Chapter 38

Even before forming hand seals, the surrounding woods responded to the pull of Sute's chakra easily. Thin roots burst from the soil, easily ensnaring Ao's wrists to prevent him from grabbing a weapon and binding his legs together. A few hand seals had the roots growing thicker and splitting, the newly halved roots branching off to wrap around his arms and pin them to his torso. Smaller, thinner ones curled around his fingers, binding them to prevent him from forming hand seals.

The capture took only three seconds in total, and once he'd been fully immobilized Sute looked at the restrained man wearily. Ao gazed back, his exposed eye cool and steely even in his current state. "What do you want?" she questioned warily.

"You're the one who captured me," he replied, perfectly deadpan.

"You let me capture you," she responded flatly. From the moment the roots first emerged Ao went rigid, but he'd made no effort to resist. Surprise had nothing to do with it; he'd had enough time to try to dodge, the man was a jounin for a reason, but he hadn't even tried to so much as step back. He had purposely kept himself motionless and pliant, allowing the roots to pull and move his limbs whatever way she wished.

Shinobi didn't just let someone place them in such a vulnerable position. She could have just as easily yanked his limbs to rip him apart, and even now the Byakugan wouldn't be enough to save him if she decided to slit his throat like this. He knew that telling Sute he'd seen the battle with Juzo would reveal he knew about the mokuton, and he'd known she wouldn't react well.

Sute was no expert in negotiations, but she knew enough to recognize he had intentionally given her the edge so she would feel they were closer to even grounds.

Ao wanted something from her, and she had no idea what.

"You always were clever, Sute," he observed, calm and almost casual.

"Then let's skip to the part where you explain it," she said impatiently. "You've known about the mokuton for months now, and no one's tried to confront me about it yet so you obviously haven't told anyone." That meant he'd been planning to collect this favor for a long time, waiting for the right moment to show his hand. Either he'd had something in mind all along, or he'd been stowing away the information until something came along where he could use the leverage.

Either way, the fact he revealed it now meant he had something in mind. "So I repeat," she all but growled, eyes boring into him. "What do you want?"

Ao met her suspicious gaze evenly. "I want to help you leave Kiri."

And that—Sute never would have predicted that.

She felt some of her steely façade slip, just staring at the man in open shock. "You want... to help me leave Kiri?" she repeated slowly, just to make sure she'd actually heard him correctly, and he nodded.

"I figured out you were planning to defect back when you first said you wanted to become a Hunter-nin," he told her gruffly. "You never expressed any interest in it before, and after seeing you use the mokuton it wasn't hard to guess the reason. You've always been the kind of person who uses every resource at your disposal."

That just surprised her more. He'd known her intent this whole time, and had still agreed to train her? The man never struck her as the type to support defectors, nor did he strike her as the type to support her decision to leave due to sentimentality or affection for her. Ao was a product of the Bloody Mist and proud of it; he had voiced strong disapproval over those who defected due to disagreeing with Kiri's tactics and brutal lifestyle, and how the younger generations had grown too soft and coddled.

"I'm still not hearing why you want to help," she pointed out, if only to distract herself from her growing shock. Focus on the facts. "I sincerely doubt it's just because of me saving your life. Shinobi don't do things just to help someone without some sort of benefit—especially those from the Bloody Mist."

"We don't," Ao agreed with a nod. "I'll be blunt: the mokuton is a death sentence in Kiri." The remark got a soft snort from Sute, rolling her eyes despite the situation.

"I know that already. Anyone with working eyes can see the growing bias and prejudice against kekkei genkai in Kiri. It's already chased off a few clans, and I'm certain some of the casualties during the war weren't from enemies." Yuki Shiromi came to mind as she spoke, her remarks about how her civilian relatives had been killed and one of her brothers had likely been murdered by his own teammates in the war. And since the war, that attitude had only grown worse as blame began to shift towards kekkei genkai users for their loss.

"The stigma is definitely there," Ao said. "But if you had literally any other bloodline but the mokuton, they would probably just ignore it." The casual remark had Sute pausing again, her eyes narrowing.

"What do you mean?" she asked warily.

"You're one of the only seal masters in Kiri, and one of the best medics we have," he replied, blunt as always. "Your poisons are regularly used by Hunter-nin and ANBU assassins, and I know for a fact that we'd have had a lot more casualties if you hadn't found antidotes for so many other poisons back during the war. And that doesn't even account for the strides you've made in ninjutsu.

"The fact is, you've proven yourself a perfectly capable kunoichi without the use of your bloodline," he declared, not breaking eye contact, "and you're only getting better each day. You might not be a Swordsman, but you're already shaping up to be one of the best shinobi Kiri's ever produced. You've made yourself more valuable than you realize."

