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Chapter Twelve
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"We're geniuses!" Isami chortled, grabbing my hands and spinning us in an awkward circle.
I escaped her enthusiasm as neatly as a limping ex-genin could. "What do you mean by that? We don't have many buyers, and we haven't managed to break the original seal yet."
My sealmaking buddy shook her head, grinning like the clever idiot she was. "That's all in the past now, my friend."
Well, it was about time our market reached more than the occasional skeptic. She couldn't have cracked the original seal—if she had, the store front would be advertising "Isami and Suzume's Seriously Serious Seals." Of course, it might be, and I might not know. Genjutsus were odd that way.
Isami laughed at my raised eyebrow. "Don't be such a pessimist. Guess who just left the shop?"
"Someone without any more money?"
"He made an order, Suzu-chan," she said, rolling her eyes. "The Copy Ninja himself ordered two hundred of our seals!"
My wrists twitched in fearful anticipation. "Two hundred?" Just left the shop? Daddy was supposed to be on an ANBU mission right now. Three hours ago, if one were to count. "Which kind, the glitter?"
"Um, no."
"The rubber ducks, then? That's funny. We geared those toward the Academy students. Or did he want the bouquets?"
"Not exactly." Isami walked behind the counter. She seemed to think that as a retired ninja, I was prone to violence. She hid behind me, subtly, whenever any customers resembled ANBU. I couldn't really blame her for that. I'd used Kato as a shield much too often.
I swallowed. "Two hundred?" No wonder she was hiding behind the counter. If I'd pulled a stunt like this on her, I'd be doing the same thing. "I'm sure you have a convenient explanation for this."
"He paid up-front?" she offered meekly.
"Isami-chan, it doesn't matter if he offered double. We can't promise seals that we haven't perfected. We aren't even at testing stage with the soap bubbles, and we've spent months on that one. We can't even manage thornless roses for the bouquets." (Ideally, the bouquet seal would be a cascade of assorted blooms. As roses were the only flowers we had figured out, and they still had stems . . . it was strange. Genjutsus aren't supposed to cause pain.)
She huffed, exactly like a four-year-old would. "That's just because Mom's been making us run everything through a fūinjutsu master."
"Who, I note, you want to impress into offering you an apprenticeship, which means even more work for both of us. You do realize that I won't be allowed to write for you when that happens?"
"Then you'll have to wait until I open up a shop just for our seals. Once you train some copiers, you can put all your time into helping me. No, wait." She stuck out her tongue. "No one else will ever reach your mechanical standard of obsession."
"Of course not," I agreed, smiling ruefully and letting go of my annoyance. I reached into my skirt's pocket. "I finished the next few stages, by the way."
Three stacks of inked paper were placed in front of the budding sealmaker. She flipped through them, lingering on the tiny brushstrokes. "Your handwriting is so perfect. How did you finish these overnight?"
"Magic." To be more realistic, one of our ANBU-sitters seemed to think that children were messy creatures that ought to be locked in their room and ignored. He rethought the issue after . . . Kato, undoubtedly . . . blew a hole in the wall (When Tenzō showed up later that night to fix it, I was blamed. As if a four-year-old could write anything but childish scrawls—honestly. Fortunately, he didn't notice the seals I was hiding underneath a henge). I'd finished the last few seals in the bathroom.
Isami ran through the sealing hand seals with speed born of excessive practice. While I had a disciplined hand, she was the reason for our sealmaking prowess. She could take layers upon layers of sealwork, memorize them, and reformat them into a single space. And then she would dictate those seals' arrays to me while keeping a finger in one of the unhelpful books the library offered civilians (and no, I assured her, I was not qualified to visit the ninja section. Especially with a smiling Hyūga behind the desk—a truly terrifying sight).
I took the papers from her and added more words. I wrote; she sealed.
Combined with the Hokage's forgery practice, I was going to have perfect handwriting.
Still, though, it might be worthwhile to explain what we entrepreneurs were doing. We were creating seals. Before I met Isami, I'd considered seals to be rather straightforward. Write down the parameters in a spiral pattern and apply chakra, I'd figured. Not so.
There are three main types of seals, Isami was quick to inform me. The first and most common example is the touch-and-go tags. They're everything from explosive tags to sealing scrolls. True to my original assumption, they are made by writing out a seal and simply activating it.
