~I'm not super happy with this chapter and I'm behind on review replies, but I've decided that at this point, it's better to update. Stoked to reach 1000. Wow.
This chapter was written some time ago, then revised and fleshed out. If it hadn't been, I'm afraid that some background events would be foreground, and I would have bumped up the rating. Recent events in Afghanistan and other places . . . the horror and grief . . .
We live in an informed world. We hear news about other continents every day. We read stories written by people across the globe. It's wonderful. It's overwhelming. But it gives us an opportunity, doesn't it? If you can, please say a prayer for the people in Afghanistan. For the people who made it out. For people who are waiting. For compassion and changes of heart. If that doesn't sit right with you, is there perhaps something concrete you could do to help in some way?
So many new stories are coming to light. It hurts to hear them. I don't want to turn KK into a narrative that's stuck on the horrors of war. I don't want to romanticize life and death, either. KK is not real life. My intention in writing is always to get people to laugh a bit, think, and reflect. So I'll stick with K+ for as long as I can since this is fictional and that's possible here.
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Chapter Thirty-Seven
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For the first time since babyhood, I woke up in a hospital bed. It was rather alarming. Hadn't the hospital been damaged by one of the summoned snakes? If I was here, how many days had gone by since the attack?
And why did my head hurt so much?
Oh, right, genjutsu backlash. My head hurt, and memories were still swimming in a frantic jumble. Great.
Kato was propped on a chair next to me and woke when I poked his arm. He claimed that today was only the second of August. The day after the invasion. When I didn't believe him, he cited common sense—a hospital is the most important building to protect during a crisis. If it had been damaged, it was fixed now.
I found that I no longer cared about the date. What had happened? What hadn't happened?
The Hokage was alive. Critical condition, but alive.
The One Tail was imprisoned deep in our holding cells.
Suna was frantically apologizing and washing its hands of Orochimaru's actions while Kazekage.
Mom and Dad were healthy.
Shisui was in parts unknown.
Then there was me. "I collapsed from chakra depletion, right? No one wanted revenge on me and knocked me upside the head?"
Kato snickered. "Only I get to do that. Yakumo said you got hit by a really nasty genjutsu and probably used up your chakra to get rid of it. If I'd known you were already that low on chakra, I wouldn't have asked you to take point, you know."
My lips cracked at my smile. "Where's the fun in that?"
Kato raised an eyebrow. "Maybe the fact that when they gave you a soldier pill, you threw it right back up? How many clones did you make yesterday, anyway?"
Um, I didn't remember yet. Their deaths (and my own stupidity's inclusion of a genjutsu) were kind of messing things up in my head. There had to be a trustworthy memory of falling asleep in here somewhere . . . although I could definitely take notes from being chopped in half.
"I didn't take enough soldier pills for my body to reject them," I said, reasonably certain. "It must have been the backlash. Things got really weird."
Only really weird meant my memory is messed up even though my chakra is back to normal.
And I couldn't shake the feeling of being patted on the head by a long-dead Hokage . . . maybe the clone that had found Daddy had fought a genjutsu specialist?
My brother's jaw hardened. "I'm your twin, Kana. Dad warned both of us about multiple shadow clones after you convinced Naruto-kun to teach you his forbidden jutsu. The memory kick doesn't affect you like most people, but you know what Dad said. What possessed you to make so many?"
Ah. Wrong backlash. It seemed that my dear brother was underestimating the amount of chakra I'd had to throw away to escape that haywire genjutsu.
He did have a point, though. If I hadn't created my clones, I would have kept more chakra for myself and I'd certainly be having a better time with my short-term memory situation.
"I only made a few. I think. And besides, why do you think I did it?"
He shook his head. "You have to take care of yourself, you know. What will you do next time if you're dead?"
Be less confused about things?
"I'll be dead," I chirped. Then I frowned. "How's Dad holding up?"
"The Sandaime had already named him successor on paper. Ceremony's tomorrow. They're hoping Grandfather will be stable by then."
Ugh, if I was dealing with a casual mental slap, I'd hate to know what Grandfather was going through right now.
I pushed aside the concern. What else was important, how many people we'd lost yesterday? No, I didn't want to know that. I didn't want to know how many enemies had been killed.
The middle ground, then. "How many hostages do we have right now?"
"I don't know; I'm not you."
He fidgeted a second later and straightened, joints popping in a stretch that was just a bit too leisurely to not be an act. "I need to get Yakumo. She made me promise to get her as soon as you woke up. She's pretty eager to visit you while you're on bedrest."
