Author's notes/disclaimer: Naruto is owned by Masashi Kishimoto, not me. Mentions of Hashirama/Madara/Mito, Kakashi/Rin/Obito, Shisui/Itachi/Izumi, and past/maybefuture?!Mikoto/Kushina. Basically, all you need to know for this AU is no Uchiha massacre, Third Hokage instead of the Fourth Hokage died during the Kyuubi Attack, and Mikoto is secretly a criminal mastermind. As of yet, this has no set plot and is suffering from timeline-what-timeline?
Much love to anyone that reviewed/favorited/followed.
In hindsight, Itachi decides, while rash, his decision to fetch Great Uncle Madara after the Incident with That Nara Boy is one of his better ones. Nothing puts down an attempted invasion like an enraged octogenarian bashing in skulls with his cane. Or stabbing a rather alarmed Oto-nin when it turns out his cane has a sword hidden inside of it. As well as a giant war fan … But of course. It is Great Uncle Madara after all, Itachi reminds himself.
Suddenly, Great Uncle's head snaps like an Inuzaka ninken catching sniff on an intoxicating scent, white hair untamed by any brush swishing behind him. His nostrils flare. "Hashirama" he breathes.
Madara begins to gallop towards the black shield that currently encloses the Fourth Hokage. Itachi quickly calculates the imminent property damage and hurriedly follows his uncle. How is that a man four times his age wearing chakra-restricting cuffs can get around so quickly Itachi does not know. The elders these days will give Itachi grey hairs before he turns twenty. Itachi is sure they were not like this in his parent's generation. Perhaps he should take that vacation to the rural spa with the nice onsen Shisui is always telling him about.
There is a clash and boom and then the sky roars. For the first time in his life, Itachi is dumbstruck. What on earth is that? Is Great Uncle Madara's giant Susanoo that broke down a supposedly impenetrable shield blushing? Pondering this, Itachi artfully dodges a bothersome, passing-by Sand-nin who tries to gut him. He hears a sickening crunch and looks reproachfully up at Shisui.
"Really Shisui," Itachi chides, doing a back-flip to all the better throw four shruiken to non-lethally disable twelve approaching opponents, "you needn't be so violent. It's unnecessary to exert that much force to disable a low-level jounin. He was at most A-rank."
Shisui's lips pull up into a crooked grin and he reaches out a hand to flip Itachi's ponytail. "An A-rank is a low-level jounin now?" he asks, arching a brow, "Only you Itachi. You are, after all, exceptional." Shisui wraps his fingers further into Itachi's hair and leans forward.
As per usual. Shisui's flirting is interrupted as his head is flattened by a one Uchiha Izumi's manicured feet as she dives gracefully down from the sky seemingly out of nowhere. Tossing her hair in a picturesque flip that would not have been shabby for a professional hair model, Izumi discretely pulls a poisoned senbon from the depths of her bosom and lobs it at an incoming Suna chunin.
"Oh Shisui-kun," Izumi simpers innocently as she treads on Shisui's face, "I didn't see you there. And Itachi, I had no idea you were going to be here. You look a bit peaky. Why don't we sit down and have some dango? We can even share with Shisui-kun if you'd like." She flutters her eyelashes, conveniently ignoring the combustion only thirty yards away and what appears to be Great Uncle Madara flirting with the reanimated corpse of the First Hokage.
Shisui, face pressed into the pavement of the arena, groans what appears to be an affirmative.
Itachi sighs. Perhaps Shisui had a point when he said all Uchiha women are tiny and sweet and utterly devious.
Except for his Satsuki. While clearly very tiny, sweet, sugary, and every nice, Itachi's baby sister kills her foes outright, no tricks needed. His Satsuki does not have a devious bone in her body, fighting with dignity and honor as befits the perfect Uchiha.
…
Satsuki, curse seal writhing and body near collapsing, pulls a hunk of red hair and then throws a handful of sand in her opponent's face to blind her. Sometimes, Satsuki acknowledges, one must fight dirty when it is the last remaining option. Though Satsuki also acknowledges she has no problem with fighting dirty as her first option either. Unlike certain blondes. Honestly, who wears orange in the middle of what was supposed to be a stealth mission when they were supposed to be evading a psychopathic Sannin? It is the moron's fault that this redheaded nuisance discovered them and Satsuki is in this mess in the first place.
Then, the thought finally hits Satsuki. It is very, very incredibly stupid to throw sand in the face of someone who uses sand as her main defense. And as her main offense. To crush people …. Satsuki would rather not be crushed right now and she just literally has given this deranged, over-mascaraed, stalking Sunan lunatic more sand to crush her with.
