"Wait!" Isamu called out to Diane as Elyse and him exited the test room. Further along the way, Diane halted and turned back to her two friends.
"What do we do?" Diane asked despairingly as Isamu and Elsye reached her.
"First, we have to see who won the card game. Isamu said that as soon as we leave the exam room, we check the cards," Elyse said matter of factly.
Diane looked back and forth between Elyse and Isamu incredulously. "Are you serious?" They nodded. "We have much more pressing matters at hand! The whole world has been turned on its head!"
"We have to check the cards. It's one of the only rules for this game," Isamu said with a frown as Elyse nodded emphatically next to him.
Diane threw up her hands in exasperation. "Fine. I have three aces. I win." She pulled out her cards and tossed them at the ground in front of Isamu and Elyse. Elyse looked down at the cards. Huh, she really did have all three aces. Diane must be getting better at theft. Elyse hadn't noticed her ace getting stolen, and she was sure she still had it that morning. When had she taken it?
"Actually, I win," Isamu said. "I have a royal flush." He reached into his pocket, pulled out a scroll, and applied chakra to it. Nothing happened.
Casually, Elyse took out some cards and fanned them in front of her, face up towards Isamu. "Looking for these?" she asked.
"Ok, what's going on?" Diane asked momentarily distracted from the Naruto catastrophe by the unexpected cards. "None of those cards were the cards that were dealt out."
"Of course not. Isamu pulled these out of the deck and hid them before he proposed the game to us. I figured it out and stole them from him without him noticing," Elyse said smugly.
"I thought I had it in the bag," Isamu said shaking his head.
"You can't use cards that weren't dealt out at the start of the game," Diane said.
"I can. There's no rule against it," Elyse pointed out. "You always have to root out the loopholes, Diane."
Diane sighed. "Never mind. This is ridiculous. You win. Now, can we please go find Ryuu and figure out what to do about the sky that's falling?"
"Ok, ok. No need to be so dramatic," Elyse said gesturing for Diane to lead the way.
After Diane told Ryuu what happened through hysterical ramblings, Ryuu stood up from his seat on the couch summoning a pen and paper. "My bonus is definitely going to get deducted," Ryuu muttered grumpily as he wrote out a message.
"Your bonus?" Daine repeated incredulously. "Is that what you're worrying about at a time like this?"
"Yes," Ryuu said folding up the message he just finished writing and stashing it somewhere in his vest. "I have to go send this. You three wait here and do nothing until I come back."
Diane stared at the door swinging shut with a discomfited expression. "Am I only one that appreciates how monumental this is? The main characters failed the first round of the chunin exams. The future could become unrecognizable because of this. If nothing else, the matchups in the preliminaries and finals will be different. Or maybe there won't even be preliminaries. And what if Orochimaru doesn't even give Sasuke the curse seal now?"
"I'm sure Orochimaru will still mark Sasuke. Sasuke still has the sharingan, and that's ultimately what Orochimaru was after," Elyse said. She'd thought a lot about what the repercussions would be, and she felt sure that Sasuke missing out on the curse was not one of them.
On the other hand, Naruto missing out on learning the toads summon from Jiraiya was a distinct possibility. Elyse didn't know how much Jiraiya planned to get involved with his dead student's son when he arrived in Konoha, but she refused to believe he only decided to teach the boy due to the naked woman jutsu. Even so, he might not want to pass on the summoning contract to a genin that couldn't even make past the first part of the chunin exams especially not if Jiraiya had only agreed to teach Naruto to prepare him for the finals. Without more information about Jiraiya's original motivations concerning Naruto, Elyse couldn't tell whether that particular part of canon would play out. All she knew was that Naruto's toad summon had a significant part in the upcoming arc. Its absence would surely cause a permanent change.
The toad summons were only one of the possible alterations in canon to result from the exam failure. Neji couldn't go up against Naruto in the finals which meant he wouldn't have some sense knocked into him unless he somehow managed to face another person equally as capable as Naruto at rehabilitating opponents during fights. Shikamaru might face someone that doesn't give him the opportunity to impress the judges and never make chunin. A team that didn't originally make it out of the Forest of Death might. Sakura and Ino hadn't yet reconciled though Elyse wasn't sure that had any significance to the plot. Lastly, Kakashi surely wouldn't teach Sasuke the chidori without the threat of Gaara looming over Sasuke. As such, Elyse felt secure in her assumption that canon could not recover from this blow.
