Life number two had taken the most amazing turn possible.
Sute loved fuinjutsu.
Medicine was fun and all, but she'd been in med school in her old life and then spent two years working in the field before dying. Half the reason she went into it was just because she already had a disturbingly detailed understanding of human anatomy, both in terms of "healthy and whole," and "effects when under a metric hell-ton of torture and agony." Taijutsu fell into a similar category (thanks, old dad), and while ninjutsu and chakra were brand new to her, she still felt wary of using elemental ninjutsu since her natural affinity tended to be really finicky and dominant.
But fuinjutsu?
Fuinjutsu was new and unfamiliar territory, and she had no reason to fear showing off her passion for it because it was a learned skill and not some crazy kekkei genkai that would mark her for death.
Harusame couldn't mentor her directly too often since he had to prioritize training Utakata, so instead he gave her a bunch of scrolls, textbooks and workbooks to use—some taken directly from her own giant book of storage seals—and would review her progress at least once a week. Studying fuinjutsu could admittedly be tedious at times, requiring countless hours just copying down the same seal until she could recreate it perfectly from memory. Creating one's own seals could end disastrously without enough experience, so the early days involved much more time dissecting preexisting ones than experimenting with making her own.
But when looking at the potential applications, she found the time and occasional bouts of boredom more than worth it.
Fuinjutsu had to be the single most versatile and terrifying skill available to shinobi. One only had to look at Konoha's Yellow Flash, whose nickname rose from his ability to teleport, to understand the incredible potential it posed. Reviewing the textbooks jogged memories of other alarming feats from the original canon, like Orochimaru screwing Naruto's chakra control, or just Naruto's seal, period. Sute would probably call "hax" on it if it weren't so complicated.
As it stood, the craft was so complex that barely anyone dared tackle it, focusing instead on more direct ways to improve their battle prowess. But not Sute. She had spent her first life in a world where the average person would probably be able to live an absolutely peaceful and boring life without ever witnessing the horrors of war firsthand. Knowledge mattered more than being able to fight, so she loved the intellectual challenge fuinjutsu provided, and it helped that a lot of it just seemed to click naturally.
Sute loved fuinjutsu, she couldn't say that enough. She loved puzzling out complex formulas and transcribing them into something she could actually understand. and on the occasions Harusame let her experiment with it (under his close supervision, of course), she loved pushing the limits with it to create ridiculous and outrageous things. Her work was pretty basic thus far, a mishmash of basic fuinjutsu principles mixed with knowledge she'd attained in her first life.
Really, she was so lucky she knew so much math and science from her first life. It gave her even more leeway with creating and improvising seals even in the early days when Harusame picked over her work with a fine-toothed comb.
Punches too weak? Put some force-amplifying seals on her gloves! Patients in need of constant monitoring? She could set up a seal to monitor their vitals and alert the medical staff instantly if something went wrong. Zabuza needed to practice lifting super heavy swords? Weight-multiplying seals made it so simple. Everyone smelled like fish? No one really cared but she made odor neutralizing seals anyway, which ended up being picked up by Kiri's ANBU for rather obvious reasons.
As long as one had reasonable math skills, access to decent resources, and a strong and flexible imagination, anything seemed possible with fuinjutsu, and Sute had all of those in droves.
And so her days fell into a content monotony of seals, hospital work, and training, with a few stints in Torture and Interrogation to help add some spice to her routine. All in all, life was just... peaceful. Peaceful sounded like a weird word to use to describe life in a place called the Bloody Mist, but she couldn't think of a better one. Time seemed to fly by, and Sute was elbows-deep in a man's chest down in T&I one day when a chuunin entered with news of the war's official end.
In the end, her expectations had been turned on their head somewhat.
Juzo did not, in fact, die and pass on his sword to Zabuza, though Sute still remarked on his continued state of being alive every time she saw him. There were also more bloodline limit users around than she expected, but then, any kekkei genkai counted as "more" based on her limited foreknowledge of Kiri's political atmosphere. Some had managed to win their place in Kiri through undeniable heroics during the war meriting them international reputations, which... good for them, she supposed.
