Chapter Ten

"What Makes a Good Kunoichi?"

Road to Uzushio Arch II

"Watch where you're stepping, brat." Sasori griped, and Fū was yanked to the side and thrust harshly into the trunk of a tree several meters back from where she had been. "Stay where you are."

Her head spun from the vertigo, so she barely registered when Sasori's chakra threads set off a paper bomb that was stuck to the branch she'd been seconds from stepping on.

Almost immediately shadows sprung at Sasori from where they'd been concealed in the foliage. Sasori was taking them down easily – chakra strings only.

This was the first time they'd encountered anyone unfriendly on the road. The last few weeks had been rather dull, and they had lulled her into a false sense of security that she would never allow herself to fall into again. Not after this.

Fū's heart slammed against her ribcage, watching in wide eyed terror as weapons gleamed in the mid afternoon sun. The clank of metal reached her ears, and the shouting of jutsu was all the warning given before a gust of wind hit with such force she almost stopped breathing. The jutsu had knocked the wind out of her. Ironic.

"If you'd focused more effort on your training you wouldn't be so out of sorts," Sasori scolded from where he stood, just above her on a large tree branch. He was waving his hands around like a maestro – the screams and the sound of blood gushing out of his victims were the symphony that spurred that malicious look in his eye.

He was enjoying this.

"This happens to be the first real dangerous situation I've been in," Fū just managed to say it all without stuttering, despite the tremble in her body as she slumped down against the tree. Her head felt like it was splitting open and she watched in abject horror as the men died one by one – each death more violent than the last.

Without further question, a man was in front of her. Not, she thought, of his own accord. Judging by the fear in his eyes and the way his arm was poised as if he were about to jab the kunai he held in his fist into her jugular, but simply couldn't do so. His hitai-ate proclaimed him a Takigakure shinobi, and he was fucking terrified. His standard shinobi pants were stained with his own urine. Fū could smell it from where she shook against the tree.

She looked at him with matching, fear shaken, eyes.

"Take out your kunai and slit his throat," Sasori ordered. Fū glanced up at him, blinking in shock when he sat down, one leg dangled casually over the edge of the branch and the other tucked up underneath him. One of his hands was planted against his waist, giving him a faint 'disappointed dad' look, the other hand was controlling the last shinobi standing – dangling right in front of her - like the man was nothing.

Sasori's dark eyes bore back into hers with startling intensity.

It was a test. Maybe. It could also be Sasori's way of trying to desensitize her to killing.

Fū didn't want to be desensitized to killing.

"If you can't do it, I'm taking you back to Ame and letting Pain know he should stop wasting his time with you and your opinions." Sasori's tone usually oscillated between bored and condescending, but in this moment it was cold with an edge that caused the hairs on the back of Fū's neck to rise. "You can wax philosophical until the breath leaves your body and the others can soak it up like dry sponges if that's what suits them. To me, your words remain weak without actions behind them."

He was right, damn him.

What had she thought? That she'd just get away with living in a world like this and having some kind of easy picket fence lifestyle without being mired by death and violence?

She wasn't that fortunate. Never had been.

"Please, I have a family, a little girl your age–" were the last words of the Takigakure shinobi as Fū slashed her kunai across his throat.

She found it disconcerting that as the man collapsed forward, she was able to stand on sturdy legs and throw a sarcastic smile over her shoulder at the puppet master.

"Enough action for you, Sasori-shishou?"

Sasori looked appeased as he clenched his fingers, watching with a faint smile as the dead shinobi collapsed to the ground at Fū's feet in a heap. "For the time being."

He didn't know she'd killed before. In another lifetime.

Fū and Sasori settled into a working-relationship after the incident with the Taki shinobi. That had been a week an a half ago, now. In that time they'd made their way about halfway through Sound.

Little changed between them, save for a new tension between herself and the puppet. Sasori was less of a dick to her after she'd killed in front of him, though, and hadn't insist she do that again thus far. Her ability to follow through on his order seemed to have been some sort of initiation in which she'd gained a thread of respect. She tried not to think too hard on the man she killed, but… it was unavoidable.

