Second Verse
1.1 Caesura
(Summary: ...Apparently, not the same as the first. (SI-OC as Namikaze Minato, AU.))
"Do you know who I am?" His voice - it is warm and amused, almost fatherly. Mina shivers in fear.
"O-Orochimaru. You are Orochimaru."
"That's right." He hums, deep in the back of his throat. A kunai crawls up and out of his mouth, and he catches it, and buries it in the table between her legs with a muffled thump. "And, do you know what I like to do?"
Mina swallows thickly. "N-no, sir."
"I like to consider myself a scholar, or a scientist. I collect knowledge. All types, too - histories, sciences, techniques, the arcane and the esoteric. The more obscure the knowledge, the more I seek it. And, do you know what my favorite topic is?"
Breathe. In, out. In, out. "I d-don't. Sir."
"The soul, Minato-kun. I want to know more about the human soul… and I think you have the answers I seek."
A pause. Mina's heart threatens to crawl up her throat in a sick sequel to Orochimaru's knife trick.
"I'm only going to ask once. Tell me, Namikaze Minato. Tell me what you remember."
And she did.
Second Verse - Caesura
Three days earlier…
Rubber kunai, four copies of Takeshi the Sushi Ninja, and worn-down action figures of the three Hokage litter the hardwood floor. Eight beds, two by two by two, each draped with bleached-white blankets are pushed up against the walls. A still-fresh spray of mystery liquid trickles down the wall, having spontaneously appeared there in between one aborted catnap and the next. Cold starlight spears through the window and gives Mina a front-row seat to her bunkmate falling six feet to the floor and breaking his nose against Tobirama's tiny metal staff, with real collapsible action.
The child - Daisuke, maybe, or Daichi, or something like that - screams in pain, horror, and surprise. Small spurts of blood begin soaking the ground, dripping through to the floors below. All the other boys in the room wake up as well. A moment of shocked silence passes before their screams join the chorus.
Sick joy warms Mina's heart, but she ruthlessly shoves it back into the darkest depths of her being. Dai-something had been the one to coat her pillow in itching powder, yes, and she had to cut her hair horrifyingly short in the back because of it, yes, and she cried for days because her hair was the only thing feminine about her, and it was gone, yes- but she is an adult, and adults do not take pleasure in a child's pain.
(Even though she doesn't feel like an adult at all.)
By the time the caretakers arrived mere seconds later, Mina already had Dai-whatever's head in her lap, and was cleaning his face with her blanket and crooning a lullaby under her breath.
"I see the moon, the moon sees me,
"The moon sees somebody I want to see,
"Shining through the leaves of the old oak tree…"
She is going to do terrible things, one day, but she doesn't need to become a terrible person to do them.
(She doesn't.)
What she does need, is strength.
And she knows just how to get it.
A tiny fist raps against a large, wooden door. One-two, one-two-three, one.
"Aneue?" A pause. "It's me, Mina."
"Come in!"
The Academy studio smells of fresh paper, antiseptic, and déjà vu. For but a moment, she's not in Konohagakure, she's not in Hi no Kuni, and she's not on the Elemental Continent - she's at her University, her beloved University. She's not here to seek help learning how to kill, she's here to ask her tutor how to better heal. She's learning journalism, medicine, and philosophy, not knife-throwing and fire-breathing and assassination.
Any second now, her roommate is going to round that corner. Her hair isn't going to be a fluffy blonde, her eyes aren't going to be a warm grass-green. She won't have the build of a six-year-old and the walk of a soldier. There won't be any bloodstains on her clothing, she won't be dressed in an obscuring miko outfit over hidden knife sheaths, and there will be car keys and pictures of boys in her hip pouch, not sharp kunai and sharper senbon.
Mina gets to believe it for all of a second before reality asserts itself, and the dream withers away.
"Are you okay?" Mina asks.
"Un, I'm fine." A strip of fabric is stiffer than the rest, crisscrossed with black thread, and the air is thick with the coppery tang of blood. No. Nonō is not fine. "'Zashi can't throw for his life, is all. Sensei patched me up."
You shouldn't be getting hit by throwing knives in the first place, Mina wants to scream. And if you ever were, you should be screaming and crying and oh-so-very afraid. You shouldn't just… shrug it off. You should be safe and protected like all children should be, not learning to fight and kill and die for a military-
Naïve. 'Should' doesn't matter, anymore. It is what it is, and it will be what she makes it be. If she tried to stop Nonō from training… Well. Mina might as well kill her herself. It'd be kinder.
