Knitting Fate

Second installment in Canon Patchworking with Uchiha Ren series

Fifty-Eighth Thread

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This chapter has been beta'd for you by hestia8693. I'd be lost and dead without her, probably. Praise thee!

Heeeeey. So university happened. I failed an exam, gotta buy me a retake. Life goes on, I'm perpetually late.

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"Growth is never by mere chance; it is the result of forces working together."

James Cash Penney

0

Ren chuckles, reading the letter once again. Kisame is such a great friend, or just person in general. He even shared her cupcakes with Itachi – except Itachi scoffed at them because they could've been poisoned, and then proceeded to look angry when Kisame inhaled them all.

Honestly, her cousin's moods are worse than those of pregnant women.

"Who are you writing with?" Kakuzu asks eventually.

"A friend of mine. We're closer, distance-wise, than we've been in years so messages arrive much quicker than usual," she explains, because it's true. Kisame and Itachi are in Kusa, somewhere, near the Taki border.

"Can't you just meet, if you're close enough to send multiple messages a day?" he asks, and Ren grimaces, remembering all the shady shit Akatsuki would be up to and, most importantly, Itachi, who might actually try to kill her. The worst part is, Kisame would most likely go between them, and she'd hate to turn Akatsuki against him. Those fucks are dangerous.

"We're from as opposing factions as it gets, old man," she sighs. "I wish we could, trust me, but it probably won't happen anytime soon."

Not until they are dispatched to try and capture Naruto, post chūnin exams, at least.

"And even if it does, we're probably going to try to kill one another."

"Should we bother trying to impersonate the ROOT guy, or should we just go for the kill?" Ren asks two days before the appointed meeting with Doku Romi. She and Kakuzu are in the storage doing an inventory of everything they had looted from the hideout, preparing to leave at a moment's notice. They both agreed that it would be best if they arrive in the area before Romi to get to know the terrain and maybe lay some traps.

Personally, Ren is itching to put a more lethal twist to some of the pranks Naruto loves to pull on the villagers.

"Why should we?" Kakuzu asks. "I know how Doku Romi looks like so I can confirm it's her. And with poison masters, it's best to take them by surprise and take them out before they can poison you."

"Fair, it's too dangerous," Ren agrees, because it's true. She has her spiders, and Takuya-sensei, but they're just summons, and the target is a high-rank missing-nin. Honestly, the only reason she's going after Doku Romi is because Kakuzu is with her. Contrary to popular belief, Ren isn't stupid, nor does she have a death wish – she knows when an opponent is too much for her to handle.

Arrogance is what kills people in this world, after all. She can't afford much.

It nearly cost her already, believing that her spiders were a foolproof method against Danzō. But there are places even they can't get into, things they can't relay. Hence her mission getting infiltrated.

Lesson learned, please and thank you. She'd be even more careful from now on.

Also, should she bother telling the Hokage? The senile old fool is so deep in Danzō's pocket it isn't even funny. There's no guarantee whatsoever that he would do anything about it, hell, he might even try to get rid of her himself.

That's about how highly Ren thinks of him, but she doesn't feel bad for doubting the man this much. He has repeatedly proved her right, after all.

(See: Naruto's treatment, Uchiha Massacre and Danzō and everything he implies.)

A weak-willed old man in power and a power-hungry tyrant with a killer puppet army. They sure are a power couple. Ren honestly doesn't blame any of the Sannin for hightailing from the village while they could. Doesn't mean she dislikes Jiraiya any less, or that she approves of Tsunade drowning her depression in sake instead of seeking help like, you know, the renowned medic she supposedly is. She doesn't have much to say about Orochimaru – he got involved with Danzō, and as it is with Danzō, everybody pays the price but him.

(She hates Danzō, and maybe is a bit weak for men of beauty of Orochimaru's caliber, so sue her.)

"Here," she is ripped her from her thoughts by the pole suddenly thrusted in her face. She splutters for a second, grabbing the tool, and looks at it. It's heavy, possibly metal rather than wood, and- oh.

It isn't a pole at all. It's a naginata. The sleek shaft is quite long, though she's seen longer at the shop. This one is longer than she is tall, mounted by a blade that looks to be in the range of the longer ones, maybe half a meter. The whole thing is too tall to stand it straight in the room, because it grazed the ceiling.

"Oooo, that's a pretty one. Is it for me?" she asks, trying out a stance she saw in the scroll while scavenging for anything sword and tantō related. And as much as she loves Ryuuzakura that Sasuke braved the compound of ghosts for her, and Sumire which she picked with Kisame, this time- it was as if something clicked. The weight, the length, the shape of the blade just fit with her, spoke to her. She found herself itching to use it, to dance with this blade.

"As I thought," Kakuzu said, giving her an appraising look.

"What?" Ren asks.

"I thought you'd be the type to wield naginata. You are well-versed in close-range combat, but a medium-range weapon like this just seems to fit you."

"I can't disagree with that," Ren chuckles. "It feels so right in my hands, makes me wonder what the fuck I've been doing for the past few years. Sure, I'm not throwing out my tantō or katana, but damn."

"The more weapons you are adept in, the more advantages you have," is Kakuzu's answer, and Ren doesn't even bother agreeing because that's just a fact. "This particular one is an ō-naginata, the type made for men. Or so they say, the truth is women are just generally smaller and need smaller, wider blades to compensate for that."

"Yeah, I can imagine how more petite girls would need slightly different blade for a better cut, but I'm tall and quite heavy so it should be fine," she agrees, examining the metal. It's a bit dull, and it's obvious that this particular weapon is no work of art. No matter, she'll just harass Tenten's parents' smithy for a naginata once she gets home.

