Chapter 37
Winter passed by slowly, the people of Kiri gradually adjusting to their new leader. Sute paid only minimal attention to the policy changes Yagura enacted, too busy with the ever-steady influx of patients at the hospital. Outside her shifts she continued to throw herself into her studies and research with more fervor than ever before, focusing much of her efforts in and on her greenhouse.
Without the convenience technology offered from her original world (and also a general knowledge of how it worked in her world), her focus turned to using fuinjutsu to generate an artificial weather system. Stored water would be released as rain at frequencies matching whatever biome that part of the greenhouse emulated, and another seal would produce light. Beyond that she added some smaller animals to the greenhouse, giving her beloved mamushis a steady supply of food they could hunt.
By the end of January she had made it a self-sustaining ecosystem, the greenhouse able to sustain itself for a full week without any intervention. When she gleefully showed Utakata the fruits of her work, he looked suitably impressed.
"Guess this means I won't have to house-sit for you anymore," he commented, and she shook her head with a beaming smile.
"Nope! It's totally autonomous now, I don't even need to take care of it myself anymore. All I have to do is make sure the storage seals are stocked with water."
"Maintaining this was like, forty percent of your free time though," he mused with a frown. "You need some hobbies outside of training and studying." The innocence of his remark made Sute smile wider, slinging an arm over his shoulder.
"Uta, I am so touched you care about me," she said. "But don't worry, I'll be fine. I have other things to do." He looked at her doubtfully but didn't argue, nor did he try to dislodge her arm from his shoulder, much to her contentment.
"Making poisons does not count," he reminded her dryly, and she rolled her eyes.
"I know, I know." In a way she didn't really count her greenhouse experiments as a hobby either, but she saw no point in mentioning that. Maintaining the greenhouse had been relaxing at times, but she also used it as a way to train. She couldn't practice her mokuton openly after all, and the seals she'd developed had required intensive research as well which could be applied to other areas.
The end result remained the same though: automating her greenhouse meant she'd have very little to do in regards to caring for it. Her main concern would be making sure the small animals she'd brought in for her mamushi to hunt wouldn't damage the plants. Other than that, the greenhouse would just make a relaxing place to sit down and read a good novel or work on her research.
"How's your training going, anyway?" she asked curiously as they headed back to her house. They still didn't train together too often, as Harusame wanted Utakata to focus more on his jinchuuriki training, so hearing his latest improvements was always interesting.
"It's going pretty okay, I guess," he said with a shrug. "No real progress on tapping into the Rokubi's chakra, but I've learned some new ways to use bubbles. It's actually pretty neat riding in them." Sute came to a halt at that, staring at him with her jaw hanging open.
"You can ride in bubbles now?" she asked incredulously.
"Yeah," he replied with a shrug, perfectly nonchalant about this latest physics-defying feat. "I used it back in Frost, actually, to get to the meeting spot after the avalanche. Figured it'd be faster and I wouldn't have to use the stilts." Sute just gawked at him, still struggling to process it.
"How does it even support your weight?"
"I don't know. Chakra, I guess?" Utakata shrugged, looking unbothered by the impossibility of it even as Sute's eye twitched.
After so long in this world, Sute could accept the fact they could walk on trees and water. She could accept that they could transform and cast mind-bending illusions. But this? This was the most basic of physics. She'd seen Utakata's bubbles, and they weren't solid force fields or anything like that. They were bubbles. Bubbles should not be able to support a human's weight.
She proceeded to rant about just that for the next hour while Utakata listened with an obvious mix of amusement and disinterest, giving no help in understanding how the hell it was possible. "I don't care how it works, it just does," he said when she pressed him to say something. When Harusame arrived at the end of that hour, he listened to her rant with a much more obvious amount of amusement.
"You get caught up in the strangest details," he chuckled, and Sute just screamed in frustration.
