amaterasu's irises gleaming crimson. Without warning she flung kunai after kunai, shuriken after shuriken in an intense pattern of two, three or even four at a time. It was the most extensive shurikenjutsu she had ever managed to learn, requiring perfect timing, speed, strength and precision, so she focused on her technique and not on what Chen was doing. The weapons clanged against each other at specific times, and as soon as Chen became preoccupied trying to defend from attacks coming from angles he couldn't possibly predict, Ama sank underground.
The match was over when she grabbed his ankle and buried him up to his neck in soil, surfacing just in time to stop the final kunai from stabbing him in the face. Amaterasu shook out the dirt in her hair and dusted off her clothes as she plopped down next to his head with a sigh.
"You alright down there?" she asked after a few moments of silence, and Chen rolled his eyes.
"I give. You win." he admitted easily, letting out a long breath. "So two hours of preparation equated to just this. That was barely five minutes."
"Four minutes and thirteen seconds if we're being picky." Shisui added helpfully, approaching them with slow claps. "Not bad. Not bad at all."
"You're a genius." Amaterasu said flatly, glaring at the head of the boy she had just buried. He craned his head to look up at her incredulously.
"Are you seriously the one saying that about me?"
She shook her head, tapping her temple to draw attention to her red eyes.
"I don't forget things when I see them with these and it seems neither do you. Except you don't need chakra for it, just your brain. You memorised the full layouts of all the traps we encountered when we were evaluated by Shikaku, didn't you? I saw some of the triggers and ejectors positioned exactly the same way. You set them all up perfectly. After seeing them once. In a high stress environment." she said thoughtfully. "You graduated the Academy early at age nine and students are usually picked for early graduation depending on the knowledge-based exam scores. Do you find rote memorisation of a textbook easy?"
"I- w-what… I just - " the poor boy spluttered incoherently.
"You have photographic memory, don't you." Amaterasu cut in instead, looking at him with a frightening intensity that made him squawk.
"I don't even know what that is!" Chen huffed, looking flustered by her evaluation.
She ignored what he said, choosing instead to glare at him heatedly following a sudden revelation.
"That means you did still go easy on me. You could have replicated the explosive ones with the four tier wires and you didn't." she marvelled. Chen squeaked.
"No way. You're crazy. Do you know how dangerous those are? They're used to behead people on the spot and can amputate limbs if I do something the slightest bit wrong!"
Chen was once again ignored as Amaterasu shared a look with her brother.
"The photographic memory bit has to be investigated further, but there's no denying he has insane potential. He'll be flooring me in no time if I don't improve my strategies." she mumbled, eyes glazed as her thoughts whirred at seventy miles an hour. Shisui flicked her forehead, snapping her out of it.
"Kabuto, your thoughts?" he asked.
The boy pushed his glasses up his nose before he replied, looking solemn.
"I don't think this was a fair match. The playing field was Chen's - he had unlimited time, or as he said, two hours setting it up before. He wouldn't be able to do that in a real life situation."
"We didn't decide what the event was though. If Chen was playing the part of an ambush and I was the target, then this is how it would've played out. I don't think the question of whether it was 'fair' matters much in this match." Amaterasu quipped back.
"Kabuto is right, Ama. This was supposed to be a sparring match." Shisui intervened however.
"I don't think Chen did anything wrong. He prepped the place to his advantage and it was a result of his own proactivity. Surely that's what ninja do?" Amaterasu frowned.
"I never said he did anything wrong. You were the careless one, starting a match before asking your opponent or proctor to declare whether the terrain is fair and doing the first stage of the seal of confrontation." Shisui replied. "As I said, this is a village sparring match, so that's what you should have done."
Ama opened her mouth, and then promptly shut it. Her knowledge of matches was unconsciously based on Naruto's Chūnin examinations - which technically hadn't happened yet. Thinking back to her actual experiences, what Shisui said was true. They had been taught at the Academy that the first stage of the seal of confrontation - outstretching two fingers before the start of the match - meant they were approaching this match in a fair and honorable way.
"Huh, you're absolutely right. I forgot." she realised. She helped dig out Chen's arm and locked two fingers around his, finishing the seal of reconciliation thoughtfully. She never realised how different fights within the village and between villages actually were, but it made sense now she thought about it.
Her breath hitched as a thought struck her. Itachi was used to this system. He was going to the Chūnin exams. They didn't do this honour/comrade stuff over there. How much had Itachi changed from the coldly calculative, one track minded one from the anime?
An image of Itachi, staring at her exasperatedly but with a subtly caring, contented aura and a slightly awkward figure of speaking - He was going to be fine though, right? He couldn't die. He was still a good shinobi even with all the medic stuff, right?
