"Just might kick your butt,
go run amok then paint my nails,
Never learned to raise my hand,
was too busy raising hell,"
-Dynasties & Dystopia, Denzel Curry
When I opened my eyes, the sky was a lighter gray.
I sat up slowly, expecting it to hurt, but it didn't.
Something tumbled down into my lap and I stopped, blinking down at my cloak.
Usagi, I remembered, And Naga too.
I pulled it up and ran a hand over the middle, feeling the hard bumps of stitches under my fingers.
I looked at Naga and his head was slumped forward, asleep against the wall next to me.
How much thread did you use? What if you need it?
But I knew he'd considered that, and it hadn't mattered more than how much I loved my cloak.
I pulled it on, found a used storage scroll tucked neatly in his pouch, and unsealed his cloak. I folded it into a square, slid it behind him on the wall, and used two fingers to push his head back against it.
It was the only kind of pillow we had.
I stood, finger-combing sand out of my hair.
Yahiko was on his side on the ground, Namekuji squished under his head.
Other than Namekuji, I mused, looking at Hidan, who was using his cloak like a blanket, his arms stretched limply above him.
Next to his feet and sitting slumped against the wall opposite of me was someone with white hair, wearing a black, sleeveless shirt and purple pants.
His arms were crossed, and his chin was almost touching his chest. Bandages were wrapped loosely around his neck and shoulder. A thin blade was upright on the wall next to him.
It was like no blade I'd seen before, so he was probably Mangetsu.
I hummed, turning my head to look at Chojuro.
He was awake, polishing Hiramkekarei in his lap with some kind of cloth. Unlike Samehada, it looked mostly the same without its bandages, except for the small hole at the top.
He was making up for the day before, maybe, or—I looked up at the sky—earlier, whenever that had been.
He nodded at me without taking his eyes off the spot he was scrubbing.
I glanced next at Kisame, who had been staring at me from the back corner, still wearing an eerie grin.
Someone had asked him to take watch, I knew, because Chojuro would've been asked to stay up with them, not do it himself again, and that person wouldn't have been Kisame.
Even if Kisame hadn't said anything saying he would, they were all asleep, and he was awake.
He would've been awake anyway, I think, but everyone but Chojuro was showing that they trusted him.
Were doing so blindly even, just because I said so.
I stared at Kisame for another second, wondering if that meant anything to him, and then I turned to leave.
Mangetsu lifted his head as I went past, looking at me through one eye, but I didn't give him another glance.
He was here and wasn't attacking us, and that was all I needed to know.
.
.
.
I stopped half-way up the stairs to Gengetsu, thinking that there had to be more to Minakami than a path to somewhere else.
Where did they eat? Where did they get their clothes?
I glanced to the right at a girl picking ants out of the grass, maybe five or six. Bandages were tied around her eyes, but she still found them with the accuracy of a sensor-nin.
She looked up at me as I lingered, her hair a blond nest on head and her clothes gray rags. She turned her head to follow me when I kept walking.
A man leaned on the balcony of a second story house, watching me with deep bags under his dull eyes.
An older woman standing in front of another house was smoking and using the ashes to draw on the wall.
No one but me was using the staircase.
I hummed, wondering why.
I paused again in front of the alley that the green-eyed man had emerged from but couldn't see past the wall of mist.
I walked into it without hesitation.
The mist was like a curtain as I passed through it, heavy in only the way man-made mist had been so far, thicker than the mist that hung around the houses.
The first thing I saw when I came out on the other side was a symbol on the wall, two green lines twining around each other, with a big red X painted over it in a careful way to not cover the symbol completely.
The wall was covered in them, but none of the others were x'ed out.
I looked towards the back corner of the wall, where the green-eyed man leaned against the wall. He raised his head, looking lazily at me, and then he jerked to full alertness.
He went very, very still.
"You tried rob me," I reminded him, amused, trailing a hand along the blank gap between symbols as I walked closer to him. "Or kill me."
He only frowned.
I lifted one shoulder and asked, "Where does this lead?"
He didn't answer, his hand twitching up a little like he wanted to grab the blade on his back but then thought better of it.
I stopped and dropped my hand, staring at him as I said, "I was being nice before. I didn't have to let you go."
I'd learned it from Sasori, how to use apathy like a another tool. I'd been doing it already, but that was without thought, without trying, without thinking of my face like a weapon.
He looked away and quickly wiped the sweat forming on his forehead with his sleeve. "Market," he said through his teeth.
I held up two fingers. "Now you just owe me twice, for the other two."
He didn't respond, pressing himself hard against the wall as I walked past him.
"Couldn't have known I'd be here," he managed.
