A/N: Still a bit of an intro chapter, to let you know a little of how Riye came to be the kunoichi she will be in the later chapters :)
Disclaimer: I don't own Nauto, unfortunately..
Senbon Soulmates
- 1994 -
"Don't be a stranger and stay alive will you, ne Hina-chan?" a gruff yet teasing voice said, making Riye roll her eyes in a decidedly un-maiko fashion even as she lost the battle against the fond smile that was fighting its way onto her lips.
Kenta had been the one of the Daimyo's guards she got along with the best ever since he found her with her nose buried in a medical tome during her third month at the palace, which incidentally was also when he decided she looked so much like a dainty little doll even without her maiko-getup that her name would forever be Hina in his mind. Now if only it had stayed in his mind that would have been one thing, but no matter how intimidating and no-nonsense the grizzled middle-aged shinobi appeared to be, his personality beneath that was usually anything but and he had loads of fun teasing people either with his names for them or acting overly formal or familial - both of which could be slightly disconcerting if you didn't know the bear-like man very well. In her case he had a tendency to fluctuate between addressing her O-hina and Hina-chan, but since he had become a sort of unlikely uncle-ish friend to her over the past almost two years, she knew he only acted like that towards people he liked and took it as the sign of affection it was.
That didn't make the doll-part less exasperating though, so she had retaliated by coming up with an equally 'original' name for him too.
"Hai hai Kuma-sensei, there's no way I'm going to let a little thing like a worldwide shinobi war get me down, so just you make sure you're still here for me to visit when I get the chance. And thank you" the now 11 year old blacknette responded, receiving a grunt in affirmative before he was gone as fast as he had come.
It was no joke when she called him sensei either; Kenta might have the build and strength of a born brawler, but he was in fact a trained medic nin and had actually managed to teach her some despite the severely limited free time in especially Riye's schedule. Incidentally that 'some' included the exact technique she had been unbearably curious about for years - commonly known as the Shousen no jutsu - and also the tips she had needed to form her first non-wavering chakra scalpel. There weren't many patients to practice on however and she wasn't about to go around hurting animals just so she could hopefully heal them up afterwards, so again like with the diagnosing jutsu she had turned it on herself - the Shousen mind you, not the chakra scalpel - and learned much of how it could affect her body. As it turned out it wasn't simply the healing processes it could speed up and if one knew one's body in as extreme detail as she happened to do, it was even possible to target specific ones with pinpoint accuracy and only stimulate those, which was very interesting even if she wasn't entirely sure how to use it yet. She had proven that she could amp up both her endorphin and adrenalin production among other things, and also how to lower it or get rid of the excess - spending a night unable to sleep because she was still all jittery from a self-induced adrenalin rush had taught her that was equally important the hard way - so in theory she should be able to do something similar with the rest of the ridiculous variety of chemicals and whatever else the body produced.
...which her poison-obsessed sensei had been quick to enthusiastically point out might actually enable her to deal with poisoning rather efficiently as long as she could identify how exactly the poison in question worked. Teruha-sensei had been building her student's immunity to a range of poisons from the day she became Habu, but if Riye could prompt her body into producing more of the antibodies it created to deal with the minute amounts of poison being introduced to it, a level of immunity that would allow her to function even with high levels of said poison in her system would be reached indefinitely faster, meaning they could add an even greater variety poisons to the mix!
To be perfectly honest the slightly manic glint in her sensei's eyes right then had been downright scary and had had her slowly edging towards the door, but really, only a complete idiot wouldn't get nervous when an expert poison-user who was also an assassin looked at you like THAT.
Still, apart from the whole poisoning thing and tendency to throw her head-first into situations Riye herself wasn't always so sure about, Teruha-sensei had actually turned out to be one of the most brilliant teachers she could have asked for. While not quite as dainty and petite as her student would probably turn out to be judging from the pictures of said blacknette's mother, she had had to overcome much the same issues, from not being taken seriously because of her looks to struggling with taijutsu because of lack of physical strength, but had overcome them and blossomed into a deadly kunoichi. As a consequence what she passed on to Riye was the fruits of many years of researching, experimenting, testing, adjusting and loads of training that finally culminated in her very own complete fighting style and the perfect base for her student to tweak into HER own style; Teruha-sensei would accept no less, insisting that while they had a lot in common they were really different persons with their own preferences, so naturally these would have to be incorporated before it could truly work for her.