This isn't the twenty-first century, these aren't Americans, and inalienable human rights don't exist and never have. Nonō doesn't need protection - she needs the strength to protect herself. Mina needs to learn the same.
"I don't know how to throw either," Mina admits.
"Mm. That's fine. You're not an Academy student, yet, Micchan."
"Yeah, but… Can you show me?"
Nonō smiles. "Sure."
She disappears back around the corner, and Mina looks around. She's never been here before, the walk being too far for a child like her, and she's starting to realize why she was never invited over regardless.
The studio apartment has a rice paper half-wall splitting the single living space into two rooms, one private and one public, where the front door opened to. The entire space is maybe ten strides by ten strides large, and, being four, her steps aren't the greatest system of measurement. That being said, the walls are a cheery yellow, there's a trio of fluffy chairs pressed up against the wall, and a rosewood shelf is filled to overflowing with thick scrolls. With the pink-and-blue hand-woven rug adding a childishly peppy tone to the ambiance, the entire apartment just screams "Nonō."
But, when she returns a minute later, Mina almost doesn't recognize her. Her clothing is unchanged, her hair just as fluffy and her smile just as warm, but her eyes- Mina shivers.
"Time to go!" she sings, and Mina follows.
Konoha is beautiful. It is civilization carved out of the Garden of Eden, grown and overgrown until everything is green. The village has its own scent, of tree sap and grass and smoke on the wind, and it is so uniquely Konoha. Mina loves this village as much as she hates it, and she can see why so many people have given and will continue to give their lives for this place.
Today, though. Today, it feels cold. Nonō smiles and waves and points out all the coolest shops, but she trails a shadow of killing intent and restrained menace behind her. It should look ridiculous - her, scared of a child? Nonō is six years old.
It's not, though. Children mature freakishly fast, on this world, becoming stronger and faster and more mature. It's because of chakra - it has to be. Chakra isn't just a mana pool for ninja to use for their techniques: it's the raw power of life, of vitality and nature and endurance. It makes everyone… more.
Mina is four years old and has all the dexterity of her previous, adult body, and none of the limitations. She can backflip and cartwheel and run like the wind. She can give her old world's best parkour masters a thorough spanking, and she hasn't even signed up for the academy yet. Most importantly, though, is that the rapid maturation extends to the mind just as much as it does the body.
Her emotions are still out of whack, and her priorities are hard to align, but- her thoughts are clear. Crystal clear. They come quicker, deeper. What used to be an Atari has evolved into a sleek PlayStation 4. She feels like the smartest girl in the world.
Suddenly, Kakashi's and Itachi's and the Sannin's early graduations don't seem so far-fetched. But, Nonō…
"Aneue is scary," Mina whispers to herself.
"Say something, Micchan?" Nonō's smile wouldn't look out of place on a child model, sweet as sugar and just as fake. "You need to speak up."
"A-ah. Nothing, aneue."
They eventually reach a training ground. It's small, no more than fifty of her bite-sized paces across, being little more than a grassy glade surrounded by trees. She looks around but doesn't see a sign - is this ground so tiny, so unimportant that it doesn't have a designation? Mina wouldn't be surprised. It's pretty, but reminds her more of the average backyard in American suburbia than a location where ninja are trained.
"Mm, aneue-"
"Heheh. Sorry, Micchan." Now that the risk of being seen by literally anyone else has been minimized, Nonō has returned to her sweet, genuine self. "You don't know any other shinobi, do you?"
Mina blinks in honest bafflement. Was that a thing shinobi do? One would think that terrorizing the populace for kicks is something generally frowned upon. Maybe in Rock, or Mist, but the Leaf? "No?"
"Um, how to explain this…" Nonō plops down next to a tree, using the smooth bark as an impromptu backrest. Mina follows suit a moment later. "You've seen all the Akimichi in the market square, right? They've got the swirl things. Now, ignore the civilian ones, and think about the shinobi Akimichi. Have you noticed anything strange about them?"
Actually, looking back… no, she hasn't. Nonō smiles softly at her disgruntled look.
"They all act the same, don't they? Each and every one of them follow the archetype of 'gentle giant.' They're jovial to a fault, tell bad jokes, and make every conversation about food. There are slight inconsistencies here and there, but if it weren't for subtle differences in their build and uniforms, no one could tell them apart. No one."
"That's… not that strange, right? I mean, if they're all raised together…"
"It is, Micchan. It really is." She seems amused at Mina's ignorance, but also pained, as if the topic isn't as friendly as she's making it sound. "There are two hundred shinobi in the Akimichi clan, and every single one - from the Jōnin to the Chūnin to the Genin to the trainees - all act the same. All of them. Are you starting to get it, now?"