I listened for Yakumo and heard the hospital, the One Tail smashing through an apartment complex, and a kunai snicking through my eye in one huge, interchangeable mess. I tried not to gag. Yeah, bedrest sounded like a good plan.
Had I really only been here for one night? Ugh. It seemed like my old chakra problem was back. One night without using it up on a genjutsu shouldn't matter. Ugh. Maybe it was fueled by an overactive imagination.
Whatever.
I just knew that I was in for it when Shisui got back. Unlike my father, he wouldn't be too busy to scold me.
I deserved a scolding for sending a genjutsu at an angry Tailed Beast.
Maybe I could fit some in subtle jabs about being left alone afterwards. Shisui was a one-man army. I wasn't.
But I wasn't qualified to give him a scolding.
Kato left to retrieve Yakumo as promised. I focused on breathing and attempted to relax. I was lying in a nice, clean bed in the hospital. It wasn't a private room, but there was a curtain half-drawn around my bed and I was mostly certain that the occupant of the other bed was slumbering peacefully. Either that or he was bleeding out amidst the sounds of kunai and explosions.
I sighed. Most of these things were memories, not genjutsu-influenced frights. And my chakra didn't feel wrong, just hard to pinpoint. Yesterday's memories and fears kept distracting me.
I made a generic genjutsu of a little potted plant to sit on the table next to my bed. Two little butterflies came next, and I smiled at them reflexively. Ow. Forgot my lip.
My chakra still felt normal underneath the extra sounds.
I sighed again, and this time fell prey to hacking coughs as my body remembered what it was like to choke on one's own blood. Not to be outdone, I remembered the deafening boom of the One Tail's horrible sand wall, and a horrifying shriek some distance away as one poor soul fell victim to a thrashing serpent.
How was I supposed to fix this mental repercussions mess? Most ninjas avoided using multiple shadow clones because the extra memories were too much to deal with, but I'd never had trouble before. Clones know that they're clones. I'd checked with Naruto once, and he'd agreed. Extra memories were easy to sort through if you're comfortable with your thoughts and your clones know that they're clones.
In the past, most of my clones would disperse after a solid blow, before the pain hit. I'd let some stick around longer, but the blast of memories had never blurred with my actual ones or affected my senses before. Maybe this was happening because I'd been able to hear so many versions of myself at once? No, that didn't make sense. This wasn't a paradox. My hearing was normal to me.
I'd expelled the genjutsu along with its traces of Tailed Beast chakra. Most of the mental disagreement had vanished with it. Unfortunately, a lot of the "memory interference" I'd encountered at the time was still in my head. It should be a matter of revisiting. If I could confirm all of the times where multiple memories matched up, I could extrapolate the rest. There were only so many inconsistencies, after all.
Easier said than done.
When had I formed the first clone? At one of the fires, right? I'd made three—no, just two.
Just two.
Two aural perceptions of aha, this is what my surroundings sound like now.
Right, and it was at that falling-down store. One of many, many, compromised buildings.
Clone One held a third of my chakra. She patted me on the shoulder (or I patted my lookalike, agh) and charged the burning building she'd been formed to traverse. Her sister clone led the way, and One reinforced sagging doorways with what she could in case, oh say, the building's integrity would buy everyone some time. A piece of burning trim fell across her arm as she kicked a bag of rice to an untouched part of the room. One yelped. Her purpose was to help the civilians, though, so she ignored her new burn and forged onward.
The pain was entirely worth it when they got the civilians out. In fact, One forgot to feel sorry for herself until her fellow pointed out that I had recovered from my chakra depletion.
She wanted to disperse, but when I said no, she grudgingly obeyed. I wanted to make the chakra expended on that burn wound count, since I assumed she'd be using chakra to reduce the pain. One thought I was pretty stupid.
(No wonder my head hurt.)
She did bandage the wound and slather it with cream. That didn't take chakra.
One and her fellow clone crossed a few undamaged rooftops, then took to the streets when a Suna ninja came too close for comfort. Their mission was saving lives, not fighting. "Injured Suna ninja," One whispered for my benefit. "Chūnin." She listened with more concern than she felt she needed as a clone to the doings of the Hokage, her mom, and Orochimaru. Then she heard a far-off Gaara's chakra go wonky and turn into what could only be the One Tail. She connected the very intimidating real life memories with my old knowledge of the chakra beast's abilities and regretted it.
Especially when Sasuke showed up in Gaara's vicinity.
The second clone commented on Gaara soon after and was sent to retrieve Daddy (aw look at that, my clones were as sentimental as I was).
