Chapter 71 - Cavatina Posato
Karin ran her eyes over three faces of both wide and narrow-eyed confusion.
She spoke before Sakura could. "No questions. You promised. Besides, I am going to explain, okay? As best as I can."
Sakura just nodded, solemnly.
And Karin continued.
"This whole project—these children—they're my creations. All of them." She lowered her eyes. "I… cloned each of them from tissue samples, and afterwards used my body as a surrogate to grow them."
This, she said, for Sakura's sake. Because even she could notice the hard glossing-over in Naruto and Sasuke's expressions.
(She tried not to savor the look of badly-disguised awe on Sakura's face, however.)
"Nobody forced me to do this. I began this project knowing full-well what I'd have to do, what it would do to me. I've experienced my fair share of pain. I've almost died for this, actually. But I do not regret any of it, okay?"
Her hand tightened around Ooda's as she said this.
"To be completely honest, I began this for Sasuke's sake, at first," she said, quietly, only allowing him the slightest look, averting her eyes before he could change his expression. "I got this idea in my head that if I managed to figure out how to clone a human being, then maybe I could help in reviving the Uchiha clan. I was kind of a different person back then, okay? I had different dreams.
"I got the idea when I was helping gut out the labs, from some of the reports we'd found. They were just… speculations, on his part, but I thought if I worked hard enough that I'd be able to succeed where he didn't. I mean… I always knew I'd be using my own body for this. You can't just… grow a human in a jar, okay? Even I know that's impossible. And I know my body. I could custom-tailor medicines, hormones, treatments to fit my own needs. I would be successful where he wasn't, because he relied too heavily on quantity over quality, treating every surrogate the same. When he used them, anyways.
"So I waited a few years for things to quiet down. I got my clinic set up, I made my presence in the village, got the locals to like me, made good with the refugees and runaways. And at night I did research. I had more than enough materials on-hand from the labs, and whatever funding I managed to get from the local government, which I justified as funds for my clinic. Practiced cell-culturing. I took a sample of tissue from my ovaries and grew an extra one outside of me, for egg cases. I remember being so excited, back then, because my progress was so quick. Honestly, I was just riding off of Sensei's discoveries. Improving things, here and there. But it wasn't really true progress.
"Eventually, I figured I was ready, so I began preparing myself to carry the first clone. The control, as it were. I began gaining weight, since… well, I was kind of way too skinny to…" She paused. "…nurture a little one, back then. It'd also make the pregnancy easier to conceal, I figured.
"I don't know… why I chose Sensei to clone, first. Again, I was… kind of a different person back then, okay? I wouldn't change my decision, though, even if I wanted to," she added, strongly. "I wouldn't. What's done is done, anyways, okay?"
Ooda kept his head down, though she gave him as comforting a glance as she could.
Suigetsu, from the wall, looked as worried as he could be.
She cleared her throat. Took a moment to gauge her other audience.
Sasuke looked vaguely horrified. Or disgusted. Or both.
Sakura's eyes were still unreadably wide, as easily interpreted as disbelief, amazement, or fear.
Naruto just looked confused.
She continued.
"It took me… three, four tries to finally get it right. The right levels of hormones, to prevent rejection, the right body mass... I… can't even begin to describe how excited I was when I tested my blood and finally got that positive readout, and when two, three months passed and nothing happened. Sakura, I… know you have children, so perhaps you can, I don't know... relate a little, on that level."
She looked up, a half-smile of recollection on her face.
"Because when I first felt Ooda moving, it really started to hit me, what I was doing. That I was creating something that was… alive. It wasn't some hypothetical, it was a real thing, okay?"
She gave Ooda another comforting glance, rubbing his hand with her thumb.
"Didn't really affect me until much later, though. Maybe because this was my first. The little one kept growing. The village folks didn't… really say anything about it. They never have. Honestly, if anyone's noticed then they probably respect me enough to leave me alone about it.
"I was due in December, with Ooda. And I practically counted down the days. I was so… naïve back then, okay. Because the sooner the little one was out of me, I figured, the sooner I'd be able to start with the next one." She sighed. "If only it were so easy.
