Because I wrote parts of this years ago, I ended up stuck with a very weird naming convention. Basically: country names were left in English but village names are in Japanese. This was presumably to avoid saying things like "Hot Water Village, in Hot Water Country–" even though they mean they same thing, past self, why are you like this–

Hidan had intended to attack the village at dawn, which would give him enough time to slaughter its population and ritualistically sacrifice its peace-loving leaders before Kakuzu showed up at noon.

(Hidan's companions thought this was a bit of a time crunch, but no one said anything.)

After sending his little death god off to do… whatever the fuck she was going to do, Hidan sat down against a tree to get some much-deserved pre-murdering-spree sleep. When he was woken up hours before dawn, he was understandably pissed.

"What the fuck?" he grumbled at his nervous-looking follower. "You better have a damn good reason for waking me up."

"Hidan-sama." The man he'd sent to watch the tiny death god was back. "The village is rioting."

Hidan shot to his feet, grabbing his scythe. "What do you mean, rioting ?"

"They're…" the man hesitated. "Some of the former shinobi attempted to initiate a civilian lock-down, but a lot of people have taken to the street instead."

"Why'd they do that?" Hidan demanded.

"There was an outbreak of dead water fever." The man made a face. Hidan did not care enough to wonder if the face was disbelief or fear or disgust.

Dead water fever. Highly contagious. Highly deadly. Highly likely to cause a frenzied panic.

Hidan's followers looked nervous. Hidan, instead, threw his head back and laughed.

Hidan did not fear disease, the same way he did not fear being struck down in battle. He led the other Jashinists to the village, scaling a watch tower and throwing its single sentinel out the window after beheading him. From there he watched his former home light up with fire and screams.

He was ecstatic.

One of the Jashinists appeared, having returned from reconnaissance.

"Apparently a band of foreigners are infected, about ten in total. A handful of locals have come down with the disease. There's fear it's gotten into the water supply."

Hidan cackled. Summoning the tiny shinigami was the best idea he'd had in a while. It did not occur to him that wild rumors spread during a public panic might, in fact, be wild rumors.

Hidan grinned as he ordered his followers to surround the village and kill anyone they found trying to escape. He'd enter the city alone, relishing the idea of destroying the whole thing with his own two hands. Or, more technically, his two hands plus Jashin-sama's uncountable… whatever Jashin-sama had.

He landed in the main street. One of the fine, rich houses that lined it was on fire– possibly arson, but possibly just an accident with one of the torches the older houses used for illumination. Either way, it pleased Hidan.

A pair of young boys ran by him, slowly down briefly to stare at him in wonder. He grinned back at them. They were each holding armfuls of expensive goods– undoubtedly stolen. Hidan would let them go for now. He wanted as much chaos as possible.

A woman screamed and his grip on his scythe tightened. That was the type of victim he was looking for right now.

Tori threw a chair at the glass doors. It bounced back and she yelped as she leapt out of the way.

All the doors were locked. She could go down the back hallway a little bit, but eventually there was a heavy double door chained closed from the other side. Other than that, there was the hallway to the ER and a hallway that led to radiation. Both ended with locked doors.

She'd tried breaking the windows, but that had failed. She'd thought about climbing through the vents, but the openings were too small to fit through. She'd thoroughly searched the room twice over for some tool to break open the locks, but no dice. Hours later, she was back to breaking windows, but that was still failing.

What was this, ninja-proof glass? Was that a thing?

On top of all that, as far as she could tell, the people running around outside and screaming were not evacuating the village like she'd hoped.

She righted the chair and sat down.

"How are we going to get out of this one, Scoob?" she mumbled, then wondered if crying again would make her feel better.

Useless , a voice hissed in the back of her mind.

She sighed and stared up at the ceiling. Crying would definitely not help. Maybe she should try praying. If the Naruto World was real (and she was going to need some non-chaotic downtime to process that properly), maybe its gods were real too.

"Dear Jashin," she said to the ceiling. "I have created this madness in your honor. Please help."

Nothing happened. Not that she'd expected as much.

