I do not own Naruto. Or Zelda. Side note, I have no idea how age works. TW for Gore and past trauma.
Ryuishi stretches out on the unfamiliar bed, her long, tan legs sliding easily against the tacky shuriken-patterned sheets. The bed beneath her isn't as nice as the one she owns, but it's a step up from the fuuton she spent a week sleeping on in the Okiya. Meaning, it's much better than a cushion on the floor with a fucking weird wooden block for a pillow. It's probably a good thing she spent all those years learning how to deal with that shit back in Kiri, now that she thinks about it. Learning the ins and outs of the culture of escorts was more useful than anything she could have asked for.
The old Okiya wasn't of the highest quality, the kind of establishment that trained people for entertaining nobles, but neither was it a shack full of too many drugs and worn-looking women. They taught a little bit of class there, just a tiny, tiny bit. It's where she learned to walk in the ridiculously layered kimono and stupid ass high, slanted zori. She learned how to pour tea just right, and say fanciful fucking nonsense that sounded pleasing to the ear. She could speak like a lady, and act like one of those really awesome and perfect housewives. It also taught her how to pick a john, if she ever needed to. One that wouldn't beat the shit out of her or get violent. It taught her how to calm those dickheads that got too rowdy, and how to force a pretty, pretty smile onto her face even though she would have torn the teeth right out some of those leering asshole's faces.
(Actually, she might have learned that one in high school. It was nice to know how to do it in this weird, culturally-meshed world, though.)
She hums out the notes to the Song of Storms, her eyes darting over the pages of the Icha-Icha book. She's already read it, and even if it's not great, there is some pretty awesome prose inside of it.
Still, she'd kill a fucker with a candy wrapper for a gaming system and a television. They have the latter, if you have connections or lots of cash to blow, but they aren't really popular and also, really shit quality. The movies are okay, though. The spread of technology is fucking weird. She misses the convenience of internet, and telephones… and video games, board games, mass manufacturing, bulk product, easy to install electric lighting, cars, planes… shit. The things she would do for a klondike bar would horrify and traumatize the masses. She doesn't even fucking like klondike bars. But ice cream and chocolate are specialty items, and she misses the chemical taste of things from her old world.
Ryuishi continues her song, mouth barely open to vocalize better. The acoustics of the room are great, even if the traps make it a bitch and a half to get into. She is so stuck in the book and her own thoughts she doesn't hear the front door slide open and then close again.
The grim-faced Hatake Kakashi, however, takes one look at the pack neatly settled innocuously near the corner of his couch and the spread of files on his table and promptly clenches his jaw. Did she even know how much paperwork her disappearance caused? His hand had cramped halfway through and he still had to finish it.
How does she keep getting in his house anyway? How did nobody notice her getting in? His alarms should have been triggered. He should have had some sort of warning his day was going to be ruined other than extra items and strangely comforting humming.
He takes a moment to wonder why she sings so much, and why it sounds so nice. Half the songs aren't even in actual words. None that he knows anyway, but judging how they rhyme and how they still sound well made, he can only guess that the manic woman made up her own language. A strange one, full of syllables and sounds he didn't know could be made outside of feverish babbling. The whole language is mad, just like her.
Kakashi sucks it up, remembers the plans he and the Hokage discussed and continues onward. He has a mission. He always completes his missions for the benefit of Konoha and its people. He's taken mortal wounds for his country, he can expose himself to an unstable teenager for it. Or so he thinks, until he makes his way to his bedroom and enters it, following the lulling sound.
He wants to just slump in defeat, because he is sure this is not in any training manual. What does one do when a missing nin has sprawled out over their bed wearing stupid, ridiculously tiny shorts, long hair trailing loosely over their body and…
"Is that my shirt?" he asks, appalled. The woman in question jerks minutely, and he congratulates himself for sneaking up on her. Finally.
"Mother fuck—!" she starts, whipping her novel away from her face, only to take in his purposefully non-threatening stance and breath out a sigh of relief. "Oh. You're home," she finishes, placing her hand over her chest as if to calm a racing heart.
He stares at the fabric drooping around her. He isn't that much bigger than her, but the way she has it on make her look ridiculous, like a child playing dress-up.