"Where else would you be?" I asked. "You wouldn't be as dirty if you lived inside."
He was silent. When I looked back, he was gone.
I laughed.
.
.
.
The market was boxed off by a moss-covered wall. To separate or protect it, I didn't know.
There weren't stands, but once-white shelves pushed together in squares, with enough space to walk between them. They were covered with food and had one vendor watching over their own square.
I glanced at the broken bulbs that hung from old, dirty strings tied along the triangle-shaped roof. The top of it was black, but the underside was brown, and it was held up by four gray concrete pillars.
A man with black markings across his face shaped like wildflowers leaned against a far left pillar, his muscled arms crossed, lazily looking over a pile of gray sacks with oranges visible through the tears. Bowls of purple berries were piled next to it, and behind them were a few sacks with green apples.
I looked at the apples with interest before taking in the rest of the market.
Carrots tied together in bundles with brown spots on them on another square in the middle, cabbages of varying quality, a white bag with a purple, lumpy vegetable spilling out.
On the far right, in buckets of ice, were meats and fish.
All the people were around the meats, looking into buckets or talking to the tired-looking vendor in low, angry voices. She had sharp teeth and dark, baggy circles under her eyes.
The fruit vendor turned a little more to watch the brewing argument as I stopped behind the square with the apples, wondering if they'd trade with me.
Yahiko still had the pouch with all our money, and I didn't know if they'd take it here, anyway—
A short-haired kid darted by, snatching a handful of black-ish berries and folding them up in their too-big shirt as they turned to run.
The fruit vendor was still faster, making up the distance with long, fast strides. I watched him snag the short-haired kid by the back of their shirt and hold them in the air.
I didn't move.
"Little demon," he hissed, grasping at the berries as they tried to hold onto them and stomping on the ones that fell, just so the kid couldn't have them.
It was the same thing, everywhere I went.
"What can I trade for this?" I asked, and he finally seemed to notice me.
He threw the kid away from him, wiping the sneer from his face as he looked skeptically over me.
"Clan?" he asked.
I hummed, watching the kid hold a scraped knee.
I turned to look at the vegetable vendor, an old man sitting on a stool, but he wasn't looking. His expression said it happened often, like it wasn't even worth keeping his attention.
"Hey," the fruit vendor said, snapping his fingers at me. "No clan, no business—" he broke off with a curse, hurrying around the shelf to snag the brown hair of another kid who had been hiding beneath another shelf that turned out to be a table, who tried to sneakily steal an orange.
"Wish those damn hunter-nin would be good for something and take you lot to their bloody Academy already," the fruit vendor hissed.
I watched as he struggled with the kid, as they managed to thrash free and run for the vegetables, managing to bite off the end of a soggy carrot before the old man got up to yell at them.
The fruit vendor managed to catch them by the hair again, ignoring the pain yelled as he handed the kid over to the old man to pry the carrot from.
I glanced at the apples, humming again, and then I reached into my pouch and pulled out a kunai.
Both the fruit and vegetable vendor froze, but I only pointed at the bag of oranges.
"Could I trade this for that?" I asked.
The fruit vendor looked at me with sudden interest, walking back over, and I wondered how well-armed the village would let them be outside of missions.
I wondered why there weren't hunter-nin everywhere, watching everything, if Minakami was really as dangerous as everyone said.
Why would those kids still be alive to keep trying to steal, if all the worst criminals were here?
"Who are you?" he asked, eyeing the kunai.
I looped a finger through the handle and spun it. "Do you want to trade, or not?"
He looked at me the same way Sana had, a look I hadn't been able to read at the time, but told me now that what I was offering was worth much more than what I was asking for it.
He ducked his head, nodding towards the bag of oranges. "One bag. Hand it over, and it's yours."
I handed it over.
He turned slightly, using the column to hide him disappearing the kunai up his sleeve.
I went around to the bag as he went back to leaning on the pillar, in the middle of opening it to pull out an orange when, without looking, I caught a darting hand that went to rip off my pouch.
A pick-pocket, but not an experienced one.
I finished pulling the orange out and glanced back, meeting the frozen eyes of the long-haired kid.
The short-haired one was still on the ground, watching, frozen holding their knee.
"Civilians are usually the ones with the most money, and easier to take from," I told the kid, and watched mud-brown eyes widen.
The fruit vendor was next to me a second later, cursing the kid, reaching for a fistful of hair—
And then he stopped abruptly, some instinct making him glance to the side just before he could touch them, something compelling him to pay attention to me as I stared at him. He swallowed hard, suddenly unable to find the words to speak.
I hummed, turned back to the kid, and lowered myself into a crouch. Both the kid and the vendor took an audible step back, but I only held the orange out.