She frowned at the ceiling. It was the same foamy tiles her high school had had. The kind that weren't fixed in place, but rather laying against a metal frame. She'd watched various teachers and staff move them while changing light bulbs. Hell, she'd watched students climb on their desks and hide stuff in the ceiling with those tiles.

She guessed Jashin was on her side after all.

Being as short as she was, she had to balance a chair on top of the receptionist's desk to reach the high ceiling. It was easy enough to move a tile aside and open a hole into the ceiling, but the gap was still above her head and she was absolutely lacking the upper body strength to pull herself up.

Tori stood on the desk and surveyed the room. As her eyes landed on a stool, a large explosion rocked the building. Tori squawked and nearly fell off the desk. More screams than ever started up outside.

A new wave of adrenaline coursed through Tori as she jumped off the desk and grabbed the stool. She hauled it back onto the desk and dropped it onto the chair, but the seat was only wide enough for two of the stool's three legs.

Tori turned the stool around and around, desperately trying to make it fit. There was crashing from inside the hospital– right on the other side of the doors to the ER. Tori climbed onto the unstable stool anyway.

"Your blood will be the first to quench Jashin-sama's thirst, Old Man!" a voice was yelling as Tori practically jumped into the ceiling.

Loud bangs came from below as Tori army crawled across the ceiling tiles. A man was pleading for his life. She didn't know where she was going or what she was doing. All the panic she'd been holding back was coming out, her whole body shaking violently and her vision blurring.

And then, the ceiling fell out from under her.

Hidan had found the first of the village leaders he wanted to sacrifice: the head of hospital, Hiroshi Yukai. The old man was trying to unlock a back-entrance to the hospital when Hidan descended upon him, wrapping one blood-stained hand around his neck.

" You ," the old man croaked. A kunai appeared from under the old man's cloak and Hidan jumped away, but it was already too late. Hidan licked the old man's blood from his fingernail.

"I'm going to enjoy sacrificing you, Old Man," Hidan practically purred as his skin turned to obsidian. HIroshi Yukai's eyes widened in horror.

"N–no, please," the man begged, shrinking away. "There are still people inside– I need to help them–"

Hidan rolled his eyes. "You've gone senile, Old Man," he said. "Peace isn't a good look for you."

Yukai slammed his hand against the brick wall of the hospital and a seal spread out from his fingertips. He leapt back as it exploded.

Hidan smirked and took the explosion head-on. The old man made a strange sort of gasping noise and fell to his knees, various cuts and bruises blooming across his body.

"Nice try, Old Man," Hidan sneered, grabbing the man's neck again. He dragged him through the hole into the hospital, intent on finding a nice clear area to perform the sacrificial rites.

Kicking through a few locked doors, Hidan finally arrived in the main entrance way. Perfect.

There was a weird rustling from above– rats? The people in upper floors who had been left behind? Hidan didn't care. He dropped the old man to the floor and began his pre-sacrifice prayers.

The ceiling collapsed. Something fell on his sacrifice. The old man's head slammed into the ground and Hidan collapsed. A girl's voice moaned in pain.

"What the FUCK," Hidan yelled, dragging himself back to his feet and blinking away the head injury he'd just experienced through his sacrifice. He lurched forward and grabbed the tiny death god, pulling her up and shaking her. "Why the fuck are you–"

He stopped mid-sentence, dropping the shinigami. His furious eyes strayed from the girl's dazed form to the old man's perfectly still one.

The man, already old and weakened by battle, had just had his head slammed into the hard floor.

The man was dead.

Hidan's sacrifice was gone.

"You," Hidan rounded on the girl, eyes filled with rage. "You stole my sacrifice!"

The girl made a pathetic squeaking noise and tried to crawl behind the receptionist's desk. Hidan grabbed her leg and threw her onto the old man's corpse.

"You'll just have to take his place!" Hidan roared.

"B–b–but," the girl stuttered. "I did what you asked! I cut his fate!"

She looked down at the dead man, suddenly horrified. She had been partially leaning on his chest, and she ripped herself away from him as if pulling herself from boiling water.