Sute listened with a calm, unmoved expression as he rattled off each point, but internally she felt herself reeling. Ao never complimented someone just to fan their egos, or even to try to play to his favor. He only ever spoke the truth; even now his voice had the flat tone he used when stating cold, hard facts. While she knew she'd made herself a valuable asset, for him to call her one of the best shinobi Kiri ever produced?

That meant she really was one of the best.

As he reached the end of the list he finished, "Beyond all that, you're also close to one of our jinchuuriki, to the point that the village felt they could trust you to keep an eye on him in another country. Killing you just because you have a measly bloodline limit would risk his loyalty to Kiri." He paused then, huffing a small breath. "But that connection is also exactly why the mokuton is a death sentence."

His ending remark made Sute frown, her stunned awe quickly snapping back to caution and wariness. "What are you talking about? What does the mokuton have to do with that?"

This time Ao was the one to snort and roll his eye. "Kid, I know you graduated early, but I know you at least had history classes. What do you know about the First Hokage?"

"You mean besides the fact he had the mokuton?" she asked sarcastically, and he looked unimpressed by her answer.

"Yes, besides that." Sute sighed, crossing her arms with a contemplative hum.

"Senju Hashirama," she started. "Head of the Senju clan, and the founder of Konoha alongside his younger brother Tobirama, the future Second Hokage, and Uchiha Madara. He was considered the 'God of Shinobi' and one of the strongest men to ever live. He died in battle shortly after the first Shinobi World War, supposedly as a result of being weakened by his battle with Uchiha Madara when the latter defected."

"Very good, you're at the level of a first year academy student," Ao drawled, voice dripping with sarcasm.

"Oh, buzz off," she growled irritably, and sighed before she continued. "The mokuton isn't a recurring kekkei genkai in the Senju or any other clan. Hashirama's the only known person to have it, though there have been legends predating his birth of people who could grow forests. No one knows what caused it to manifest in him specifically, and his children did not inherit it either."

"Enough about that," Ao cut in. "What do you remember about the Five Kage Summit?" Sute frowned, surprised he'd even ask because everyone knew about the outcome of that fabled meeting from the first war.

"The Hokage tried to negotiate for peace by offering the other villages eight of the Tailed Beasts. They ultimately divided the beasts so that Kumo, Kiri and Iwa would receive two, while Konoha kept one and the Land of Water received more land due to already having the Ichibi. At a later point the last beast would be given to Taki, who..."

Her voice trailed off there, her annoyance fading as she finally realized why he'd asked about the First Hokage in the first place. Ao clearly recognized she picked up on it, because he broke the silence. "The mokuton can be used to control Tailed Beasts," he told her bluntly. "And the current Mizukage is a jinchuuriki."

Sute exhaled a shaky breath, shaking her head. Shit. How could she forget that? The scene where Yamato had used the mokuton to restrain a rampaging Naruto had been one of the more memorable scenes of the series. It had been the reason he'd been assigned to lead the team to track Orochimaru and Sasuke in the first place. His ability had been stated to be weaker than the First Hokage's, but it had still been enough to restrain Naruto and calm him down.

And while her memories of canon might have faded and she lacked knowledge of the full series, Sute knew her grasp of mokuton was stronger than Yamato's ever was.

"How, though?" she wondered aloud in frustration. "I don't get why wood is able to control them. It's just—it's wood," she said flatly, gesturing at the roots still wrapped around Ao. "It's literally just wood infused with chakra. It's not like it gives me mind control abilities." If it could, she'd be in a much different situation. Why leave Kiri when she could just manipulate a few elders to reform society a bit?

"And we're all lucky it doesn't," Ao muttered to himself with a mild grimace, likely imagining a similar scenario. "I don't know how exactly it works either. There aren't any records of how he used it to control them, just that he did. And that possibility alone is enough of a threat."

He met her gaze evenly once more, his serious look silencing any retorts she might have. "Karatachi Yagura is a perfect jinchuuriki. I don't think I need to explain how rare that is, and why that makes him so powerful. If we ever need to take him down, there will be massive casualties even if he doesn't fully transform."

The puzzle was finally, finally starting to click into place, and Sute's eyes narrowed. "You want to use me to overthrow him." She didn't even bother to phrase it as a question, it was so obvious that's what he wanted.

"If it comes down to it, yes," he confirmed with a nod. "Kiri's always had a lot of internal tension and dissent, and in recent years it's only gotten worse. There was already talk of a revolution even before the Third Mizukage died. It's too soon to tell if we'll need to go through with it with Yagura, but based on his track record so far, we're not holding much hope for him unifying our forces."