The kid looked at it, at me, and then back again, and then snatched it, backing away quickly and holding it close.
"Hey! Don't encourage them—" the vegetable vendor started to yell, limping over as the fruit vendor stayed quiet, and I stood again, turning to stare at him with empty eyes.
Eyes that told him of all the violent things I would do to him if he didn't stop talking.
The vegetable vendor's mouth stayed open, but the sound had stopped. His eyes widened and he shuddered.
"Diable," he breathed.
It was easy, so easy, to see why people feared Sasori on sight. Except he did it naturally, like he'd been doing it for so long that it became his normal expression.
Diable sounded like Diablo, I mused.
When Hibiki had said it, she'd been calling Naga a devil.
I calmly pulled another orange out of the bag in the silence and held it out at the other kid, who scrambled up to take it, then hesitated.
The entire market had gone quiet.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Arisu," he said, inching closer, showing off baby teeth as he spoke. "I'm a girl," she quickly added, gruffly, like the misconception happened often.
I blinked. I waved the orange at her until she took it, quickly backing away from me, shaking dirt out of short black strands.
The long-haired one stopped in the middle of tearing into the orange with their fingers. "Boy," he said affirmatively, then stuffed peels in his mouth.
"Name?" I asked.
He blinked and shook his head.
"He doesn't have one," the girl said quietly, then ravaged her orange too.
"Who the hell are you?" the fruit vendor found his voice to ask.
"I'm the Wolf of the Rain," I said easily, pulling another orange free. "I'm from Amegakure."
I dug into it with my finger, the same way Arisu had, and peeled a layer of the skin free.
While I did I heard murmuring, a name I didn't recognize, and then 'he said there were ame-nin in the minefield'.
"Does anyone recognize the symbols on her cloak?" the meat vendor asked suddenly, leaning her arms on the table, and the market went suddenly silent as everyone looked at me.
The boy came over, almost shyly, looking up at me and standing next to the bag. He looked at it and then back at me.
"Take them," I said, dropping a strip in my mouth.
I regretted it immediately because it was hard to chew and bitter, but it wasn't too bad once I was used to it
I listened to the quiet 'no's' and 'never seen anything like that's' whispered around me.
"It represents the Akatsuki," I told them, as Arisu came and put as many oranges in her shirt as she could hold. I looked over the small crowd watching me, ignoring the other vendors. "I didn't come here for it, but I should ask if Minakami wants to join a revolution."
The market went quiet again.
I ate another peel and said, "I'm more than just the Wolf of the Rain, but today I'm the ninja that was hired to kill the Fourth Mizukage. If you help me do it, no one will be able to ignore that they were freed from him by Minakami. I won't let them. You'll have power, more than you'll ever get by trying to make Kirigakure see you by working hard. Or you can leave without retaliation from the village. I'll make sure of that too."
Arisu turned and ran, shirt full, and the boy ran up to the bag to copy her, but his shirt could only fit three of them.
I tried an inner part of the orange in the stunned silence.
It was sweet, but somehow sour too, and wetter to chew, and I knew Naga would hate oranges.
"In six or so days, Kirigakure will change, with or without Minakami," I told them. "It'd be harder without the help, but my offer favors you more than me."
The meat vendor stared at me through narrowed eyes. "You're the Amekage," she guessed. "That or you're the best liar I've seen in my entire life."
The fruit vendor took another step back.
"I'd bet money on it being a con," a man said blithely, propping a small, red-stained sack of meat on the edge of a shelf. "Nothing changes around here and you're all gullible fools for entertaining her. Not recognizing that symbol means nothing. There's a clanless kid right over there."
He lifted his tired gaze to the boy, who froze and ducked behind a shelf, clutching the oranges tighter.
"It'd be faster to antagonize the hunter-nin and at least get a quick death instead of the long, drawn out one I'd get listening to her," he went on, and I ate another peel strip. He turned to the meat vendor. "I haven't brought this meat for it to sit out and spoil while you all dream."
The meat vendor didn't take her eyes off me. "No con-artist worth a damn would have let you speak uninterrupted for so long. Doubt doesn't inspire people to pay into an idea."
I paused, and then I smiled, swallowing as I said, "Like I said, I don't need Minakami, but I'd like the help."
There was quiet chatter again, part of it doubtful, 'he's right, I didn't take time off to hear fairytales', part afraid, 'she's someone, even if she's not the leader, and Baizou's reaction proves it', and part convicted, 'could we afford not to at least consider it?'.
"What is your client offering you, Amekage?" the meat vendor finally asked. "You talk as if you'll have more influence than a simple alliance could ever give you. Where does your confidence come from?"
