WhIP

by footfungus

nederlands verhalen over mijn otp

158. Plasticity - Akatsuki x SI

Plasticity

Misfit_McCoward (Mixelation), Mixelation

Summary:

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes the immortal leader of a cult tries to summon the god of death and gets you instead. 'Not dying' just got a lot more complicated than 'follow chemlab safety instructions.' A tongue-in-cheek, Akatsuki-centric SI/OC.

Notes:

Translation into Español available: Plasticity [Traduccion] by Frozen_Stardust

I've always wanted to write a long-ish SI/OC, so here goes. I'm a little bit nervous because I wrote this a few years ago and decided a lot of it needed to be completely rewritten but... welp! You gotta post things eventually.

This is meant to be fun and self-indulgent. There is no planned romance.

(See the end of the work for more notes and other works inspired by this one.)

Chapter 1: A girl has a bad day

Chapter Text

As far as Tori Mendoza could tell, she'd been rummaging around in someone's else's bathroom closet one moment, then a split second later found herself curled up in a wooden barrel.

It took her a few moments to figure out she was in a barrel, of course. She wasn't sure if her brain had registered the sudden darkness or that her knees had been folded up to her chin first, but either way she tried to stand and hit her head on the lid. She fell back and a liquid that pooled in the bottom of the barrel sloshed around her.

It smelled foul, leaving a coppery aftertaste on the back of her tongue.

Leaning back against the wall of the container, which was oddly wet, Tori blinked into darkness and tried numbly to comprehend what the fuck was going on.

She'd been at a party. A dumb college party, celebrating 'half-o-ween' just before exams. She'd been dressed as a vampire and had been lugging around a Nalgene bottle full of fake blood.

The bottle was tucked neatly between her feet, so at least that had travelled with her to… whatever this place was. She'd been upset about losing her plastic vampire teeth earlier, but that seemed silly now.

She stretch out her hands and ran them along the walls of the container. The wood— or at least it was textured like unsanded wood, and slick with the foul-smelling liquid— was arranged in a cylinder around her. It was just wide enough to sit cross-legged with her admittedly short legs.

She'd been— she'd just been trying to find toilet paper, not even thirty seconds ago. She'd waited in line for the bathroom, and when she finally got in, she'd zoomed in on the fact that the toilet paper roll was empty. Nalgene bottle in hand, she'd gone right for the closet door, and then…

And then she was here. She managed to scramble into a squat, her knees banging against the walls, and pushed upwards on the lid. It didn't budge.

The key to this, Tori thought even as she hiccuped on the stale air, was to stay calm. She pushed harder. The lid did not give, and it was dripping .

The liquid, which was definitely not water, was slowly but steadily seeping in through the seal of the barrel or container or whatever contraption she was trapped in. The fluid dynamics were such that not only did it cling to and coat the walls, but also adhesive forces were strong enough it travelled across the top, pooled, and then dripped down onto to Tori's face and hair.

She discovered this running her fingers along the seal, desperately grasping for any crack or opening. Her hands were shaking. The nail of her left ring finger caught and ripped. She kept going.

Was this a joke? Some kind of prank? She hadn't known anyone at the party very well, but they'd seemed nice, and one of the hosts had invited her to a screening of Carrie …

She paused. The liquid seeping in smelled less rank and more like pennies. Her breath hitched.

Oh god, she thought. It's blood.

It was up past her ankles.

If she died like this, trapped in absolute darkness and drowning in blood, if she had to struggle against the immovable lid and rake at the wood until all her nails were gone and her own blood ran, if she swallowed , if she inhaled the sticky blood into her lungs , if it went in her nose and eyes and ears–

Tori abruptly extended her legs, ducking her head so her forehead smacked the walls and her shoulders hit the lid. Putting everything she could into it, she pushed upwards.

She meant to scream for help, to demand to be let out. It came out wordless and furious.

It did nothing.

"OUT!" she screamed, pushing until her legs cramped. "OUT! OUT!"

This was so stupid. If she was going to die a stupid, senseless death, she at least wanted to know who was responsible.

She grabbed her Nalgene bottle and rammed it into the lid as hard as she could. Vibrations ran down her arm.

"LET ME OUT," she yelled.

The blood was up to her waist. She needed to calm herself and think rationally. She stopped, panting, back still against the underside of the lid and legs still cramped from the weird position. Her entire body was trembling, but she forced herself to take a deep breath.

The air tasted like stale blood and carbon dioxide. The surface of the blood brushed her chin.

She screamed with a renewed panic, banging her fist and bottle against the walls. The blood rose to her mouth and in her panicked fury she did end up inhaling a mouthful, spluttering and coughing as she floundered to rearrange her body so her face was pressed against the roof, giving her a few more inches of air.

The container filled, and Tori contemplated that the human soul better be real, because she was coming back and haunting the shit out of whoever sealed her in whatever the fuck this was.

The lid opened.

She burst from the surface, gasping for air and standing and grasping at the edges of the container for support. There was light, finally, but it was dim and she was seeing black spots.

"Ho," said a man's voice, sounding incredibly pleased.

Tori's chest expanded and contracted, her body eagerly gulping in air. She blinked rapidly, clearing blood– and it was indeed red, sticky blood– and the spots from her eyes.

She was in a wooded area. The trees were bigger and older than the ones marking the property line of the house she'd just been in. There was a man towering over her, all pale with moon-silver hair.

She staggered back. She didn't want a man towering over her right now.

Her back hit the edge of the barrel, which came to the bottom of her ribcage when standing. She didn't want to be in the barrel any more. Turning, she got one knee over onto the rim, heaved forward, and then toppled out of the barrel and into the dirt.

"Oh," said the man, sounding incredibly disappointed.

Tori rolled across the the packed dirt and managed to get to her knees and stand. Her limbs felt light and shaky.

The man was towering over her again, but now he was frowning. He was conventionally handsome, with clear skin and dark red eyes. He was also, unfortunately, opening his mouth and snarling something rude and accusatory at her.

"-and who the fuck are you?" he demanded, reaching out and grabbing her shirt with no concern for the slick blood.

Tori stared dimly down at his hand, then squinted up at his face in disbelief.

"Hidan," she croaked. She'd meant for it to be a question, high-pitched at the end in her normal speaking voice, but she'd ruined her voice screaming and it came out as a flat statement of fact.

The glare slipped from Hidan's face and he eyed her calculatingly.

This made no sense. Hidan was a cartoon character. There was no place near her college town like this. It was impossible and it didn't make sense. This was just one of her weird lucid dreams, and she'd wake up soon wanting to vomit but otherwise in perfect health.

"Right," Tori decided, feeling vaguely like someone watching her and not like the one piloting her own body. She watched her herself untangle Hidan's hand from her shirt and drop it.

She was still wearing her stupid thrift-shop vampire costume, and her top was a black fishnet over a black camisole. That was a nice attention to detail, for an anxiety dream from hell.

"You know my name," Hidan said, sounding delighted and leaning in.

"Yes, of course," she said, and then backed up from him and walked around the other side of the barrel to get a better look at wherever she was. Her boots, now filled with blood, made squelching noises.

The clearing was a perfect circle, all uniform packed dirt. There were other people scattered around, four or five kneeling at strategic positions in a weird pagan-looking symbol painted into the dirt with what was probably even more blood.

There were also bodies, at least ten, all contained in their own weird pagan symbols. They were all contorted into unnatural shapes, faces caught up in horrific death masks. Trails of blood flowed from their open wounds, then spider webbed their way across the ground and to the wooden container. The blood trickled up the side of the container even as it overflowed and dripped blood back out.

"Oh," she said. "Hmm."

This was pretty weird. Like, really weird, even for a dream.

One of the living people stood and hurried over to her.

"Oh vessel of Jashin-sama," he crowed, "oh angel of death!"

"Um," Tori said.

She still had to pee. She'd forgotten it somewhere in the middle of panicking, but there it was again. She really hoped this wasn't one of those dreams where she spent the whole time desperately looking for a bathroom.

The man in front of her was rambling about laying waste to heathens and nonbelievers. Having grown up in the American south, violent religious rambling was par for the course for Tori, and she bobbed her head along as she tried to get her brain to piece together where the fuck she was .

Hidan stomped over, spun her around and jabbed her in the chest with his finger with enough force to cause her to stumble back half a step. It hurt.

"Why the fuck do you look like that?" he demanded.

Tori blinked up at him and he jabbed her again. He was big and aggressive and a little bit scary.

"Oi, Haruaki," Hidan said, turning to the other man. "You fucked up your summoning. There's no way a shinigami–"

The air was hot and humid. Tori rubbed the spot on her chest where Hidan had poked her, right under her collar bone. It was sore. Her socks were wet and uncomfortable and disgusting liquids filled the gaps between her toes. Her hair was heavy and clumped as the blood dried and snagged on her fishnet shirt. Her fingertips smarted from where she'd ripped off nails. It all seemed very realistic.

"Are you," Tori asked, her voice hoarse and deep. Hidan and the other man stopped arguing. "The one who brought me here?"

Hidan scowled, grabbed her buy the arm and dragged her up and towards him, so her toes dragged on the ground. His face filled her vision.

"This fucker made me waste a entire week setting this up to get you," Hidan said, and his breath was hot on her face. "So you'd better tell me you can reap the whole damn village, or we're going to find out what happens when you kill a shinigami."

Tori was beginning to suspect she was not in a dream. She was also beginning to suspect she was going to die.

She didn't want to die.

"Alright," she said slowly. Then because he'd cheered up when she'd said it before, she added, "Hidan."

Hidan stared at her, eyes wild, for several seconds. She held eye contact, doing her best to ignore the rising panic in the back of her brain. She had excellent facial control and was good at keeping a straight face in stressful situations– she could do this much, at least. Hidan finally dropped her.

"Jashin wouldn't put a girl in a coffin without a reason," he reasoned. He sounded like he was convincing himself as much as he was convincing his comrade. "Even if she looks like a drowned rat."

Rude .

Tori opened her mouth to– to play along, she guessed, and tell him in a mystic otherworldly being voice not to mock a shinigami. Instead she said:

"Then find me a bath."

She was starting to smell, and she had to pee.

There was a small lake nearby, which Hidan was very happy to hurl her into, clothes and all. She did her best to rinse her hair out. The sun had started to set, and she hoped she looked like a proper death god as she ran her fingers through her dark hair in the twilight. She had very long, thick hair– it might look very dramatic.

It probably didn't. She peed her pants while standing waist-deep in the water. She didn't think shinigami got bathroom breaks, so she might as well do it now.

Hidan sat on the edge of the lake and glared at her the whole time. Some of the other Jashinists had crowded off to the side and were muttering to each and looking at her doubtfully.

A bunch of murderers had unknowingly watched her pee in a lake. Her mind had gone blank. She couldn't handle this. She couldn't even get the blood out of her clothes and hair properly.

She very much wanted to curl up somewhere and cry. She'd have to save that for later, though, when she was free or, more likely, dead.

Tori considered just swimming to the other side of the lake and running away. There was literally no way she could have prepared for or anticipated this situation, and she was at an absolute loss for what she could do to get out of it.

They wanted her to 'reap the village.' What did that mean?

Swimming away wouldn't work, anyway. Hidan could literally walk on water. Even if she did get away– which she couldn't physically do because she wasn't a cartoon ninja– where would she go? They were in the middle of the woods at night.

She'd have to get to this village, then. She didn't know where it was, so she'd go along with this… shinigami… Jashinist summoning… thing until they got there. Then she'd figure out a way to get away.

She briefly thought about how she still had no plan for after that, and momentarily considered that they seemed to be going to the village with the aim of murdering everyone, but… well, if she thought about that too long she was going to lose hope and shut down. The short term goal of getting to the village was much easier to focus on.

Okay. Yes. She could do this. She waded back to the edge of the lake.

"Hidan," she said, because he liked that she knew his name. He leaned back on his arms, cocked his head, and gave her a disparaging look.

If she was going to get him to take her safely to the village, she needed to convince him she was a true otherworldly entity. Which, now that she thought about it, she technically was. How did she make him believe that?

She eyed him. She tilted her head back to look down her nose at him– she was a god, wasn't she? Isn't that how they'd expect her behave?

The little huddle of Jashinists kept whispering, giving her odd flashbacks to middle school clique drama. She supposed the effect of looking down on them was ruined by her being covered in a thin film of diluted blood and lake scum… and also being five feet tall and ankle-deep in muddy water.

She stepped up onto shore. Her movements were shaky and less graceful than she'd like, and Hidan raised his eyebrows at her. The bank of the lake was grassy, and he had his legs sprawled out in front of him, his Akatsuki cloak unbuttoned and pooling around him.

"Where's Kakuzu?" she asked.

Hidan leaned further back on his hands and crossed his legs at the ankles. "Who the fuck is Kakuzu?"

For less than a second, Tori felt a wave of hot panic. Had he not met Kakuzu yet? No, he was wearing the cloak– he had to have.

Tori twitched, then very purposefully curled her lip into a sneer. "Your partner, Hidan. Don't play games with me."

"Ah," said Hidan, then got to his feet. He grinned at her. "Yeah, I guess you're legit."

Then he hit her approvingly on the shoulder hard enough to nearly knock her over. He didn't seem to notice though, as he started yelling at his comrades to start moving out. Tori watched them carefully. They followed Hidan's commands, but they didn't seem particularly happy about it.

Hmm.

One of the Jashinists approached her. There were five others besides Hidan, including the one that had greeted her as an angel of death. They all wore the same pendant with the symbol of Jashin.

"You dropped this," the Jashinist said, holding out her Nalgene bottle.

"Oh," she said, and took it. Her first instinct was to thank the man. Did shinigami thank people?

It didn't matter; he turned away from her immediately.

What Tori managed to learn from their conversation, as they marched through the woods towards the village, was this:

Haruaki– the man who'd announced her as a servant of Jashin– was some type of fuuinjutsu user who'd set up the… sealing array or whatever it was to summon her. He'd also gathered fifteen other Jashinists.

Ten of them had ended up sacrifices. Apparently not every follower of Jashin got up again after death.

In fact, she'd be willing to bet Hidan was the only one here who could. Everyone treated him with fear and respect and as the de facto leader, even though Haruaki had done most of the organizing and it was clear no one actually liked Hidan.

Hidan didn't seem to like anyone else either, and at one point snapped at Haruaki and called him a "snivelling dog begging at Jashin-sama's feet." Haruaki had just squared his shoulders and taken it.

So… there was that.

Hidan and Haruaki must have a history, though, since they both wore headbands from Yugakure. Yugakure, incidentally, was also the village they were traveling to 'reap.'

There was a lot to unpack there.

At least she didn't have to pee anymore.

Hidan took the lead of their little party, putting several yards between himself and the rest, and Tori scrambled to keep up with him. He walked faster than she liked, but he was obviously more accepting of the idea she might be a god than the others.