Sasuke and Gaara were somewhere in the forest, far away from the stadium. Perhaps Gaara had tried to sneak away and had been attacked by someone I wasn't familiar with. He was certainly on the warpath now, and Sasuke wouldn't stall him for very—she winced. Not long at all.
One updated me on our chances of success, was snapped at, and resumed sneaking.
The One Tail was taking Gaara back toward civilization. A wide loop, and it would end up on the mountain's doorstep, facing the barrier that our civilians would be sheltering behind. One's role of escorting would keep her well within hearing range of that.
She rubbed her aching arm and wondered how long it would take me and my team to intercept the jinchūriki with our likely suicide play. Long, she realized when I formed another clone while we were stalled and announced that its role was to henge into Sasuke and do something desperate.
Two groups of civilians later, she was quite discouraged at the number of villagers who hadn't obeyed protocol and fled (never mind that the summoned serpents were everywhere, and Konoha's ninjas simply couldn't be). Her arm hurt, when could she disperse and save everyone this misery?! She could hear Clone Two, who was still dodging firefights, report that she'd get there any minute now. One thought that it was a shame they couldn't ask Shisui to fetch Daddy. Or, say, ask Shisui to solo the One Tail.
"Hey," said Two, "that's two Suna ninjas I've seen chugging soldier pills now."
One was an exact copy of me, and she checked her weapons pouch. Two pills as always. Perfect. She gulped one down and felt the chakra fill her system much fuller than the one-third she'd been formed with. As an exact replica of me, she had the capacity for it. Now she was getting somewhere!
She used a bit of that happy chakra to dull her burn wound and the various scratches she'd gained.
"Hey," she said. I was running and didn't notice. "Hey! Kana!" (It was so weird to have to say my name to me!)
"What," I panted.
"You should eat a soldier pill!"
"Oh yeah those, thanks!"
One grinned, glad to have helped. She spared a few seconds to focus.
Pop, pop!
Two brand-new clones watched as One doubled over. She grimaced at them. "Um, hi. You guys know what to do. I'll just disperse now—"
"What? No!" one of the new clones yelped. "You formed us; what happens to us when you leave? And we know that the chakra from the pill won't go to, um, Kana—someone would have hacked that long ago. You'll have to stay here or come and help."
One stared balefully at her newly throbbing, shaking arm and lamented sharing out her chakra. That burn was really hard to focus over and the new clone must have been having trouble, too. More importantly: "Wait, do we know that?"
The new clone looked guilty. "Um. No. Sorry. I'm a little out of it. Just like you. Me. Us."
Clones can't pass on "new" chakra and certainly don't disperse when other clones do, and I felt rather embarrassed for myself, which was nothing new. At least I'd been in pain and under pressure . . . the absolute worst time to fudge details. Good thing I wasn't a medic.
The other new clone raised an eyebrow. "Seriously? We're forming secondary clones in the middle of a battle and we don't know how it works?" She pursed her lips. "When I get around to remembering this, I'd better take some time to check the facts."
A grin. "Are those your last words?"
One wondered how she put up with herself. "This is a chokepoint. I'll stay here and keep watch. You two could use another body, and I have enough to form another clone."
She did just that and settled down in an empty storefront to watch the road. I'm not sure what killed her. Probably pain and inattentiveness (as I said, pain by default makes a shadow clone disperse).
Clone One-point-one . . . yeah, see? This is why I was having so much trouble! One-One did pretty well. After warning the other clones about her theory (which was, as I said, wrong), she went into combat with her gang. This little group had been created to help take down a summoner and his giant beetle. The duo had been burrowing into various buildings and had ambushed enough people for me to risk some empty deaths. One-One pulled a sacrifice play and died of poison cloud.
One-Two, in contrast, ate a chakra pill and formed two more shadow clones. She led the posse into combat and watched One-Three get torn to pieces (she'd been used as bait) and One-One disperse heroically. The depletion of numbers worried her. She and her derivative clones didn't have any soldier pills left, so every clone was going to have to count. They managed to take down the enemy ninja and the summon. Then what? What could they do that would accomplish the most good?
One-Two kept pushed forward with her squad and was ultimately taken out by a kunai.
Thanks to the squad's efforts, One-Two-One managed to get within range of Shisui before their dispersion. She tried to contact him through genjutsu, but failed or was ignored. The squad heard Jiraiya fighting in some verrry distant area and retreated to the village. This was not without cost, and One-Two-One was taken out by kunai as well.