"Taiyokage," I corrected automatically, eating another inner piece of the orange. "It's because of the state the village will be in when we're done. I don't believe, even for a second, that Yagura will go down quietly. No revolution is ever quiet. The new Kirigakure won't throw an alliance away over a few people, not when mist-nin don't have any other friends. And maybe, if they do, I'll decide to take the whole thing."
"Then why don't you do that from the start? If you put forward a mist-nin as a puppet leader when the village is weak, you could get away with it," the meat vendor said, staring intently at me.
Because the daimyo wouldn't let it be that easy, because Mei had influence, even if she'd lied about the daimyo, because I hadn't decided if I wanted to save Yagura or not.
I finished the orange as I thought of what I wasn't willing to say, and then settled on, "I don't want Kirigakure. It's a mess."
It was, at least, true.
The meat vendor stared at me, saying nothing.
"A Kage that no one stands behind is like a ninja with gaping wounds all over them. No amount of bandaging will change that they're unsaveable. That goes for Yagura and a puppet Mizukage, because I wouldn't know if either was replaced or killed until weeks after it happened. Mist-nin can have Kirigakure."
Looks were exchanged, but no one spoke to each other. There was less doubt, too.
The meat vendor straightened. "You want murderers like me on your team?" she asked. "Your client seems to have given you the impression that we need to be freed from something. We're not all good people. I'm a fugitive. The only thing worse to the village than killing a comrade on a mission is causing the mission to fail because of it. They'd have me executed."
"They didn't, and they wouldn't."
She leaned a hand on the shelf as she leaned forward. "And why is that?"
"A few reasons," I answered, tempted to lick my hands clean. "You can say that my offer is to make Minakami at least equal in standing as Gengetsu. If they aren't criminals for killing people with kekkei-genkai, why would you be?"
"That confirms you're not from here," someone muttered, and I heard more murmurs like it.
"What would stop me from deciding that people in Byakuren should pay for what they did under Yagura?" I asked.
"Because they'd throw a fit," the man who'd doubted me before slowly answered. "They'd remind us all that their influence goes beyond strength, or the village itself."
I dropped my hand and tilted my head. "So, with a village behind Minakami, why couldn't you do the same?"
His dark blue eyes widened and he didn't answer.
"There are worse types here," the meat vendor said, unmoved. "Cannibals, deviants, you name it. Anyone that the village can't leash gets sent here."
I hummed, looking down at the boy's hiding spot, but he'd already snuck away.
"I don't believe that," I finally said.
"You don't...?"
"I've only been attacked once. Why is it that, in a place full of the worst criminals in the village, the only thieves here were two kids?" I asked. "Why is it so quiet? Why do the hunter-nin stay away?"
Her eyes were narrowed again. The looks thrown my way were suddenly more guarded, and the silence felt stony instead of surprised.
"Minakami has a leader," I answered myself. "Someone strong enough to keep the peace and to get rid of the criminals that make noise. Or you drive out or kill them for that person, because you all respect them enough to follow their rules."
And still, no one spoke.
That person had been Hanzo once, except he'd turned Amegakure into place where even criminals didn't want to be, if they didn't get eaten first.
I pulled the half-full bag of oranges off the shelf, watching the fabric stretch dangerously and waiting to see if it would hold, and then when it did I looked at them again.
"Tell that person they have five days to give me an answer, and if they don't, the offer's gone," I said, then turned and went back to the alley.
The market stayed silent.
The green-eyed man wasn't in the alley, but one of his friends was sitting against the wall.
He hastily shoved his pant leg down over a wood carving in the shape of a leg, grafted to his knee, and dropped his eyes to the floor.
Short brown hair, in his twenties, and dark freckles down both his arms.
He shifted his other leg out of the way as I moved past him, trying to hide the kunai on the ground on his other side, like I might see it as a threat.
I stopped just past him and his shoulders pulled down and curled forward as if to protect himself, but I only reached into my sack, pulled out a lumpy orange, and tossed it at him.
He caught it on instinct, and then looked at it and then me with wide, shocked eyes.
"I'm not heartless," I said, and kept walking.
.
.
.
I crouched, lowering the bag down onto the grass next to me, and the girl with the bandages around her eyes minutely flinched at the thump, but kept her attention trained on me.
She turned her head as I opened it and picked out an orange.
I had too many and didn't know what to do with them. If the boy hadn't disappeared, I would've given them all to him.
"It's food," I told her, putting it down on the grass between us. "It's an orange."
I felt the weight of stares on my back.
She turned her head towards the fruit, slowly felt for it, then jerked her fingers back as soon as she brushed against it. She shook her head, frowning.
