Please note: The name Shingi to Giri comes from silenceia's Growing Strong. silenceia allowed me to use it when I asked and I'm very thankful for it!
The sun had almost reached its peak when the three children reached a house built aside from the others. Hitomi had ended up taking care of Sasuke's house entirely, except for his bedroom. She'd felt like an intruder, going methodically through his family's things. In Itachi's room, she had found a poetry book he had written. She had hidden it away in one of her scrolls, one that already contained her own things and wasn't used to collect what they wanted to take from the clan lands.
She would read it, one day.
"Whose house is it?" She had asked that question each time they had gotten ready to cross a threshold, and Sasuke answered, giving the names of the people who had lived there and then a few information about them, as if to introduce living relatives to his friends. Naruto was listening, his blue eyes darkened by a touch of seriousness and maturity that felt almost out of character for him. Fortunately, he still spoke with excitement when he discovered something, providing his two friends with the lightness they needed to handle their conflicted feelings and the weight on their shoulders.
"Uchiha Shisui. His father died when he was fourteen and his mother followed not so long after that. When he found himself alone, he couldn't bear to live so close to their ghosts. My father gave him this house and turned the other one into a dojo for the police force. He was known for his usage of the Shunshin. He turned it into a weapon, just like Hokage the Second wanted to."
Hitomi's eyes went wide. The Shunshin was one of the techniques she wanted to learn the most. Until she could use it, she would settle for the Substitution technique, more restrictive but taught at the Academy. Kurenai had mentioned wanting to get them started on the basis of these techniques during the holidays, before sixth year started. The girl had no trouble picturing an offensive usage to these two techniques. Their applications and limitations were different, but with some training…
She shook her head and filed those thoughts away in her Library. The section reserved for her projects would soon burst with them if she continued having new ideas. She could have created more shelves, but a bit of chaos seemed fitting for that part of her mind. Back in the physical world, she took the lead and opened the door.
"I'm taking the living room," Sasuke said. "Naruto, take the kitchen. Hitomi, the bedroom and library?"
The girl nodded. It was the way they usually did it since they had started in the morning. Naruto also took the basement and bathroom, and Sasuke often came to help his sister finish with the library or office. She was most at ease with entering the intimacy – bedroom – and mind – library – of people she had never even met.
This was their eleventh house and, after all this time, Hitomi had found a routine. For example, she didn't take the clothes. She would later suggest to Sasuke that he gave them all away, but she had no space for it. The shinobi gear, however, she never left behind. It would have been stupid to do so; they would find a use for it, without the slightest doubt. Of course, the blades needed cleaning and sharpening, the grips tightening, but nothing a bit of care couldn't provide.
Shisui had been the kind of guy to care for his interior design. For his bedroom, he had chosen pale blue shades, incredibly soft and soothing, that made Hitomi feel safe, like she was inside a bubble. His furniture was a very light cream, almost white, under all the dust. The girl had kept a straight face when Sasuke had said his name. She hadn't known the man when he was alive, but she knew he had been Itachi's best friend, and he had died offering him the eye he had left.
She knew his other eye was in Danzō's body.
A flash of anger burned through her veins, the sweet melody of vengeance promising her a thousand marvels for the day when she would finally act. Whatever the fall from grace that would break the cycle of violence and manipulation in which the councilman was sweeping up people, she would take part in it. She would make him fall, she would break him. And if she couldn't do so herself, she would be there watching, making sure all his victims were finally avenged. And that was why she couldn't, without hypocrisy, reproach Sasuke's desire for vengeance. She, who couldn't forgive without lying at least a little to the person in question, understood how bitterness corrupted the mind slowly, day after day, until it reached a point where everything, except revenge, faded. There was a way out of that kind of darkness, but it seemed so far out of reach. She understood.
Her eyes went to the trinkets and paintings decorating Shisui's room. He had obviously loved animals. Some of the species represented there didn't appear in the Land of Fire. Hitomi notably recognised a fennec fox that had probably been drawn in Sunagakure, and a salamander that could only be found in the Land of Iron. As for the rest of them, she couldn't even say where they were from.