The second type of seal has an official name, but I prefer to think of them as on-the-go seals. They're formed by tapping ("tagging") an available surface and using chakra to make a pattern. The best example of these would be the Nidaime and Yondaime's teleportation technique. Touch seals are extremely difficult because of the surfaces they must be applied to. The sealer has to not only recreate a seal from memory, but also figure out exactly how much chakra to apply to the given surface. Basically, a touch sealer has to be able to waterwalk in a coma before even dreaming of sealing. To get to that level, I'd probably have to drown myself in a bathtub, so no. Not exactly a life goal.
The last category was the one Isami and I had spent months slaving over. Layered seals.
In general, seals can be described by chapter and content, the seal's latitude and longitude. All seals have a main focus word or two—the "chapters", and different, less important words defining and detailing the seal's purpose. For example, a weapons-sealing scroll. The typical template would have the words "seal," "space," and "weapon" arranged around a few directional arrows. The seal's content would wrap around the focus words, specifying exactly how much space and how many weapons. Detailed weapon seals might replenish their content's chakra.
Explosive tags were also a pretty generic design—fire, spark, and density flanked by modifying words. And that brings me to the two most common problems with seals. Relationships and comparisons. Seals rely on being exact—or, failing that, being flexible. A brushstroke just a hair too small can ruin an entire balance (consequently, there are many personalized scripts. We have a decorative seal from Minato hanging in both of the bedrooms, and my writing was chicken scratch in comparison. One of my dreams was definitely finding the rest of that script). I say balance.
Fire, spark, and density. The spark fuels the fire, which is in turn controlled by heat and concentration. As the three elements needed to create a basic, uniform explosion, they compose the seal's chapters. How much chakra should be distributed between the chapters? Was the fire too large to be hot enough? Was the spark big enough to ignite the seal but not powerful enough to destroy the paper itself? Should the handwriting itself be bigger, or a higher concentration of chakra be required in the ink? Layers of subtext and calculations went into the simplest of seals.
Small wonder the Uzumaki clan had been deemed a worldwide threat.
The first two categories of seals use chapter and content, as mentioned. Does the ninja algebra stop there? Of course not. Simple concepts can always expand.
If most seals are like books, then the third category, layered seals, are 3D blueprints. Layered seals could contain hundeds of smaller seals woven through, over, around, and into each other. Our rubber duck genjutsu tags used forty-three smaller seals. Each seal had to be written on top of the others before Isami's hand seals could integrate it into the others. And yet somehow it all worked and once I'd drawn the generic explosive tag array in chakra-less ink on top of our gag tags, they turned out. That was Isami's magic.
"Two hundred," I muttered, adding another layer to the seals she'd been working on. "What did he order?"
"Something clever," she smiled. "He wants us to make explosive tags without a real explosion."
Oh. Oh, that was brilliant.
She shrugged. "But I must admit I don't see how that would be very helpful. An enemy might fall for it, but a fake tag won't hurt anyone."
A fake genjutsu, however, would. We'd mulled over that concept before—a fireball would be a remarkably simple visual—and had shot it down because every successful tag had a thousand fruitless experimental layers behind it and I hadn't realized how useful that particular tag would be. We really were magic. One thousand failures.
"I'm sure the Copy Ninja has a good reason," I said morosely. "Do you have any ideas yet?"
Well, yes and no, as per usual. She dictated a few layouts to me, and I commented where I could (which was disturbingly often—I had an eye for word choices and placement). We edited the designs until Isami's mother shouted that Isami needed to come inside and package ration bars. I gathered up what felt like a small library of papers and tucked them into one of the weapons pouches I'd received for my last birthday. Isami chewed on her lip. "When can you come back?"
I didn't bother replying. I'd be back tomorrow afternoon with fifty copies of each prototype. I would be tired. It really was a shame that chakra ink wasn't compatible with stamps.
"Bye," Isami said uncertainly as I stepped into the forgotten sunlight. I shivered.
Suzume was an easy character to become, but sometimes I forgot how even with a henge, I could still feel the breeze tickling individual hairs on my arms. Physical henges were very different from insubstantial ones. For example, while none of the ninja boys glanced twice at my insubstantial henges, Isami's friend garnered an unfortunate amount of male attention. If our seals ever became popular, I'd never be able to do a discreet superhero face-change again.
I turned into one of the less crowded side streets and slapped on an insubstantial henge. A retired ninja, I reasoned, was hardly suspicious doing such an activity. Besides, anyone who saw me release the Suzume henge was much too good for me to fool. Like Daddy. Or any ANBU. Or the Sandaime's lazy crystal ball. My mind ran through the idea of Itachi and promptly decided that enough was enough. Scared of him seeing a henge? it taunted. Well, here's a henge of him.
