I do not own Naruto.
The search begins for Watanabe Ryuishi's father begins before the child is even born. Three months before, to be exact, after every attempt of purging the child from Keiko's womb fails.
In Kirigakure, and most of Water Country, there is a certain etiquette to being a whore. Most women see more men in a month than most will in their lives in Kagami's brothel, and she has learned the unsaid rules well. The first rule is that after money has exchanged hands and the deed has been done, the contract is over. Unless there is more money exchanged, and further agreements made, customer and service provider never see each other again. Second is that any act performed not agreed to beforehand will nullify said contract, and the customer will be handled by security. Third rule is that no unpleasant surprises will occur after the contract has been completed for either person(s) in the form or disease or offspring. These where just the main staples, and there were many more rules gone unsaid.
Keiko's rounded belly is proof that the system does not always work.
Kagami blames the quality of contraceptives at the time. There had been a steady provider for the Okiya who had quite suddenly, stopped supplying to Water Country due to some insult or slight. It had left Kagami scrambling for another supplier, and at such short notice, the quality of the product she had found may have been lacking somewhat. It mostly worked though, and only four girls saw the repercussions of the low quality prophylactics before Kagami could rectify the problem. Three of which became pregnant, and one of which contracted a sexually transmitted infection that put her out of work for two months before she was cleared for duty again. Two of those pregnancies were easily terminated with bitter root tea, and the girls rested a bit before returning to work.
Keiko, the third pregnancy, remained with child, even after two more attempts.
Taking it as a sign that the child was meant to be, Kagami set to work informing everybody of such. She also began looking through the client records of the estimated insemination time, following one of those unspoken rules. It didn't really matter who fathered the child to her, but to others it might. It was proper procedure to check if the child was offspring of civilian or shinobi.
If it was civilian, the matter would be dropped. Kagami had no qualms about hiding the existence of a child from someone who never wanted one.
However, if they were a shinobi—well, it was all a matter if they were clan shinobi or not. If they did come from a clan, then by proxy, the child was also property of that clan. Most bastard children would be assimilated into the lower ranks and shamed for existing, but they belonged to the blood either way.
If it was a non-clan shinobi, then they would politely be informed of the accident. The shinobi could choose to take the child with or without consent of the mother, or they could ignore its existence. If they chose the later though, said child would be watched for possible potential for the Academy by infrequent, casual visits by ninja. The blood of shinobi could win out, even if it was watered down and diluted by civilian genes.
Kagami and Keiko scanned over the records for potential candidates. They narrowed down the conception time to a week long period, using Keiko's magnificently well kept records of her monthly visitor and fertile days.
In that week alone, Keiko entertained somewhere around twenty-one customers, five of which could be immediately excluded due to gender, six of which were disqualified due to the type of services rendered, and seven of which were civilians, and therefore, did not matter.
Which left three candidates for the paternity of the child. None of them clan, and two of them only sporadic visitors. It was decided that they would wait and see if the child was even born alive that they would inform the candidates.
The moment it was born, and its body was washed clean, the paternity boiled down to one. The fair skin and lighter features of the other two did not match the tanned child in front of her.
After emerging from her scrolls, Kagami discreetly contacted her informants in the shinobi forces to look for one 'Sato Takeishi'. Only, no such man existed. Even after she provided a physical description—tall, dark skin, strange eyes, and a tattoo on his forearm—no one was ever found.
Having done her duty to the best of her ability, Kagami gave up the search. It did not matter to her whether or not the man was ever found. Keiko, in something like sentimentality, gave the child her family name and placed the character for stone in her name. 'Ryuu' so she would remember the strength of flowing water, and 'Ishi', after her mysterious father.
The topic would not come up again for twelve years, when a man with golden eyes and a gilded tongue came asking questions.
It was the natural course to take, when researching an unknown chakra trait, to ask questions of parentage. So it was when one Watanabe Ryuishi came under his care.
For a long while, he would not believe the stories the girl told him of death, rebirth, and the all-encompassing Void. It was too outlandish, too preposterous, and not defendable or able to be proven in any way. Thus, he suspected it was a mutation or a hitherto unknown Kekkei Genkai. He took samples of her blood, bone marrow, hair, chakra, saliva, and her spinal fluid in an attempt to figure out the strange taint in her chakra and the infection in her gates.
He also questioned her paternity. The results of which revealed one parent to be deceased and the other a complete unknown.
"The man who knocked up Keiko was nothing more than a sperm donor," the girl-woman explained carelessly after an intense round of training one day, "He wasn't there for anything, and he might have not even known I was existed. Keiko banged dudes all the time, it was literally her job."
"You sound like you do not care for either parent," he had rasped, reading the bitterness under her flippancy.