Diane brought up all these concerns with a pessimistic overture leading into a possible future where Lee ended up taking over the world, forcing everyone to wear green jumpsuits. "While I do agree that there will be unforeseen consequences to this change-" Elyse interrupted before Diane could continue outlining her Lee-lead world. "-I highly doubt that anything will result in Lee taking over the world."
"You never know," Diane said shakily. "That's the whole point. Anything can happen now."
"Anything but that," Elyse said firmly.
"Well, hopefully." Diane frowned at Elyse and Isamu. "Why aren't you two more concerned about this?"
"I'm concerned," Elyse said. She was concerned. Just because she wanted to change canon and had purposely done so did not mean she wasn't worried about what the results of her meddling might be. "I just don't think there's any point in fretting over it."
"Well, I'm not," Isamu said. Diane gaped at him while Elyse nodded to herself. She had an inkling Isamu never got on board with the canon love.
"How can you say that?" Diane asked Isamu.
"I have no stakes in this. I'm just an observer. I'm curious to see how this turns out."
"Fine. You always were strange anyways." Diane turned to Elyse with an upset expression. "Did we cause this? By going over to team seven before the start of the exam?"
Elyse pressed her lips together. She wished she could assuage Diane's guilt, but she had no desire to admit to her culpability in the situation. "Maybe. There's no real point in trying to deduce the point of divergence. All we can do now is wait for the clan to give us orders for how to deal with this."
"Ok." Diane sat down on a couch in the room and placed her head in her hands. "I can't help feeling partially responsible for this."
Isamu sat next to Diane and awkwardly placed a comforting hand on her back. "Listen, I don't think a short conversation could have any sort of effect on canon. Think about it. If canon could be changed so easily, it should already have changed by now. I mean, a whole clan that didn't exist before plopped itself into the second most mentioned village in the story without any differences to canon. A conversation is nothing compared to that."
Isamu had a point, and he didn't even know about Mitsuko's failed efforts to prevent the Uchiha massacre. Suddenly, Elyse felt more than a little unnerved. How had canon held up for so long when changing it was as easy as casting a simple genjutsu? Surely, she and Mitsuko weren't the only people to have ever tried changing canon drastically. Even if they were, the existence of the Nintendo clan alone should have inadvertently changed something by now. If not that, then the presence of another living Uchiha seemed like something that would be cause for deviation.
"Well, clearly something changed canon. What do you think caused it if not us interacting with the main characters?" Diane asked looking up at Isamu pleadingly.
"Probably a cumulation of all the changes that already happened due to the presence of reincarnated people," Isamu said.
"Maybe," Diane said doubtfully. "I guess the why isn't as important as how to fix it. I hope the clan leaders come up with a plan for setting things back to normal."
Elyse held back her reply as the door opened and Ryuu stepped through looking exhausted. "I just spoke with Juanita," he announced. "We're to stick to our original mission until told otherwise."
"Our original mission?" Elyse scratched her head in confusion. "You mean finding out why Sasuke ate breakfast? I thought we already decided that his eating breakfast didn't contradict canon."
"Actually, ever since I suggested the idea to Juanita, the clan leaders have been locked into debate on whether or not a heavy implication in the manga is as good as an outright statement," Ryuu said with a slightly amused smile.
"They've been locked in debate for two days? How could there be enough argumental points about this to carry on a debate for two days?" Elyse asked. She knew the clan had invested a lot of time into Sasuke's breakfast eating habits lately, but it just didn't seem like anyone could hold a long debate about whether he did or did not eat breakfast in the manga. For Elyse, it was an open and shut case. The answer was, 'Who cares?'
"Trust me. There's plenty of points to talk over. They have diagrams and graphs. They have citations and drawings from the manga. They have analyses from professional psychologists and writers," Ryuu listed off holding up a finger for each point he made.
"Ok. Hold up a second," Elyse said putting up a hand. "I'm going to need to hear what graphs could possibly be used in these debates and how an analysis from a psychologist could help."
"Well, someone put together a graph listing the amount of hours after eating it takes for different people to grow hungry enough for their stomach to growl. There was another graph measuring the amount of food it usually takes to fill someone up and how that changes the number of hours till stomach growling. The statistics found that Sasuke's food intake that morning should have kept him properly satisfied past the point of Kakashi's arrival."
"Wow," Elyse said impressed with the amount of time and effort her clanmates were willing to put into the matter. Members of the Nintendo clan definitely had too much time on their hands. "And the psychologists?"
"Oh, yes," Ryuu said nodding. "They give very important testimony. First, they provide information on the longevity of human memory and whether we collectively could have misremembered parts of the manga. Second, they analyze Kishimoto's psychological state from his writing and try to determine if he would count an implication as fact in his story."
