Chapter Five
Abura Soba
Taste buds were strange, to think about. Itachi had lived twice, and part of the strangeness was from that - in her last life, she had preferred savory things like meats and steaks. This body's tastes ran far more to the sweet side. She'd never had much of a sweet tooth, in that other life, but now she had a very bad one. It was jarring to consider how much her tastes had changed. So when Obito suggested barbecue, she didn't hop on it immediately.
Maybe it was partly developmental - she had grown up eating sweet things. Savory was less a part of the diet in this world. But she didn't know anything scientific about that - only her observation. And this body didn't prefer steak.
Of course, Obito had something to comment, about all this, as they strolled down the street. "Well, you have to eat protein, too. You're a growing girl."
She eyed him, resisting the urge to snarl. "Oh, yes, because barbecue is the healthiest thing I could be eating right now."
"It's healthier than dango!"
She paused, right in the middle of the street in Tea Country. They'd made minor concessions to their surroundings: Tea Country was near enough to Konoha that word might have gotten out, so Itachi wore non-descript clothes, and had hidden her forehead protector. Obito wore his mask, but not his Akatsuki cloak.
"Healthier than sweets, yes, I am sure," she agreed, dryly. "But surely I need something that's actually good for me, sometimes?"
"Fine, fine," he agreed. "What about ramen?"
She rolled her eyes. "You eat so poorly." She folded her arms, however, and said, "Fine." She did like umami, and the salty flavors of the broth, so it was a good compromise.
"Excellent!"
"Are you weirdly enthusiastic about ramen, too?"
He paused, cocking his head. "Ramen?"
"The kid, the kyuubi jinchuuriki is obsessed with ramen. He reminds me of what you seemed to have been like." She paused, and smiled, a little. "He always crowed to everyone who could hear about how he was going to be the Hokage someday. Does that," she grinned, wider, now, "sound familiar?"
"No," he said, laughing. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Well, Naruto-kun's favorite place in the entire universe was the ramen stand, Ichiraku. He always wanted to go there, never anywhere else."
He shrugged. "How often did you treat the kyuubi jinchuuriki to meals?"
"Not too often," she said. "But the poor kid was so unloved it hurt to look at him. He was alone. Entirely alone. No parents, no one taking care of him, besides a monthly visit from the Sandaime. I'm not - not a person with a bleeding heart, or anything, but… something about him made me care."
She felt like she knew him, was what it was, why she cared. But she couldn't explain how she just knew things about people sometimes, without mentioning too much about how she'd lived twice.
"Look at that," he agreed. "Another similarity."
"You're an orphan?" she asked, happy to jump on a new topic.
"The only person that took care of me was my grandmother, and I was just as much taking care of her as it was she was taking care of me," he explained. "It was rough. I was too soft, too careful, and a bad shinobi." He chuckled, to himself. "Even my eyes weren't up to snuff. I had to wear goggles all the time, to stop dirt from getting into my eyes."
"Naruto-kun has goggles, too," she said.
He laughed again. "It's like history is repeating itself. You're your mother, and I'm Naruto-kun."
"My mother?" she asked.
"Mikoto was always kind to me. Of course, she wasn't loved by the clan, much, either. She felt like she deserved to be Clan Head, but she was a girl. Girls don't get to be clan head. She was very angry about that sort of thing."
"Oh," Itachi said. She'd never seen any evidence of that, but she had been wrong about her parents so much before that she didn't want to speculate. It was a sure way to be wrong, about a great many things.
"Anyway, I can't imagine my grandma's still alive. She was called Uchiha Michiko."
"No, I've never known anyone by that name," Itachi said.
Obito slumped, at this. "And your mother?"
"What about her?"
He glanced over at her. "How is she these days?"
"I don't know. She barely spoke to me, before the massacre," she said. "She did not agree with my decision to present myself as female. She refused to acknowledge any of it."
"Oh," he said, quietly. "That's rough."