"You mean, ah, they're acting a specific way on purpose?"
"Yep." She shuffles awkwardly. "Everyone does it. The Nara, the Yamanaka, the Sarutobi, the Uchiha and Hyūga and Inuzuka - everyone. Each clan has their own 'persona,' so to speak. The lazy genius, the brash but loyal friend, the arrogant noble; whatever. Even us civilian kids do it, if we're clever enough to catch on."
"But…" Mina thinks and thinks and thinks, and Nonō leaves her to it. Several minutes pass as she mentally scours her knowledge of the manga. This hadn't come up… anywhere. At all. Why hadn't it ever come up? Tobi had done it, of course, and so had Jiraiya, to an extent… but Nonō makes it sound like everyone does it. If this is true… "…Why?"
"Protection, mostly. The first lesson they teach us in the Academy is about the art of war: 'The proper state of mind is half the battle.' That's the third maxim." She hums. "Think of it this way. Imagine you're a Kumo-nin, and you were hired to seduce a Hyūga on vacation and carry their spawn all the way back home. How would you go about it?"
"Aah… tea ceremonies? Act like a yamato nadeshiko? I don't know."
"Exactly. New exercise. You're an Iwa-nin, and you were hired to attack and pillage a caravan. But, when you show up at the ambush site, you find it's being guarded by an Uchiha - he's got the trademark scowl on his face and fan on his back. What would you do?"
"I'd prepare for a lot of Katon," Mina responds, with an air of dawning understanding. "And wire techniques and Interceptor taijutsu."
"You're starting to catch on." Nonō smiles. "Of course, not every Hyūga is a stuck-up prick, and not every Uchiha has an affinity towards that combat style. But…"
"…If I was a Hyūga, and if I was really motherly or casual, than anyone trying to appeal to the Hyūga ideal would fail. And if I was an Uchiha, and I focused on kyūjutsu, then anyone preparing for a lot of Katon would also fail."
"Exactly," she says fondly. "Of course, most clan kids do tend towards their clan art, so it's less for battlefield tactics and more for the mental and emotional side of things. For example, there's this girl in my class, right? She's really nice and really sweet, and she can't stand to see a child in pain. All an enemy would need to do is abduct a random civilian kid, and she wouldn't be able to fight back for fear that he would hurt the child."
That girl is you, isn't it? It would explain why she pretends to be a psychopath. Someone as cruel and sadistic as she acts wouldn't care if a kid was caught in the crossfire, so an enemy wouldn't think to use that as a tactic.
"It's more than that, though," she continues. "A good - let's call them a 'persona' - covers three things: someone's greatest desire, most crippling fear, and strongest technique. Even better, the persona goes on to offer false versions of all three things. Another example. You're a civilian-born Chūnin, okay? And you really, really like lollipops. Like, if an Iwa-nin gives you a lollipop, bam!, instant best friend. That's dangerous, right? You can't be trusted when a lollipop enters the equation. So, you lie and say that you really, really hate lollipops, but you adore mitarashi dango. You don't mind dango, but you don't actually like it. Do you see where I'm going, here?"
"I think so." And Mina really does - it makes sense. This is something she can see a shinobi population believing. The most powerful - Tsunade, Orochimaru, all the Kage, most of the Akatsuki - probably don't bother, but they're strong enough that they don't need to. Genin and Chūnin, on the other hand… yeah. Mina can see this happening. "Same for fear, right? So, if I have a horrible phobia of spiders, I'll pretend I'm cool around spiders but not so cool around clowns, or something. That way, an enemy who researches me will attack me in clown makeup, instead of surrounding my campsite in giant spiders. Did I get it right?"
"Uh-huh!" Nonō stands up, brushing grass off of her thighs. "The Academy wants us to start at it early, so it can be ingrained by the time we graduate. It's also training, in a way. Someone who pretends to be someway else for years will have an easier time trying to be someway even more different, you know? They test us on this, too."
Mina blinks up at her. "They do?"
"Yeah. They're not as obvious about it as they are with academics, but trainees who can make and maintain a persona are more likely to get a good Jōnin-sensei when they graduate. It shows that they're ready for life as a shinobi, understand? You've got time, though. Class isn't for another two months." She reaches out and grabs onto Mina's hands. "Now, up! I'm going to show you how to throw kunai."
For the next three hours, Nonō carefully, deliberately leads Mina through the most common kunaijutsu styles of throwing. While Mina still sucks just as much at it at the end of the day as she did at the beginning, she doesn't mind.