Out of the corner of her eye, Elyse saw Isamu cover his mouth before a laugh could sneak out. "Has anyone considered consulting a translator to make sure nothing was lost in the translation of the manga from Japanese to English?" Isamu asked keeping his voice surprisingly steady for someone that was on the verge of laughter.
Ryuu scoffed. "Of course. That's one of the first things they looked into."
"So what was the conclusion?" Diane asked looking less upset about her possible involvement in the ruination of canon and more intrigued by the results of the debate.
"Well, after much discourse, the clan leaders eventually decided that there was no way to tell for sure what Sasuke did or did not eat the morning of the bell test," Ryuu said.
"Good thing they spent all that time debating it then, huh?" Elyse asked sarcastically.
Ryuu frowned at her. "Yes, actually. Otherwise, they would have just accepted the premise that Sasuke eating breakfast was still within canon and then we wouldn't get to continue the mission. Juanita said that I can still get my bonus if we get to the bottom of this breakfast matter."
"Ok," Diane said. "I don't particularly care about your bonus at all, but I want to do what I can to figure out what has gone wrong with canon."
"I agree with Diane," Elyse said slowly. "But onto other matters, why are you always so obsessed with getting double pay and bonuses, Ryuu? I've seen your house. It's tiny, and the inside is bare. You never go on vacation. You're the most frugal person I know. What do you plan to do with all your money?"
"I put it all in my bank account," Ryuu said simply.
"But for what purpose? What are you saving up for?"
Ryuu scratched his head. "I don't know what you mean. I'm not saving up for anything. I just want to make sure I have enough money."
Elyse sighed. "Ok. Let me rephrase the question. Are you planning on just continuously piling up money into your bank account until you die? You already have more money than most people make in their lifetime. It's not really good for the economy to have all that money in stasis rather than circulating. Besides, you can retire right now and live comfortably instead of doing work you don't really enjoy."
"Maybe, but I need to keep building my supply of money in case of an emergency."
Elyse gave up. "Never mind. How are we proceeding with this Sasuke breakfast investigation?"
"We should probably talk to Tenten more," Diane piped up. "She can tell us exactly what Guy said about what he saw that morning."
"Tenten's still taking the chunin exams," Isamu pointed out.
Diane frowned. "Oh. Right. Maybe we can go straight to the source and ask Guy."
"And make him suspicious of us? No," Ryuu said firmly. "We'll just be observing from the shadows. We don't want to do anything that will draw attention to us especially considering that we're from the village about to invade Konoha."
The next days passed by uneventfully with them carefully keeping tabs on team seven and the village in general. Team seven proceeded with their training as normal for a genin train. Nothing seemed odd about the village as a whole.
Diane could barely get herself to go anywhere near can characters or locations anymore becoming paranoid about inadvertently changing canon. Her mental breakdown was shared by most of the rest of the Nintendo clan according to Ryuu's recaps of his communications with Juanita. They seem to be divided on the issue. Around half the clan thought canon could still be salvaged, and they needed to throw all their efforts into making sure later parts of canon prevailed. The other half thought canon was irreparably damaged. Of that half, some took the opportunity to broach the idea of interfering to stop the more dangerous ninja before they could implement their plans. The rest slid into a bit of depression with a 'What's the point?' kind of attitude.
The members of the clan that wanted to restore canon and the members that advocated for building off of the change created factions in the clan. Ryuu informed Elyse and Isamu that the two different factions spent hours of the day presenting their sides to each other. Diane was moping in her room again. "Are there graphs and diagrams? There had better be graphs and diagrams," Elyse said. She desperately wished she could be back in the compound to witness all those arguments firsthand.
"The salvage faction made a large scale timeline with numerous branches for all the ways the changing point could result in a worse world. The other faction took up the timeline and added positive possible branches to it," Ryuu replied.
"Do one of the branches involve Lee taking over the world and forcing everyone to wear green jumpsuits?" Elyse asked.
Ryuu wrinkled his forehead in a puzzled frown. "Not that I know of. I didn't ask too much about the specifics."
"Diane will be disappointed," Elyse giggled.
"She can add that branch herself when we go back," Isamu quipped.
Elyse learned that Tenten sided more with the more cynical members of the Nintendo clan when she got back from the second rounds of the chunin exams. Tenten met up with the four other reincarnated people in Konoha in the same place they originally met. Once there, she started in on her rant.