Hidan watched as her eyes widened. She didn't look like a god of death now. Not that she had before, but… despite a few lapses, before she'd at least given off the feeling of being a shinigami. Now was she just a frightened little girl.

"You're a liar," he accused, deadly calm.

She looked absolutely, mortally terrified for just a few seconds. Then she scowled at him and snapped, "I did what you asked! Jashin-sama doesn't like to be kept waiting, you know."

That… seemed plausible. Jashin-sama had intervened in Hidan's rituals before, when he hadn't quite perfected them yet.

She had mysteriously appeared as a result of the summoning ritual. Normal people didn't just show up after a summoning, did they?

The little woman got to her feet. She put her hands on her hips, shaking with holy rage.

Or… extremely human fear.

Hidan wasn't sure. He grabbed her by her gross hair and dragged her out of the hospital with him.

When Kakuzu arrived in Yugakure at precisely noon, it had been massacred, just as Hidan had promised.

Bodies and dying fires littered the streets. Kakuzu could still feel quite a few chakra signatures in hiding, but he hadn't really expected Hidan to kill the entire village. The man wasn't efficient enough for that.

When he found Hidan in the main square, he was half-way through a double sacrifice.

"Only an hour left," one of Hidan's followers assured him. Kakuzu considered ripping the man's arm off out of annoyance. But Kakuzu had just made quite a bit of money off the bounty he'd been turning in, so he was in a good mood.

"Hidan-sama is doing a double sacrifice of the last two leaders out of consideration for you, Kakuzu-sama," the man was saving. "To save time."

Kakuzu ignored him, surveying the main square. Most of the vendors' stalls had been smashed, but Hidan's other followers were eating leftover food from one of the ones that had been spared. At their feet, under the barstools set up at the stand, a civilian girl was lying bound by her hands and feet.

Kakuzu blinked. That was new.

He didn't ask about the girl, preferring to ignore Hidan's obnoxious followers. When Hidan finished his ritual, the followers bowed to him and disappeared with the bodies of the village leaders.

They left the girl exactly where she was.

"You took too long," Kakuzu growled. "And you didn't even finish off the entire village."

"Shut the fuck up," Hidan snapped back. "I got sidetracked. That reminds me…"

He glowered and stomped over the girl, dragging her out from under the stall by her hair. Kakuzu followed him boredly.

"Are you going to sacrifice her too?" he asked. "You said you'd be done by noon."

"I just want your fucking opinion on something, asshole," Hidan answered, throwing the girl to the ground between them. "Does this bitch look like a shinigami to you?"

The girl was shaking, her long hair matted with dirt and sweat and something that looked like dried blood. The rest of her was caked in dirt and more of the unknown dried liquid.

"Is this a joke?" Kakuzu asked.

"I-if I'm not a sh-shinigami…" the girl struggled to pull herself up and failed. Her voice was quivering pathetically. "…then how did you summon me?"

Hidan stared down at her, stumped. Kakuzu raised an eyebrow. "Your summoning ritual you were so proud of produced this ?"

"Shut up!"

"If I'm not a shinigami," the girl continued, her voice evening out. "Then why do I know your names, Hidan? Kakuzu?"

She was radiating anger now. Kakuzu was not impressed.

"Well?" Hidan asked, waving exasperatedly at her. "There wasn't anyone in the coffin, and then we did the ritual, and then she came out. So what the fuck is she?"

Kakuzu kneeled down, eyeing the girl with his strange green and red eyes. She held his gaze, scowling.

"You summoned this one?"

"Yeah," Hidan answered, kicking at the ground. "Three day ritual, ten soul sacrifice, right from the book of Jashin itself!"

Kakuzu reached forward and gripped the girl's hair at the roots to angle her face up at him. She made a gurgling noise at him that might have been meant to be intimidating or might have been out of fear.

Hidan seemed genuinely annoyed. The girl was doing the thing again where she was trying to radiate power she did not have, angling her chin at Kakuzu to glare down her nose at him.

Kakuzu dropped her and stood again.

"You've been had," he told Hidan simply.