Shortly after the war ended, an official declaration arrived to the Mizukage's office announcing the Fourth Hokage's inauguration, a bit of news Sute relished. Nothing ever came of her brief brush with the remnants of his genin team that had whittled it down to only one member, and she had no idea how to feel about that. Konoha never contacted Kiri about it, and while word began to slowly spread among her peers about that ill-fated mission, Sute never got grilled for details by her peers or anyone higher in the ranks. As far as she knew no one in Kiri ever learned she was involved with it at all, and she'd prefer to keep it that way.
In any event, with the war finally over, the hospital no longer had such a heavy influx of injured people to heal so she got taken off the super-busy rotations. Meaning she had a bit more free time than before, which she of course spent training other skills. Sute had neglected her physical conditioning a bit with all the other stuff going on, and she wasted no time pressuring Utakata into more spars or otherwise just getting herself back into peak shape.
A couple weeks into February, she was sitting at a table near one of the training grounds eating lunch after a solo training session when she heard footsteps approach from behind. "Hey," a vaguely familiar voice greeted, and she turned her head to find a white-haired boy standing behind her.
"Hello, Mangetsu-kun," she greeted lightly. It had been a while since she'd seen the Hozuki boy, one year her junior; he used to visit the Ringo household before Ameyuri died, and after graduating she occasionally saw him at the hospital. Funnily enough, his clan's secret technique that let them basically melt into water if anyone ever tried to hit them did not make him impervious to other physical ailments, like headaches. Or sunburns.
(His skin boiled when he got sunburned really bad. Literally boiled. Seeing his skin with half-formed bubbles in it had been both fascinating and slightly disturbing, even for her. That... had actually been a new one for her. Which was quite disturbing to realize so she promptly shoved that thought away before she could process the implications.)
"Mind if I join you?" he asked, hefting a small bag presumably holding his own lunch, and she shrugged.
"Go ahead." He nodded at her as he plopped into the bench across from her, and for a while they just ate in silence.
"I have a brother now," Mangetsu said after a while, and Sute arched an eyebrow.
"Really? Congratulations."
"Thanks," he said, though his eyes still remained on her, a contemplative gleam in them. "His name is Suigetsu."
"That's a nice name," Sute hummed, contently biting into her grilled saury.
"Do you remember the first time we met?" Mangetsu asked carefully, and Sute smiled.
"Of course. You were banging on the door at five in the morning demanding Ameyuri train you to use the Kiba." Four year old Mangetsu had been fairly annoying, and she seriously suspected the main reason he hadn't been murdered back then was because of his status as the Hozuki clan's heir, and also the Second Mizukage's grandnephew. Killing an annoying toddler wouldn't be worth the political storm his family would raise. "I got really annoyed and threw my pillow at you to shut you up."
"Yeah," Mangetsu agreed with a nod. "You called me Suigetsu." Sute just smiled at him, perfectly placid and just a bit coy.
"Hmm, did I? How interesting." She took another bite of her sandwich, Mangetsu eying her all the while.
"...Your 'old memories.' Did I ever appear in them?" Sute paused, her grip tightening on the bread minutely, before quietly lifting it to her mouth once more.
"You should eat," she told him, and he didn't push the topic.
After that, Mangetsu always seemed a little more attentive to her occasional comments about her "old memories."
It happened in October.
News trickled into the village slowly, just rumors at first, but it quickly rippled across Kiri like a flash flood. Soon the village hummed with whispers, the words "Konoha" and "Kyuubi" on everyone's lips, until finally the Mizukage made the news official:
The Nine-Tailed Fox had gone on a rampage in Konoha and claimed the life of the Fourth Hokage.
Already Sute could hear some of the veterans debating on the strategy of attacking now while Konoha was still weak, but she knew nothing would come of it. They had just finished one war, and no village was prepared to handle another, especially not Kiri. They had suffered heavy casualties over the course of the war, including four of the Seven Swordsmen, and their own Mizukage was expected to retire soon. Launching a sudden assault now while still recovering themselves would just lead to more harm than benefits.