One-Two-Two escaped the kunai and ran. She had no interest in surviving, really, just a hope to join my audible network again and pass on information before dispersing. She didn't want to be a dead end, and she knew that she'd have a good idea of the village by the time she made contact with one of me. There weren't many hostiles left and she could cover ground quickly.
Because all of my clones shared my hearing, it was easy to corroborate their stories when they were together. The genjutsu definitely couldn't replicate that. Or maybe the genjutsu didn't affect memories that I'd received after I'd fallen asleep.
One-Two-Two remembered seeing a dead Wildcat hand an injured Sandaime to a medical team. How did she know he was dead? He hadn't had a heartbeat. How did I know the memory was real or not? I didn't—no other clones had been in earshot. One-Two-Two stopped her run to gawk and ask if any Kanas were around.
As she asked, some unnoticed enemy's genjutsu caught up with her, because dead Wildcat vanished for a few seconds and then an also dead, similarly unnerving person appeared in front of her and patted her on the head before she could react.
"Interesting," he said. Then vanished.
One-Two-Two blinked and wondered why a dead Shisui would have a henge of the Second Hokage up (because hello, who else could teleport) and then blinked again and dispelled herself.
Being a clone was simple. Once you were gone, so were the questions.
Lucky clones.
Clone Two, sometime earlier, had reached Daddy by the skin of her teeth. Ibiki stalled a boss snake just in time, and Wildcat came soon after and dragged her over to Daddy. Two was frazzled by now. It didn't help that Mom was stuck in a box with Orochimaru. And the Hokage. And two corpses with inhuman abilities.
She hadn't panicked about Gaara initially.
When it took her dad away from her mom, though?
Panic, panic, panic.
"Gaara's loose!" Two cried. "I mean the One Tail. It's loose in the village."
Daddy cursed and looked torn.
"You can't see from here, but it's headed for Hokage Rock. You know, the main gathering place for the villagers!"
Wildcat cleared his throat. "Ah, I can send a hawk for—"
"No need," Daddy said, and he formed a clone that ran off before its smoke settled.
Two wanted to watch the fight in the box, but at least she had one version of it in her memories, much as she didn't want to see that version play out. She darted on when Wildcat told her to scat and found a Sound ninja cracking down on a battered Mist genin.
"I should find my team," the Mist genin said once they were relatively safe. "Or maybe I'll be a hindrance . . ."
This wasn't exactly the best time for self-doubt.
Two fished out one of her pills. "Here, have a soldier pill if you want. You look like you need to swallow something, and it can't hurt to try. Your team probably needs all the help they can get. Just like everyone else." She thought through the possible repercussions of an object created by shadow jutsu's vanishing inside of someone's body. Probably no worse than a sugar pill.
To reassure the genin, Two swallowed her second pill. Heeey, she thought. Should have done that earlier.
She bade goodbye to the genin and continued on her merry way.
Like my other clones, she thought it would be a great idea to form a clone from a clone. Unlike the others, she worried that the mental repercussions might hurt me. Still, we were the same person and she knew I wouldn't really mind the risk under the circumstances (just the consequences, but those weren't her cross to bear). She formed three clones.
Two and her underlings used gag tags, supported various Konoha ninja, and tied up hostages. Cushy.
They'd been far enough out that they had no idea how the fight with Orochimaru had gone. I didn't remember any of their ends, either. That made things tricky.
A lot of the weird stuff going through my head had been real, and it helped to know what was memory. Clone One had dispersed as my team was baiting the One Tail. That was good, solid. Most of her buddies had vanished while I was still engaged with it. But every time I tried to put the last minutes of that encounter together, I couldn't stop gagging. Memories of swallowing pill after pill— But surely I could remember which of the Two clones had dispersed first at least—
Okay, this was enough to put me off of hospitals.
Clone Two and so on must have dispersed during that genjutsu mistake or after I was unconscious. There were enough of them to do both.
My subconscious was probably perfectly capable of rejecting soldier pills if it felt that I'd eaten an unknown amount of them and a genjutsu had set off my short-term memory. If my subconscious felt that I'd eaten too many at once, perhaps that explained the other weirdness with Wildcat and Tobirama. Clone Two had seen part of the real fight. Tobirama's corpse had been involved.
It didn't quite match up with the backlash, which was neatly boiling down into two main parts (hallucinations of death and a lot of gagging).
That wasn't so hard to follow, I lied to myself. It sounded nice and idyllic.
Were there others? No, that seemed doubtful. The sacrifice clone had vanished very early. After that, I'd spent my chakra on the One Tail and had been thankful for every bit I received back from my clones.