He was shorter than I expected. Ouch.
He's barely a teenager, my haphazard brain reminded me. Suzume would have had her growth spurts already.
Suzume's female, I countered, looking down. This is weird.
Yeah, because henging into a male is not part of the ninja job description. Is there even a description?
"Mass butcherer," according to Deer.
"Fun!" Sparrow.
Daddy would say, "Whatever keeps my precious people safe."
I twisted, examining the henge. The textures and colors of the clothing were right. Everything appeared to be proportionate—and solid. I'd figured that out eventually: one hand seal meant a solid henge, whereas the official sequence resulted in an illusion.
So if my slipshod henge had worked . . . what prevented me from being Itachi? Common sense, of course, but what did that matter? I'd be discreet. I was the epitome of discreet. Which is why your father calls you reckless.
Which I'm not, I decided as I joined civilization with what was, unfortunately, a very accurate disguise.
"Itachi-kun!"
I flinched, before recognizing the voice as belonging to an unusually out-of-breath Inuzuka Hana.
"Have you seen Jun? He's white. Black tail."
"No," I said carefully. "Why are you searching?"
She launched into an involved story with very rude civilian dogs and a spoiled cut of steak. I nodded along during her breaks for air. "I will watch for him."
"Thanks, Itachi-kun." She flew away. I exhaled. Inhaled. Exhaled. Turned to find a mirrored surface to examine—
"Niisan!"
I froze. That's not Sasuke. That's not Sasuke. That's not— "Niisan!"
The face in the reflection was very close. The eyes were slightly too round, perhaps. Irrelevant. What mattered was the dark-headed child that was definitely a faster runner than I. Great, I thought, but then my waist was attacked by a small, deadly viper.
"You're back from your mission already?"
I didn't say anything. Itachi was pretty talkative around us twins. His relationship with his brother couldn't be anything less than inseparable. However, just as I knew I couldn't use "I'm on duty" as an excuse (even Daddy's pack had trouble finding the Uchiha when he was working), I knew that Itachi did not waste words. While he found Sasuke adorable, he wouldn't answer a question both parties knew the answer to.
And I had a structural problem. I hadn't made my new body's core muscles strong enough. Couldn't answer the little brother without oxygen.
Sasuke released his constrictive grip and darted in front of me. He smiled, the smile that a shark—that an innocent child makes when he wants a thing that he has no real way of getting. "Can we go get rice balls, Niisan?"
Oh, yeah, kid. Sure. Let's just go spend all the money that I've earned from my sealmaking breakthrough. The money that Isami and I had reinvested and would reinvest until we were old and gray. No, the only money I owned was mine from Uncle Asuma for our last birthday. One had to wonder how it had arrived almost a year late, but hey, circumstances. The coins had gone through the wash a few times already and happened to be in my pocket.
Anything for you, Big Brother's face lied. You little thief. Don't make that face at me; my father makes that face every day. I couldn't care less how you beg. I'm immune. Nasty Itachi, falling for such obvious manipulation. Next time he babysits us, I should henge into you and ask him for some privacy.
I nodded. Sasuke's hopeful expression morphed into something that greatly resembled happiness. He grabbed my hand (what if it was too big, or too small, or too smooth?) and hauled me toward the nearest vendor. Oh, look, there goes my money. Sasuke tried to jump up on the counter. He fell. I snickered. "Niisan," he complained. I smiled.
"Tomato, please," Sasuke ordered, glancing at me with a pout that quickly surrendered. "Do you want cabbage? And a cabbage, please."
Shoot. No wonder Daddy warned me away from the Uchiha boys, if their children were this good at making me lose my treasures. I forked my personal spending money out of my pocket and came up five yen short. Five whole yen! The girl behind the counter giggled, handing us our snack. "Don't worry, Itachi-kun, you still have credit from last time. By the way, I heard that your mission schedule—" Sasuke dragged me away again.
"Pay attention to me," he whined in a chirp that Itachi probably loved to hear. He found a picnic table and proceeded to tell me what he'd learned in school today and how he'd missed me and that girls were weird and squeaky and would I train him, Niisan, Niisan, Niisan? Please with a kunai in it?
Unfortunately, I was done with my bland rice ball and long overdue to make conversation. I opened my mouth . . . and realized that I had no idea what I would sound like. I coughed experimentally. Subtly.
