Summary: Sequel to Samsara: Egregori. Four lives, countless assassins, mad scientists, and more corruption than you can (presumably) shake a stick at.
Pairing: Tsuna/Reborn
Beta: —
Spoilers: Samsara, Samsara: Treading on Scorched Sand, Samsara: Egregori, and all that those cover
Warnings: slash, canon mangling, time skips, cracked played straight
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Amano Akira, Weekly Shōnen Jump, and Viz Media. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. Also, Atlus, et. al., for any references to Persona; Bethesda & Arkane Studios; Kishimoto Masashi, et. al.
Notes:
1. Title taken from Prey (2017). The song is played twice in the game, once in the Yellow Tulip (bar) found in Crew Quarters, and once during the end credits. (My personal preference is for the Danielle Sho version [sung by Mae Whitman] and not the one available on the OST.)
2. Alterations to canon, of course. I did spend plenty of time at the (various) wiki(s) [and in the case of Naruto, at the manga], so shit that's wrong is deliberate.
3. I went a little insane at one point.
4. Shout-outs to at least two video games, but I won't bother to specify. And at least one movie.
5. Not every chapter is 10k, specifically, chapter eight, but that's just how it goes.
6. Certain ideas scavenged from a thread at Reddit.
7. Originally, something in here was supposed to be its own story. Yeah, that did not work out.
8. Initial assembly: 13 01 2020
v2020-1.0
January 2020
(16 07 2019 - 13 01 2020)
When he woke up it was to see a stained ceiling and unfamiliar surroundings. A slow look round revealed that the place was a shithole on top of being dirty and cluttered with things. A glance down the length of his body revealed that he was about the usual age, though it was hard to say for sure. There was a calender on the wall, but seeing it did nothing to relieve his general ignorance.
'Where the hell are we this time?' Hayato asked, sounding more than a bit confused.
Tsuna sighed and got up, then hunted down a bathroom. A look in the mirror—a sad thing covered in dried water splotches and bits of furring dust—revealed spiky blond hair, startling blue eyes, and odd whisker-like marks on his cheeks. It was a pleasant enough face, though there was a suggestion of mischief in it for some reason.
A thorough investigation of the flat showed that he was alone. The refrigerator had food in it, but all of it was either expired or on the verge of expiring, and the cupboards had far too much in the way of cup ramen. A look out the window showed a town that was vaguely Japanese.
'Are those fucking ninja?' Hayato said.
'Are you the only one awake in there?' he asked, eyeing the oddly-dressed people who were doing things like leaping from roof to roof over gaps far too wide for a normal human being, or quite literally walking up the sides of buildings.
'Yeah. Dunno why. I'm thinking maybe we should play this one quiet to start. You're alone here, in a flat with only a single futon, so it's obvious you live on your own, which is damned weird. How about you send out a window while I kick the others awake?'
He nodded. The very idea that someone of his age was living alone was so crazy that he immediately wondered if he was being watched or monitored in some way. Having his family materialize bodies would be a bad idea in that case, and quite possibly bring down some form of authority to investigate.
With that in mind he opened a window in their-eyes-only mode and sent it out into the town. There seemed to be two distinct classes, that of civilian and ninja, and those two were further split by normal considerations such as wealth or family. Some of the ninja types appeared to be on a different level if the masks meant anything, masks which resembled some kind of creature.
'What the fuck?' Sin said flatly. 'Ninja?'
Tsuna nodded again, his eyes on the window. 'This is probably going to be as weird as λ15 was. Possibly more so.'
'Have you put up the usual yet?' Daemon asked sleepily.
Tsuna shook his head, but also very subtly retrieved an anchor from his storage and set to work. 'Depending on whether my suspicions are correct or not, we may have to add in quite a bit of runework, as well. The confunding properties of the Bounding Box only reach so far, so if someone were trying to spy through the windows from a distance…'
'Considering what I'm finding in your body's memories,' Mukuro said darkly, 'there's a fuckton of shit we need to discuss.'
His brow went up as he moved to the approximate center of the flat and placed the anchor. For anyone spying from a distance it would look like a poorly-constructed, crude statue of some unidentified animal. Afterward he flopped onto the sofa (constructed from spare bits of wood and a futon of questionable condition) and closed his eyes.
Once inside his own mind he took a seat at the table and looked at Mukuro expectantly.
"Well," his Mist said unhappily. "This body is Uzumaki Naruto, age six, and a student of the ninja academy here in Konohagakure no Sato. We are in the Elemental Nations, in Hi no Kuni. Sadly, before your awakening, this body appears to have had very little use for its brains, so information is lacking. You are … reviled."
His brow went back up.
"The most commonly used epithet is 'demon brat', though we're going to need to do research to figure out precisely what's going on. There has to be a reason why you're the local whipping boy, and I can't see it being the evidence in your body's memories that you're a prankster. Anecdotal evidence is showing that the civilians are nearly united in hating your body. The shinobi mostly ignore you, but there are watchers. Your body didn't notice them, but sifting through these memories… You have watchers. They wear animal masks."
"So some kinda elite," Ken said.
"Presumably," Mukuro said agreeably. "Next, your body was in an orphanage. There was some big ruckus a few years back that saw a lot of people dead, including your body's parents, I must assume. Your body is adamant on becoming a ninja with an end goal of becoming Hokage, all so that the people will have to respect you."
Tsuna rolled his eyes. His body's original mind was clearly more than a bit slow, though considering the child was hated, it was doubtful that many, if any, bothered to try to teach him the basics. Attention-seeking behavior? Lambo, anyone? Except for the part where Lambo was quite smart once he got a bit older and started to grow out of his youthful stupidity.
"Right, so, we have to assume some of the animal masks are keeping watch on this flat. If the civilians here hate me, they might be motivated to attack anywhere, and a sleeping child would be an easy target. And if some of the ninja hate me, they would presumably have a lot more in the way of skill to accomplish the same, though I expect that their leader, this Hokage, would not be impressed by his people assaulting or attempting to murder a child without orders."