They were following a poorly maintained path. It was wide enough for a car to pass, so Tori assumed it was once used for carts or herding mules or whatever they used for transport in this world. Now it was covered in tree roots and upturned rocks and weird holes. There had been a faded sign nailed to a tree a while back that claimed that Yugakure was four hours away. Tori liked hiking, and the walk wasn't particularly strenuous, so under normal circumstances a four hour walk across relatively flat terrain would be fairly easy. 'Normal circumstances' being the key phrase there, of course. Trying to keep up with Hidan– who was at least a foot taller than her, and infinitely more in shape– was not easy, especially when it was dark and they were marching to the light of fancy ninja glowsticks.

No one had given her a glowstick. She had to work to keep at Hidan's side to even be able to see, which was easier said than done. She was quickly reduced to a sweaty, winded mess. It didn't help that the knee-high boots she was wearing were obviously designed for fashion statements and not hiking.

When she inevitably tripped and fell, Haruaki leaned over her and suggested that they had, perhaps, made a mistake with the summoning.

He didn't even offer to help her up. Rude.

She supposed she did look ridiculous; she was still damp from her dip in the lake, and her clothes were uncomfortably heavy in the humid evening. At least she had been dressed like a gothic edgelord instead of in a cute sundress when she'd emerged from a blood-filled coffin. She looked at least slightly more the part.

She sat up. Hidan was yelling profanities at Haruaki. "Did you heed the call of Jashin or not–"

She stood up, grabbing her Nalgene bottle and unscrewing the lid. Her fake blood was mostly chocolate syrup, with some corn starch for viscosity and red food dye for color. She unscrewed the top and took a sizeable gulp, since she was hungry and could use an energy boost. Some of it dribbled down her chin and she wiped it away.

"You know," she said, interrupting their argument because she would really rather not have this Haruaki person convince Hidan she was a fake. "You only get as much out of a summoning as you put in. You think ten sacrifices were enough to get a shinigami at full power?"

She crossed her arms and popped a hip in a show of false confidence and waited expectantly.

"I fucking told you," Hidan said finally, turning back to Haruaki. "Jashin-sama wouldn't let me down."

That wording, Tori thought, was telling, and she decided to gamble. "Ten might have been enough," she said, "if you'd gotten proper followers. I don't even know who you are."

She gestured vaguely at all the people who weren't Hidan. Haruaki looked offended. Hidan's eyes lit up.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, that makes sense. So what can you do, chibigami?"

Tori opened her mouth only to realize she had not thought that far through her charade. "I don't appreciate your nickname," she said instead.

"What can you do ?" Haruaki growled out.

Tori glanced at him, trying to be as dismissive as possible, and then took another long drink from her Nalgene.

Having wasted plenty of time, she still hadn't thought of a good lie and said the first thing that came to mind. "I can see people's fates."

"Hidan-san," Haruaki practically whined, but Hidan ignored him, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Oh yeah?" he said. "How's that gonna help us, chibigami?"

She cocked her head in a play for seeming cool. It reminded her that her hair had formed into one giant tangle. "I suppose I could cut their fates as well."

After she said it, she realized any rational person would question that meant and she didn't have an answer.

Hidan, thankfully, was not a particularly rational person and nodded seriously. Haruaki, however, looked like he'd just swallowed a lemon.

"What does that mean? " he asked. "You can't honestly expect us to believe you're some kind of-"

"Shut up ," Hidan yelled. He grabbed his scythe off his back, and before Tori or Haruaki could properly register was happening, two of the scythe's blades were embedded in Haruaki's chest. Blood splattered everywhere and Haruaki let out a sad sort of wheeze.

Hidan shook the blade a couple times, then dislodged Haruaki's body with his foot.

"Don't you dare," Hidan growled, setting his foot right over Haruaki's wounds and pressing down, "question the will of Jashin-sama. We asked Jashin-sama for a messenger of death, and so that's what we got."

Haruaki, who was quite clearly dead, did not answer.

Hidan turned his fury on the rest of the Jashinists. "Anyone else got a problem with chibigami?"

Tori certainly had a problem with what was going on, and she was glad Hidan was distracted enough not to notice her working her way through several breathing exercises. She could have her panic attack when she had escaped, she reminded herself. She could have her panic attack when she escaped.

She didn't catch what the replies were, but Hidan eventually turned to keep going down the path, and one of the Jashinists knelt in front of her and offered to carry her the rest of the way.

Riding on the back of a ninja made the rest of the of the trip take less than an hour.

They stopped just short of the tree line. Yugakure– a former ninja village with no currently active shinobi and no ninja academy– had dismantled most of their protective walls, leaving a few observational turrets and a symbolic wooden archway at its entrance. The writing above the arch declared Yugakure's new name for itself: The Village That Has Forgotten War .

The violence-loving Jashinists hated Yugakure and would wipe it off the earth for this sin.

Or… something like that. Hidan went on a very long tirade about it in what Tori guessed was supposed to be some sort of pep talk. She ignored it mostly in favor of chanting to herself to stay cool stay calm stay cool stay calm.

"Well?" Hidan finally asked, looking at her expectantly. "Do your thing."

Tori blinked at him. Her ears were ringing and she could barely remember what her 'thing' was. "I'll go in alone first," she heard herself say. "You'll know when to follow."

Then, feeling incredibly lightheaded, she walked out of the trees and into Yugakure.

Yugakure was pretty, she thought. It was all narrow cobblestone streets lined with lights. The buildings were cramped but elegant with dark, slanting roofs. People decorated their windows with potted plants.

The narrow streets were the part she liked most. She ducked into an alley, squatted down behind a dumpster, and let herself cry.

Eventually she heard a rustling over her, and looked up to see a woman rummaging in the dumpster. She'd balanced herself on the edge and was poking through it with a crowbar. Tori watched for a few minutes before the women seemed to notice her.

"You okay?" the woman asked.

"Yes," Tori answered automatically, even though it was embarrassingly obvious she was overwhelmingly not okay.

"Here," the woman said, and tossed down a bundle of newspapers she'd fished out of the dumpster. "That'll cheer you up."

The headline read SEVENTEEN MORE CONFIRMED DEATHS FROM DEAD WATER FEVER! WILL HOT WATER COUNTRY BE NEXT? so she wasn't exactly sure how that was supposed to cheer her up.

She read the article, anyway. It was calming– she was a biology major and liked learning about new diseases and the spread. Then she read the rest of the newspaper. The woman filled the knapsack on her back with some items from the dumpster and dropped two magazines at Tori's feet.

"Could be worse, you know," the woman said, toeing the headline of one of the magazines. "In Water Country they've got people dying all over."

Tori nodded dully. She didn't really care that much about an epidemic in another country right now, but it had been an interesting read.

"Thanks," Tori said. "Have a good evening."

The woman shrugged and bustled off.

Tori wrapped the strap of her Nalgene around her wrist and gathered the magazines and one of the newspapers in her arms. These were the only things she had in this world, and she felt compelled to keep them.

She wandered out of the alley. There were more people walking around the village than she would expect for this time of night, and they were mostly heading in the same direction. She decided to follow.

No one paid her any mind. She was filthy and gross looking, yes, but she was also very good at shrinking her presence, hunching over her new reading material. It probably helped that Yugakure seemed to have a sizeable homeless population– including the woman who'd helped her– and its residents were practiced at ignoring them.

She followed the flow of people to a huge open square, which was lit up and lined with various vendors in wooden stalls. Most of them sold food, but there were some crafts and games. Tori wondered if this was always here or part of some special event.

The smell of something savory and fried hit her nose. Her stomach groaned. Without even thinking it through, she let her legs wobble as she approached a stall, willing her entire presence to screaming misery.

It wasn't hard– she was a miserable mess.

"Um, excuse me," she said to the man throwing onions and mushrooms onto the grill between them. She tried not to blink so the smoke would get in her eyes and make her tear up again. "I was robbed on my way into town and–" she hiccupped, let her face tremble like she was on the verge of tears.

"Move along," the man snapped. "If you don't have any money, you can starve for all I care."

She turned to the woman at the stall next to him, tears welling in her eyes, but the woman avoided eye contact. So did the man on the other side. A couple holding hands pointedly ignored her as they discussed their food order.

"Oh for crying out loud," said a voice behind her. She turned to see a takoyaki salesman wavering her towards his booth. She approached timidly.

"I swear, people can be disgusting," he said, ladling sauce onto a double-helping of the takoyaki for her.

"Thank you so much," Tori said, looking for all the world like she was about to cry. The man smiled kindly at her.

Tori took her food to a bench on the opposite end of the square, feeling smug at her deception. She set her possessions down next to her and happily licked a fleck of sauce from her fingers. After an entire day of feeling on-edge with Hidan, this particular charade had been a breeze.

It was calming to have warm food in front of her, and a tiny bit of optimism crept in her mind. Yes. She could definitely hide somewhere and wait out Hidan's massacre, or sneak out and avoid it all together, or–

A family of four walked by, laughing as they ate little barbecued squids off of sticks. One parent affectionately ruffled the hair of the younger child.

The food turned to chalk in Tori's mouth. She put the paper container down and wanted to vomit. These people were going to die. In all her posturing in front of Hidan– flippantly talking about human sacrifices– she'd been thinking of the people of this world as fictional background characters. They weren't.

This world was real and had real problems. She didn't want to be one of them.

She felt panic and tears well in her again, which was not going to help her. To distract herself, she grabbed one of the magazines and flipped through it. There was gossip on celebrities she didn't recognize and an article on the possible spread of this dead water fever into other countries.

It was a hemorrhagic disease that turned your organs to mush and made you bleed out your nose and ears. That woman had been right. This was a much worse fate than being sacrificed to the god of suffering.

Tori tried to focus on the article over the overwhelming panic in the back of her mind. Calm down, she commanded herself. Think.

Dead water fever got its name from the fact that it thrived in places with plenty of warm, still water, which Hot Water Country happened to be filled with. There was a lot of fear-mongering in the articles she read– a lot of travelers moved through Hot Water Country, and people were terrified of those travelers bringing in the deadly disease.

Or at least that's what these articles claimed. Tori wanted more facts than ominous warnings. Was the fever spreading a real threat? Did local authorities have plans in place in case an infection broke out? Was it really as deadly as the gossip magazine claimed? What was the exact mechanism of the disease? How was it being transmitted– mosquitoes? Was anyone working on a vaccine or treatment?

She got up, gathered her things, and went to go find someone who might know.

Tori found the woman who'd given her the magazines, yelling at man as he poked through another dumpster.

"What do you know about this?" Tori asked, holding up the newspaper with the fever on the front page.

Her reasoning in approaching the woman had been that the woman was both open to talking to her and also presumably read the local news. Any conversation would be a great distraction from having a panic attack about Hidan.

The woman snorted and answered, "I know if it shows up here I'm getting out ." Then she eyed the leftover takoyaki in Tori's other hand. "You gonna eat that?"

In that moment, Tori had a monumentally stupid idea.

She handed the woman her food and the man jumped down from the dumpster to join them.

It was a stupid idea, but Tori was probably going to die anyway. The Jashinists were no doubt watching the village, so she couldn't leave. Eventually Hidan would get bored and barge in, signal from her or not. She might as well die making a dramatic stand.

A little past eleven, the party in town was still going strong, but the hospital was quiet. There was a single receptionist at the front desk of the hospital when Tori wandered in.

Tori stood in the center of the room, swayed, and then collapsed.

Tori heard the scrape of the receptionist's chair and then her hurried footsteps over. The noise stopped, there was a long pause, and the receptionist said, "Oh shit. "

She hurried off. Tori continued to lay on the floor, as still as possible. She'd filled her ears and nose and mouth with fake blood from her Nalgene. Somewhere else in the village, the two homeless people she'd shared her dinner with would be doing something similar.

Her immensely stupid idea was this: if there was an outbreak of a fatal disease, people would flee. If people fled, Hidan couldn't kill all of them.

There were a lot of ways this could go wrong and not a lot of ways it could actually work. She refused to think about that though, and instead focused on looking as ill as possible as medical personnel showed up to talk about what to do with her.

"We can't just leave her here," one of the medics was saying. They were all standing as far away from her as possible.

"Well we can't treat her here either," another voice snapped back. "We're not equipped for quarantine. We don't even have the proper equipment to handle something like this since the post-war decommission."

"Are we sure it's dead water fever?" another voice asked.

Tori keep her body completely limp and prayed none of them actually examined her. She had absolutely no idea how to fake a fever, or the signature rash, and she was certain a trained medical professional would be able to tell the blood was actually chocolate syrup up close.

"She's bleeding from every visible orifice," the first voice said. "I think it's safest to assume she does have it until we've got a safe way to diagnose and treat her."

"And how are we supposed to do that? The closest place with the proper equipment is Oto, and they're not likely to help us."

"Maybe they will," a fourth voice said idly. "Their head medic is pretty shady, maybe he'll want to study her."

A snort of derision.

They started arguing about whether or not to approach her again. She had not seen any of their faces, but Tori was fairly certain they were all quite young, probably not much older than she herself. The homeless woman had told her most of the senior staff in the hospital had been shinobi, and when the village started dismantling their military, most of them had left, leaving the hospital understaffed by less experienced healers.

Both the homeless woman and man were shinobi who'd been left jobless by the decommission. They knew all about it.

Suddenly, there was screaming from outside. The sound of running filled the hospital.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" one of the medics yelled. " Another one?"

The woman had loved the idea of vomiting fake blood in public and causing chaos in the village. So had the man.

There were shouts for evacuations. Slamming doors– commands to lock her in the reception area. The hospital filled with the sounds of chaos. But the reception area was left an oasis of calm.

Tori cracked an eyelid. She was alone. Cautiously, she stood. There were two sets of glass doors leading outside, and the outer set was barricaded from the outside with a dumpster. She watched house lights flicker on and people run by. No one looked at her. She could hear movement form above– upper floors of the hospital evacuating patients through other exits.

Her plan had worked. People were evacuating, and in the chaos she could hopefully sneak away from the village without anyone noticing.

At least, she thought it had worked, until she realized she was locked in the hospital.

Chapter 2: A girl somehow has a WORSE day

Summary:

In which more canon characters are mean to our heroine.

Notes:

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–

Chapter Text

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.

Chapter 3: in which the bechdel test is passed

Summary:

In which our heroine has a lot of problems, ninja are bullshit, and a lot of worldbuilding is done.

Notes:

Since we have moved to Sound, there is predictably human experimentation that I must list as a warning, including experiments involving drug use.

This took longer to write than expected, but please enjoy this extra long chapter.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Tori woke up sprawled across a cement floor. There was a rusted drain next to her face.

Feeling woozy, she sat up. She was alone in a closet-sized room that smelled strongly of bleach. There no windows, and the only light came from a bare bulb overhead. It was a very yellow light that gave her a headache.

Or maybe the headache was from being drugged. It was difficult to say.

