Masked Koi: Chapter 24. "Expel"

"Try it again," Danzo ordered.

"Hai, Danzo-sama," Naruto wheezed. Sweat poured down his face and his joints felt like they were lit on fire and were so sore. His head ached and his body pained from all the chakra he was pouring into the genjutsu he was still struggling to perform after what felt like an eternity.

The Uzumaki boy went through the seals for the umpteenth time slowly since his hands hurt from gathering chakra so many times and expelling it slowly, like dipping his hands in boiling water and slowly drag them out into a hot summer day. It was a different feeling from when his father had tried to teach him genjutsu. His father did have good pointers, but Danzo's training was a whole different level of difficulty. For some reason, however, Naruto got the feeling that with the exceedingly difficult feel of this training he would be able to get it. Maybe it was because of the whole 'no pain no gain' phrase or because of the fact he'd gone through nearly all his chakra and it had only been three hours since he'd risen yet again to train with Danzo yet again. Naruto knew that he still had laps to run and kunai to throw and jutsu to practice.

He wrapped his chakra around a certain part of the body and applied even more to each point. From there, he trickled his chakra in, creating the burning sensation he felt. Raw chakra was being expelled from his hands and going through his bones and muscle and nerves and then, instead of expanding and being free like it normally did (or at least keep moving about), it was pressurized and forced to go one direction and be together in a lump. From there, the chakra would enter the other person's system. If one were to demonstrate without chakra, it would be like taking drops of food coloring and dropping it into a glass of water and watch the color spread and make its way to the bottom. However, food coloring wouldn't be evenly distributed within water without the aid of stirring. Chakra on the other hand had to be forced to fan out and make its way to the chakra coils and brain. The act of fanning out was the most painful for the Uzumaki boy; it was almost a disgusting feeling, like slipping a hand into a decaying carcass with slimy maggots infesting it and cold like ice spears prickling his skin and nerves and hot because of the chakra that didn't want to conform to his will.

It wanted to be free, or at the worst, be released as ninjutsu.

Then, Naruto felt it. It was like rock climbing and getting the hook to have a solid grip on the edge of a near-vertical mountain with winds whipping his face red and making him sway. He was slowly getting a hang of gripping their chakra. Creating the actual illusion didn't require that much imagination; he could just distort something in the distance or slow the feel of time by just a moment. The next part was making sure that they didn't realize it was a genjutsu and anchoring your chakra into theirs that to Naruto was as easy as wrapping a cord of water around a burning hot pipe. Once the chakra was anchored, one could take their entire concentration off of keeping an even flow of chakra and a tight grip of their enemies' coils and mind and focus on a ninjutsu technique. Of course, one had to be at least proficient in keeping their chakra in another person to divide their attention to ninjutsu. If that wasn't the case, then the caster be damned good at ninjutsu to perform it almost unconsciously.

Danzo sighed as Naruto failed yet again to keep an even flow of chakra. He wouldn't be able to perform ninjutsu in the meantime of a real battle because he was focusing so much on simply expelling the chakra in a somewhat 'even' flow and that meant keeping his hands locked together.

"You're running low on chakra. Go refine your kunai and shuriken skills," Danzo dismissed him with a flick of his wrist. Naruto nodded weakly and vanished. Danzo's mouth thinned into a grim line as he thought about what could be the problem with the boy.

It might've been chakra control, seeing that the boy had so much chakra. No, it couldn't be, could it? Danzo was once grateful for her and her teachings; she'd cemented his chakra control in the form of jutsu. Then again, Danzo thought, it might've been the Kyuubi having an influence on him. If the Kyuubi's chakra was somehow seeping into his chakra system, it could throw the boy off balance since a small amount of mass of bijuu chakra equaled to a huge amount of energy. A millionth of the Kyuubi's chakra could equal an tenth of the boy's chakra. Danzo got the feeling that it might be that. The only problem was a seal master that he could trust not to talk. It might even help fix the problem with applying the tongue seal; Danzo had been unable to keep the ink from vaporizing before his eyes when he'd applied the seal two times before. He knew the boy was suppressing his own chakra, but the Kyuubi's? Danzo didn't know, but he felt as if he'd just realized a solution.

"Hey, Nori!" Shisui waved. "I didn't know you were in the village again. What brings you here?"