"Civilians, however…" Chikusa said. "We need to either find a safe place to materialize, or Heul needs to do the runework so we can safely bring out the trunk. All of the rooms here have windows, though I would still recommend using a secondary Bounding Box to cover it."
"The other option is a secret base," Sin said. "Leave a clone here to keep the attention of any watchers, leave via Between, and reconnoiter. It doesn't even have to be inside the village, not with the way we can slip through the cracks of existence."
"I'm going to 'wake up'," he said. "A clone can be crafted around me, to hide me, and then I'll go Between. Find a decent spot, you all can materialize, and then we do a thorough search. Meet back here once it gets dark. I want everyone to keep a window on the clone, just in case. The clone can do child things here."
Everyone nodded, so he twisted his perception outward again. A moment later a clone formed around his supine form, and Tsuna easily slipped Between to escape any watchers. He found a dense stand of trees to pause in and stepped out long enough to send out a pulse of Sky Flames, to see if there was anyone nearby. Finding no one he nodded slightly.
His family materialized bodies for themselves, nodded, and stepped Between.
xXx
It was full dark and Tsuna was carefully etching runes into the frame and wall around the kitchen window. When he finished he took the time to power them with magic, then moved on to the bathroom after taking the trunk from storage and shoving it up against the wall where it could not be seen from outside unless the watcher was right there at the window and something of a contortionist. He also placed a secondary Bounding Box, anchored to the chest itself.
An hour later he was done in both the bathroom and living area, so he returned to the kitchen, entered the trunk, and watched as his family materialized again. Tsuna moved straight to the trunk's kitchen so he could prepare a meal, and the others arrayed themselves at the table, Sin aside, who moved to assist him.
"This place is strange," Hayato said, then got back up to make tea.
He honestly wondered at times what happened to the food materialized bodies consumed. Did it disperse into everything, like the results of a vanishing spell? They ate for the taste, for the pleasure of it, and he was more than happy to provide.
"We need to deeply investigate a number of places," Daemon said. "The library, for one. The Hokage's tower, for another. And finding a place to create a stronghold, a base of operations."
Hayato glanced over his shoulder. "And where the defects are, so we can kill them."
"Okay, who wants what?" he asked.
Hayato immediately volunteered for the library, as did Mukuro.
"Use the doubling charm to make copies of everything," he said. "I know they won't last for more than a couple of weeks, but that's more than enough time to scan them. OCR software may or may not work on the scans, but either way we'll have copies."
"And we can print them out," Xeul said. "I want the Hokage's tower. They probably hide the really interesting stuff there."
Tsuna nodded. "Same deal. Duplicate, scan…"
"I am going hunting for defects," Daemon said.
"Um… I'm also going to more deeply investigate how the economy works here," Hayato said, serving tea to everyone.
Ken and Chikusa shared a look. "Stronghold," Ken said. "I noticed a fenced off area, quite large, circular, with a tower at the center. I plan to start there. Maybe we could slide something in under the tower, depending on how it's built. If that doesn't pan out, we could check outside the village walls. Whatever we choose, it should probably be underground."
"Given that," Chikusa added, "we will need to brush up on runes for air circulation, water supply, and so forth. Possibly hydroponics."
"We already know that Naruto is reviled," Sin said, "but what I discovered is that he is regularly sold the absolute worst of supplies and food. The contents of the refrigerator weren't because the child was too silly to pay attention. He's regularly overcharged for everything, which would explain all those cup noodles. Naruto is a regular at a place called Ramen Ichiraku. A man by the name of Teuchi runs it, along with his daughter, Ayame. Those two are some of the very few who like Naruto and are happy to see him."
"Which might also explain the all the cup noodles," he mused as he started portioning out stir fry with Sin's help.
A bit later Tsuna emerged to blend with his clone and disperse it, then lie down to sleep for the night, knowing that someone would be shorting their own sleep to keep an eye on him despite the protections.
xXx
He woke up to a hand on his shoulder and nearly sliced it off with a manifested blade of flames he only barely prevented himself from forming.
"What are you doing!?" a male voice demanded. "You're supposed to be in class right now."
He very intelligently said, "Bwuh?"
The man's face was set in a harsh, annoyed expression, but Tsuna knew he could not have gotten in if he intended actual harm. "Get up, get dressed. I'm going to make sure you make it to class."
Tsuna ducked away and skittered into the bathroom so he could take care of the usual, then got dressed in the only clothes on hand. He loved the colour orange, but to have it be the only colour in his wardrobe of shabby jumpsuits was a bit much.
He was then hauled off to the academy and firmly directed to a seat, and the man walked to the front of the classroom so he could begin a lecture. Tsuna was left a skosh confused by it all. Part of him paid attention to what was being said, but the larger part of him began to subtly observe his fellow classmates.
They were a mismatched lot. Some wore what he assumed were the symbols of their families, along with high-quality clothing. Some were a bit more shabby or merely average in terms of a display of wealth or stature. And, while they generally tended to pay attention to the lecture, not a minute went by without one of them randomly sending a glare or look of annoyance his way.
'It seems their parents have taught them hate early,' Daemon commented into his mind.
He sighed almost imperceptibly. 'Yeah. Oh happy day.'
The lecture dragged on seemingly forever, and then they were allowed a break for lunch—not that Tsuna had anything to eat—and then they were herded outside so they could get in some practice with blunted kunai, as well as be shown the basics of the academy taijutsu. Well, everyone else was. Tsuna was generally ignored, given annoyed looks, or brushed aside when someone else suddenly required additional help.
It was interesting how neither Mizuki-sensei nor Iruka-sensei managed to actually work their way around to him to ensure he was doing things correctly. Funny, that. How nice to find that the very shinobi responsible for teaching him to be a good little ninja were actively against him.
Before they were released for the day Iruka shoved a paper at him. "A reminder, since you seem to have forgotten what days you're supposed to come here for class. Now off with you."
'This is helpful,' he thought as he meandered off, shrugging off the dirty looks without a second thought. He continued on his way to the flat and inside, relaxing slightly at the feel of his protections. True, they hadn't stopped that teacher, but that just meant the man had not come with the intention of hurting him.