"Honestly, I almost want to go back in time and slap myself for being such a fool about it. I can remember, when I finally went into labor, I kept… trying to keep a record of everything, in a little journal. Like it was an experiment." Another sigh, a shake of the head. "An experiment, okay… I learned my lesson that night, I suppose," she added, almost sarcastically. "It's one thing to be an outside observer but another thing entirely to be brought to your knees by contractions and crying because it hurt so bad and you didn't expect it."
Sakura covered her mouth with shaking fingers.
Karin continued, softly, trying to keep her own voice from shaking too badly.
"I can't believe it took that long for me to really realize what I was doing, what I'd done, what I really had to do, okay. I mean, before then, it was almost like I'd… assumed that Ooda would just spring out of my body fully-formed and he'd be able to take care of himself."
She paused for several deep breaths.
"…I can remember the exact thought that went through my head, when Ooda finally came out, when that was all over. Looking at him there, it just… there, it hit me that this wasn't—an experiment, that this wasn't that simple, okay. This was a person, a helpless little person, and I had to take care of him." She scoffed at herself. "I was so shocked by how small he was, how real he was, that it was all I could really think about for the first few minutes, before I finally had the sense to pick him up off the ground and… well, I don't need to elaborate…
"Frankly, I was terrified. All of that just… fell down on top of me. Looking back, I can't believe that it didn't stop me. Sometimes I think that it should have, that I should have just stopped with Ooda and raised him and have that be the end of it. I was only nineteen…! Maybe that has something to do with it, that I was so young. I thought I could do anything.
"I guess I learned that lesson pretty quickly, too."
She tilted her head and her eyebrows slightly sideways.
"Ooda, you were such a cooperative little one, but you were still a baby, okay? And you cried so much I didn't know what to do, sometimes. And all the diapers and the feeding… Somehow I managed. A small miracle, that. But then again, I had the village to help. They all bought into the story I cooked up, that you were a foundling. Or maybe they didn't and they were just humoring me and they thought that you were some fatherless child and they pitied me for it. I don't know, okay.
"I had almost no time for research because taking care of him was so… time-consuming. And it frustrated me so much, almost as much as it scared me. Since I had to take care of him. I'd have to take care of any other clone I made, wouldn't I? And I'd have to justify having them around, or exposing myself, or…"
Another pause, another breath, another moment of gathered composure.
Ooda put his other hand on top of his mother's, and nodded at her.
She continued, looking at Sakura, and not him.
"Some nights it just got overwhelming. But… I'd look at Ooda and how… perfect he was and, even with all the fear and the frustration, he reminded me why I was doing this in the first place. Reminded me what I had done. I'd succeeded, once. I'd done perfectly. I could do this, okay?
"I had to keep going, so I did.
"I waited until maybe a half a year after Ooda was born before I tried again, this time with an Uchiha. I'd always intended to… use Itachi's DNA for my first, in that instance. Sensei had a small stockpile of his hair and some flesh samples left in the labs—he had samples from every member of the Akatsuki, and then some, okay. I suppose I thought that, if I managed to find a successful method, I'd be able to go back to Konoha and get more genetic material. Foolish of me, I figure, now.
"I got stopped pretty early on, though. No matter what I tried, I kept… miscarrying. This went on for months. It exhausted me and it made me so—angry. I didn't know what I was doing wrong. Was I stressed because of Ooda? Because by then he was eating… solid food, sleeping through the night, he was fine… And my work in the village wasn't exactly taxing, okay.
"So I tried again, with another subject. I had a fairly large library of genetic samples to choose from. And I made a promise, from the very start, from the very start, to only clone the dead. Never the living. Never the living. I have principles.
"Even then I had a hypothesis that maybe my troubles had to do with the Sharingan—the kekkei genkai. So I chose the most… normal subject I could find."
She found it very hard to look at Naruto, even though it was necessary.
"I chose Jiraiya. And it was a success. Though there was a bit of a hiccup halfway through," she added, quickly, snapping her eyes to Suigetsu.
"What, you're talking about me?" he said, though there were pauses in miniature in his words, like he was talking out of line.
"Yes, you," Karin said. "Remember, your arm, okay? I was maybe five months gone with Kurunari when you almost ruined everything."
"I didn't ruin anything."
"I… I know you didn't," Karin said, trying not to look at Naruto, what with the name slipping out of her. She knew what it meant to him. "You ended up helping, in the long run." Back to her audience. "Suigetsu discovered me midway through that second pregnancy and, well. I almost decided to stop right there, after that, because he took it so badly."