The Uchiha man had a carefree smile that wasn't the same as it used to be, but no one but Kakashi or Minato could tell the difference. His unruly hair was unrulier and still just as black as it used to be but he wore a simple shirt and pants, both black. His hitai-ate was in his pocket along with a scroll with kunai, shuriken, and bombs. His posture was nonchalant but tense at the same time and his eyes were not as bright as they usually were.

The woman with black hair and obsidian eyes turned, giving him a confused look. Shisui's breath died in his throat. Koi was looking at him, but wasn't looking at him. Shisui coughed into his hand before realizing his error. "You're not Nori…are you from this village?"

"You know Nori?" the woman asked, clasping his hands in hers. Before, Koi's eyes were dead with grief but now, Nori's eyes lit up with as if Shisui had given her a free box of Black Thunder. Shisui tried not to flinch from the slightly wrinkled woman with Kakashi's facial structure. Shisui was getting more and more confused. He opened his mouth to try to make sense of the situation, but no words came out.

"Y-yes," Shisui said. "Are you related or…"

The woman nodded. "I'm her mother. I've been looking for her for over twenty years. Do you know where she is?" then she paused. "Actually, do you know where the Hokage or Kakashi are? I was going to ask them about my other daughter but I've been looking all around and I can't find either of them."

Shisui blinked slowly. "Ma'am, what is your name?"

"Noru," she responded. "I'm not from Konoha, though."

Shisui's eyes narrowed minutely. Is she a spy? "I see. Well, I know where the Hokage is, so I could lead you there."

She nodded gratefully and after an hour of going through fields and other training grounds, they reached the last and farthest one where a man with blonde hair and blue clothes was sitting on a rock, watching the sparkling river flow by him. There was a certain listless look in his eyes and Shisui flared his chakra just a bit as to not startle the man.

"Yes?" Minato asked.

"This is Noru-san. She was looking for information on her family and she thinks that you are the person to ask," Shisui said.
Minato turned around. "Any proof you're not a spy?" the man drawled his words, clearly tired and fatigued. Not that one could take offense; he was the Hokage and it was a valid question. "Like travel papers or proper identification."

Noru produced the documents swiftly and Minato went through a dizzying amount of seals before biting his thumb and smearing blood across a small box on the top right corner of the latter document. An insignia flared with a slight green tint and then faded to black and then vanished, along with his blood. "Well, your papers aren't forged. But that doesn't mean you're not a spy. If you don't claim tourism, then you have to claim that you know someone in Konoha and then they have to go through a few days of processing to confirm this. Clearly you passed if your documents aren't forged and you know someone here. Or you're just that good of a spy to slip in through the cracks," Minato wiped his thumb on his pant leg before his icy blue eyes flicked up to look at her. "Well, who confirmed your identity?"

"Hatake Sakumo," Noru said.

"Go find him and bring him here. Noru, stay with me," Minato ordered in a clipped tone. Shisui nodded and disappeared in a puff of smoke and left Noru with him.

While Shisui was gone, Minato glanced at the woman. "Why are you here? Really, though. You're Kumogakure's shinobi and yet you decided to just up and leave all of a sudden. To Konoha, Kumo's enemy. Family can't just be the reason. If it was, wouldn't you have looked for them sooner?"

"I couldn't. I had other things I had to do in Kumo. I wanted to, badly, but it wasn't a good time. Things got worse after the war and I knew I had to bide my time. But, it looks like I've waited much too long. My children are grown and dead and I can't seem to find blame in anyone but myself," she sighed. "You're a parent, right? I know it's hard to imagine not being there for your kids, but it is hard."
Minato didn't respond to the last statement. "Family, you said? How do you know Sakumo?"

Noru looked at the sparkling water before responding. "Kumo had a number of war prisoners during the Second War. Kumo didn't want to get just information out of the captured shinobi. Raikage-sama and his council decided that the frustrated men that wanted to see their wives back home and were locked up could be put to use for Kumo's benefit. At the time, Kumo was winning but it wasn't enough. They wanted to crush Konona right then and there but knew that Konoha wasn't useless or weak. So, they had an ingenious idea," Noru gave a grim smile.

Minato's eyes widened. "You mean…"

Noru nodded. "Sakumo was, at the time, one of their strongest shinobi they captured. I was a shinobi with no friends or family and had considerable skill in recon. The higher-ups figured that it would be wonderful to use Konoha's next White Fang against its own. It was a delicate ploy for Kumo to toy with shinobi mindlessly. However, the war ended too soon for the children to grow up and destroy Konoha with Sakumo's prowess. Konoha won and Sakumo and Konoha demanded the children back. Back then; I didn't think that running away was even an option. I gave my first and third child away."