She shrugged, then winced at the pain it jolted down her spine from an earlier blow. "Keiko was distant, and she tried, but she was more enamored with the idea of having a daughter than being a good mother. She was more of a distant older sibling figure if anything. I cared for her, and her death was what finally made me break, but the sperm donor? I couldn't give any less of a fuck. I had good parents, Orochimaru, just not in this life."
He understood the logic, and let the subject change naturally, his golden eyes calculating. If she did not know, the Matron might.
Which is how he found himself drinking tea in front of a retired Kiri seduction agent. He admired the skill the woman must have had to live long enough to be discarded from the corp. It was not an easy thing, infiltration and sabotage, and he appreciated the skill it took.
"Why does it matter?" the woman, seemingly calm as still water, asked him. He knew that she was tense, that just beneath that placid surface a strong current ran.
"It has to due with the health of the girl. Her parentage could be… aggravating the trauma in ways. Some bloodlines can be susceptible to such things," he said, in a mix of half truth and half lie.
The woman frowned, and knew she was being milked for information. She was not an idiot, yet the note he carried was in Watanabe's sloppy handwriting, and sealed with the girl's perfume. More than that, it was written with the absolute rudeness and crass personality of the child, and stained with the same color of lipstain Kagami knew the child had come to use. A mockery of a kiss stained the corner of the page, in a vivid plum-berry color.
"Keiko came from an older civilian family. Raised in this sort of business, likely the kind of girl who had been hoping for Geisha but settled for escort. Her father was narrowed down to a few aspects, but with her skin tone and eye shape, hair texture, and later, body type, we narrowed it down. Used the name 'Sato Takeishi', but that is about as real as the Mizukage's benevolence," the steely woman said.
He asked more questions, about the man, about her research, and the suspicions the matron held. She was certain he was a shinobi, but he only ever visited three times before he disappeared. He was ignorant to the child, and she never felt that strangeness in him that she could often feel in Ryuishi.
He retains his interest in the child's genetics long after she moves away and begins her own purpose. The taint in her chakra holds his curiosity, but when he is inducted into a criminal organization and begins creating his own footholds in the Elemental Nations, it burns low and quiet in the back of his mind.
That is, until he is grouped around his colleagues for the first time. The organization is not complete, and there are spots empty, but there is one who catches his attention. It is not for his functional immortality, which is crude and subject to failure, incorporating far too many weaknesses for Orochimaru's tastes. No, it is for the familiar shape of his narrow slanted eyes, which stare out from above his mask. They are similar, near perfect replicas of eyes with coal black irises that looked at him not to long ago.
Orochimaru pays a little more attention than necessary to the Akatsuki treasurer. He does not follow him, no, but he does… observe him, time to time. While he does not gain irrefutable evidence, there is a growing list of similarities.
His hair, for one, while not the correct shade, is the same lightly volumized and wavy texture as his young partner's. He finds this out when collecting a bounty with the man, and the shinobi uses a Fuuton jutsu, blowing the mask and cap away.
He finds in that same instance that the bridge and shape of the nose are fairly similar, as well as the general shape of the face. His young protégé had more a more feminine countenance, with fuller lips and a less square chin, but there is a resemblance, to be sure.
The vindictiveness is parallel as well, when the bronze-skinned criminal makes that same shinobi pay for the Fuuton jutsu ten times over. He is vindictive when he makes the man scream, and spiteful when he waits until that screaming is raw and throaty before ending his life.
The way the man sometimes leans back in his chair, two legs off the ground, and watches others with those narrow, almond-shaped eyes. Not speaking, just observing. Distant, remote, and familiar.
He does not discover what the Taki-nin's original chakra nature is, nor does he truly see him in full. An examination would be denied and he is not a fool to request such a thing, even if the rudimentary stitches holding the nin together and the five hearts are mildly intriguing. There is no way to procure a DNA sample for comparison, either. At least, not for a long time.
Orochimaru weighs the options, carefully selecting one that will benefit his the most. Though it is a long option, he takes it. He bides his time, and he waits.
When members awaiting recruitment become a conversation, he waits for her name. It is mentioned passingly, as an option. The girl's old teammate stiffens in response and whirls on the leader, his jaw tight and teeth bared. Orochimaru is long practiced in smothering the scorn he feels, but it tests him to see such a reaction. The girl had slaved away, making a kingdom and building an empire, and the boy hated her for it, even though she gave him the option to build it with her.
As the one with the most comprehensive information network, Orochimaru is selected to compile a dossier with Sasori on 'The Kiri no Ningyo'. He is pleased that her status as Rakki Ryuu remains hidden from them, and sets to work. For all the world he appears driven, but he is as deceptive as she. Her file says nothing and little more, mentioning areas he knows she does not tread and professing skills long outdated and surpassed.