"Yeah, me neither," Sute scoffed. Even without her knowledge of canon, she'd have serious doubts based on their limited interactions. He just seemed to lack something that most people had, even in a village full of psychopaths like the Bloody Mist. It had only been a couple months and he already proved to be the kind of leader who ruled with an iron fist, and viewed his people as assets and tools before anything else.

One thing she couldn't deny though was that he was easily the most powerful shinobi in all of Kiri. "But still—you think I can go up against him?" she questioned incredulously. "You literally just had to save my ass from a couple of missing-nin!"

"No, if you fight him now you'd die in a heartbeat," Ao said flatly, ignoring the sour glare Sute shot his way. "Like you said, you don't know how the mokuton can be used to control the Sanbi—and even then, you're still fighting with a handicap."

That had her annoyed scowl softening to something more contemplative. "What are you getting at?" she asked, and he huffed quietly.

"I won't mince words: your grasp over the mokuton is currently weak. The raw potential is strong, the fact you didn't need to use hand seals to make these roots spring up or change your arm when fighting Jzuo shows me that you have a powerful natural aptitude for it. But raw talent means nothing without training. The fact you've been hiding it for so long means you haven't had the opportunity to do any proper training with it. I don't care what you've done in secret in your greenhouse, it's not enough.

"And I know the rest of your ninjutsu has suffered because of it," he added with a pointed look. "I may not have a kekkei genkai of my own, but I've watched enough kids with mixed natural releases struggle to separate the elements. Your natural aptitude works against you, because mokuton is the most familiar element to you. Your instincts will make you try to subconsciously form it. That's why I had you learn raiton to get over that mental block. As long as you keep trying to hide the mokuton and don't train it properly, using either suiton or doton will run the risk of them merging."

Sute remained silent as he spoke, the man unknowingly echoing her own thoughts and revelations from when she'd finally made the breakthrough with raiton. He'd made it clear enough back then he'd known about the block, but she hadn't realized he'd known the exact cause for it before even she herself did.

It just made it clearer that Ao really had been subtly trying to help her this whole time, even knowing she planned to escape. And she could also start to see why he went along with it.

"And once I leave, I can practice it more freely and refine my control," she summed up for him, and he nodded.

"Exactly. I don't know if you plan to start using it openly after you leave, but even if you decide to continue hiding it, you'll have an easier time finding places to train in private. You'd still have pressure from being found by Hunter-nin or other shinobi, but you won't have to worry about an entire village of shinobi potentially watching your every move."

Sute hummed, knowing he was right. She had already planned to start training the mokuton in earnest once leaving Kiri. While missing-nin might lack a stable place to call home, the constant travel would make it easier for her to train without leaving noticeable traces or patterns. There were plenty of places shinobi would likely never visit, places even civilians would avoid. She had a literal world full of options.

"And then years down the line after I've trained it up and have a better grasp of it, I come back to help kill Yagura," she mused quietly. Though even so, he had no way to guarantee she would come back.

"Ultimately, we can't force you to do that," Ao acknowledged calmly, surprising her once more. "We still don't know for a fact we'll have to overthrow him yet, but if it does go that way, we can probably figure out some sort of incentive for you to come help us. At the very least you'd probably be able to return for good after he's gone. But until then, you won't be able to do anything at all as long as you're in Kiri. So if helping you leave now gives us a fighting chance in the future, then so be it."

Sute remained silent once he finished, contemplating his words. Help with a revolution, huh... She always knew there would be a revolution someday. The very first time a Mist ninja appeared in the manga had been Zabuza working for Gato to raise funds for his own efforts, and from Kakashi's description she doubted he'd be an isolated case. The fact that she knew Mei would become Mizukage, after witnessing the stigma against kekkei genkai users firsthand, only seemed to further confirm this.

She'd thought about it over the years, if she would have felt the need to run from Kiri if she didn't have to worry about the stigma from having a kekkei genkai.

And in the end, Sute figured she probably wouldn't.

Out of all the hidden villages in the Naruto universe, Kiri probably was the best fit for her. Her first life had left her just the right kind of fucked up to feel right at home among all the bloodthirsty savages and murderers in the Bloody Mist. Hell, it left her just fucked up enough to make them wary of her. She couldn't imagine adapting nearly as well to villages like Konoha or Suna; even the more savage Iwa or Kumo the American Expy weren't prone to her specific brand of brutality. She'd probably be carted off to a psychiatric evaluation within her first week at the academy, if not earlier.