Resolute, she walked to one of the two wardrobes in the room. The other contained clothes and trapping material she had inspected before packing away. She pouted when she heard the door creak so loud it ringed in her ears. A tantō occupied the middle shelf and, even without unsheathing it, she knew it was a masterpiece, the kind that could only be found in houses where nobles lived, or where shinobi brave enough to steal them did.
The sheath was the purest shade of black, smooth and carefully lacquered. Feathers painted in blood-red ink fell from the guard to the tip, each detail painted with striking precision. Until his death, Shisui had possessed the Crow Summoning Contract, Hitomi knew. She found it sweet that the fierce shinobi had chosen such a pattern for his weapon of choice. Slowly, as reverently as she could, she took the weapon from its stand and wrapped her fingers around its guard, getting a feel for the braided silk that reinforced it, its shade of red matching the paint perfectly.
She drew the blade out in a swift move – too swift, in fact. All the swords they had found so far had been gripped by rust, almost impossible to unsheathe. It wasn't the case this time. Careful not to harm herself, the girl got the edge of the blade closer to her face and inspected it. It was absolutely perfect, as sharp and formidable as it had been in the first weeks of its service, without any usage mark. Even her tantō had those. The sword's name was carved on its blade. Ishi to Senrigan, Determination and Clairvoyance. It was said that blades were named after the virtues they offered to their masters as they lived, battled, and travelled together.
"Sasuke?" she called in a soft voice.
He joined her in the room a few seconds later. She had often called him, in other houses, to ask about a particular item, so he had grown accustomed to it. His dark eyes went wide when he saw the tantō in her hand. The light pouring through the window reflected coldly against the edge of the blade. The last Uchiha, as he was called in the village, hadn't thought he would see this weapon ever again, he who had only glimpsed it once, the day Shisui had received it from his clan leader.
"Do you know why this weapon looks like it had just been purchased and placed here yesterday? Hitomi asked to make Sasuke focus on her again.
Sasuke shrugged off the shock he had just felt and squared his shoulders, taking a step in the bedroom. He didn't dare touching Ishi to Senrigan, only eying it respectfully. "It's a chakra blade. That steel can resist anything, including the passage of time and its master's chakra. This tantō has been in my clan for at least as much time as Shingi to Giri."
Shingi to Giri, Loyalty and Honour, had been Uchiha Fugaku's katana. When he had been fighting with that sword in his hand, the blade enshrouded in chakra flames, not many foreign shinobi had been able to face him. The rumour said he had been the one to remind his clan of their old kenjutsu style, based on flaming swords – that tradition coming back in fashion had terrified the enemy during the last Shinobi World War. Sasuke had found the katana in his father's office and decided he would wield it rather than the one he had bought when he had started training with Hitomi.
"What do you want me to do with it?" she asked. "Do you want to keep it too?"
"You can take it," he said with a shrug. "I'd rather you have it and use it than any alternative. If we find another, you could give it to Naruto and teach him to use it. Could become the special thing our team does or something like that."
The two children exchanged a knowing look. They were very aware of the fact that they would form a team later and didn't understand how others, like some civilians, could miss it. Iruka and Mizuki always prioritised making them work together, even if they still made sure they could work with most people of their group. The two teachers knew what Hitomi had done with the clan-born kids and the jinchūriki, but they hadn't tried to stop her, since it fitted so well with the Academy's goals.
"Do you think they'd call us Team Sword? That sounds good. Maybe when we're promoted to Chūnin…"
"Who knows. I just think it'd be neat to have a skill in common. We're all more or less frontline-oriented, but we don't have something special, something that would make people remember us as a team."
Without giving it any more thought, Hitomi tied the sword to her belt, switching it with her old one, which went in one of her seals. This weapon had served her well, and she loved it so much – Ensui had given it to her, after all – that she preferred keeping it safe rather than risking breaking it.