At night, in her bedroll, she'd cry silently for him. For his daughter and whomever else he'd left behind.

Just like she'd been backed into a corner in her last life, she was backed into one again. Only this time, the man might not have deserved it.

She was sorry she'd killed him.

But, just like last time, she hadn't had a choice.

The situation was so similar, yet so different. But it was the similarities that kept Fū awake at night, turning in her bedroll.

She was still the woman who had a child to think of, and he was a man that threatened her life and ability to care for that child. She'd had to choose herself.

So why did it haunt her still?

Sasori, didn't behave exactly like he had in the story when working with Deidara. Fū assumed that was because he was still quite young, and she didn't argue with him about his art.

She tended to agree with Sasori over Deidara anyway; art is eternal.

Otherwise, they wouldn't build statues and monuments to honor and glorify events and people worth remembering, would they?

(She'd said as much to Sasori and he'd damn near smiled. She saw it. A twitch of the lip. He covered it just as quickly as she'd seen it, though.)

That, and he called her a brat so often she thought he probably just didn't know her name, and he had a gruff demeanor.

Especially when he was inside the puppet.

She'd seen him outside of it a couple times, now. If he'd been surprised that she hadn't been surprised the first time he stepped out from inside of Hiruko he never mentioned it.

But it was worth noticing that Sasori hadn't turned himself into a puppet fully yet.

From her limited observations, it was clear that his arms and legs had been converted but nothing else had been. He might've still been researching the fūinjutsu that would be needed to keep him 'alive' in that little drum he'd one day make to store what was left of his physical body.

She could certainly help him with that if she made it to Uzushio and found some instruction to work with. Perhaps that was why he was so amiable with her — maybe he thought the same thing.

(Fū wasn't going to debate the ethics of helping someone discard their humanity and their body — she'd eaten a bullet at thirty years old in the other world. She was the last one to advocate against body mutilation.)

"You're never going to be a good kunoichi," Sasori's words were like a hammer, obliterating what remained of Fū's ego into mere fragments with all the tact of a dancing, shit covered monkey. "You do not possess the drive, ability, or focus for it."

"Yeah, I know." Fū slumped over their campfire, poking at it with a long twig she'd snagged from underneath her bedroll when she napped a few hours prior.

They'd been training in the afternoons and evenings when they would camp, ever since they'd started out from Ame weeks ago. In that time, Fū hadn't managed to learn much from Sasori. Besides how to henge, feel for nearby chakra signatures, avoid being caught by his chakra strings (he still caught her more often than she got away) and an increase in stamina due to the prolonged travel.

Other than that, she'd been having trouble learning any shinobi arts.

She'd come to the realization that what she'd told Obito before, when she fixed her privacy seals, was more true than she'd thought.

She was bad at everything except fūinjutsu. The longer she tried, the harder she trained, the more she noticed it. If even she was noticing it, then Sasori had her pegged from the beginning.

(Though, she wasn't so sure about her fūinjutsu skill at the moment, either. She was struggling to understand Hiraishin. Even after two weeks of pouring over Minato's notes on the subject every night. There was something about his theory that wasn't jiving in her mind and it was driving her mad. She knew that it was a hard jutsu to pull off… nobody but Senju Tobirama and Minato had been capable of it in the story but she wanted to be the third. She couldn't be a fūinjutsu genius without being able to preform Hiraishin.)

Fū thought her inability to perform up to par with shinobi standards might have something to do with not wanting to fight in the first place. She'd never been particularly violent, in this life or the other one. She'd killed, once, in the other life. Self-defense. It was him or her and her children and she wasn't going to end up dead with her kids in foster care like mama had.

So she'd fought back and survived.

She hadn't wanted to kill someone then, and she didn't want to do it now.

But in a world that laid such a heavy emphasis on physical prowess, to not be a fighter was to be vulnerable. She was Naruto's sister… she couldn't be vulnerable. That could get him killed. That could get a whole bunch of people killed, actually. Especially after all that talking out of her ass about 'revolution' she'd been doing.

