I do not own Naruto.


Watanabe Ryuishi, missing nin, Burner of Kiri, the Lucky Dragon, people's princess, founder of the tribe of Mumei, once-upon-a-time member of the Kiri no Kaijuu, and all around person with way too many titles, has developed something of a sixth sense. It started way back, before she even became a shinobi. Hell, it might have started before she was even in this world. In fact, she's kind of sure it did.

When one is raised by a family with a military history as large as hers had, they become trained to notice their surroundings from a young age, even if they never join the force themselves. When one is raised by a family with a military history and a shadier, less known but equally large criminal history, they become even more aware. It's a trait that is almost bred into them.

It should be stated that none of her family from her past life were criminals, per se. They weren't like the mafia or some shit like that, but they had a tendency to do dumb and reckless things from the very beginning, the same way they had tended to gravitate to the more violent, military aspects of life. In fact, they could be the same tendencies appearing in different ways.

Take, for example, her old paternal grandfather, who was a respected soldier who made the rank of sergeant back in World War Two. Clever and capable, he was known for being a good man. A less known fact was that he also had an absolutely incurable case of sticky fingers. So those crates of supplies he might have written off as broken in his reports? Or those machines that, somehow, just didn't work anymore? They were actually discreetly shuffled around for the right price.

How about her great aunt, who had been a guerilla fighter and wonderful mother back in her world? The one that had wonderful baked cakes and a delightful sense of propriety? Well, she was a moonshiner. Ryuishi knew it, her parents knew it, her cousins knew it. Seemed like everybody knew it but the police.

So it really should come as no surprise that her brothers had all become soldiers in the various branches of the military, who at times probably did some extremely shady shit later on, and she became a drug dealer. She herself might have joined up if, you know, every fucking one of her older siblings hadn't done it too. The unbeaten path and all that.

She tried college, honestly, she did. She liked it even, that's where she learned rock climbing, and where she got to try so many new things she didn't get as a kid. The problem is that grant money doesn't last forever, and she didn't come from good money. Military service means little after one leaves the corp, and VA spits on those it's supposed to help more than most would believe. Not only that, but criminal activities aren't as profitable as they would seem. Not really.

One thing she learned through her years? Never, ever get into debt. You won't get back out.

So she lived her life and came back to the town where she was raised, which was probably for the best. Her parents were not capable of much physical movement, and her sister was still young. They needed help, and they needed money. She took care of her parents, and raised her sister like her own. And when they were hard up for cash, yeah, she maybe pushed some drugs. She didn't have her aunt's contacts, her grandfather's opportunities, or even half the backing her brothers had.

The point she is trying to make, with all this rambling, is that she has kind of a sixth sense. Half bred in from generations of avoiding death at the hands of others and avoiding the eyes of authorities, half trained into her from a childhood spent in a shitty area with paranoid parents.

(A shitty area in both lives. The second one clearly was harder than the first, though.)

Her skill has been honed by the many, many, many attempts on her life since she became a shinobi. Ambushes in war, on the battlefield, and being hunted as a criminal by authorities and bounty hunters alike have made her talent into a dependable skill.

So when Ryuishi feels her chest tighten, and the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, she can say with a fair amount of certainty that she is being watched.

It's her hint that she's spent way too long fucking around in the river systems, and it's time to get her ass into gear. Not fast, but twisty and steady, her usual grueling, unrelenting pace.

She goes for a while, working with the current to go faster, not letting whoever it is know she's aware, and then, without pause, she goes to land, and then tree, and then circles up and back to river. She does it three more times.

It's nearing dusk, a day and a half later, when she gets tired of the itching feeling. It's really starting to piss her off. So, thinking that it would be better to just murder them, or otherwise disable them from following, she sets a trap. Or, in this case, she sets up a camp that she usually wouldn't do at this point in her journey.

She doesn't need extra light to do anything. She always worked best in low light, and her eyesight is poor enough that she never relies a hundred percent on it anyway. More like, eh, eighty six percent.

