Shibasa wasn't a brunette the last time she fell asleep.
Shibasa wasn't her name the last time she'd fallen asleep either.
Shibasa most certainly couldn't read japanese the last time she'd fallen asleep, and yet clear as day, she could see through the window of a closed shop that there was a soup of the day on the tea house menu. The bold characters were carved into a board above the counter.
In the reflection of the glass there was a face Shibasa didn't recognise. Her entire body, for that matter seemed entirely different. She felt more confident, more aware of her surroundings, even if her surroundings were just trees as far as the eye can see.
This place was familiar to her somehow, like she'd been here several times before but, this clearly wasn't part of any city. She'd lived in the city her whole life.
Shibasa wanted to leave so badly, she wanted to run and run until she wasn't lost anymore, but a nagging voice in the back of her mind refused to let her leave. It was like she had a duty to stay put, exactly where she was, in front of this tea house in the middle of nowhere.
Her stomach rumbled and without thinking Shibasa reached into a pouch strapped to her lower back.
Staring intently at the strange bead she pulled out, Shibasa recognised the thing between her fingertips to be a protein pill. She knew even before she munched down on it that the pill tasted terrible.
There were no words to describe how overwhelming the confusion she felt over the situation, but despite her best intentions, no tears would form. Emotionally muted, Shibasa simply stared toward the line of trees in front of her as she remained leaning against the tea house wall.
Minutes went by without anything happening, but the nagging feeling in her head told her to stay regardless.
The soft crunch of sticks and leaves was the first indication that Shibasa had that someone was headed towards her, the second was the distinct but subtle smell of wood gloss and blood blowing downwind.
Shibasa's body tensed up.
'He's here'
At the clearing, a hulking and hunched figure emerged slowly and purposefully.
Shibasa gently pushed off against the wall and met the heavily garbed figure halfway.
"You're early." A low voice rumbled from the figure before her. The man wore a black cloth across the bottom half of his face, covering his nose and mouth.
Shaibasa didn't even think before replying. "I don't like to keep people waiting." She said, a hollow tone was all she could muster.
The words seemed to resonate with the figure before her as he didn't speak for a long while.
"I appreciate the sentiment." The man finally echoed.
A smooth hand extended from beneath the black cloak. It looked too clean to be real.
Many thoughts shot through Shibasa's head in fast succession; Why were his hands so smooth? Followed by, why in the hell would that matter to her?
Despite her instincts screaming otherwise, she reached out and shook the man's hand.
'It's a puppet.'
Shibasa internally screamed at the well of knowledge she suddenly seemed to have, any conscious effort she took to try and understand what that meant was met with a stony silence.
"You're more careless than I was led to believe, Shiba-San." The deep voiced doll remarked.
Shibasa lowered her head and levelled her eyes at the puppet's chin, where she could instinctively tell the user was hiding.
"You don't gain anything from killing me." Shibasa replied, once again without much consideration for what she was saying. The moment she opened her mouth she felt like she knew the exact words to say, despite never having met this person in her life.
The puppet chuckled, shaking all over, perfectly imitating how a human chest would move if someone were to laugh.
"Indeed." The man agreed, much to Shibasa's relief.
The silence preceding their brief exchange was enough of a prompt for Shibasa's instincts to kick into high gear, she reached behind her back slowly and grasped the cylinder strapped to the center of her back.
"It's all in there." Shibasa said, extending the cylinder to the puppet. She had no clue what 'it' was, but that same feeling of responsibility that had kept her in place for so long was now telling her that this trade was important.
The puppet took it carefully from her hand and nodded in an exaggerated manner, it hid the cylinder beneath its cloak.
"I'll remind you that you are not to share any of the information you've retrieved for us." The puppet grumbled, although the tone sounded more like it was part of a speech he had said many times before.
Shibasa relaxed, tension she didn't even realise she was holding left her chest.
"I don't intend on dying over something so easy to avoid." Shibasa replied.
The puppet nodded once again.
"Some people are more forgetful than yourself. The Akatsuki doesn't tolerate fools, or traitors, even if they're a simple informant." The puppet grumbled, turning slowly to leave.
Shibasa had never heard the name Akatsuki in her life. Or rather, the inhibant of Shibasa's body hadn't, the Shibasa that had fallen asleep and never woken up seemed to recognise and fear the name.
"The ryo has been placed in it's usual drop point, as well as the information you requested since our last meeting." The man bellowed.
"Thank you sir." Shibasa replied automatically.
The hulking figure paused in it's stride for a moment.
"We don't make a habit of fulfilling personal requests, you've simply worked above our expectations. We appreciate the effort." The man said before continuing to walk away.
