A quick update from Shisui told him all he needed to know. The peace that was achieved wasn't as all-encompassing as many were led to believe. All around them were signs of civil unrest. Skirmishes occurred outside of borders of hidden villages and big cities. And while these weren't noticed by many because of where they were happening and because of how sporadic they were, Shisui and Itachi had been through enough shinobi wars to know that these could very much snowball into bigger battles involving more highly trained militia. Neither of them acknowledged it but the grim picture being painted by the information they had on hand left a sour taste in their mouths. Had they been so naive back then to give up both their lives and their souls to prevent one war? One war which stood in a queue of many. Did their sacrifices even matter?
Joining the deafening thoughts inside Itachi's head was a coldness that settled over him, resting on his shoulders and making him shudder. He looked up at Shisui from where he stood across the table. They were in his cousin's personal quarters. Earlier they dragged his study desk to the center of his dimly lit room so they could circle around and pore over the dozens of written report which they have dumped on to its knobby surface. Shisui had both hands clutching the edges of the desk as he leaned forward. A lock of his overgrown wavy hair fell over his face. Itachi couldn't see his eyes. He could only see the firm line of his mouth.
'Does it ever end?' He thought. 'Or are we stuck in a cruel game created by the gods with only a few years' worth of reprieve in between?'
He wondered if Orochimaru had made the right call to bring him and his cousin back. Could they really make a difference this time around or had he done them the ultimate disrespect by disturbing their peace to fight for a lost cause? What would it cost them now?
"Shisui," he called out after a long stretch of silence.
"I still stand by what I said all those years ago. If I can find a way to end the fighting, I'll do it." Shisui looked up to meet his gaze and he could see the determination burn behind his dark eyes. He smirked at his itoko, somehow grateful that he put into words what he already knew he had decided on, even if he was hesitant to admit it to himself.
"Good," he replied. "I'm in."
His smirk broke into a smile as Shisui reached out to tousle his hair.
"What will I do without you Itachi?"
He shrugged. "Lose an eye?" Guilt ripped in his guts when he felt the older Uchiha's hand recoil as though burnt. "Sorry, that was mean," he mumbled.
"I can see that your stint in the Akatsuki clearly has its effect on your sense of humour."
"Jokes aside, we need to make a plan once we get out of here. I want to be on the field as soon as possible. It's been five years. It's time to see how things are like outside these walls."
Shisui nodded. "I agree with you. But a few house rules before that happens…we ditch our names and get new ones. I can move around better if the world keeps on believing that I'm dead. And you my friend are still known to most of Konoha for your own spread in the village's bingo book."
Itachi had to agree. He was right. Only a handful of elite Konoha-nin and a few of the people whom he encountered during the war had some sort of insight on the real story. To the majority of the world he was still a psychopathic mass murderer.
"Second thing, we need to alter our look a little bit don't you think? No one will be looking for us because technically we're dead. But we can never play it too safe."
Itachi sighed, shifting on his seat so he could straighten out his legs in front of him. He crossed his left ankle over his right.
"Alright. Any suggestions?"
Shisui walked around the desk and made a move to grab the long length of jet black hair resting on Itachi's shoulder. The latter grabbed his wrist before he could touch it.
"Lose the ponytail."
"…I had a feeling you were going to say that."
—-
The day they left Orochimaru's lair was the day they started living as nomads. They took it day by day, bounty after bounty and minshuku after minshuku. Just two no-name mercenaries from the Land of Fire acting as hired muscle to anybody or any place who needed it, provided that it was a mission that didn't compromise the safety of Konohagakure or its inhabitants. Come early March they have made a reputation of themselves as reliable mercenaries, especially for the smaller villages.
They particularly honed in on missions involving a handful of seemingly random kidnappings happening all over the lands, from the borders of Yukigakure to the busy streets surrounding Port Degarashi in the Land of Tea. Itachi hand-picked them from the list of bounty missions that Shisui had presented him. On paper they weren't nearly as ominous as the others. When Shisui asked what made him zero in on those cases, his reply made him do a double take.
"Something is not adding up," Itachi had told him one night. "Most bounties are straightforward. We know what needs to be done. Assassination. Providing security for a convoy. Security on transferring precious goods. Locating wanted personnel. The gists are in the prompts. These kidnappings do not make sense. I understand that there are motives to kidnap the wife of a prominent business man. But what reason does anybody have to abduct an eleven-year old orphan who is being cared for by his impoverished grandmother? Or a porter on a pier? Or a widowed mother with no obvious assets? There weren't even mentions of ransoms."