The children finally found a sword for Naruto around the end of the afternoon, but it didn't look like anything they had seen before. Hitomi, with her knowledge from the Previous World, would have called it a claymore. It was almost as tall as the little jinchūriki and had a seal allowing it to adjust to his wielder's size, but the boy would have to build up serious muscles to use it. That sword was made for titans more than men, and if Naruto was still a scrawny kid, his chakra and willpower would do the trick. He immediately fell in love with the sword and swore he would learn to use it before graduating. Hitomi knew he would.
Sasuke told them, during a break they had, with a shy smile, that this sword had belonged to Uchiha Takami, Fukagu's mother. She had been the Lady Uchiha then, until her husband had died on a mission. Then, she had taken control of the clan, since her son had been too young to do so. She hadn't been a gentle ruler. Mikoto had told her sons about that time in a low voice, as if she still feared being heard by the woman's ghost. Hitomi hoped she would never have that kind of cold and cruel power over people. She was determined, not heartless.
Finally, they found the thing that had led them there in the first place: the collection of techniques scrolls the Uchiha clan had kept for teaching and archiving purposes. It was hidden under the dojo just next to the main police station. Hitomi took them all, no matter the subject. She didn't care, she just wanted the knowledge and knew it would be useful in one way or another anyway.
When they were finished with the scrolls, they found a strongbox in one block of black stone that only opened when Sasuke touched it and focused chakra in his palms. There were the scrolls about the Sharingan itself. Of course, they would just introduce the basic knowledge – Hitomi remembered the sacred stones under the Naka temple, and what Sasuke would need to do in order to access them. He still had a lot to learn to get to that point. He could summon the Sharingan at will, but it used up a lot of his chakra and he couldn't do much with it yet. Hence the need for the scrolls.
As the sun slowly set on the village, their many storage scrolls full to the brim, they decided it was time to leave this painful place and go home. They would come back, in a few weeks maybe, to take care of all the clothes that filled wardrobes and were never worn. No one would miss them, and Sasuke, despite his attempts on the matter, couldn't quite hide his need to be useful.
Kurenai welcomed them with a daimyo-worthy feast on the table. As soon as the three children were home, she drowned them in questions about their unofficial mission. Some things, they told her without the slightest hesitation. Others they barely dared whisper, their postures defeated, and their eyes filled with a dull sadness no kid should ever feel. Others yet, they didn't say at all. A team knew how to keep its members' secrets.
The dinner was quiet; even Naruto behaved as perfectly as he could, as if the day spent rummaging through the Uchiha lands had spent part of his amazing stamina. It didn't stop him from bickering with Sasuke like usual, but the way the two boys were smiling stopped Kurenai from asking them to stay civil. Hitomi, too, refrained from kicking them in the shins so they would calm down. Wasn't she nice?
Once the table was clean, the three children settled in the living room just like the day before, and just like the day before Kurenai sat on the couch as they claimed the coffee table. It wasn't time yet to sort through the tremendous volume of things they had brought back from the Uchiha lands, but they had other work to do. In one of her pockets, Hitomi found a pen and a notebook. She never went far without that very useful pair of items. She didn't ever forget anything, but it wasn't the case for Naruto, far from it, and even Sasuke didn't have her eidetic memory. If they were captured with written information somewhere on them, they could still swallow it. Good luck to their opponent then to have that back.
They had a very lively conversation that lasted the whole evening. Establishing the cost of a product was hard enough as it was; adding the production cost and a margin could turn in a real nightmare, especially when Sasuke and Naruto had to fight tooth and nail against Hitomi's instinct to devalue her own work. The girl had a hard time understanding why her friends were fighting so hard so she would have more money since it didn't change anything for them. She ended up giving in, though. Somewhere deep inside, she wanted that income.
When the night came, Hitomi had a lot to think about and, when she finally fell asleep, a dream came to her once more.