After that she dropped the subject to focus on reviewing her latest fuinjutsu ideas and experiments, grateful to her teacher for his helpful eye. They spent probably four hours immersed in her fuinjutsu lab in the basement, talking theory and testing out a few seals on the spot. By the time he left Sute felt like she'd made leaps and bounds with a few of her projects.
Then she went right back to ranting about the superfluous state of physics in this world.
"Seriously, what is it that determines which laws of physics just don't work!" she groaned, slamming down her empty shochu cup with a scowl. Next to her Kisame just eyed her quietly, looking almost speculative.
"Ya know, I always figured you'd be the wild kind of drunk that makes bad impulsive decisions," he mused. "That, or you just wouldn't get drunk somehow. Never pegged you for the ranty-type."
"No, I'm definitely the impulsive type," Sute corrected him. "I was suuuuch a bad drunk last time."
"The hell do you mean by 'last time'?" Kisame challenged, but Sute just snorted and downed another shot of shochu. While she might be physically fifteen in this life, she had zero qualms about going to a bar to get drunk with Kisame. Alcohol tasted awful but the buzz could be nice, especially when this world made no freaking sense.
Besides, if anyone felt like trying anything, Kisame would be more than enough to scare them off.
"Aren't you a bit young to get drunk?" he asked.
"I'm also too old to be in a magical universe," Sute retorted. "And yet here I am, in an apparently magical world that picks and chooses what laws of physics should be followed." She pushed the cup aside so her face could meet the counter with a loud groan.
"...I'm never going to know anyone normal, am I," Kisame sighed, and Sute turned her head just enough to look at him.
"Normal is overrated. Shark-nii-san is Shark-nii-san, and anyone who doesn't want to get to know you just because you're blue is stupid and missing out."
"Come on kid, let's get you home," Kisame said, pushing away from the counter and hunching next to Sute. She let out a small "whoo" as he scooped her up to carry her away, flinging her arms around his neck to hold on for dear life.
"Thank you Shark-nii-san," she said, and he shot her a rather unamused look as he carted her out of the bar.
The next morning Sute woke curled up on the couch in his apartment. Kisame had been too wary of traps to risk going to her house while she lacked the sobriety to warn him of them, so he'd decided to take her home. As she miserably curled up in his bathroom she silently conceded that he had been right to be wary, as she vaguely recalled trying to talk him into triggering two different traps after leaving the bar just for the heck of it.
It took half an hour before she could function enough to crawl out of the bathroom, gratefully accepting the bowl of miso soup Kisame prepared for her. "You are too good for this world," she told him solemnly as she ate.
"And you are too crazy," he responded wryly. She didn't try to argue, just content to eat the nice breakfast he had prepared. Besides, he might be right. Even after fifteen years in this world, Sute still seemed to shock and unsettle most of the people she met without any particular effort on her part. Her first childhood may have left her even more screwed up than she realized, and the second one certainly didn't help so far either.
She finished her meal and looked at Kisame curiously. "So, any idea when you'll get the Samehada?" she asked.
"Not until Fuguki dies," the shark-man snorted. "Swordsmen carry their swords until death, kid. You know that."
"I do, but the Samehada's also sentient," she countered idly. "I was wondering if it could decide on a new owner while the last one was still alive. Has that ever happened before?"
"Heh, sort of," he said with a grin. "It's happened once or twice, and it usually ends with the old owner dying anyway as a last meal." He snickered at that, flashing his pointed teeth in all their glory. "What's with the sudden curiosity, anyway? You're not usually that curious about it. Are you just suddenly realizing that living swords make no sense too?" he added in amusement.
Sute started to respond, and then paused. "I never really thought about it, actually," she admitted after a few seconds. "The Samehada being alive is just one of those things that just... is. It's one of those chakra things, I guess." She shrugged, and then scowled as she muttered under her breath, "Bubbles carrying people still makes no sense though."