Noru smiled a little. "To Kumo, I was never a person. I was a vessel for their experiments to blow things up and kill their enemies. I was young back then, so naïve and didn't know what I'd done to find myself in that position. I thought I'd broke protocol or something, only to find terrified men and women that were puppets in Kumo's game. I felt so ashamed that I thought that giving them up was better. The thing is, I don't know still. I don't know if giving them up was the right decision or not. Sometimes, I think that if I hadn't, my daughter wouldn't be dead. But would she have had the childhood she'd enjoyed here in Konoha, such a beautiful place, or would she have died young? Would she have been happier, or would she be lonely? I'm just regretting not realizing that as a shinobi, I have to make a move before death does. Well, did."

Minato swallowed. "Who was your daughter?" He had a feeling he knew, but he didn't want to think about it.

Noru gave him a very tight smile. "Koi. That was the name I'd given her. She was my first child. My second child was Nori, whom Suna demanded a few months after they found out about her. Nori always followed what Koi did, seeing how she was the big sister and all. Then, Nori was gone and replaced by Kakashi. And then, Konoha wanted them and I gave them away. They grew up believing that some other woman was their mother. I don't know if this woman was kind to them or not and I certainly can't ask Koi now, can I?"

"I think Aiko-san was kind," Minato added weakly. In all honesty, he had no idea if she was kind or not. The woman beside him seemed to age a little more and Minato felt horrible.

"Hokage-sama," Sakumo greeted. "You wanted me?"

Danzo knew that Jiraiya and Minato were the last seal masters in Konoha, or at least affiliated with it. And he certainly couldn't ask them to help suppress the Kyuubi's chakra. They'd get suspicious and then ROOT would be put at risk. He had to find someone else. Danzo knew that someone else had to be outside the village and preferably, an Uzumaki. That clan was known for their sealing prowess.

The reason why he didn't break into Kushina's home was because the seal she'd used on her son was a seal that had been passed down in her clan and perfected by herself and the scroll she probably had inked it onto as a test run had a 100% chance of having an Uzumaki seal that he couldn't break. The other reason why he didn't break into her home was because of the seals surrounding it. They'd been fortified after Seiseki broke through with chakra that should be nonexistent, now. Shisui's chakra was a faint lingering one in the seals, but not as much as the chakra of an elusive deer. Danzo was very, very unnerved and irate about it. Barrier seals break down after the caster dies. It didn't make any sense; she should be dead. Was she hiding in the shadows somewhere, waiting for him to slip and then have her revenge? It didn't make any sense.

Danzo flicked his wrist. An operative appeared before him. "Go find someone with sealing prowess that isn't Jiraiya."

The operative shifted a little. "Danzo-sama, please excuse my words. May I speak?"

Danzo gruffly nodded. "Why not have Naruto-kun ask his father? It would come with no risks to us; Naruto-kun does not have the tongue seal yet. Hokage-sama would fix the seal and then Naruto-kun would return here and then you could apply the seal and no one would know."

Danzo narrowed his eyes. "Return to your room and get Naruto over here."
"Hai, Danzo- sama."

Naruto appeared after a minute. "Yes, Danzo-sama?"

"Ask Minato to fix your seal. Then return here," Danzo said. "You are not to mention ROOT or anything regarding it."

Naruto nodded. "Hai, Danzo-sama."

"No, Hokage-sama. She isn't a spy. She is who she says she is. I saw her yesterday," Sakumo said.

Minato nodded and went back to looking at the water. "So, Noru-san. You wanted to know about Koi, huh? I'm actually not the person to ask. She was my ex-wife's student. Koi came back to Konoha about thirteen years ago when her sensei died fighting the Kyuubi. She trained my son, I think, in a sort of way to repay her debt and gratitude to my ex-wife. It's not all that clear to me, but she also had trained two other children. If you want more information, you could ask Kakashi when he comes back from his mission or her teammates."