She patted herself down. There was a patch of gauze on the inside of her left elbow, taped on right over her fishnet sleeve. When she peeled it off, there was a small puncture wound underneath. Had they taken a blood sample? Given her more drugs? There was no way to know.

The skin around the puncture wound had obviously been cleaned. Other than that, there was no evidence her person had been altered in anyway. She was still covered in grime and smelled rank. She found a candy wrapper in her pocket.

She had no memory of putting that there, but she highly doubted this world had Werther's Originals. It might have been there since before the last time she washed her pants.

Her Nalgene bottle was gone. Now the only thing she had left of her world were her clothes and this wrapper, and she felt strangely attached to it. She very carefully smoothed it out, folded it up, and slipped it back into her pocket.

Standing up gave her a wave of nausea and she leaned against the wall. The room was less than ten feet deep, and narrow enough that if she stood in the center, her finger tips would brush against both walls.

The only object in the room was an off-white lump shoved into a corner. Upon inspection, it turned out to be a folded futon with matching blanket. The futon was was splotched with yellow-brown water stains.

Was this… her cell?

Is this how she was meant to live from now on?

She wondered if she should cry. Crying now seemed like a good idea. If she got it all out in private, she was less likely to do it with someone watching.

She didn't have the energy to cry. Instead, she rolled out the futon, laid down on it, and willed her headache and nausea to go away.

Tori was dozing when someone banged open the door and yelled at her to get up.

Tori removed her arm from her face and squinted up at the person looming over her. It was a teenaged girl, standing with both fist on her hips. Her bright red hair haloed in the artificial light.

"Karin?" Tori croaked and carefully rolled over and got to her feet. She still felt weird, but the nausea had mostly faded.

Karin was small in stature, but she gave off the definite air of someone who got her way or else . A heavy ring of keys jingled at her hip.

"Learn to follow orders faster," Karin snapped. "Follow me."

She turned on her heel and matched out of the room, not checking to make sure Tori followed. Tori briefly considered staying in her little room; she didn't like following orders just because she was meant to. She quickly disregarded this thought, though. Karin was deceptively scrawny and shockingly young-looking in person, but she was also a ninja and not a particularly nice person. Tori hurried after her.

The hallway outside was also devoid of windows and illuminated with the same yellow light. The door to Tori's… cell, or whatever it was, had "E7" painted on it in faded red. She passed doors E6 through E1 shuffling after Karin.

Tori feet hurt, the soles throbbing from walking too far and the skin of her heels and toes screaming from blisters, but she dared not lag too far behind.

The heavy door at the end of the hall required a key to open, which Karin produced from her ring. Outside was a wider passageway, still windowless but with softer lighting. Tori stared around her, wide-eyed, as Karin led her through several hallways and locked doors. There was very little to see– Oto was not a place for welcoming decoration, it seemed. They only passed one other person, a very tired looking woman pushing a cart.

Finally, Karin stopped at a large room housing laundry facilities.

"First, you need a uniform," she said. "What's your shoe size?"

Karin pulled over a large canvas bin on wheels, filled with black open-toed shoes.

"Six," Tori answered obediently, and Karin gave her a very odd look. Tori was not sure how she'd gotten her own shoe size wrong, but apparently she had. "Thirty-five?" She tried next, since she had a pair of sandals from Peru that said that. Karin continued to look at her as if she were an idiot. "I think… my world has a different sizing system."

"Kabuto said you'd be difficult," Karin muttered. "Look, just find a pair that fits, and I'll grab your clothes."

Karin wandered further into the laundry room and Tori peered into the bin. Someone had tied the shoes together into pairs with twine, so at least there would be no issue finding a matching set. She hoped that someone had also sterilized the obviously pre-worn shoes.

When she'd found a pair that looked her size, Tori pulled off one of her boots to try it on. Her socks had once been white with tiny puffins decorating them; now they were a gross red-brown.

"Those look fine," Karin declared as Tori stared balefully down at her disgusting socks in the stupid toeless shoes. "You get two uniforms and one towel."

Karin launched into an obviously practiced speech about laundry schedules and hygiene standards in Oto, sounding incredibly bored with the whole thing. Then she paused and said, "Usually I make newbies change immediately, but you need, like…. a biohazard decontamination."

She wrinkled her nose as she gave Tori a once-over. It was a fair point.

Karin lead her back to E-corridor and the women's bathroom. It looked shockingly like Tori's dorm bathroom, with mildew-spotted shower curtains and grimy beige tiles.

"Cool-down showers are only five minutes, but I'll give you…" Karin trailed off and looked her up and down again. "You know what. Take as long as you want, just get rid of that smell."

The pile Karin had handed over in the laundry room had consisted of blue plastic bags, labelled in marker. Tori pulled out one labelled WMN UNIFORM and one labelled SHOWER TOWEL (E CORRIDOR). There was another uniform one, and then one WMN UNDERGARMENTS. She peered inside. There were indeed undergarments in there. She pulled out a set and Karin snapped at her to hurry up.

Tori drew the shower curtain closed behind her and started to pull off her ruined clothing. Underneath her gross socks, her feet were a mess of pussy pink and red blisters. She had random bruises all over her body from being manhandled, and her wrists had been rubbed raw by restraints.

The water came out unpleasantly hot. Tori didn't care.

"Okay, listen up," Karin said, voice loud and bossy over the sound of the running shower. "In Oto, you have to earn trust. We get a lot of people from all over and we can't just go around letting them do whatever they want."

There was a dispenser on the wall labelled SOAP - SHAMPOO. Tori used the scentless gel that came out of it to scrub her body and hair down as Karin lectured her on the structure of Oto. She was not to leave her cell without an escort. She would be assigned a job. Meals, bathroom breaks, and sleep were all on a fixed schedule. She belonged to Orochimaru.

Tori watched the now red-brown soap suds swirl around her feet as Karin droned on and on, clearly bored with her own speech. If Tori proved herself, she'd get special privileges the Oto elite enjoyed, like personal belongings.

Personal belongings.

"Can I keep my clothes?" Tori asked, interrupting Karin in the middle of reciting things Tori could get access to if she properly surrendered her body to Oto, like fresh fruit and reading materials.

"What?" Karin answered. "No, I'm going to burn them, because they are disgusting –"

Tori stood under the water for a few minutes while Karin ranted about how indescribably gross she was. She decided Karin would eventually notice the water now ran clear. She turned it off and toweled down.

The Oto uniform was a dark grey shirt and matching pants. The set was stiff from cheap laundry detergent, but the sensation of cleanliness felt practically luxurious.

Toeless shoes were silly, Tori thought as she slid her foot in, but at least they wouldn't aggravate her blisters.

Karin led her back to what appeared to be a storage closet and made a big deal out of pulling out a red biohazard waste bag and shoving Tori's last worldly possessions into it. Tori watched, expressionless, as the last bit of her former life was shoved into a bin marked BURNABLE REFUSE. She'd forgotten to rescue the wrapper from her pocket.

"Right," Karin said, adjusting her glasses. "I was supposed to take you down to the dining hall, but…" Karin sniffed and turned away. "Well, you can wait until dinner. You wasted a lot of my time, anyway."

Karin slammed the door closed on Tori's cell and left her. Tori stood in the middle of the room for a few minutes wondering what to do.

She went with sitting on the floor and raking the tangles out of her damp hair with her fingers. There didn't seem to be much else she could do.

Eventually someone else unlocked her cell. It was a man this time, in his early twenties and skinny with his face permanently screwed up like he had just caught whiff of a foul smell. He briefly introduced himself as the commanding officer for Corridors E and F. Tori decided to call him Snarly-Nin.

There was a queue of children in the same gray uniform following behind Snarly-Nin. Tori obediently got in line behind them and followed them to the mess hall, where she was given a plastic tray containing dry rice, a mysterious salty meat, and green mush. It was all lukewarm with pockets of cold, like it hadn't been microwaved long enough.

There were multiple long tables arranged neatly in the hall, and small groups of other ninja sitting at them. Most of them did not wear the grey uniform, but instead clothes closer to what she expected ninja to wear– dark, loose pants and flak jackets. The group Tori had been herded in with all sat together, though, so she followed suit. Even though…. they were all literal children. The oldest one couldn't be more than thirteen.

Oto sure did recruit them young.

Tori poked at her meal with the metal spork she was given. It didn't taste like much, but she was hungry.

"I can't wait to get promoted," the boy sitting next to her lamented. "I heard you get fruit cups then."

Tori ate her food as quickly as she could and hoped her body continued to be too tired for a wailing breakdown.

Tori spent the next three days mostly lying on her futon. Occasionally Snarly-nin would come to shepard her and the other new recruits– and that's what everyone in the ugly gray uniform was, she learned– to the dining hall to eat disappointing food or to the bathroom. She was told when to bathe and reprimanded for spending too long on the toilet and leaving behind gristle from the mystery meat on her plate.

She had no timepiece and didn't know if all this ran on a tight schedule or not. She also didn't know if the lights shutting off correlated with night time in the real world or not.

The first time she experienced lights out, she had no warning. One moment she'd been picking scabs off her blisters, and the next it was pitch black. She waved her hand in front of her face, watching the blue-white shape her mind constructed for her in the pitch blackness.

There was a name for that, she thought. For when your brain gave you an image of something you knew was there but couldn't see.

From their gossip, she knew the other new recruits went to training between their meals. One of the boys bragged about finally getting a mission, and how if it went well he'd be promoted and get to leave them behind. She wondered how she would get promoted, if she couldn't take missions because she wasn't a ninja.

There were older civilians that staffed Oto. They all looked defeated and tired, with slumped bodies. She saw them in the hallways pushing laundry carts and mops. The women who gave her poorly heated trays of food were civilians. She knew they were civilians because the other new recruits mocked them.

Would that be her, years from now?

No, it wouldn't, because Sasuke was probably fourteen or fifteen and so Oto wouldn't exist like this years from now.

Should she, like, tell them that…?

No, she decided, fumbling around in the dark for wherever she'd kicked her blanket. She really didn't think they deserved to know about their on-coming doom.

Being left alone for long stretches of time, Tori thought, was probably some sort of psychological conditioning to wear her down. So was most of what she was being forced into here– it was all a game to force compliance.

The new recruits she ate lunch with didn't like talking to her. She was older, she wasn't a ninja, and she was foreign and weird and didn't know about any of the pop culture they wanted to discuss. Alone at night, she started to wonder if putting her with them was done on purpose to isolate her.

The thing was, though, that just because she could recognize tactics to make her feel alone and miserable, it didn't mean those tactics didn't work. The tactics worked incredibly well. They worked so well that when Karin interrupted her breakfast one morning, Tori beamed at her and greeted her overenthusiastically.

"Uh, okay," said Karin, sniffing and letting one hand rest on a popped hip. "Kabuto wants to see you, weirdo."

Kabuto's office, as it happened, was a cubicle located in the infirmary.

The Oto infirmary, as it happened, was terrifying.

There were several tables with restraining buckles dangled from them, adjacent to metallic trays of surgical tools. There were other instruments, hanging from the walls, that looked like they came straight from an American Civil War field surgeon's kit– bone saws and curved scissors and giant forceps with ridged tips. The medical waste disposal bins were larger than any normal doctor's office. The entire place smelled heavily of rubbing alcohol.

Kabuto's desk, shoved in the corner of the clinic, was startling normal looking, with a few piles of papers and notebooks and even a single decorative figurine of a carved wooden beetle. His desk also had a small digital clock, which read just past 8 o'clock. Tori wondered if that was accurate. It was the first time she'd known the time in days.

"Do you need anything else?" Karin asked, sounding sweeter than Tori had ever heard her.

"No, thank you," Kabuto said with an equally weirdly-sweet smile. Karin left, and Kabuto turned the smile on Tori. Tori experienced a brief and vivid fantasy of crawling into the giant medical waste bin in the corner, pulling the lid down over her, and hiding there for the rest of her life.

Instead of doing that, Tori said awkwardly, "Good morning."

"Good morning," Kabuto answered. "How have you been adjusting, Tori-chan?"

A lifetime of social conditioning pushed Tori to tell him she was fine, just fine, even if that was a blatant lie. She hesitated though, the dumb friendly smile she'd put on for Karin still stuck on her face. She didn't think Kabuto actually cared either way. What did he want her to say?

"I know it can be difficult," Kabuto said, turning back to his desk and arranging stack of papers. "But I hope with time you'll be able to make friends."

Um… okay?

Kabuto gestured for her to climb onto one of the examination tables. Paper lining had been pulled over it ( for bodily fluids, Tori's mind helpfully reminded her), and the buckled restraints dangled ominously from it. Tori stiffened. She'd had time to sit and wallow in all the terrible things they could do to her. She's had time to lie in the dark and try to remember the entire wikipedia article on torture.

She'd read that article in full, once, because torture seemed interesting when you were confident it couldn't happen to you.

All of her muscles tensed. She really, really didn't want to get on that table.

"Well?" Kabuto asked, voice soft and low.

She had no dumb or sassy excuse not to. If she didn't do this under her own power, Kanuto would make her.

Feeling like a prisoner sent to walk the plank, she climbed onto the examination table.

Kabuto proceeded to give her a completely normal physical. He was very professional about it and healed all her leftover blisters and major bruises, his green healing chakra feeling cool and tingly. It wasn't weird at all, aside from the very bizarre feeling of Kabuto touching her feet. The dichotomy between her expectations and reality left Tori dizzy.

When he was done, Kabuto gave her one critical once-over and clicked his tongue.

"I don't know what you're thinking, Tori-san," he chided, "But in Oto we take care of our comrades. Don't be so nervous."

Then in a complete one-eighty from his reassurances, he pulled out a clipboard and announced that Orochimaru wanted him to run a few medical tests.

"Just to understand some things about you, Tori-chan," he said gently.

She wondered if that worked on the younger recruits.

She watched blandly as he tied a tourniquet around her arm and slipped a needle under her skin. She let her legs swing as he filled vial after vial, her fingers slowly losing strength from blood loss.

"What are you even going to do with all of that?" she asked, now feeling lightheaded.

"You know, the usual tests," Kabuto said vaguely. "Your antigen profile, chakra residues…"

"I'm O positive," Tori said. Then because Kabuto tipped his head like she'd said something interesting, she went on: "What's a chakra residue? Do you even use ABO blood groups? Because you don't have the same shoe sizes. In my world, O means no antigen–"

She blabbered. Kabuto leaned in and listened very raptly. Part way through explaining Rh groups, Tori remembered that ABO blood groups were definitely a thing in this world, because there was a scene in the manga where Orochimaru asked Kabuto for his. Japanese culture connected ABO groups to personality types; it was like asking a Westerner if they had horoscopes.

So then what was Kabuto listening to her for, then? Something incriminating? Secrets of the state?

"Oh, but you do know all that, right?" she finished. "Because you're type AB."

Kabuto didn't look surprised, exactly, but something sharpened in his eyes.