She listened to the rumors with half an ear as she strolled down the street with Utakata one day in search of lunch, mindful of her friend's silent demeanor. He'd been increasingly quiet since the first rumors about Konoha arrived, more on edge. People kept glancing their way before swiftly averting their eyes, so brief she'd miss it if she hadn't been so observant of her surroundings at all times.
"Something on your mind?" she asked casually, and Utakata snapped his head to stare at her, his lone visible amber eye narrowing.
"...It's nothing."
"It's not nothing," she retorted calmly. "You're obviously bothered by something. I'm not blind."
"It's..." Utakata faltered, and glanced away with a small scowl. His bangs covered the eye facing her, leaving her unable to read his expression beyond the bitter twist to his mouth. "It doesn't matter. Just, forget it." Sute hummed in thought.
"Is it related to what happened in Konoha?" He immediately stiffened at the question, halting mid-step and standing in the center of the road rigid and tense. Sute just looked at him expectantly, waiting patiently for him to break the silence.
"...Don't," he whispered, and then continued stalking forward while pointedly not looking at her. She frowned, trailing after him at a sedate pace.
"Don't what?" she pressed. "You're being vague again. You do that a lot you know."
"Some things are private, Sute."
"Yeah, but bottling up your emotions is bad for you. Half this village is going to burn out because of this whole 'killers can't have feelings' thing, I'd prefer you weren't one of them."
"What does it matter to you?" he bit out, still not looking at her.
"Well, we're friends, aren't we?" she deadpanned and he stopped again, his back even more rigid than before. As she skipped around him he slowly turned his head to look at her, his eye wide.
"What?" he whispered, so soft it was almost inaudible, and she huffed in annoyance.
"We spend almost every day together," she pointed out flatly. "We train and spar together, eat lunch, hang out in our free time—hell, you've been to my house. I don't have much experience, but I'm pretty sure that's enough to qualify us as 'friends'."
Utakata didn't respond right away, just continued staring at her wide-eyed, but then something harsh glinted in his face. "You're a fucking genius," he said slowly, his hands balling into fists at his side. "You're a prodigy and one of the smartest people I've ever met, you've spent the past ten months learning fuinjutsu, and you still haven't figured it out?"
"Figured out what?" Sute challenged, and his scowl deepened, his lips curling back to reveal his teeth.
"I'm a fucking jinchuuriki!" he screamed, and then froze, the rage vanishing from his face to be replaced by a look of pure horror. Eyes widening, he backed up and then vanished in a body-flicker, leaving Sute standing alone in the center of a suddenly quiet street.
"...Oh," she said lamely.
Utakata sat alone on the edge of a lake at one of the more isolated training grounds, holding his knees to his chest as he stared at the still water. Mist drifted across the surface, leaving the air damp and the ground soggy and squishy. He didn't care, just continued to stare at the water in silent brooding.
Soft footsteps padded across the soil behind him and he stiffened, squeezing his eyes shut as he sucked in a sharp breath. He recognized the smell that he inhaled with it, of herbs and spices with a slight undertone of dew dripping from leaves just after a storm. Then something cold and wet touched the back of his neck and he jumped with a yelp, jerking away to spin around wide-eyed only to find himself face to face with a can of iced tea.
"Wh-what the hell!?" he sputtered.
"In anime, people usually touch canned drinks to people's cheeks," Sute informed him blandly. "I told you, I don't have much experience with this stuff." Utakata just gaped at her, having half a mind to ask when the hell she had time to watch anime. When he didn't respond, she tossed the can which he caught on reflex more than anything, and then proceeded to plop onto the ground next to him. She pulled out another can with some stupid overly sugary drink, a small hiss sounding as she popped the tab.
"What are you doing here?" Utakata asked, finally finding his voice.
"Drinking soda?" Sute responded, lifting her can for his perusal with an arched eyebrow, and he scowled.
"That's not what I mean." The girl just shrugged, reclining lazily as she sipped from her can.
"I just spent three hours looking for you. Can't you show some gratitude?"
"Why?" he demanded, scowling. "Didn't you hear me earlier? Do you know what a jinchuuriki even is?"