Sasuke noticed. "Are you sick? Mother told you to eat your vegetables so that you'll stay healthy." Two disturbingly black eyes shone up at me, and I realized. Wakato was cute. Sasuke was, too, in a different way. But had Wakato had Sasuke's sweet worry—his tremendously thoughtful personality—I just might consider trading a village.
I was smiling again, amused by the worry written in the expressive face. Hana didn't blink. But then, Hana was preoccupied. "I am well."
His mouth pursed. Oh, we're dead. "So you can train with me?"
I'm alive. "Not today."
"You always say that!"
Actually, I've never said that. You should join my family. You could compete with me and spend so much time working on your chakra that you wouldn't even notice how often your sister is missing from the house. It would be a temporary situation, I'm sure. You and Wakato can grouse to each other when he figures it out.
I poked Sasuke's forehead. He grimaced. "Come on, Niisan. We'll be late for supper. We're eating early tonight because Father has to work at the police station tonight."
He launched himself at my back. I sidestepped, catching his hand, instead. He frowned. "Why won't you carry me?"
There were several responses to that question. I nearly said, "Don't you want to become stronger?" but answering questions with questions wasn't really the kindest way to answer a kid, and besides, I thought of something better. It occurred to me that this was an impossible opportunity for blackmail. "Mission," I said quietly.
His shock was beautiful. "You're hurt? You never get hurt!"
"Girls fight dirty," I replied, safe behind my henge. Chew on that, you double-crossing Uchiha.
I escaped a few minutes later.
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Tidbit Two, or
Memory25's Belated Prize for the Contest Hardly Anyone Remembers
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"It's good to be home," Mikoto sighed, wrapping an arm around the familiar bulk of her husband.
Fugaku's own arm found her waist. "Do you feel good? The medics wanted you to stay another night."
"Fugaku. Itachi and I are fine." Both new parents' eyes drifted to the cradle to watch their newborn son drool in his sleep. "Besides, I don't want him to hate hospitals for a while yet."
Fugaku's brain caught in his throat, desperately trying to word a comforting response and find a satisfactory way to phrase the fact that he found their son beautiful. "He'll make a fine ninja," he said eventually. "He'll take after you—"
Mikoto was crying into his shoulder.
"I'm sorry," she mumbled. "It's supposed to be the babies that cry, and here I am making up for our polite son."
"It's all right." He hated it. Women cried to him all the time while he was working, but here, with the woman he would love through life, his own heart faltered in sympathy. He would die with her. Even her pain was worth living with.
She smiled, tears still flowing. "You're sweet. I'm going to blame hormones while I still can."
"Really," Fugaku said, aware that he might be digging a hole, "I don't mind unless you start flying into a rage like that friend of yours."
Mikoto laughed weakly. "Can you imagine Kushina with a baby?"
Fugaku shuddered. "That woman would probably unleash the Nine-Tails . . . if only to make it say hello to her child. Ugh, that would be a nightmare of paperwork." His arm tightened around his wife. "In fact, if she ever has a baby, we are going to take a vacation far away from the village. I don't want her influencing my children."
"Obito-kun was hardly influenced by her, Dear."
"I beg to differ. You kept taking her home with you. What was the boy supposed to think of her antics?"
Mikoto snickered, something she'd picked up from her Uzumaki friend. "She wants to have a big family, you know."
"Save us all. That Minato will do whatever she says."
"Mm. Let's have our own to balance theirs out, then."
They already had, and they both loved him more than the world.
"Fugaku?"
"Yes?"
"Promise me we're going to grow old and dull together." She smiled. "Of course, Kushina-chan says you've always been dull."
"Oh? Allow me to prove her wrong."
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"Mother, what's a ninja?"
"Why do you ask, Itachi?"
"Father says I'm going to be one someday."
"Ninjas protect."
"Protect what?"
Mikoto smiled at him sadly. "You will understand when those eyes of yours haunt you for everything you've lost."
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"Itachi!"
The boy looked up, long eyelashes widening. "Yes, Father?"
"You skipped your shuriken practice," Fugaku said sternly.
Itachi laid his book on the bench, taking care not to bend its pages. "I apologize, Father. I was reading about the founding of the village and lost track of the time."
Fugaku eyed his son with a frown Itachi recognized as confusion. "You need to focus on protecting the clan," he said eventually.
"But the clan is part of the village, Father. Don't I need to know who to protect?"
"Go practice," Fugaku ordered.