Riye couldn't have agreed more, so while she studied poisons and learned how to best administer them, she didn't inherit her sensei's slightly obsessive fascination and nor did she rely on them in battle beyond treating some of her senbon. Instead she worked diligently on mastering her lightning affinity and making the ideas her geisha-name had sprung out from into reality; applied to senbon it increased piercing-power or delivered a small shock that could temporarily mess with the nerves in the hit area, while running a current over her skin made for a pretty neat advantage in taijutsu battle and theoretically she should be able to completely scramble the signals her opponent's brain was constantly emitting to control said person's body with a simple - shocking - touch if done right.
In fact the petite blacknette was surprisingly dangerous at close range considering her lack of physical strength, going straight for pressure points and other vulnerable areas even as she nimbly avoided any counter-attacks, plus at some point she hoped to get the hang of using the chakra scalpel while in battle. At longer distances she employed her high accuracy with senbon in coalition with her knowledge of anatomy and acupuncture to great effect, no matter if said senbon were clean, electrified or coated in poison.
These key differences between teacher and student meant that more than a few adjustments had already been made to the fighting style Teruha-sensei drilled into her for the times where she couldn't avoid a direct confrontation, but it still relied on the same basic concept; lightning quick strikes that weakened the opponent - which most often translated into delivering an unhealthy dose of poison or disabling limbs one way or another - dodging or diverting rather than blocking and finishing it when the moment proved most opportune. That meant Riye's speed and agility had been honed to the point of the ridiculous considering her age, even surpassing her sensei in the latter, but seeing as she didn't rely on poison-mists to keep her opponents at bay or indisposed it was necessary; the genjutsu designed to subtly confound her opponent only worked so well. Her taijutsu also relied heavily on those two, enabling her to dart in to engage in close-range battle and get the hell away just as quickly; a concept that worked equally well when wielding the ninjato Teruha-sensei was training her to use, since being proficient with swords was something of a requirement in ANBU, meaning Habu had to learn. In fact she had to become damn good at it too, for the simple reason that Sasori happened to be bloody brilliant and demanded that her apprentice reach a similar level. Having never even held a sword before the rigorous kenjutsu training began, the petite blacknette had had to start out from scratch and needless to say she had been extremely grateful when she finally got the Shousen no jutsu down well enough to deal with the worst of the bruising she acquired in the process of learning. Two years down the road she was still a far cry from where her sensei wanted her to be, but she was no slob either and coupled with what else she could do, it was unlikely that she would get herself killed out of line as long as she followed her sensei's every order and kept improving.
"Has it really already been two years?" Riye couldn't help but wonder out loud as she took one last look at the grand palace, then set course towards the waiting carriage they would be leaving in to keep up appearances as Raiha and Shinrai for the final time. A war-weary jounin had arrived yesterday to take over the mission to act as the Daimyo's hidden last line of defence, so Sasori would be returning to Konoha to receive her next mission and for the foreseeable future Habu would continue following her on all missions she deemed her apprentice's presence wouldn't endanger; not playing an active role at first, but gradually getting more involved until she could finally carry out the missions herself. The blacknette had already been warned that there might be times where she would be abandoned for a while out of necessity if for instance enemies were in pursuit and what to do in such cases, which basically translated into putting her chakra-concealing skills to good use and lay low as a civilian or do the same thing while making her way towards a predetermined point. When not out on missions Habu would be mostly staying at ANBU Headquarters, since Hayashi Riye repeatedly disappearing and reappearing from the village without entries being made in the gate-log was just asking someone to figure out the petite ANBU's identity.