Had Shisui not read the reports that Suigetsu had kindly provided them on his request, he wouldn't have thought that these disappearances were connected. A quick look at their causes of death and the state the bodies were found convinced him that Itachi was on to something. No one knows how any of these people died. It was as though some time during their disappearances their hearts simply stopped beating. Their remains were often found in abandoned buildings on the outskirts of the towns they disappeared from, sometimes two or three towns away. They would be intact, often with no signs of a struggle. A common finding would be bruises on the wrists and ankles of the victims, as though at one point they were tied down. The binds were nowhere to be found by the time they were discovered.
Then when Shisui and Itachi, now known as Ryota and Kazuo, began taking more jobs involving these disappearances, its sinister nature became more apparent to them. Whoever these people were, they took their victims with the intent of killing them. And they were highly successful. It didn't matter if the team hunting them down was late by a few days or a few minutes. The missing person always turned up dead.
—-
One icy January afternoon, after wrapping up a bounty which involved chasing a moderately armed thief in the middle of a storm, the cousins decided to take shelter in a ryokan situated in the southern region of Jomae Village. Both were huddled under the thick sheets of the kotatsu, thankful for the delicious heat it provided them.
As he lied on his back Shisui undid his top knot and allowed his overgrown wavy hair to fall down to the sides of his cheeks. As per their plan of somewhat altering their appearance, he had grown out his hair and had gotten into the habit of tying it back into a knot at the top of his head during missions. His gaze shifted to his cousin who was seated on his left, the lower part of his body under the covers. The young man stared blankly at the space in front of him as his left hand reached up to grab the oversized cap off his head, revealing short dark hair. Shisui had to admit that Suigetsu did well when he offered to get rid of Itachi's ponytail and the wisps of unruly fringes framing his face. Now his little cousin sported a regular short haircut which was softly parted over his left eye. It made him look younger and a tad bit more approachable.
"What is it?" Itachi asked. He was giving him that look that meant he wanted to ask him something he wasn't sure he should.
Shisui shrugged. "Just curious. Was there someone you left behind when you passed? Aside from Sasuke, I mean. Like a friend? A koibito maybe?
He only knew about Izumi from back in the days. They were so young. It was easy to see that Itachi adored the kunoichi. He was there in the times when the young boy struggled to show his feelings for her despite how real they were. His poor mind was too preoccupied by the burdens he shouldered in secret. In the end his choices made it impossible for Izumi to receive the same amount of affection she gave him.
There was a long pause. Three names came to mind. Itachi deliberated on whether or not he should tell him.
He leaned back against his seat, tilting his head up until he was facing the ceiling and sighed.
"Three people," he finally said just when Shisui thought his question would be left unanswered.
"Sora-san…Fudo-san…Shiori."
His voice broke ever so slightly as he uttered the last syllable of the third name. He sniffed once and shifted on his seat. All these told Shisui enough of what he needed to know. Itachi had never given away so much by saying so little. The first two names were people whom he considered friends, or at the very least people whom he respected fiercely.
The third person on the other hand…
Knowing him, the way he dropped the honorific completely told Shisui that he was leagues closer to her than he was with the other two. He watched his younger cousin from the corner of his eye as he rested his forearm over his eyes. He was still as a statue after that.
Shisui didn't know enough to assume who Shiori as to Itachi. Regardless of whether she was a friend or a lover, losing her cut him deep. It didn't matter if he admitted it to himself or not. Shisui could see that he yearned for her.
"I can help you find them you know," he said, dark eyes trained at the ceiling.
"I just need a few more information but we can find them."
No response.
Shisui never brought the topic up after that.
—-
Like his cousin, Itachi had also fallen into the habit of gathering intel on the current status of certain people. This list included the key players of all hidden villages, the high ranking officials in the Land of Iron and a few odd civilian contacts from his days travelling around the world as a rogue shinobi. Most of them didn't pique his interest but he decided to catalogue their information at the back of his mind. He was certain the time will come when these will prove useful. More often than not his thoughts would wander to two people in particular.
Gathering intel on Sasuke had been easy with his notoriety and his mile-long rap sheet following him around. Shisui and Orochimaru filled him in on what he needed to know. Any further digging he made painted the same picture everyone seemed to say: He was doing well. He was healthy, happy even. More than once he was tempted to drop by his and Sakura's new place to say hello. They were roughly the same age now. He wondered how strange that would be.