He formed a clone around himself and, when in an optimal position, separated from it and headed into the trunk. Naruto might have been brainwashed to exist on ramen (and cheap ramen at that) and enjoy it, but Tsuna was having no part of that nonsense.
Baking shortly commenced, as well as preparations for dinner, though he did snack a bit as he worked so he could fill the hole in his stomach from a lack of lunch. A momentary twinkle off to the side told him that Daemon had drifted off to do his own work while continuing to keep an eye on him.
It might take a few days, maybe even a few weeks, but they would strip the village down to the ground (or below) and uncover every last secret of interest, then decide as a family how to handle things.
xXx
"Me," Sin said, his expression saying he would not budge.
Tsuna shot him a fond smile. "Was there ever any doubt?"
Daemon raised a hand briefly. "I think it would be of great benefit to have a Mist-primary."
He nodded. "Then that means one of you guys gets to play Papa, someone can be a brother, and the last three as children of the completely made up family."
Xeul immediately claimed the "father" role and Mukuro was quick to claim the "brother" spot.
"Er, how old are we 'kids' supposed to be?" Chikusa asked.
Tsuna shrugged. "You can be old enough to help with the as-yet-to-be-determined clan trade, or young enough to get stuck in the civilian school."
Three sets of eyes narrowed, a look bounced around, and all three decided that school was off the table. What a shock.
"We have boatloads of gold and can always steal more," Xeul said, "so we could make like we're newcomers to Konoha, get approved, buy some land, and set up house. Ward the place to the teeth with an eye toward Heul, Sin, and Daemon being invited to live with us. As for a trade…"
"Home remedies?" Mukuro suggested. "It can't be a restaurant, not unless Heul's clones can stand up to being kicked around during taijutsu practice at that shithole of an academy. Other classes I spied on showed the students sparring with each other."
He groaned quietly. He was more of a brawler than a martial artist, for fuck's sake. He might actually have to learn things properly this time.
Xeul smirked at him. "On a side note, I have completed my investigation of the Hokage's tower and found a very interesting document hidden away in there—and no, I'm not referring to the old man's extensive porn collection."
"The old man I supposedly look up to as something of a grandfather?" Tsuna said.
Xeul nodded. "Though why he reads that low-class smut I'll never know. It's barely better than Weasley-level of writing."
Half the room shuddered.
"The Scroll of Seals—which yes, I have duplicated and will be scanning shortly—has a very interesting technique on it, called Shadow Clone. It is, in many ways, quite similar to our clones. Shadow clones, however, when destroyed, transfer their memories back to the creator."
Sin started cackling along with Daemon, Mukuro, and Hayato, with Chikusa chuckling a heartbeat later.
"They can't be used for physical development," Xeul stressed, "but knowledge, muscle memory, chakra control—those are all fair game."
"So let me see if I'm understanding this right," he said. "I could create a dozen of these shadow clones, set them to doing kata until it's reflex, then dispel them, and I gain all the benefits."
Xeul nodded. "And then when you make the next batch, they already have that and can progress further, getting faster, more precise, or what have you."
"The knowledge aspect alone is priceless," Hayato said. "We could send clones to the libraries—except… We'll have to test if these shadow clones can use flames, magic, or chakra. If they can't duplicate books and scrolls…"
"According to the scroll, it takes a whole lot of chakra to even make one of them, never mind a bunch. And we still have to see about Tsuna unlocking his chakra. And us, assuming we can with these constructed bodies. Considering how many lifetimes of augmentation we have, I imagine we'd be quite powerful despite not having done so at the recommended age and increasing reserves over time.
"Also, there's a bunch of other techniques on the scroll, including variants on the shadow clone technique, but those can wait. Let's see about unlocking chakra coils first, and seeing if there's a way to test how much we have before we get cocky."
"If they can use our skills," Chikusa said, "then yes, they would be incredibly useful for more quickly getting our local library up to snuff."
"Well," Hayato said, "I took the normal library, and there's a wealth of information in there. I think I should switch to going through the academy library instead, though, since the general library has very little on shinobi stuff."
"The archive library has data on their shinobi forces," Mukuro said, "records of each and every academy student, and any registered ninja, living or dead. It's not quite as useful right at the moment. I think I'll help with the academy library to speed things up, and later we can see about more advanced techniques, the archives, police records, and so forth."
"And sneaking into people's homes to acquire copies of whatever they have," Daemon said. "Depending on how boring things are, we could take a few trips so we can open windows in other villages, shift some clones over…"
xXx
The first time he made a shadow clone showed them all exactly why chakra control really was important. When he came to he had a bitch of a headache, like someone simultaneously had stuck a drill behind one eye while expanding a balloon inside of his head, which also felt like it was on fire. His stomach was also threatening to throw up everything he had eaten in the past week. Had he not been in so much pain he would have been fascinated how it all stuck to one side of his head.
"I think this might be something like a migraine," he whispered, which caused a flurry of movement nearby and a surprisingly cool hand to gently touch his forehead. Moments later the pain began to recede, which caused him to sigh in relief. "Thank you," he whispered. "That's helping."
"I'll get you fixed up, tesoro," Sin whispered back.
A few minutes later he dared to open his eyes and cautiously sit up. "Lesson learned," he said dryly. "We need to treat this like magic. We need to be able to only use as much as we need."
Ken snickered at him. "You made like a thousand of the damn things. I thought we were going to suffocate or something."
After he was set up with something to drink, he sat back to listen to Hayato's impromptu lecture on chakra control techniques.
An hour later he was staring at a leaf in resignation. But then, so was everyone else. "When is the made-up clan moving into the village?" he asked as he tried to stick the leaf to his forehead with chakra. He barely had it in place before it blasted across the room and disintegrated from the force of impact with the wall.
"Next week," Xeul said. "I already tracked down a courier and had them deliver fair warning to the Hokage that we'd be arriving and looking to settle."
"And you two?" he asked, looking at Sin and Daemon as he reached for another leaf.