Mostly everything was accounted for.
I guess that I could live with that.
In total, eleven shadow clones had acted on my behalf yesterday. That made eleven versions of sound and sight to work through. How did Naruto possibly manage his hundreds without even seeming to notice?
Belligerence?
He probably avoided a lot of filler that way.
.
Yakumo dutifully came to visit. She looked like she needed several days' worth of sleep. Likewise, she said.
"Um, congratulations about your father. Are you done basking?"
I blinked. "What?"
She explained that I'd said that when Dad had taken down the One Tail. I nodded and pretended to remember.
"By the way, thanks for giving me that soldier pill when I was running too low. As soon as the village is off high alert, I'm going to go and buy a whole bottle of them. I don't care if it takes my whole income for a year."
"Soldier pills are only for emergencies," I said with as much sagacity as my weirded-out brain could handle. "I think that I'm going to swear them off."
"Well, I'm still going to pay you back. I'm sure the pills will come in handy in the future."
"Just don't feed them to shadow clones."
Yakumo's eyes widened. "Are you feverish? You should go back to sleep. Here, have some water. Besides. You know that I'll never be able to make a shadow clone. I'd get even sicker than you."
Great, that honestly boded well for her quality of living.
She glanced at my plant and watched the butterflies hide behind it. Her expression lifted before she thought better of it. "You know, the medic said that most people would be in a coma after a genjutsu encounter like that. He said that if you didn't wake up today, you could be asleep for weeks. That's why you're in this room."
How was I supposed to respond to that?
"I didn't tell Kato what the medic said. He was helping someone else with a stretcher. I thought that if you woke up, it would all be okay."
She sounded guilty. Small. Overwhelmed.
I had to find words instead of staring at her helplessly, come on, Kana.
"Yaks. Any one of us could have died yesterday. Or all of us. We're not dead, so there's no sense imagining it. Genjutsu is dangerous. That's why we're so lucky to have Shisui-sensei, and he's probably why I'm awake. My father would know what my medical report is. Telling Kato was his decision. Don't worry, my brother is very good about secrets after the fact. Now that our dad's the Hokage, we're going to get a lot of practice."
She smiled and looked very glad to not have a Hokage father.
"I'm glad you're not in a coma, Yakumo. You did your fair share of teamwork yesterday. Above and beyond." I smiled, and this time, I didn't wince.
"I'll go and call Kato back in," she said. "He's family, so he can stay with you longer."
I didn't want Kato, with all his twinful derision. I wanted my Dad. Or Shisui. Maybe even a medic.
"Wait. I actually don't want to be alone just yet. Could you stay?"
She frowned. "But . . . why? You don't get lonely." That was untrue. I simply had too many ways to combat loneliness.
"I just need you to sit there calmly. No guilt allowed."
"Okay," she said, her voice vibrating with uncertainty.
The Yakumo of my multiple memories was stressed out the whole time so this would be perfect. I had something real to dwell on while I worked on my memories.
And yet something still just didn't add up.
Now that I'd sorted through the bulk of my memories, I could tell when a memory was real. That pat on the head . . .
"Yakumo," I said a while later. "What happened to Orochimaru?"
She smiled at me. "Oh, him? Your father killed him, of course."
That couldn't be right. The Sannin was unkillable.
My teammate nodded. "I felt the same way until your father found me in the hallway this morning and promised that he'd killed him. Anyone else's father? I'd still be worried. Your father, though?" She grinned. "Rest in pieces, Orochimaru."
I glanced at my potted plant illusion and didn't reply.
There was no way he was dead. It would take an awfully powerful testimony to convince me. He'd escaped the Id and my memories told me that no matter what happened to him, he'd keep coming back.
I'd have to ask Kato if there was any chance I could speak with Mom. She'd been at that fight. Dad had, too, but he'd be too busy to explain anything, and he wasn't one for sharing details.
I guess I should have expected this ever since the Wave mission—the future wasn't set in stone. Some things had changed for the better.
But when something changes for the better, I can't help but feel like something else must have changed for the worse.
.
"He's dead," Mom said, skipping any unnecessary drivel about love and the precarious nature of life.
I stared at her like an idiot. Did she mean Grandfather? Surely she wouldn't tell me like that? I was sitting down, yes, but I was still officially on bedrest in the hospital. No one could spare the time to come and release me. I would know.
They probably wouldn't release me until I'd had at least 24 hours without chakra fluctuations, anyway.