"It is what it is. She loves me, but she does not agree with my choices. I imagine she agrees even less with my decision to kill my father."
"Heavy," Obito murmured. "Sorry for dredging up bad memories."
"You couldn't know," Itachi demurred. "It's in the past."
"What about that senbei shop? Run by that guy and his wife - Teyaki, or something?"
"Yes, they're still there."
"Has the senbei gotten any better?" Obito asked. "It was not very good. I think the only reason they were in business was brand loyalty, honestly."
"It was never my favorite," Itachi agreed, neutrally.
"You're awfully polite, Itachi."
"It is proper to be polite to elders," Itachi returned. "I am sure they are making the best senbei they can make."
"See, that's the weird thing about you, Itachi. You come off this cold fish, but then you're super polite. Makes you seem like a real serial killer, you know?"
"Thanks for that, Obito," she replied, keeping her reply as dry as she could possibly make it. "Really makes a girl feel special, calling her a serial killer."
He laughed, awkwardly, and lifted open the flap to the shop. It was thin, and dingy, and the sign read only 'Ramen,' which did not encourage Itachi's opinion of it very much. Still, she dutifully followed and seated herself at the bench, settling in next to Obito. A thin, wiry man, who looked like he was half-leather gruffly bustled up.
"Abura soba," Obito ordered. The man gruffly nodded.
"I would like just miso, please," Itachi said, nudging him.
The man gave her an odd look, and nodded.
"The old guy doesn't care about that stuff," he said.
"Oh? What is abura soba, anyway?"
"It's a speciality of this place. Ramen without broth. I don't love the soupy bit, so I always order that."
"Heathen," she declared. "I take everything I said back. Uzumaki Naruto would be ashamed of you."
He was wearing a mask, so she couldn't see his expression, but he glanced away. "Uzumaki Naruto, huh? That's the kid's name?"
"Yeah," she said. "Why?"
"Nothing."
"It's not nothing, clearly. What do you know about the kid?"
He sighed, and dragged a hand through his hair. "It's complicated. You know who his parents were?"
"No, I don't think so," Itachi said. Maybe? She wasn't sure. It hadn't seemed important - they were dead. Dead was dead, until she realized she was able to resurrect people. "I know there was an Uzumaki clan, so I figured he was just one of the last ones. They were mostly wiped out when Uzu fell, so…" She shrugged. "It made sense in my head."
"Heh," he said. "Well, long story short, his father was the Fourth."
"What?" Itachi asked, almost too loudly. She stopped, and moderated her volume. "I can't believe what you're saying. If his father was a war hero, why in the name of the Sage is he alone at eight?"
"I don't know," Obito admitted. His voice sounded rough. "But his father wasn't an Uzumaki. His mother was - I assume he was given the name to hide the fact that he was the Yondaime's son."
"That's a big secret," Itachi mused. "I realized he was the kyuubi jinchuuriki, but… I don't know how I missed that."
"I expect the Sandaime forbade anyone to speak of it." He sighed, long and hard. "I expect he thinks he can hide everything from Naruto-kun for his own protection."
"The Sandaime," she said, slowly. "He always blamed my family for the death of the Yondaime. He claimed that the Kyuubi was controlled by an Uchiha - my father, I expect."
Obito glanced away, threading his fingers together on the counter. He gripped tightly, his knuckles white.
"He wasn't wrong," he said, so softly that Itachi almost missed it. "Because I killed the Yondaime, and his wife. The Yondaime, who was my sensei, the closest thing I had to a father, and his wife, who treated me like a little brother. She made me call her Kushina-nee. Kakashi and I."
Itachi was silent, for a long time. She chewed on that - on a lot of things: the silence, the fact that Obito and Kakashi were on a genin team together, on the fact that Kushina was gentle and loving, on the fact that the Yondaime was their sensei, and the fact that he had clearly acted the way Katsu-sensei had towards Kane: he had taken over in the wake of a parents' absence.