Shisui stood there frozen. He stared at the woman, unsure of how to really react or what to even say. He didn't understand a thing. "Hokage-sama, I…what…"
Minato glanced at him. "This is Koi's, Kakashi's, and Nori's mother. Kumo used Sakumo and a Suna shinobi, war prisoners at the time, to create soldiers they could use to destroy Konoha. Noru-san was just one of their guinea pigs."

Shisui hid his shock well. Being an Uchiha had given him such skill and control over his emotions, but he couldn't help but feel anger all of a sudden. Then the Tsugi...those bastards…

"I-I see," Shisui's voice shook like his hands that curled up into balls and quivered at his sides. He gave a smile at the woman that made her frown a little. "I'm sorry for your loss."

Noru appreciated the sentiment. "Thank you, um…"

"Uchiha Shisui," Shisui said. There was a few beats of silence before Noru turned to Minato. "Are her teammates in Konoha, or are they on a mission like Kakashi? When will Kakashi be back?"

"A week or two. As for her teammates, you've already met one of them," Minato said. "Team Kushina consisted of Hatake Koi, Uchiha Shisui, and Hyuuga Ko."

"Tou-san."
Minato looked up to see his son wearing plain clothes: a green shirt and blue shorts and had shuriken and kunai and scrolls strapped to his legs. The boy walked with an air of confidence and calculation. Not a breath or step was wasted, but fatigue radiated off of the boy. Bags were beginning to form under his eyes and his eyes were glassy and the way he walked was as if he were walking on needles and his arms were carefully held up to reduce the amount of strain and movement his muscles felt.

Minato looked up to see his son outside the window of his study. Minato opened the window and his son hopped in gracefully. He sat on the windowsill and gave his father an even look. "I need your help."

Minato smiled. "I'd be glad to help. What is it?"

Naruto scratched his face and looked away sheepishly. "My seal…I think there's something wrong with it?"

"What?" Minato's voice was hushed but sharp, concern and worry in his eyes. "What do you mean?"

"The Kyuubi's chakra. I can feel it and I'm scared," Naruto gave his best nervous expression. It worked.

"Let me see," Minato said. Naruto nodded and lay down on the floor and lifted his shirt and flared his chakra so the seal appeared. Minato placed one hand over the other over Naruto's seal and closed his eyes and concentrated. With each passing moment, Naruto became more and more drawn to his subconscious until he was face to face with the humongous beast. Minato seemed to stare at it in awe for a moment before he inspected the seal.

Naruto turned, his feet echoing in the huge room with water coating the bottom. He raised a hand and let flames come from his fingertips to illuminate the room. The light caught a glint of something silvery and Naruto ran over. "Sensei!"

Koi pushed him away calmly, focusing on Minato. She walked over to Minato and stood by him and stared. "What are you doing?"

Minato screamed in fright. "Y-y-you're…!"

Koi quietly waited for him to regain his composure. "Yes?" Her obsidian eyes held a slight inflection of patience but nothing else. The rotting wound had grown.

"How are you here?" Minato stared at her, looking from her feet to her silver hair in wonder.

"Minato," Koi started. She glanced at Naruto with narrowed eyes before turning to glance at Minato again. "You do not need to worry about the Kyuubi or the seal. I am here to guard it, nothing more and nothing less."

Minato looked at her. "Naruto said that he could feel the Kyuubi's chakra. Is the seal weakening? Does it need repair?"

"Naruto…" Koi closed her eyes. "Has lied to you. The seal is not weakening. If it was, you would feel a flare of my own chakra being expelled from him. There is nothing to worry about, Minato. Please, you should leave. This chakra is poisonous and being around it for too long could burn your chakra coils."

"Why?" Minato looked at Naruto. "Why would you lie about your seal?"

Naruto shook his head. "I didn't think I did. I really thought I felt it."

Koi tensed slightly before slamming Naruto against the wall with her hand around his neck. "Do you want to die?! I didn't die for you to just throw yourself where my brother learned how to kill me! If you stay there, you will die! When a bijuu is extracted, the host dies! You are nothing but a fancy name and can be replaced by Kayo or those other two toddlers! I trained you so that you could be strong, so that Kushina-sensei wouldn't have died for an ungrateful, stupid, and weak willed brat! I've wasted my time and the life I could've had with Shisui and I sacrificed everything I had! I didn't have to come back to Konoha! I didn't have to worry about you! I didn't have to come back after the War ended! I could've stayed dead and my life would be much easier and you would have been a much, much happier child!"