She follows his gaze curiously, her face lighting up in understanding when she sees the fabric. "Oh! Yah! Um, I used to steal my unit's shirts all the time because their big and comfortable so, I mean, since we're—" Companions? Acquaintances? "—friends, I thought it would be cool," she explains, squirming a bit. "I mean, that's what they do, right? Steal each others clothes and crash at each others places…" she finishes uncertainly. She bites her lip and looks out the window overhead.
Kakashi isn't certain what normal friends do, but he thinks people may get ideas if they find out a younger woman wears his clothes and waits for him on his bed while reading—admittedly, very good in his opinion—literotica. He's certain of it. Maybe he can omit this from the report? No, it could be an important detail for the psyche eval. Dammit. Nobody can ever tell the Toad Sage, ever.
(Somewhere, a white-haired shinobi pauses in his stroll. How long has it been since he's seen Sakumo's brat? A while, right? Didn't he just make jounin, or was that a few years ago? Maybe he should send the kid a letter. Bet he's a hit with the ladies by now. Or men. Jiraiya doesn't judge.)
"Er… right?" she asks again, and this time he sees the uncertainty written out on her face. He takes a moment to remember where he's seen it before and is cast back to the morning after her flashback. She's embarrassed, possibly ashamed, her slanted coal eyes wide and searching, and her nails nervously digging into her palms.
"It's… fine," he relents, even though it's really not. She searches his face some more before accepting his words, even though it looks like she suspects something else.
"Okay," she breathes, shifting her bare legs closer to herself. He wonders if she's uncomfortable, because she keeps scanning the room as if suspecting an ambush.
The silence in the room is heavy and stilted. Do either of them have any idea what they're doing?
"Um… I brought some more files. One might be irrelevant, though. There was a leak in your system, and I took care of it for you," she says. He stiffens. The fact that she stopped one leak just meant that it was either of no more use to her, or was dangerous to her own information.
"Took care of it?" he asks, his tone even and calm after years of practice.
"Oh yeah, she's like, super fucking dead. The facts are all in the files, and I have some remains to confirm identity, if you want. The scroll is in my pack. The buyers are also scattered now, or dead, but some of them were worth some cash, so I hope you don't mind if I sold them," she answers nonchalantly.
Ignoring the fact that she admitted to a ruthless and premeditated murder, which is nothing surprising, (aside from the fact that apparently she didn't even leave a whole corpse to recover) this is big news. Even if it was for her own benefit, she took the initiative to eliminate a threat to Fire Country. The Hokage will be ecstatic to know his plan is showing signs of fruition even after such a small amount of time.
"Thank you," he says, and he is surprised to find he might actually mean it.
She flips her hand around, the sleeves of his shirt swaying loosely around her arm. "Nah, it was nothing. I was doing some stuff in the area anyway," she waves off, but he notes the pleased look in her dark eyes. Responsive to praise. Perhaps he should treat her like one of his summons? She seems to respond well to food and and attention, and even if he hasn't attempted discipline, it could work. Maybe he could burn her energy out with some exercise? Speaking of—
"I found a place to train that won't compromise your identity, or require sparring," he informs her. She twitches, and he can see her features slump and melt into something wary.
"Yah?" she asks cautiously, and he knows she is defensive, "I'm not really in the mood to be isolated and then ambushed, so forgive me if I decline."
So untrusting, he thinks.
"The only thing that would ambush would be the wildlife, or me if you agreed to a training exercise," he answers. The pleasant expression is gone from her face, and she looks calculating.
"It's named Training Ground Forty-Four," he says, and something sparks in her eyes before suddenly being smothered out. "Most people call it The Forest of Death, though," he tells her.
"Well, that sounds homey," she drawls, her eyes wandering back to the book in her hands.
"It's open, and full of hiding areas," he reassures, not mentioning the sealed gates, "Plenty of places to disengage."
It's an attempt to assuage any worries she might have, and being a missing-nin on the run, that's a lot. It's also a good way to gauge her skills, but not without giving away some of his. From the look on her face, she knows this. She might even know the training grounds. They are somewhat infamous.