"Tomorrow," Daemon said. "I'll slip us in as orphans who have always been there, but have been recovering from an illness, which delayed our entry into the academy. We'll join you in class the day after, most likely."
"And then we can form a little gang of troublemakers who strangely never cause much trouble," Sin said. "At least, not anything they can ever pin on us. We wouldn't be very good troublemakers if we left evidence behind."
xXx
Two days later they had two new students in Tsuna's class. Coincidentally, there were open seats to either side of him. It had nothing to do with him being a pariah, he was certain. Also, there were open seats in front of him. He had been relegated to the back corner simply by virtue of the other students arriving early enough to ensure it.
Daemon sat to his right and Sin to the left. All was well with the world.
That and Tsuna had finally managed to get a leaf to stick to his forehead for a whole second before it blasted off and dissolved on impact with the nearest hard surface.
Later that day, as he was making dinner for everyone, Mukuro said, "Bad news, Heul. Apparently, Uzumaki have this weird thing going on where they not only have loads of chakra, but it's denser and it keeps naturally expanding all the way through until maturity, so you'll probably be doing chakra control exercises for years just to stay on top of things."
"For fuck's sake," he muttered as he carefully rolled a paper thin sheet of egg.
"Good news bad news," Mukuro continued, "I have found the names of your body's parents. They are Uzumaki Kushina, originally from Uzushiogakure, and…"
His brow went up at the delay. A quick glance over his shoulder showed that Mukuro looked oddly conflicted.
"Namikaze Minato, the Yondaime Hokage."
The spatula Tsuna was using somehow found itself embedded in the wall, so he calmly opened a drawer and got out a new one to use. The only thing he said was, "Huh," as he continued to cook.
"They were both killed during the attack back the day your body was born, when the Kyūbi attacked Konoha for whatever reason. So basically, you were born right in the middle of a shitstorm."
He shrugged. "And of course, no one knows this information, probably because from what I've read about the Yondaime, a truck-load of people would just love to get some bizarre form of revenge on Namikaze by brutally murdering his son. And they hate me…?"
"…Maybe they associate you with that shitstorm and, unable to kick the Kyūbi in the balls as an expression of their loathing for the being who tried to flatten their village and did kill any number of their friends and family, take it out on you like the idiots they are?" Ken said.
Mukuro smiled. "Hm, no. They hate you because of what's inside you. The books and the lessons all say the Yondaime killed the Kyūbi, but that's just a story for the young or the people who can't be bothered to learn more. No, the Yondaime split the Kyūbi in half, yin and yang chakra, and sealed half of it into your body. The other half he sealed into himself before he was taken by Shinigami as the price for the fūinjutsu he used."
Tsuna suddenly felt a whole lot better about blood family, especially when Mukuro went into more detail about what he had learned (presumably from the Sarutobi Hiruzen), if only because his body's parents (much like James and Lily Potter) had done everything they possibly could to not only save their village and its people, but also to save their son. Funny how both those sets of parents were in no way related to the mafia and both were coincidentally dead.
"So I have a nine-tailed demon renting space inside me," he said blandly. "This presents—"
"A problem, yes," Hayato said. "Because you'll die a hilariously stupid death, as you always do, and what happens then?"
"Supposedly, if a jinchūriki dies, the tailed beast they contain will be set free, presumably to rampage around, wreck the landscape, and kill everyone they can," Mukuro said. "Though, given that people keep them locked away in seals, I can sort of understand that reaction."
"…That wasn't quite what I was driving at," he said, serving up plates of food. "If this body is the container for a tailed-beast, does it have any access to my mind?"
Mukuro shook his head. "Not if what I got out of Sarutobi was factual. The seal is pretty damn tight. I sure as hell didn't catch any hints you were eating for two before we materialized."
Daemon and Xeul shook their heads. "We didn't sense anything," they said in unison.
"Also, allegedly, should you die, the Kyūbi would die with you," Mukuro added, "though Sarutobi's thoughts on that were slightly wistful. I can't tell if he's lying to himself or…"
"What about why Heul is reviled?"
Mukuro wrinkled his nose. "Because Namikaze and Sarutobi were both naïve fools. Namikaze wanted his son to be seen as a hero—you know, for containing the beast—and Sarutobi did inform the village. Naturally, they turned all their hatred onto the child, treating him as if he was the Kyūbi. At that point, Sarutobi used his executive powers to instate a new law, which basically says anyone who spills the knowledge gets a trip to T&I, and then incineration."
"I'm surprised this village isn't a ghost town, then," Sin said dryly. "Well, we definitely need to meddle when the time comes. Fixing team assignments, 'encouraging' the right people to fail so that it's that much more attractive to place the three of us on a team together…"
xXx
The new clan moving to Konoha was the major topic of gossip for the next few weeks. The clan purchased space for them in the same area the Uchiha had originally been moved out of when faith in them decreased and they had been 'encouraged' to relocate closer to the fringes. Because, hey, nothing like kicking people in the balls as a way to encourage them to straighten up.
The Kuro Clan (because none of them felt like being creative when it came to names) settled in and started with constructing greenhouses (ostensibly) to grow their ingredients in, as well as preparing planting beds for growing food. Under the cover of Mist they were steadily warding the entire compound with a mixture of Tsuna's anchored Bounding Boxes and runes, though they were looking into learning fūinjutsu.
More methods of protection meant … more protection, after all.
A clone of Naruto slept in the shithole of an apartment while Tsuna had a nice, comfy room at the new place—which meant, thank the gods, he could snuggle up to his lover in sleep. The trunk had been moved, as well, though they were considering crafting a second one. Ken had quite unthinkingly shifted into the house trunk one day and proved beyond doubt that it was possible to do so without harm, but his materialized body might have been the deciding factor.
Tsuna, unwilling to risk dying so damn early, abstained.
Still, while their storages were incredibly invaluable, it would be nice to have a library trunk to store things a bit more handily. Books were so much prettier on shelves, after all, and they were building up quite the collection. Being able to separate things out by dimension was starting to look very attractive.