"A jinchuuriki is a human vessel used to seal a bijuu," Sute replied almost automatically. "Because bijuu chakra is corrosive to humans, jinchuuriki are usually chosen at young ages based on compatibility between their chakra, so that the bijuu's chakra can safely assimilate into the jinchuuriki's chakra coils during development. This typically grants them access to the bijuu's powers, most notably nature releases typically seen only in kekkei genkai."
Utakata just gawked at her through the brief spiel, taken aback by the overly clinical description of his burden. His mouth thinned and he looked away, scowling once more. "You forgot the part about the seals potentially breaking," he bit out. "You heard what happened in Konoha. The bijuu are constantly fighting to take control, the smallest bit of leeway can allow them to break free and go on a rampage. All that training I do is to make sure the Rokubi doesn't break free."
"With that sort of attitude, it probably will," Sute deadpanned, catching him off-guard. "You called me a genius and a prodigy, and said I spent the past ten months learning fuinjutsu. I can't make one, but I still know a thing or two about how jinchuuriki work. Actually, those lessons make a lot more sense now," she murmured absently to herself, slipping into that strange language she sometimes used.
"You're using that gibberish again," Utakata muttered dryly, earning a flat look from her.
"Not gibberish, English," she corrected. "Forget it, doesn't matter. The point is, I know more about fuinjutsu than the average person. And jinchuuriki seals? It's pretty obvious if something's wrong with it." She poked his stomach as she spoke, making him recoil and scramble back with a startled look. "Yours is stable, Utakata. I never would've picked up on it if you didn't tell me. Now will you stop moping already? That stupid canned tea's going to get warm."
He just stared at her in shock, his mind struggling to process it. "You... you don't care," he said slowly, and she snorted, rolling her eyes.
"You owe me, I'm going to have to change a lot of plans because of this." Her words held no malice or anger, just tired resignation, and after a long moment Utakata just slowly nodded and popped the tab on his own can. Listening to the light hiss, some of the pressure lifted from his chest in time with it, his soul feeling just a bit lighter.
Later that night after returning home, Sute went to the guest room, stripping the mattress to reveal a hole in the box springs hiding a tattered notebook. A fine layer of dust coated the cover, and she had to wipe it with a tissue before opening it to keep her hands clean. It had been some time since she'd last pulled out her notes on the Naruto canon, having little need or time for it during the war.
She leaned against the wall as she flipped through it, idly tapping a pen against her chin as she skimmed the pages full of childish English handwriting. Brief profiles of the main cast, a basic roster of the Akatsuki members, any memories related to Kiri and its residents. She stopped on a page divided into two columns, the second filled with text while first remained blank. Pulling the cap off the pen with her mouth, she proceeded to scribble in the first blank.
Year Zero, October: Naruto born.
She steadily worked her way down the list, jotting in years and designing a rough timeline. Year Thirteen would mark the start of the Naruto canon. Before that, Year 7 or 8 would feature the Uchiha Clan Massacre, the month unknown, and Year Three or Four would have Neji's dad die. Her mouth curled in thought, and she flipped ahead to the next two pages to leave two final thoughts in an empty section:
Year Thirteen – Fifteen/Sixteen (Blank Period): Two Jinchuuriki dead. Utakata likely one. Stop Akatsuki.
Year Five – Deadline to leave Kiri.
She capped her pen and dropped it into her pocket, reviewing her notes briefly before quietly closing it and returning it to its hiding place. As she walked away her mind wandered back to the last item on that timeline, her expression souring for a brief moment before smoothing over once more.
Year Fifteen/Sixteen: Sasuke kills Itachi.
All other events unknown.
She had been on a boat headed to an island off the shore of Africa when she noticed one of her peers hunched over a napkin, scribbling away intently. "Oh hey, is that Obito?" she asked idly as she peered over the woman's shoulder to see a drawing of a dark-haired boy with goggles pulled over his eyes, and instantly received a giant, wide-eyed stare.
"You recognize him?" she gasped, her eyes seeming to sparkle, and she shrugged.
"Yeah, I watched Naruto all the time." The woman's face lit up with excitement, grinning at her excitedly.
"Oh my gosh, that's amazing! I never thought I'd meet another fan out here, everyone in my med program thought anime was for kids!"