"You know I still have check-in dates, right?" she asks, and he nods at the subtle threat. The very reason she is being brought into the fold is a threat against them. An embargo on trade and anger amongst the populace is what nobody wants. Her death or disappearance could spark wars.
He wonders if she ever thinks about it when she engages in risky behavior.
"Is this even a friend thing?" she asks suddenly, "Or is it blatant information gathering?"
He pauses and fights back a reaction. Does she know? Or is she just being distrustful of him? Has she figured everything out, or is this just a blunt question? He has to be careful.
"I know many shinobi and kunoichi who train together to strengthen bonds," he answers slowly, "And they say facing an hardship together forms long-lasting friendship."
"Who's they? Who actually fucking says that?"
He doesn't actually know. If he were a lesser man, he would be sweating.
She rolls her eyes in the silence and flops down on his bed, covering her face with the book. He hears a sigh, and he questions why she is so very dramatic.
"Fine, whatever. Let's go to your horrible horror movie woods and bond with nature or some shit. Maybe I die when I get ambushed by a billion creepy masked motherfuckers, or maybe I get strangled by an errant vine. Either way, I won't have to face the consequences," she relents.
She needs to keep up with her training anyway. Orochimaru will know if she hasn't. She's already taken the weeks she spent with Naruto and Gaara off. So what if it's in a infamously horrible forest full of weird shit? That could describe the streets of Kiri, and she'd come out of them relatively alright.
Besides, it's THE Forest of Death. She's curious, and beside the overwhelming need to meddle in things, she is driven by her curiosity. Like an itch she can't scratch, the need to push things and gamble on uncertain outcomes is second nature for her. She's pretty certain she can handle some woods. Even if she can't, she doesn't believe Hatake would be so stupid as to let her die.
She's keeping his shirt for later, though. It's super comfy. He can think of it as payment for putting up with this nonsense.
The next day Ryuishi looks up, and up, and up, and up. The treetops are so high they block out the morning sun, and already she regrets waking up early and sneaking around the village. Admittedly, it was pretty funny when Hatake thought he had lost her, but then…
Ryuishi looks down where her handler seems to have doubled. A stoic-faced, brown-haired boy is watching her with intensely crazy eyes.
She slides her gaze over to the silver-haired nin, who is showing no reaction at all the the straggler he seems to have picked up. "Hey," she starts, "Remember that thing I said about an ambush?"
"Yes," Kakashi says simply. A moment of silence reigns supreme and a light breeze sweeps between them all.
"Why… Why did you pick up your teammate?" she tries again.
"I didn't," Kakashi tells her. He shifts in place, his single grey eye turning to look at the blank-faced boy glaring at her.
The boy in question, and honestly, he can't be much older than her, or younger—they might even be the same age. As always, she sucks with these sort of things—glares at her. She has a feeling that if he could rip her soul from her body with his eyeballs alone, he totally would.
"How did you know who I was?" he demands, and seriously, that boy has the mark of the crazy on him.
"You smell like resin," she explains to him, "and also, you need new sandals because the one on your left foot has a tear in the heel that was there last time I was here."
Both of these are lies. She actually knows him because of a previous life of foreign comic books, and maybe she looked at his ass a little. Ryuishi doesn't forget a good butt.
The boy accepts it as truth, though, even if she does get a side eye from Hatake. Tenzo… Yamato? Whoever he is, he looks stricken for a second for having given away his identity, which is pretty funny.
"What is he even doing here?" she asks, this time turning to Hatake. He shrugs, and they both look back to him for information.
"I'm—" Tenzo says, stalling for a moment. The reason he was here is because no Konoha operative should take on a mission alone. Not when they had backup, and not with that woman. When he asked his senpai why she was in the village, he was told it was classified information. When he had informed the Hokage of his senpai's strange behavior, the old man had smiled and told him he was aware of what was happening, as it was an important mission.
He didn't ask to be let in on that information, or the mission, all he asked was if senpai had to do it alone. He had been given the affirmative to support his captain as long as his captain allowed it. So when he had sensed his chakra signature looking for something, he had prepared himself to investigate. Now, here they were.
"Spit it out already," the she-demon hisses.
"I'm chaperoning," he states. He isn't sure if it is true.
He hears the smack of his senpai's palm against his face and he knows he is cradling his eyes in his hands.