Now, if only Tori had memorized the databooks and knew everyone else's blood types. That sure would be a trick to show off.

The next test Kabuto did involved holding wooden plates up to Tori's skin, which really threw her for a loop. The plates were pentagonal, about the size of her hand, and had fancy looking characters painted on them. Kabuto pulled on nitrile gloves before handling them.

"They absorb chakra," he explained when she'd looked confused. He had rolled up her sleeve to the shoulder and was pressing plate after plate against her upper arm. "The seals will change over time to give information."

"Huh," she said. Then she decided to go out on a limb and asked, "What is chakra, anyway?"

"Energy, basically," he said dryly.

She narrowed her eyes at him. Her vision was swimming from the loss of blood and chakra. "Is that like ATP hydrolysis?"

Kabuto didn't know what that was. Tori hadn't thought about it properly in a while, and her brain was so fuzzy. "You have three phosphates, and then you cut one off and energy comes out."

Kabuto gave her a very strange look.

Once he was done collecting chakra, Kabuto summoned Karin back and she humphed and complained as Tori dragged herself out of the clinic and back to her cell, leaning against the wall the whole way.

"If one session took that much out of you," Karin said, nose in the air, "then you're not going to make it very far in Oto."

She slammed the door closed to Tori's room, and Tori suddenly refound her ability to cry.

It was stupid to cry, she decided after she'd bawled her eyes out. Karin was right: she needed to toughen up if she was going to survive this. There was no point in mooning and crying and wasting time in the bathroom trying to hide the fact that she had been crying.

"Hurry up," Snarly-nin snapped, and grabbed her by the back of her shirt and dragged her away from the sink to join the rest of the group outside. The girl who'd told on her for wasting time jeered at her.

At dinner, the new recruits discussed when the last time they'd had a banana was. A few of them had never even had a banana, which Tori thought was odd.

"We used to get them in the market all the time," the girl who'd tattled on her boasted. Her name, if Tori wasn't mistaken, was Haruka. "We're the only city in the Land of Iron to get imports from Water Country regularly."

Haruka was easily the most interesting in the group, Tori thought. At thirteen, she was the second oldest after Tori, and she came from a samurai family that had been killed or banished or something like that. Haruka had been a thug for hire for a bit before Orochimaru had scooped her up.

"You mean you were ," a boy who might have been named Kisuke corrected. "You're here now."

"Yeah," Haruka agreed, then picked at her food for a bit before launching into a description of what bananas tasted like. A girl from a northern country leaned into the story with wide, hungry eyes.

Tori wondered what would happen if the poor girl found out about mangos.

Deciding to integrate herself into the group, Tori asked, "Has anyone ever had a passion fruit?"

No one answered, but Haruka rolled her eyes exaggeratedly. Tori didn't know if that meant no one had or if everyone had and she might as well have asked, "Who else here has tried mustard before?"

Maybe it was because passion fruits were a new world fruit? Did they have new world foods here? No, of course they did, they had potatoes and tomatoes…

When Karin fetched her again the next morning, Tori asked about passion fruits.

"You say a lot of weird things," Karin said instead of giving a real answer.

Instead of making real conversation, then, Tori found herself earnestly explaining what a passion fruit was. "It's got like a leathery shell, and then the part that's edible inside looks like yellow frogs' eggs, except instead of baby frogs it's seeds."

"A baby frog is a tadpole," Karin corrected.

"Where do your potatoes come from?" Tori asked, keeping the discussion on track.

"I don't think a new recruit needs to know our supply chains," Karin snapped, and that was the end of that.

When Tori was left with Kabuto, the first thing he did was hand her a slip of paper. Tori took it without question, and then Kabuto leaned down to examine it in her hand.

"As expected," he said, then straightened up and turned to make some notes.

"Um," said Tori, looking down at the paper. It looked completely normal, the size of an index card and the weight of printer paper. When it was obvious Kabuto wasn't going to explain what was going on to her, Tori asked, "Is there something that was supposed to happen…?"

"It's chakra induction paper," Kabuto said, leafing through papers at his desk with a small frown on his face. "It changes based on elemental affinity. You don't have one."

Tori blinked down at the paper in surprise. She'd always wondered, the way anyone might idly wonder about the fantastic, what her elemental affinity might be. To hear it was nothing was disappointing, to say the least. All those personality tests had lied to her.

"Is that common?" she asked.

"It's not unheard of," Kabuto answered. "But it's not common, no. If you were raised in a shinobi village, it might be considered a sort of disability, but otherwise it won't affect your life."

Tori hadn't exactly been worried about that; she didn't anticipate finding out chakra affinity to impact her life in any way. It just would have been nice to know she had the potential to sneeze fireballs or shoot lightning out of her hands.

The other tests Kabuto had for her today were all physical tests. He tested her reflexes, hitting her knee with a small mallet and shining a light in her eyes, and then asked her to go through a series of strength and flexibility exercises, which was sort of like being in high school gym again.

He let her take lunch in the clinic, and then Orochimaru showed up with a folder full of photographs.

"Orochimaru-sama always likes to see the more interesting parts of experiments," Kabuto said plainly, his voice just a tad softer than usual.

Well, thought Tori, shit.

Orochimaru didn't even greet her. He just dropped his folder on Kabuto's desk and started leafing through the notes Kabuto had kept on her.

"Ah, you're right," Orochimaru murmured to Kabuto. "She's not very biologically interesting."

Tori wondered if everyone in this world thought it was socially acceptable to talk disparagingly about people when they were sitting right there in the room with them, or if it was just a ninja thing.

"Well, maybe we'll find something today," Orochimaru said with a pleasant smile that made Tori's skin crawl.

He spread a series of glossy photos out in front of her. "Do you recognize any of these people?"

Tori frowned down at the spread, pretending to concentrate while internally she panicked. He was trying to probe her made-up abilities, which happened to be the only thing interesting enough about her to keep her alive. She absolutely could not screw this up.

"Future sight doesn't work on photos," she said finally, looking up to meet his eyes. Mistake. Orochimaru's eyes were terrifying. She turned back down at the photos. "But I recognize some of these people from Sasuke's future."

Orochimaru leaned in, his terrifying eyes focused solely on Tori and looking as if he might want to eat her. "Tell me about them."

The photos were mostly people from Oto. Tori wasn't very good at faces, but she recognized some of the weirder hairstyles from the cafeteria. Some of the photos were of deceased people, too; she recognized Kimimaro and some of the Sound Five.

The first photo she pulled was Juugo. He was snarling at the camera, eyes wild as an animal.

"Juugo is surprisingly mild-mannered around Sasuke," Tori said. "I don't really understand what his problem is, but it helps to be around Sasuke's…. chakra, I guess?"

"Sasuke and Juugo interact?" Kabuto asked, sounding surprised.

Oops, Tori thought. She didn't want to tell them Sasuke was planning to murder Orochimaru, and she didn't want to say anything that would indicate Orochimaru would never get to take Sasuke's body, lest that upset him.

"Sasuke starts putting together a team to track down his brother," Tori said slowly. "He's very focused on it."

Orochimaru laughed softly, covering his mouth and glancing at Kabuto as if to say, Isn't that the truth?

Tori pulled Suigestu's photo next. "Sasuke also recruits Hozuki Suigetsu. And… Karin isn't here, but her too."

"How does he convince Karin to go along with him?" Kabuto asked, crossing his arms. "They don't get along."

"They don't?" Tori asked, frowning down at the photos, trying to recognize other people. "Karin likes him, though, and he's very respectful of her tracking abilities…"

Should she tell them she recognized the Sound Five too? They were dead, so it wasn't like she could say she saw Sasuke meeting them in the future.

"Can you see Karin's future, Tori-san?" Orochimaru asked. "She said you knew her name before you were told."

"Um…" said Tori, shifting in her seat. "A little bit. It's mostly focused on Sasuke, though…"

Orochimaru asked a few more questions, and prodded Tori into telling the stupid bear story from Karin's chuunin exam, and that Juugo was the basis for Orochimaru's cursed seal.

"But what is a cursed seal?" Tori asked, wide-eyed.

"Maybe one day we'll talk more about it," Orochimaru said vaguely. Then he turned to Kabuto and asked, "Have you confirmed she's from another world yet?"

Kabuto pushed his glasses up his nose and launched into a long explanation of Tori's physical and chakra profiles not being far enough outside the average to be abnormal. Her antibody profile, however, was bizarre.

"Were you a very sickly child?" Orochimaru asked, scanning the paper Kabuto handed him.

"I mean… I was average healthy?" Tori said slowly. "I used to get a lot of ear infections."

Did that count as sickly? She started to lean over the spread of photos to see if she could get a peek of the paper Orochimaru was reading, then realized what she was doing and stopped immediately. One did not simply read over Orochimaru's shoulder.

"You have antibodies against antigens we've never even seen before," Orochimaru said, sounding delighted.

"How did you even test for them, then?" Tori asked, dumbfounded.

"Some of them seem worrisome," Kanuto said, but kept going before Tori could ask, How could you possibly know that if you've never seen the thing causing the antibody? "You've never been hospitalized with fever?"

"No," Tori said. "I get my flu shot every year."

Both Orochimaru and Kabuto gave her a very strange look.

"I get the annual influenza vaccine," Tori elaborated.

The strange looks stayed in place.

Oh my god, you're kidding me, Tori just barely managed not to say.

As it turned out, this world didn't have vaccines. Or rather, they did– they were just produced through some wild method that involved intricate seals that didn't make any sense to Tori, and were basically only used on shinobi going into high-risk areas.

"Of course, a good medic can disrupt pathogen membranes with chakra," Orochimaru said, making a vague gesture at Kabuto.

Of course you can use chakra to bullshit your way out of disease, Tori thought.

Orochimaru pressed her for more information on vaccination programs where she came from. She told him what she knew of how they were made and how they worked, and then about what sorts of diseases were standard to vaccinate against in her country. Apparently the Naruto world somehow didn't have things like measles or whooping cough. No wonder everyone had been so terrified of Dead Water Fever.

When they'd exhausted that topic, Kabuto cut in.

"Other than the strange antibody profile," Kabuto said, grabbing another paper form his desk, "She has a lot of odd behavior that would support that she really believes she's from another world."

Kabuto read off a list of weird things Tori had said or done, including not knowing standard shoe sizes and describing the imaginary passion fruit. When did he even have time to find out about that? Did Karin tell him while Tori was focusing on lunch?

"Passion fruits are real," Tori insisted. "Where do potatoes come from?"

Orochimaru dipped his head to one side, silky black hair falling over his shoulder, as if Tori were an especially interesting beetle he'd found on his garden wall.

"Asking questions is good," he said finally. "Maybe learn to ask better ones."

He left, leaving Tori feeling vaguely lightheaded. That hadn't been so bad. That hadn't been bad at all.

It was after her scheduled dinner time, and Kabuto escorted her back to her cell himself without even mentioning the prospect of food. She fell asleep hungry.

Tori was finally assigned a job in the stockrooms. Every morning she went through her assigned inventories with a checklist and recorded how much they had of everything. She then turned this in to an older kunoichi, who was in charge of keeping track of how quickly things were used and deciding what needed to be ordered.

It was almost an interesting job. Tori liked seeing all the huge containers of food in the kitchen storeroom and how basic weaponry was stored in the armory. Her favorite was the medical storeroom, which featured all sorts of medicines and compounds kept in old fashion glass bottles. It made her feel like an alchemist.

There was another shinobi who also turned in papers to the old kunoichi, who Tori supposed must look after other stock units.

"Tori Mendoza," Tori introduced herself, making sure to give off the friendliest smile possible. "I'm very excited to be working… inven- Tori."

She stuck her hand out to shake and grinned even wider. The shinobi looked at her hand like maybe it wasn't very clean and very firmly ignored her presence after that.

In this way, mornings in Oto were fine. She could usually find at least five or six thoughts and daydreams to distract her from other, more worrying aspects of her life, like her afternoons.

In the afternoons, Tori reported to Kabuto's clinic, where he demonstrated that her assessment of human experimentation being "not that bad" was entirely incorrect.

"Eat these," Kabuto said the first afternoon she went in after being assigned to inventory. He handed her a tiny paper cup containing two brown tablets.

"What are they?" Tori asked.

"Don't worry, they're just soldier pils," Kabuto said. "Eat them."

Tori, understandably, was very resistant to the idea of eating strange pills a trained assassin had just handed her.

"Aren't you not supposed to take more than one at once?" she said, delicately taking the tiny cup from him.

"You'll be fine," Kabuto said, sounding incredibly assuring. Tori knew this was a lie, but she felt better anyway. She ate them.

"Take your shirt off," Kabuto commanded, and Tori reminded herself that he was a medical professional and her Oto-issued underwear included a high-power sports bra that covered her entire chest anyway.

With medical tape, Kabuto attached a bunch of the chakra-absorbing wooden plates to exposed parts of her skin. Tori started to feel the effects of the soldier pills, her heart racing and her brain suddenly restless and unfocused. Her arms twitched and she watched the characters painted on a plate on her forearm slowly rearrange themselves.

She wanted to do something, and she wanted to do something now.

Down the hall was a room that was some sort of training facility, equipped with sets of weights and benches for stretches. Kabuto made her run around the small track. The first few laps were fine; she'd never been much of a runner, but she felt like she'd just downed three energy drinks. She did tire quickly, though, and Kabuto insisted she keep going in quiet, deadly tones. He made her keep going until she couldn't any more.

Karin reappeared while Kabuto was peeling the tape off to gather his chakra plates. He was kneeling over Tori, having left her where she'd collapsed on the track.

"That didn't take very long," Karin observed, sounding bored. "I thought I'd have more time to review disciplinary files."

"She's a civilian," Kabuto said, holding up a plate to examine it in the light. "Even with soldier pills, she can't do very much."

Tori could do so little that Kabuto had to put her shirt back on for her and Karin had to support her weight on the way back to her cell. Tori's cheeks burned with humiliation.

It continued like this for a while. In the mornings, Tori took inventory, and then in the afternoons, Kabuto fed her odd drugs, or made her do physical exercises until she couldn't anymore, or had her do mathematics and puzzles while under the stress of drugs or mild electrical shocks. One day, he gave her something that ended with her vomiting and hallucinating on the infirmary floor, wailing and crying and crawling pathetically, and whatever the experiment was that day had to be cancelled.

She didn't remember how she got back to her cell after that, but when she was lucid again, there was a tupperware of light soup in her cell with a little note from Orochimaru to feel better.

She stared at the note dully. It was on light blue cardstock in careful lettering. She wondered if Orochimaru had written it himself (why would he?) or if someone just sat around writing fake cards on his behalf. She could see how this might be comforting to a younger person who didn't have proper parental figures, like most of the people in her recruitment cohort, but to her it just felt weird.

Or… maybe he wanted her to feel weird. She wasn't going to pretend she might be better at mind games than the combined power of Orochimaru and Kabuto.