Shibasa waited for a few minutes after the rendezvous had ended before moving anywhere, she paced back and forth wracking her brains for anything, any clue to what was going on. She didn't remember anything.
Everything she'd done up till this point had been reactive, the moment she was left to her own devices she was back to her muted horror.
This wasn't her body.
This wasn't anywhere near her home.
Shibasa lived in the inner city… Her home was...
Her home was…
"I don't fucking know where I live anymore." Shibasa said with absolute misery in her voice.
She had a dog at home, she had family members she hadn't called in weeks.
Shibasa clutched her head and slowly sunk to the floor until she was curled into a ball. She wasn't home, she knew she wasn't anywhere near home, and the voice in the back of her head told her she wasn't going back no matter how hard she tried. Shibasa tried recalling the names of her siblings, her parents, or even the name of her country but none came to mind, her family's faces were blurred and the distance between her and them were so far away.
The more she focused, the more Shibasa found herself acknowledging she wasn't even the same person anymore, not just physically, but even her own emotional state. Her memories of her life were no longer clear and comforting, but vague and distressing. For example, she didn't remember the breed or name of her dog, but she did know exactly how it felt to have a tooth forcefully removed while being interrogated.
Shibasa gently stroked her cheek, sticking her tongue through the gap where her back molar had once been. Her fist clenched. It infuriated her. How could she be someone else? Why was she someone else? It didn't really matter anymore, she supposed, but she couldn't let it go.
Whoever this body's owner was before wasn't coming back, so she was Shibasa now. She couldn't even remember her original name, she'd just robbed someone else's life and burned all memory of her previous experience.
Shibasa looked up from the ground, she hadn't noticed how long she'd been laying on the floor but the sun was way higher in the sky. It was probably early afternoon by now.
She didn't know what to do with her life.
But she did have unfinished business.
The Shibasa from before her had something she'd been willing to die for, whatever it was, she couldn't recall, her memories were hazy and inaccessible to her but the previous Shibasa's instincts and knowledge were all easier to feel than her own.
"The ryo has been placed in it's usual drop point, as well as the information you requested since our last meeting."
The drop point.
Shibasa got up from the floor and brushed herself off. The drop point was south from the tea shop.
For lack of anything else to do, Shibasa started walking through the forest, towards the drop point.
Starting to leave, Shibasa couldn't help but notice the multiple silhouettes following her from a distance. Shibasa continued her way through the trees without confronting her followers, she instinctively knew they weren't friends though.
Hours later, Shibasa had finally made it out of the small forest and her stalkers didn't follow when she approached a run down looking bar. The building itself looked as if it had been cared for in decades but Shibasa wasn't about to go and fix it for them.
She entered through the door and the old woman from behind the dim bar's counter gave her a weary glare as she took a table next to the left wall, furthest away from the counter.
The bar was empty besides her.
"You gonna sit all the way over there? Rude brat." The wrinkled lady remarked, gathering a slim and short glass as well as a bottle of what Shibasa immediately recognised to be her favourite brand of sake.
The woman walked over to her, placing the bottle and glass down on the table and sat opposite her, pouring the alcohol into the small glass.
"I got a delivery yesterday addressed to you, and someone paid for a room to sleep for tonight. He's up there right now. He said he wanted to talk to you about Genba, ring any bells?" The old lady asked, handing Shibasa the small glass of sake.
Shibasa snatched the glass and downed it immediately at the mention of Genba's name. He was important, probably the whole reason she was dealing with missing nin to begin with.
At that very moment she also realised she was also in fact a missing nin. That wasn't fantastic.
"Yep, rings a bell, thanks for the heads up Beashiro." Shibasa thanked the old lady, holding out her glass for another drink.
Beashiro glared at her petulance but it must've been a common occurrence because she poured more sake into the glass regardless.
"No need to thank me, brat, you pay me more than enough." Beashiro grumbled.
Shibasa nodded automatically at the statement, recalling that half the pay she received from her intel gathering went to Beashiro in order to have a permanent place to stay and drink. Shibasa had been a heavy drinker for whatever reason and considering how good her sake tasted on her tongue, Shibasa reckoned she'd continue to enjoy alcohol.
"You had any customers besides me today?" Shibasa asked, out of courtesy more than anything else, sipping the sake from her glass more slowly now.
Beashiro snorted.
"Surprisingly yes, four young men from Kusa stopped by for food, they're the first customers I've had this month that weren't you." Beashiro chuckled to herself.
Shibasa's body tensed up. "Did they say what they were doing out here in the Land of Fire?"
That was the first time she'd been able to recall where geographically she was. She also knew instinctively that there was no good reason that shinobi from Kusa would get this close to Konoha with the risk of provoking a response from the large village.