So she listens, and she breathes, hoping to catch a scent or sound, and to her luck, she does. Only, it's not a sound she's expecting.

Someone is vomiting. Sure, it's muffled, and it's faint, but she knows the sound of upchucking. Blame it on her inability to remember that she is horribly lactose intolerant. Whatever the source of her ability to identify the smell and sound of throw-up is, she takes off to the source of it. She leaves the bedroll between two trees and her firebox on the ground, burning hot. They unidentified person isn't far away, and she's quick to find them.

It surprises her, in a distant, faint sort of way, that they are familiar. While they aren't wearing the same mask, and their cloak is a bit off, they are definitely the same child that snuck seaweed onigiri from her at Kakashi's place. The child looks immediately away upon her entry, and she can see the kid tense, but her mind is spinning. Small child. ANBU. Hatake's squad. Won't look at her. Vomit.

Oh beautiful and gracious cosmic powers that be, she's being followed by a tiny Uchiha Itachi. She's unsure whether to fawn over him or shit her pants.

She goes with option three, absolute apathetic bluntness. "Usually they send taller people to hunt me," she states. The tense, capable little murder baby curls away from her, and she feels a little bad. What the hell did she do?

For a moment, she is thrown. This isn't the aloof but capable shinobi that was always shown in the series. Instead, he's a shaken preteen. Well, he's holding together pretty well for a kid that just lost his lunch and chased her nonstop for two days, but still, he's not one-hundred percent super cool genius Uchiha.

"Your Gates," he whispers. "It's inside your Gates."

"The fuck you doing, lookin' at my Eight Gates?" she asks, still unsure.

Honestly, that was a bad thing for him to say. What if she had been somebody like Orochimaru, or Kumo? If she were anyone else, she might not have known he had a doujutsu before he said that, because only those with special eyeballs can look at the Eight Gates. Generally speaking, one doesn't get to see chakra inside the body.

It dawns on her then. Oh, she realizes. He saw my chakra.

She looks down at him in pity. "Oh hon," she sighs, "don't look at me with those crazy eyeballs of yours. Turn them off, or whatever you do. It's not something that's meant to be seen." He doesn't respond, and if she had to guess, he's wondering if he messed up and gave himself away. He did, but not in any way someone else would figure out.

She shifts her weight, wanting to comfort him but also not wanting to be stabbed. The only ones who had seen the Void infection completely were Orochimaru, and probably, now that she thinks about it, Hatake. Shouldn't Hatake have put out a warning about it, or did he just assume some other shit?

Sure, some people may have seen tiny bits of it inside her jutsu, but the thing is that the eye kinda slides away from it unless you force it to stay. That's the way Orochimaru described it anyway, and he would know how her jutsu look. In the heat of battle nobody's forcing themselves to look at anything either, and she never heard Kisame or Zabuza breathe a word about it.

The Void is something she likes to forget, and for those who never died, she bets it is doubly so.

She huffs and looks down at the boy, who looks like a drone just holding himself together. How long was he forcing himself to look? The fuck was that kid thinking? He was a child, he had no need to watch that mess, to gaze into the abyss and have it watch him back.

"What are you doing following me, anyways?" is what she ends up asking. It does no good to dwell on the emptiness inside her. The taint on her soul is something she likes to ignore.

He seems to remember his purpose and draws himself back up, still keeping his distance, and the blank mask is presented to her again. His posture seems to stiffen up and empty out of all personality.

"You are—" he begins, but she cuts him off with a wave of her hand.

"It's not for murder, otherwise you wouldn't be talking to me. That means it can wait. You hungry? You must be, you've been following me for like, two fucking days. I have some toiletries you can borrow to get the taste out of your mouth, and then we can eat," she states.

The masked figure doesn't show any expression or any other visible change at all, but she feels like if he could see his eyes, they would be giving her a deadpan expression. Which is fine with her.