"What the fuck does that mean?" Hidan yelled. A flash of terror flickered across the girl's face before she tried to hide it with outrage. "She came out of a coffin , covering blood –"

"I am not of this world–"

Kakuzu raised his voice over both their protests. "I don't know how she was summoned, but she's obviously nothing more than a normal mortal woman." He did a one-over of her prone form. "She's not even a ninja, just a mildly talented actress."

The girl's face did something like a terrified pout and Hidan yelled, "WHAT!"

Kakuzu turned to Hidan. "I suggest you get rid of her before this story gets out. It would be bad for your reputation." And by extension, Kakuzu's reputation.

"With fucking pleasure." Hidan raised his scythe.

"W– w– wait!" The girl yelled, pathetically trying to wiggle away from them. "I'm– I'm not a shinigami, but I really can see your fates!"

Kakuzu rolled his eyes and Hidan snorted. "Fool me once, Chibigami."

If Tori weren't terrified, she'd comment on the uninspired insult. Instead, she stuttered out more terrified pleas. "I really am from another world," she blabbered. "You think your ritual would summon a normal girl?"

Hidan paused, seeming to think this over. Then he shrugged. "Nope," he said, "too pissed not to kill you."

The girl was wide-eyed and starting to tear up now. Her desperate gaze moved from Hidan to Kakuzu, her mind reeling.

"I'm more valuable alive, you know!" she yelped. "You– you could sell me. Sound's not far, I bet Orochimaru and Kabuto would love to study a girl from another world. Or– or– or technically I'm patient zero for dead water fever– and–"

She started babbling on about how should could be sold for medical research or into slavery or how she could sell her eggs and plasma for him (whatever that meant), but she had set Kakuzu to thinking.

"Hidan," Kakuzu said, placing a hand on his partner's shoulder as the man advanced. "Wait."

"You just told me to kill her," Hidan whined.

"If she really is a summon, I she might truly be from another world," Kakuzu said. "And she's correct that a being from another world might be valuable."

Hidan groaned. "What, you want to take her to Leader-sama?"

"I don't think Leader-sama would properly monetize this situation…"

The two started arguing. Hidan pointed out that just because she thought she was from another world didn't mean she was. Kakuzu reasoned that summoning jutsu were designed to pull summons, such as animals or gods, from their own worlds, so it was likely Hidan's summon had just pulled someone from the wrong world. Hidan pointed out there was absolutely no foundation for that argument other than Kakuzu being a greedy piece of shit who wanted it to be true. Kakuzu said it didn't matter where she was from as long as Orochimaru thought she was from another world.

"You seriously want to do exactly what she said?" Hidan asked. "You want to sell her to fucking Orochimaru ?"

Kakuzu just stared back at him, unbudged. "It was a good idea," he said plainly.

Tori, who had been thinking about this suggestion as they argued, piped up. "Um, actually, Mr. Kakuzu sir, I changed my mind… I'd rather just sell my eggs. Sir."

She smiled winningly up at him.

"You're disgusting," Hidan said.

The trip through Hot Water country turned out to be rather uneventful. Kakuzu threw her over his shoulder and headed off into the forest, travelling quickly through the trees ninja-style. At first Tori was not sure if she should try to be optimistic and enjoy whizzing through the trees, or be terrified that she was being touted off to be sold to a sadistic scientist, but in the end she just wound up being extremely annoyed by Hidan's constant death threats.

Hidan followed along behind Kakuzu, angrily explaining to her exactly what he was going to do to her if selling her failed.

"You know," she said after a few hours of non-stop threats, "This actually stops being scary and gets boring after a while."

"You won't be bored when I rip out your spine–" He went into another tirade.

"Yes, please entertain me by crushing all twenty-seven bones in my hand one by one," she muttered.

"Oh, I'll crush all your bones alright," Hidan answered. "All twenty-seven in each hand, all twenty-six in each foot–"

"Unhinge my elbows and shred my skin," Tori deadpanned.

"I'll bend your elbows backwards and peel your skin with a potato peelers, you heinous bitch."

"Sew my mouth shut and pulverize my knees."