Kisame laughed at her sour look. "So a living sword makes sense, but bubbles are where you draw the line, heh?" he chuckled. "Man kid, I really can't predict anything you say or do." Sute just rolled her eyes and didn't bother responding to the remark.
"You know, last time I saw the Samehada, I swear it was reaching for me," she commented. "It was fidgeting on Fuguki's back a lot, and maybe it was just my imagination but it felt like it was bulging in my direction specifically. He seemed kinda irritated at it moving so much, so I'm guessing it doesn't usually do that."
As she explained Kisame's smirk faded, expression still a little amused but also becoming more contemplative. "What, you think it wants you as the next owner then?" he asked.
"No, I think it might want to eat me," she replied flatly, and he snorted.
"Yeah, that's probably not too far off the mark. I'm no sensor, but I can tell you've been training in ninjutsu way more lately. Your chakra's finally starting to feel more refined, and depending on what you're up to, it's probably starting to feel pretty delicious."
Sute blinked as she absorbed this information, her head tilting to the side. "Wait, so the Samehada has flavor preferences? Does it like certain chakra natures? Do different chakra natures have different flavors? Would fire chakra be spicy to it?"
Kisame barked a sharp laugh at the stream of questions, shaking his head in amusement. "Kid, you ask the weirdest questions sometimes. I don't know about how chakra tastes to it, but it definitely has preferences. Doubt it's related to the chakra nature though, I've seen it gobble up earth chakra from one guy and practically spit out pieces of another. Hell, Fuguki said it seemed to like our good old Mizukage way more than the last host for the Sanbi."
"Old?" Sute repeated dryly, and Kisame laughed while she helped him take the empty dishes to the kitchen. The clatter of porcelain reinvigorated the headache which had started to fade, reminding her the hangover was still very much present. Now that she was a bit more awake she had the presence of mind to remember she was a medic, and she spent about five minutes pumping soothing healing chakra into it to take off the edge before getting ready to leave.
It had started to rain at some point during the night and hadn't let up once, a heavy deluge that only added to the muggy air in Kiri. As Sute peered through the window Kisame appeared next to her with an umbrella extended towards her, grinning all the while. "Just get it back to me later after the storm," he told her. "You already look like a wet rat when you're dry."
"Thanks," she replied dryly, voice sarcastic with a subtle undertone of sincerity as she accepted it. She opened the plain parasol and made her way home through the rainy streets, channeling chakra to her feet to walk atop the large puddles that steadily flowed like rivers in the downpour.
Later that night after the storm ended she would return to Kisame's apartment with the umbrella only to find it empty. It didn't take long to find out he'd been sent on a mission away from the village, expected to take at least two weeks.
She never would return the umbrella.
Two days after that, Sute sat in her kitchen eating a late breakfast when she heard a knock on the door. People never visited her house for basic pleasantries, so she already knew to expect a masked figure when she opened the door. He handed her a scroll and departed without a single word, leaving her to take it back to the kitchen and break the seal.
She read it in silence as she finished her meal, her eyebrows raising. A hunter-nin had requested her specific presence on a targeted takedown, a rarity since this had only one specific target. The target himself wasn't too much of a threat, but apparently he'd found a partner with a rather nasty affinity for lightning. The last team to fight them had been left in rather bad shape, and Kiri would prefer to take care of the problem quickly.
Leads to the target's location had already been found, so the mission should be relatively straightforward. More importantly, Sute felt excited to go on an actual ANBU mission again. She loved the opportunity to stretch her legs outside the village, and if this meant she'd be put back on the regular roster then her plans for defection would be much smoother. Sute finished her breakfast and went to pack, heading out less than half an hour later feeling ready for action.
Her eagerness only exploded when she arrived at the gates and saw who had requested her. Even with the mask, she had spent enough time around the man to recognize Ao's hair and body immediately. Despite training together and getting into ANBU on his recommendation, the pair had never actually gone on a mission together. Even during the war, they never really fought together. This would be their first true team up.