"You can't blame me."
"I'm not," Karin said. "It was a good slap in the face, though. I mean, you remember how you acted, right?"
"…yeah, I remember."
"Because before that I was just in this little isolated bubble. I thought everyone would be as excited as I was, that they'd accept it when I finally went public. You showed me otherwise."
(There was an unspoken thank-you-it-was-nothing exchange between them, in the pause.)
"So I had to rethink things. Restructure. I got him to help me—we made a deal, okay? I made a promise to… one day produce a Hozuki for him. And in return he stayed quiet and ran errands for me, here and there."
Suigetsu took a moment to turn his head toward the sleeping boy beside him, though Karin didn't.
"I did want to continue with the project but I figured that I couldn't keep the children with me, because that would… be bad. It would attract attention. And I finally sort of understood that the public probably wouldn't approve. I needed to stay hidden and I needed them to stay hidden and safe. So that became Suigetsu's job, delivering the children to other homes after they were born. Though it took a bit of… wrangling."
"You know I've apologized a ton for that, will you ever let it go?"
"No," Karin said. "Not really."
"But we got better at it," Suigetsu was quick to add.
"Yeah. After I started running things," Karin said.
Suigetsu did not object.
"If I'd had it my way, I'd have had Kurunari put into a far more loving home. So he wouldn't have had to… suffer like I know he has. But…"
And she finally brought herself to look at Naruto.
His face was still filled with neutral confusion, though worry was also very apparent there.
"But from what I've gathered, Naruto, you've been very, very good to him, and I can't tell you enough how grateful I am for that, okay?"
He just nodded.
"Kurunari was… likewise fairly complication-free. I kept him for three months so it'd be easier for him to survive any sort of journey. Kept him in a room below the clinic that I repurposed as a nursery and checked on him in-between patients. And… Ooda you were so little, then you probably don't even remember, but you were so curious about him, always trying to poke your head in there and bother him." A half-smile, half-laugh. "You were two years old when he was born. Already talking so much.
"I gave another try at an Uchiha clone, after I'd given myself enough time to recover. A good six months. Again, it was… a failure. Suigetsu, of all people encouraged me to keep going."
"Yeah, 'cos, well, you made a promise to me and I told you to maybe not focus so much on that Uchiha whatever," he said, sitting back a little. He put a hand on Shingetsu's gently rising and falling back.
"Yeah. I know," she said. "You got me on a different path."
(Another silent thank-you.)
"Suigetsu got the idea for me to give a try at other kekkei genkai, since I'd eventually have to learn how to foster them for the sake of my promise to him. And Orochimaru had samples on hand for certain… individuals with very rare gifts, but I didn't want to… go too far, okay. So he went and got some… material for me to experiment with. Suigetsu, I mean. Since I was having a bit of a difficult time getting Hozuki cells to stabilize, even in a petri dish.
"That… also ended in a failure at first. It was horrible. So I gave another try at a 'normal' subject, one without any sort of special bloodline, from outside of Orochimaru's library, just to make sure it was the bloodline and not the process that was at fault. Since, well, he didn't have much of an interest in 'normal' people, okay. Suigetsu was very enthusiastic about this one."
"Oh, shut up, so what if I was," Suigetsu said.
"…I never said it was a bad thing," Karin said. "The results were the same as Kurunari and Ooda. Fairly complication-free, though since it was my third I was more experienced, okay? I'd managed to mix my medicines better. I wasn't in as much discomfort, and the delivery was very easy.
"I named him Fuzan." A pause, as she considered, "Oh, I suppose you'll want to know where he came from too, okay… Well, his genetic material came from Momochi Zabuza. Suigetsu dug up his and Haku's graves to get me my material. He thought it was a good idea, okay?"
"Well, it was, I think."
"I never said it wasn't," Karin said. She cleared her throat. "I kept him for three months, just like Kurunari. And then Suigetsu brought him to his family, after scouting extensively and finding a safe area. I made sure he was more careful this time."
"And I was."
"Yes, you were. And I've had him check in on them as best he could, discretely, okay. Making sure they were being taken care of. Given… where he'd put Kurunari and the—ahem—situation with his relationship to Mist it was difficult to keep tabs on him, but Fuzan was easier."
"Once a month. That's how it's been," Suigetsu said.