The deceptively normal-looking woman sends him an incredulous look, her brows raised high on her forehead. "What now?" she asks.
The more he thinks about it, the more he is sure of his statement. Obviously this missing-nin is running a seduction mission. Her shirt, if it could be called that, exposed her stomach and navel, and the cut showed a little too much collarbone and the barest hints of cleavage. Her loose pants were sitting far too low on her waist, as well. He recalls the way she lulled them all into a false sense of security with her home cooked meals and her delicious walnut rolls. Truly, she was a formidable infiltration specialist.
He would stand strong, for senpai. He would be the reminder his captain needed.
"I'm sorry, are you in fact, implying what I think you're implying?" she asks again, and this time her incredulous expression has turned into a mask of glee.
Ryuishi whips her head towards Hatake, who looks like he would like the ground to devour him whole. Actually, he looks exasperated, but she can exaggerate if she wants to.
"Hatake," she breathes, a manic grin on her face. She can see him wince. "Which one of us has the virtue that needs protecting?"
"Please, stop," he states flatly, his hand swiping down his face.
"No, no, let him come. This is the best ambush I could ask for," she tells him. It could be a lie, then again, everything she knows about them is probably a lie. Also, it's a bit creative of a lie for a brainwashed child… teenager… man? It's really out there, is what she's trying to say. He could have told her something more believable.
"Don't encourage this," he bites out. She laughs a second before attempting to smother it, and he hates that he doesn't feel more offended.
"No, please, let's all go into the horribly terrifying forest of monsters together. Wood boy can make sure we all have our virtue intact."
Kakashi groans.
"That is, if you had virtue in the first place," she teases. Tenzo turns to her, and his stoic face is something of a marvel. She has no clue how he makes his stupid turtle head plate look so shadowy and grave, but it is mildly impressive.
"Senpai is very virtuous," he assures her, and the fact that he's so fucking serious, but still using the word 'senpai' is killing her. She can't help it. It sounds fucking ridiculous.
"Soooo virtuous," she chokes out, attempting to swallow her laughter. She feels more comfortable trading snide insults with them than she ever has before. What does that say about her? "Untouched. His honor is intact," she wheezes out again, and the glare Hatake sends her could melt steel. She has no idea why this is so funny to her.
Without words, the silver-haired nin turns and goes toward the gate, and she begins to finally regain her composure a bit. Instead, the humor turns to excitement as she looks out into the dark forest, thick with trees so tall the touch the sky.
She doesn't really pay attention to whatever complex bullshit he's doing to the gates, only peripherally aware of them the same way she was any other person. Instead, her gaze is locked on the sky-scraping flora around them. She isn't sure if they were old or just the result of chakra, but she knows that if she ever imagined a place that had Ents, it would be this place. It feels old, like, old as balls, and the air is heavy and thick with some sort of aura. It is the unnatural feeling that the fog held in Kirigakure, the sort of sensation of something more than just nature.
She can feel the grin on her face, and she knows she might be a bit manic, but this forest, it feels alive. Not in the way the Bijuu chakra felt, malignant and oppressive against her senses, or the way Guy seemed, exuberant and overflowing with purpose. No, the forest feels alive in the same way the ocean and desert feel alive, like it's been there for an eternity, unchanged and forever. As if, for all the human activity that it had seen, it was untouched and unexplored.
Ryuishi follows the dog-nin inside, followed by the Mokuton user, and knows that she should be wary and afraid of her eminent betrayal. Instead, she is in awe.
"Woah," she breathes out, and she hears the gate shut behind them. This place is amazing.
The smell of damp, earthy woods fills her nostrils, along with that extra something else. She can already feel the stirrings of life around her, and her heart beats in her chest, solid and sure.
"Okay, I still hate you for waking me up, but this might be worth it," she admits, and Hatake doesn't say a word. He just sends her a glance and leaps with chakra-powered feet into the trees above, followed by his second-in-command.
Ryuishi lets out a loud whoop of joy, not caring if it gives away her position, and scurries after them.
She laughs, and the other two must think that it is strange, because they send her looks as they flit, silent and graceful, through the trees. She doesn't think she'll ever be as good as they are at branch hopping. It gives her a new appreciation for the both of them. How can they just run like that? This isn't the fucking ground. There are branches and shit.