They maintained the usual professional attitudes for a majority of the initial stages of travel, never exchanging more than a few words as they ran to the port and boarded a boat to the mainland. Only after disembarking and leaving the port city, at which point they had a good amount of wooded ground to cover, did Sute finally break the silence. "How did we go this long without ever working together?" she questioned as they ran along, and heard Ao snort.
"We work different types of jobs. You're a combat medic, and I'm usually in search or infiltration squads as a sensor."
"...When you phrase it like that, this is one weird team for a specified search and destroy mission," she remarked dryly. Medics and sensors usually played support roles, not run solo missions on the front lines.
"The target's not that dangerous, and the partner's fighting style seems like a natural match for yours," Ao said. "And besides, neither of us are purely support and you know it. Not unless you count causing an avalanche with fuinjutsu as support." Sute perked up at the reference to her last mission, a giant grin bursting across her face.
"Yessss," she breathed excitedly, ready to start raving like every other time it was mentioned. She paused though and her smile faded, her gaze becoming more critical. "Hold on. How the hell do you know about that?" The mission had been classified immediately upon return given its political nature, meaning Sute couldn't tell anyone about her amazing feat even if she wanted to. Which she absolutely did of course, who wouldn't brag about causing a giant avalanche like that?
But still, the fact remained that Ao should not know about that. Even Harusame had only been let in on it after arguing the merits of letting her fuinjutsu teacher review the seals she'd used.
"Because I'm not an idiot," Ao replied dryly. "You leave Kiri on a top-secret mission with Terumii Mei and one of our jinchuuriki, and shortly after you return an ANBU team comes back from Frost with gossip about an avalanche. And meanwhile, all rumors of a peace talk between Konoha and Kumo suddenly stop."
Sute tensed at the last bit, her eyes narrowing. "You really should be more careful about what you say," she remarked coolly. "That's pretty sensitive information."
"Kid, I've got the Byakugan and we're in the middle of a forest," Ao deadpanned. "The nearest person is a full kilo to the west, and judging by that chakra signature I'm pretty sure it's just a fisherman. No one's going to overhear." Sute hummed and nodded, accepting his logic.
"Fine, point taken. I'm still not going to confirm classified details though. But seeing as we are alone and you brought up the avalanche, I should warn you now that I'll probably spend the next hour raving about it since I can't tell anyone else."
"No you won't," Ao responded bluntly, and Sute pouted in disappointment but didn't try to argue. She'd spent enough time around the man to know not to test his patience—that, and she genuinely respected him. The man been the closest thing she'd had to a formal jounin-sensei outside of her fuinjutsu training with Harusame, going as far back as the war. More recently he'd been integral in her training and the key to her breakthrough with using suiton without automatically trying to default to mokuton instead.
For that reason alone, Sute would respect his request to not pester or annoy him with her rambles about fuinjutsu. So they traveled in silence for a long while, both comfortable with just focusing on traveling.
Thanks to the information they had, it only took three days to find their target and his partner in a rather barren and rocky area in Hot Water. Like so many of the people to flee Kiri, Inaba Tsutomu had only reached chuunin before his career and skills hit a plateau. The man tended to specialize in stealth more than full-frontal assaults, going for ambushes and surprise attacks. He made up for what he lacked in strength with precision strikes and clever use of ninjutsu.
Sute did not recognize his new partner, but that man seemed to be Tsutomu's opposite, a hulking man with muscular arms as thick as her neck. The survivors had been able to give enough details for a sketch, and it had done little justice to his frame. Had she not known about his lightning affinity beforehand, she would have assumed him to be the brute force type.
He also seemed to be a natural sensor, because the moment Sute stealthily approached the pair's camp he suddenly lashed out at her hiding spot with a bolt of lightning.