Actually, this whole situation is fine with her. This is an opportunity, something to be taken advantage of. She would never have gotten him alone by herself. This is actually huge. Gigantic. If she plays her cards right, she can do so much, change so much. Plots whirl to life in her head, bursting into life like fireworks in the night sky, each one branching out into possibility. She can use this.

It occurs to her that the thought is inherently fucked up. In fact, she might be fucked up. Here she is, faced with a small, soon-to-be broken child, and she wants to use this meeting to her advantage. Jesus H. Christ on a bike, is she ever not thinking of herself first? Does she have any morals at all? What happened to her great Human Rights movement? Wasn't there a clause about not using kids or some shit?

Morally, she's stuck. Does she even have morals at this point, other than she won't murder children?

She stops herself. There's no point in looking deeper. She knows she's selfish, and that she has no right to do this. It's not going to stop her. Her morals and ethics have been loose for too long.

Ryuishi turns slightly and waves him forward. He hesitates, but he steps up, and they walk side by side. Not because they are on equal ground, no, but because neither one trusts the other not to stab their back. For a moment, there is only the sounds of the forest around them. The ambient noises of the late fall cicadas begin in a rhythmic, hypnotic buzz, and there is the whistling of nightingales. The camp looms in the distance.

"You know, you're very skilled to have kept up with me," she starts. "Hatake must be a better teacher than I thought."

His steps barely falter, really, it's hardly noticeable at all. He's very good even at, what? Eleven? She doesn't know. She doesn't remember every detail about him, but that's fine, because she knows enough, and the rest she can gather from context. It doesn't matter that she doesn't recall the exact age he was when he entered ANBU, because she knows that he's there and that means the Uchiha are still strategically placing their clan in the outside ranks. It means that the coup is still on.

Which is a shame, but something she expected. If anything, her own actions will have spurned it on. If Kiri can do it, why not them? Not that many know what happened in Kiri, and the civilians had a much better reason to revolt. Being systematically oppressed and butchered on the streets is much different than losing some political footing or being cast in suspicion, but the privileged don't seem to think much on that.

"Then again, that's not an ANBU mask. So it could be the training you're getting in that… hidden group," she says smoothly. Just hints, just enough to make him question.

The statement is leading. She could be talking about ROOT, or he could even believe she's talking about the Uchiha. It's a vague statement, he can think what he wants.

The firebox is still burning bright, and she shifts the bag off her shoulder. She gestures for him to sit. "I don't have any onigiri this time, I apologize. I can make up some stew, though. It will be better than the rations you've been eating, I bet," she tells him.

He waits in silence, and she smiles. She knows it probably isn't as soft and warm as she want it to be, but it will do. She can't coddle him, no matter how much she wants to. Lord is it hard, though. He's fucking adorable, all tiny and cute in his black cloak and blank mask.

"You're a growing boy, so I'll make a lot. Then after a bit of rest, you can go back and tell them that I have declined the offer," she tells him, digging into her bag for her food and spices scroll. Okay, maybe she can coddle him a bit. Somebody needs to do it.

"You have not heard it," he answers monotonously.

"Don't care, I have my own shit to do," she answers, unsealing the ingredients. "I'm not part of the village, they can't order me to do jack shit. Especially when they use children."

"I am—"

"No," she says, and this time she looks up from the vegetables. "I know exactly who you are, Itachi-kun, and you are a child." She sees his body movement still, and even the rise and fall of his chest is hard to see. Maybe it's her poor eyesight, though.

She meets the black eye holes of his mask, and she wonders if this is how people feel when they look at her. The darkness is empty and foreboding.

"How?" he demands, his voice sharp and imposing. She smiles again. Such a demanding kid.

"I know many things, Itachi-kun, things I should have no way of knowing," she says pleasantly, her husky voice smooth. "The things I know could bring the whole world to ruin."

He stares, and she returns to prepping the leeks. She looks ominous, he thinks, foreboding and other worldly like something out of a fairytale. Cast in the shadows of the small fire, she looks like some sort of spirit.

"I won't, though," she says, and he listens closer. "I have been through one war, and I have seen ruin. They are not what I desire."