The second person on the other hand had been more difficult to track down. Shiori didn't have the same big reputation that his otouto had. Her connection to the Akatsuki wasn't common knowledge like that of the rogue shinobis'. The few people who did know about this most likely presumed she died shortly after his passing. Logic told him this was the most likely scenario even if Sora and Fudo had done everything right. This didn't stop the illogical, selfish part of him from daring to hope.
'Did she make it?'
'Did they make it?'
Of all the questions ringing inside his head these two were the loudest. They kept him up a night, rousing him from vague dreams of fireflies and grey eyes that made him feel warm.
—
1st of May
.
"You and your men kidnap and murder people with kekkei genkai. You are going to tell us why."
Itachi didn't mean this as an order. He was simply stating facts.
The twelfth abduction took place in the Land of Lightning. It involved a teenage boy with the ability to wield Storm Release, a kekkei genkai commonly found among the locals in the region. It was also the same abduction that finally proved to Itachi that his theory had been right.
Because the boy had been a civilian with no strong political connections, the case had been assigned to a pair of for-hire mercenaries known only by the names Kazuo and Ryota. Like all the previous ones similar to this, the victim was dead by the time they arrived. They secured the scene for the Land of Lightning Police to process but not before acquiring one of the cleanup crew members for interrogation. They propped him in a chair situated in the middle of an empty room with closed blinds, similar to the ones they took their victims in.
"Preferably today," Shisui added. He was leaning against the wall right beside the only exit out the room. He smirked, watching as Itachi circled the gaunt-looking man like a predator.
He was slightly impressed at the guy. He was sweating like a pig. Rivulets of it ran down the creases of his cheeks and plastered his thin long hair on the sides of his face. He was shaking with fear. And yet he kept his mouth clamped shut.
Itachi met Shisui's gaze and gave him a slight nod. Playtime is over.
"You might want to keep an eye on my pal right there," he said.
Without thinking, the man locked eyes with Shisui. Initially he sat frozen like a statue. Seconds later a guttural scream ripped out of his throat. Shisui knew the intricacies of performing a genjutsu like the back of his hand. And he certainly did not need the activate his Sharingan to procure one that does the job. He kept it up for a few minutes until the man bent over his knees, a heaving heap.
Itachi stopped directly in front of him. He stood there with his right hand on his hip looking extremely bored and uninterested.
"Right. Now it's my turn-"
"-Fine! Alright!" The man roared, wiping his mouth with his arm. His dark, beady eyes found Itachi's. "I didn't kill anybody alright? I'm just the cleanup guy."
"So who does?"
"The Seamstress. Forget about asking me what her real name is. Nobody knows. All I know is that she has this-this power. She can transfer a person's kekkei genkai to another."
"What?" Itachi asked in disbelief.
"Bullshit," Shisui spat out at the same time.
"Guys I can't make this shit up!" He continued. "She's the one who tells us which goods to procure. One team gets it. Another gets rid of the body after. The transfer procedure kills the original wielder."
"Who is she transferring these abilities to?" Itachi probed.
"The customers. Big time merchants. Village officials. She's not picky. If you can afford the steep price tag, you get a kekkei-motherfucking-genkai. And I don't ask why."
The two exchanged looks.
"This makes sense. Many villages have yet to recover from the war. They will turn to every resource they could find to get a leg up."
"This is bad," Shisui sighed. "We'll be dealing with more than skirmishes if this gets out of hand."
Itachi grew quiet. A heavy weight manifested at the pit of his stomach. He thought about the things thousands of shinobi had done to ensure that the world wouldn't be destroyed by power-hungry men. He thought about the way he was disrespectfully summoned back from the dead through Edo Tensei. Even then he fought tooth and nail to maintain peace and protect who he can of the innocent.
Now this?
Itachi rarely cursed. Mikoto raised him well. But at that moment a barrage of expletives ran through his mind as he stoically stared at the man in front of him. He took a couple of breaths before continuing his interrogation.
"Where are you headed next?"
"…Unraikyo. I'm due to arrive there tomorrow morning. There's an abandoned warehouse at the northern border of the village. That's where they're taking the goods - her!" He quickly corrected himself when the saw Itachi's eyebrow twitch. "It's where they're taking her. Please, if you let me…"
He shimmied out of the chair, arms up in the air while he did, and knelt on a clean spot on the floor. He then slammed his palms on the cold marble and summoned a thin manila folder. He handed it to Itachi with both hands. The file itself was small containing less than ten pages in them.
'Case number thirteen that we know of,' Itachi thought silently, opening the folder to the first page.