She had to jump out from behind the cover of the rocks to dodge the attack with a silent curse, forced to expose herself as she ran from the steadily-arcing stream aimed her way. Ao had hung back to watch with the Byakugan from a distance while she handled preliminary scouting before launching their attack, and she now immensely regretted agreeing to that. The terrain worked against her, the rocky ground uneven and littered with sharp, jagged stones that made running hazardous if she didn't watch her step.
So of course, Tsutomu used the Hiding in Mist technique.
Sute's mental cursing amplified as the air around her became shrouded with thick white haze. Suddenly she could no longer see more than a foot in front of her, making each step even more hazardous than the last. Worse yet, the unknown man didn't seem to be hindered by the lack of visibility because lightning continued to whip at her from within the mist. She shouted in pain as she felt it lick at her arm, only her bracers shielding her from worse damage.
"Little Hunter-nin, you're not so tough when you can't see, huh?" the man jeered, his taunting laughter echoing in the mist. Somehow Sute managed to still pick up the quiet footsteps to her left over the sound, the scuff of shoes against stone barely audible, and she twisted out of the way from a kunai aimed at her throat by Tsutomu. In the same motion she swung at his legs, but the man managed to skate just out of her reach and retreat into the mist.
Sute grit her teeth as he fled, her instincts telling her to follow but her logical side forced her to keep moving forward. Right now she had no sense of her bearings, her mokuton-based sensory tricks useless without any root systems to use, and these men knew the terrain better than her. The rocks made running blindly too dangerous to risk, it would only take her tripping once to end up with massive wounds.
Lightning crackled right next to her ear as she moved, missing her head by inches. She flashed through hand seals and spewed a stream of water at the source of the lightning, knowing full well she'd likely miss without visibility. As she did she only noticed Tsutomu behind her at the last second, and she aborted the technique and skipped to the side, but not fast enough to fully dodge his swipe this time. She hissed as the kunai slashed through her shoulder, the wound shallow but still painful.
Dodging turned out to be just as bad though, because she only got a brief glimpse of lightning before it hit her. She staggered back with a pained shout, feeling the electricity course through her body. As she stumbled back her foot bumped into a stone, which was enough to make her lose her footing and fall. That fall likely would have been a death sentence if not for the choked gurgling sound from deep in the mist.
Even as she painfully hit the ground she could hear Tsutomu call out in alarm. His voice cut off mid-syllable though, and seconds later the mist cleared to reveal Ao standing with a senbon stabbed deep into their target's jugular. His partner knelt on the ground hacking for air not far away, more senbon littering his body and leaving one arm limp. Rage filled his eyes as he glared at Ao, his other hand raising in a seal.
Though her body ached Sute didn't give him a chance to do anything, rushing through hand seals before slamming her hands on the ground. The earth rippled around her palms, jagged cracks quickly streaking towards the man and churning the hard ground to throw him off balance. As he fell onto his side Sute slid a kunai from her sleeve and flung it low towards the ground, the blade piercing his neck just as it hit the ground.
Blood spewed from the man's mouth as he began choking, grasping at his throat with his only working hand. At the same moment Ao appeared behind him, bringing down his foot on the back of his skull and stomping his face to the ground. The impact pushed on the handle of the kunai and it fully penetrated through his neck, blood spraying on Ao's leg.
For a moment neither of the Mist ANBU spoke, simply watching as he spasmed for a second before his struggles stilled. Only then did Sute move again, quickly assessing her injuries and tending to them. Fortunately her armor had shielded her from the worst of the jagged rocks littering the ground, only getting a few small cuts along her legs. It also helped absorbed a good amount of the shock from the lightning, leaving her with mostly a faint tingling. Her ankle had been twisted by the fall, so she focused on that for now.
"That was not fun," she grunted as she worked. "I did not expect them to pick up on me and go right into ambush mode."
"Our intel didn't include the fact his partner was a sensor," Ao said, bending next to Tsutomu's body and unsealing a tanto. "It explains why they worked together. If I'd known, I would have skipped scouting or gone with you. That sort of combo would be hard even for some jounin to combat." He chopped off the man's head with a single slice, storing it and the body in a scroll.