Thankfully, no one expected the Kuro Clan to start selling remedies anytime soon, not with them having to grow everything first. Even so, the excitement and gossip about a new family in the village made it easier for people to temporarily forget they loathed Naruto. It did not last long, but it was a nice reprieve.
xXx
"Bad news," Mukuro said as Tsuna prepared dinner for them all.
It had been more of the same at the academy—the glares, annoyed looks, and teachers pretending he did not exist should he even look like he might possibly have a question—and it was a comfort to him to come home to the Kuro Clan compound (using a clone as a distraction for his ANBU watchers) and be with his family.
"Apparently the old fossil—"
"Which fossil?" Ken asked. "There are several."
Mukuro scowled. "The fossil known as Shimura Danzō. He's been fucking around in the background quite a bit, and none of it is good. One, he runs an offshoot ANBU organization called Root, so there are tunnels and secret compounds under Konoha, filled to the brim with quiet, emotionless, sealed children taken from the orphanage or clan children convinced to join."
Mukuro looked pleased at the scowls and frowns they were sporting. "Two, he's angling and meddling with an end result of the potential extinction of the Uchiha Clan."
"…What?"
Mukuro was kind enough not to point out the obvious. "We need to get in there and find out if there's any weight behind wanting them gone. If they're defects, that's one thing."
"But not the children," he said flatly.
"Not the children," Mukuro said.
"Well, that gives us an interesting task, if nothing else," Xeul said.
"I might be a bit sleepy in class, though," Daemon added.
Tsuna scoffed. "Like that'd matter. So long as we keep passing into the next year and pass the actual exam to graduate, it doesn't matter if we sleep through half the classes. If it wasn't for the sparring requirements, I'd be sending in clones already."
Sin smirked at him. "You just hate that you have to do more physically than just punch shit to death."
He scowled at his lover.
"That and taijutsu spars don't allow for all your usual tricks."
Tsuna scowled harder, then turned to his adorably psychotic Mists. "After dinner, if you would please winnow through the wheat and find the chaff? Once we've all been updated, we can make a plan, execute it… Or them. Whichever. We will also have to delve into Shimura's domain, but let's deal with the Uchiha first."
xXx
"A good number of the adult Uchiha are spoiling for a coup," Daemon reported. "The clan head and his wife are in on it. They've worked themselves up into a froth over real and perceived injustices—that and feeling like they've never received enough respect, mostly because too many of them are overly convinced of their own superiority."
"Out of the younger shinobi in the clan, many of them have no idea what's brewing," Mukuro said. "Most are also convinced that the clan head and elders are infallible. If left alive, it could easily result in the same situation a few years or a decade down the line. It might not. It's hard to say, as they aren't in the loop, but if they found out, with their current mindsets, they would jump to agree with a coup."
"On a related note," Xeul said, "Shimura. I had a look and what I saw isn't good. First, he's behind some of the push for a coup, using words as his main weapon. Rumors, specifically, to get them worked up and so that it doesn't get traced back to him. He's been meddling behind the scenes for some time. Part of that is him disliking the Uchiha. He's almost jealous of their skill and that dōjutsu, which leads to the other part, where he's hoping to collect awakened sharingan from the massacre he's pushing, for his own use."
Tsuna's brow went up. "His own use? He's not an Uchiha."
"No, but it is possible for awakened dōjutsu to be transplanted. He already got his hands on one awakened eye, which replaced his right eye—it's why he has bandages over it, to keep it closed, because a non-Uchiha can't regulate the power for them properly. Orochimaru helped him obtain an arm from one of the Uchiha, infused with DNA from Senju Hashirama, that has a number of sharingan implanted in it.
"Shimura wants more of them, in case his use of the ones he has causes them to fail. He has fingers everywhere and he's been manipulating events all over the place. I'll get into more of that later. Just, for now, know that he's been manipulating the Uchiha for his own gain. He was the one behind preventing the Uchiha from going on the offensive during the Kyūbi attack, limiting them to protection of the civilians only, and then started the rumors and suspicions that the Uchiha were behind the attack in the first place."
"Sounds like he's an excellent strategist," Chikusa said, "with absolutely no morals or care for his own people. He's a sociopath at best, thinking of other people as tools."
Xeul nodded. "He's a real piece of work."
"So, if we don't interfere, the Uchiha Clan will be wiped out, even the children," he said.
Xeul nodded again. "And all those awakened eyes stolen."
Tsuna sighed and dropped his gaze to the table. He already knew what his family thought of the situation. He did not need the words spoken out loud. "Then let's talk about a plan of action. How we're going to save the children, and prevent any of those eyes from wandering off."
"We let the action against the coup happen," Sin said, "but we're there to hide what's really happening to the innocents, and the eyes of the dead."
"Essentially," he said. "Anyone in the academy or younger is to be protected."
"If Shimura plans to sweep in after and help himself to all those eyes, would it be better to fool him into thinking he's succeeded, or outright spike every eye there?" Ken said.
"Fake him out," Hayato said. "We can always store them so that no one will get their hands on them, or destroy them after the fact, but faking him out means he goes bugnuts later on once he realizes he's been fooled, and then he wastes time trying to figure out who actually obtained them."
"And if that someone took them for their own use, or is actively working against him," Chikusa said.
"We can't use shadow clones," Mukuro said, "even if we could use them, so it'll have to be our type of clones to fool whoever ends up going there to kill the clan members. Heavy on the confusion properties."
"I will make the clones," Tsuna said. "I still have way more experience with those using Cloud to manipulate how they affect people. That leaves all of you to use Mist to further complicate matters and hide that you've extracted any and all eyes. We might want to get in some practice at doing so, so that none of them are damaged."
"We'll need a place to hide all those children while this is happening," Xeul pointed out. "Preferably unconscious, and then moved back in to replace the clone bodies and be found alive by the proper authorities."
"Do we have a map of any kind of the Uchiha compound?" he asked.
Daemon promptly created an illusion map on the table so they could all see what they had to work with, then pointed at a section of land that a brook passed through. It had a small outbuilding on it. "It's rarely used from what I could see. They store things there that aren't often used. I see no reason why we can't temporarily expand it to accommodate the children, and return it to normal after the fact."