Lights went out and she still hadn't touched the soup. Tori hadn't vomited since she was a very small child, and the idea of eating food and possibly doing it again filled her with dread. Still, by morning she was hungry, and she dutifully walked with her recruitment cohort to the dining hall.

"You look like shit," Haruka said bluntly.

"She looks like an onibaba," one of the boys cried. The rest of the children started screaming about how she looked like a demon granny, until Snarly-Nin yelled at them all to shut up.

Tori followed the line to the dining hall feeling very, very tired.

"What is an onibaba?" she asked Haruka when they'd sat down with breakfast, which was undercooked brown rice and salted fish.

"Ugh," was all Haruka said, then she picked up her tray and moved to the other side of the table.

Tori did her inventory duties in a vague haze. After lunch, she walked as slowly as she could to the infirmary, delaying having to meet with Kabuto as much as possible, like a naughty child sent to the principal's. When she did make it there, Orochimaru was sitting at Kabuto's desk, relaxing in the swivel chair like it was his favorite armchair.

Tori thought she should be afraid. Her whole body ached, though, and her brain was numb from exhaustion and humiliation, and she didn't think she had it in her to experience new emotions right now.

"You're wasting your time on this," Orochimaru was saying to Kabuto. "These experiments are redundant."

Tori stood in the middle of the room feeling dead on her feet and waited for them to acknowledge her. Kabuto murmured some apologies, and Orochimaru tutted and said, "If you can't think of anything else, you might as well skip to the vivisection and then send her off to housekeeping or food service or wherever full-time. I'm bored with her."

The word vivisection cut through Tori's existential apathy like a knife. A weird hiccup of fear escaped her, and they both turned to her.

"Ah, Tori, I didn't see you there," Orochimaru said, and Tori wanted to scream at him that of course he saw her because he was a badass ninja and a liar.

"Don't worry," Orochimaru said, "Kabuto has very steady hands, and I'll be directing, so there's no need to–"

Half of Tori's mind said, Yes, it'll be just like routine surgery for them, nothing to fear, and then the other half yelled at that half to shut the fuck up.

"I don't really see," Tori said, her voice weirdly high and on the verge of cracking, "how a vivisection is going to show you anything interesting. You're just testing things at random, none of your experiments have had any controls, I don't think those stupid wooden plates even give you real time data–"

She had to stop because she could feel herself on the verge of tears. She took and deep breath and attempted to calm herself, even though Orochimaru was looking at her with a terrible sort of interest in his eyes.

Did he want her to keep going? Did he want her to break down sobbing? What would get her out of being sliced open and have her organs poked and examined?

"If you gave me an anatomy book," Tori said in a very quiet and desperate voice, "I could just tell you if anything's different from–"

"Tori," Orochimaru interrupted. His voice sounded like honey, rich and velvety sweet, and it made her want to flee. "What do you think Kabuto is testing for?"

"I– he–" Tori's eyes darted between the two of them. Kabuto's face was perfectly blank. She took and deep breath and commanded her voice not to crack or seize up. "Most experiments are to see how my chakra reacts to stresses on the body. I think, before you move on to invasive measures, you could do some qualitative tests on my future vision–"

Orochimaru turned from her to Kabuto, suddenly not interested in listening to Tori at all. "Vivisection was unlikely to be informative anyway. Where does she work?"

Tori was reassigned to the research lab. She nearly wet her pants.

Orochimaru's lab was huge– maybe even bigger than the giant chemistry labs meant for tens of students she'd had classes in in university. It was hard to judge space: where the student labs had been rows of work benches and sinks, this one dedicated a lot more space to shiney metal tables and… more surgical equipment. Which. Great.

There were familiar things, too: racks of test tubes, cabinets of carefully labelled reagents, fumigation hoods, flasks and beakers of all sizes, chemical-sweet smells and artificial lights. And then there were terrifyingly unfamiliar things, like the operation tables and a glass-front refrigerators filled with opaque containers that reminded her, alarmingly, of specimen processing in her mother's blood bank. There were also, baffling, what looked like calligraphy sets scattered along the work benches.

For all the space, though, there was only a single shinobi in the lab when Karin dropped her off. He was old for a ninja (or at least a Sound ninja), perhaps in his early thirties and balding.

"Keizo-san," Karin greeted. "We found you an assistant."

Keizo had his back to them, mixing something in the fumigation hood. "Good," he grunted. "I swear to God, Karin, if this one gets sent on a suicide mission too–"

He turned around fully, taking Tori in. "Oh," he said, impressing unprecedented amounts of disappointment into that single syllable.

"I'm Tori," Tori said politely. "Nice to meet you."

She did not extend her hand to shake, because apparently that wasn't something they did here.

"What the fuck is this?" Keizo sneered.

"Tori-san is a recent acquisition," Karin answered, her voice silky sweet and just as polite as Tori's, yet somehow a million times more dangerous. " Orochimaru-sama thought she could pick up that project you dropped."

Karin stretched out every syllable of their boss's name like a song, and Keizo stiffened. Tori wasn't sure if Orochimaru had personally weighed in on what she ought to be doing in the lab or if Karin had used the name-drop as a power play, but either way Keizo grumbled for Tori to sit down and not touch anything while he finished up in the hood. She sat in a stool near one of the calligraphy sets, and Karin left them be.

The calligraphy set consisted of a box of brushes and a dark stone inkwell. There were also two of what Tori guessed were ink sticks, and a roll of black fabric. There was nothing particularly scientific about it, and Tori spent the next ten minutes or so staring at it and wondering what its purpose was. There were four other ones, too, scattered around the lab.

Then Keizo got up from his work at the hood, disappeared into another room for a minute, and then unceremoniously dropped some type of organ in front of her.

More specifically, he slammed a tray down in front of her, and then dropped the organ onto it with an alarming splat noise. Tori had actually no idea what the organ even was. It was big, dark red with blood, and oblong with slippery smooth skin. Not a pancreas, then; that was the one major human organ she thought she couldn't ID on sight, but in textbook drawings the pancreas always looked like it was made of bubble wrap. A deformed and enlarged kidney, maybe?

"Spleen," Keizo said by way of explanation. "This one's already been treated. So you just have to…"

He paused, grabbed a notebook off a shelf, and leafed through it.

"Yeah, okay," he continued, slapping the notebook down next to the spleen. "You weigh it, write it down. Then you cut out the bone fragments, and weigh it without them. The sample's name is Yamaguchi Suzume."

Tori stared at the notebook. Someone had filled a page with a chart listing each sample's name, the weight of the spleen in total before and after experiment treatment, then the weight "de-boned," and then a calculation of how much of the post-experimental mass had been bone. Yamaguchi Suzume's name was already filled in with her "pre-experiment" weight, along with five others. The names of the samples were people's name. Not impersonal alphanumeric codes, the names of actual people, probably the people the spleen had come from–

Wait.

Why the hell would a spleen have bones?

After rummaging through some drawers, Tori found a glass stirring rod. She poked the spleen with it. It jiggled.

Bones? BONES?

"Weigh it first, shitstain," Keizo barked.

Tori found a box of gloves before she found the scale, and she pulled them on. She paused at the scale, and then in an embarrassingly nervous voice, asked Keizo what she should use to put the spleen on the scale.

Keizo, who was weighing out some sort of powder on the other side of the lab, snarled at her and told her to just put the spleen on the scale as-is.

Tori blinked down at the digital scale's plate, which indeed bore rust-colored stains, as if someone was in fact in the habit of putting bloody organs right on it. That seemed like poor lab maintenance, which she was against on principle, so she measured the basin with the the spleen inside, hit the 'zero' button, and then picked the spleen up. She recorded the absolute value of 'zero minus the weight of a spleen,' which seemed like bad science, but slightly better science than 'just throw it on.'

Then came the problem of step two, 'de-bone the spleen.' Which. What the hell .

Tori had wanted to be a doctor and planned her life around one day cutting up human organs. Or at least into humans. Or, well, going to medical school, specifically, but that would involve those things .

The point was, Tori had anticipated handling human organs at some point in her life, but she had assumed it would come with some sort of instructions.

She had to go into the Horrifying Surgical Zone of the lab to find a razor blade. She found a whole drawer of them, carefully wrapped in cardboard, right under a display of tools that could just as easily be for torture as for medicine.

Her first cut into the spleen was very awkward. She decided she should cut it in half long-ways, because that would give her a lot of surface area to find the… bones. (Bones?) Wherever spleen-bones may be. She stabbed the blade into the organ and then just… looked at it.

She'd expected it to ooze out blood, like juice from ripe fruit. Instead it just sort of… blurped. Barely any resistance. No bubbling out of juices. Very dull.

Huh.

She moved it, cutting across the spleen, and some blood did come out, but it wasn't the horrorshow she was expecting.

When the spleen was completely in two, she stared down at it and discovered there were actually tiny fragments of bone floating in the flesh of the organ, like seeds in an apple. They were all randomly arranged, and all more or less the size of her pinky nail. That… really wasn't supposed to happen, or else Tori had deeply misunderstood something about human anatomy. What kind of an experiment was this?

It took a lot of cutting to remove the bone shards, and then more to be sure they were all out, and by the end the spleen could be roughly described as minced meat.

That meant she couldn't use the same technique as last time to measure, because she could no longer just pick up the entire spleen. She found what she was pretty sure was a crucible, zeroed its mass, and then shoveled the spleen bits like chunky play-dough back into its container.

She filled in the rest of the chart. There were previous eleven entries, and Yamaguchi Suzume had an average amount of bones… in her her spleen …

Tori flipped through more of the lab notebook. The notes in previous pages were on sample preparation, which included a lot of notes on surgical removal, preservation, and genetic splicing that didn't really make sense to Tori, in part because they included a lot of doodles of shinobi seals.

Well. That would explain all the calligraphy sets, at least.

In Tori's world, a lot of biological research depended on hijacking the metabolic processes already in use by living creatures. If Tori wanted to splice foreign DNA into the genome of someone's spleen, she'd have to chemically isolate DNA, use an enzyme based on an enzyme from a deep sea vent bacteria to copy it, use more designer enzymes to cut out the the piece of DNA she wanted… and then she wasn't sure how things like viral vectors and CRISPR gene editing worked, but those were techniques based on viral infections and the bacterial immune system, respectively. Tori didn't think one could reliably insert a brand new gene into a whole, grown organ like that, anyway.

She frowned very intensely down at the lab notebook. There were a lot of pages on testing different sealing arrays, which just… transferred the gene of interest from one sample to the other. No sequences, no chart of enzymatic activity, just page after page of meaningless squiggles. Tori would have to spend forever pipetting clear liquids into each other, but these people just drew a fancy drawing and bam, science.

Tori was so caught up trying to divine meaning from the lab notebook that she didn't notice Keizo until he was breathing down her neck.

"Quit goofing off," he snapped, and Tori nearly jumped out of her skin. "There's more in the fridge."

There were indeed more spleens in the glass-faced fridged, sitting in plastic tubs like dinner leftovers. The first one Tori pulled had a single, huge ossified chunk that composed almost half the mass. Tori was unsure if this meant to experiment had gone well or not. She added a column for notes on the morphology of the bone mass.

Tori got through one more dissection before she was shooed away to lunch, after which she reported to Kabuto's clinic in much better spirits than she had had in days.

"Does all your science rely on seals?" Tori asked as Kabuto went through his usual ritual of taping wooden plates to her. "We have a lot of, um, chemical kits…"

She tried to explain how to isolate DNA for a civilian. Kabuto did not seem to be listening. He gave her a dixie cup of a sweet liquid to drink. It made her whole world go sideways, and Kabuto made her run laps until she vomited her disappointing lunch back up.

At dinner she drank the juice box she was given and ate part of the rice. She pushed the rest of her food– the world's saddest boiled shrimp and some extremely limp pickled vegetables– around uselessly on the tray, still hungry but unwilling to eat, and then announced that any of the new recruits could have it if they wanted.

A fist fight broke out. Tori watched dully as one little new recruit set another one on fire with a jutsu. Haruka, the samurai girl, leapt into the fight swinging her naginata and screaming at everyone to shut up.

No one else in the cafeteria intervened. Fights weren't uncommon, although they rarely got this out of hand. One of the new recruits– a ten year old boy– lost two fingers to Haruka. He scooped them up and ran out of the cafeteria red-faced and crying. Snarly-nin, who watched them like a hawk from the door of the mess hall, rolled his eyes exaggeratedly before running after the boy.

Tori comforted herself with the thought that Kabuto could probably stick the fingers back on. She couldn't tell if she actually cared anymore.

"This is good," Orochimaru told her several days later, flipping through her section of the lab notebook. Tori had gone through all the spleens in the specimen fridge and expanded the chart with extra notes. "Why didn't you get through it faster?"

Tori twitched. She didn't know what would happen if she failed this review. She could, perhaps, die.

She didn't want to die.

She gave him her best sweet smile.

"She only comes in in the mornings," Keizo grunted. He'd been hovering nervously at Orochimaru's shoulder as he flipped through Tori's notebook.

There was a lab bench, closest to the surgical beds, that was ostensibly Orochimaru's. It was a mess of test tubes and pipettes left out, some with samples still inside. Calligraphy brushes and inkstones were scattered at a random. While Tori and Keizo had bottles of useful reagents carefully stored in the shelves above their benches, Orochimaru's were left wherever he'd been last using them.

Since Tori had been transferred to the lab, Orochimaru had spent the entire week "indisposed." She didn't dare question what that meant.

"She also missed two mornings," Keizo continued, sounding accusatory. Tori kept smiling, trying to seem as pleasant as possible.

"Kabuto needs me as a participant in your experiments, Orochimaru-sama," Tori said, and then felt immediately disgusted with her own simpering.

Tori had missed two full days of work because Kabuto had given her something that had made her so paranoid she'd had several screaming fits in her room and Snarly-nin had just left her. Her last forty eight hours had mostly been a blur of feeling Really Bad and picking a lot of skin off her fingers and arms in nervousness, and she wasn't sure what she would do if Orochimaru announced he wanted to vivisect her again.

Scream, probably. And then maybe vomit, since that was a thing she did now.

"Oh, those aren't mine. Kabuto is very gungho about his little tests," Orochimaru said with the same hint of amusement that an indulgent parent might have. "I think you make him nervous, Tori."

He smiled at her, warm and inviting. Bile churned in Tori's stomach. She copied him, a toothless and disarming grin.

"I don't see why," she said after a beat when she was sure she wasn't going to hurl.

"Well," Orochimaru said, snapping the notebook shut. "You know how former spies are with their secrets."

Tori absolutely did not. She watched Orochimaru toss the notebook back onto her bench and listened to him give Keizo a string of orders, starting with critiques of Keizo's own work and follow-up experiments he wanted.

"I want to continue the ossification project," he finished in a very calm way that made Tori want to do whatever he said immediately. "If you can't handle it and your current experiments at once, teach Tori the seals."