"Orochimaru," Mom clarified. She shut the door behind her and raised an eyebrow. "Also, you should probably stop perching on the windowsill and come inside. I want to have a private conversation."
I smiled grimly and slid back inside as ordered. "Sorry. One of the Aburame clan is on the next floor and I had to shoo a few of his insects out. Pesky things."
Buzzy and distracting, but a good excuse to look out the window.
"And then you stayed to watch," my mother said. Her voice had lost some of its commanding tone. "Of course you did. It's hard to stand by when you want to help."
Understatement.
I smoothed down one last wrinkle in the curtains. "Yeah. But I know I can't help right now. I messed up my chakra system. I'll be okay, but until I sort through everything, I'm going to be limited to talk-no-jutsu."
Why was I talking this way? I wanted intel, not another traipse along a rabbit trail. If I wanted a tangent, I could probably get one whenever I next saw Dad. Like father, like daughter, I guess. Always covering up the true heart of the matter.
Now she was amused. "For a girl who convinced her brother to sneak past my entourage just so I could visit you, you don't seem very—"
I tackled her in a hug.
"Thank you, Mom. Thank you for saving Grandfather, and thank you, thank you—"
Our hug seemed pretty effective at wordless communication, so I left it at that. I loved her fiercely, she loved me even more, and I didn't want to burst into tears during the few minutes she could spare.
"You first," she said once the hug was over and we were sitting next to each other on the bed. "Tell me why your sensei left you, and why you opted to take on the One Tail."
Shisui was going to put me through the wringer when he got back, but boy was I glad I wasn't him.
Until I told her that I'd tried using genjutsu against a Tailed Beast.
Once upon a time, I'd thought that the lectures about practicing my kekkei genkai against the rules were the worst that I could get. Mom's ire was pretty deadly. Thus, Kato and I had followed her rules quite religiously. The delivery was scary. The facts? Horrifyingly true. The threats? She'd follow through on every single one.
Ugh, two parents to be disappointed in me.
I wasn't brave enough to mention Boil Release.
"If you'd made that kind of mistake when Orochimaru was feeling you out, you'd be dead," she finished. "His real targets were never attractive for kekkei genkai alone." She shuddered.
I froze. ". . . Mom?"
Her gaze darted to my convenient potted plant.
"He wanted immortality. His research centered on it. He even discovered how to take over other people's bodies. That's why he wanted your friend Sasuke. The Sharingan, the Rinnegan . . . he's stolen the DNA of your first two Hokages and done unspeakable things.
"If reanimating dead corpses had been it, I would have turned a blind eye, you know. Immortality, reanimation . . . there have been worse offenses. But that doesn't even scratch the surface of what he's done, and the end does not justify the means. Not in his case."
A thirst to learn every jutsu and a willingness to discard every moral. It was sad. Also terrifying.
"His followers will continue some of his work. I wish I had the resources to ferret out every lab and bolt hole, but I don't. At least I know that the man himself is dead."
"He wanted Sasuke?" I questioned.
I knew that this was the case. I wasn't feigning ignorance. I just didn't want to talk my way into more strongly worded disappointment.
"Yes. The Sharingan has quite the allure. And the boy himself is promising. He should end up as one of Konoha's most powerful ninjas."
That he would. But enough lauding Sasuke.
She'd ended her mom lecture by mentioning Orochimaru. Saying that kekkei genkai wasn't all that drew him in. Uhm. I didn't want to be pretentious, but it sure seemed like I'd earned a place on Orochimaru's radar. If he was after me, I wanted to know. I wasn't going to pretend that he was dead.
"When we engaged the Sannin last month, he knew that we were Hatake kids and that I have a side job writing seals. If he was fighting you as Dad was watching through the barrier, well, uh. . . ."
Mom knew what I was driving at. "Yes, he knew. He wanted you and the Uchiha. Your father and I were hoping to get some information from him during the fight, but that was the point we gave up. He wasn't there to talk about his research. He was there to gloat."
"Information?" I asked. "About his goals, plans, and allies?"
"Like I said. He's a powerful figure, Kana. Someone is bound to continue his work. We can't let more children disappear." More would. His denizens would crawl out of the woodwork and squirm along his twisted path.
Orochimaru didn't need to create the perfect body to be immortal. As far as I was concerned, he already was.
I was pulled out of my thoughts by a very secure hug.
"He's dead, princess. Your father's kamui took care of that. Would you like to hear the full report, since you probably know half of it from your clones?"
I didn't tell her that I knew almost nothing. That, like telling her about my Boil Release, would be distressingly honest and incredibly disappointing.
She filled me in.