"And we can use an anchored Bounding Box to gently keep it uninteresting."
"Any idea when this is going to move forward? It would be helpful to see just how often they go there," Hayato said. "Because we have two ways of handling this. We either do the runework ahead of time, prime it, and just hold off on activating it until the right moment, or we use the temporary spells, which would mean one of us would need to stay there the whole time."
Tsuna shook his head. "Temporary. I do not want to place runes and then have to remove them. People in the compound might feel when we'd be priming them, since expansion runes take a fair amount, unlike the ones protecting the windows in that shithole."
"I'll do it, then," Ken said.
"So we need to know how many clones to make, be ready to force those kids to sleep and do the swap—I'm going to assume for the moment that when the attack happens it'll be at night, so it should be easier on our end. We'll also need a rotation to keep an eye out for when, so we can act immediately."
Hayato looked up from a document and said, "There are two hundred forty children twelve and under that are either in the academy still or too young to be."
Tsuna winced.
"The remainder consist of genin who have not and will not be placed to Uchiha advantage until they reach chūnin, the Konoha Military Police Force—about five hundred of those—the elderly, and adults who never awakened their dōjutsu. Given what we know, it's possible the unawakened might be spared, but I doubt it."
Ken nodded. "I can handle the expansion for that many."
"I will prepare an anchor," he said. "Any idea who's going to be tasked with this unsightly mess?"
His twins exchanged a look. "Odds on favorite is Uchiha Itachi, Sasuke's older brother, a pacifist."
Brows went up around the table. "A pacifist?"
"The other would be Uchiha Shisui, mostly because of the peculiarities of his sharingan. It's an ability they call Kotoamatsukami, and it does rather what we do. It mindfucks the target into doing what Shisui wants."
"Just the one? How many times can it be used?"
"Unknown, but it can reprogram anyone in his field of view."
Tsuna rolled his eyes. "Right, okay. I want windows on those two Uchiha. If their dōjutsu can do that kind of shit I want to know the second something happens. Action on their part, attempted theft of their eyes… I also want eyes on Shimura. Between those three, we should know exactly when we need to move on any of this."
"Then we need to find some defects to experiment on, so we can retrieve any and all eyes without damaging them."
"We can leave clones behind to work the greenhouses and beds, maybe hunt down a medic-nin and see how they do shit like that. If we do end up failing on the extractions, well, at least the defect won't get them."
Tsuna nodded. "Sounds like a plan. I am going to pinpoint exactly where each of those children sleep so I can swap them out quickly. Up until things actually start I would welcome help for that, but the second the attack starts, everyone but Ken needs to be focused on the eyes. If we're already done shifting the children, I will also be focused on the eyes."
"…" Sin didn't say.
"Hm?"
"Time turners," Sin said. "We need more time during that attack. There's no way, unless you set up a very special Bounding Box over the entire compound, that we can efficiently handle these numbers. We can double our strength with time turners. Just, you know, our turned selves need to wear different faces."
Tsuna smiled. "Yes. You know, it makes me wonder. We know that the Hyūga use that seal to prevent the eyes of the branch house from being stolen, as well as giving the main house control over them. Now, I could see why the Uchiha wouldn't want to be branded that way, but still. A seal that would protect their eyes from theft sounds like an excellent idea."
"Maybe they don't trust seals?"
"Should we add the Hyūga Clan to our list?" Chikusa asked. "Come up with a seal that would work on all of them to protect their eyes, but without the ability for anyone to hurt or kill them with it?"
"Perhaps, but that can go on the back burner for now," Tsuna said. "It's going to take a lot of work to become proficient with seals, and then to devise something we could hit them all with, plus remove any knowledge of how to make the original seal so they can't pull this shit again. It might not hurt to do the same to the Uchiha who live through this."
"We would have an issue down the road with no one else knowing how to apply the thing," Ken pointed out.
"Again, back burner issue," he said. "We can all think about it in our spare time. For now, let's focus on the upcoming issue with the Uchiha Clan."
"Okay, so, those kids," Hayato said. "We save them, cool. Totally on board. But… If Shimura is still kicking when everyone suddenly realizes those kids were somehow mysteriously spared…"
The Mists nodded. "We'll have to do some tinkering to ensure he doesn't get any ideas," Daemon said, a spade flashing in his eye for a split second. "We're going to have to interfere anyway to ensure he doesn't realize he's got a box full of air instead of awakened eyes. We can handle both at the same time. One adjustment to make him store away his box of air for later use, and one adjustment to make his thoughts veer away any time he even thinks about those children once it's revealed they're alive."
Tsuna propped his head on one fist. "I wonder how much time we'll have between the attack and the attack being noticed. Maybe we should store the kids elsewhere? Are there any unused buildings in the village? One of those places that was abandoned after the Kyūbi attack due to deaths and never really used again?"
"Actually," Mukuro said, "I think we might be going about part of this wrong. There's no reason we should be using energy to shift all of them. Why not just make portkeys and activate them remotely? Or do you think the kids would wake up?"
"Non-magicals can use portkeys, but it's pretty rough on them," Chikusa said. "They would likely wake up."
Mukuro scowled. "Yeah, you're probably right. We'd have to ensure all of them would remain asleep first, which is almost as bad as shifting them in the first place. Fuck."
xXx
While Tsuna was attending the laughable excuse for a shinobi academy with Sin and Daemon, the others were busy at work mapping the Uchiha compound precisely and marking where each child slept. They were shown, after being released for the day, windows to each bedroom so that everyone knew exactly where they'd be shifting kids from. With two hundred forty kids it meant they each had to shift thirty to the safehouse, fifteen for each person and the other fifteen for their turned selves.
The safehouse, rather than being the outbuilding by the brook, had been moved to a building clear across the village that hadn't been in used in years. Why, he didn't know, but an inspection of the place revealed nothing in particular to worry about. He briefly considered turning the place into their stronghold, but reason prevailed over convenience.