Kabuto stopped summoning her to his clinic, and Tori started learning ninja science full-time.

Keizo did not care about whatever she had to say about how things were done at her old lab. He rolled his eyes and complained when she didn't even know how to hold the calligraphy brush correctly. He sighed deeply when she didn't know any of the six standard arrays for seals. He gave up talking to her when she asked what chakra was made of.

After several futile hours on the first day, Keizo left her alone with an introductory book on sealing while he puttered around his side of the lab. The book was obviously for children, and relied on Tori already knowing a lot of chakra theory she was missing. Still, she dutifully practiced the six standard arrays that made up the first half of the book. Hers looked ugly and lopsided, but the book assured her she could still get results from malformed brushstrokes as long as she had "proper stroke order and high quality chakra."

What did that mean?

Chakra, Keizo had recited in a bored tone before he'd abandoned Tori to teach herself, was found in all bodily tissues, and sealing ink used human blood, so she should be able to craft and use seals without being able to mold chakra.

Learning seals was… boring. Boring was the word. It was repetitive, she wasn't very good at it, this world continued to fail to adequately explain what chakra was anyway, and she had no idea what anything she was copying actually meant.

Where a lab in her world might have a binder of protocols, Orochimaru's lab had random sheets with sealing instructions shoved all over the place. A lot of them had no labels, and some of them were marked as vaguely as "37ºC" or "scar tissue."

Apparently, if you wanted to edit all the genomic code related to bone growth, all you had to do was know the stroke order for the "ossification" seal and then stick it in the right part of your array. It was the most infuriating thing Tori had ever heard.

"What about epigenetic controls?" she asked. "What about loci with multiple targets?"

"What?" said Keizo. "This is too advanced for you. Haven't you learned the cooling seal yet?"

The first proper seal Tori tried, after practicing drawing the components for days, was a seal that cooled things down to 4ºC. The version a ninja scientist would usually use had a second component to keep their target at a four degrees, but she was starting simple.

(There was another, completely different looking seal for warming a frozen thing up to 4ºC, which was the second most infuriating thing Tori had ever heard.)

Tori pricked her finger with a scalpel she borrowed from the surgical half of the lab and mixed several drops of blood in with her ink. She very carefully set up her array, and then added the command for cooling, and set a beaker of water in the "target" space of the array.

She dropped a thermometer in the beaker. Nothing happened.

She got new paper and tried again. And again. And again. She tried right through her lunch break.

Something like a mix of disappointment and panic formed in the back of Tori's mind. She wanted to make the magic seal thing work because it was infuriating but also kind of awesome. She needed it to work because if she couldn't perform Orochimaru's weird research tasks, then she wasn't sure what would happen to her.

"I don't know, try more chakra," Keizo said when she came to him in a panic. He shooed her away from where he was working on his own, stupidly complex seal.

More chakra, Tori assumed, meant more blood. She pricked another finger and milked blood into her ink until her finger went all tingly and white.

She drew out her seal extra carefully this time, holding her wrist with her left hand to keep it steady. When she placed the beaker with its thermometer in the seal, the thin line of mercury started to shrink.

"Keizo!" she cried, leaning over her seal to watch the thermometer drop to exactly four degrees. "Keizo, I did it!"

The seal exploded.

Notes:

Since I got some questions, here's an FAQ...

When does this take place?
Tori guesses Sasuke's age to be fourteen or fifteen, so this takes place one to two years before the start of Shippuuden (time kept vague because the entire Naruto timeline is one big hand-wave). Akatsuki is going strong but they have some time before they start really getting involved in the plot.

Are Hidan and Kakuzu coming back?
YES. Tori will eventually interact with all Akatsuki members and the main plot will focus on them. I'm adding characters to the character list as I go, though, because I don't want anyone looking for Itachi or Sasori, for example, to click this and be disappointed when they haven't been introduced yet.

Thank you for all your lovely comments so far. If you liked something you read, feel free to leave me one. :)

Chapter 4: tori continues to be miserable and so does the author

Summary:

In which Tori's face suffers greatly, a lot of people are lied to, and several plot-vital things happen while the author screams and bashes her head against a wall.

Notes:

This somehow turned into another giant chapter, and I am suffering for it. The warning for human experimentation is still in effect; it gets hit harder in this chapter (and Tori participates) and there's some body horror/gore. Yup. Typical Orochimaru.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Setting off an explosion a foot away from your face was not something Tori recommended.

There was a sliver of a second between when she realized what was happening and when her world collapsed into pain. In that briefest of moments, Tori's very eloquent last thought was: Oh, fuck.

There was a lot of searing pain, a lot of confusion and muddy thoughts and some more pain, and then she she was in the dark weighed down by the pull of gravity on her own body, listening to muffled voices. A woman was talking, she thought, with occasional input from a man. She could hear them perfectly well, but her brain was having a hard time interpreting their words.

"I want to ask her something," the man was saying.

"Why?" said the woman. "I talk to her all the time; she never says anything interesting…"

Were they talking about her? With massive effort, Tori opened her eyes. The light was bright and it took her a moment to adjust. Karin and Sasuke came into focus.

"Why're you here?" Tori croaked out.

She was in the infirmary, tucked into one of the cots in the back. She felt heavy and sluggish, but probably a lot better than she should feel, given… whatever had happened. Her memories were confused. She'd been working. Her face had been in mortal peril. With great effort, she reached up and patted her cheek. Her face was tender but still there. Excellent.

Karin's stool was scooted right up next to Sasuke's. She crossed her legs so that one foot slid against Sasuke's leg and glared at Tori.

"Did you make fun of Kabuto's data collection to Orochimaru-sama?" Karin said. "Idiot, you shouldn't have done that. Orochimaru-sama loves teasing him."

Tori had no idea what she was talking about. "What?"

"I'm supposed to observe you," Sasuke said.

"What," Tori repeated. What did Sasuke have to do with her? She hadn't seen him since she arrived.

"You're wasting Sasuke-kun's time," Karin sniffed. Then in a much sweeter voice, she said to Sasuke, "You should be resting your arm, Sasuke-kun."

Sasuke's arm was bandaged from his wrist upwards. He was holding a pen and clipboard. His eyes were red. Karin leaned over him and pointed to something on the clipboard.

It was too weird. Tori didn't want to think about it. She pulled the scratchy infirmary blanket over her head and went back to sleep.

Tori jerked awake to pressure on her face. A tingly sensation started at her temples and spread across her scalp. She tried to sit.

Kabuto pressed her back down, hands gentle but firm. "Calm down, I'm just doing a final assessment."

Kabuto dubbed her fit to return to work. "Your skin will be sensitive for a few days, but that will fade with time. Unfortunately, I can't regrow hair."

Tori had a moment of panic– she'd spent years growing out her hair and was proud of it– but no, she obviously still had a full head of hair. There were some shorter strands around her face, singed off with weird ends that needed to be trimmed now, but nothing some creative layering couldn't fix.

Not that she'd be able to consult a stylist in Oto.

"We can go now," Karin said in the background, tugging at Sasuke's good hand. "Let's go raid the kitchen and–"

"I want to talk to her," Sasuke repeated, and appeared behind Kabuto, eyes dark and intense.

"Ah, Sasuke-kun, thank you for helping with observation," Kabuto said, easily avoiding what Sasuke had actually said. "Your notes are rather bare-bones, though…"

Tori sat up as Kabuto kept going on about… data collection. Sasuke had been using his sharingan to collect real-time, qualitative data on her. Sasuke didn't look like he cared one bit if his notes were useful to Kabuto's experiment or not.

Karin was right: that was a massive waste of everyone's time.

"Tell me if you need me again," Sasuke said eventually, and left.

"You know if you need a sensor to monitor chakra, I can do it," Karin said snippily, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Ah," Kabuto said, tilting his head and smiling politely at her. "Orochimaru-sama wants to keep him happy. Don't you like running interference?"

Karin turned red, then muttered an excuse about something she needed to do. "Sasuke-kun, wait for me…!"

Tori was sent to lunch with the rest of her cohort of new recruits. Upon sitting down at their usual table, Haruka the samurai girl looked up and promptly burst into uncontrolled laughter. The rest of the new recruits joined suit.

"Trying to make a fashion statement, Onibaba?" Haruka asked through her tears of mirth.

During their after-lunch bathroom break, Tori looked in the mirror to discover her face bright pink and shiny, devoid of both eyebrows and eyelashes. It made her look alien and weird, two dark eyes peering out from a pink, featureless face.

"Oh no," she gasped.

The girl at the sink next to her burst into a fit of mean giggles.

It was actually amazing that Tori could blow her face off one evening and then go back to work the next afternoon. Even if people in this world were all on the brink of dying from a measles outbreak, at least ninja magic bullshit medicine was effective.

(She hoped she was carrying measles, and that everyone here in this terrible hellhole caught it and died– )

Tori focused on how amazing medical ninjutsu was and tried not to think too much about murder or how much she desperately wanted to look up how long it took eyelashes to regrow. Ninja should hurry up and invent Google.

Keizo had left a note on her bench with a safe range of blood-to-ink ratios and a helpful note that said, "Don't fuck up."

Tori was hesitant to try the cooling seal again, for obvious reasons. The thawing seal– to bring frozen things up to 4ºC– was also simple, but seemed even more likely to explode since it was adding energy into the system.

She pulled some old lab notebooks and flipped through them, trying to find another easy seal to practice.

There was a lot of weird shit in those notebooks. There was an entire book dedicated to experiments to keep organs alive once they'd been removed, complete with photos of people's torsos pinned open, revealing all their precious internal organs decorated with ink. There was another notebook that was split between adding random organs into a person without their body rejecting it, and an experiment that had something to do with nature chakra that Tori didn't really understand but than caused people's limbs to fold in on themselves grotesquely and turned all the subjects a sickly gray. Some of the really old notebooks were all rushed, frantic notes on things like 'chakra flow reversal' and 'cellular fusion.'

The pictures were horrifying. Tori stared at them in morbid fascination for several minutes, the way one might stare at old crime scene scene photos in a documentary.

Eventually, she found a series of experiments involving gene splicing, which seemed immediately applicable to her project, and she read through the pages very intently. While drawing up some seals to transfer genetic material sounded a lot simpler than real world science, whoever had made this notebook was having a lot of the same problems real world scientists might worry about. Genes were transferred to only a few cells; genes were spliced into the wrong part of the genome; subjects died or grew tumors and the researcher didn't understand why.

There were pages and pages of photos and sketches of experiments gone wrong. This was why people in Tori's world didn't just skip ahead to human experimentation. Tori chewed on her bottom lip and with her finger traced a sketch of how the chambers of someone's heart had collapsed under experimental conditions.

"That's a nice face," someone purred near her ear.

Tori screamed and nearly fell out of her chair.

Orochimaru straightened from leaning over her and laughed his soft, rasping laugh. On the other side of the lab, Keizo whipped to attention and hurried over to greet Orochimaru as Tori clutched at her chest. It was unclear if Orochimaru had been teasing her about her lack of eyebrows or her expression, but either way he'd scared her half to death.

"I brought you this," Orochimaru said, and then set a jar down on her bench. It was filled with a bluish liquid and contained a human hand.

Well. Okay, then.

"Observe it while you practice your sealing," Orochimaru said vaguely and then walked off with Keizo to talk shop.

Tori did not have any idea what sort of observations she might make about a disembodied hand, but she obediently set up a log sheet and then rolled out a new sheet of paper to practice the stupid cooling seal.

She listened to Orochimaru and Keizo's conversation with half an ear while she mixed blood and ink in various ratios. Keizo had been working on a project to improve human regenerative processes.

Tori tried four more seals, the last one of which got down to ten degrees before her beaker started warminging back up to room temperature. Periodically, she'd been writing "no change" in her log sheet for the floating hand, but when she glanced over at it this time, it was gone.

"Umm," she said.

Tori looked around nervously. Had she… lost the hand, somehow…? Where could it have gone?

The two men ignored her, fiddling around at their own benches.

"UMMM," she tried again, louder this time.

They continued to ignore her. She wrote down "disappeared?" in the log and redrew her stupid seal. Just sticking something in the fridge or doing the work on ice was much more efficient than this bullshit.

Orochimaru left a few hours later, picking up the jar and log sheet without even glancing at Tori or mentioning the missing hand. He'd left behind sheets and sheets of seals for Keizo, who was rushing around his side of the lab with calligraphy materials and flasks of clear liquids.

Tori was summoned for lunch, and when she came back Keizo shoved a plastic smock at her and told her to assist him.

There was a body on one of the surgical tables. It was thin and topless, with its face covered by a piece of sealing paper.

"I'm not really…" Tori started to say. She didn't know what exactly she was protesting, but she was positive she couldn't do it.

She held tools for Keizo as he peeled back the person's skin and muscles poked around in the organs and then spent hours drawing complicated patterns in ink with a single-bristle brush. Tori focused on the person's abdomen. She'd watched surgeries before, on TV and on youtube, and by guest lecturers who came into the pre-med club at university. This was fine. It was fine.

"Fuck," Keizo said and tossed his brush across the lab.

The person had died.

When Tori came into lab the next morning, Orochimaru was already there, dissecting the body. She very pointedly did not look in that direction as she set up her calligraphy kit and mixed ink.

She resisted for about an hour before she ended up boggling at Orochimaru and the body across the lab. He frowned and poked and prodded and every once in a while he pulled something out and handed it to Keizo to weigh.

Tori had cooled a beaker of 200mL water to four degrees three times in a row now, so she should probably try cooling something else, or adding the component of the seal to maintain temperature, or try the thawing seal…

Orochimaru sighed deeply and then looked her dead in the eyes.

Tori whipped back around, grabbing her brush. Seals. Yes. She was practicing that. Working hard, all day long.

To her horror, Orochimaru came over and asked how her progress was.

"Where did you get this ink?" he asked when she was done with her floundering explanation, picking up one of the ink sticks with his bare hands. The color rubbed off on the tips of his bone-white fingers.

"They were there when I got here," she said immediately. This, at least, she knew the answer to.

"And you've been adding blood?" he asked, rolling the stick between his thumb and pointer finger.

"It's what the book said to do," she said slowly. It was more specifically what Keizo had told her to do, but she wasn't going to throw the trained assassin she worked alone with under the bus.

"This is already chakra infused," he said, and dropped the stick carelessly onto her bench. "No wonder your seal exploded. You're lucky it didn't kill you."

He said all this as if it were an amusing anecdote to tell to a child. Tori felt her jaw tense but kept her face carefully still.

"I've theorized people without elemental affinities have more stable chakra," Orochimaru continued, casually leafing through Tori's pile of saved seals. "Maybe we should use your blood for all our research."

Tori could not tell if that was a threat or not.

"Do you really not use seals at all in your world?" he asked eventually, holding up one of her first attempts. It looked like a child had drawn it. "How do you get anything done?"