Beashiro shook her head. "They just said it was shinobi business and left it at that, felt like they were going to lop my head off for even asking that much."
Shibasa groaned. Despite her every hope, she knew damn well that they were the figures pursuing her from back at the tea shop. They could even be listening in to their conversation right now, there were plenty of methods to do so.
Rising from the table, Shibasa snatched the bottle from Beashiro's grasp. Again, this must've been a pretty common occurrence because the old lady simply rolled her eyes at the action. She walked to the front of the bar, checking through one of the windows by the door while also glugging a quarter of the sake bottle in the span of a few seconds.
Her eyes caught sight of a crouched figure in front of a tree some distance away from the bar itself, and a shuriken rapidly approaching the space between her eyes.
The window shattered and Shibasa instinctively rolled across the floor to the front door. The sudden movement made her slightly dizzy but she barged out the front door without hesitation, directly into the largest man she'd ever seen. The man was a solid wall of muscle that easily stood at seven foot tall with a headband that indicated his allegiance to the village hidden in the grass.
Shibasa recognised the headband and instantaneously found herself flung with great force back through the small wooden door and crushing a bar table on her landing. Shibasa hacked and coughed looking at the now destroyed doorway, the colossal man's palm was still extended. Her bottle of sake was thankfully still safe in her grasp and without even thinking she drank as much as she could in the short amount of time she had.
The large shinobi started walking in calmly, his face was stoic but didn't quite hide the disgust he felt at watching her drink an entire bottle of sake in mere seconds. If she was being honest, Shibasa had no idea why she was so compelled to drink alcohol in her greatest moment of peril but she wasn't about to die without a buzz anyway.
Beashiro, the sheer picture of professionalism, got up from her table and started to head towards the stairs at the back of the bar.
"No hard feelings dearie, but this isn't really my scene." She apologised, the large man ignored Beashiro as she walked past him and headed upstairs. He seemed to be a man of certain standards, Shibasa inwardly sneered, shinobi shouldn't risk the chance that Beashiro might intervene, but to be fair she was very old, and a coward.
Finally the man stood before Shibasa, who was still laying flat against the collapsed table, the bottle against her lips as the last drop of sake trickled down. Her arm fell to her side and the bottle clanked and rolled out of her grip.
"What's your name, big guy?" Shibasa asked, letting her instincts do absolutely everything for her, it felt like she was in autopilot, watching from a distance as she moved and spoke freely.
"My name is Karisu, the man who will kill you." Karisu replied, his voice was impossibly deep and held an overwhelmingly confident tone. It wasn't cockiness though, he genuinely sounded like he was simply stating a fact.
Shibasa shivered.
"Where are your friends, Karisu?" Shibasa asked, rolling her eyes up to meet his own charcoal irises.
"I sent them to look upstairs, your patron mentioned that there was a contact who was going to share information of some kind." Karisu replied, entirely honestly, it spoke to the absolute confidence he had that she would die here, a very accurate but insulting thing to do in Shibasa's opinion.
She felt a slight bit of anxiety, if her contact died she wouldn't have information on Genba, something she desperately needed if she wanted to understand who she herself was.
"How thorough of you, you're clearly a very competent shinobi. Kusa's lucky to have you." She replied, Shibasa herself didn't understand why exactly she said it with such a hateful tone.
"And Kusaakure is lucky to be rid of someone as slovenly as you, you are a stain on our village's pride." Karisu replied as he swung his fist down in the exact spot her head was.
Well that answered a few questions she had.
Shibasa deftly rolled left and scrambled to her feet, only to be met with a boot to the solar plexus. All the wind left her lungs as she retched, but she expertly stopped herself from puking her precious sake, she'd barely worked up a buzz after all.
The next kick came but Shibasa knew it was coming this time, pushing off the floorboards from all fours and contorting her whole body to spin over the man's meaty leg. His assault was relentless but Shibasa winded in out of the man's guard using nothing but instinctive reaction. There was a lot of muted shock Shibasa felt as she couldn't recall any time in her previous existence where she'd been in a fight, let alone against someone so clearly lethal with nothing but their body.
A fist swung and she weaved passed it.
A knee thrust towards her head but she caught it with both hands.
A roundhouse kick threatened to break her ribs but she flipped over his leg smoothly.
Karisu was progressively getting more and more frustrated as his attacks met air or got redirected entirely. It seemed like something in his head snapped as he shot a volley of open palms at her faster than her eyes could track.
Like a ragdoll Shibasa collapsed with an incredibly sore body but despite herself, she didn't feel concerned in the slightest.
"Uggghh man you're basically made of steel, how is this fair?" Shibasa groaned, laying on her back once again.