Karin nodded. "And for a while after that, things were pretty quiet. Ooda turned five after Fuzan was born so I enrolled him in the local school, but that proved… troublesome." In a sudden, swift murmur, she added, "Darling, I won't say anything further, I promise, okay? I won't say anything further."
"Thanks, Mom…" His voice was barely audible.
"Following… that, I decided to educate Ooda myself. And that was less difficult than I'd imagined, since Ooda's such a… smart boy, he took to things very quickly. I suppose that turned out for the best, teaching him everything I knew, since he became such a help in the later little ones, okay. The best assistant I could ever ask for."
Ooda's smile was badly-fought against.
"I went back to research for a bit, after that. Trying to figure out what had gone wrong with the other little ones. The ones with kekkei genkai. I really did my research, okay. I started figuring that a lot of it had to do with hormonal levels, uterine environment… I thought, surely, I'd get it right the next time.
"But it was around this time that I was contacted by Taki Mikan. She and her husband were having severe difficulties in conceiving a child—this was entirely due to her uterine cancer, which Sensei had treated as a child. That was how she had found me, apparently. She had her husband's men do some digging, and they tracked me down. Surprisingly, she recognized me. But I guess that's to be expected, since I was there at the time of the treatment, okay.
"I told her that there was nothing I could do for her own body, since so much had been done to her already and I didn't want to cause any permanent damage. I mean, I'm an excellent doctor but I'm not a miracle-worker, okay? Mikan was very eager, however, so after a fair bit of discussion we came to an agreement. I wouldn't be able to give her a child that was biologically hers—her ovaries had to be removed in her treatment, which she was somewhat unaware of since she was so young when it happened and Sensei was probably unclear about if she was fertile still—but when I brought up the possibility of raising one of my own she got very excited and asked for me to elaborate.
"I suppose she had gotten it into her head that helping me out in this way was a more proper way of thanking me—and Sensei, I suppose—for saving her life all those years ago. I'll never understand, okay. Maybe she wanted to at least see if it was an option before she and her husband considered adopting, and this seemed like the next best thing. But the decision was made, and I told her that I would keep in contact with her about it.
"The only condition she had, really, was that she wanted a daughter. And Sensei… as wonderful as he was about treating women equally—Sasuke don't look at me like that, I'm not trying to excuse anything it's just the truth, okay," she added, daring to look directly at him for only a moment, "overall, the world outside of Sound wasn't nearly as accommodating in providing strong females. I didn't have much to choose from. So…"
And she sighed, again, bending her head and massaging her temples with her fingers and thumb. And when she looked up, she said, "Naruto, I'm so sorry that so much of this has to affect you personally, compared to everyone else. But I used your mother Kushina's genetic material in making Kiine. Sensei had a fair amount of her hair in his libraries."
Naruto's expression did not change, neutrally, worriedly confused.
Sakura, frankly, seemed more affected than he was.
Karin, after a few breaths, continued once more.
"Kiine gave me very little trouble, overall. Especially with Ooda helping. And I kept in touch with Mikan every step of the way, sending her progress reports and everything. And when Kiine was born she came by herself to collect.
"Naturally, the Taki family paid me very handsomely for my services, though discretely—I mean, really, if it was somehow discovered that I now had syndicate ties then my reputation would suffer and it'd be just very bad for me, okay. Though Mikan continued to stay in touch with me, asking how I was. She's been wonderful about everything. The money helped a lot, too, okay. It allowed for me to purchase better equipment for my clinic and my research. And the best part was that Mikan offered to pay for anything further that I needed."
"Also offered to give me work whenever I showed up to see how Kiine was doing, that was a plus," Suigetsu added.
Karin nodded. "I suppose that's why I had more success, after that point. I was finally able to afford equipment, chemicals and medicines for my." She swallowed. "Studies. I certainly needed them, okay. Especially with all the difficulties I had in nurturing an Uchiha embryo. But I pressed on, seeing if I could have success elsewhere. Again.
"After the Hozuki culture failed again I gave the material I had gotten from Haku a try. That… proved difficult. But doable. Yuki clan members have a lower body temperature than others, okay? Sensei had figured that out in his… encounters with them. So I had to lower mine in order to preserve the fetus using drugs and keeping my house chilled. I ended up succeeding when I conceived in the middle of winter. Funny how that works out."