"I'll sew your mouth shut so you can't even scream while I–"

Kakuzu cut in. "This conversation has gotten tedious."

"Fuck you, Kakuzu," Hidan huffed back. "It's your fucking fault we're making a such a huge detour."

"Our current mission isn't time sensitive and it will be easier to cross the border from Sound than from Fire–"

The two argued the rest of the way to the Sound border.

In fact, Tori had no idea they'd even crossed a border until they both suddenly stopped. "Fuck," Hidan swore quietly.

Tori was debating asking why they'd stopped when four shinobi wearing Oto headbands appeared.

"We do have a border check-point, you know," one of them drawled.

"Must've missed it," Hidan sneered back. He took his scythe from his back and the Oto ninja tensed.

"Wait," Kakuzu commanded. This caused the Oto ninja to tense up even more. "We have business with Orochimaru."

The Sound ninja that had addressed them snorted. "Business you had to sneak across the border for?"

This ninja– who Tori decided to call Sloppy-Nin for his shitty hairstyle and attitude– was trying hard to seem casual, but Tori could sense nervousness under his act. She wondered if this is how she'd looked to Kakuzu, and took note of everything about his body language that was giving him away.

"We wish to speak to him directly," Kakuzu said.

Sloppy-Nin eyed them warily. Tori supposed that, being Orochimaru's flunkies, they probably recognized the Akatsuki cloaks and wanted to avoid a fight. Good call.

"Sorry, he's not available right now," Sloppy-Nin finally said, unsheathing a tanto from his back.

Not such a good call.

Kakuzu dropped her as Sloppy-Nin lunged, catching his blade with one hand. Sloppy-Nin's eyes widened with horror as Kakuzu ripped the blade from his hand, tossing it aside as his free hand easily snapped the man's neck.

Tori bit the inside of her cheek to stop from whimpering. Well. This was terrifying.

Her hands and legs were still tied, so Tori resigned herself to lying in the middle of the battlefield like some sort of very sad, very gothic caterpillar.

Hidan laughed maniacally as he struck down another shinobi and Kakuzu neatly took out a third with an Earth ninjutsu combo. The fourth ninja– a girl who couldn't be more than fourteen– turned and fled.

"Let her go," Kakuzu said as Hidan turned to intercept her. "We need a guide."

Kakuzu told Hidan to carry Tori, as he needed freedom of movement to track the Sound girl back to Otogakure. This was followed by another argument, which Kakuzu won by hissing out, "The only reason you have all of your limbs right now is because I don't want to waste time re-attaching them."

"Why the fuck are you covered in ants?" Hidan asked as he bent to pick her up.

"Well," Tori explained sheepishly, "I am also covered in chocolate syrup, so…"

Hidan stared at her. "Chocolate syrup?"

"Well, okay, I made fake blood out of chocolate syrup and food coloring and–"

" Chocolate syrup? "

"W–well it had to be edible."

Tori had no idea why she was trying to explain herself to Hidan, but once the floodgates had opened she couldn't stop.

"It was for a half-o-ween party! And I don't mind being covered in ants, really!"

Well, they were biting her a little bit, but hey, that was a pleasant distraction from where the ropes were cutting into her skin.

"Kakuzu, the bitch is covered in ants and chocolate fucking syrup and I am not fucking touching her."

"Then make her walk," Kakuzu snapped back, heading into the woods in the direction the Otogakure girl had gone.

Hidan did not stop the train of muttered swear words as he cut the ropes that had been binding Tori's ankles and hands. She sighed with relief and massaged her wrists as she followed after Hidan and Kakuzu.

They walked at a brisk pace for several hours. Luckily for Tori, the trees in this forest were widely spaced and easy to pick through. Kakuzu had commanded they be silent so as not to attract more attention from Oto-nin, but considering the amount of noise Tori made trying to keep up with them, she suspected Otogakure knew they were coming and had simply decided to let them pass.

It was starting to go dark, and Tori's stomach growled for the third time.

"Fucking seriously?" Hidan snapped, breaking the silence.