Unbeknownst to her, Kakashi is thinking something similar.
She isn't running in formation, or with them in any sense. Where he and Tenzo are a well oiled machine, honed down and in tune with each other's movements on an instinctual level, she is an outlier. A strangely moving one, at that.
"Watanabe," he asks, keeping his pace, "Are those maneuvers truly necessary?"
He watches her move through the canopy like an acrobat in a circus. She drops from an higher limb to dive forward and catch another branch with her hands, the momentum of the jump swinging her forward. The moment her feet are parallel to her arms, she releases, flowing forward and spinning until her feet connect to another branch, where she lands, crouched, and pushes off again. She's acting like some sort of gymnastic feline, springing, flipping, and weaving through the trees.
"I don't fucking know how they do it in Konoha," she explains joyfully, "But in Kiri, one moves around obstacles. I can't fucking run on trees like it's hard-packed earth."
"I suppose they just teach us how to dodge," he retorts, ducking under an errant branch. She laughs, and he has to wonder how many things she is attracting with her noise. Her feet don't make a sound, but her lips certainly do.
"Go ahead, try and hit me," she mocks, right before releasing into an admittedly very well-executed gainer.
Unfortunately, his kohai takes this invitation a little too seriously, and flings a kunai directly at her. Kakashi feels dread, his mind flashing through the consequences. If she gets hurt, she will never trust them again. If she dies, the world will pay for it in chaos and blood.
To his utter relief, she simply flips again, and in a feat of astounding dexterity, avoids the blade by centimeters, her body curving around it. In the second it took to ponder the world's demise, she has stopped her free fall and landed before springing off again. The maneuver used the least amount of chakra possible, barely a hint to stick the landing. She even laughs when she hears the kunai thunk into a tree trunk.
"See? Move with the force of your body to avoid strikes. Keep up now," she teases, darting forward. Does she even know where she's going?
He takes the opportunity to send a lethal glare at his kohai, who looks completely unapologetic.
"She asked for it, captain," he explains.
Kakashi laments his choices in life before following after. It's a good thing she isn't very fast.
There are a few, blessed moments of silence, before she starts talking again. "Hey, do you think this place has bears?" she asks, still a little too far out to be part of the group. "Because I always wanted to see if I could fight a bear."
"There are many things in training ground forty-four," Tenzo offers, in what most likely is an attempt to get back in his captain's good graces.
"So probably? God, your training grounds are so crazy," she says, and her grin is manic.
"Surely Kiri has something similar?" he asks, probing.
He sees her shrug out of the corner of his eye right before she lands on her hands and drags her legs between her arms, her feet never touching down. Still little to no chakra.
"I don't really know. Only ever used one, and then, it was rare," she explains. "I had just graduated when the war started, so I got most my training on missions or the front lines."
He hears a bewildered noise behind him from Tenzo, and Kakashi himself is startled.
"How old were you?" he asks.
"Er, seven when I graduated I, think. Same age for the war," she answers, and he is stunned. Not only did that make her a childhood genius, but it meant she had been taking front-line missions for most of her life. How was she still functioning?
Then Kakashi remembers the scars that line her body, the thin lines of white and thick scores on tan skin. He recalls the screaming night terrors and flashbacks, the mood swings, and reckless behavior.
Is she functioning?
"Where were your parents?" Tenzo asks, and Kakashi wants to smack him. It would be a relevant question, if she had shinobi parents. The only thing was, she told him she was an akasenko before.
"Mom was a whore. I found her crushed under some rubble when I came back on leave. Never knew my dad," she says, and she sounds so detached from it, like it doesn't matter.
He thinks of a child genius who lived through the horrors of war and is left with a broken dependence on teammates who are nowhere to be found. He thinks of a dead parent, found in the remains of what once was a home.
The story sounds intimately familiar.
"WOW," she exclaims, a little forcefully, "You sure know how to ask some seriously depressing questions, wood boy. What next? Are you gonna ask me about the graduation exam?"
"How did it feel kill your classmates?" his stupid, ignorant kohai asks in a monotone voice. He needs to teach the man about sarcasm and rhetorical questions, apparently.