That meant Riye wouldn't be able to simply seek out the people she wanted to see whenever she wanted to, but on the bright side her status as genin and apprenticeship to Fuwa Teruha would be entered into her non-ANBU file, so the rare times where the tokubetsu jounin was officially back in Konoha between missions - meaning Sasori had a break - she was allowed to wander the village freely as herself too. It wasn't much, but with the war not going nearly as well as it could have for Konoha, odds were she would have been using the lion's share of her time training and doing missions either way, in the hopes that her efforts might save a comrades life or somehow keep the village safe; this wasn't really all that different, only the missions she would end up carrying out likely would have a greater impact. In the grand scheme of things, giving up a little free time wasn't much of a sacrifice if it meant she could keep her vow to protect her new home to the best of her ability, and it wasn't like she wouldn't ever get to see Sasaki-obasan, Genma and the other former classmates she had gotten along with.
I wonder how they are all doing.. Has the village been forced to send genin into the skirmishes yet or have any of them made chunin and joined the fray that way? Will they even recognize me if I happen to run into them?
Well, probably not in the maiko-getup she was currently wearing for what would likely be the last time in a while, but what about without it? Riye herself didn't think she had changed all that much, but Teruha-sensei had begged to disagree and it wasn't just the way she held herself or moved she was referring to either. Apparently she was a so-called early bloomer, meaning the first stages of puberty had set in already when she was ten and since then she had grown in more ways than one. She was still petite and delicate-looking, but her height was coming along - not that she was likely to grow past the one and a half meter mark -, hips and waist had started to form, and finally her flat chest area was slowly, but surely changing into something that resembled an actual bust.
Then there was the way her sensei's preferences in clothing had rubbed off on her own, which she had to admit was true. Before she had usually just thrown on a long t-shirt that was more of a short dress, a pair of plain shorts and her basic blue shinobi sandals, but now she had a bunch of colourful yukata and obi that she loved wearing whenever she could get away with it; she blamed all those ridiculously pretty, but much less comfortable kimono she had been stuffed into as Shinrai and of course her sensei's habit of changing into her own yukata any chance she got. Similarly the shinobi outfit she wore for training was also a lot like Teruha-sensei's own and bore a striking resemblance to the ANBU uniform, only without the grey armour and with the skin-tight turtleneck being green, with sleeves just long enough to cover the tattoo that was a dead giveaway to anyone who had seen it before. The shinobi sandals, comfortably loose pants and armguards were also there, all black, but in place of the long gloves she wore bandages beneath them so as to not give off more ANBU-vibes than strictly necessary; the sword on her back really couldn't be helped though.
The habit of applying the red and black maiko eye-makeup was completely on Riye however, but really, after two years of doing it at least once every day it was a wonder she hadn't adopted the white foundation, red lips and black eyebrows too.
...Okay, so maybe she could see if some might have a bit trouble recognizing her. Still, her long black hair, light skin and large green eyes being exactly the same always had to count for something, right?
If not I can always hurl a water balloon at Genma and burst it over his head again - he'll be sure to remember that!
Cheered by that mental image, the blacknette settled into the carriage and after her sensei joined her, Raiha and Shinrai waved goodbye to life at the Fire Daimyo's court as they rolled out the gate to join the caravan heading towards Konoha.
- 1994-96 -
Sadly another couple of years from that day of departing from the Daimyo's court would have to pass before Riye and Genma again managed to be in Konoha at the same time, though Habu had occasionally spotted her fellow senbon-wielder and he had in turn spotted the snake-masked ANBU that was quite a bit smaller than his or her comrades.