"Oh good, so it's not just me," she drawled as she finished up with her ankle. She got to her feet with a grunt, stretching a bit before turning to the thinly wooded area at the far edge of the outcropping where the duo had made their camp. "Anyways, if you've got his body stored can we head back? I'd like to finish healing myself somewhere without all these jagged rocks everywhere."
"Not a fan of rocks?" Ao asked as he sealed the other man's corpse into a separate scroll, and Sute snorted.
"After having to dodge lightning while blinded by mist and trying not to trip every other step? Not at all." Being away from forested areas didn't bother her too much, but after what just happened she'd prefer to be closer to her natural element.
Ao seemed to understand to some extent, grunting as he slipped the two scrolls into his pouch and began walking towards the woods. "There's a decent spot about half a kilo ahead for you to heal yourself," he told her. "We can set up camp there. I didn't have a chance to finish setting up before I saw you getting attacked, so everything's still packed." Sute hummed as she followed, eyes flicking towards him curiously.
"I knew sensors can work around the Hiding in Mist technique, but I'm surprised you could," she mused to herself.
"Why's that?" he asked, sounding unamused.
"I thought the Byakugan would be thrown off by the mist being infused with chakra, like with the Sharingan." She vaguely recalled from the war that they theorized the Sharingan failed against it for that reason based on a few encounters with Uchiha, and so she'd assumed the Byakugan would have the same issue.
"The Byakugan can see through the mist fine," Ao replied evenly. "It still picks up on the chakra in the mist, but it's sharp enough to see people's signatures through that." Sute nodded and turned her attention forward, feeling some of the tension fade as they crossed into the tree line. The woods here were still barren and thin, nothing like the dense forests she preferred, but it still felt familiar and reassuring now that she had her element so close.
As they walked along a thought began niggling at her though, cutting into some of her relief. The Byakugan could see through the mist. She hadn't known that, but it made sense. Along with that, she knew that it had a long range and could see chakra in people's bodies. On the first day of traveling Ao had been identify a chakra signature as a civilian from a full kilometer away.
"Hey, Ao," she said thoughtfully. "Can I ask you something?"
"What?" he asked, sounding mildly irritated.
"When I fought Juzo, did you watch it with the Byakugan?"
The older hunter-nin didn't respond right away, and her gaze flicked towards him. He steadily faced forward, the side with the eyepatch facing her and hiding the majority of his expression as he continued walking. Even so she thought she could pick up a minute tension to his shoulders, his jaw just a bit stiffer than usual.
"I did," he finally confirmed, and Sute's steps paused, letting out a quiet exhale.
"I see," she said softly.
And then the earth exploded, thin roots bursting forth to ensnare Ao.
Sorry for the long wait guys! Didn't mean for the hiatus to last as long as it did. I got caught up with work and the MHA fandom, time flew way faster than I realized.
On a happier note: I got fan art! There are two pieces you can find on my Tumblr, cannibalisticapple. I added a link to Bloody Oracle of Kiri stuff. One is from the guest Abby who tried to post a link last time, and the other is from anja-nuehm which REALLY fits the swamp monster vibe. And THEN I got two MORE amazing pieces of fan art on Twitter! One by Tam733 ( Tien733) which I feel really catches her manic nature, and another by Xand ( AlexGruber24) that feels like a Disney princess version of Sute. You can find those two on my Twitter, cannibal_apple! I'll be posting direct links to them over on AO3 since FFNet doesn't let you post links.
Again, I really am sorry for the long break. Good news is I have everything written up to Chapter 41, so you can expect updates every other week or so for a little bit! I'll try to get further ahead on the draft so that I won't have to take another break! I won't lie, I am losing a bit of my love and passion for the Naruto fandom, but I love Sute too much to stop this story cold. So I'll see you all next time!