This question seems to wipe out any benevolence the missing-nin might have been feeling. He can feel the immediate spike of her chakra, unnatural and thick with killing intent. He tenses, but keeps moving, his eyes glued to the kunoichi, watching her intently. Behind him, Tenzo moves stiffly, following his lead.
"Boy," she drawls, and the intonation sounds serpentine. He can feel his kohai recoil in horror from it. "You don't know shit," she bites out. He can see her muscles tensing, and every instinct in his head is telling him that she is dangerous, so dangerous. Even outnumbered and outclassed, she will drag them to hell with her.
She breathes in, and he can see her smooth out her features with little effort. She pointedly turns away from them. "Whatever, fuck you guys. I'm gonna go find a bear," she says over her shoulder, and then she darts off, disappearing rapidly in the gloom.
Kakashi whirls on his squad member as soon as he knows she is out of hearing range. "This mission," he reminds quietly, "is delicate and in risk of being are jeopardized at any moment. She is an unstable, viciously dangerous missing-nin, and if you ostracize her, it will fail."
Tenzo has reverted back to a stone face, an emotionless mask that Kakashi recognizes as his 'Root' face. This one is only a little bit different from the usual blank expression he has. It is in the tenseness around his eyes and the tightening of his muscles.
"Can you, or can you not, proceed in a manner that will help this mission succeed?" Kakashi asks.
The man looks over, his eyes wide and solemn. "I can proceed, captain. I will not make a mistake again," he promises. Kakashi searches his face for a moment, but accepts the proclamation. Tenzo hasn't let him down before.
The only problem, they find, is that when they try to follow where she went, it turns up that there is no trail to follow. No scent, even though Kakashi knows she wears perfume and scented products, no traces of broken branches, no chakra. Like a ghost, she has disappeared. He thinks back to the way she moved, how it disturbed nothing, moved nothing out of the way. How she channeled so little chakra when she leapt and ducked.
Instinctual, he thinks. She has done it so much it has become ingrained.
Which is a problem, because this is the Forest of Death and he needs to find her before she kills herself doing something stupid, like wrestling a bear. The longer they wait, the more could go wrong.
He is on the verge of something like panic after half an hour of searching for clues. Not actual panic because he has faced worse. His concern, ah yes, that's the word, melts away with a sudden, violent chakra flare to the east. They race towards it without a thought, even though it is more than three kilometers away.
The scene they find isn't the one they thought they were going to find, though. At this point, Kakashi wonders why he set expectations for her in the first place. He doesn't think she's ever going to be confined by them.
"Those aren't bears," his partner decides to say. It's neutral, and nothing if not true, because they certainly aren't bears.
They watch in fascination as the missing-nin, in a fit of insanity, dances her way out of the way of an overly large feline creature's swipe, sliding through the slick mud.
It dawns on Kakashi that the chakra flare hadn't been a distress signal, rather the natural spike that occurs when one uses ninjutsu. Judging by the newly moistened and slicked terrain, a Suiton-based one. Which is startling, because there is no water source, which means she converted it. It takes a large amount of chakra, or precise control, to convert chakra into an actual element from scratch. If he ever entertained ideas of her retaining a chuunin rank after defection, they are blown away now.
One of the wagon-sized creatures roars at her, and they watch in morbid curiosity as she bellows back at it and swings her leg up to kick its fore-paw. He thinks he's only ever seen such a bold move from Guy before.
It connects, and there is a sharp cracking sound. The creature cries out in pain and crumples forward, sending out a wave of mud. She leaps over it, landing on the prone creature's back, where she proceeds to watch the other creatures while simultaneously stomping her leg thigh-deep through its vulnerable eye and into its brain. And though he is a war-hardened shinobi used to death, he thinks that might be a little excessive.
"How many of you are there?" she asks as they prowl around her, "What? Like twelve, maybe?"
There are far more than twelve.
One of them strikes from behind, lunging at her. She drops without looking, rolling down the still twitching remains of the first beast. Two more take this time to swipe and bite at her, but she miraculously dodges them as well.
She slides back up into a nimble, low stance that he doesn't recognize, skipping down the rump of the dead creature to land in the mud.