Koi let go and stood motionless in front of the wheezing boy. A ghostly smile played out on her lips and she laughed emptily. "I thought you were different, Naruto. I thought you were a shinobi that worked to protect his comrades, to protect your village. But I see…you're just like everyone else. You're the same as the ones that hated me and dismissed me and said that I was useless and dangerous and better off dead," she smiled. "The great thing is: they've won. I'm stuck here with nothing, not even the only person who acknowledged me as Koi, and not a weapon that needed to be broken. I left him all alone with nothing. If he hates me now I understand; I died. I left. I took away the life we could've built together. Maybe there would be more Uchiha running around if I hadn't wasted my time on Namikaze Naruto."

"What do you mean?" Naruto wheezed, confusion and hurt and anger swirling in his Uzumaki eyes.

Minato's wide eyes burned holes into the Hatake girl. Koi looked at her sensei's son. "I do not see a reason to explain anything to you. You are not my student."

"N-Nishiki-sensei!" Naruto said a bit louder than he'd expected. Panic flooded though him. "I am! You said it yourself: I'd remain your student if I were this stupid and I am stupid! What are you saying?!"

Koi placed a hand on his shoulder. "I am not your sensei. I never was. By being with you, I wasted two vital years of my life and dug my own grave. If I had put village safety first, I would not be dead and Shisui would not be alone and the Uchiha would not have died. If I hadn't broken a fundamental rule of Shinobi Conduct, letting emotion cloud my judgment as Konoha's protector, I could've stopped Seiseki and killed him before he could hurt anyone else. I thought I could protect Konoha and you, but by choosing both in a situation where I could only choose one option, a fork in the road if you will, I had already killed myself and wasted time dreaming about the peaceful future I wanted. I was never good at genjutsu, and that dream was the most tempting was the most deadly and I fell for it, just as I always did for genjutsu."

"What were you saying earlier, about me being like everyone else? If acknowledgement was all you wanted, then I did, wholeheartedly! I was desperate for you to teach me; Mikiko always blamed me for everything and took my mother's things and always tried to hurt me or yell at me! You were, and still are, the most important person to me!" Naruto yelled, tears gathering in his eyes.

This time, Koi laughed and laughed and laughed. She held her stomach and tears streamed down her face. "Oh..Oh Naruto…"

"W-what?"

Koi wiped her tears away and stifled a few remaining laughs. "You're wrong. I don't give a damn about acknowledgment. They all acknowledged me. They knew what I was. They had to, with war approaching and my cowardly father being his cowardly self. But, as I said, they've won and got what they wanted, finally. I'm dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! DEAD!"

Koi clasped her hands together.

"Isn't that just wonderful? I served Konoha to my best ability: protected and served and then did as they wanted: died. Ever since I was little, I've always wanted to die. I told my older brother and he was excited for me. There was a big ceremony when I was sixteen and I carried by brother to the final act but I couldn't understand why my best friend didn't want to play. He stayed behind and said, 'The show must end!' I went on and did as the world wanted: 'The show must go on!' I had the audience of my family and Obito and Rin and they cheered when it was all over. No one was happy when I came back for encore. The only people that were happy were Danzo and Shisui. I was caught in the brightest sun and the darkest sky. I was within the clouds and I couldn't seem to get a hold of anything but I didn't realize it because of the genjutsu. I let myself be carried within a thunderstorm I had run away from when the final act hadn't been thought about yet. I woke up drowning and drenched in blood and blind. The thunderstorm, without any flock of a thousand birds, had ran straight through me and the only thing I could do was realize that Kai wasn't much of an option that late in the game. So, Naruto, when Kakashi says he got lost on the path of life or something, he truly means it. All those birds, all one thousand of them, had been blinded and muted by the unspeakably bright light of lightning and deafening clap of thunder."

Koi pulled out a Black Thunder and let lightning flow through it and then dropped it on the ground and it cooled slightly to allow flames to engulf it as if to demonstrate her point. Naruto was hysterical, tears running down his cheeks and sobs echoing and muttering something about avenging her and why won't she understand that and how he loved her but Koi wasn't listening to the Namikaze boy who she'd wasted her time on. She didn't blame Naruto; she blamed herself. He was just a casualty of her mistakes.

"Danzo?" Minato asked.