He understands that sentiment. He was young when he saw the tail end of the war. He saw the remnants of what was. He saw the burning corpses pile high, and smelled the thick, cloying smoke of smoldering human remains. He experienced just a bit of that chaos, that needlessly violent struggle that was the battlefield. He finds it hard to imagine what it must have been like to have known nothing but those horrible scenes for all his life, to have spent years on the front lines.

But is she just saying that, or does she mean it?

"To be honest," she begins, pulling a pot from another scroll. How many does she have? "I have no fucking idea what to do with most of what I know."

He watches in stiff silence as she browns the meat, then adds some sort of flour from a small bag alongside spices and aromatics. She is a good cook, he thinks. An odd skill for a woman such as her. A domestic one. A peaceful one, meant to nourish instead of destroy.

"I wonder if I have a right to interfere, to use what I know. I wonder if I know what is right or wrong, if I understand morals or ethics at all," she tells him, and her movements are smooth and sure. She adds the water to the mix, then sliced vegetables, and she looks at him. Her gaze is distant, like she is looking right through him. The shinobi inside him understands that his mission is over. She has declined any invitation given, but the person inside of him says otherwise. It tells him that there are answers here, answers to questions he might not have even asked yet.

"I wonder if I have a purpose here, or if I am here through a random quirk of the universe. I wonder if I have any meaning at all," she says.

Her eyes swim with things he cannot name. He can read people, he can kill them, but things like emotion? They are foreign to him. Not that he does not feel, but more that he does not understand. The coal orbs focus after a moment, and she looks him dead in the eye, like she knows who he is at his core and all that he can be. Like she knows him.

It shakes him, and he knows he will forever remember how she looks in this moment. Even without his Sharingan, her dark, slanted eyes will remain with him, staring at him knowingly. He will never forget the way the soft orange light of the fire illuminates her, causing her horrid scar to stand out like a warning and reminder on her slender neck. The smell of savory stew and the darkness of the forest will haunt him.

"I look at you," she says, her voice soft and low, "and those things cease to matter. All I know is that I want to help."

The amount of conviction inside that statement is staggering. Itachi has met this woman once, and then by proxy. She was afraid and unsure, but she cooked them meals so they could enjoy them. He knows she is a wanted criminal, and he knows her sordid records as the Kiri no Ningyo. He knows that there is something he is missing, because no simple criminal gains such attention from those in charge. Whatever that may be, whatever her reasons, she stood in the land of her enemies, and she made them comfortable. She poured them tea, and she made Hatake-taichou grin, something he had not seen before.

"I might not know how, and I might screw everything up. I might do more harm than good," she says. "But I will try, even if only a little, because you do not deserve what you were given."

He sucks in a breath. How many secrets are bare before her? How much does she know? What is she talking about?

"So, I will offer you something. It's not a great solution, because I'm not that skilled. I don't have that kind of power. When the time comes and you make your choice, know that I cannot stop it."

She breathes out, as if reassuring herself that she is making the right choice. "I can help a little, though. The small ones, the ones who will be too young to remember, I can give them sanctuary away from everybody. I can hide them from every shinobi and every missing-nin, including you and me," she says.

He doesn't know what she's talking about, but it sounds ominous and foreboding. What does she know? How does she know it? No spy would make this offer. No infiltration specialist would sneak in to willingly board with the enemy. He doesn't trust her, not at all. To do so would be foolish. Yet he can not ignore how she said it, how she included that she herself would be unable to reach those hidden.

"If… if you know who I am, then you know I have done it before. If you don't, then I will keep that secret with me."

"How?" he asks. He does not know why, and he does not know what to think, but there is knowledge here, knowledge she is convinced will help him.

"The Land of Iron is a big country, and the shinobi are barred from it save for very special occasions. Traders, however, are not."

He stills completely. He is smart, more than people realize, and the implications of her statement are huge. She could have ties with the samurai… but no, she said they would be hidden from her as well. So it would not be her hiding as a trader, it would be an actual merchant. Which means she has ties with merchants who do business in Iron Country, ties which would convince them to do something that would risk their lives.