'I'm probably going to eat those words.' Fū thought, angry that she was repeating the same mistakes from her last life in her new one, and the stakes were far higher in this one. 'This is what I get for being arrogant. Nagato's going to notice I'm a phony and he'll kill me for sure.'

Silence reigned for a solid ten minutes after Sasori's proclamation. Fū was brooding, and Sasori tinkering with one of his puppets in the still of the night, only the crackling of the fire between them, before Sasori spoke again.

"That's not to say that you won't make an exceptional fūinjutsu master – everything else is merely a skill that can be learned in order to facilitate your natural talent." Fū's eyes snapped up, watching Sasori with suspicion that gave way to gratitude when she realized he wasn't joking or trying to be cruel.

Sasori could be… pleasant-ish. Or something approaching it, in any case. When he wanted to be.

"Maybe I'll be able to find some things worth studying in Uzushio, then. That way I'm not such a waste of your time." Fū conceded, poking at the dying embers of their fire. They'd put it out before beginning their staggered sleep/watch schedule for the night. For now, it was providing her a little warmth against the cool fall night breeze sweeping in from the north.

Sasori watched her for a long, weighted moment, then nodded. "I'll begin teaching you how to form chakra strings and work on increasing your dexterity when we camp tomorrow."

Fū's brow knit for a second, confused.

The puppet master rolled his eyes. "You're too reliant on your dominant hand."

Improving her dexterity, training her mind to be capable of using both hands for separate tasks simultaneously.. Fū could think of at least a dozen things that such a skill would be useful for. Most of them are for fūinjutsu, some of them just for everyday life. The prospect was exciting and her back straightened involuntarily.

"… I'd like that, thank you."

Sasori looked back down at his puppetry, saying nothing.

Fū watched as Sasori tinkered, lost in thought before she zoned back into reality and observed his seal work. She hadn't seen much outside of the puppet he buried himself inside, he tended to prefer that one, but she knew he was definitely carrying more than one puppet around in his scrolls. This one, from the looks of it, concealed at least a dozen.

She wondered if he already had the scroll that contained his army of puppets, or if he'd yet to collect that many.

"If you change these lines," Fū pointed to the scroll, "loop them to the right instead of to the left and down, then mirror that to the opposite end of the scroll, you'll have no delays in the summoning and it'll have a longer rate of preservation. Your puppets might experience some deterioration over the course of the next few years with the seal the way it is now."

He glanced at her from the corner of his eye. "I'll try it."

It wasn't much, but it was a start.

Obito had done a hell of a job completely ruining Kirigakure.

In his defense, he hadn't thought he'd need to set it back to rights when he'd begun pulling the strings in place of Madara. But here he was, trying to figure out how to fix what had been broken for over a decade.

One point in his favor was the coup that was in its early planning stages. He wasn't certain when Momochi Zabuza and his accumulated followers would strike, but Obito could utilize it to his advantage. He could do just enough good in Kiri with his control over Yagura to turn things around within the country. The weak willed insurgents might hesitate. The strong willed would be captured. Potentially executed. Unless another option presented itself.

No matter what stage Kiri was in, insurrection could not be tolerated. It set a bad precedent. Obito needed to utilize that to his advantage, somehow.

He wanted to keep Yagura as the Mizukage, too. At least for now.

That would keep Obito at the head of Kiri for the foreseeable future so he could continue pulling the strings of one of the Five Greater Nations. In order to do that he needed to sweep the suspicion that Yagura was being controlled under the rug.

If he could manage to divert the coup and settle the civil unrest, he could continue to lead from the shadows without being discovered. He would do this until a suitable option presented themselves for the next Mizukage.

Leadership was a lot harder when one was actually trying to do well.

These were the thoughts that plagued him while he was doing his level best to field Naruto's new rebellious streak.

And he was indeed, rebellious. Mischievous, too.