"Madara did it, not you," Itachi told him firmly.
"I did it," he said. "I was so angry, so furious, I felt so spurned by everything and everyone that I tried to burn the world, and remake a false one, instead. One that was free of pain, and suffering, and death. One that was better than this one. How foolish I was. How sentimental. How much suffering could have been avoided if I had just accepted that the girl I liked was dead and there was nothing that could be done about it?"
"Your feelings matter," Itachi argued, quietly. "They do. Sometimes I stop and think about the kinds of suffering I could have avoided if I had just accepted I was a boy, despite how it made me feel. It's not productive. Feelings are real. Don't beat yourself up over it."
Obito didn't reply to that, simply staring at the little stand of chopsticks, like it contained all the mysteries of the universe.
Itachi decided to try a different tack. "So it was true? That an Uchiha set the Kyuubi loose."
"It was."
"That was why my clan died. It was the excuse Danzou used to marginalize us." She said the words quietly, but she could tell from the angle of Obito's head that he was upset.
They were interrupted by the arrival of the food - Itachi and Obito broke their chopsticks, and she dug in. Obito lifted up his mask, exposing his mouth and throat, and did the same.
There was a long silence, where Itachi distracted herself by eating the ramen - slurping it up, so she didn't flip out at Obito. She might have wanted to, but there was nothing gained by doing that. There was nothing to yell at him for - it was as if a different person had done it. He, too, hadn't slaughtered the Uchiha. She had done that. He'd set things into motion, but the decision to plan a coup had been entirely their own fault.
"I cannot fault you," she decisively said. "It wasn't your fault that my clan died. It was mine. I made that decision. I intend to own it. I was justified, but it was mine alone."
"Thank you very much, Itachi. For what it's worth, I am sorry."
"It's Naruto-kun that you need to apologize to. Not today, but someday. He needs to understand. Even if you would take that back now - he needs to understand why he grew up alone."
"Okay," he said, swallowing a mouthful of brothless noodles. "Would you like to try? It's really good."
"Ah. No," she told him.
"I understand," he said, softly, picking at his food. "I'll tell him. Everything. I promise. The Yondaime was my sensei. How could I have betrayed him? I was so angry, so full of hate. Madara took everything I was and twisted it into something else."
"I can't imagine how that feels," Itachi said, before she ate another mouthful of noodles. "To have lost a decade like that…"
"It's not easy," he admitted. "But what can I do? I can't go back in time."
"No, I suppose not."
The silence stretched between them again, as they continued to eat. Itachi was mostly eating for taste, at this point, since she was full, and probably didn't need to eat any of this. The surgery had eliminated most of her need for food, at this point.
She had learned that a smaller stomach really did stop her from eating as much - her usual portion had nearly made her sick, and she wasn't the kind of person to overeat. Once all the noodles were gone, she stopped, and pushed the bowl aside. Obito still hadn't, but he didn't have a hilariously small stomach. He even got a second bowl.
She changed the topic, instead of going back to the previous one. "So… these cloaks."
"What?" Obito asked, sounding like he had been lost in thought. "What cloaks?"
"I mean, did you guys decide that you needed a unifying symbol for your boy band?"
"We have a girl," he protested. "We can't be a boy band."
"I don't think you understand that much about boy bands, Obito. You need more than one girl to make it co-ed."
"That's not true."
"What do you know about it, old man?"
He huffed, and shoveled more noodles into his mouth without answering. Itachi grinned.
"That's as good as conceding the argument," she proclaimed.
"A girl cannot, by definition, be in a boy band." He said this with the finality of truth. "Therefore, I am right and the cloaks aren't a way to distinguish the boy band."
"Well, clearly this cannot be settled right now, but seriously: why the cloaks?"
He folded his hands above his second empty bowl. "A common symbol helps foster group dynamics. It's why the forehead protector exists, after all."
"Right, so is there some tailor somewhere that makes them for you?"