If the village was ever attacked, the building could be destroyed. They could make it invisible with the Fidelius Charm, but without testing they were uncertain as to whether or not concussive force, fire, or similar attacks would get through, especially if they were area-of-effect attacks rather than directly at the spot the building was hiding at.
"We'll have to test that," Ken said. "It would be useful information."
He nodded. "For now, let's just protect it the normal way." An anchored Bounding Box was set up to keep anyone curious away and they set to work etching in what would be temporary runework, stuff that could be scraped down or sanded away later. Whenever possible they hid them behind other things or at angles they would be unlikely to be noticed at.
He would have gone so far as to clean the place up, but it was only intended for temporary storage. They could shift in cots or something so the children did not get covered in dust (which would leave clues, though how much of one he wasn't sure) and would not have to rest on an uncomfortable floor. The dust was the main reason, though, as simply being alive should be enough. And if it wasn't? He'd be tempted to call them whiny brats, but even he would admit that losing the majority of your clan in one night would be cause for flipping the odd table.
'Sometimes I think I'm still too cold,' he thought, 'but I know I'm not, not if I can become so close to strangers, like Nanako-chan, Kanji-kun, and Naoto-kun. I'm not completely closed off.'
Several members of his family paused in their work to smile at him, which caused him to roll his eyes. Damned mind-readers. Snoopy, beloved bastards.
xXx
Thankfully it was full dark when they got the alert. All the little kiddies were in their beds and sleeping, fully unaware of the horror to come. Everyone took their assigned batches of children and shifted them to cots in the safehouse. A good half of them disappeared without their intervention, which simply proved that their time-turned selves were at work and gave them extra confidence that the overall plan would work.
The clones in their beds were "sleeping" and the moment anyone came to kill them the confusion properties would kick in. Unfortunately, that meant they had all been crafted by Tsuna so that he had a direct link to them. As a result, he was in the safehouse and out of reach, rather than Ken, guarded by the runework and the anchored Bounding Box.
Who actually showed up was a bit of a mystery. Shisui was already dead. Shimura thought he had one of the boy's eyes, and Itachi thought he had the other one, gifted to him by Shisui prior to the boy killing himself. Itachi showed up, as ordered, to kill every single member of his clan (and wasn't it just convenient that they were all there that night) bar his brother Sasuke.
He had a helper, though, someone clearly an Uchiha, who claimed to be Uchiha Madara (an allegedly dead man), but in the end he wasn't much of a fly in their ointment. Tsuna didn't doubt one of his family tagged the guy to see where he went after the fact.
"Madara" went after the KMPF while Itachi went after the civilians. As each child was about to be killed, Tsuna activated the confusion properties of the clone so that Itachi would think he succeeded (not that the boy lingered beyond making a sure kill). The boy was very, very good as a shinobi, and Tsuna could sort of understand going after the kids first.
All the potential screaming from adults still awake might wake the little ones up and cause massive chaos, which would greatly hinder his mission. The only one bypassed was Sasuke, but he expected that, and it was the only reason he had not switched the kid out. He was, however, keeping an eye on the child.
Itachi wasn't heartless. Anyone with eyes could see that. The poor kid was dying inside having to follow his orders (from Shimura, of course) to kill his clan, and being a pacifist surely did not help matters. What he did not expect was, after everyone was dead, for little Sasuke to wake up for no damn reason and run out to see the bodies, and for Itachi to attempt to use his sharingan against the kid.
Daemon or Xeul stepped in at that moment, clearly, because Sasuke just stood there blankly, and Itachi seemed to think he had accomplished … something. Itachi left, tears sliding down his face, and Sasuke collapsed on the spot.
Itachi has left the compound, he saw. We're keeping an eye on all access points for when people come to investigate. It should be safe to shift the kids back and destroy the clones.
Tsuna nodded and starting swapping kids for clones.
The so-called Madara took out the entirety of the KMPF. Unfortunately, he was able to make off with several of the bodies.
He frowned as he worked.
That eye of his has some freaky powers. The bodies disappeared in a swirl. I'm wondering if it's anything like what we do when we store things.
Tsuna grimaced and continued to shift bodies. What was Itachi trying to do?
One of our time-turned selves handled that, but I did get a look into the kid's brain. I'll share the memory once this is all over. The short version is that he was trying to push the kid into becoming strong enough to eventually kill him, hate him enough to do it, as he felt that was the only way he could atone for what he had to do, and the only way he knew for Sasuke to awaken a higher form of sharingan.
That is some seriously bullshit reasoning, he wrote. Yeah, sure, traumatize the fuck out of the kid by killing off the clan, then traumatize him again into fratricide, mostly like against orders if the kid becomes a ninja? Hopefully having the other kids alive, too, will temper Sasuke's reaction to this mess and focus him on keeping his cousins safe and well, and not turn him into a psycho avenger.
If he goes the psycho avenger route there's precious little we can do aside from rewiring his brain.
I know. Something I'd really rather not do to a child. Besides, we are not responsible for fixing every damn problem a dimension has, especially since we only ever see one planet.
Don't jinx us!
O-ho! Great. Next thing we know we'll be in a space-faring dimension.
I fucking hope not. For all we know I'll be one of those people who can't handle zero-G and throws up a lot.
Tsuna snickered quietly. Yeah, no. Our control over gravity would counteract that. That being said, I'm not in any rush to go space-faring.
Heh-hem. It looked quite strange for someone to "clear their throat" in text only. Things are winding down. It's got to be close to when we turn back for round two. A sweep of the compound has revealed that all eyes have been taken.
And the bodies of the KMPF have had theirs removed, as well, with us only taking our assigned sets. Well, aside from the ones that Uchiha made off with.
…Let's give it five minutes, then we'll turn back, he wrote, having learned on his intuition for a hint.
xXx
After an exhausting night twice over, they collapsed into beds with the exception of Daemon, who knocked back a Pepper Up to stay awake and keep an eye on things. Someone had to be aware to wake them if necessary, in the event that something went wonky when all those children were found in a compound of death.
Thankfully, they did not have school the next day, so they could sleep themselves out and use sleeping potions to get to bed at a reasonable time later on. Daemon and Xeul had tracked down Shimura ahead of time and mind-fucked him, so he at least should not be a problem, and he could wait a little longer, but not too much longer.
