Chapter 2: Chaos
In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.
-Sun Tzu, The Art of War
AKA the chapter in which Minari realizes she should really keep her mouth shut
Minari opened her eyes blearily. Next to her, Moruto was passed out.
And around her were dozens of children, all apprehensively pointing various forms of weaponry at the two.
Her hands flew up.
"Don't hurt us!" The children only redoubled their grip on their weapons at her gesture.
Despite the situation, Minari couldn't help but stare in fascination.
Either a poor mother somewhere had centuplets, or a cloning experiment had been replicated far too many times, because the children were all identical.
Then she realized. Kabuto's experiments. It had to be.
A little girl in pigtails shoved her way through the crowd of little boys.
"Konohamaru! What are you doing? She's definitely a civilian!" The child's speech was strangely accented. Old Elemental?
It made sense, for children grown by Kabuto in a lab.
"There's no way! They just shunshined into the Forest of Death!"
Minari dared drop a hand to shake Moruto roughly.
No luck, he was out for the count.
The girl was studying them closer. "But her chakra reserves are tiny...Oh."
Minari felt nauseous as the girl pulled out her own weapon. "The onii-san is a shinobi."
Shinobi. An old word. Meaning ninja. The children were no doubt trained to kill other ninjas on sight. Moruto was already a dead man.
She licked bone dry lips. How could she survive?
"Please, tell Kabuto-sama I'm here to speak to him. I'm here to offer up Moruto."
The children exchanged looks of incredulous alarm.
Minari fought to control her trembling, to appear in control. She gestured towards Moruto's prone body. "If you need to bind him up, that's fine."
The girl shoved the nearest boy. "Stay here."
She leapt away, jumping almost three times Minari's own height to land in a tree.
"Ebisu-senseiii~!" The girl hollered.
Minari stared in bewilderment.
The girl called out again, higher pitched this time. "EBISU-SENSEIIIII~!"
A flicker, and a long, dark shape was standing next to the girl, bringing with it a menacing atmosphere that had her struggling to breathe.
She'd only felt this once before, on the first day of the end of her world.
Accompanied by the dark shape, the girl bounded down from the tree, miraculously paying no mind to the pure evil radiating off of the figure.
"Hey, hey, say what you said before again," the girl said, jabbing the kunai vaguely in her direction.
"K-Kabuto-sama..." She whispered, staring at the monster's sandaled feet. "Please spare me..."
The weight in the air tripled. There was no hope of controlling her trembling now as she simply tried to stay alive under the unbearable pressure.
"Kabuto...Yakushi?"
The voice was not the sibilant hiss that had echoed throughout the classroom. It was...nasal?
The shock of the voice broke whatever spell the shadow had put on the air around her.
She jerked her head up to meet the gaze of suspicious eyes behind round, clouded lenses.
"Who are you?" The two chorused.
Moegi elbowed Konohamaru and Udon aside as they tried to eavesdrop through the door.
"What are they saying?" she whispered
"The onee-chan's not saying anything any more." Konohamaru whispered back. "But they called in Ibiki-sensei, so..."
The other two nodded in sympathy. The lady would be spilling whatever beans she had to spill in a matter of minutes.
"Poor lady," Udon said.
Konohamaru's face was set. "If she's working for Kabuto, it means she's working for Orochimaru. I hope Ibiki-sensei pulls out the pliers."
Moegi and Udon exchanged glances over the other genin's back at his uncharacteristically hard stance.
The murder of the Third had weighed heavily on the genin, and changed him.
Sitting in the darkness of her blindfold, Minari's mind raced to reconcile what little she'd seen. No one had spoken to her since the man called Ebisu-sensei had radioed in for reinforcements and dragged them bodily from the forest, but she'd been carried through the sky effortlessly. This was a community of ninjas. Friend? Foe?
There was no way to know, not unless Moruto woke up.
"She said Kabuto?" A new, gruff voice queried.
"Yes, specifically "Kabuto-sama". She was looking to give that man over."
"Hn." Footsteps moved towards where she knew Moruto had been bound.
"Do we have a name?"
"Just the first. Moruto."
Minari made sure to not react to the revelation that they did not know who Moruto was. They were not Kabuto's people then, but they would likely hand Moruto over to Kabuto without a single thought.
"Have a team check the bingo books for him."
"We have, there's nothing in the major village bingo books. "
"Then check the minor villages, goddammit. If Kabuto Yakushi wants him, there's something here."
"Maa~, did you know you had some cute little eavesdroppers?" Another new voice, far too relaxed for the urgent tone of the room at the time.
The gruff voice. "You're late."
The nasally voice again. "They were the first to find her, we have them waiting outside to give a report later. What're you doing here?"
A click as the door was closed behind the newcomer.
"I've been managing leads for Jiraiya-sama while he's away from the village. This is Akatsuki-related. Unless you want to deal with getting them mind sealed, run them out of here, will you, Ebisu?"
