I do not own Naruto.
Tenzo has had three phases to his life so far.
The first phase begins and ends with Orochimaru's lab. There's something that comes before that time, but he can't remember anything from it other than the smell of smoke. So, his earliest, clearest memories are of a tank filled with water, and tubes winding around him like snakes. He can recall examination tables, golden serpent eyes, and fear. Sometimes, he wakes up at night still feeling the currents of water on his skin, artificially created by ever whirring pumps and oxygenated by bubbles from a machine somewhere below his floating body.
The second phase begins where that one ended, when he was spirited away to join the ranks of ROOT. The memories here are clearer and yet somehow more muddled. There was nothing definite in that place. Nothing was solid. He had no true name, or even a true face. He went where he was told, did what he was instructed, and owned nothing at all, not even the clothes he wore or the bed he slept in. He lived to serve and became whatever was most needed at that moment.
The third and current phase of his life started when he met senpai in that muddled place. It was senpai that gave him a name, and brought him up from the shadows he had seen his whole life. His superior showed him a world that was bathed in sunlight, where the mission wasn't everything; he was more than just a soldier or a number on a test-tube. He's still learning how to live in this newest phase, testing the edges of it every day.
It's quite strange, though. During every phase of his life, she has shown up.
At first he thought that maybe she was a creation of his mind, a manifestation of his wish to not be alone. He thought he made her up; she was a friend to have in that terrifying place, a coping mechanism.
She was his imaginary friend when he was on the examination table, or when Orochimaru's eyes dissected him through the glass tank. He would simply call her up with his mind, conjure the warmth of her fingers in his palm, making the creation of his mind tangible if only for a few moments.
After he left that place behind he once again reinforced her existence as a figment of his imagination. People from dreams don't exist and they never found any other living being in that place. It was just him, alone, and anything or anyone else couldn't have been real.
But... she came to him again. She manifested inside his head, something solid when he was supposed to be little more than a ghost. She shared his body with him, doing things to prove herself beyond a shadow of a doubt. That might have been terrifying by itself, a sign of insanity perhaps, but she made witnesses out of Hokage and Danzo both. (Or, at least, something like her did.)
Now, she's here and he wonders how her very existence seems to make the edges of reality soften and smudge. She's grown up from the child in the dream, all gangly limbs and fine features, standing in a glade in the middle of the night. By her side are possibly the biggest wolves he's ever seen, bristling as she reaches out her hand and asks, "Are you ready to go nowhere?"
It's like something out of a storybook, a scene that shouldn't exist in real life, let alone on covert mission in The Land of Grass. Chakra signatures don't just appear out of nowhere, and neither do people. Human beings don't just materialize in moonlit glades, flanked by wolves and asking espionage operatives to travel with them based on some sort of childhood friendship ritual.
He reaches out to grasp senpai's shoulder, just to have something solid to hold on to.
"You found him?" Kakashi-senpai intones lowly. Tenzo knows what it sounds like to a paranoid ninja. Tenzo is the lone holder of a powerful Kekkei Genkei and she just admitted to searching for him specifically.
"I did," she proclaims tranquilly. "I said we would go nowhere together when the snake man was going to hurt us."
Tenzo sucks in a breath and Kakashi's hands twitch near his shuriken pouch. There is no mistaking who she's talking about, and the way she's talking makes it sound like she was in the lab with him.
In a way, she was; but then again, she wasn't.
'A paradox,' he remembers faintly. 'Is an existing state of contradiction.'
"Who are you?" Kakashi asks coolly.
"Oh," she says quietly, as if just realizing a mistake. Her peaceful expression falters, and she looks down at the outstretched hand, obviously ashamed. "I never introduced myself, did I? That's really rude. I'm sorry."
She retracts her palm, settling it gently on her chest. It takes a moment, but she carefully works her half smile back on to her face.
"My name is Lien," she says. She continues moving her free arm to gesture at the dark wolf beside her, introducing it as well. "This is Urdr, but she usually goes by the name Franky. The red-brown one is Verdandi, who goes by Theresa. They're my cousins."
"Those are terrible names for summons," Kakashi tells her flatly, ignoring the fact that she just claimed two non humans as relatives. It's a reasonable conclusion given the information he has, but not a correct one. If Tenzo had to guess he would say those wolves are actually the same entities that took over Danzo and the Hokage.
Lien cocks her head to the side, drawing her hand away from her chest and settling it on the one named There- Theres-
Senpai is right. Those are awful names. He can't even pronounce them inside his own head.
"Well, I'm not sure what a summon is, but Franky and Theresa are people most the time, so I believe their names fit just fine," the teenager hedges carefully, as if she isn't sure about the logic.
"You don't know what a summons is?" Kakashi asks tonelessly.
"Not in this context, no," Lien answers.