She can't really focus on it, after all. Like a broken CD player, her mind keeps skipping back to what Nonō had told her.
That hadn't been anywhere in the manga. A fundamental practice of the village had just… gone unsaid. Looking back, a lot of fundamentals had gone unsaid. What else has she missed?
She doesn't know. She had assumed her knowledge of this world was encyclopedic and stopped learning. She had thought that knowing classified information like "Who is the Kyūbi Jinchūriki?" and "What is the Great Toad Sage's prophecy?" meant that she had an in-depth, street-level understanding of the mechanics behind the hidden villages and shinobi life in general.
How arrogant. Almost everything she knows comes from fan theories and Naruto's point of view. Fan theories are hit-or-miss and Naruto flunked the academy three times. This is a real world, and won't conform to her expectations. To see her confidence punctured so easily… to see her foreknowledge proven to be a crutch, one that's breaking down… it terrifies her.
To think, she had thought herself invincible because Namikaze Minato won't die for another twenty years. Hasn't she already realized that she is not and never will be Namikaze Minato? She may know a future, but it won't be her future.
Everyone has their eyes closed to what could be. She opened her eyes and thought herself all the more enlightened for it. She was wrong. She had opened her eyes too far, saw too much, and the light left her just as blind as the dark left everyone else. If she's going to survive…
She's not good enough. She needs to get stronger, smarter, harder.
She needs to learn.
The next day, she swings by the Great Konoha Library. She takes one look around, scoffs, and leaves.
Silly of her. Mina fully expected to find a wealth of propaganda and nothing about chakra, but the sheer lack of useful reading surprised her. If all she found were mundane medical texts and a guide on child care for those adopting the ninja-descended, she would have been satisfied. But, she actually feels lesser for having stepped inside.
No. If she wants to learn something worth learning, she'll have to hear it from the mouths of the shinobi themselves. But, where can she find a shinobi who'll show her a trick or two? Better yet, where can she find a trainee who'll let her into the Academy Library? It'll probably have twice as much censorship as the Great Library, but there's got to be something she can use, right?
Naturally, that's when Dai-something walks past, bandages covering his face. Mina hums her lullaby's tune under her breath, and Dai-whatever homes in on her like a bloodhound, carving a path through the crowd of early risers like Moses splitting the Red Sea.
"Mmf-umf! Mhmph!" Dai-what's-his-face wilts, than jumps into the air and claps his hands. He then vigorously plays charades right there in the middle of the street.
It seems the doctor who patched him up put bandages over his mouth and jaw as well as his nose. If it weren't for the holes punctured through the cloth, he wouldn't be able to breathe. As is, he probably has to eat through a straw.
Mina is around eighty-five percent sure the solid half-pound array of bandages over Daichi's face has no basis in modern medical science. The doctor must have really, really wanted him to shut up.
"I'm sorry, I don't understand." Let's take this persona thing out for a spin. Smile softly, tilt head cutely. Frown, bite lip. Look forlornly up at the Great Library. "I really must be going, though. I was hoping to study up on the Academy's classes, but this library is woefully understocked. I'll need to go now if I want to find a better library. I'll be searching for hours…"
Daisuke wilts again, before… jumping into the air again, actually. Is he for real? People actually act like that? Maybe it's one of Nonō's personas. Maybe Dai is actually a sociopathic serial killer and he's just pretending to be a harmless clown. He might spend all his free time plotting world domination, kicking puppies, and eating small children. There's no way to know for sure.
He makes the universal "follow me!" gesture and bolts down the street. Mina recoils at the sudden movement, but takes off after him a moment later. Even with her impressive speed, Daimaru has to double back several times to keep in sight… or because he took a wrong turn, who knows. This may be because of his age - he looks to be around nine years old - but he's also fast, faster than she has ever seen anybody but the flickering ANBU on the rooftops run.
She doesn't get to see much of Konoha on her mad dash through the village. It's a staggeringly different experience than her walk with Nonō, yesterday. That had been tense and uncomfortable, and would have been scenic if she had been less afraid. This? Racing through the village with Dai-whatever is a much more pleasant affair, even if she is using his Academy access for her personal gain.
Mina gets but a single look at the Kage tower before he grabs her hand and tugs her inside of it. A dizzying number of turns later, she's stumbling to a stop in front of the most glorious library she has ever seen. Of course, she doesn't get more than a single look at that, either, before there's a stern figure in front of her and glaring.