I tried not to catch too many flies.
So that was why Wildcat had been dead.
And.
So that was what she'd done with the seals I gave her last month. Wow.
It was hard to find additional words, but I managed.
"Is Grandfather still in a coma? Is he stable? Have our medics been keeping up?"
"Yes, for now, and barely. They've been able to give him transfusions. None of your local medics are comfortable taking him out of the coma, so we have to find someone who can before his body starts to reject the transfusions. Your medics have had trouble dealing with the sheer scale of the invasion. I don't know the exact statistics, but your father is threatening to make one member of all Konoha squads report for medical training."
I blinked. "Hope that's not me."
She snorted. "Don't get your hopes up. If you're working with Boil Release, you're bound to injure a teammate one day. Same for your brother. No kekkei genkai in the world is foolproof."
It was all too easy to imagine Boil Release sneaking out of bounds to hurt one of my friends. I wasn't a genius. I couldn't account for every angle. If I could, I'd be a one-man army.
There was nothing wrong with medical training. Far from it. What self-respecting ninja would pass up the chance to help others?
. . . Fine, so "ninja" wasn't the best base for humanity. But. If a man like Hashirama could kick himself for not being able to heal Grandfather, what would be my excuse? I wasn't going to spend my life creating a village or becoming a pinnacle of ninja achievements.
"Do you think I should give up my seals?" I asked her.
"What?"
Uh. Perhaps I should think my questions through. This one, for example, had an obvious answer.
"I know I shouldn't. They're too valuable."
Good thing she was my mother. She didn't laugh at my strange thought process, she didn't pass me by, and she didn't ignore me.
"It's time," I said after a minute. "There are so many things that are worth doing. Some are worth more than others. I don't know how I'm supposed to choose."
She smiled. "That's life. Endless choices." Her gaze dropped and the brilliant green of her eyes darkened. "What truly matters is that when you see evil, you choose to not look the other way."
I've probably said before that I loved my mother for the way she views the world and doesn't back down, even though she might have to bide her time.
I wouldn't choose any other mom.
Or other dad, for that matter.
And to think both of them were going to be Kages now.
I was really going to have to keep training. It's one thing to disappoint your parent . . . quite another when your parent has assigned you a legitimate mission.
At least I wouldn't have that problem with Mom.
.
Dad was installed as the Godaime Hokage on August third on the Hokage Tower's newly rebuilt rooftop. I watched from the ground with the rest of the civilian populace. Because what do you know, when he'd stopped by my room the previous night to tell me that he loved me and was grounding me until I figured out how to fight without ending up in the hospital, he hadn't meant it as a father. He grounded me from missions.
Kato and Yakumo were farmed out to construction and surveying teams, but I was grounded. Kato told me I was lucky.
Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura were absent from the crowd of onlookers (a historic occasion: Dad was only three minutes late). They'd rushed away with Jiraiya to try to locate someone who might be able to pull Hiruzen out of his coma. "Someone" being Tsunade, who had all but cut ties to the village when her loved ones had died decades ago.
I sat tight. I didn't reach out to the sealmasters that doubtless wanted to talk to Suzume. I didn't ask around to see what Shisui was up to. I definitely didn't comment on the astonishing rate that the village was being reconstructed at. Or how Tenzō sure seemed to have a lot of wood clones. Nope. As I said, I sat tight. The hospital's instructions on resting and monitoring my chakra paired great with being grounded!
Besides, how else could I keep tabs on our undead situation?
I worked on my fire nature, repaired our backyard and damaged roof (the booby-trapped windows were spotless as always), and kept food in the refrigerator. All of those wood clones had allowed the professional construction crews to focus on restoring the power grid. Genin teams focused on bringing in supplies. Chūnin teams had finished their search, rescue, and bury detail and moved on to other assignments.
For an invaded village, we were bouncing back fast.
.
Mom, in contrast to Dad, infiltrated our home one evening under cover of henge. She and I discussed normal things—poison, the weather, the state of the village—until Kato and Dad came home for supper. We had a last meal. She gave both of us genin more elemental tips and the stern admonishment to ask our father for help. Kato received two pretty paired short swords, designed for easy chakra channeling. I got a new tantō to replace the one I'd lost during the invasion.
She apologized for not finding me a more personal gift. I laughed at her. The woman who had sacrificed her life needed to give me something else? Pfft. That said, it was a nice tantō and I would probably cherish it more than I really should.
Especially since I was starting a habit of losing these swords. . . .
I'm dead certain she and Dad kissed while Kato and I were washing up. Both adults did a first-rate show of poker faces after that.