Senpai turns to him then, his hound mask dramatically shaded by the moonlight. It would be intimidating, but the eye behind his mask is entirely exasperated, ruining the effect. He stares at Tenzo for a long second, silently demanding his kohai shed some light on this.
"Lien," Tenzo tests quietly, feeling the name roll in his mouth. It's much better than the other two, at least. "Is a paradox."
If anything, Kakashi's expression grows even less impressed.
"I first met her in a dream I had in Orochimaru's labs, but after I woke up I could still feel the imprint of what she had done," Tenzo hastens to explain in a quiet whisper, trying to describe holding hands without actually saying the words because that would be embarrassing.
"You met her in a dream," Kakashi comments, his voice lacking any inflection at all.
"After that, I thought I made her up but then when I was in ROOT she possessed my body," Tenzo continues, ignoring the lack of reaction.
Kakashi narrows his eye at him.
"-Which doesn't make her real, but then, two other entities possessed… Actually, I'm not sure I can tell you that. It's classified," he stutters out, coming to a halt. Danzo and the Hokage were fairly clear about keeping that between the three of them.
Now his superior officer is full out squinting at him. Tenzo feels sweat begin to bead on the back of his neck despite the airy, comfortable temperature of their surroundings. Technically, senpai has the same clearance level as him, or higher, so that's definitely suspicious.
"Just...she proved herself real, alongside two companions. And now she's definitely here, so she's even more real? And I may be tasked with an ongoing mission to discover more about the group?" he finishes lamely, his voice raising in pitch towards the end.
For a long moment, the two teammates just stare at eachother.
"So let me confirm this. That girl," Kakashi jerks a thumbs towards Lien, and subsequently the wolves, "Started out as nothing more than a dream, then stole your body, along with others, whose identities are classified-"
"-Just to be clear, she didn't steal it so much as she inhabited it at the same time as me. She let me have control when I wanted to, unlike the other two and their hosts-"
"-And now she's somehow teleported here, alongside two wolves with impressive chakra signatures who aren't summons, but are definitely too smart to be wolves."
Tenzo opens his mouth, then closes it. He mouths the words his senpai just said to himself over and over again, confused. (Not that anybody can see it, with the mask and all.)
"I think that's right," he allows after a moment.
Kakashi looks at him, then towards the glade, then back again, nodding to himself once.
"Alright. Yamanaka it is," he declares.
"I...what?" Tenzo asks.
Kakashi breathes in, then pauses, obviously repressing a sigh. His hand remains at his side, close to his shuriken pouch but he seems a bit more steady than he was a few moments ago.
"Mind invasion, Shintenshin techniques, that's all Yamanaka. Chakra repression can be learned. They might have a teleportation jutsu, but I'm going to hope it's just stealth," Senpai says.
Something akin to dread fills Tenzo as he looks down to the girl in the clearing. She doesn't look anything like a Yamanaka, all dark hair and pale skin, but that might not even be her body and senpai has a point. Like most bloodline techniques, the Yamanaka jutsu's themselves are kept hidden, purposefully shrouded in mystery to keep them obscure but what he does know about the family fits.
"You think that she might have actually been there, in the labs?" Tenzo asks quietly. Because she would have to have been, to enter his mind at that point in time. Or at least, she may have been. Orochimaru was toying with bloodlines and there's no telling what he could have done.
"I don't know. I don't know anything about this situation or the suspects. You have more information than I do," Kakashi says evasively. It's clear he's not sure what to think but that he's instinctively attempting to form patterns none the less.
Tenzo turns to the girl below, who looks towards them guilelessly flanked by the hulking lupines. Every now and then her head will tilt and she'll follow a wandering firefly as it blinks by.
"Senpai," he says after a moment. "There were no other survivors from that event, let alone three."
"And Yamanaka cannot live without their body," Kakashi finishes. "I said I didn't know, Kohai. We need more information."
They stand in silence then, watching the trio. Something seems to have caught the dark wolf's attention and it's ears swivel around on it's head. It cautiously drags it's eerie yellow eyes from the two of them to look east and the reddish one mirrors the action, nudging it's nose along Lien's ribs.
She looks down, noting them both and peers in the direction as well. She seems to contemplate the distant treeline calmly, running her hands down their fur. Everything about her is steady and undisturbed. Even her chakra remains tranquil, un-smothered and free.
Kakashi sighs beside him, realizing the problem the same time Tenzo does.
"None of them are hiding their chakra," he states blandly. "Here, on this very covert mission. The one where we are supposed to be hiding everything. Especially chakra."
Tenzo grits his jaw. He has an ongoing mission, but the Hokage and Danzo want information. This isn't going to be easy.
"What's the protocol for possible hostile asset recovery in the face of incoming ambush?" he asks carefully, despite knowing it well.