Orochimaru actually listened to what Tori had to say, and what she had to say was a rambling description of various laboratory techniques. She started awkwardly, halting and stammering and double-checking that he wasn't getting annoyed or bored. He watched her intently, though, occasionally asking clarifying questions or prodding her ramble in a new direction, and Tori picked up speed and fluidity in her speech.

It felt so good to talk to someone who actually wanted to hear what she had to say, after weeks of being insulted and ignored. She thought that maybe she shouldn't tell Orochimaru so much about her life, but what was he going to do with her shakey knowledge of Western blots? What was he going to do with a description of a DNA extraction kit?

The answer was, of course, that Orochimaru wandered to the back of the lab, grabbed a few chemicals, and attempted to replicate the DNA extraction kit she'd described.

"Here," he called and waved Tori over. She approached cautiously, and as soon as she was within arms distance of him, Orochimaru reach over and ripped several hairs out of her head.

"Ow," Tori yelped.

"Tissue sample," Orochimaru said vaguely and then picked up a pipet.

Tori didn't see why he had to test it on her when he had his own head of perfectly good hair, which he obviously washed with actual shampoo and conditioner, not the shampoo-soap combination gel she was using. Between that and burning some of it off, Tori's hair could use a break, thank you very much.

It took very little prompting to get Orochimaru to explain the "classical" ninja technique of DNA extraction. Basically, you chemically cleaned your sample of impurities, and then tossed it onto a seal. You could even configure the seal to pull certain genes of interest without knowing anything about the genomic sequence.

"How convenient," Tori said blandly, by which she meant, That's the most infuriating thing I've ever heard. "How do people who aren't ninja do science?"

"Monks have some knowledge of chakra," Orochimaru answered, free-hand pouring ethanol into his test tube like some sort of maniac. That still didn't explain how anyone who couldn't make fancy ninja seals got anything done, unless all medical and scientific research was done by ninja and monks.

"What about, you know, scholars…?" Tori tried, watching Orochimaru slowly swirl his tube.

"Fascinating," Orochimaru breathed out as a white precipitate formed in his tube, completely ignoring her question. "You said you knew how to purify this?"

"Um–" said Tori, before she was left alone to figure out if the lab even had the reagents to do the next steps.

Tori couldn't believe she had been summoned to another dimension to do a phenol-chloroform DNA purification. She couldn't believe Orochimaru had reversed engineered DNA extraction from tissue in less than an hour and then gotten it on the first try. What the hell.

The chemical storeroom was a large closet around the corner from her bench, and after a long search, Tori was dismayed to realized she'd have to make phenol-chloroform herself. While she's done the purification enough times that she wouldn't have to consult a protocol, her lab had always had the reagents already made.

Tori supposed that if Orochimaru could make up scientific protocols on the spot, so could she.

When she came out of the storeroom with a glass bottle in each hand, Kabuto was in the lab anesthetizing a patient. Two random people were already passed out on surgical tables, while Orochimaru was examining a very conscious and very nervous cafeteria worker. The woman was shaking so hard Tori could see her trembling from across the lab.

There were only three surgical tables. That woman was going to have to watch whatever the hell they were doing.

Tori focused on her work. Phenol was a really dangerous chemical, after all. What was she supposed to neutralize it if she spilled it, again? Was it glycerol? She should go find glycerol, for safety reasons. She ducked back into the storeroom.

The lab had a hand-crank centrifuge, which was the most absurd piece of lab equipment Tori had ever seen. She thought very hard about how ridiculous it was to have to manually spin down the samples herself. She thought very hard about how ridiculous she must look, this tiny civilian girl with no eyebrows cranking the silly machine as hard as she could. She thought very hard indeed, lest she get distracted thinking about how Orochimaru and Kabuto were literally pulling out organs just a few yards away.

It was all very stressful.

The surgeries did not take very long. By the time Tori had purified the DNA and moved it into ethanol to precipitate again, Orochimaru had left the people in the care of his minions and was washing his hands in the lab sink.

"I'm supposed to leave this at minus 80 degrees," Tori said, and Orochimaru blinked down at her like he'd forgotten she was there.

"I've never cooled something by that much," he said, drying his hands. He hadn't used gloves. "So many new challenges today, Tori."

He sounded pleased. He very casually drew up a beautiful seal and set Tori's capped tube of DNA in it. Ice crystals formed immediately on it as it chilled.

"Wonderful," he said dryly. "I want to show you something."

They'd harvested spleens from three civilian workers and one ninja. Orochimaru drew another gorgeous seal around one of his recently procured organs.

"You're going to help me resurrect a bloodline limit," he purred.

The spleens were to screen splicing techniques. You didn't need a spleen to live, after all, and they were nice, big organs with a generous blood supply– a perfect prelude to a full-body test. All the spleens Tori had dissected had been failed to attempts to splice in a lost bloodline limit.

Kimimaro's bloodline limit, specifically, Tori realized with a jolt. Orochimaru showed her where he kept tube after tube of DNA marked Kaguya Clan. One didn't just die in Oto, it seemed.

Orochimaru helpfully narrated what he was doing for her. This is was a stasis seal to keep the organ alive. This component of the seal isolated DNA from the donor; this one fused it into the new host. He had a book of notes on different variables she could try.

The fusion process itself was marked with a dim glow of blue chakra, and then Orochimaru left Tori to process the spleen. This one was filled with thin, splintering pieces of bone that followed the branching patterns of the blood vessels. It was oddly beautiful.

When she was cleaning up, Snarly-nin appeared to take her to dinner. She'd missed lunch entirely.

The cafeteria staff was down by one and jumpy. One of the woman visibly flinched when a kunoichi in a flak jacket snapped at her for a larger portion of meat.

Tori's cohort was talking about bananas again, and then how one of the boys had been promoted after a week-long mission in Water Country, where he'd probably had access to said bananas. Now he was allowed to take meals and showers whenever he wanted and travel the base unaccompanied.

"It's not fair," Haruka whined. "I've taken on all sorts of missing nin. Why don't I get any missions?"

"Fighting a librarian doesn't count, even if they are rogue ninja," someone sneered back. "You can't even use chakra, right?"

Haruka responded by grabbing the kid by the back of his head and slamming his face into the table. Tori moved down a few seats to the end of the table. And she'd thought public school was bad.

The following weeks were the most productive of Tori's life. In Oto, you worked all day every day, and you worked hard. She worked her way through all the basic lab seals she could find, managed to assist Keizo in his surgeries without having a nervous breakdown, and kept logs on the disembodied hand.

She grew in at least six eyelashes.

One day Kabuto came in and gave her a disembodied foot instead, and Tori realized where the body parts were coming from.

"It's the Hozuki boy, isn't it?" she said, staring at the foot. "He turns to water, right?"

"So you can recognize him by his foot and not his hand?" Kabuto asked. "Interesting."

Tori's lips thinned. Had they actually wanted her to watch the hand or did they just want to see if her made-up future vision could get anything off a single hand?

She didn't like that. She couldn't fake results if she didn't know tests were happening.

"You need more than half the body for Future Sight to work properly," she said, turning back to the note Orochimaru had left behind about adjustments to the day's experiment. He was very good at explaining things in person but his notes were… less cohesive. "It's just that– who else could it be?"

"Hmm," Kabuto said noncommitly, and left.

One morning Karin woke her before lights on and dragged her down to the infirmary in her pajamas. Sasuke was sitting on the examination table, wincing slightly as Kabuto poked at his side with healing chakra.

"Good morning, Karin, Tori-chan," Kabuto said, leaning back from his work. "Sasuke has some free time, so I thought we'd try another experiment."

"Free time?" Karin scoffed. "He has two cracked ribs–"

The argument was short. Orochimaru had given his blessing, so they were doing this. Sasuke watched them passively while Tori shifted nervously from one foot to another.

"Unfortunately, I didn't plan for this," Kabuto said, tapping his chin thoughtfully. "Why don't we try physical stress. Tori-chan, do some jumping jacks."

Tori looked from Kabuto back to Sasuke. Sasuke's eyes were red, which meant sharingan, which meant he was going to have the sight of her making a fool of herself seared into his brain forever. He already had her scraggly partial eyebrows permanently recorded in there.

Karin hovered behind Sasuke. She raised her own, beautifully sculpted eyebrows at Tori expectantly.

Tori did not want to do jumping jacks. It was dangerous to refuse orders, but also it was very early and Tori was not a morning person. So instead of just doing them, she blinked at Kabuto again and asked:

"What's a jumping jack?"

They stared at her.

"You don't know what a jumping jack is?" Sasuke asked, genuinely baffled.

"Maybe it's a terminology difference between our worlds," Tori suggested with a shrug.

Kabuto gritted his teeth. "Jump, but open your legs and raise your arms above your head."

She jumped, landing with her left leg forward and her right one behind her. She raised her arms straight above her head. Karin had to physically turn around to hide whatever face she made.

"I think we call this a 'sun salutation,'" Tori said brightly.

Kabuto looked furious for about half a second. "Sasuke-kun, demonstrate for Tori-chan."

"Absolutely not."

They decided to try and see how genjutsu affected her future vision instead, and Tori sat across from Sasuke, staring intently into his eyes.

"Use your ability," Sasuke said.

"Um," Tori said. "In a few years, you're going to get into a fight with a missing-nin from Iwa named Deidara."

"Never heard of them," Kabuto said from behind Tori.

"Really?" Tori said, keeping eye contact with Sasuke. She'd never been in a genjutsu before, and she was curious to see what it would be like. "He's pretty good. It's a tough fight for you, Sasuke."

Sasuke didn't say anything. Tori continued narrating the fight.

"...and he claims he's trained one eye to be immune to genjutsu, since he has a grudge against your brother–"

Sasuke tensed and sat up straight. Tori had to turn her face to maintain eye contact.

"Does he know where Itachi is?" Sasuke asked. "I would ask him where–"

"Sasuke-kun, you're ruining the experiment," Karin whined loudly, interrupting him. "Tori, why don't you skip ahead to how Sasuke wins?"

Sasuke gave Karin an annoyed look. "The genjutsu hasn't affected her ability at all. She hasn't even noticed."

"What?" Tori said, jumping slightly. He'd already started it? She looked around the lab. Nothing seemed out of place. Sasuke and her were still sitting, Karin leaning casually against the bench next to Sasuke chair. Kabuto was watching them with hands on hips, and Keizo was ignoring him while he–

They weren't in the lab. They were in the infirmary. Tori hadn't even noticed. Huh.

Yep, didn't like that.

Karin sat in Sasuke's lap and pushed his hair back. The lab melted away and back into the infirmary as Sasuke shoved her off and stood.

"This is useless," Sasuke declared. "I'm going back to my room."

He left.

"Look what you did," Karin accused, before running after him. It was unclear if she blamed Kabuto or Tori for… whatever that was.

Later that day, Karin found her again while she was following a line of new recruits to dinner. She pulled her out of line and into a narrow corridor that lead to parts of the hideout Tori had never visited.

"Here," Karin said, and shoved a handful of small plastic items into Tori's hands. "Fix your face. Sasuke keeps staring at it."

She'd given her make-up. It was all obviously used– two tubes of nearly empty lip gloss, powder foundation with a hole all the way through the back of the container, and two pencil eyeliners that had been sharpened down nubs.

"You look ridiculous and I'm sick of looking your dumb face," Karin continued, pointedly not looking Tori in the eyes.

"Thank you?" Tori said. It was– well, it was weirdly thoughtful. Her skin wasn't pink anymore and didn't match the foundation anyway, but she could definitely use the eyeliner, at least, to draw in the rest of eyebrows and highlight her eyes in place of her eyelashes (which she now had a full ten of, thank you very much).

"Shut up," Karin snapped, making it easier for Tori to squash the sudden sense of endearment she had for Karin. "I'm transferring soon, so I have to get rid of old stuff anyway."

Karin turned to go, but Tori hadn't completely managed not to be charmed by the gift, so she said, "Hey, um… I'm not allowed to be alone with Sasuke, right? That's why you're always there, right?"

Or at least, she wasn't allowed to talk to him about certain things without someone to intervene. The 'certain things' definitely included 'how to murder your brother,' judging by their last conversation.

Karin turned, giving her a weary look and neither confirming nor denying Tori's theory. Tori kept going. "So, I mean, next time, if I just left… you'd be alone with Sasuke, right?"

The corners of Karin's lips twitched into something resembling a smile. "I'm not supposed to let you go anywhere alone."

"You're not supposed to give me things either," Tori replied.

"Ah, that's true," Karin said, then made a big show of rolling her eyes and sighing deeply. "I guess it can't be helped, then. Don't get caught with that," she added, sharply, then waltzed off.

Tori shoved her her new possessions into her bra and hurried to catch up with the other new recruits.

In the bathroom after dinner, when they were allowed extra time to shower, Tori drew on eyebrows. The second one ended up longer and thicker than the first. They made her look like one of the ugly stepsisters from a Cinderella movie.

She attempted to even them out, then got entirely distracted and elongated one eyebrow into a swirl across her temple and burst into giggles.

"What are you doing?" one of the girls asked.

It was a new girl, who was nine years old. Recruiting a nine year to live like this and go out to be a human weapon was disgusting, but the look of pure derision on such a tiny girl's face was hilarious. Tori laughed so hard she had to grip the sides of the sink to stay upright.

"Weirdo," the girl muttered.

"What did you do to your face?" Snarly-nin asked immediately when Tori walked out.

Between peels of laughter, Tori had tried to wash off her make-up experiment, but shinobi make-up proved to be impressively waterproof. She'd only succeeded in smudging it slightly and making her forehead red from rubbing.

"Um," Tori replied. "Lab accident."

"You expect me to believe that?" Snarly-nin asked, towering over her.

"There's lots of ink in the lab," Tori said, taking a step back. "You can ask Orochimaru-sama. He was there."

"Ink…" Snarly-nin started to argue, but she scooted around him to follow the rest of her cohort down the hall to the cells, and he didn't stop her.

Snarly-nin didn't ask Orochimaru, of course, because annoying Orochimaru was a great way to get yourself tapped to be an experimental subject. Other ways to get tapped were to do things like injure yourself too badly on a mission, or question orders, or be one of the civilian workers.

Tori knew this because she'd been graduated to performing actual experiments, and Orochimaru liked to comment on why they chose certain people for the procedures. It wasn't exactly a scientifically sound way of choosing test subjects, but Tori certainly wasn't going to say anything.

"Poor boy," Orochimaru said as Keizo cut into the teenaged shinobi they were operating on today. He sounded deceptively sympathetic.

The boy had come back from his mission missing part of his leg, and Orochimaru had very reassuringly told him they were working on a new surgery that could regrow limbs, not mentioning that every patient so far had died on the table. The boy had agreed enthusiastically.