Ren feels a bit embarrassed that she knows Tenten only as that kid-assistant in the weapon shop and honestly knew her parents better. Oh well, she can't be friends with every brat – not with how emotionally constipated Neji is, and Gai taking most of Lee's time these days. Even if the latter is actually Ren's fault.

Or maybe she would raid the Uchiha armory. It is only collecting dust these days, and there is bound to be some good stuff there.

Yes, she'd probably go to the armory and drag everybody down with her. What's the point of having a treasury full of weapons if you didn't use them? She is the clan head anyway, due to Sasuke being a little shit, so she can do with her property whatever the fuck she wants. If she can make those close to her happy along the way, then all the better.

"I won't be using this particular one because it's shabby," she finally says to Kakuzu, "but I will look into naginatas. Thanks for showing this to me."

"It's not my fault you're a moron who hadn't looked into them before," Kakuzu retorts, but without too much of a bite. Ren chuckles.

"Yeah, yeah, be grumpy all you want, I appreciate it nevertheless."

"Hmph."

Invisible, thin spiderwebs are strewn all over the area, all separate but eventually all connecting to one spot, on top of which sat a massive garden orb-weaver, gently placing its long, slender legs on the threads and feeling tor movement.

"This is actually useful," Kakuzu judges when she introduced the idea when they were on their way. "Nobody would care about a stray cobweb."

There are also traps scattered about, some hidden with genjutsu, some with just clever usage of the environment. Most of them are explosive in some way, capable of shooting shrapnel or full of sharp ninja wire. The area is mostly tree-covered swampland with rich foliage, so that made it easier to hide things there, but it also means that Ren's fire chakra stands out like a beacon in the water-earth-plant-cold climate. All she can do is mute it and hope for the best – you never know where you would find a sensor. Kakuzu has his five hearts, but his primary nature is earth so he melds with the environment much better.

Doku Romi isn't stupid. You don't become a notorious missing-nin by being stupid. And since she's not stupid, she's also not alone, and because the clearing she enters, where she was supposed to meet the ROOT puppet, is empty, she's instantly on alert.

But Kakuzu has been missing-nin for longer than Doku Romi has been alive, and Ren is nothing if not creatively violent.

A spiderweb net falls on them, sticky and strong, not enough to stop them, but enough to stall their movements and allow Kakuzu and Ren a moment for an attack. The first two shinobi Romi is with are so unremarkable, that Ren barely notices slitting their throats. They were chūnin, maybe. But the third manages to cut himself from the net, just as Romi melts her bindings with some acid, and goes for the hit. Kakuzu outright ignores him, relentlessly going after the poison mistress, Takuya-sensei on his shoulder, as Ren is left to fight the third of her entourage.

And he's good, she'll admit. Jōnin-level, probably, strong enough that Ren has to brace herself for his strikes because they're heavy. He's using some sort of giant, glorified chopper and before long Ren has to bust out Ryuuzakura because kunai obviously won't cut it. She comes at him, all calculated anger, and, she realizes, she isn't really that afraid of his blows.

Not the way she was with the ROOT puppet, up until the moment his mangled corpse was laid by her feet.

Yes, her opponent is strong. Yes, he could realistically kill her if she's not careful. But all Ren can feel is a semi-serene sense of catharsis, a thrill and a quiver sent to her hands by the colliding blades. She has missed this, the calculated, weaponized anger and the underlying glee of fighting someone to the death. Someone somewhere on her level of skill to test against after the latest scare.

She needed this, she realizes. This assurance that not everybody is Danzo's ROOT, that not everybody is on their level. That they're the elite of elites, and that the rest of the world only rarely compares. That Danzō is the real threat that must be taken care of, but the outside world can be taken in without all this fear.

And with that, she realizes – she is anxious. She feels inadequate. First, nearly dying to a ROOT agent, and then spending time with Kakuzu, who has a good fifty years on her, even counting both lifetimes. She subconsciously started comparing herself to them, to this man who fought the Shodaime and lived, and to the child puppets who live for nothing but to kill and die for Danzō. Of course she would feel inadequate as a fighter next to them.

Parrying another strike, she threw her opponent's chopper up, making him stagger as he clinged to it, and pouring her scalding-hot chakra into her muscles, she forced them into a burst of speed, stabbing him right through the side of his throat, impaling both his artery and spine. He convulsed for a second and stopped moving, as Ren pulled Ryuuzakura out, causing a fountain of blood to spurt from his neck. She sidestepped it.

Shortly after this, Kakuzu threw Doku Romi's corpse next to Ren's feet like a sack of potatoes, and then drank something Takuya-sensei gave him.

"How was it?" Ren asks, seeing the man a tad ruffled but otherwise fine. It probably wasn't much of a fight, with Doku Romi's only real talent being poisons.

"She tried to get me with gas," Kakuzu answers shortly.

"Paralysis," Takuya-sensei says. "Thankfully, she didn't know how to deal with Kakuzu-san here. She really didn't expect him. It was a clean kill and the antidote is already in his system."

"Eh, I just killed a guy with a huge chopper blade," she shrugs. "You know who he is?"

"He appears to be Honebami Eiji," Kakuzu says, examining his face. "From Kiri. I think his bounty was one million Ryo."

"Damn old man, do you know everyone's price by heart?"

"Yes."

"Somehow I'm not surprised. Let's get them to the bounty station, yeah?"

"Yes, the sooner the better."

It was slightly underwhelming for Ren, who had been preparing to face Doku Romi for the past week, but not everything has to end in an epic confrontation. For now, she is just happy to be alive; foiling Danzō's plan is just a bonus.