"Ah, yeah, that happened at my school too," she commented with a small smile. "It kinda bummed me out. I ended up having to stop reading because med school got too busy though. I've been meaning to get back into it, especially since it's over now, but..." She trailed off and shrugged, and the woman sagged slightly but still remained smiling.
"Well, that's okay. I had to stop too, and I ended up marathoning the manga during summer breaks. It'd be nice to talk to someone about it again though, maybe I can help fill in the blanks. When did you stop?"
She didn't even have to think to remember, she had specifically chosen which point to stop reading to give herself the best sense of closure possible. "I stopped right after Sasuke killed Itachi."
(She never saw the tragedy behind Itachi's actions.)
(She never learned what lay under Tobi's mask.)
(She never witnessed Naruto befriend Kurama, saw the Five Great Villages form an alliance, learned the extent of Danzou's crimes, or saw her adopted mother briefly cameo thanks to the Edo Tensei. She never watched any of the filler arcs that gave life and breath to her best friend Utakata, showed Juzo joining the Akatsuki and working with Itachi before being slain by the Fourth Mizukage, or learned that the same Mizukage would be manipulated by Obito.)
(Her last true memory of the series was a black and white image on her computer screen of Sasuke leaning against a wall next to Itachi's corpse, blood smearing his forehead as he stared forward blankly with the words "To be continued.")
Well, here it is, the most important twist of this whole story: Sute has an incomplete knowledge of canon.
Some people have actually picked up on this. This lack of knowledge is 90% of the reason why Sute is so casual about the world. Almost everything that happens after Itachi's death is unknown to her, ranging from his actual motivations to Obito's identity (though she actually DOES suspect that one pretty heavily). I chose to do this because I'm sick of seeing near-omniscient SI!OCs, and I also don't want her to become nitpicky about changing and/or preserving canon. She has no idea how the future will unfold, or even a good chunk of what's going on in the present, which will heavily impact her decisions.
That said, she does know a few things from after she stopped reading. That friend from DWB and some others gave her small spoilers in the forms of fan art and photographs of cosplay, as well as the occasional accidental slip or mention. But otherwise, she is mostly in the dark.
With this though, all of the major twists regarding Sute's first life have been revealed. There are still some secrets regarding her second life—some of which have already been guessed, and one major twist even she won't predict—but at this point the major mysteries regarding her first life have been revealed. It's been fun reading all your speculations about her background, and I look forward to seeing your theories on the future events! Especially since, as Sute noted, she plans to defect by Year Five of her timeline.
Next chapter features a time skip. For the record, this chapter ends with Sute at age 11. We'll pick back up when she's 14.
Unrelated: if you guys like speculating about people's mysterious backgrounds, I recommend reading my other story, Echoes of Light. It's about an Uchiha OC (not an SI!OC) and is set in Konoha during the canon timeline, but it focuses more on the impacts his existence/survival has on canon as a whole rather than being purely OC-centric. The best way to describe it is "see how many Naruto fan fic cliches I can take and twist completely on their heads". It's definitely slower than this one (particularly at the start), but it's chock-full of twists and mysteries, and I'd LOVE to see some more speculation on them like I've gotten here. Especially since in the draft I'm nearing one of the biggest twists of all, and one of the scenes I've been anticipating for a VERY long time now.
...I also recommend it because I am seriously tempted to do a crossover between that and Bloody Oracle, because Sute and Ryoko would make the most terrifying and canon-breaking alliance ever even if Ryoko's dead for 99% of the story. They even both have "Bloody" in their monikers, it's a perfect match! Thing is, the plot I have in mind heavily revolves around the upcoming major reveal in EoL I just mentioned, which means it'd be spoiler-heavy for EoL.
So, yeah. If I do write it, it'd probably be more enjoyable if you'd read EoL first. Which will have Chapter 50 posted either today or tomorrow, so it's definitely not a quick read. Hence why I'm recommending it now.
Anyways, thank you for reading and enjoying Bloody Oracle so far. Next week's update will probably be on Sunday, because I usually have work on the first Saturday of every month, so don't be too surprised if it's a day late. I'll see you all next week!
And please, do leave your thoughts on this chapter's reveals. I'm eager to see what you guys think will happen from now on.