"This is just like the D-ranks they used to give us, only you are a lot bigger," she tells them, and Kakashi takes the time to wonder exactly what kind of D-ranks Kiri hands out.
He figures that as informative as spectating is, they should really get down there before she gets mauled to death. He can spot two other corpses, and she hasn't drawn her weapon, but so many would be a struggle even for him.
He jumps to her down from the tree, but instead of accepting a presence to guard, like any good Konoha Ninja would, she whirls immediately, throwing a right hook. He barely has time to catch it, and his palm protests the action. It is only years of training with a taijutsu master that save him from the following elbow, knee, and heabutt, all aimed to his face and throat. Kiri, he thinks, not Konoha. No teams, not for a long time.
"Watanabe!" he calls out.
The woman in question appears to finally take note of who he is, and pauses in her assault. She blinks in recognition. He thinks it is over before he notices the way her eyes widen and she sinks down low. He follows on instinct.
Overhead, a wooden plank burst into life and slams into the leaping feline's ribs, knocking it back.
"Talk later, important stuff to do," she tells him, tearing her fist out of his grasp and reaching up her pant leg.
For a horrible second, he thinks that she is just going to rip away her pants. It fits, it seems like a thing she would do. Thankfully, that is not what she does. Instead, she tugs on something, and a blade drops into her hand. Beyond all logical belief, she pulls a long meteor hammer from her pant leg. He is stunned at how he never noticed. There is no way she fit that many meters of solid metal links inside her pants without anybody noticing, let alone the half a meter blades.
What follows is madness. It's painfully obvious that Watanabe hasn't worked with a team in years, or been indoctrinated with any proper squadron. Her fluid, dance-like steps are the only thing that stops her from colliding with him and Tenzo several times, and the fact that the two of them are capable shinobi in their own right are the only thing that stops them from being impaled on the end of her weapon more than once.
As it is, she sweeps a hail of kunai aimed for the beasts out of the air and sends the blades back at them, on reaction alone. It gives three of the beasts an opening to converge on her, and in a desperate gamble, he sends a Katon: Goukakyuu at the pile the exact moment she uses the other end to leave a gash on the torso of one. It makes them retreat, but he also hears her curse as she retrieves the heated metal with a complicated movement of her leg.
Another instance is when Tenzo uses his Mokuton to skewer one of the felines, which she conveniently decides would make a good mount, jerking both gigantic cat and woman into the air. It sends her flying right back at the wood user, and they crumple into a heap. It would be adorable, the two of them tangled in a ball of limbs and spattered with mud and animal body fluid, if not for the fact that they were surrounded.
Turns out, his kohai is a solid place to plant her hands and she saves them both when she drives her feet into the jaw of an oncoming beast. He can see the strength in the strike, not only from the way the monster staggers back, but from the ominous creaking sound that comes from Tenzo's ribs and the rush of breath that leaves his mouth.
They barely make it out of there without serious injury, thanks to the way the missing-nin battles without regard for the other shinobi. As it stands, they wind up exhausted and bruised, the sun dipping down fast. Kakashi knows they won't make it back to the gate before nightfall.
"It's going to be dark soon. We should make camp," he suggests, and the long-haired woman shrugs silently. She hasn't spoken much since the fight ended, or since Tenzo said what he had.
It turns out she doesn't need to speak for him to learn more about her methods, though. She leads them, with an uncanny sense of direction, to a small clearing by a river, and shrugs her bag off her back without a sound. The two other nin watch as she pulls a scroll out and releases a pulse of chakra into it, revealing a metal box and her sleeping roll. The roll she ties up, not in the grass or dirt where it would leave an impression, but between two trees where it acts as both a hammock and tent. She gathers wood and kindling from fallen branches, careful not to pick to much in one area and leave it bare.
She places them into the box, making sure they're structured properly, and sets them aflame. There is not enough light to give away their position, but heat for comfort and cooking.
Later after she has bathed, and somehow simultaneously procured fish as well, they eat in total silence. The gloom settles around them, and she looks from above, the glowing embers left from the small fire casting light onto her face.
"I never killed my classmates," she says suddenly.