"Come and visit," she told us.
"We will," Kato said.
And Mom left.
She left Zabuza's team behind to help as needed. They were a chūnin team now.
Apparently Mom and Dad had pushed for some new initiative to promote worthy genin who had made it to the preliminaries. Dad told me later that he'd pitched it to Grandfather years ago as a wartime clause, and while Haku had won his promotion fair and square, Mei was pushing things to say that the other genin had participated in a crisis situation during the exam. Orochimaru's actions had been part of the invasion, not the exam itself.
Please, Orochimaru was like the pop quiz of all time.
Kages could promote ninjas without a tournament, anyway, so getting tetchy over the results of a chūnin exam wasn't really worthwhile. I think the only big difference was the paperwork.
Dad was not a fan of early promotion (he would know) and he wanted his genin to have time to mature. Promotion wasn't about bragging rights. Sometimes it wasn't about strength.
Kato and I didn't ask for details. Neither of us really cared what rank we were now, so long as we could train and do some good. Our Hokage knew our abilities pretty well. Honestly, not being promoted would give us more flexibility and would keep us a bit less public.
No one from Sand or Sound was offered a promotion. They'd promote their genin without our help. Perhaps they'd start with the survivors.
As for Konoha, two of ours made the cut. Rock Lee and Nara Shikamaru.
Two young men with very different approaches to life. One had put forth his very best attempt and succeeded. The latter put forth an attempt and also succeeded.
(Shika made it pretty clear that his fight hadn't challenged his tactical skill. Maybe he "didn't put forth much effort," but why would he need to? I should take a page from his book and stop getting myself hurt during fights.)
(While I was thinking about Shika, why had he waited until the second round to drop out? He could have forfeited before making it to the round with Naruto . . . but maybe he knew something was up and was curious. Maybe he stayed after Neji crushed Hinata. Maybe he wanted to fight Neji, and then decided to let Naruto advance uncontested. He certainly wouldn't want to be victim to a fight with Naruto. Or perhaps he wanted to conserve chakra for whatever was boiling over.)
I was fully in support of Lee's promotion. Still, that didn't stop me from wondering . . .
Naruto wasn't ready to be promoted yet, not going by maturity, but the way he'd creamed Neji? Wasn't it brilliant? It was.
Hinata had lost her match, but she'd shown a good skillset, right? Sure. She'd also backed down when she shouldn't have.
Well, what about Sasuke? He'd shown a solid grasp of Gaara's weak points. The fact that he seemed overpowered was a point in his favor.
Dad agreed with me. At the same time, though. Some people would do better with keeping the same rank for a time. Especially people who do a lot of unhealthy comparison to relatives.
I could understand that. Change wasn't always beneficial. But Sasuke wasn't really genin level any more, in my opinion. He was starting to get up there.
Dad smiled. "Besides, the next exam is in Kiri. How else are we going to visit your mother as a family?"
My jaw dropped before it registered that he was kidding. He wouldn't abuse his power as Hokage to do something like that.
Dad snickered.
I regained my powers of speech. "Are you sure you're the Godaime Hokage?"
He smirked.
Oh, he hadn't abused his position of Hokage, but since the promotions had already been decided, and the opportunity to say something was there. . . .
"I don't think I thought this Hokage thing through enough," I muttered.
Dad, being Dad, laughed.
.
.
~Well, that's a wrap for now. A big helping of "you gave us fillerrr" (it's traditional), a mother-daughter chat, and some choppy-feeling last scenes. Could be worse. It feels a bit like whiplash before I did the last edit-thru, though. Anyway. Thank you all for reading!
Next time, events will be "back in the present tense" and there will probably be some fun stuff. Maybe something unexpected. There's one conversation especially that I've been looking forward to posting. I think that's part of why this chapter felt so draggy to me - I ended up not liking the clone stuff very much at all and wishing the undead Hokages could show up in it (sadly, there was no real good reason for that to happen . . . although feel free to suggest ideas) and then fighting the urge to do a little timeskip or not, all while I knew the next chapter would be more interesting to me. I imagine we'll all like the next chapter more because it's more engaging to me, and that of course helps me write and edit better.
If you weren't too thrilled with this chapter, either, I'd welcome ideas on how to help it flow better and improve it. I might go back and work on it some more later. That's a perk of FFN - it's not printed.
I will try to update within a month, but life gets busier, and priorities come and go.
Thanks for your reviews. I have a special love for the ones that come in months after the update, since that's the hardest time to write. :)
9.10.21