(She said, not mentioning the innumerable, painful miscarriages that came when her body rose just a little too far above the comfort zone.)
(Yuki had given her hell, but he was not the worst.)
"Why I did this, I don't really know. Perhaps to prove to myself that I could succeed with an 'abnormal' clone, with at least one kekkei genkai. And Yuki was the result." A slight laugh. "Clever name, I know… But I couldn't think of anything else.
"We left him with the Taki clan, again, for a number of reasons. Mostly because I wanted him to be with a family that would accept his inevitable gifts and not shun him for it."
"Because that made Haku's life miserable. Even though times are different now," Suigetsu said, quietly.
"Yeah," Karin said. "I wrote to Mikan explaining that if Nobuhiro-san rejected him—and I chose him because Sensei was awful to him in the past and I wanted to see if this would make up for things a little, okay—that I trusted for her to take care of him. And I warned her about his gifts, and she was very wonderfully understanding. So when Yuki was, again, three months old, Suigetsu took him and brought him to the Taki. We were careful about it, though. Left him sort of as a foundling. I had Suigetsu write the note that came with him, since I thought someone might recognize my handwriting."
"Almost got caught," Suigetsu said, almost grumbling. "But it worked out."
"Yes, it worked out. Yuki was adopted and well-taken care of, Mikan was very eager to tell me. And that was that, okay."
She nodded, a few times, with an unaware smile.
"As… usual, I went back to work on trying to get an Uchiha to grow. Yuki gave me a lot of courage, I suppose, since he gave me so much trouble. But I had succeeded, okay. I did a lot of research trying to… pick apart what made Uchihas different. Came up with a lot of hypotheses.
"It was all in the hormones, I found. The release of chemicals during the pregnancy at abnormal intervals, compared to a normal gestation. I figured it had something to do with the fact that I was a non-Uchiha trying to grow a full-blooded Uchiha, okay. Since I'd heard about your successes in reproducing, Sasuke. Half-Uchiha probably don't have the same problems."
Sasuke, his arms crossed, tightened his hands.
"I tried for maybe two and a half years before getting it right. It was a challenge. And then, finally, I had Yakata."
She had to stop, stare at the ceiling, bite her lip.
"I almost didn't want to give him away. But I knew I had to. I… I couldn't have kept him. And we found a good family for him, okay? There was a village in the Land of Rice that Suigetsu had found where a lot of former… test subjects had come to settle. Tamina. Good people, but fearful. Satoko and Gishi especially, because…" She considered her words. "Largely because I had their files on hand and I knew what they'd gone through, in the past."
"Plus it was pretty obvious they really wanted a kid, at least to me," Suigetsu said, though stiffly.
"Yeah. I thought it was only fair to them. And I knew that Yakata would be in good hands, with them. And there was… one other factor."
And she looked at Sasuke, there, with very, very narrowed eyes.
"I did not want for you to meet him. Ever. This is why I chose the Land of Rice, okay? Why? Because I know you. You wouldn't want to go back. And because of that, you would probably never meet him. Do you have any idea how nervous I was when you came to me, saying you'd seen him? What I thought you would do because of it?" Her voice grew louder, louder. "You were not meant to meet, okay?"
Suigetsu, in an instant, was by her side, with a hand on her back. "Karin, hey. Calm down."
Though he gave Sasuke an unkind look of his own.
Sasuke tried not to look shaken.
Karin managed to slow her breath. Ooda patted her held hands.
"Mom, it's okay…"
"I know. I… I know."
Suigetsu did not leave her. Though he kept an eye on his son, sleeping by the wall.
"Really, I… never meant for any of these children to encounter people who knew where they had come from, okay? I can't even imagine how much trouble that would have caused. And believe me, Sasuke, I have questions for you after this about what you've been doing to that boy, okay?"
"Mom, hey…"
Karin flung another nasty glance in Sasuke's direction before going on. "After Yakata, I took a break. He'd left me very... fatigued. I tried to work on facilitating a Hozuki embryo. No success. Suigetsu got annoyed, some things happened, it's not worth talking about."
Suigetsu did not object.
"Point is, Shingetsu came afterward. Call him the result of compromise." Her face calmed itself quite suddenly as she regarded the boy by the wall with soft eyes. "He really caused me to rethink some things. Him and Suigetsu both. Interesting how you two seem to do that."