"Well shit," Satsuki mutters. Time for Plan B: electrocute the ginger and then set her on fire if all else fails. Satsuki decides she likes this plan.
"CHIDORI!" Satsuki snarls, lips pushing backwards as she plunges her lightning-gloved hand into the sand shield. It cuts through like butter and grazes Ginger's shoulder. Oh yes.
"BLOOD! BLOOD!" the Ginger exclaims, breathing heavily as more sand begins to cluster around her, "I'M BLEEDING! BLOOD! THE AGOONY!"
Satsuki eyes the ginger dubiously. This is supposed to be the fight where Satsuki tests her mettle and sees whether she is strong enough to Avenge and cut Orochimaru into small enough pieces to hand-feed to his own snakes. Ginger needs to get herself together or this will all be for nothing.
Satsuki puts on her best smirk and sneers, "Oi, for fuck's sake fire-crotch, get your shit together. You act as if you've never bled before. Haven't you ever had your period before? Trust me. If you had, then you'd know true suffering."
At this, the Ginger seems to calm down for a second as she utters a flat, "What?'
"Your period? You know? When hunks of your uterus fall out through your vagina as a signal that your body is ready to bear a passel of screaming brats," Satsuki trails off, unsure of how to better explain this. Don't they have sexual education units in the Academy at Suna?
At Ginger's confused and then enraged look, Satsuki decides they, in fact, do not. Satsuki remembers her trauma from the stilted euphemism of "crimson peony blossoms coming to bloom" she received at the Academy before Mikoto cleared matters up for her.
"You're lying," Ginger intones, voice going even flatter—something Satsuki would have thought impossible had she not heard it happen right now.
"Am not," Satsuki eloquently counters as she blows a fireball in Ginger's face. Ginger roars and a wall of sand rises. Satsuki stares in awe. She feels this gut-punch, wrenching, sinking feeling starting in her chest and going down to her stomach where something bubbles and twists like she's falling and floating at the same time. The blood under skin feels static-y and pulsing; Satsuki feels goose bumps form and her hair on her arms rise. Satsuki has never felt like this. Satsuki has never met anyone like this before. She wants to be this, to devour this. Whatever this is.
"Who are you? Why are you the way you are?" Satsuki grunts, eyeing the Ginger suspiciously. This must be genjutsu of some sort.
Ginger pauses before she says, "My name is besides the point. The only reason for being is one thing: killing you. Everything else besides the point and without a purpose. There is nothing else."
Satsuki scoffs, "Killing me? That's stupid, idiot. If that is your entire purpose, you need to find a better one than that. You literally started stalking me and talking about eyes and hell and loneliness and some other crap. If that's what you've been doing for the last twelve years, no wonder you're so messed up. I pity you."
Ginger goes deathly still and the sand falls around her. Satsuki knows she should know fear but all she feels dull surprise at what she has said. It is probably the most she has said to someone outside of family since entering adolescence without insulting up to eight generations of their lineage, their intelligence, or their general integrity as human beings.
For some reason, Satsuki continues, "If you want a purpose, what about your family? I want to Avenge, but not because I'm stalking someone. Orochimaru, he crippled my father, killed my baby sisters when they were still in Mother's belly. She hasn't smiled since." Satsuki has never told anyone this, even Itachi.
Ginger moves closer, leaning into Satsuki's face. Satsuki's body tenses and relaxes at the same time. Her eyes flutter close. Oh, oh this must be like that moment Great Uncle Madara was telling her about—the moment he realized he was in love with an idiotically happy Senju in the middle of a death-match to destroy the village. A death-match and village-destruction attempt that failed, Great Uncle had admitted, but that was besides the point. It was the love at first fight that had mattered.
Ginger hisses in Satsuki's ear, "I'm going to kill you." Then, sand begins to pile around Satuski's body. Wait, this isn't how this is supposed to be going, Satsuki thinks.
Satsuki begins to struggle and prepare for her imminent demise when she hears some banging and yelling. Oh, no, anything but this. Satsuki will never hear then end of it if she is rescued by the moron.
"Back off, Raccoon-Eyes," twenty Narukos bellow in cacophony that will give Satsuki nightmares for decades to come, "Satsuki-bitch is my bitch and no one else's."
Somewhere in the distance, Satsuki hears Sakura huffing, "Naruko, wait up! You can't just go into a fight without plan—oh you already have then…well, okay then. Why do I even bother?"
Satsuki manages to wiggle around enough to give Naruko—well one of the Narukos. When Satsuki finds out whoever invented a jutsu that could multiply stupid, there will be reckoning— and Sakura a heated glare. Can't the orange fungus she's interrupting something?