When the boy realized Fū wasn't coming home that first night (and the nights after where she was conspicuously absent) they'd learned just how attached he was to his sister.

It should be impossible for a child of almost two to cause so much chaos, but Naruto was a little hellion and the Akatsuki base had been turned upside down over the past several weeks. Everyone, including Nagato, was ready for Fū's return. Konan had volunteered to fetch her on three occasions, even, and Fū was scheduled to still be away for the next month at least.

"You're more difficult than the Kiri situation, kid." Obito huffed, carrying the squirming boy to his crib. Not that the child-sized jail cell would actually hold him. He'd long since proven that no mere crib could quell Uzumaki Naruto's chaos. Obito was just hoping for a brief respite.

"Fū!" Naruto screamed in Obito's ear, eyes red, puffy, and flowing with tears like they had been every night for weeks. "Ane! I want my Ane!"

Naruto was by far harder to deal with than Fū had been at that age. He made her look remarkably well behaved in comparison. He didn't remember a single time she'd yelled.

Though, perhaps it was because she'd had an adult mind in a small body this entire time.

Now that he thought about it, that was probably the case.

"Soon, Naru-chan. Soon." Obito grumbled, twitching hard when Naruto's tiny fist knocked his mask to the side. He pushed his shoulder into it to dislodge it the rest of the way, letting it clatter to the ground as he lowered Naruto into the crib. "Trust me, I miss Fū too."

He never knew a toddler could manage such an enraged look, but Naruto was definitely showing him that it was possible.

They were halfway through Sound, close to the Valley of the End, when Fū heard a devastating roar to the north. The ground shook from some kind of heavy impact and her head whirled to see if she could discover the source.

"We should ignore it and continue on. Whatever it is, it's not our problem." Sasori told her, eying how she was staring off toward the direction of the sound.

Chakra fizzled in the air around them like the electricity that remained after a lightning strike. It was… an oppressive weight, and it choked her where she stood. Just above the tree line, about two miles away, a glowing blue tail flickered in the distance.

"That's a tailed beast–" Fū breathed without really thinking about it. She could feel it in her bones that whatever was going on to the north of them, it was a tailed beast that was the culprit.

But which tailed beast? Which one was blue… the cat? She couldn't remember the colors. If it was the cat… Matatabi, what was she doing in Sound and what happened to her jinchuriki?

"More reason to not bother with it." Sasori insisted, grabbing her arm.

"Wait!" Fū said, ripping her arm from his grip. He glared at her, but he didn't stop her as she began to climb the tree. "She's going to crush that town!"

If it was Matatabi, then she wasn't volatile like Kurama. If memory served. That meant there was a reason she was destroying this unassuming village.

"Then let them be crushed."

'There might be something wrong with the seal!' Fū thought, jumping from the tree and racing towards the town. Out loud, she shouted; "There are innocent bystanders living there, Shishou!"

"Brat! Come back here, now!"

Fū ignored Sasori's demand and chakra strings whipped all around her. She dodged them faster and with more precision than she'd ever done in training. Fū didn't even notice that she'd managed to out maneuver Sasori's strings, focused as she was on getting to the village.

The Akatsuki had received agreement from both Grass and Rivers to schedule meetings with their Daimyo's. Their reputation for efficiency at a lower rate had engendered the other nation's curiosity. To that end, each had responded something to the effect of; 'We look forward to meeting the faces behind the organization's good name.'

No word yet from the Land of Birds, but Nagato remained patient. Birds did not have much of a shinobi force – no Kage and no hidden village. Accepting a meeting with the Akatsuki meant allowing them to enter their lands, where they could potentially do much damage and seize control with little resistance.

The Akatsuki's request would be difficult political waters for the Bird Daimyo to navigate. At least until they met and could be convinced that the Akatsuki did not reach out with nefarious purposes in mind.

Thus far, things seemed to be going well. The Akatsuki had not drawn any unnecessary attention, and they were working towards bridging the gap between the small border nations.

But Nagato was irritated, regardless of the good news.