The first Chūnin exams were probably going to be rigged and heavily monitored because it was a matter of village pride, especially since it was so close after the end of the war. A loss didn't just mean a potential lack of promotion... It was going to reflect the strength of your village. The villages were only going to send shinobi that were definitely beyond qualified to achieve the rank of chūnin, those who all had experience in the war so that they would know what was at stake. Amaterasu wouldn't put it past some villages to put forward ninja that were already experienced chūnin, if it meant they would win.
A spark of chakra to her shoulder made her blink out of her thoughts and she realised that Chen and Kabuto were positioning themselves in the middle of the clearing once more.
"What is it, Ama?" her brother asked gently after the two began the spar by running towards each other to engage in taijutsu.
Amaterasu gazed up at him, and her expression must have shown her fear because the hand on her shoulder tensed.
"The Chūnin exams..." she began slowly. "There won't be a seal of confrontation or anything like that, will there?"
Shisui's face darkened for a moment before he gave her a reassuring squeeze coupled with a bright smile. It seemed so genuine Amaterasu wanted so badly to believe it was real.
"It's Itachi, Amaterasu." he reminded her from the corner of his mouth. "He's exceptional."
"He's also an iryōnin now. His priority won't be offence." she whispered back, trying to seem like she was focusing on the fight in front of her.
"His fighting style was like that in the first place. Centred around defence, keeping back, seeing how they reacted to his genjutsu and analysing the opponent before making his moves. The medic stuff is just an added bonus. You didn't think your brother was going to let him slack on the shinobi side of things, did you?" Shisui murmured. "I took him on a training trip with me only last week and he did well. He'll be fine."
Amaterasu watched as Chen unleashed one of the few of his traps that were still intact, making Kabuto dodge by slipping underground. That turned out to be a good move because one of the kunai had an explosive tag attached to it.
"Yeah, the one that escalated to getting involved with ANBU." she muttered under her breath, fully intending for him to hear it. Shisui didn't initially react - he was far too good for that. When he spoke next however, his tone was frosty.
"How did you -"
"Classified, I know. Don't worry, Itachi said nothing. But why else would a simple training exercise within the village perimeter become classified? We have no war going on so it's not enemy infiltration, meaning it must be internal strife. No chūnin or genin would have been where you were because you were supposed to be tracking someone - presumably the jōnin supervising your exercise. You must have been in a remote area and somewhere off the routes usually taken by other shinobi when going in and out of the village or it wouldn't have been an isolated exercise. So no one should've been there at all, let alone causing enough trouble that you had to intervene." she murmured quickly.
"It wasn't the Konoha Police because you wouldn't be here teaching us if that was the case. So... what's the only other group of shinobi that are important enough to turn a training exercise into a classified case. ANBU. Hence, ANBU problems."
Shisui pinned her with an odd look before returning his gaze to the fight.
"I literally have no idea how there can be problems with a group like ANBU, which is supposed to be elite shinobi, handpicked by the Hokage himself for their loyalty, but that was just my musing. It would have remained just a musing but your and Itachi's reactions just told me I was right." she shrugged in a 'what can you do' manner.
"Your 'musings' have gotten you in trouble before and they will get you in trouble again." Shisui breathed with a touch of unrestrained anger, and she stiffened at that. "No one gets to know what they aren't supposed to know without any consequences (1). Think about what you're going to say and before you say it, 'muse' through any potential consequences since you're so good at it. You'll realise that there'll be scenarios where you can do yourself a favour by just keeping your mouth shut."
Amaterasu's head bowed at his words, cheeks reddening in embarrassment and shame. That... was brutal. Brutally honest and something she probably did need to hear, but it still stung. One would think that she would have realised this from her traumatic prior experiences but apparently not.
Why was she like this? How did her pride override basic common sense? She was well into her thirties and still being... what was wrong with her?
Self loathing washed over her in waves as she tried to think of words to say to her brother that would make this better.
Before she could say anything at all however, he clapped as the match in front of them came to a close. Amaterasu shoved her thoughts on the matter to the back of her mind and focused on team training for the rest of the morning.
Shisui left for a mission of his own after briefing them on a babysitting D-rank, and although she did try to wait up for him, he didn't come home that night. Strangely enough, neither did Kin.
I'm back! Thank you for your reviews and your interest! Thoughts on Itachi and how he's changed? Think he'll be too soft to be the cold decision maker that got things done?
(1) Shoutout to anyone that can tell me who said this and which chapter! I will honestly be so impressed if you remember.