…
On the outskirts of the village, in a rather lovely rural teahouse, Mikoto's delicate porcelain cup cracks. That can never be a good sign. She hopes that Sakumo's boy hasn't decided to break up with dear nephew Obito and that sweet Nohara girl again. The collateral damage of fight between a lover's spat when one of the people has a Rinnegan is rather large. No, that cannot be it; Obito was out of the village on a mission. Mikoto sets down her teacup reluctantly and looks to a heavily pregnant Kushina.
"Perhaps we should return to see how the chunin exams are going, Kushina dear?" she asks.
"Yes, I needta make sure Minato isn't wrecking my village, ya know!" Kushina declares excitedly. She begins to hum excitedly as she cracks her knuckles.
Mikoto shakes her head but begins caressing the katana on her back ominously. If the men in her family have decided to act up again and ruin her darling Satsuki's moment of glory, there will be reckoning.
…
While Orochimaru and the First, Second, and Third Hokages are indeed fearsome foes, the Fourth Hokage, an aged Great Uncle Madara, Itachi, and Itachi's unwanted harem are able to match them blow for blow, albeit barely. The real turning point, however, seems to come when Great Uncle Madara pulls his back as he is heaving his giant war fan.
The reanimated corpse of the First Hokage freezes. "Mada-chan?" is the tentative question.
"Hashi-kun," Madara says, shielding his wrinkled face, "I didn't want you to see me like this."
Itachi blinks at this scene, struck speechless for the second time that day. If his eyes don't mistake him, the undead God of Shinobi is currently cradling who was once known as Death's Scourge in his arms and giving him a chaste kiss on the top of his head … Itachi's brain is not even sure how to begin to process this.
"Hashi-kun," as Great Uncle Madara called him, gently sets down his old lover—Itachi's brain commits suicide at this thought—and turns to face the errant Sannin. Black clouds begin to build ominously over his head. "You made Mada-chan overexert himself," snarls the enraged First Hokage as he charges at Orochimaru.
The battle is decided rather quickly after that.
In the end, the Fourth Hokage, two other rather sheepish-looking Hokage-zombies, Itachi, and Itachi's still unwanted harem are left looking studiously at the ground as the third Hokage-zombie exuberantly tries to shove his tongue down his lover's—Itachi's brain is still in its death throes and screams internally at this word once again—throat.
Itachi clears his throat and jerks his head to the other side of the stadium. "Wouldn't it be prudent to check for civilian survivors?" he asks the fellow appalled on-lookers, searching for any, any reason to escape the spectacle before him. Minato and the rest of the company hastily agree.
"Be careful with my bones, they're more brittle these days, you witless Senju dirt-clod," Itachi hears Great Uncle Madara moan as they hurry away .
"Oh, Mada-chan, you really do love me," the First Hokage agrees happily.
It seems like they are having a very private moment.
The horrible realization then hits Itachi that it has been five minutes since he last thought of his foolish little sister. How could he? Where is she? What is happening to her right now? For all Itachi knows, Satsuki could be being traumatized for life. Someone could be invading her personal bubble.
…
Satsuki struggles in Naruko's arms as the blonde triumphantly skips away from the destruction of her and Gaara's fight. Naruko happily ignores Satsuki before finally tossing her over her shoulder to better facilitate enthusiastic hand-gesturing as she tell Gaara about the eight wonder of the world which is Ichiraku Ramen.
"Ummm, Naruko," a hesitant Sakura calls out as she trails a few yards away from the potential blast radius, "maybe it's a good idea to put the angry Satsuki down if her left eye is twitching. Usually, that isn't a good sign now, is it?"
"But Sakura-chaaan," Naruko whines, blonde ponytails that Satsuki will set on fire bouncing, "Satsuki-bitch is too weak even to walk right now." Naruko turns to Gaara and whispers informatively. "You gotta be gentle when playing with people that don't have bijou inside them, ya know, Gaara, especially Satsuki-bitch. She's vicious so she'll win if she can nab ya with a nasty hit the first fours hours or so, but after that she starts getting worn out and is too much of a prissy ice queen to say anything. You understand?"
Gaara continues to ignore Naruko as she has since the dust from their fight settled twenty minutes ago, and Satsuki seethes that someone who talks like an illiterate peasant thinks that they can dictate her life. Satsuki does not have to put up with this. Wait, why is Satsuki putting up with this? Oh yes, Satsuki's chakra is so depleted that she has to be carried and cannot even fight back when being draped across Uzumaki's shoulder like some kind of designer Uchiha outerwear. Never again, Satsuki promises herself.