Because Jiraiya-sensei had just infiltrated Amegakure.

"He wants the children," Nagato told Konan, needlessly – she already knew, "take the boy away from the city. To the safe house. I will handle our erstwhile sensei."

"Of course."

He ignored the way his heart sank into his stomach when Konan glanced worriedly at him before she hurried out of his room to fetch Naruto.

'Why did you have to show up here Jiraiya?'

"What happened?" Fū dropped from the rooftop of one of the buildings on the far south end of the village, away from the tailed beast but directly into the fray of shinobi that were in the midst of an outright panic.

One took a swipe at her and she dodged it just in time to only lose a few strands of hair. She hadn't noticed that she'd lost her focus on her henge and that her hair was blood-red in the evening light.

"I want to help," Fū implored, managing to take in the site of four struggling ninja, each with forehead protectors that branded them Kumogakure ninja. "I'm not here to hurt anyone."

"What village are you from?" One of the young men hissed, he had dark eyes, brown hair and a very well-defined jawline. Conventionally attractive, but his voice was nasally and riddled with distrust. He held his kunai like he was ready to slice her throat if she answered anything he didn't like

"Uzushio," she answered, out of irritation rather than good sense. These ninja wouldn't like either of the other answers she might've said. Konoha was a hell no, and she didn't want to claim her attachment to that village anyhow. Ame, they'd probably laugh her off of the battlefield. The shinobi opened his mouth and she cut him off. "Yeah yeah, everyone's dead there. Whatever. Moving on – what's happening with your jinchuriki?"

"She's got the hair, Kiyoi." One of the other shinobi, an older man with dark skin, light hair, and tortured eyes said hesitantly. "Maybe she can help."

So the guy she was talking to was Kiyoi and he might be their captain, judging by how the one was looking to him as if for direction for how to proceed.

"She could be working with Iwa."

Fū felt her jaw tick, and she was saved from saying anything negative about Iwa (she was still proud of Minato's 1000 vs 1 victory against them – never liked Iwagakure in the story and that carried over into this lifetime) when Sasori dropped down beside her.

"You best tell us what's happening before I take the girl away from here and any chance of limiting the destruction, and potentially saving your jinchuriki, goes with us." Sasori told them, sounding as if he'd just come in from a boring evening stroll. He was completely unruffled, even as Matatabi's claws swiped through a building on the other side of town and the civilian's screamed in terror.

Fū thought Sasori sounded rather restrained, for a guy that had just tried to yank her back with his strings and was probably outraged that she'd managed to get past him. Get past him and involve them in a dispute between two of the five Greater Nations.

Fū had the good sense to realize that once Nagato found out she'd be in big trouble. Then when Obito heard... well, there was nothing she could do about that now.

The Kumo shinobi – Kiyoi – ran his hands through his hair and growled.

"Fine," he bit out, all angry glare and spite in his tone, "-we were in the midst of negotiating something classified with a team of Iwa nin. Things seemed to be going well, but then one of the Iwa bastards shot forward and got the jump on us. He tampered with our jinchuriki's seal and the two-tails burst forward. Yugito ran off, bleeding, told us to stay where we were and she was going to try and get the beast under control. We're trying to track down those Iwa assholes right now while she settles the beast."

'This day isn't going well for them,' Fū thought, grinding her teeth. 'Not an Iwa shinobi in sight.'

"Right," Fū frowned, looking over her shoulder at Sasori, who was looking back at her blankly. "You get the Iwa shinobi – I'll figure out how to stop the two tails and save the jinchuriki."

"Now hold on a minute, kid, you're no–" Kiyoi began, pointing his finger at her like she was the culprit of all of this day's woes.

"NO! You listen to me right now Kiyoi-san!" Fū snapped, her temper and irritation rising as Matatabi's hissing roar spilled out over them all, Kiyoi took a step back, wide-eyed. Fū didn't realize her hair was doing its best impression of a raging octopus, and she continued on unfettered. "You will all assist my shishou in capturing the Iwa ninja responsible for the lost lives and destruction here today. I will do everything I can to save your jinchuriki and quell the threat from the two tails. Understand?"