"So I went down to fight my preliminary match against Ino and I just thought, 'Why? Why bother?' I wasn't supposed to face Ino in the first place. That was supposed to be Sakura. It didn't matter what I did, the whole fight wasn't canon. So then I thought, 'Why should I even try to become a chunin?' I never wanted to be a ninja. Don't get me wrong. I love duels and weapons competitions, but I can't stand real battle. If I hadn't been so set on preserving canon, I never would have agreed to take the chunin exams in the first place. Hell, I never would have agreed to take the academy exit exam. So I backed away from Ino, held up my hand, and forfeited. In retrospect, it wasn't the greatest of ideas because then I had to deal with Guy and Lee yelling about how unyouthful quitting was, but I'm glad it's done with."
"You… you faced Ino and quit the chunin exams," Diane stuttered out in a strangled voice.
"Yup," Tenten chirped. She then snorted. "She totally decided that it was because I was intimidated by her too. She'll have a rude awakening in the finals."
"Oh, God, what's happening?" Diane moaned to herself.
"Never mind all that," Ryuu broke in. "Did Guy tell you anything more about the morning Sasuke ate breakfast? Maybe there was something unusual. Did Sasuke deliberate for awhile before choosing to eat breakfast?"
"Oh, for heaven's sake!" Tenten threw up her arms. "It was a lie. Guy's weird, but he didn't watch a team of genin for a whole morning. I was bored, ok. I spent my whole second life playing a role, following whatever the Hokage, my sensei, or Mr. Peterson told me to do. I just got sick of it one day, and that's when the idea came to my mind. It was very amusing for me to imagine the clan having a minor freakout over Sasuke's eating habits, so I fibbed a bit. I didn't think anything would come of it, just a short little panic that subsided once the clan realized nothing else different happened, but then they sent you guys and now we're in this mess."
Elyse put a comforting hand on Diane's back as she started making small choking noises. "So Sasuke didn't eat breakfast that morning?"
"I don't know!" Tenten cried. "I don't have that information. I'm sorry I lied about it. Everything is my fault."
"I wouldn't go that far," Isamu said. Did Elyse imagine it or did Isamu send her a sidelong look? "My theory is that this is a cumulation of the effect of the addition of every reincarnated person to the world."
Tenten perked up. "Very interesting. Do you have anything to back that theory up?"
"Nope," Isamu admitted. Tenten wilted again.
"Ok. I'm going to need to contact Juanita again," Ryuu said wearily.
For the next few days, they kept up the watch for any suspicious activity finding just as much as they had the first few days. It ended when Ryuu entered the genin's room in the middle of the night and awakened by shaking them. "What's going on?" asked Elyse as she stumbled out of the bed.
Diane blinked sleepily up at the ceiling. "Team seven failing the chunin exam. Was that a dream? Please tell me it was."
"I'm afraid not," Ryuu said grimly. "All of you get up, get ready, and pack. Juanita's calling us back to the compound. The whole clan is in a state of crisis, and they've decided that our presence isn't helping matters in anyway."
"Even the faction that wants to change canon now?" Elyse inquired.
"Yes. They want to change canon by taking out guys like Zetsu and Obito, not by inadvertent changes that negatively affect the main characters," Ryuu answered. "Come on. Hurry up. I want to beat the heat."
"What does the heat matter at a time like this?" Diane asked in a monotone voice still staring stiffly up at the ceiling.
"It makes me sweaty, itchy, and uncomfortable. My comfort matters at all times even times of crisis," Ryuu proclaimed. "Which means I'm not going to let your existential meltdown delay our departure. I expect the three of you to be ready within ten minutes." Ryuu swiftly left the room.
"He's in a mood," Diane complained as she sat up.
"You're one to talk," Elyse pointed out. She turned to Isamu who still had his eyes closed and prodded him. "Come on, Isamu. Time to get up."
Isamu opened an eye to stare at Elyse suspiciously. "What are you so eager for?"
"I want to get home. I was getting homesick." In truth, Elyse was excited to suss out the faction that wanted to take a more active role in the world. If they gained enough influence, Elyse would get what she wanted all along.
The return trip was a lot more tense than the trip to Konoha had been. Ryuu again insisted on scouting out ahead leaving Isamu, Elyse, and Diane to keep each other company. Isamu and Elyse tried to continue their banter from the first journey, but it didn't feel right with Diane's new depressed and silent persona. Maybe the whole trip was less annoying, but it was also much more miserable.
Upon entering the compound, the group was ambushed by a crowd of clanmates and bombarded with questions and accusations. As the sensei of the group, Ryuu fielded the questions and deflected the accusations. Diane kept her gaze on the ground, Elyse watched the scene with a wry grin, and Isamu looked on with interest. After debriefing to Juanita and the rest of the clan leaders, the genin split ways and returned to their homes.