Oblivious, the moron continues with a monologue of Naruko's Guide to Dealing With Not-Even-That-Pretty-Anyways Uchihas and blabbers increasingly nonsensical poppycock, "Actually, if you wanna fight with her again, Raccoon Eyes, I'll have to make rules and be there to make sure you ain't too rough on her. She's delicate. Like she can electrocute you to death, but if you'd trying to crush her to death like you did with me, she'd die. I don't want Satsuki-bitch to die. She's mine; she's my best friend."
Exhausted, beaten, deprived of her fist kiss, this is the last straw for Satsuki. Being called the moron's friend. No. No. Satsuki's right eye begins twitching as well. Only the ever-observant Sakura is aware of the slight change and is able to dive for cover before the resulting blow-up.
Surprisingly, it is this outburst that draws the attention of nearby Leaf jounin who seemed to be absent for the entirety of the epic battle between two giant chakra monsters just thirty minutes before.
…
As Mikoto strides in behind a waddling Kushina to smoldering wreckage of what was once the chunin exam, she is met by a sight horrible for any eyes to behold.
That does not even begin to refer to whatever that scene with Great Uncle Madara going on the corner is. No, it is referring to the fact that her baby girl is upset, and the ones she tasked with watching over her daughter and her little teammates are obviously inadequate at even comforting them.
A pale Satsuki is shaking ever so-slightly in Itachi's arms, grunting about friendship and the horror. Naruko, hair rumpled and one eye black, seems similarly upset and noisily sobs into an alarmed Minato's arms, "Whhy won't she love me? Whhhhhy? I just wanna be rivals forever and always." And then there is that red-haired child who has been sending her baby love notes disguised as death threats and a wide-eyed Sakura eyeing Great Uncle Madara and—is that "Great Uncle Hashi" as well?— doing something they are far too old to be doing in the first place. Honestly, they should know better.
Mikoto closes her eyes and counts to ten internally. Ahhh there, much better.
"Why did I ever break up you? This would never happen if we were still dating," Mikoto asks Kushina, remembering the simple days of genin-hood when scraped knees and chunin exams that were not a cover for a foreign invasion were their only problem.
Kushina tilts her head and ponder this before responding, "I don't know. Though I guess you were only ten at the time, ya know."
Mikoto nods her head soberly—oh, if only she had known the mistakes she had made at ten would haunt her for the rest of her lifetime—and dutifully ignores Kushina as she begins to leer. Really, Kushina has become much more touchy-feely since her pregnancy began; perhaps it was not a good idea to mention anything that could put ideas in her head. A Kushina with ideas is—
"Neee, Mikoto-chan, if you ever want to start dating again, you and Fugaku are welcome to join Minato and me," Kushina croons, eyebrows waggling in what Mikoto supposes is a seductive manner. Mikoto hesitates for a second before deciding it is not prudent to seduce the Hokage and the Hokage's wife when the village is under military lockdown. There will be more convenient times to do that in the future. Also, Mikoto must convince Fugaku first. It shouldn't be the hard; after all, if her Itachi is anything to go by, the Uchiha genetic proclivity towards maintaining harems and/or complicated love triangles is still going strong in the latest generation. Mikoto deserves (will have) one as well. She must do right be Grandfather Izuna's memory.
"Later, Kushina, and not in front of the children," hisses Mikoto, "Right now, we must consider our priorities. You tend to the children, and I'll … deal with Great Uncles Hashi and Madara."
Kushina narrows her eyes but nods, waddling as quickly as her swollen feet can take her to Minato and the teary Naruko. Mikoto takes a second to appreciate the glory of all that red hair swinging as it moves away before turning to her wayward father figure. She clears her throat. Great Uncle Hashi finally lifts his head and looks rather alarmed.
"Uhhhh, Mikoto-chan, you see Uncle Mada-chan and I are just wrestling," the esteemed First Hokage splutters, trying to shield his unprotected parts with the wreckage of nearby building. Madara simply purses his lips into something that would be called a pout if he didn't have an estimated body count in the quadruple digits.
"Just like that time when you were 'naked sparring' in the middle of the garden when I was four?" Mikoto questions sweetly. Hashirama and Madara begin spluttering simultaneously. Mikoto's smile somehow grows sweeter and more deadly at once. She weaves three hand-signs and the two decrepit delinquents in front of her are doused in water.
In the distances, Mikoto hears Kushina bellow, "YOU HAD ONE JOB MINATO! DON'T EXPLODE THE VILLAGE WHILE I'M AWAY!"
Oh, sweet music. Mikoto, after all, is an Avenger, a giver of retribution. Whoever caused this will given their retribution indeed. There will be reckoning.
And people said Satsuki and Itachi got it from their father. Mikoto gently laughs and pulls out her katana.