She did not wait for anyone to respond, and left them all gaping like fish as she jumped from the rooftop and straight toward the danger.

Fū was on the other side of the village when Sasori sighed, cursed, and then proceeded to say; "Well, I suppose it can't be helped."

He threw his summoning scroll on the ground and in several plums of smoke, his puppet army was summoned.

"Such an interesting girl. If she dies, I'm going to add her to my collection. So long as Leader-sama doesn't kill me."

The Kumo shinobi stood by, wide eyed and terrified as the puppet master set to work tracking down the Iwa nin that were hiding all around.

They would not escape him.

Nii Yugito was dying.

She knew it, and so did Matatabi.

Whatever the Iwa shinobi did, it had disrupted the flow of her tailed beast seal and had, somehow, severed the connection between jinchuriki and beast without fully separating them.

Matatabi was dying right along with her jailor, and the two-tails was scrambling to do everything she could to get out of Yugito before the human died and took her too. Not because she didn't care about the girl – but because she didn't want to die yet.

Yugito understood this, but still… having lost control to the point that Matatabi was reaping so much destruction on this previously serene village gave her enough strength to hold on.

To hold out hope for a miracle.

She hadn't expected that miracle to appear in the form of a small, crimson haired child. A few years younger than she herself was.

But, that's who jumped down beside her, just barely missing being swiped at by one of Matatabi's extended claws.

"My name is Fū and I'm going to fix your seal," this strange, fearless child introduced herself, dropping to her knees beside a stunned Yugito with a focused frown. Her large blue eyes trained on Yugito's stomach, where the older girl was trying to staunch the bleeding from the kunai that the fūinjustsu had been stored on. "Please, let me see."

"If I move my hand I'm dead," Yugito said in a rush, feeling faint and light headed from the blood loss. She was pretty sure the only thing keeping her alive right now was the adrenaline from her fear.

The girl – Fū – shook her head. "You're going to die if you don't."

That was true, too.

Yugito steeled her breath and began to pull her hand away, shakily.

Matatabi roared.

Fū glanced up at the rampaging tailed beast and stood, hands on her hips, glaring up at the blue beast like she was an errant child.

"Matatabi! That is enough!" Fū shouted, stamping her foot like she was amidst a tantrum and something absolutely insane happened in that instant that Yugito was sure had to be some kind of death induced fever dream. Because there was no way this child had just adressed Matatabi by name.

Then long, glowing, golden chains shot out from Fū's body and wrapped around Matatabi, dragging the great beast to the ground in seconds. The two-tails thrashed violently, but it was no use. More chains erupted from the earth and clamped around her like a vice until she couldn't move save to blink and shudder.

"What the hell are you?" Yguito stammered as Fū dropped back down to her knees, now peeling the older girl's hand from her stomach herself to examine the seal, blood staining her too small hands. The world spun and Yugito hardly caught the girls' response as she fell into the depths of unconsciousness.

"I'm an Uzumaki," Fū mumbled, eyes focused on the seal as golden chakra steadily appeared on each of the fingers of her right hand, "and you're going to be okay. I promise."

Uchiha Shisui was a good shinobi.

A great one, even.

He'd been lauded since early childhood as a prodigy, he'd worked hard, pushed through the ranks, and had been promoted to Jonin by eleven years old. He was good at what he did. Good, and loyal, and efficiant.

The only thing that mattered more to Shisui than his loyalty to his village was his loyalty to his clan; and he took both of these oaths seriously.

The struggle that often choked him was when his duty to his village warred against his duty to his clan. More specifically; when he felt like he might be doing something that would hurt his friend Itachi.

He'd promised he would never ever betray Itachi. Not for anything. Not even for the village. Even though it was the village who'd requested he keep an eye on the younger Uchiha prodigy in the first place. Shisui would never betray Itachi.

But this felt like he was doing what he said he would never do.