"Well excuse me for being a simple mortal girl with simple mortal needs, like food," Tori answered, crossing her arms. Being sassy with Akatsuki was a bad idea, but she was hungry and tired and covered in forty types of bug bites and too grumpy to not make pissy answers. "All I've had to eat in the past two days were takoyaki and chocolate syrup."

"What the fuck is with you and chocolate syrup?" Hidan asked. Kakuzu actually looked over his shoulder at them, as if he too wanted to know why the girl from another world was covered in chocolate syrup.

"I told you," Tori whined back, "It was half-o-ween. I was at a costume party, dressed as a vampire."

"What the shit is half-o-ween?" Hidan asked.

Tori opened her mouth to explain it was the halfway point to Halloween, realized Hidan wouldn't know about an Americanized Celtic holiday, unless he did somehow, in which case–

"And what the fuck kind of costume is that?" Hidan asked, ignoring her dumbfounded face and gesturing to… all of her.

Tori pouted. "If you will recall when you original summoned me, I actually looked kind of decent."

Hidan snorted. "Did not."

"Enough to fool you ."

"Well I didn't think you were a vampire ."

Tori opened her mouth to argue back, but her stomach growled instead. From ahead, Kakuzu gave something like an exasperated growl.

"Hidan," he said, "give her a food pill. Then both of you shut up."

Hidan pretended to "accidentally" drop the food pill on the ground. Tori stuck her tongue out at him before picking it up and popping it in her mouth. Her stomach didn't growl again until they reached Otogakure.

The "village" was more of a series of low stone buildings arranged in a loose circle around a statue of a snake. There was no protective wall, but a ring of huge trees made it impossible to approach the village except from one gap between the massive trunks. A single Oto-nin was standing at attention at this gap, waiting for them.

"Orochimaru-sama is waiting for you," the shinobi said smoothly.

He led them into one of the stone buildings, which contained a single, mostly barren room, housing only a long stone table with old, polished wooden chairs. They sat down– Hidan swearing and Kakuzu looking annoyed– and a handful of nervous looking civilians appeared with bowls of delicious smelling stew.

"Orochimaru-sama hopes you enjoy his hospitality," the shinobi stated. "He will be here shortly."

Neither Hidan nor Kakuzu touched the food. Tori, who hadn't been exactly sated by the food pill, was tempted, but she supposed she should follow the other two's lead. She picked up her spoon and twirled it in her fingers.

From what she could recall, pretty much anywhere Orochimaru hung out was actually an underground hideout. So, this place might be… some sort of cover? A hideout they never saw in the manga? She had no idea. It would explain the bizarrely empty atmosphere, though.

Unless all of Otogakure was just like this, empty and creepy and weird.

Well. Well.

Tori swirled the spoon around in the stew some more, stirring up pieces of potato and meat. What was Orochimaru even doing at this point in the story, anyway? She wasn't exactly clear on where she was in the timeline, nor did she remember much of Orochimaru's antics particularly well. Didn't he not have usable arms or something?

She flicked her hand, meaning to spin the spoon, but instead sent it flying across the table. A string of broth droplets followed the spoon as it soared past Kakuzu and Hidan and clattered to the floor.

Neither Kakuzu or the Oto-nin said a word. Tori felt her cheeks grow hot as Hidan turned and mouthed What the fuck? at her.

Thankfully, the stone doors groaned open, and Orochimaru entered, flanked by Kabuto and Uchiha Sasuke.

Tori very consciously did not shuffle nervously in her chair. She wasn't sure if Sasuke's presence was a good thing or a bad thing, but she knew Kabuto wasn't good news.

"Kakuzu-san," Orochimaru greeted. "I heard you and your new partner had some sort of business with me."

"It's Hidan, asshole," Hidan said. Everyone ignored him.

"I have a proposition for you," Kakuzu said, reaching under the table to grip Tori's wrist. "My partner may have made an interesting discovery."

Kakuzu briefly summarized Hidan's ritual to summon the god of death, and how it had instead summoned a strange girl in strange clothing who claimed to be from another world. He conveniently left out the whole god-of-death shenanigan, making it sound as if Hidan met up with him immediately after summoning her.