"Elyse, we're so glad you're home," Eri said pulling Elyse into a tight hug. "I'm sorry you went through such an ordeal."
When Eri released Elyse, Haru took his turn. "Don't ever think this is your fault. We never should have sent genin no matter how skilled your team was."
Elyse patted Haru's back comfortingly before stepping back. "Don't worry. I don't think it's my fault. I've taken on Isamu's theory that the change was caused by a cumulation of influence by people like us."
Haru rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "That's an interesting theory. Do you have any evidence to support it?"
"Not a bit," Elyse said cheerfully before turning to her little brother. "Hey, kid. I couldn't get you an Inuzuka ninja dog because I didn't want to get thrown into the Konoha prison, but I did get you a piece of fur from one."
Kei looked scornfully at the proffered fur. "If you actually got that fur from an Inuzuka dog, you've gone way too far for a joke."
Elyse grinned and shoved the fur into Kei's hand. He dropped it immediately. "It's not polite to turn down a gift, Kei."
"One of you better clean up that fur," Eri scolded.
"Don't worry. Kei will clear it up. It's his after all."
"Elyse, why?" Kei asked with exasperation.
"Why what? That's too vague." Nevertheless, Elyse scooped up the fur and threw it away. "It's good to be back." Maybe she had been a bit homesick.
The next morning, Elyse awoke to yelling and shouting. Shooting up out of her bed, Elyse threw on some clothes and exited to the living room. "What's going on?" she asked Eri who looked a little pale.
Eri turned an anxious gaze to Elyse. "Kisame just arrived at the clan compound."
"Kisame," Elyse repeated disbelievingly. "The fish man that's a member of the Akatsuki? The one that's partnered up with Itachi? The one with the giant sword?"
"That's the one."
"What in the world is he doing here? Don't tell me he's reincarnated too."
"I have nothing to tell you if I can't tell you that," Eri grumbled.
"Wow." First Tenten and now Kisame. Just how many canon characters were reincarnated and how had that not already destroyed canon? "Why did he come here? He hasn't visited the compound before, has he?"
"No," Eri said with a sad shake of the head. "He's one of those that gave up on canon once Naruto failed the first part of the chunin exam. He refuses to associate with Akatsuki or act as Kisame any longer. Haru just left to go to a meeting on what to do about Kisame's refusal to comply with canon."
"What can they do? Surely, they can't force the guy to continue playing the part of Kisame."
Eri sighed. "I don't know. I just hope they figure out something. Everything's been such a mess since the change. Half of the clan refuses to speak with the other half of the clan. A fight breaks out in the streets every other day. I'm sure the whole city has noticed the division in the clan by now. A couple houses burned down the previous morning."
Elyse raised her brows. "How is burning houses down going to help anything?"
"Well, one of the houses was an ugly yellowish brown mixture, so it's perishing improved the visual appeal of the compound greatly. Other than that, it doesn't," Eri mused.
"The house near the park that has the dinosaur slide?" Eri nodded. "Good riddance. So what's the consensus of the clan leaning towards? I'm guessing since they're trying to convince Kisame to carry on with canon that they want to salvage canon as much as they can."
"For the most part." Eri leaned forward in her seat. "The support for taking on the bad guys of Naruto is growing rapidly. I think a lot of the younger clan members have dreams of heroism. Besides, many have given up on the idea of keeping canon in tact."
"Pity," Elyse commented lightly. On the inside, she was smirking in satisfaction.
"I don't know," Eri confessed. "Don't tell Haru, but I'm starting to think those members of the clan are right. I don't see how canon can come back from this blow. I'm not completely sold on facing ridiculously powered ninja, but I also don't see the point in trying to hold back water from gushing out of a 50 inch diameter hole with one hand."
"You've got a point," Elyse said slowly. She hadn't expected either Haru or Eri to turn on canon, so this was a pleasant surprise for her.
After eating a quick breakfast, Elyse rushed off to find Mitsuko. She wondered what she thought about this whole thing. As expected, Mitsuko was waiting in her home for Elyse. "Welcome back," Mitsuko greeted with a smile as she held the front door open.
Elyse slipped into the house and sat on the couch. "I did it, Mitsuko. I changed canon."
"Oh, did canon change? You'd think the clan would make some sort of uproar about it." The two laughed. "So how'd you do it? How did you manage what I failed at so many years ago?"