"Not like I'm trying, hey," Suigetsu said. He flashed his teeth in a slight parody of a condescending smile.
Karin smirked, looking up at him in return, and then back.
"After that I decided to change my goals entirely. It was no longer an issue of Uchiha or 'normal.' I didn't care about just Uchihas any more. It was giving dead bloodlines a… slight chance at reviving. I wasn't looking at bringing entire clans back, goodness, no. I'm only one person. But I wanted there to be at least that… tiny chance, okay? Kind of short-sighted, I suppose. Especially given how… limited I am. But I wanted to make a difference. Even a small one, okay.
"So I went through and chose my further subjects. Kimimaro, I decided, was next. He was already a rarity, when he was alive, and what happened to him was unfortunate. I was very hopeful."
Her pause went on for far too long.
"…the interesting thing about the process of cloning is that… not everything is exactly the same as it was in the original. Cells can still mutate and change in the process of growing. Phenotypes won't be the exact same, either, okay."
Another far-too-long pause.
Ooda was starting to shiver, and let go of his mother's hands to hold his fists close to his chest.
Karin put her hand on his shoulder, patting him a few times.
"Darling, it's okay. It's okay," she said, softly, before returning. "When I finally… managed to get Asaoto to take, I could not have anticipated that there was something… wrong with him, okay. None of us could have. None of us could have, Ooda," she added, now stroking his arm and some of his back. "It's okay. It's nobody's fault."
"I'm sorry, Mom…" Ooda said.
"No need to apologize, shh…" She continued on, not taking her hand off of him. "When I was seven months pregnant, Asaoto's ability manifested unexpectedly in utero and… I was very badly hurt. Lots of damage done to my internal organs. Ooda managed to save the both of us with emergency surgery, and later… organ transplants, but I was out of commission for months…"
Sakura broke her promise.
"Karin, oh… oh, no, so you mean that-"
Karin held up her other hand. Her eyes were very tired, but also understanding. "No speaking. Until I'm done."
"Sorry," Sakura whispered, the excess shock still entirely present in her eyes.
Naruto reached over and held her hand, tightly.
Karin tried to ignore this.
"Asaoto himself was very premature, but he managed to hang on. Poor thing… He needed a lot of attention. And since the growth-attacks continued well after he was born, I made the decision, even before I was fully recovered, to not give him away.
"Though… obviously, you know Juugo is now his father. Those two are… a special case, okay? For starters, I didn't allow for Asaoto to live with him until Asaoto was much older. Juugo'd been living by himself, sort of wandering and coming to me whenever he was having difficulties. He knew he could always come to me.
"I took a risk and let him see Asaoto, the next time he showed up, after he was born. I explained the situation as delicately as I could, telling him that Asaoto was… not Kimimaro, but more like… a child of his, or a relative, but not him exactly. And Juugo said that he understood but I still worried, okay?
"The improvement in his condition was incredible. Even on that first day—and Asaoto was so small, then, he could fit into Juugo's palm no problem—he just lost so much of his worry. He started coming back more, after that, not because he was stressed, but because he wanted to see Asaoto so much. Ooda, you remember how it was, don't you?"
"Yeah," Ooda said, quietly, "I do."
"And he started helping out in taking care of him. Feeding him, changing him, playing with him. Sometimes just being in the nursery while he was sleeping, in case he had an attack or woke up for any other reason. It was like he was meant to do it, stupid as that sounds. I started to sort of… feel I could trust Asaoto with him. Even considering his past with Kimimaro. Maybe because of this. I had to be sure that Asaoto was healthy enough to live away from me, though. First and foremost. So I waited and let Juugo continue to… 'practice' before then.
"I let him go on his second birthday, after setting up a checkpoint between my lab and a house that Juugo had put together in Hakyo, as an emergency measure, since I didn't doubt that Juugo could bring Asaoto to me himself in the instance of a mild attack. But there were always… bad days. Juugo knew not to bring up my connection to Asaoto to anyone that asked, though, beyond my 'assistance' in taking care of him. Another foundling story. Suigetsu stayed with them for a while to make sure things went well, okay."
"Yeah, and that did go well. Juugo's been doing a good job."