Before he fell asleep he thought it might be better to deal with Shimura as quickly as possible, while there was still hysteria over the near demise of the Uchiha Clan. Maybe a heart attack? The dude was quite old, after all, in his seventies probably.
He could feel Daemon looking his way, feel the malicious smirk, and wondered if, when he woke up, Shimura would already be dead.
He was awake again six hours later, not nearly enough time for a proper rest, but enough to function on. Daemon looked horribly dragged out, but he still had a malicious smirk in place. His brother locked eyes with Xeul.
"All right, hold up there, you two," he said. "Let's just open a window to wherever he is, and force his heart to—you know what? Fuck that. I'll liquefy his brain. While we're there we can retrieve the eyes he stole. Root itself can wait a little, until after this shock is over and they can stand another one."
His twins pouted at him, while the others, also waking up, laughed.
Daemon opened a window on Shimura's location and paused. "I can't tell from here if he's alone. There could be members of Root lurking in that office."
Xeul nodded and, after looking to Tsuna for approval, vanished Between.
Tsuna watched as Shimura went blank, like a puppet, completely unresisting when Xeul stepped out of concealment and started doing some surgery. The man's stolen right eye was taken, along with his entire right arm. The thing was fucking creepy it was that unnatural looking, never mind the multitude of sharingan eyes embedded in it.
Everything disappeared into Xeul's storage, Xeul nodded, and then stepped back into Between.
Tsuna took that as a cue to use his own warped version of mind-fuckery and turned Shimura's brains to grey soup. Well, he assumed it would look like that. It wasn't as if he had ever broken open someone's head after one of his "mistakes", he just sort of knew what had happened by the feel of it.
Even then they waited a good twenty minutes before Xeul returned and the window was shoved off to the side. "I have to assume that when the Root guards in there wake up they'll manage an approximation of panic and rouse the compound."
"Well, let me get started on breakfast for us, and we can pretend this is our favorite TV show," he said, then headed off to the kitchen.
The others followed, Sin moving to give him a hand. Ken thoughtfully got out hashi, rests, bowls, and plates, then sat down with the others to eye the window. They were enjoying a nice, traditional breakfast when one of the Root members suddenly popped into view, facing the deceased Shimura. While his face was covered and therefore his expression masked, his body language betrayed him. He was shocked and seemed to have no idea how to react.
When the next one popped into view he had much the same reaction, as did the girl who popped out next. It was not until the last of them, another boy, popped out that one finally spoke. "What do we do?" the kid said in a creepy monotone.
"We do not have instructions for this eventuality."
They stared for a while longer.
"Maybe Shimura-sama will wake?"
"He is missing his arm, that eye, and his chest does not rise and fall."
"Kami-sama," Tsuna breathed. "These poor things are useless without direction. Are we rested enough to knock each and every one of them out with Draught of Living Death until we can figure out how to remove the seal on them?"
"Assuming you can locate and shift over enough of the stuff, yes," Hayato said after assessing his fellows.
Tsuna nodded and opened a windows to various spots in λ15 so he could indulge in a little theft. "We should probably start making and storing a wider variety of potions," he said as bottles started to appear on the table. "Maybe we could get better results with fūinjutsu in terms of stasis, since the magical version doesn't seem to work that well on them."
"There are space-time techniques," Chikusa said. "It might be the answer we need."
"And we have four years or so before you're supposed to graduate," Mukuro said. "That's a fair amount of time. Eight years if we repeated every day. Or use shadow clones to exponentially increase our learning rate."
Xeul and Daemon started dividing the bottle contents into individual portions using a stash of paper cups.
Sin looked at Tsuna for a moment, then said, "You know, you are still hilariously bad with the leaf-sticking exercise. Maybe you should be trying tree walking instead? Maybe you just have too much chakra to start with something that seems to require so much less than you're currently capable of limiting yourself to?"
Tsuna shifted a few more bottles to the table and closed his windows. "Maybe that is the problem. We'll have to check it out. If I could finally get the control to do a shadow clone, well, as Mukuro said, that would up my learning exponentially. I could potentially make enough progress that I could do the leaf-sticking exercise. Now, let's start dosing these poor drones."
"They'll be safe enough down there for the time being," Hayato said. "But I think we should keep eyes on the entrances, in case any Root were out on missions."
He nodded.
"On a side note, I have bad news," Xeul said. "The tag on the so-called Madara shattered or dissipated when he did that swirly thing to exit stage left."
Tsuna sighed and nodded. "Fuck. Well, we can keep an eye out. Someone doing shit like that is bound to pop up again, though it does make me wonder if we should be working on something like a runeset that chakra could power and would drive away any Uchiha over a certain age, just in the hopes that 'Madara' doesn't come back to wipe those kids out. Itachi wouldn't—he'll probably cry tears of joy when he inevitably finds out the children all survived—but this 'Madara' guy?
"We'll add it to the list."
xXx
Konoha was shocked senseless by what had happened. And then the crying and wailing started, which was hysterically funny to Samsara given that a good portion of the village was suspicious, jealous, or scornful of the Uchiha Clan. Only a few of them had even been liked, such as Shisui and Itachi, and now Shisui was dead and Itachi a 'traitor' and missing nin.
Then came the squabbling over who got to oversee the Uchiha while none of the children were old enough to head the clan. Certain civilians were clamoring to be allowed to "take care" of the children, hoping to score one of them as matches for their own kids, which rather reminded Tsuna too much of how certain people had acted toward him when he was Harry Potter.
The Hokage proved he still had his balls when he made it quite clear that as a shinobi clan, the Uchiha were under his purview until such time as Sasuke was old enough to be considered an adult, at which point he could appoint a proxy if he chose to become a genin and attain the status of adult early rather than waiting until he was sixteen.
As a genin he would not have the time to personally oversee his clan. They could only hope, should he go that route, that he would not choose unwisely. Not really their business in the end. They had already interfered enough by choosing to fuck up the plans of various people.