She doubted killing Yagura would be enough to fix everything. Fixing all of Kiri's issues wouldn't be an overnight thing, it would be a long process with lots of reform and politics involved. But if his death might be enough to get them started on the path to change, to start truly uniting the blood-loving savages of Kiri and stop all the needless prejudice and hatred against kekkei genkai...

"We'll just have to see how I feel when the time comes," she finally said. That would be years down the line, far too long to know for sure she'd still hold any shred of desire to return to Kiri. "But you're still making a bold gamble assuming I'd be willing to help you then just because you helped me now. There's a big difference between letting a teenager leave the village, and battling a Kage. The second one's tantamount to suicide. You really have no guarantee I'd be willing to help then."

"I don't," Ao agreed. "But with the potential payoff, it's a gamble I feel is worth the risk. It's too soon to know how a coup like this would go, but just having the chance of having you on our side after unlocking your full potential is more than worth it. And besides," he added, "it's better for you to go fully independent and abandon everything to do with Kiri than risk you somehow becoming one of Yagura's lackeys."

And now Sute saw the other side to his motivation, and felt her expression turn sour. "You really think I would work for him?" she asked flatly, almost insulted. "Even if they don't kill me, I have standards."

"I've seen enough to know not to make assumptions," Ao retorted. "Shinobi deal in deceit for a living, kid. There's a lot more at work in the shadows than you'd expect, even beyond ANBU. I don't think you'd work for Yagura willingly, but everyone has a weak spot of some sort. And if Kiri thinks they have a way to guarantee the loyalty and service of a mokuton user, they'd try that first before killing you."

Once again, to her immense irritation, Sute couldn't refute his logic. She'd like to, but... well, Orochimaru existed. The fact he convinced a Daimyo to let him found a village in their country, and then talked so many people into working for him even with all the human experimentation on them and their peers, kinda spoke volumes of his ability to manipulate people. Charisma only did so much. Sute had no intentions of working for someone like that, but either way...

Yeah, Ao was absolutely correct to consider that as a possibility, no matter how slim it might be.

"So basically, you're just taking the route that leads to me not being your enemy," she summarized, tone even flatter than before.

"Pretty much," Ao confirmed, just as flat.

And honestly? That was good enough for Sute.

Ao tensed as she raised her hands to go through a series of seals, but relaxed when the roots released their hold on him. "Surprised you let me out before we reached an agreement," he remarked as he rubbed his wrists.

"The only thing I really need from you is your silence," she responded, already resuming her trek towards the camping site. "You've already made it clear that you don't plan to tell anyone, and if you wanted to kill me you would've tried that before now. There is nothing further to negotiate."

"You really think you can escape all on your own?" Ao asked as he followed and fell into step by her side. Sute couldn't help the sharp smirk at the question, mouth splitting wide into something closer to a cutting grin that bordered on manic.

"Of course I do. Ao-san, I've been planning this for almost as long as I can remember. Your offer is greatly appreciated, but at this point you'll simply get in the way of what I already have planned so your silence will be enough." Sute had nearly finished the last arrangements for her defection. If all went well, she would be gone from Kiri by the end of the month.

That last thought gave her pause though, realizing there was something he could help with. Her steps slowed, and beside her Ao stopped too. "...Hey, Ao-san. We're alone, right?" She could feel his attention focus on her at that, intense even without looking directly at him.

"...We are," he confirmed after a few moments.

"Are you sure?" she asked, and he huffed.

"Yes, Sute, I'm sure," he replied impatiently. "I have the Byakugan. I can say for a fact there is no one remotely nearby."

"If you're sure," she hummed as she resumed walking, ignoring his irritated scoff. "It's just, sometimes I feel like I'm being watched. Not always, but there's a few times I've come back from a mission, and there's this... shadow."

"A shadow?" Ao repeated skeptically, and she dipped her head in affirmation.

"Yeah. It started back when I was ten, after I got back from my last deployment in the war. It wasn't a constant thing, but now and then I'd see this shadow from the corner of my eye. The worst part was I'd see it inside the greenhouse." She made an aggravated noise as she recalled those fleeting glimpses, lips curling into a bitter scowl. "My greenhouse is supposed to be safe, but it appeared there the most. You can ask Utakata, I told him about it back then. I hung around him a lot for a whilee because it only appeared if I was alone."

"Sure it's not just paranoia?" Ao asked, and she shrugged.

"Maybe, maybe not. But sometimes the perimeter seals on the property would trigger in places they shouldn't. You shouldn't be able to pass the fence or front door without triggering those, but I've had it go off in my poison lab." She growled at the memory, still bothered by the few times it had happened. "I don't know if the seal was faulty or what, but it's just..."