"You know the drill, Kohai," Kakashi reminds him. "You secure the information, I hold the hostiles. This just turned into a good old snatch and grab."
There is an overlap between what is real and what makes sense, and despite everything that Lien says, it's fairly large.
For the life of her though, Theresa cannot find it right now.
Before all this, before the world jumping and horribly abrupt changes, Theresa lived her life knowing that everything could be defined. It could be measured, and found within acceptable parameters. Maybe everything wasn't exactly formulaic, but it at least fell within the statistical average. When a pot of water was placed on the stove and the gas was lit, that water boiled when it got up to 212 degrees fahrenheit - consistently.
This is so far outside the statistical average it is overwhelming. Her world view is melting, dripping around her ears like oil.
'This is impossible,' she thinks distantly, her nose twitching on her elongated face. She can smell something just upwind. Scratch that, she can smell everything, from the rabbit trails winding through the tall grass, to the group of hunters closing in fast from the east.
'This is happening,' she forces, focusing on that fact. She knows that she shouldn't be capable of such thoughts as a wolf, but that's just it. Wolves shouldn't be capable of higher concepts, and people shouldn't turn into wolves, or jump worlds while they sleep.
The formula she lived her life by before was wrong. All these things that shouldn't be possible are happening to her right now. They were happening to her before, when she wore the body of an old man or became a t-shirt. Presumably, they have been happening to Lien as long she's been alive.
It's hard to reconcile 'impossible' with 'occurring at this very moment'. She can feel her brain trying to distance itself, or worse, just shut down as she attempts to quantify everything.
Her ears swivel around on the top of her head (and isn't that a weird sensation?) and she notes she can hear in two different directions at once. In the east, metal slides free from fabric, and the smell of wariness -harsh and heavy- fills her nostrils.
To the south, the two males Lien spoke to begin to move, heading towards them almost faster than she can track. Franky whips around to face them, snarling at the perceived threat but Theresa knows that her sister is snapping in the wrong direction. She can feel it in her gut, a swooping, lurching sensation that tells her danger isn't coming from the south, but the east.
She isn't wrong.
Instinct drives her, and she's moving before she can even think about it, dancing out of the way of needles that rain down from the sky like water, stinking something bitter and sick. Suddenly her heart rate kicks up and her mind is hopelessly trying to tell her that this is wrong, that it's impossible, but her body is already reacting to the danger that is presenting itself.
The group to the east descends from the trees like owls, silently gliding from the high branches, their hands moving incredibly fast.
Something in her screams that this is too much for them, that they need to flee to need to warn everyone rises in her throat like magma. She can feel it crawl up her throat, and work its way out of her muzzle. They're coming, and they stink like poison and wet earth.
She yowls.
"That probably means run," comments the silver haired male idly, and Theresa can barely comprehend anything. She shouldn't be able to understand him, because she's a wolf, and wolves cannot comprehend human languages, only tone and inflection.
More needles rain down from the sky from their attackers. The two males seem to dodge just fine, and Franky makes her way through it somehow, but she and Lien are not so lucky. Thoughts of impossibility are driven far from her mind when two inches of metal bury themselves in her leg, driving a yelp from her jaws.
"A genin could have dodged that!" taunts the enemy as they land, and Theresa has no idea what the fuck a genin is, but it hurts. (Oh god, that's a huge fucking needle. Holy shit, she's bleeding-)
"We aren't ninja," Lien breathes nonsensically, her voice quiet and pained. Her hand is pressed to her shoulder, where the stem of needle sticks out, and Theresa notes a stream of red coating her fingers. What do ninja even have to do with this? (Oh god, oh god-)
"Not ninja?" someone asks, disbelieving. It might be the man with the brown hair.
"Grab the girl and retreat," orders the silver haired man (ninja?) as calm as still water. If anything, he sounds apathetic. Which is crazy, because people are throwing needles at them, she has fur, and she is in pain. He shouldn't be this uncaring about it.
The brown haired male seems to understand though, sweeping through the grass and snatching Lien up as he goes. Theresa lunges after them, wanting to cry as she moves. The thick grass keeps jolting the needle, and it hurts like nothing else she's ever felt before.
In the distance, Franky barks out in alarm, and the scent of ozone and petrichor fills her nostrils, alongside the smell of blood. She flees without thinking as her sister and a stranger fight off attackers using medieval weaponry to amazing effect, keeping pace with a man who can apparently run faster than a quadruped while carrying a kidnap victim.
'This is impossible,' her brain tells her. 'This is happening' it says at the same time. 'It hurts' it adds on simultaneously to the other two.
'There are new rules,' something quiet whispers in the back of her skull, not quite her brain, and not quite instinct. 'Find them.'
AN: Just to point out a hint within a hint. Lien doesn't introduce herself as Skuld.