Koi glanced at her Hokage. "Yeah, Shimura Danzo. The one you apparently trust," she smiled to herself. "Tell him I exist in Naruto. Have Shisui with you, right next to Danzo, when you tell him. I promise you, Minato, I'll make this encore much better than the last."

An earsplitting clap of thunder ripped both Namikaze back into the real world. Night had fallen so soon. Naruto was in a state of shock and confusion and hurt and fear while Minato was left in a sort of awe and curious state. If he could've switched Koi for Kakashi, he would've done it in a heartbeat. Koi was an interesting child.

ANBU flooded the hallways and Naruto knelt on the ground with his wrists shackled and Minato had his former ANBU tagging behind him with a look of murder in his eyes.

Laugh! Go on, laugh! Danzo, it's the second encore, the one you've been waiting for because you dug your kunai too deep and scared off the deer and were a moment too late to catch a hoof to stop the silvery and elusive monster that could touch you and you'd explode fantastically from falling into the clutches of death. But that's not what Death would say because he knows everything and you don't know that because you're a smug bastard and money isn't as good as other things. Right, Shimura-san?

He wore his Jounin vest and his white cape with 四代目火影 written in red like the flames that licked the bottom edge because they were hungry and feasted upon the justice. It wasn't sexual harassment, but it was something close because he'd taken her from him and Shisui was struggling not to scream and let black flames gorge because they are emaciated flames. He shook and hated it but he was so close, so he could wait. He'd do anything for her. Anything.

"So," Minato said with a placid face. "This is your illegal organization were you've dragged my son with some tempting bait? I hope you enjoyed your fun, because she has been watching you the entire time and could've struck you," that part was a lie, "at any moment."

The ANBU freed their darker counterparts and left the three Jounin alone in the ROOT base with an angry Uchiha forming the last corner of a triangle. His eyes seemed to glow red, but were still black. Silence reigned over the three and Danzo decided to speak.

"What are you talking about?" his words came out like molten rocks.

"What did you do to her?!" Shisui demanded. "Did you try to drag her into this hellhole?!"

Danzo gave him an angry look. "I did nothing of the sort. Do not go around and accuse me of things, Uchiha. I understand you must be a heartbroken man but I didn't think an Uchiha would stoop so low as petty accusations."

Shisui seethed. "You understand nothing about me or her. Don't go around and assume things, Danzo-sama. I know you did something to her. There was a reason she acted differently, as if she'd been frightened by something, and then decided to train Naruto even harder. What did you do?" Shisui ground out the last words.

Danzo opened his mouth and his body flickered. Shisui's eyes widened in horror at the speed of the old war hawk with his feathers falling off faster and faster and then the flames were allowed to gorge.

They weren't black, though. Nor was he out of chakra.

The entire ROOT complex exploded starting with a slight burning sensation from Shisui's arm. Minato was already gone by that time, having just slightly better reflexes than the Uchiha man whose mind had gone blank for a moment in shock. Danzo had tried to silence him. Shisui didn't need to really know; it must've been something terrible, like join his organization or something. Nevertheless, the fish was able to swim and use its gills and gasp and flick its tail into the air and see the sun.

Shisui's deep red eyes saw a deer that glowed silver whose steps on the ground caused the earth below it to fade away like ash in a breeze and it was staring at him. The deer rested its head on his chest before flickering away in a burst of golden light with the ashes turning to blood.

Shisui's eyes turned black and he stood at the epicenter of a huge crater. Danzo's body was nowhere to be found. Shisui looked up and saw the sun above him and debris around him: the wreckage of the former ROOT compound. He let out a smile and fell back onto the warm and soft earth, littered with little sparkling green rocks from when the earth was scorched and the sand fused together to make glass that gave off light that only the sharingan could see. And damn, were they bright. Shisui took one into his hand and held it up to the sun.

"This is for you."

Kushina looked at the young man with grey hair and dorky glasses. "Thanks, Kabuto."

The young man went off, back to Orochimaru probably, and Kushina walked back to the table where her fellow outcasts were sitting. She took someone's glass of water after popping a pill into her mouth, and drank it down. She wiped her mouth in a very unladylike manner before taking a seat beside the only other woman there.

The woman was about her age, give or take a few years. Kushina turned to the eighteen year old whose face was frozen in shock and wanted to express joy, something there hadn't been a reason for since he'd fought and fought and his parents died right in front of him.