Karisu stomped forwards.
"Fairness doesn't apply to the likes of shinobi." Karisu replied with bile in his throat.
Shibasa laughed hard, she couldn't stop herself, she didn't even know why she was laughing in the first place. Visions only briefly swarmed her mind, something had definitely happened to her in the past that she considered to be unfair, and it was connected to Genba.
"You got that right, Karisu." Shibasa said, pushing off of her back and landing on her feet easily, she swayed a little from side to side.
Karisu spat in disgust. "Killing a drunkard wasn't what I wanted to do today." He stated.
Shibasa giggled and hiccupped.
"How about a drunkard killing you?" Shibasa asked, taking up a familiar fighting stance.
Karisu scoffed but she could see the sudden concern in his eyes, he took up what she recognised to be the Kusa academy's standard taijutsu stance, although he seemed to look more refined using it.
Karisu lunged in first with a left jab, when he missed as he expected he would, he thrust a right palm strike at her chest, she was pinned to the right by the bar counter and couldn't move left without him grabbing or striking her. She still dodged his attack, contorting backwards and kicking him in the chin as she backflipped, creating more space between them. In that brief moment of disorientation Shibasa flung a bar stool at Karisu, he caught the seat easily with both hands but wasn't prepared for the subsequent drop kick she delivered smashing right through the wooden stool and catching him right in the chest.
Karisu stumbled back but threw a right hook at the forward advancing Shibasa, catching her in the cheek but despite the heavy blow, she plowed on forward arching her own arm to strike an open palm at his throat, he caught her hand with his free hand and there was a brief flash of horror that spread across Shibasa's face. Karisu grinned, twisting her wrist and she was forced to turn with her arm, she slammed against the counter and Karisu brought his arm up, ready to swing it downwards and break her arm.
At that exact moment a kunai practically appeared on his forearm, he yelped in pain and Shibasa took the opportunity to free her wrist and deliver the hardest kick she could between the large man's legs. Karisu's eyes widened and watered instantly as a low whine exited his mouth.
The giant fell to his knees and Shibasa took no time at all to flip around the man and pull her forearms up against the man's throat while latching her legs around his arms. She squeezed his throat with all her might and counted to ten as the large shinobi tried to break free of her grip. He stopped moving after ten seconds and she kept counting.
Thirty seconds passed.
Forty seconds passed.
A minute passed.
Shibasa released her hold on the man who's body had gone limp some time ago, his body fell gracelessly forward landing face first upon the wooden floor.
Shibasa breathed in heavily and exhaled slowly until her vision stopped swimming.
Somewhere in her manic mind she was horrified that she'd killed a person, but a bigger part of her mind said that she'd done it before, that this was nothing special.
From the stairway, Beashiro tutted, looking at the damage done to her bar during the fight.
"I knew I'd find one or two kunai somewhere… I hoped that you would've sorted him out before then though. This was sloppy, even for you." Beashiro commented.
Shibasa felt the judgement in the old woman's tone and laughed mirthlessly.
"I haven't been feeling like myself lately." Shibasa excused halfheartedly, and looked over at the empty bottle of sake that had smashed at some point during the fight.
"And I was basically sober. Have you been watering those bottles down?" Shibasa asked. From the sheepish look on Beashiro's face, she definitely had.
Realization struck her suddenly.
"Weren't there five Kusa nins, including the big guy?" Shibasa asked.
Beashiro shrugged, the sound of footsteps creaking down the stairs echoed through the bar.
"I found your contact standing around four bodies, he was doing some real strange things to 'em but he sorted them out like they were nothing." Beashiro said with a half impressed tone.
A slim, grey haired young man with round rimmed glasses came down into view, standing a few steps behind Beashiro with a warm smile on his face and a strange looking storage scroll with the kanji for 'Bodies' written on it.
"Hi there, I was told you were looking into someone by the name of Genba Yamanaka?" He asked politely with a gentle smile on his face.
Something about the guy gave Shibasa the creeps.
She didn't care though.
She knew what she wanted.
She wanted revenge.
"Call me Kabuto, my Sensei asked me to help you out however I can, so I hope you'll treat me well." Kabuto introduced himself. His eyes fell down to look at Karisu's corpse.
"You weren't going to use that were you?" Kabuto asked politely, tilting his head as he spoke.
Shibasa shivered.
"... He's all yours, Kabuto."
Kabuto clapped his hands together and both he and Beashiro walked down the stairs.
Beashiro got a broom while Kabuto crouched by Karisu's body using medical tools to inspect the body. Shibasa sighed and reached for a bottle of sake from behind the counter, she'd been through more than enough to deserve a good drink.