For the blacknette those two years more or less blurred together until her memory of them seemed like one continuous flow of missions, training and R&R when she looked back, only broken up by the rare week spent as Riye, living in her apartment and being fussed over by a thrilled Sasaki-obasan, who was happy to have her pseudo-niece home for once. Of course she knew time passed and things were changing, but gradually a weariness that no child her age should rightly be experiencing stole over her, stemming both from the psychological effects of fighting a war that just wouldn't seem to end and the building stress on her young body from the physical exertions. She didn't break though, which was more than could be said for some unfortunate souls, and neither were her coping mechanisms as bizarre or outrageous as some examples she had witnessed both inside and outside Headquarters. There were however quite a few of them, of which the most productive ones were throwing herself into her training and her studies respectively, so as to not dwell on thoughts on how far into the future the war would go on or the lives lost in it. Those were impractical when on missions however, so there she could instead sink into a sort of auto-piloted state were all thoughts but the most imminent ones concerning the mission were pushed aside and she instead ran on training and instincts, allowing her to properly focus on her surroundings without her mind creating distractions and respond within split-seconds. Her habit of swinging by the Memorial to offer up a small prayer was hardly anything new, but it also helped and as the war progressed the number of people she had known that had their names engraved there grew, though with most of them being fellow ANBU she couldn't be sure which belonged to which, only that they were there somewhere. The one her comrades enjoyed the most had actually come into being when her sensei had gotten fed up with listening to Saru's uncharacteristic snappiness one day and ordered her apprentice to do something about whatever ache was causing it, which she had done and since then a steady trickle of ANBU-operatives had sought her out to get some relief a range of symptoms that weren't debilitating enough to warrant a visit to the over-worked medic-nin, but annoying nonetheless. As it turned out using her shiatsu and acupuncture skills for healing was nearly as soothing for her as it was for her patients, so she hadn't turned them away and in return she had gotten on the good side of quite a few people.
Finally there was what was probably her most radical coping mechanism, but also the most effective and likely the reason she could still genuinely laugh with her comrades or Konoha's civilians without it sounding hollow. In essence it was really just the compartmentalising skills taught to all operatives taken a step further, though not quite as far so as to develop a full-blown dissociated personality disorder like she had half feared she might back when she first began distinguishing between Riye and Habu in her mind. Instead it was more like switching between two mindsets or sides of herself, with Habu being the minor one that allowed her do what was necessary during missions without hesitating or second-guessing herself, even when that meant killing in cold blood as it often did. She was also the calculating, manipulating and slightly cynical one, with a dark and sometimes downright morbid sense humour, but there was no sadism or arrogance there. Of course since she didn't have a true dissociated personality, the two inevitably bled into each other to a degree that varied depending on the situation, but Habu's emerging fully when the situation called for it definitely made the darker sides of shinobi life easier to handle for the blacknette.
Especially when Sasori began leaving the actual assassination of some of the targets of the missions they went on to her apprentice, having to make sure that she could handle the mental repercussions of planning and carrying out what amounted to premeditated murder without breaking, or at least not breaking before being back in the village. Killing in cold blood like that was completely different from killing in the heat of battle and much harder, but Habu somehow pulled through and made her sensei proud; she would never become fond of killing and particularly not in that manner, but she was able to and that was what was counted. Thankfully it wasn't purely assassination missions Sasori and Habu got assigned to, but everything from scouting, infiltration, sabotage, information gathering, ambushing and sneaky attacking of enemy camps. There were some that involved seduction too and while she observed or played a minor part in these, the blacknette was still too young to handle them even if some targets had no issues with her youth and the worst ones actually preferred younger. Habu also got to work with other ANBU than Sasori of course, even joining them on some missions without her sensei, and more than once she had had to lay low or make her way back to Konoha's outposts alone, like she had been warned might happen.