"At first we were skeptical," Kakuzu said, "But she claims her people can see other's fates, and she was able to demonstrate for us."

Orochimaru and Kabuto both seemed extremely amused by the story, clearly not buying it. Sasuke instead looked slightly suspicious, trying to figure out what was going on behind this ridiculous story.

"And would we be able to see a demonstration of these skills?" Orochimaru asked, almost mockingly.

Kakuzu squeezed Tori's wrist rather painfully.

"Um…" her mind raced, trying to think of the best things to say without having an angry ninja fly across the room and stab her.

She tried to sound calm and cool as she first turned to Sasuke. "I know you have a dream, well, more of an ambition to kill a certain man… that will come true, but not the way you want it to."

Sasuke's eyes widened slightly. It was a vague prediction, but she hoped the wording was close enough to his introduction to ring a bell.

Next she turned to Kabuto. What the heck was up with him at the end? She pretended to size him up while she tried to remember. "You had… adoptive mother, right? She gave you your glasses. I think she'll be proud of you, eventually."

Kabuto made no visible reaction, so she turned to Orochimaru.

What was even up with him? She could barely remember his plotline at all.

"Your fate is confusing," she said finally, scrunching up her face to emphasize her point. "You die, you come back. It's weird."

Orochimaru actually laughed.

"Well, as entertaining as that was," Kabuto said, pushing his glasses up, "it was hardly conclusive. I don't even have an adoptive mother."

"Liar," Tori called out, unbidden, her voice ringing through the room like a bell. It wasn't an accusation, just a simple statement of fact. Kabuto frowned at her and Orochimaru laughed again.

"She caught you, Kabuto," the Sannin said. Kakuzu relaxed his grip on her wrist. "There may be some truth to this story after all. What do you think, Sasuke-kun?"

Tori jumped as she realized Sasuke had activated his Sharingan.

"Her chakra is weird," he said, brows furrowing slightly. "It's strength and flow aren't any different from a normal civilian, but it's… it's like it's a different shade of the same color. And the networking is a little different."

He frowned and leaned back in his chair, letting his eyes fade to black. "The differences are barely perceptible. I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been looking for them."

Kabuto sighed and turned to Orochimaru, ignoring the two Akatsuki and one girl from another world.

"This isn't conclusive evidence. She could just be a freak."

Hidan let out a bark of laughter.

Orochimaru peered over at them.

"If she is from another world," he said, "why bring her to me? Is she, perhaps, a gift?"

"Hardly," Kakuzu answered. "I intend to sell her."

Orochimaru raised his eyebrows. "I see."

What followed was an amazingly tedious game of politics and one-upmanship. First Kabuto and Orochimaru discussed– loudly for the rest of the room to hear– whether or not Tori was a worthwhile investment. A bargaining tactic to talk her price down.

"I suppose, even if she isn't from another world," Kabuto sighed, "Her strange chakra might be worth a look."

Then there was a lot of stress about how maybe she was valuable as a small project, with lots of sighing to devalue her.

Tori found herself annoyed they were using the same haggling strategies one might use to buy an flea market coffee table.

When they finally made a pitch at Kakuzu, he snapped back with all sorts of vaguely-nice things to say about her (with the motivation of upping her price), which she almost felt flattered by. She had been having a very bad day, after all.

Tori was pretty sure Hidan had fallen asleep with his eyes open. She was thinking about tipping his untouched stew into his lap when Kakuzu abruptly stood up.

"It's settled then," he said.

Orochimaru stood as well. "Indeed. Baku-san, Sasuke-kun, let us finish this business outside. I'm sure Kabuto would like to talk to our new addition in… private."

Kakuzu kicked Hidan's chair, and the Jashinist jumped to attention with a start. Sasuke and their Oto-nin guide– Baku, Tori supposed– went to follow the three outside, but Kabuto put his hand on Sasuke's shoulder.

"Actually," he said, "I was wondering if I could borrow Sasuke-kun's eyes for this."

Sasuke and Kabuto moved to sit across from Tori at the table. A still-nervous looking civilian reappeared and collected Kakuzu and Hidan's untouched cutlery and stew.