Who is she, to hold so much favor?

"I will admit, I will ask something in return," she says, turning to stir the pot. It smells heavenly, and even if he wanted to ignore it, he doesn't think he could.

In all actuality, her wanting something in return eases his disbelief. A deal is much easier to accept than a gift. A trade is no foreign concept to him.

"I will ask that if you do this, or if you don't, you keep it secret. The offer I give is of no detriment to the Land of Fire, or anybody else, and you and I are the only ones who need to know. Nobody else. Not the Kages, not missing-nin, not those who support the tree, and not those who look at it in scorn and hate," she says.

He blinks at her, and she smiles. The stew is almost ready, the sauce—Gravy? Broth?—is almost thick enough.

It's not a light thing she does here, and not an easy thing, but he is a child, and her heart weeps for him. She had a sister, one she would have done anything for, would still do anything for. For her sister, she would have slaughtered the whole world and danced on its ashes. She would have cut her own throat to see her become better than the older siblings that led the way. She would have died with a smile on her face to see her baby girl grow and become a good person, a happy person.

Itachi did that. He fucked up, she knows, but he was a child as well, and children make mistakes. They fuck up. Plans made as a thirteen year old generally don't stand the test of time. He tried, though, and in some ways, he succeeded. He may have irrevocably fucked Sasuke up, but damn if he didn't get what he wanted in the end.

"When the time comes, and all this vague nonsense finally means something, let me know what your choice is," she finishes.

He does not move, and she thinks that he is unnaturally still. What a scary child. Was she like that? God, she hopes not.

She wonders for a moment what it means that she is, in some small way, attempting to manipulate a child for her own greater good. Yes, saving kids is a good thing, but do the means justify the ends? How low will she go? She feels like Albus fucking Dumbledore, only without a fancy wand. Instead she gets murder water bending and six meters of cold, deadly steel chain.

"Until then though, eat and rest, because I can't stick around long," she tells him, and the boy seems to snap out of his eerie stillness and contemplation.

He takes the bowl, and he eats. She suspects that its only because poison has never been her MO, but he doesn't rest, not really. He lays down, sure, and his breathing evens out, yah, but he isn't sleeping. He just lies there in what she would hesitantly call a meditative state, always aware of his surrounds, always aware of her.

She never figures out who sent him, or why he was here, but she suspects that some dumb elder might have ideas about her. Maybe Danzo wanted to get chummy, or drop some threats. Maybe the Hokage wanted to do the same thing, only hidden behind the thin veneer of a grandfatherly persona. Shit, maybe he was sent here to fuck her day up and thought otherwise when his special eyes saw what they did.

Doesn't matter. Ryuishi used the opportunity to her own advantage, as she was wont to do, wondering about butterfly effects and genocide and knowing, the whole time, that the only reason she is still breathing is because he didn't know what she was talking about.


AN: Ryuishi may be wearing the tiniest amounts of plot armor, but remember they are testing her. She's a powerful unknown, and people want to know how to use that. Speaking of using, she's having some moral dilemmas that will crop again. Nothing huge, but definitely something that would be apparent and will crop up again. Without Kisame and Zabuza to draw a line, and with her only influences being who want to use her for one reason or another, our Grey area Ryuishi begins to slide a bit. Which is to say it's late and I'm most likely explaining this poorly. Also, pre-massacre Itachi is hard as fuck to write. Any other plot holes, feel free to message me.

Thank you to my lurkers, my favoriters, and followers. A big thank you to my reviewers. You guys keep me going strong.

Many blessings on my beta Enbi. Sweet cinnamon bun, to good, too pure for this world.

Question: Three characters (or more) from this fic are now in a random horror movie. What kind of things happen? OR Ryuishi is sick of this political nonsense. She starts her very own 'Fuck you guys have no idea how to raise kid, neither do I , but dammit at least don't make them murders' orphanages. What children does she steal and how does it go down?