"You have an awful lot of questions about some cloaks." He sighed. "But yeah, they're made by a tailor in Rain. I guess it was an original design, created by the guy who originally founded it."
She shrugged. "They're distinct. I didn't realize how identifiable they were until I saw those two guys. It's a nice bit of PR."
"You're a weird kid, Itachi-chan."
"And you're a shitty old man, but you don't see me making a huge deal of it."
He just sighed, and kept eating.
There was another silence, to that, while Obito worked on his third bowl. Itachi was flabbergasted, but she supposed that she shouldn't be surprised. She had, after all, seen Naruto eat twice this in one sitting, and he was eight.
Itachi was just not feeling food, as much. She was beyond stuffed. She did consider whether removing the broth allowed one to more completely fill up on noodles, and that she ought to tell Naruto this strategy, but then she realized that she could no longer treat him to Ichiraku anymore, being a criminal, and despaired.
She cast around for something to distract herself with.
"Obito, tell me about the next person in Akatsuki we're going to meet."
"Oh, well, I had actually thought about Pein, but it might be easier to do a test run, I think. So, Hoshigaki Kisame. He's a member of Akatsuki, but he's been with me from the start. Loyal to the real plan, not Pein." He had another mouthful of noodles. "Good fighter. Sort of revels in it. You two would get along well, I think."
"Well, here's hoping we do."
"He killed his team to protect information for Kiri, and left the village," Obito explained, gesturing with his chopsticks. "I found him, and he promised him something better. I don't know how he'll take it, knowing that my promises are dust."
"So we might have to fight?"
"It's possible. We can win, but he likes to do obnoxious things like fill entire valleys with water."
Itachi frowned. "How much chakra does this guy have?"
"Well, they don't call him the Tailless Tailed Beast for nothing."
"Right," she agreed, brushing a bit of noodle away from her thigh-highs. "You people and your massive amounts of chakra."
"I only have a ton because I'm made mostly of Hashirama cells and spite these days. Shouldn't you have a bunch, too?"
She huffed. "I'm not a chakra powerhouse. I mean, yes, I have more, but not to that extent."
"There's only so many people that would consider filling a valley with water made from their chakra worthwhile, yes."
Itachi folded her arms. "And yes, I'm not one of them. I mean, honestly, Obito."
He shrugged, sort of aggressively. "I don't want to assume."
"Well, I'm not one of those people," Itachi said, fiercely. "Since I was a child, I was always had more skill than chakra. It's part of the reason why I focused on genjutsu - it's not as much of a drain as ninjutsu techniques."
"I never knew that," Obito said. "The one time we fought, seriously, it was over before chakra reserves became an issue."
"That, and my genjutsu was neutralized because you had the Mangekyo."
"Well, you won't have that problem now," Obito told her, putting his bowl aside. "I don't think Akatsuki currently has a genjutsu specialist, so you should be very effective against any of them."
"That's excellent to hear," she acknowledged. "My Mangekyo technique, Tenjin, should help compensate for my lack of chakra - a way of gathering sage chakra without standing perfectly still. So, yes, it's not that the guy who can make literal entire lakes of water by himself should be unbeatable for me, but no, I still don't have a ton of chakra."
"I didn't mean to offend," Obito told her. "I'm just surprised, that a great genius from a great clan has such a drawback."
"None of us are perfect," Itachi countered. "We all have weaknesses."
"I suppose you're right."
"It's - don't worry about it, Obito."
"Alright," he said, stretching and standing up. "Do you wanna get out of here?"
"Alright."
He stood, and laid out a few notes to pay for the meal. The chef came over, and took it, and smiled, and then they were out the door. Back to the hideout. Maybe Itachi would see about getting a haircut soon. It was getting rather long, after all.
an: One of the lovely people in my Discord server advised I went too abruptly from the previous chapter to the next two, so here's a little breaking-up chapter in between. Some nice charming banter between our duo. Thanks, SpokenSoftly.