Details of unimportant things slip through. Things like deceased mothers and a photograph of poor quality and a few years out of date. The swordsman stares at it for a long, long while, but that does not interest him.
The fact that the treasurer stares at the mother's name and the photo with narrowed eyes, however, interests him greatly.
The first time Kakuzu takes note of the child's existence, it is not for any other reason than that she has a surprisingly high bounty.
He is flipping through bingo books, taking note of updated values and new faces. Pages scrape quietly against one another, and he takes his time reading each graph and set of habits. First is the newest print from Iwa, which mentions an unsurprising and uninteresting few. The next that comes is from Kumo, where Sharingan Kakashi has been bumped up in price yet again. The third is from Kiri, and he nearly skips it.
The reason is that, glancing over the page, there is nothing there but a small child that can be nothing more than a genin. Kunai fodder, and more trouble than it's worth. He reads a few more pages before his brow furrows and he thumbs back to her page.
It turns out, for that price, the trouble is more than worth it.
He sets to memorizing the page. Kirigakure kunoichi, graduated in the Bloody Mist. Actually a chuunin, which is impressive. Unsaid treason, which is vague, but understandable. Strengths, weaknesses, known relationships, interests. Combat experience, frontline experience—
His eyes flick up to the base statistics again. Age eleven. Eleven…
Those same acid green and scarlet eyes slide over to the provided picture again. It's a three quarter body shot, and the first thing he notices is the stockiness of it. It's an identification photo, taken every year after becoming a shinobi. The background is the standard white-beige that comes with mass-produced photography.
The second thing he notices is the unimpressed glare she is leveling at the camera. There is something familiar in the shape of her cold black eyes and of her nose.
Her skin also throws him. Kiri inhabitants tend to be chalky and pale like milk, not tan that looks like it would deepen in the sun. She looks like the small children he remembers from years and years ago. The ones that ran on the streets and played in the rivers of Takigakure. Otters, the whole lot of them, living half in and out of the water, burned butterscotch and bronze by the sun and languid and comfortable in the wet heat of Waterfall, untouched by the warring clans.
The girl stares out, unimpressed, and he checks her birth date. October tenth. Where was he, eleven years ago?
Somewhere in Water Country, collecting a bounty.
He closes the book and slides it away from him. The chance is infinitesimal. There is no need to think on such things, and if he waits, the girl's bounty will only get bigger. If she escaped the hellhole that was Kiri, she would do just fine escaping the lower level bounty hunters. He need not get involved until later, when he could gain the most profit for the least amount of energy.
Five years later, it comes up again. The girl has made a frightening name for herself, and bounty hunters are warned about the Kiri no Ningyo. She is hell to track, flitting around like a ghost. No one seems to see her or know when she crops up, not the lowest gutter orphan with eel bones in his hair, or the most well connected spymaster, who gathers information from all around. Some teams have gone after her, and they have only re-appeared as heads, brought in for their own bounties. She's a killer, she is cruel, she is powerful.
The Akatsuki are interested. A file is made, a file that lists her deceased mother's name. Watanabe Keiko is familiar sounding, and he stares at the characters on the page for a long while. It can't be. It couldn't have been.
He looks at the newest photograph. It is grainy and poorly lit, but that face stands out, familiar like the one he sees in the mirror. She is fourteen or fifteen here, and the picture is old, but the changes of adolescence are showing though, and they look like that of a Takigakure native.
They look like him.
He looks at the file and the photo for a long time. Almost as long as the swordsman.
In the end, it matters little. They decide against her suddenly, but are told to keep tabs if they can. Right now she is too unstable, too hard to track, and insulated by an unseen third party. Later, she may be of use.
The photograph disappears, alongside the file. It does not matter, the memory of it is burned into his head. He does not want to admit the possibility of a mistake. He knows nothing but cold facts about this… girl? Woman? Kunoichi, yes, that's better. It matters nothing to him that she favors a mid to long range weapon so like his thread, or that there is strength in her body, enough to wipe out teams of hunters. It is nothing that a swordsman stares at a stolen photograph when it is late and he thinks no one is around. It is worthless to wonder is she is like those children, those otters who lived half in and half out of the rivers, useless to remember they call her Ningyo.
Her early life means nothing to him, and he feels apathetic about the possibility. He tells himself this again and again, then looks her up in the most recent release of the bingo book. Her price has risen again, and maybe he will attempt to claim it soon.
Soon, but not quite yet.
AN: Spaghetti grandpa, old as balls, done made a mistake. A living mistake. He is now Spaghetti dad. That being said I thought this was more of a 'fun fact' than an actual important detail. I don't know if it will ever come up in canon or be important if it does. That being said I did plan on him being the sperm donor for a long time. Surprise!
Shout out to enbi for going above and beyond and editing this when she usually only does OTRATS. Bless her.