Kabuto smiled good-naturedly at her. It put her on edge.

"Welcome to Otogakure, Miss…?"

"Tori," she said flatly.

"What a lovely name, Tori-chan. Have you eaten yet?"

He gestured at the stew. She looked down at it then looked back up at him.

"Well?"

"I'm not hungry," she said flatly.

"It's not poisoned," Kabuto said with a light laugh, but there was something steely in his eyes. She was going to eat the stew, or he was going to force her.

Tori glared down at her stew. This entire situation seemed stupid, but she knew it was just a show of power. She was going to eat the food because he said so, just like she was going to do any number of bizarre or awful things in the future simply because he said so. They were setting the tone of their relationship right now.

"I can't," she gritted out eventually. "I don't have a spoon."

"What?"

"It's on the floor." She nodded across the table, to Sasuke's left. Sasuke slowly turned, then disappeared under the table. He came back up with the spoon in his hand, seeming baffled by its presence.

He handed it to her.

I'm also covered in chocolate syrup and dead ants, she almost said, just to see his reaction. She held her tongue.

Kabuto stared at her expectantly.

Tori stared from her spoon to the stew and back again.

"Actually," she said. "Can I have a clean one?"

Kabuto's eye twitched, but he called back in the civilian servant to get her a new spoon.

Tori hoped she had successfully set the tone of their relationship.

As she slowly ate her cold stew, Kabuto went through a series of questions while Sasuke studied her with his Sharingan. He was the lie detector, Kabuto told her.

She told them about how her world had no ninja, but instead was more technologically advanced. Kabuto was intrigued by some of the technology she mentioned, including cars and the internet, but her knowledge of how they actually worked was vague and he gave up on that line of questioning.

"So tell me," he said. "can everyone in your world see people's fates?"

Tori pretended to chew for a very long time, debating how to answer.

"Well…" she said after a while. "I guess everyone can, but no one can see every person's fate."

This was true, if you counted "seeing people's fates" as "knowing what happens next in a TV show."

She took another bite of stew. Kabuto's smile was getting steely again.

"What do you mean?"

"Well." She fiddled with the spoon. "For example, I can see yours and Sasuke's fates okay, but that other dude– Baku?– I had nothing on him. And then between you and Sasuke, I can see Sasuke's a lot better."

Sasuke looked slightly disturbed, but Kabuto seemed intrigued.

"So when you say 'fate,'" Kabuto said, "does that mean someone's destiny cannot be changed?"

Tori shrugged, suddenly feeling nervous. "I mean, I don't think anything's set in stone. I think what I'm seeing is just like– if nothing acts on that fate. A body in motion, Newton's Laws, all that."

Kabuto and Sasuke both looked slightly confused. "Newton?" Kabuto asked.

"You know the… science… dude," Tori had not meant to change the topic, but she was thankful she had. "The first and second laws of motion? Force equals mass times acceleration?"

Kabuto and Sasuke exchanged looks. Tori nervously explained what she'd learned in eighth grade physical science, and eventually the two ninja nodded in agreement. The concepts existed in this world, but of course they weren't named after some guy named Newton.

"Are you a scientist, Tori-chan?" Kabuto asked.

"Um, well, I'm only a year into my University degree, but I worked in a bio lab for two years and did my senior project in bio so…"

This led to a comparison of scientific knowledge between worlds, which Tori actually found quite interesting. They didn't get very far into, though, before she found herself starting to nod off. It was weird; she hadn't really slept much in the past two days, but usually when she got this tired she could at least keep her eyes open…

"Ah, there she goes, Sasuke-kun," she heard Kabuto say through a fog. "Watch for any chakra anomalies."

He had poisoned her after all. Sasuke wasn't here to be a lie detector; he was here to watch her body's reaction to the poison.

Bastards, Tori thought before losing consciousness.

END NOTE: I want to completely rewrite the next part (and also... past-me didn't get much further than an outline for most of our heroine's adventure in Oto), so the next few chapters will take a bit longer. Thank you for all your kind comments so far. :)