"And by then I'd already gotten started on the next one. Almost if only to see if I could still do it, even with the transplant. I had doubts, but… it went surprisingly well. I barely had to do anything. But I was… very emotionally exhausted. It was hard to endure, okay? Mostly, too, because I knew who I had to leave the next one with, and I couldn't deviate from that plan, no matter how much I wanted to.
"Sensei had always had a fascination with Senju Hashirama. His Wood Release, a mutation of the Senju line, was something he wanted to recreate, and badly. Hence the… preoccupation with modifying infants and, eventually, Shimura Danzo, to recreate the trait, since he had no luck with prenatal experiments. I know there was only one living success, the man named Yamato; I had read about what had happened to the children that couldn't control the release. I was still scared of what could go wrong, because of Asaoto.
"But I knew Yamato could probably suppress those abilities, regardless of how wrong or right things went. So I went forward with it and I got the Senju embryo to take. Suigetsu, in the meantime, tailed Yamato for a while, and got enough information to make up an alibi, something that would convince him, when we left Kotoji with him, that the child was his. Because I couldn't think of anything else to explain Kotoji's abilities, okay?
"It was very, very hard letting Kotoji go. I insisted on bringing him to Konoha myself, even though Suigetsu said he could take care of it. I had to, for my own sake. I was tired, I could hardly take any more, okay…"
She had to take her hand off of Ooda's back and cover her mouth as she collected herself, swallowing her emotions.
Ooda, in return, put a hand on her shoulder. "Mom, it's okay…"
"I know, I know…" She sniffed, she gulped. "I suppressed my chakra and disguised myself otherwise and… well, I managed to get him into Yamato's care without bringing much attention to myself, without getting caught. Suigetsu followed up and confirmed it for me, and I was so relieved to hear it, okay… I just wanted him to be taken care of…"
Karin didn't say anything for a while, taking off her glasses and wiping at her defiantly dry eyes.
Ooda ran his hand over the back of her arm, gently.
She put her glasses back on.
"I honestly don't know why I continued. But I knew, as soon as I started, after thinking it over for… months, that Osato would be my last. I've done this for far too long, okay. I'm not young any more. I'm tired. I'm sick. I just… I want it to be over, okay? Osato is my last and he was always going be my last, from the very start.
"Why I chose… who I chose, for my last… Hmph." Another self-depreciating scoff. "Thought, maybe, I'd go out with a bang. Try the impossible. Satisfy… a nagging… thing of curiosity that had been with me since I began thinking about other bloodlines.
"Sensei had… genetic samples from every member of the Akatsuki, before his departure. Hair, blood, skin… And I'd found reports, very interesting reports, where one of the members, Konan, had asked him to attend to the health of another member, whom I now understand was the… leader, for all intents and purposes: Uzumaki Nagato."
Naruto sat up very, very slightly.
"And when I learned that Nagato was a confirmed Rinnegan-bearer, I… couldn't really stop thinking about it, okay. I suppose, even now, I can't help myself when it comes to these things. So I took what little material was left over from Sensei's treatments and tests on him, and Osato, eventually, resulted. Well. He will result when he's born, okay.
"Of course… there's always the possibility that the Rinnegan won't manifest in him. I don't know if it activates, like a Sharingan, or if it's a born trait, like a Byakugan. Or if it's even a complete outlier and it won't manifest at all. That's one of the reasons why I wanted to have Osato, so I could see, okay? And one of the reasons why I wanted to raise him myself, to protect him from harm if he did turn out to be… different, okay…"
Karin lowered her eyes, for a while, looking at her lap. She seemed far calmer.
"And that," she said, "is the end of it. Not counting Shingetsu, there are nine of them. No more, and no less. All of them are healthy and cared for by competent guardians and parents. Mine and Suigetsu's actions over the past twenty-odd years have ensured that, okay? And… while I understand what I have done is... morally questionable, I have broken no existing laws and endangered only my own life in the process."
Once again, she looked her audience in the eyes.
(And tried to appear far less terrified than she truly felt.)
"I'm not covering for anyone. I'm not even going to try and cover for myself any more. This is the truth, as well as I can tell it. I didn't do this for anyone but myself. And, well… whatever idealistic motivations I might have had when I was younger, okay… But I'm finished, now. What's done is done, and I have no regrets, nor do I regret finally telling… someone, much less you three and… whoever else you'll doubtlessly tell. I had to do this."
And she sighed, bracing herself.
"So, any questions?"