"Maito Dai!" she admonishes, and Mina gets all of a second to think "Holy shit! Maito Dai?" before the librarian continues her impromptu scolding. "You are not, I repeat, not allowed in here. You haven't been allowed in here for years, and you won't be allowed in here for years more, until Hokage-sama forbid you make Jōnin and force your way in, do you understand me? You owe more ryō than I make in a year! If you even look at this library wrong I…"
The Chūnin that Mina decides then and there to call Madam Pince from Harry Potter apparently can't see her through the red clouding her vision. Mina offers Dai a hesitant smile and a thumbs-up and makes her escape, deeper into the library. She'll make it up to him later.
The Konoha library is impressive. As the Academy it was built for resides in the same building as the paperwork-nin of the Mission Desk and the Hokage himself, it contains far more information that she expected a glorified elementary school library to hold. The wealth of knowledge is separated not by rank but by discipline, which lets her sneakily riffle through scrolls far more advanced that she would otherwise be able to get her grubby little paws on.
Of course, most of the information is purely academic. For every ninjutsu how-to breakdown, there are twenty more detailing the long and bloody history of each individual handseal. She's not surprised, though she is disappointed. A village's ninjutsu repertoire is probably protected a helluva lot like a nation did their nuclear warhead schematics during the Cold War. If she ever wants to learn area-of-effect, flashy ninjutsu, she's going to have to bother a Jōnin about it.
Not that she wants to be a ninjutsuka. While the prospect of going full Avatar on everyone after she graduates is tempting, it's not as tempting as iryōjutsu. While a part of her had wanted to be a journalist in her past life, the rest of her wanted to be a surgeon, and if she can achieve one of her old dreams in this new world… maybe, just maybe, she can find a new one.
That first scroll she finds that doesn't make her instantly roll her eyes is called Three Hundred Sixty One Ways Not to Kill Yourself Learning Iryōjutsu. If she recalls long sessions of reading manga deep into the night over half a decade ago, which she does, then that's the number of tenketsu in the chakra system. This primer is most likely a list of safety techniques, tips and tricks, and maybe a breakdown on the most likely ways wannabe iryō-nin kill themselves in training. It'll do.
She drops to her knees right there in the middle of the aisle and begins to read.
"Iryō-nin is best nin," Mina mutters to herself in awe some five hours later.
This world's lack of viable telecommunications, automated transport, manufactories, and other 'first-world' staples had fooled herself into thinking the Elemental Continent was a clone of Edo Japan with some fantasy shonen tropes thrown in. It had taken reading a primer on risk-free heart transplants to realize the Naruto universe didn't miss these things for lack of capability, but rather lack of need.
This world was several years ahead of her own when it came to medical technology. That wasn't even accounting for the many and myriad uses of medical chakra. Mina hadn't thought anything of Rin's impromptu eye surgery during the mission to Kannabi Bridge, distracted as she was by the emotional impact of the entire scene, but, looking back… damn. Iryō-nin are really badass, aren't they?
More importantly, thinking of Rin lead to her dredging up memories about all the other iryō-nin seen in the manga, and the crazy things they can do. She skipped right over Hashirama and Kabuto, knowing she'd never catch up to their special brand of bullshit. They don't matter to her anyway. No, her mind immediately homed in on Tsunade.
Mina heavily doubts she'll ever reach Tsunade's level, either, but that's fine. She doesn't care about the Strength of a Hundred or flawless chakra control. What she wants is that regeneration technique.
With that… with that…
…maybe there will be more auburn in her white-gold hair.
She slips a trio of iryōjutsu scrolls up her sleeves and casually walks out of the Kage Tower.
The third day dawns bright and early. For once, Mina rises with the sun instead of futilely throwing a pillow at it.
She is staring into her hand mirror a few minutes later. She's wearing a soft, off-white sundress, a gift from Nonō, with blue accents around the sleeves and hem that really bring out her eyes. Even with her atrociously cut hair, no one will think her a male in this dress.
It's not very practical, though. She wants to make a good impression on the iryō-nin, but would that be easier if she was wearing something more… shinobi-like? She looks absolutely adorable in this, yes, but not very capable. It'd be harder to charm them if she changed into her leggings-and-tunic outfit, but they might take her more seriously-
Maito Dai rolls off his bunk and crash-lands onto the carpet, narrowly avoiding a repeat of the Collapsible Staff Incident but managing to wake up the other six boys in the wing regardless. Mina sighs. She never likes being around when the other orphans regain awareness, especially when she's wearing a dress; they always heckle her. She shouldn't be affected by the cruelty of children; they don't understand the words they say, and just mimic people on the streets. Really, she shouldn't care.