Itachi obeyed. But he also kept his eyes and mind wide open. One day, he knew, with a calm assurance very few individuals possess, he would join the ranks of active ninjas. He would need the ability to protect. Perhaps more important was the discernment of what (and who, and when, and why; not how) to protect.
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"Itachi?"
The only reply was feathered on the nervous branches of the trees. Mikoto scanned the leaves with her Sharingan, searching for the chakra signature she'd sensed moments before. "Come down, please."
The trees muttered and revealed epileptic red hair. Mikoto relaxed instinctively. "Do you know where Itachi went?" she asked.
"Never mind that," said Kushina, her face schooled into its rare position of severity. "A band of Iwa ninjas was just spotted a few miles away."
Mikoto paled.
"Since Minato's gone, I thought you could help me keep them away from the village. Maybe redirect them with genjutsu. The Hokage wants to capture them alive. You game?"
"He was going hiking," Mikoto said softly.
"Just really fast," continued Kushina obliviously. "We'll get them away long before—" Her eyes widened. "Mikoto, what's wrong?"
Mikoto shook her head. "Give me some shuriken on the way."
The trees bickered as the Konoha ninjas disappeared, Mikoto praying that her son was not in pieces.
How could a child put himself back together?
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When Itachi misbehaved (which was rare), his parents never used a genjutsu on him. No matter what some of the villagers thought, the Uchiha clan would never use a genjutsu on an impressionable child—not without ample explanation, at least. Sharingan masters had no qualms about producing kaleidoscopes of butterflies for their children's enjoyment.
Fugaku was justifiably angry when the Academy's teachers' comments about his son were "unnaturally well-behaved" and "remarkably well-adjusted" or even "strangely perfect."
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"No son of mine—" Fugaku exchanged a glance with his wife, who had seen fit to let their son read his books instead of practice his chakra control. "Two hundred pushups, Son. You will meet me in your usual training ground after supper."
What if you break him? Mikoto's eyes asked.
He's our son. He's strong. (He has to be.)
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"Father," Itachi said one day as he finished his homework. "How do you feel . . . about love?"
"Love for the clan?"
Itachi cocked his head neutrally. "I know how Mother feels. I was wondering if you would tell me."
"Son." Fugaku shook his head. "You will understand someday."
Itachi watched his father walk away. He left the last problem blank.
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"But," the man continued, "I see no problem with advancing him when these are his test results."
Hiruzen scanned the paper. "Such a promotion would destroy a child."
The Academy instructor shifted. "Not him. Itachi-kun is like a machine. He knows his purpose."
"And what is that?"
"I do not know, Hokage-sama. I do not believe anyone does."
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"What's a ninja, Sasuke-kun?"
Sasuke's face scrunched in pointed confusion. "You're a ninja, Niisan. Now keep practicing. I want to watch so that I can become as good as you."
Itachi did just that, stopping only when he heard an unfamiliar voice. "Tenzō," a man roared, "I am going to kill you!" Itachi darted in front of his brother a moment before two men dashed into the clearing, the first one holding a scrap of cloth that might be a mask (or anything, really). The second man was surprisingly loud for having one hand over his face. "One Thousand Years of Death!"
The angry man's hand left his face to form a seal, but Itachi hardly remembered what the man's face looked like. All Itachi wanted to remember was trying to keep Sasuke behind him. Sometimes he hated his memory.
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It was coming.
He didn't want anyone to die.
Madara's vision, the Curse of Hatred . . . how had it come to this? Could anyone stop it?
Sasuke began to drool on his pillow, and Itachi decided.
No matter what, Sasuke would be shielded from this horror.
If he could keep his brother from seeing Kakashi's One Thousand Years of Death, he could keep him from seeing the corruption of their clan.
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~I LIVE! And I'm tired forever.
Did you know that "niisan" spellchecks as "nuisance"?
I really hope you guy understood what I meant about the seals.
I'm not going to lie. Itachi was one traumatized kid, and getting into his head (however slightly) was a counterintuitive process. Let's just say that family murder would be a tough choice. Fortunately, I'm not in that situation. Unfortunately, Kana is a Self Insert. Snicker.
Mikoto and Fugaku, though . . . that's it! We're doing an Uchiha SI! Nah, that's overdone. Still. No.
I'm opening up a Question-and-Answer thing! (Honest answers not guaranteed.) Ask whoever whatever, but please remember that I'm very touchy about my K+ rating. There probably aren't many interesting questions to ask yet. Eh, you guys are smart. I'll try to update around Christmas, if I can. See ya!