"Itachi?" Kushina asked tentatively. She was harsh around the others but she understood Itachi's reasoning for being so damn quiet. To her, Itachi was like her own child but she trusted Koi was training him as she spoke, or completing missions as Naruto was with his team or other Chuunin. Mikoto had been her best friend, after all.

Itachi took a few steps before rushing towards another part of the compound, his black hair trailing behind him. His black eyes couldn't process anything anymore but his heart was pounding in his chest and he nearly broke the doorknob for being in his way and for the first time in seven years his eyes filled up with tears and overflowed and he dropped to his knees.

Nii-san!

Itachi pushed away the cries they might've cried out that day. He pushed away his nightmares and horrifying thoughts when his mind wandered and thought about the brothers he'd failed. He took his brothers in his arms and would never let them go again.

"Itachi, what—"

The words died in the throat of a twenty-nine year old man. His green eyes widened and guilt and shame made him frozen there, unable to speak another word. He wanted to be forgiven, but he knew that was impossible. That look in Kakashi's eyes, the lack of one in Koi's was enough of a refusal. Nightmares that were really just recollections often came back when he'd been taken and beaten and shackled and incriminated by the very people he'd helped.

Sasuke and Yasuke's arms fell off their weeping brother and they stared in horror at the murderer they couldn't seem to forget. "You…you're that…"

Itachi knew Seiseki was behind him. Itachi just didn't know how much his siblings knew about that day. Itachi had searched Seiseki's memories, almost speaking out against Seiseki being his partner. Itachi understood Seiseki had been used and had the living shit beaten out of him daily by that Kami forsaken clan. Of course, Itachi was still filled with hate and rage so he offered no words of consolation or forgiveness. He would tolerate the man; he wouldn't forgive him. That was Koi-senpai's job in the afterlife.

"It's okay," Itachi said. "He will not hurt you. I promise."

The two heard their brother's words, but did not fully comprehend them. "You killed that lady that protected us! You've even deluded our brother into thinking that you can be trusted! You and all those Tsugi destroyed Konoha and murdered our clan!"

"Sasuke, Yasuke," Itachi said firmly. "I have read his memories. You must understand that he was used as a pawn to take out that woman. He is not to blame, just as the sword that kills is not to blame, but the wielder is. However, in the future, he will stand trial and people close to that woman back in Konoha can testify against him. Do you understand?"

In another part of the compound, the members of what Nagato had called the Akatsuki sat with tea and looked at one another. At the table were Konan, Kushina, Zabuza, Haku, Sasori, Kisame, Hidan and Kakuzu. There were two empty chairs for Itachi and Seiseki.

Kushina turned her head over to where Itachi's room was behind the hallway. "That's better. Now, we need to get our shit prioritized. We know where the Ichibi, Nibi, and Kyuubi are. Our goal is to get all of the bijuu with us before that damned clan gets a chance to find the other six. They don't have any of the bijuu yet," Kushina paused. "I'll send a message for the Nibi's jinchuuriki to be more cautious and keep an eye on the Kyuubi. As for the rest of you: go find the other bijuu. Now."

The other members vanished, leaving only Konan and Kushina in silence.

"Uchiha Shisui, for attempted murder of a Konoha Councilmember, you are no longer a Konoha shinobi and are banned from ever coming back to this village. If you do, there is an order to kill on sight. You have twenty minutes to gather up any belongings and leave," the elderly woman whose name Shisui couldn't be bothered to remember sounded as if she didn't want to expel him from Konoha. He was as much of an important shinobi as Naruto was, a reason not to attack Konoha.

Word spread very quickly. There was pity in everyone's eyes as Shisui carried a scroll with his belongings that he cared for, mainly Uchiha scrolls that Obito hadn't cared to get higher clearance to read and a few pictures. He took out all his money, all 100,000,000 ryo of it. It was quite a sum that he'd saved up for the dream that had been shattered some time ago. As Shisui approached the gates, Ko and Obito approached him.

"Shisui," was all Obito could say.

Shisui gave them a fake smile. "It's okay."

Author's Note. This chapter honestly came out strange. I tried to make it not so 'strange' but it just did. I'm pretty sure none of you are going to be satisfied with this chapter simply because of the way it was written but I'll try to make the next chapter more interesting.

But anyway, I do enjoy reviews:) So if you review about how this chapter was 'strange' or if you liked it or were surprised or if you saw this coming before I wrote this chapter, I'll give you a box of pocky