All the 'shoulds' in the world don't stop her from stepping out into the early morning breeze a mere thirty seconds later. There aren't many civilians walking the streets, yet, but the occasional blur of grey and black on the rooftops show that not everyone can afford the luxury to sleep in on the weekend. The hospital will probably be full, too, the yet-to-be-named Second Shinobi War having been in full swing for many years already.
She wishes that her graduation will take long enough that the War will be finished before she's deployed. She doesn't believe her wish will come true.
The densely populated Konoha General proves her assumptions correct when she nears the hospital a half hour later. There's this air of manic energy around the entire street, completely at odds with the sleeping village on either side. Shinobi alternately trudge toward it with bowed heads and dragging feet or flee from it like the Valkyries themselves are on their heels. The occasional iryō-nin refuel themselves with half-liter mugs of coffee and rolled up newspapers, dangling feet from the rooftops and shooting dark glares at the passing shinobi below.
Mina has never seen so many ninja in her life. Not counting Nonō and Dai, both trainees, her closest association with active-duty shinobi is the yearly recruitment pitch given by a Jōnin-sensei and his Genin team. They've never focused on her before, being several years too young or otherwise fragile-looking, but she takes a single step onto the street and suddenly feels like a piece of meat thrown to the wolves.
It's not killing intent, but the combined attention of a dozen shinobi- Mina squeaks and darts through the nearest door. The bar she finds herself in isn't much better.
Her first thought: "It's the Wild West meets Edo Japan." A strongman bartender scours a clean glass with a dirty rag and narrows his eyes at her. Torn up Bingo Book pages litter the walls and floor. A half-dozen high tables are scattered haphazardly around the dive, each with three or four straight-backed wooden chairs pulled up. The few occupants that don't ignore her have the glint of mirth in their eyes.
All except for Tsunade, anyway. Somehow, Mina isn't surprised to see her here. She is surprised to find Nawaki sprawled out next to her, the nine-year-old looking bored out of his mind.
Mina takes one look at all of the scary shinobi in the room and scurries over to the soon-to-be Sannin. Tsunade honestly scares her, but Mito expects her to help protect Kushina when she arrives in a few years, so Tsunade won't be too rough. Besides, the devil you know over the devils you don't, right?
But when Tsunade raises a single, unimpressed eyebrow, Mina flushes. She really should have thought of a more comprehensive plan than just, "Go to hospital. Learn iryōjutsu. Become uber-ninja." Maybe she wouldn't be in this situation if she had.
"A-ah. Uhm." What is it about Senju that leaves her stuttering and red-faced? Her fledgling persona is becoming all too real. "I wanted to learn iryōjutsu, so I went to the library, but I don't know how to chakra well, and I thought if I went to the hospital I might learn something, but then all the shinobi looked really scary and I hid in here but all the shinobi here are really scary too and-"
"Breathe, brat." Tsunade sighs the sigh of the damned. Mina can almost see all of her street cred wither away the more she talks. "Sit down and shut up."
Mina sits down and shuts up.
"So, you want to be an iryō-nin." She gives Mina an unimpressed once-over. "I really doubt you have the stones to pull it off, but grandmother seems to think you aren't a complete waste of time, and I don't want to have to face her disappointed looks should I kick you to the curb like you belong."
Mina begins to feel the first inklings of a tentative hope. Naturally, Tsunade promptly stomps all over it.
"Don't think I'm doing you a favor. In fact, you'll probably hate me by the end." Her smile is far, far scarier than Nonō's could ever hope to be. Mina swallows roughly. "I can't turn you away, but if you leave of your own accord… well. Then I'm not the one at fault, am I?"
She plucks a torn bounty off the floor - Hanzō of the Salamander, Amegakure, S-Rank, 3,000,000,000 Ryo - and scrawls an address and passphrase on the back.
"Go to the third floor of the Konoha General and give this to the first secretary you'll see. Her name is Kyōko and she, ah, she looks a lot like me. Follow her directions to the letter and no back talking, you understand?"
"A-ah, yes!"
"Good. Now get going, brat."
Tsunade takes a swig from her mug of rank-smelling mystery liquid and immediately forgets Mina exists. Nawaki doesn't seem to have noticed her presence at all. Everyone else in the dive doesn't share their apathy.
Mina decides that she doesn't like shinobi much at all.