Elyse frowned. "I'm not sure. It was really simple. During the written exam, I cast a genjutsu on Naruto to increase his nerves, and he succumbed to the pressure."
"Hmm." Mitsuko furrowed her brows. "That seems a little too easy."
"That's what I was afraid of," Elyse said. "But maybe it was just timing or something. Or maybe there's an adequate explanation for why your letter had no effect."
"Maybe," Mitsuko conceded. "But the only people alone that might have that explanation are Sasuke and Itachi, and I'm certainly not asking them. Especially not Itachi."
Mitsuko hated Itachi for killing or being an accomplice to the killing of Mitsuko's nephew. It was more than a legitimate enough reason for Elyse. "I heard from Eri that the mood of the clan is shifting towards giving up on canon."
Mitsuko snorted. "That's the direction it's headed in now. It's been going back and forth for the past week and a half. The recent argument that canon results in a kid named Boruto has swayed the clan slightly towards changing canon for the better."
"That's a solid point. I hadn't thought of that. Has anyone brought up that Sasuke and Sakura get married in canon?" Elyse asked.
"That was four days ago, Elyse. Don't rehash old points. I've seen it backfire every time. Besides, some like that pairing, so the argument had the opposite effect on them."
Elyse met Kisame the next day when she went out for lunch with Isamu at an outdoor taco shop. Diane was still hiding out in her parents house in misery, so it was just the two of them that day. Elyse and Isamu had only just sat down with their tacos when Kisame walked over to the window of the taco shop and ordered 36 chicken tacos.
"So you're Kisame?" Elyse greeted as Kisame leant against the side of the little building to wait for his large order of food.
Kisame peeked up at her with a scowl. "I don't use that name anymore. I'm Allen. That was my name in my first life." Elyse glanced over the large, blue tinged, shark man with sharp teeth thinking that the name Allen really didn't fit the visual. Far be it from Elyse to refuse to call someone by their chosen name though.
"Ok, Allen." The name came out with a struggle. Elyse couldn't connect the name to the man without effort.
Allen beamed showing his rows of sharpened teeth. "You're the first person to take me up on that. Everyone else keeps insisting on calling me Kisame. Thank you so much."
"Yeah. Sure. No problem," Elyse said exchanging disturbed looks with Isamu. She turned her focus back to Allen. "I'm Elyse. This is Isamu."
"A pleasure to meet you," Allen said politely.
"So, Allen-" The name didn't come out any smoother the second time. "-are the clan leaders letting you stay here?"
"Nope," Allen said cheerfully. "I'm staying here against their wishes. They can't do anything to make me follow the canon Kisame, so I can do whatever I want, and I'm choosing to stay here. There's so much from Earth here. I've been missing out by travelling around doing the Akatsuki's bidding when I could have been eating tacos everyday. Do you know how long it's been since I had a taco?"
"No, I'm actually not privy to that information," Elyse said. "Considering I've never even seen you before."
"It's been a long time." Allen stared at the taco in front of Elyse hungrily. "A very long time."
"Couldn't you have just found a way to make your own tacos?" Isamu asked.
"Of course not. Canon Kisame never made tacos. Probably. At least, I wasn't allowed to risk it. There's so many things I missed out on trying to copy the original Kisame. I was a chef in my first life. I wanted to open up a cajun restaurant, but I couldn't because I had to become a ninja and a swordsman and then join a criminal organization."
"I'm glad I wasn't reincarnated into a manga character," Isamu said insensitively before finishing off his last taco. "Sounds restrictive."
"Kisame Hoshigaki, your order is ready!" a voice called from the window of the shop.
"It's Allen, dammit!" Allen yelled. He snatched his food from the counter and turned to Elyse and Isamu. "I guess I'll see you two kids around. I have some tacos to devour." Elyse watched Allen walk off feeling a bit perturbed by the whole interaction. Expectation did not meet reality when it came to that man.
Juanita called for a clan wide meeting later that day so everyone could have their voices heard about the crisis. The meeting started with Mr. Peterson taking the stand and giving a lecture on the history of the clan and its foundation based on preserving the sanctity of canon. At the end of his speech, he received a thunderous applause, but Elyse noted a significant amount of people abstaining from the applause. The tides in the clan were changing.
After Mr. Peterson's speech, a woman Elyse hardly knew took the stand with a team of people carrying a large board up to the stand behind her. The woman, Esha Naidu, was part of the clan council, so Elyse expected her to side with Mr. Peterson. Her expectations were not met. "According to the first law of Isamu's Theory of Accumulation," Esha started. Elyse jerked her head back in surprise and sought out Isamu in the crowd. He stood a distance away from her looking up at Esha in amusement. "The change in canon was inevitable from the very start. With so many people that don't belong here, the pressure built up against canon until it could no longer hold. We can continue trying to repair canon, but the fact is it's destined to collapse."