Kakashi looks up at her words, and even Tenzo looks startled. She breathes in, as if she will find some sort of strength in the air around them.
"I shared a class with Momochi Zabuza. He was… he was my best friend." she tells them, her voice steady. Her eyes are still glued to the orange coals as she speaks, "And one day, right before break, he didn't show up to the Okiya. When I went to find him, he was standing in a room filled with—" she inhales again, and this time her breath hitches.
"—With tiny little corpses." she finishes.
The silence around them is stifling. Even the forest seems to still, listening to her words.
"We fought. It was hard, and everything was slippery with entrails and every one of them looked at me with horrible, glassy eyes. We fought, and we fought, and I think I hated him. Then, bleeding and hurt, I looked down, and realized I was hating the wrong thing," she says distantly. Her voice is cold, empty and far away, like the taint inside her chakra.
"Zabuza was nine," she tells them, "He was just a kid, so was I, and Kiri? Kiri wanted us to kill each other. I should have shown him another way. I should have showed him that they were just kids, and that he didn't need to prove anything. Kiri gave me a headband for battling the apprentice of one of the swordsmen into submission. Kiri gave him one for murdering fellow children in cold blood."
She breathes, and this time her face contorts into a twisted mimicry of rage, pulling away from the emptiness from before.
"I don't know what it feels like to kill a classmate," she spits. "What I know is the absolute hatred that comes with knowing that the whole time those classmates were being killed, somebody was watching. The pure loathing that accompanies the fact that none of that had to happen, and that our fucking teachers were watching us the whole time."
Her jaw clenches, and her dark eyes tear away from the box to look Tenzo in the eye. She holds the look for a long while, letting the mokuton user see the righteous anger inside. She turns and those same pools of black meet his lone grey eye, and he sees fury and determination whirling inside them.
"I may have done horrible things, and I will probably continue on to do more, but I never have killed a child," she tells him. "And I hopefully never will."
In the darkness, he hears what she is trying to say, hears the promise in her voice. There is nothing he can say to acknowledge it, nothing he can do but hold her stare.
In that moment, with those words, he learns that he might understand why she turned on her village like she did.
They leave the forest the next morning, and she is back to her jovial, joking self. He doesn't forget, though, and he doubts Tenzo does either. It would be hard to do, because he feels that in that moment, she shared part of herself that she hasn't shown many before. When he discovers that she has disappeared again at the end of the week, he doesn't even groan in exasperation. For some reason, he feels sure that the unstable missing-nin isn't as dishonorable as she seems.
AN: This chapter is big, a stuffed with important stuff. Ryuishi is opening up just the tiniest bit, showing that she is not a deity or almighty missing nin. She's giving away secrets by just being there. Not only is she vulnerable when Kakashi finds her on his bed, but she also gives away some of her fighting methods as well as her traveling methods. Not enough to take her down or corner her, but enough that the opposition gains a footing on ways to detain her. Not only that, but she admits a huge weakness (in her eyes) when she tells them about the massacre. She shows how much it affects her to this day, and how it can be used as an emotional barb. She's hedging her bets, slowly giving them tools to stop her if she goes too far.
I also want to say this chapter was a bitch to write and Maybe a little OOC for some, but in my head, Tenzo just left ROOT and has about as much social grace as a stoned monkey. He's digging for information the only way he knows how, by destabilizing an opponent. Kakashi, however, is realizing how big of a mess Ryuishi is.
Also, obligatory fight scene with them all. It shows not only her progress in her years away, but how her methods have become sort of merciless. I will take this time to say that Kakashi could still kick her ass though, and so many others as well. She's strong, but not a super shinobi.
I want to thank my readers, my favoriters, and my followers. I also want to say that I hope my reviewers find money on the ground, because you guys keep me going. Every time I read a review I smile, and even if I don't reply, I do read them. Over 2000 reviews, and I have read every word. Bless you guys.
Thank you to my beta Enbi, whose next story I am eagerly awaiting.
Question: If this was a soulmates AU where everyone is born with the first words of their soulmates tattooed on their skin, what words would Ryuishi have on her, who would they belong too, and how would they all react? OR A character of your choice is witness to a rare event, Ryuishi crying. WHo is it and how do they react?