She manages to keep her head high all through the thirty-second walk to the Konoha General, if barely. None of the surrounding ninja intercept her. None seem actively malicious, mostly just curious or amused, but their combined focus drills into her neck and sets her heart aflame. She feels like a mouse caught by the tail by a housecat - they don't need to eat her, they're already sated, but they find her incredibly amusing to watch jump around anyway.
She feels that familiar shadow rise up and devour her. Fear. The threat of Orochimaru, of the Jyūbi, of Uchiha Madara, of the Konoha Crush and Pein's Invasion and Kyūbi Attack, of the Second and the Third and the Fourth Shinobi Wars-
Mina doesn't want to feel afraid, anymore. This is the first step towards that ever-distant dream. All she needs to do… is take it.
The Konoha General is eerily reminiscent of Earth's hospitals. The bittersweet stench of antiseptics by the gallon strikes her like a punch to the gut, but she doesn't stagger. It's comfortable, familiar. She's been here before, she's walked these floors and talked to these nurses, she knows what she's doing and has for a long, long time now.
The familiar rat-tat-tat of her shoes on sparkling tile calms her, grounds her. Eyes pass over a dozen signs taped to white plaster walls and she turns towards the staircase. For once, her diminutive size and unassuming appearance are to her advantage, and no one questions the child in the sundress as she stalks through the hospital with confident strides.
She reaches the third floor and smiles politely at the secretary, Kyōko, and immediately sees the resemblance. They're both very gifted people. But when she passes the bounty note to her and gets a pitying frown in return, what amusement she had managed to dredge up is once again summarily executed.
This day is just not going my way, is it?, she thinks, and follows the arrows sketched onto the tile towards a back room. She raises a fist to knock on the cold, metal door, like one would find on a freeze locker or a police station, but stills.
Mina doesn't want to be here. She wants to turn and walk away, or run down the fire escape, or crawl out of the window if she has to. She wants to return to the lower floors and the familiar hustle and bustle, or retreat to the Academy library where she feels most at home. She doesn't want to be here, in front of this door, and feeling like Harry Potter before the Third Floor Corridor.
But she doesn't walk away. Strength has been offered to her; all she needs to do is reach out and take it.
Mina opens the door.
What she finds is far more dangerous than a mere Cerberus.
"Oh? For me?" Orochimaru smiles, a cruel, sickly thing. "You shouldn't have."
A blur, a whistling shriek, painpainpain-
And darkness.
Mina wakes up, and immediately wishes she hadn't.
"Happy birthday, Minato-kun," Orochimaru says. She tenses. "Do you recognize this room?"
Reluctantly, Mina looks away from Orochimaru's palepalepale face. The room is almost as horrifying, but far less likely to experiment on her still-breathing corpse.
Four steel walls enclose the icy-cold metal table she's been strapped to. Thick, black spirals decorate the cell, eerily similar to the brand marking her own flesh. A rack of too-sharp tools line one corner, several jars of mystery fluid on an aluminum shelf lining the other. A panicked breath of air crystalizes in the coldcoldcold air.
Mina shakes her head quickly, veins stark on her white skin. She doesn't. She doesn't want to, either.
"A shame," Orochimaru tells her. He sighs, a melodramatic, overacted motion, like a two-bit villain in an old Disney movie. "I was hoping you would remember. This was where I first met you, after all."
It was him, Mina thinks. He's the bastard that did this to me. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!
"Do you remember that? No, don't answer that question. Of course not." He picks up a long, thin, and cruelly serrated knife, flicking it around his pianist's fingers with easy skill. "You hadn't been reborn, yet. Well. I might as well explain - I don't get the opportunity to talk about my experiment's often.
"It was five years ago. My team and I had just gotten back from a routine salt-and-burn mission, and I had been horrified at how easily all of the separatists had died. Life is such a precious thing, isn't it? That it can be so casually stripped from us - horrible. Absolutely horrible. Naturally, I hadn't wanted such a thing to ever happen to me. But, the question is - 'How does one achieve immortality?'
"I hadn't been much of a scientist back then, unfortunately. I went to the historical section for my answers, and researched mythology, legends, and tall tales. I drew up a great, big list of everything the old stories had to say about eternal life, and decided to see for myself if they were real. At the very top of the checklist - what else, but mankind's undying soul?
"And I struck gold."
Orochimaru begins to pace manically. Mina feels like a deer caught in the headlights, amplified a thousand fold. This is how she dies. Three days into her decision to become a ninja and she's already dead. Just another casualty, just another statistic for civilians to mutter over when this monster finally leaves the village. Will anyone avenge her? Will Nonō ever find out what happened to her little sister? Will anyone care? (Will she die alone?)