A roar erupted through the crowd as people loudly protested the idea that canon couldn't be saved. Arguments broke out in different clusters. "Hold up, hold up!" A loud voice carried out over the mutterings. An old man pushed his way through the crowd to stand in front of the stand. "The second law of Isamu's Theory of Accumulation states that reincarnated persons only have an effect on canon if we stray near a being or area mentioned in canon. If we all relocate far outside of the elemental nations, we'll stop affecting canon."
A second series of outraged roars swept through the crowd. The Nintendo clan might hate the idea of possibly altering canon, but they reacted more strongly against leaving their homes. They'd built their lives there, and they couldn't imagine living anywhere else but Sunagakure.
Elyse navigated her way through her clanmates to reach Isamu. "What is going on?" she whispered. "Why the hell are they talking about a theory with your name in it?"
"Well," Isamu started. "I mentioned my theory to a few people, and they ran with it. Before I knew what was going on, the theory had a name and three laws attached to it. They started using it in clan arguments."
"It's been one full day. How can they already use the made up theory in arguments after only a day of existence?"
Isamu shrugged. "The clan works efficiently when it comes to arguing about canon."
"So it seems," Elyse cut off as Juanita took the stage shunting Esha aside.
"Everybody quiet," Juanita demanded. Abruptly, the noise died down. "Thank you. Esha has the stage right now, and I would appreciate it if everyone let her have her say without interruption from this point on. These are crucial times in our clan. We need to be at our best right now. If we can't even stand together to have a civil discourse, how can we manage to restore canon or change the world for the better? Whatever option we end up choosing, we will need to be united. If we break apart now, we have no hope when we end up facing more arduous trials. So Esha, please continue."
The crowd cheered for Juanita's words as Esha stepped back into center stage. "Thank you, Juanita, for your words." She then addressed the crowd. "As you can see from the chart in the upper right hand corner of the board behind me, four out of five Sunans surveyed say they prefer to not enter a fourth shinobi world war within the next five years."
Elyse stopped listening to Esha's words as Diane approached her and Isamu. Elyse looked over Diane. She didn't look well. Diane's face was stuck in a constantly morose expression, and she had dark circles under her eyes as if she hadn't slept in days. Elyse decided to just ask her. "Diane, when did you last sleep?"
The corner of Diane's mouth twitched upwards. "I pulled an all nighter last night, but I slept the night before that." Elyse opened her mouth to show more of her concern, but Diane barreled on. "I need to talk to the two of you. Away from here. Somewhere private."
Elyse caught Isamu's gaze. He looked as worried as she felt. "I never thought you would willingly miss a clan meeting," Isamu said to Diane.
Diane just shook her head and started moving through the crowd. "Come on. It's important."
Elyse weaved through the crowd behind Diane as potential reasons for Diane's impromptu call for a private talk bounced around her head. Diane looked pretty upset. Maybe she heard somewhere that Lee got the idea for world domination into his head. Before Elyse guessed where they were going, she realized Diane brought her and Isamu to Carpaccio's.
"Why are we going to an Italian restaurant to talk?" Elyse asked feeling a great sense of deja vu.
"I don't know. It just felt right," Diane muttered opening the door to the restaurant and holding it open. Elyse and Isamu slipped in and took a seat at the closest table.
"Alright. What's this about?" Elyse asked as Diane took her own seat.
"I've been doing a lot of thinking since the change," Diane began slowly making sure to meet both Elyse's and Isamu's gazes intermittently. "When it first happened, I felt afraid and guilty. I was sure that we had caused it, and I hated myself for it. I loathe to admit it, but I was angry with you two too. We all talked to canon characters, and none of us made an effort to stop each other. It was careless, and we were paying the consequences for our mistakes.
"Once I got over the self blame, I started thinking about what those consequences actually were. That was what I feared most. My whole life I knew what was going to happen in the future. I felt assured in the stability of my life because I felt that nothing unexpected could get thrown in my way. It was naive, I know, especially since the future I knew had little to do with the day to day going ons of my own life, but that's how I felt. When that knowledge was ripped away from me, I was lost. I didn't know how to continue on without knowing the future, but then I thought that's what your lives were like before you were reincarnated. That's how life is for anyone not in our clan.