The bright side to her current life - aside from pitching in to keep Konoha safe and the camaraderie - was that she was improving in leaps and bounds as a kunoichi, honing her various skills and learning tons from the diverse experiences she gained throughout it all. For one she had plenty of opportunity to experiment with and perfect her self-made lightning techniques with how frequently she came into contact with enemy-nin, as well as the more traditional ones. Unlike most Raiton jutsu her version didn't increase piercing power, but rather invaded her opponent's body as an electrical current to wreak its havoc there, so she had taken to calling them Shin-rai rather than Raiton to differentiate between them. After all, it made more sense and why waste the brilliant name Teruha-sensei had come up with back then? Shin-rai: Kaku was the one that scrambled up the signals from the brain and left the victim unable to properly control their limbs for a good while, depending on how much chakra she pumped into the attack, while Shin-rai: Yoroi had the current running over her skin as a offensive defence of sorts and had proved just as effective against taijutsu as she had hoped, by temporarily paralyzing the limb coming into contact with it. The blacknette could also infuse her senbon with the Shin-rai to mess with the nerves in the areas around where they hit home, in much the same way she could do it with Raiton for increased piercing power and her ninjato worked very well with both too. Then there was the variety of tips and improvised lessons from some of the more experienced ANBU that had helped her out with improving her existing skills and taught her all sorts of neat things, from the little known hidden routes through Konoha to amplifying her hearing using chakra. It wasn't just the experienced ones either; FukurÅ who was ridiculously good at blending his chakra signature into the surroundings until it was nigh on impossible to sense, Neko who had stealth down to an A and even Taka who was an excellent sensor, had all been nice enough to give her some pointers on occasion too.
Sasori was still the one she learned the most from though and thanks to her, her kenjutsu was steadily coming along. Said sensei had been over the moon when they concluded that yes, her apprentice could indeed stimulate her body into building her immunity to poisons at a seriously escalated rate and since then the blacknette had been dosed with more poisons than she really wanted to remember; it was downright creepy what some of them could do to a person at higher dosages. There was no guaranty that she wouldn't get hit with something she either didn't have or couldn't build an immunity to though, so a lot of arduous hours had gone into researching and practicing ways of either getting them out of her system, fighting its effects or limiting the damage done until an antidote could be administered. And yes, her sensei really HAD poisoned her for real then, since she needed to able to do it while suffering under the effects; in fact the sneaky woman had decided it might be a good idea to slip her some without her knowing of it too and spent four hours suffering under the effects of the Shin-rai: Kaku as a thank you for her efforts.
For all that she was practically a walking antivenin-bank and pretty accomplished at not only healing, but also manipulating the inner workings of her own body, Riye still couldn't reliably perform any medical ninjutsu outside the diagnosing jutsu on others though, much to her annoyance. Whenever she tried, she ran into the problem of there suddenly being a foreign - to her - chakra in the mix and the thousands of miniscule differences from her own body that she knew so well, that working on anyone else seemed almost like working blind and felt all wrong. Thus her recreating her methods for dealing with poisoning in others was made all but impossible, while the Shousen required complete trust from the patient or that their chakra was too depleted to screw up her control; so far that meant she could help her sensei to some degree and she had managed to prevent a fellow ANBU from bleeding out during a mission at one point, but that had cost her loads of chakra compared to what it should have done.
Actually that particular mission was the last one Habu had went on before getting called to the Hokage's Office one day, only to find a Sasori that positively oozed smugness - which was pretty damn hard to pull off while wearing a mask, but then one quickly got the hang of reading body language in ANBU - already waiting there. The Sandaime Hokage himself as usual had that kind of sad look in his eyes as they fell on her, but then it almost disappeared as he smiled kindly at her and informed her that Habu would be taking a well-deserved break as Riye would be staying in the village for the next few months at least.
The reason?
Her sensei felt that she was more than ready and had therefore nominated her for the Chunin Exams taking place in a little over a week, so they only needed her own approval before making it official to the other two chunin-hopefuls that would be her teammates for the exam.
He also told her that she was welcome to continue serving Konoha as an ANBU afterwards if she so chose, but if she made chunin she would from that point onward be assigned missions separate from her sensei, as a fully-fledged operative in her own right. That would mean a drop in the number of ANBU-missions she went on, but also that each would pay more. Either way she would be taking on missions as Riye too and staying in her own apartment again, since frankly she needed to be reintegrated into Konoha society, get some experience in regular missions and start living again, before her youth had passed her by or she lost sight of what they were fighting to protect.
Needless it was a slightly dazed blacknette that left the office a little later, but somehow that ever present weariness seemed to have lifted just a little as she travelled over the rooftops and wasn't the sun shining a little brighter too?
A/N: Ask me if there is something you need clarified - I am aware that the whole differentiating between normal, geisha and ANBU-identities/names :)