She was struggling to follow the dialect, but Akatsuki had been said almost silently. Another archaic word. Meaning dawn. And Kabuto was related to it somehow.
Was this a hidden village of ninja that had existed through the centuries without detection? Were they fighting Kabuto? How had Moruto known of this?
Muffled voices from outside now, the higher pitch of the children's voices mixing with the older man's.
The door opened and shut again.
"They're gone."
The gruff voice addressed her now.
"So, what have you got to say for yourself?"
She'd been formulating what to say for a while, but all of her prepared stories would be awful given what information she'd been able to glean.
Honesty was the best policy.
"I don't know where I am, and I don't mean any harm."
She imagined the three voices exchanging skeptical looks in the ensuing silence.
"Well, let's get that blindfold off you first, make you comfortable." The relaxed voice said.
Bad Cop, Good Cop.
She took a strange comfort in the recognition of something familiar in this bizarre, new situation.
Deft hands untied the knot at the back of her head...to bring her face to face with history.
There was no mistaking that combination of hair and mask. Not for a Fire College honors student.
"Rokudaime-sama!"
Moruto, you fucking genius.
This was possibly the first time Ibiki had ever seen the jounin truly startled. Technically, Ibiki owed the woman a round of drinks, if he were to hold to his word in the office betting pool.
He'd call it square by not pulling out the pliers for her.
The captive woman's eyes scanned the man she'd called Rokudaime thoroughly, lingering on his hitaiate and vest.
"This is Konoha?" The woman asked, all trace of the cowering figure from moments before gone. "This is a hidden village of ninja? You're the real Rokudaime?"
Ibiki stepped forward now.
"Contradicting yourself within seconds of making a statement is not usually a good way to start off an interrogation. You do know where you are?"
The woman ducked her head embarrassedly, but kept her eyes on Kakashi as if he were an oasis and she'd been lost in the desert. Disbelief, wonder, and joy, all emotions Ibiki was positive Kakashi-senpai had never, ever inspired in an enemy, shone in her gaze.
If this were acting, they needed to recruit her.
Kakashi had collected himself now, ignoring her accusations of being the Rokudaime.
"Let's start again. Do you want to try explaining yourself another go?"
Words flooded out, as if a gate had been opened.
"My name is Minari Inoue, his name is Moruto Uzumaki. We- we..." She paused, looking helplessly up at the three ninja. "We're from the future."
As the three ninja heard out the woman's outlandish claims, Ibiki thanked his lucky stars for Kakashi's eidetic memory. He knew the jounin was checking for inconsistencies in her story on the fly. Judging by his silence so far, there was nothing that could be called out in the moment.
Kabuto Yakushi...so he ended up finding a path to immortality after all.
"Moruto, he's from an old ninja family, they kept training him secretly so he was able to save us. He's the one who brought us here, he couldn't bring Kabuto down on his own."
Kakashi hummed. "Uzumaki, did you say?"
She nodded eagerly.
Ibiki eyed the unconscious young man. The blond hair brought to mind the only other Uzumaki the village knew of, a match he knew Kakashi could not have missed.
"You mean the brat gets to breed?" Ebisu whispered in faint horror. Ibiki kept his expression stone-faced at the comment.
The set of Kakashi's shoulders suggested he was suppressing amusement as well.
"He's the only other ninja of our era that we know of," she continued. "His parents passed a long time ago, and he's our only hope."
She was silent following that, suggesting she had no more to provide.
Meeting Ibiki's eye, Kakashi nodded, ending the investigation.
"I see."
At a gesture from Ibiki, she was moved to a holding cell, leaving the three shinobi alone in the room with the alleged time-traveling Uzumaki.
A medic was called to wake the unconscious man.
"What do we do if the stories match?" Ebisu asked.
Ibiki shook his head. "They won't."
"She sounded convincing." Ebisu said.
"She sounded convincing when she said everything else before the time travelling stuff too." Ibiki rebutted.
Kakashi crossed his arms, observing the medic's work on the so-called Uzumaki.
"No point in speculating now. We'll know soon enough."
Ebisu hesitated, looking at the jounin sidelong.
"If she is telling the truth...you may actually be the future Rokudaime."
Kakashi's lone visible eye took on a faraway gaze. "Ah, yes. Not if I can help it."
His eye snapped back to the medic, who'd straightened up from his ministrations.
The medic shook his head.
The man wasn't waking up.
A/N:I have a feeling people won't like Minari on principle, and I kind of like that.
I want to write some weaselly, squirrelly, purely selfish character trying to survive gracelessly and shamefully. I want to see if it's possible to write her sympathetically, and explore the outer limits of how shitty I can make her without having everyone who can facilitate her survival realistically leave her. I want to see if I can work within her philosophy to build a realistic character growth arc.
She's a parasite as written so far, like most of us would be in an extreme situation like this. She's gotten by on the goodwill of others, and will continue to be supported somewhat by purely people's sense of obligation for what we owe each other in a community.