All the loud thoughts he had in his head for the past five months grew quiet. In their place was a distant ringing in his ears. His heart staggered and skipped a staccato of beats before jumpstarting so hard that he could feel it pounding at the back of his throat. All the while his blank, expressionless eyes were glued on the first page. It was a blown up picture of the syndicate's next target along with her name printed in bold letters at the bottom.
Shisui looked over his cousin's shoulder. "Sotome Shiori…Sotome. I've heard that name before."
"That was most likely Sotome Yugen, a jonin from Kumogakure's Special Ops. This is her daughter."
It was odd how even in front of Shisui his default reaction to being caught off guard was to wall off any outbursts of emotion. He sounded mechanical, like he was merely reading aloud lines from an academy textbook.
He took the first page and handed the rest to Shisui. The photo taken of her was clear, professionally printed as though they wanted to make it as easy as possible for the retrieval team to recognise her from the crowd. It was taken in a crowded area. From the stalls at the corner of the photograph it looked like an open market. Her yellow raincoat already made her stand out in a sea of neutrals and dull reds.
"Her father is a member of the Rinha clan who produced dozens of prodigious medical nins back in the third shinobi war," Shisui went on. Itachi briefly nodded at him before looking down at the photo once again.
She looked the same yet different. Her jet black hair went down to her waist the last time he saw her. In the photo it was short, its edges grazing her chin while the rest of it was hidden under a moss green bonnet. Her hooded grey eyes were lined making them look sharper as they stared straight at him. He wondered briefly if she had known that she was being followed.
"Hang on," Shisui paused, staring straight at Itachi. "It says here that she worked with the Akatsuki as one of the civilian contacts. She worked under you."
The pieces clicked into place. His eyebrows shot up to his hairline at the realisation. Itachi didn't respond but there was now a dangerous glint in his eyes. Shisui turned to the man on the floor and shoved him back to the chair by the neck.
"Who asked for her?" He demanded.
"I don't know."
"Take a guess," Itachi pressed.
"I'm part of the cleanup crew, not the retrieval team! Half the time once I arrive there the goods are ready for disposal."
"The goods," Itachi murmured. Was that what those people were to them? Some commodity they feel entitled to because they paid for them? Was Shiori just a commodity to them too?
"Speaking of goods, I have a question for you."
The man flinched as Itachi's left hand cupped his shoulder. He then bent down so they were eye to eye.
"You've been in the business since the beginning right? So I'm sure you know how much these kekkei genkai sell for. Tell me, how much do you think these people will pay for the Sharingan?"
As he spoke, his irises began to glow bright red. Three tomoe appeared around his pupils and began to spin around them. The man began to scream in terror. His eyes wildly darted back and forth as it witnessed some horror only he could see. By the time Itachi released him from the genjutsu, he shook from head to foot, whimpering incoherently as he wept.
"Don't make me ask you again."
"They…they-they want her ability to gather information from someone with just one touch," he stuttered.
"Who's they?" Shisui prodded.
"W-Warlord Moku of Earth Country. There are already pending espionage missions as we speak. They will be executed after they access her ability. They paid extra to expedite the delivery. The retrieval team are already in Kumogakure. They're moving tonight."
Itachi has heard enough. He threw a well-aimed punch at the man's jaw and the whimpering stopped. He turned to his cousin, his face a blank and expressionless slate.
"He won't remember much. Let's go."
"Wait now? We're going to Kumogakure now?" Even as he asked, Itachi was already pushing one of the windows open. He hopped out of it and on to a nearby tree.
"I guess we are," he mumbled. By the time he stepped foot out of the room his cousin was already a couple of yards away. He was going on a dead sprint. Shisui scrambled to catch up.
"Kami, Itachi! Itachi slow down!"
"We need to get to her before they do," he replied looking back to him.
"Okay. I agree with you but…" he swerved to avoid hitting a thick tree trunk, "But we need to coordinate with-"
"-My way is faster." He cut him off. This time he slowed down just enough so Shisui could catch up and run beside him. "I aired her ability to the world by kidnapping her and forcing her to become my ward. And then I left her. I left her, Shisui."
.
Author's Note:
Hello there. Hope you enjoyed the latest installment of Providence. My update schedule is nonexistent because life. I can only hope I didn't lose any readers because of this. My inspiration for Itachi's cap came from Kishimoto's original concept art of him (which allegedly has been used on Iwabee Yuino in Boruto). Anyways, hope to hear from you soon. Shoutout to blackgremlins and for showing me some love. You guys are amazing.