He stood by and watched, chakra signature suppressed, as the crimson haired little girl shot passed him and his team, shouting back at the man who chased her with chakra strings that she dodged.

'There are innocent bystanders living there, Shishou!' The girl had shouted, fearlessly racing toward where the two-tails had been released by Iwa shinobi – their meeting with Kumo a ruse to get to one of Kumo's jinchuriki. Much as Konoha had suspected.

Shisui and his team were there for observation and intel gathering only. Their orders were not to engage no matter what happened. Konoha couldn't risk another war, especially not while they were missing their own jinchuriki, recovering from the last war, and still mourning the loss of their Fourth Hokage while rebuilding after the Kyuubi attack.

So when the two-tails sprang forth from the injured jinchuriki, Shisui had to stamp down the urge to help the civilians that were going to be trampled under its massive paws.

But the little crimson haired girl – who the more he watched the more he thought had to be Namikaze Taifū; the Adamantine Sealing Chains themselves were a dead giveaway for an Uzumaki, without mentioning the seal work she was currently doing to save the Kumo jinchuriki – had no such compunction.

"Shisui-san?" One of his team prompted, a chunin by the name of Yamashiro Aoba, and Shisui looked away as the litany of puppets were being de-summoned now that the Iwa nin were captured, marching against their volition straight into the hands of the Kumo nin they had attacked. "We have to go. The Hokage needs to be informed. There are too many enemies for us to collect Namikaze-san without violating current mission parameters. She seems to be in safe enough hands for now. That puppet master is… something else entirely. He's not going to let Kumo take her, nor would he allow us to."

Yes, it was clear to everyone in his team just who had saved the day for the small village. And for the Kumo team. Between the puppet master and Namikaze-san herself, they'd been the hero's of that village today.

"We don't know where they're heading. The Hokage may order a rescue operation," Shisui stated, thinking they might need to follow to gain more intel. Deep down, he knew he'd only suggested it because of his need to deliver Itachi's friend back to the sullen boy, in hopes that Namikaze-san may be able to do for Itachi what Shisui couldn't.

"We're close to Whirlpool. Fū has the Adamantine Sealing Chains, who knows if this was the first time she's used them or not. Before the – before I watched the Fourth Hokage instruct her in fūinjutsu." Tokubetsu Jonin and former member of the Hokage Guard Platoon, Shiranui Genma, informed the group, senbon bobbing as he spoke. "It wouldn't be a stretch to assume they're heading to Uzushio. Trust me, nobody in this team wants to go grab Fū-chan more than I do. I used to carry that kid around on my shoulders every day. But we can't get to her. Not with that puppet master - and I'm pretty sure he's Akasuna no Sasori, Missing Nin of Suna – hell bent on protecting her."

Akasuna no Sasori.

Shisui had read his page in the bingo book. That was not an adversary he wanted to go up against. Especially not in front of shinobi from two villages while in Sound where Konoha wasn't supposed to be. That would be a dead giveaway that Konoha was spying on the other nations and it would likely become a prelude to war.

"Allowing an Uzumaki to try and study long lost fūinjutsu would be the biggest mistake those kidnappers have ever made," Aoba growled, looking much older than his fifteen years. As an afterthought, he added; "Unless Namikaze-san has grown fond of her captors and now works in their favor."

"Woah now, let's not make assumptions like that about the daughter of the Fourth Hokage," Shisui couldn't help himself from saying with a tight frown. "She's been held captive by foreign shinobi for nearly two years. We have no idea what happened to her during that time. No idea what it's taken for her to survive this long. She deserves our grace." Shisui told them, with one last glance at the crimson haired girl, and ignored the way his heart squeezed as he launched into formation – headed for home.

'I'm sorry, Itachi. I really want to bring your friend home, now just isn't the right time.'

Fū has some huge lady balls. Naruto sized lady balls. So, the chapter title is; "What Makes a Good Kunoichi?" Sasori told Fū she'd never be a good one.

I'm curious to know what answers you might have to that question?