"I volunteered at the hospital. It took all of a week for a suitable prospect to arrive in the maternity ward. A strong bloodline of shinobi, albeit no limit, with no surviving family or friends, and no great chance of surviving childbirth. No one will look too closely if there are any… inconsistencies… in her newborn son. After all, who cares about Namikaze Minato?
"It was almost too easy to spirit away the child into my secret laboratory. I pulled his soul from his body, and summoned a new one into his flesh. Making sure it stuck and didn't fade away took a little fiddling, but I managed it, in the end. I always do.
"And now, here you are." He slows his pace and turns to face her, burnburnburning yellow eyes staring into her soul. "An immortal soul in a newer, younger body. I had planned to vivisect you, to peer into the inner mechanics of your soul… but I see no reason to, now. Can you guess why?"
Mina shakes her head, shivering like a baby rabbit. Orochimaru raises the other eyebrow and Mina squeaks, saying, "Be-because you've had a ch-change of heart?"
Orochimaru laughs. "No, foolish child. It's because you know things, things that I want to know, things that you have no way of knowing. And, it makes me wonder… 'What soul did I pull from the abyss? And what does that soul know?'
"Let's start with something simple.
"Do you know who I am?" His voice - it is warm and amused, almost fatherly. Mina shivers in fear.
"O-Orochimaru. You are Orochimaru."
"That's right." He hums, deep in the back of his throat. A kunai crawls up and out of his mouth, and he catches it, and buries it in the table between her ankles with a muffled thump. "And, do you know what I like to do?"
Mina swallows thickly. "N-no, sir."
"I like to consider myself a scholar, or a scientist. I collect knowledge. All types, too - histories, sciences, techniques, the arcane and the esoteric. The more obscure the knowledge, the more I seek it. And, do you know what my favorite topic is?"
Breathe. In, out. In, out. "I d-don't. Sir."
"The soul, Minato-kun. I want to know more about the human soul… and I think you have the answers I seek."
A pause. Mina's heart threatens to crawl up her throat in a sick sequel to Orochimaru's knife trick.
"I'm only going to ask once. Tell me, Namikaze Minato. Tell me what you remember."
And she does.
She tells him about Uchiha Madara and Hashirama Senju. How they met, how they bonded, how they dreamed. How they made something from nothing, and how it wasn't what they wanted. How they split and fought and hated - and how Uchiha Madara slunk away, alive. How the Sharingan can grow and improve and evolve.
She tells him about the Second War. She tells him about Salamander Hanzō and how his team are the only shinobi to face him and live. About how they were christened the Sannin, and how they scattered across the continent. About Tsunade and the death of her brother and lover, about Jiraiya and the child with Madara's Rinnegan.
She tells him about the Third War. About the Yellow Flash who becomes the Yondaime Hokage. About Tobi and Zetsu and the Kyūbi Attack, about the formation of the Akatsuki on the battleground of Yahiko's sacrifice. About how Sarutobi Hiruzen retakes the mantle and passes over Orochimaru again, and how he abandons the village, reviled and hated and feeling the same.
She tells him about himself. She tells him about Mitarashi Anko, the Cursed Seal of Heaven, and his desire for the Sharingan. She tells him about him joining the Akatsuki, how the Uchiha Massacre happened and what really caused it, and how Uchiha Itachi defeats him with black fire. She tells him about Otogakure.
And then she lies. She tells him Uchiha Sasuke struck him down when he was weak, when he was vulnerable. She tells him that he dies alone and cold and unfulfilled.
She's so far past horror that her heart loops around and reaches a blissful sort of Zen. There are no tells in her voice, her face, her heart. Who could catch one lie hidden in a hundred thousand truths?
Orochimaru believes her hook, line, and sinker.
And he laughs and laughs and screams until he cries,
But his eyes are cold, so very cold,
And he has never been more terrifying.
"Well," he says, voice rough and sickly. "Looks like we have work to do."
He unclasps her shackles and walks away.
A/N: This is as close as I will ever get to the shadier side of Oreo's research. Not only is a graphic representation against the content guidelines (I think, anyway), it's horribly squick and not something I feel comfortable writing about.
Nah, TsuTsu didn't sell Mina out to a soon-to-be rogue-nin. As far as Tsunade knows, Orochimaru is just moderately creepy. She fully expected Oreo to hiss a bit, and Mina to run away screaming. Nothing more.
Oreo wasn't actually going to vivisect her. It was a threat, to get her talking. It totes worked, too.
In other news, I love the reviews! They make me happy. Thank you 3