I lifted one shoulder, scooped up the bag, and got back up—
"It doesn't feel like food," she said hesitantly. "I'm not supposed to—you're a foreigner."
I turned back and asked, "And how do you know that?"
"I've never seen—your chakra is new. Wavy, but hard, like—like when the ground soaks up water. And it's not from here, not home. It's..." she trailed off, biting her thumb nail as she searched for the right words.
"It's not right. I've seen a lot of chakra," she eventually tried to explain. She raised her other hand and pointed at my eyes. "Not right. Then it goes down," her finger followed an invisible path down my shoulder, down my arm, and stopped at my left hand. "Preta. Bright and not right either," she said.
My eyes were wide. She could sense the Rinnegan?
"Preta?" I asked.
"That's what it says," she said, sounding confused about the question.
I lifted my hand, staring at my empty palm.
Her finger moved to my right hand. "Deva," she read aloud, her finger moving back up to my shoulder, then tracing down through my middle down to my left foot. "Animal," she said, slower, faltering a little as she followed my chakra to my right foot.
"Naraka," she read, her voice strained, and a small red stain appeared on the bandages, at the bottom of where her eyes would be. She stopped following my chakra coils as she pointed at my forehead. "He's lending you that power."
I went very still, staring down at her in silence.
"She was born with cursed eyes," a low, dragging voice behind me said, and I glanced at the smoking woman. She hadn't said it like an insult, but like a known fact.
She'd finished her ash drawing on the wall. It was a word, ガト.
"It's better to let her speak once you've got her going, to accept what is said, and then let her be. You were kind to her, so this advice is that repayment. She knows to stay on her grandpa's property, so if you don't go near her, she won't bother you."
A line of blood had leaked out from the bandages and slid down her left cheek, but it didn't seem new or surprising to her as she rubbed it clean with her hand.
Who was he? The Sage of Six Paths?
"Cursed eyes?" I eventually asked, not looking at the pile of used cigarettes littering the ground around the woman.
"The name says it all. A few say it's the opposite, some kind of blessing, but everyone I know calls them a curse. Her grandpa, when he could move around more, would tell anyone who'd listen that she was dieu a touché. In the universal tongue it means god touched. People aren't supposed to see certain things, you know? The afterlife, the realm of the gods, who knows what it is exactly that she sees. Not her fault she was born that way, but it's still not right, as she said."
I hummed. Dieu a touché.
The words sounded like they'd be hard to pronounce by the way she'd rolled the letters off her tongue.
I looked at the girl, watching her sniff and feel for the orange again, hesitantly prodding it.
"Not cursed," she muttered, almost too low to hear, her voice stronger than before now that she wasn't looking directly at me.
I wondered what she'd sense if she saw Hidan.
"What god do you believe in?" I asked the woman.
She breathed out smoke, waving the cigarette at me as she said, "You've used up all your good will, foreign-nin."
It wasn't that important. With a shrug, I turned away from her and the girl.
I wondered if I could convince Hidan to let her stare at him. He probably would, even if he complained, just because I asked him too.
I still didn't quite understand that love, or even that like.
Yahiko had told me on the boat that he couldn't describe loving someone else that way to me, because I wouldn't feel it how he felt it. And then he'd gone back to plotting how to throw Hidan overboard.
Two steps down, I stopped, glancing back at the girl. "Do you want another one?"
She'd started to peel the orange, but paused at the sound of my voice, tasting her fingers.
"They don't think I can hear them just because I can't see," she told me around them, whispering.
I responded by taking out another orange, going back up, and putting it down next to the other one.
"Why give it to me? You don't like me now," she said plainly. "I didn't know other people couldn't see it, or I would've been quiet. Wouldn't have told you."
"I don't like or dislike you," I told her. "Back home, when I was your age, I was called a demon. Earlier I was called a diable. Being cursed doesn't sound as bad as being a devil. And I know someone 'god touched' already, so it's not that surprising. Or, you could have a kekkei genkai that they don't understand. Either way, I only want to know who he is that's 'lending me my power'."
She raised her head at me, then quickly ducked down. "No, not all," she corrected me, biting her pinky nail. "Naraka. It's the brightest and the most wrong, but I don't know many names. There's nothing to read. He's just there. Don't know his name."
I hummed, and accepted this. "When I was your age, I couldn't control the names people called me. Now I can choose which ones I accept. I'm not a devil. I'm the Wolf of the Rain. If you don't fear being called cursed, the word can't hurt you."
Her head jerked up, her mouth dropping open in shock, but I didn't wait for her to respond before I walked down the steps.
A/N: ガト- Gatō