She trailed off and shook her head with a sigh. "I know shinobi are naturally paranoid, but this just—it irks me. Maybe if it was a constant thing, or the perimeter seals only triggered once or twice, I'd write it off as a fluke. But it comes and goes, weeks or months or even years apart. It's just... aggravating."

Ao made a noncommittal noise, neither agreeing or disagreeing. "So why are you telling me this, then? Do you want me to check out your house with the Byakugan or something?"

"No, I don't," she replied, and glanced at him with an almost overly sweet smile. "I just wanted to tell you about it, that's all." His mouth thinned at that, shooting her a quizzical and wary look, but Sute ignored it as she turned forward once more. They spent the rest of the walk to the campsite in silence, Ao only breaking it when they arrived to order her to finish healing herself while he unpacked.

After that, they never brought up her mokuton or her plans to defect. The trip back to Kiri passed in relative peace and quiet as they swiftly cut across the mainland back to the port in record time. They arrived at the familiar gates by dusk on the third day, and promptly delivered their reports and the scroll with Tsutomu's body to the appropriate parties before being dragged into a debrief at the ANBU base.

The moon had reached its peak in the sky by the time they finished the usual post-mission procedures. They went their separate ways with little more than a farewell, neither really in the mood to talk after spending the past couple hours doing nothing else. The streets of Kiri were silent as Sute returned to her house, most people already in bed for the night.

Her own bed called to her as well, tired from their quick-paced return, but Sute ignored it for the moment and went to her greenhouse instead. It felt even more wild in the darkness of night, the plants and trees casting almost eerie-looking shadows as she headed for a recently emptied space. A large hole had been dug there, not too deep, and Sute reached for the storage seal on her arm to retrieve her ink and brush.

She knelt by the edge and carefully began drawing a seal in the center of the hole, pausing only long enough to use a doton jutsu to harden the dirt so it would stop shifting under the brush. When she finished she pulled a storage scroll from the pouch on her hip and dropped it onto the seal. A single hand seal had the seal lighting up beneath the scroll before a puff of smoke shrouded the hole.

A smile slowly stretched across her face as it cleared to reveal the plants and soil now inside the hole. It wasn't a perfect transition, the soil sagging and uneven in places as it shifted to try to fit inside, but that could be easily fixed. What mattered was that the plants had appeared, healthy and whole with no signs of damage from being stored for the duration of her mission.

(One week remained until Sute would leave Kiri.)

I'm so sorry for the delay! Did not mean to be gone so long, especially with the cliffhanger. As I've mentioned before I'm pretty caught up with the My Hero Academia fandom now, and maybe it's because of recent events in my main fic for that one but when editing this chapter I just couldn't feel too satisfied with it. This chapter is mostly just talking, which feels kinda underwhelming all things considered. You've waited long enough though, so here it is!

On that note, I'm not going to make promises on the next chapter's release date. I will assure you all now, I have no intention of dropping Bloody Oracle. This story and Sute are just too fun, and I still have big plans for this story. I want to get the buffer to at least Chapter 43 before I start posting again, so that I can have *some* sort of schedule.

Thank you for your patience, and see you next time!

...

Also a note for FFN readers. Last week, from around Sunday, November 1 to Thursday, November 5, FFN's website was essentially broken. Any new stories or chapters posted during that time just did not show up on the website, they'd only appear on the app. I posted two new MHA stories last week, and I couldn't even see the reviews. A friend had to screenshot them on the app to show me. As far as I can tell everything's fixed now, but as of today, November 14, FFN STILL hasn't said a single word about it. I've ranted enough about this on my MHA fics so I'll try to spare you the speech here, but I'll say this much:

If you can go to AO3, do it.

FFN has been completely unprofessional about this. Five days of a serious issue absolutely no word is unacceptable. And after this, I have zero faith in their ability to fix any other major issues that may crop up in a timely manner. This long gap without any resolution suggests either a skeleton crew of staff, some much deeper, serious issues with the back-end, or (and the one I believe) a mix of both. This site's lack of active maintenance is hurting both writers AND readers.

I'll continue cross-posting existing stories to FFN, but I won't be posting any new stories here.

So please, do yourself a favor. Switch to AO3. If you're following any FFN-exclusive stories that still have regular updates, consider politely asking the authors to at least cross-post to AO3. I think that after this past week, a lot of writers are extremely frustrated with FFN and ready to leave.

Fan fiction is supposed to help relieve stress, not cause more.