"When I came to that epiphany, I started wondering why I cared so much about canon. Was it just because I loved the story so much? Was it because I was clinging to the comfort provided to me by an outlined future? Or was it due to the textbook answer that preserving canon was necessary to save the world from Kaguya, Madara, and the like? In the end, I decided it was a little bit of all three, so I broke down each reason one by one.
"I loved the story, but that didn't mean I had to live it. Reliving it would be like rereading the manga albeit more like an interactive novel. I didn't need to go through the story on my own, I've already picked apart every inch of the story. As for the comfort my knowledge of the future brought me, well, like I already said, I can get over it. Most people don't have that comfort.
"That just left me with the worry that the change endangered the world. I didn't have a solution to that problem until we got back to the compound, and I heard all the arguments for the clan to get more involved in the world. We, and by we I mean the whole clan in this case, we are the ones that ruined canon. It's up to us to limit the damage as much as possible. We have to stop the enemies."
Elyse and Isamu sat in a stunned silence as Diane finished baring her soul to him. Elyse could hardly believe her ears. Diane was one of the last people she expected to promote further altering canon. "Diane, are you sure this is what you want?" Elyse had to make sure.
Diane nodded vigorously. "I've never been more sure of anything in my life."
"You should tell the crowd outside everything you just told us," Isamu said once he broke out of the stupor. "I think you'll be able to sway some people with her words."
Diane shook her head. "No. Think about it. How long did it take the clan to make a decision after we all thought Sasuke ate breakfast? If we leave a decision this big to the clan, we could end up sitting around doing nothing for years. It's up to us, the three of us and whoever else we can get that might want to take up this mission."
Elyse suddenly found it hard to breathe. Despite her irritation with the clan for not preventing some of the more undesirable canon events, Elyse had never considered putting a stop to them herself. Maybe she had been a hypocrite the entirety of her second life. "We're just genin. What can we do?" Elyse felt ashamed of herself, but she didn't want to die this time.
"We're at least high chunin level," Diane disputed. "And we know our enemies' weaknesses maybe better than they do themselves. We can do this."
Elyse took a deep breath. This was what she wanted the whole time, for someone to stop the atrocities they knew were coming. She couldn't back out when it was her that had to risk her life. "Ok. I'm in, but we're asking Allen to join us. I'd feel a thousand times better about this if we had an S rank ninja on our team."
Diane furrowed her brows. "Who the hell is Allen?"
"That's the name Kisame goes by now. It's his old name," Elyse explained. Diane's answering expression could only be described as unnerved.
"That's… strange. Will he want to go with us?" Elyse shrugged. She knew Allen just wanted to be a chef, but he also would continue to get pestered by the clan for as long as he stayed in the compound. Maybe they could offer Allen a position as chef for the team.
"What about you?" Diane directed her question at Isamu who hadn't thrown in his support yet. "Are you coming with us?"
"Well, I'm certainly not staying here while you two go gallivanting off to do whatever," Isamu said. "But if Elyse can choose someone to ask to go with us then I am too. I want to ask Ryuu to join us."
"Ryuu?" Elyse asked incredulously. "The son of the man who preaches the sanctity of canon to children for a profession? The son of the man that cares more about canon than anyone else in a clan full of people obsessed with canon?"
"That's the one," Isamu confirmed.
"Sure. I highly doubt he'll want to go, but we should at least ask our sensei," Diane agreed before Elyse could express her disapproval further. "Let's go now."
Convincing Allen to go with them was easy especially after Elyse offered to let him be the chef of the trip. "I haven't gotten to cook for others in so long," Allen said wistfully. "And it will be nice to get away from the barrage of questions about the Akatsuki.
Ryuu was even easier much to Elyse's and Diane's surprise. As soon as Diane explained her plan to him, he said, "Ok. I'm in."
"You know you won't get paid for this, right?" Elyse asked.
Ryuu chuckled. "Yes, I do know that."
"But what about your dad?" Elyse added. "You'll be going against everything he teaches."
"Consider it a bit of teenage rebellion," Ryuu said.
"You're almost 40," Diane said flatly in a way that made Elyse feel like the real Diane was back.
"Midlife crisis then," Ryuu said dismissively. "So, shall we go then? While everyone's distracted by the clan meeting? Or should we wait to say our goodbyes?"
"I'd rather leave Suna than later," Isamu answered quickly. Diane groaned loudly accompanied by a groan from Allen. Elyse laughed loudly at their displeasure.
"Ok!" she said a bit more giddy than she had felt just moments before. "Let's get this show on the road."
Under the cover of the early evening sun, the five left the compound first then the gates of Suna to take on canon head on.
.