One of Tori's duties in lab now was to mix ink, and she held it for Orochimaru as he carefully painted seals across the boy's skin and organs. She watched him work, focusing on the paintbrushes instead of the very human shape on the table. She recognized some of the components: stability, stasis, fusion, more stability. When Keizo did these on his own, he'd consult notes; Orochimaru did it all free-hand.

Keizo also used ink Tori had mixed blood into as a chakra source, since feeding a steady flow of your own chakra into the ink as you painted for that long was apparently difficult, even for a former Special Jounin. Orochimaru had never once asked.

An hour and a half into the procedure, Orochimaru stood back and dropped his brush onto the tray Tori was holding out for him.

"Disappointing," he said blandly. The boy's insides were growing tumors at an alarming rate, blooming from his insides and making his torso bloat. It was a problem they'd been having a lot now. "Tori, tell me you have something good to show me."

Orochimaru did not look particularly intimidating– he was very pale, and delicately pretty, and not all that tall– but when he leaned into her space, Tori felt her insides turn cold and she practically ran to her own bench.

"It's consistent now," she said, leafing through pages of her lab notebook. Spleens weren't supposed to grow bone at all, and hers still did, but now the bone came in a consistent shape and mass. If she could splice in Kaguya clan genes and they didn't cause the cells to freak out and start osteogenesis, then that would mean…

Well, that could mean she'd just spliced them in wrong, but it could also mean she did it right and they could try splicing things into a whole person without them spontaneously growing an extra skeleton. It would also theoretically have implications for almost all of Orochimaru's gene editing experiments. "Theoretically" was the key word there, because both gene editing and fuuinjutsu were both weird and finicky and apt to just not work for no obvious reason.

Tori would know. She was rapidly on her way to becoming semi-competent in both.

Consistency wasn't that much of an improvement, though, and the side of Orochimaru's lips tugged down, and Tori heard her own breath hitch.

"You're splicing the right gene in, at least," he allowed after a few moments of frowning minutely at her notes. "We don't even know what Keizo is splicing."

On the other side of the lab, Keizo's shoulders tensed conspicuously, but he kept working. He was processing the body– dissecting and analyzing it before disposal. This was an unpleasant task he had attempted to teach to Tori, which she had gotten out of neatly by feigning a panic attack.

(Kabuto had seen her have lots of weird drug-induced breakdowns. It seemed in-character.)

"We could try validating some of these," Orochimaru said, sounding slightly more interested in the experiment. "I don't think Chikako is doing very much."

In Tori's world, she thought that the first step in "validating" a gene splicing experiment would be some very mundane and routine laboratory techniques like PCR or a Western blot. When she'd brought it up to him, Orochimaru seemed to think this notion was cute. In Oto, they were just going to try and a full-body splicing experiment and see what happened.

Watanabe Chikako was a spleen donor, and Tori had gotten not-horrible results with her spleen, which was enough to pass the dubious screen test. Orochimaru supervised her drawing out a huge seal across the butcher paper on the operating table, then laughed at her efforts and made her redo it five more times.

The actual surgery required more seals, drawn directly on the skin, since humans came with annoying things like their own chakra systems and metabolic reactions and other things to mess up seals. After Chikako had been brought in and sedated, Tori took notes while Orochimaru walked her through the procedure.

Tori didn't see why she had to practice on a person and couldn't try, you know, a pig or a monkey a few times just to make sure she wasn't about to accidentally kill someone.

"Why would you waste time on an animal?" Orochimaru asked when she said as much to him.

"It's the same four nucleotides," Tori answered. "And animals have more children and grow up faster than humans. It's just practical."

She wasn't going to try arguing ethics with anyone here. Pragmatism, though, turned out to be a losing argument too, as Orochimaru pointed out that humans could do useful work while they weren't being experimented on.

"After all, look at you," he said. Tori dropped the subject.

On the bright side, the sealing array Tori drew successfully spliced Kaguya clan genes into Chikako. Unfortunately, the woman spasmed, grew extra bones that burst through her skin, and died, leaving behind a body that looked more like a bloody collapsed tent than a human.

Tori did not vomit. She did, however, suddenly find herself unable to breathe and clutching at the nearest lab bench for support.

"That's going to take a while to process," Orochimaru said dryly. He didn't sound upset, which was good. "I'm interested to see what degree of penetrance we got."

He did, however, sound mildly excited, which might turn out to be worse.

"Maybe you can get Tori help you with processing this time," Orochimaru continued, and Keizo threw her a dirty look.

Orochimaru wished her good luck on the way out and patted her shoulder. Tori's knees wobbled.

Keizo fetched them some buckets to sort the woman's dissected parts into.

Tori was really and truly freaked out about the idea of mangling a person's body with magic ninja gene editing and then playing butcher with the body. She had, however, gotten very good at panicking with a perfectly serene face, and so weeping and crying and hiding in a corner to get out of specimen processing involved a lot of acting.

It had worked when Keizo was just chopping out tumors from his own experiments. No one wanted to have to deal with a gross-faced crying woman, after all. It worked less well when the test subjects were for her own experiment. On body number four, Keizo dragged her back from the chemical storeroom and told her she'd have to work or else.

The or else was never made explicitly clear to Tori, but she knew other civilians did laundry and cleaned for them with pieces of their bodies missing or added, so she insisted Keizo walk her through it while she took notes for bodies five through seven.

"That's very cute of you," Kabuto said when he nosily flipped through her notes. Orochimaru had mysteriously disappeared for the week and sent Kabuto to check in. "If you're not going to work, find something useful to do."

The or else was unspoken.

Tori did not want to learn how to use a bone saw on a formerly human nightmare-inducing mass. She pulled out old books and notes on fuuinjutsu to practice. There was a lot she could possibly be learning; seals were incredibly versatile. She'd never be a master, of course, because that required precise chakra control and she could only add blood, but…

But she could definitely do something useful to make up for ignoring all the people screaming and dying and then getting thrown in the trash.

She decided to fix up the hand-crank centrifuge. It was basically a wheel one could load test tubes in, clamped to a bench. She couldn't build an automatic one like they had in her world, obviously, but she had found a lot of motion-related seals and figured she could try making a seal that made the centrifuge crank itself. It would save her from sore arms, everyone else from having to stand at the centrifuge when they could be doing other things, and it would allow for standardized speeds.

The motion seals were mostly meant for setting traps, but every handbook on fuuinjutsu she'd gone through had a very long introduction about how fuuinjutsu was the most adaptable of the ninja arts.

Tori spent a few days designing the seal around her own specimen processing. There was a drawer at her bench filled with sticky tags, and when she was ready, she copied her first original seal onto a tag and slapped it onto the centrifuge.

The seal had what was called a 'trip-wire' component, which meant it activated with applied force, such as an enemy walking across it. In this case, all Tori had to do was grab the centrifuge crank handle and push.

She did, and the centrifuge spun right off its clamp, flew across the room, and smashed into the shelves of glass labware with a terrible nose.

"What the FUCK," Keizo screamed. The centrifuge continued spinning, digging further into the shelves and broken beakers and flasks, spitting out ground up glass and splinters.

Keizo stared at it in fury for a few moments. Tori attempted to think of an explanation and failed. Keizo reached forward to grab the centrifuge wheel, but released it immediately. Not even a ninja was going to stop that with their bare hands.

Tori opened her mouth to suggest he try snatching the tag off. She got as for as "you could try–" before he backhanded her across the face with enough force to knock her over.

"Idiot," he growled at her.

Tori rubbed her face. It hurt, but she was more surprised than scared. Then Keizo grabbed her by the hair, lifted her up, and backhanded her again.

He shook her a few times, screaming at her that she was lazy and useless and stupid, until she broke down into tears. He dropped her then, and stomped out of the lab.

Tori took a few shaking breathes to steady herself. Keizo was almost definitely going to report her to some sort authority– like Kabuto or Orochimaru– and they were both capable of doing worse things to her than slapping her in the face. Now she was scared.

"It was an experiment to improve lab efficiency," she practiced reciting to a spider that lived on the corner of her bench. "My intentions were to improve work for Orochimaru-sama. I apologize. It will never happen again."

The spider just sat there. She practiced the speech again.

When Keizo came back, Orochimaru was behind him, and the centrifuge wheel was still grinding away at the wall. Orochimaru took one look at it and burst into laughter.

Keizo's face went from vindictively smug to unsure. "Orochimaru-sama, she's barely helped me at all, and now she's broken–"

"You assured me you didn't need assistance with this project," Orochimaru said, an amused smile across his face. That probably meant he was in a good mood.

Keizo squirmed visibly. "She's disrespectful to our work, Orochimaru-sama," Keizo said finally. "In Water Country, a girl like that would be thrown out. In Kiri a civilian that insubordinate would be killed–"

"I forget, Keizo," Orochimaru interrupted. "Are we in Water Country?"

"No, Orochimaru-sama."

"Then get back to work. Tori," Tori straightened to attention as Orochimaru turned to her. Her face stung. "Why don't you watch that until it stops? Then you can go visit Kabuto about your face."

He patted her shoulder on the way out. It was almost reassuring, except that until about three minutes ago she'd been convinced she was going to be vivisected as punishment.

Tori had set the tag for twenty minutes, but she must have made a mistake in the the timing component, because it just spun and spun until it used up the chakra feeding it. The seal she'd based it on was designed to be extremely chakra efficient, and the wheel didn't stop spinning and fall onto its side until after midnight. She missed all her meals and had to wait until morning to have Kabuto fix the swelling of her face.

"How can you have improved your calligraphy this much but you still can't draw eyebrows evenly?" Orochimaru teased, days later.

It was deeply unfortunate how much Tori liked Orochimaru. He frightened her to her very core, and she knew it was dumb to seek out his attention, but he was the only person in the entire stupid underground village who even pretended to care about a single thing she said.

He nodded along with her when she explained her dumb undergraduate biology project. He asked questions about her personal life back in her own world, let her talk about how her favorite biological phenomena, and answered almost any question she asked about science and culture in this world. He had a very insulted-looking Keizo find her a book on the history of cultivars in the Elemental Nations. He once allowed her to ramble for a half hour about the Jurassic Park series while he prepared tissue samples from their latest failed experiment.

Tori didn't even like Jurassic Park. But Orochimaru seemed to find the story amusing, so she powered through it, and even told him about how she'd secretly watched it as a child, hidden under the dining table while her parents watched it one room over, terrified by it but too fascinated to look away.

"You have dinosaurs in your ancient history too, right?" she said. "Sasuke had a toy one when he was a kid."

"Yes," Orochimaru said, then paused to look at her. "How could you possibly know that about Sasuke-kun?"

Mistake, Tori thought, silently panicking. Sasuke's childhood wasn't a vision of the future.

"He's going to tell Karin once," Tori said vaguely. "And then she's not going to let that go because it's adorable. What's paleontology like here?"

"It's more of a civilian science," Orochimaru said, which meant that he wasn't particularly interested in it. "The fact that DNA lasts that long… that's interesting."

The conversations she had with him weren't even that great, all things considered, but they were definitely better than every conversation she had with everyone else in Oto. Which meant that when Orochimaru suddenly disappeared for several weeks, she suddenly felt lonely.

That was bad. That was really, truly bad, because trying to fill her need for human interaction with Orochimaru was the worst idea she'd ever had. She needed to make a friend.

She only really saw people who weren't related to the lab in the cafeteria. The new recruits were all served their shitty food together, and then they usually spread out over the same table. They weren't really sitting together so much as away from scarier, more experienced ninja.

The people in her cohort were all horrendously young , so Tori's initial reaction was to try and talk to someone else. She picked a girl who looked only a few years younger than her, who had weird yellow spikes coming from her elbows but a nice face.

"Hi, I'm Tori," Tori said, putting her tray down in front of the girl.

"Fuck off," the girl answered.

"Okay," said Tori amiably, picking up her tray and going back over to the new recruit table.

Her subsequent tries had similar results, and one boy even made a half-hearted attempt to stab her with a butter knife.

"You're not going to get anyone to talk to you until you get promoted," Haruka sniffed at her after she'd escaped back to their table. "And you're not going to get promoted because you're not a ninja."

"Neither are you," Tori muttered, poking at the dish of what was either rice with old shrimp or small brown pebbles with large pink rocks.

" Excuse me? " Haruka hissed.

"Um," said Tori, immediately backtracking. "I mean– um– we're similar, you know?"

Haruka continued to look offended, and Tori remembered her striking down another recruit with her naginata. Tori continued to ramble.

"Like, I mean, we're not ninja, so we have to work a little harder for promotion–"

Everyone else in their initial cohort had been promoted by now. Which meant they got to pick their bathroom times and get fresh fruit and vegetables and not hide their make-up in a drawer in the lab.

"Work harder? " Haruka yelled. All the other recruits were watching in silence, excitement in their eyes. "You think I'm not working hard? I've taken tons of very important internal missions!"

"We both–" Tori started.

Haruka threw herself across the table, just as fast as a shinobi, and slammed Tori into the floor. The naginata came down, slicing through the side of Tori's neck and piercing the floor.

"Don't you ever compare me to you, Onibaba," Haruka hissed, kneeling painfully on Tori's stomach as she bore down on her with the blade. "I've killed three traitors in the village for Orochimaru-sama already. I am a warrior, and you are just a pathetic, civilian old hag ."

Really, I'm nineteen, Tori thought distantly even as she panicked. What could she say to Haruka to make her get off? What did she like? Bananas? Should Tori talk about bananas?

The other recruits were jeering at them. No, talking about bananas was a dumb idea. Instead, Tori just laid there pathetically until Haruka spit on her and got off.

"Don't sit with us anymore, Onibaba," Haruka commanded, and went back to her lunch.

Tori shakily stood and grabbed a napkin off the table and held it to her neck. Since she could still breathe and her jaw hadn't gone slack, Tori assumed Haruka hadn't hit anything important, but she was bleeding profusely.

"Where are you going?" Snarly-nin asked as she approached the door.

"To the infirmary?" Tori tried.

"Clinic visits are only permitted after training sessions and missions, or in the case of disease," Snarly-Nin sneered.

"But–"

"Sit."

Tori cleaned the wound diligently when they were allowed the use the bathroom, then fashioned herself a bandage out of some toilet paper and a tampon. Haruka glared at her the entire time.

In the morning she lied to Snarly-nin about helping Kabuto with an experiment and went to the infirmary instead of breakfast. Kabuto clicked his tongue at her and informed her it was infected.

"You should have come to me right away," he said. "Now it's going to scar."

Tori nearly screamed. In the lab, she said to the spider that lived on her bench, "This place is going to drive me insane."

"Hey," Keizo snapped. "Who are you talking to?"

"No one," Tori replied, and opened her lab notebook. To the spider, she whispered, "He's just upset Orochimaru likes me better."

"Hey," Keizo repeated, stomping across the lab to her bench. "We're doing another osteogenesis experiment today, and you're actually going to do the post-op yourself this time."

Then he looked at the spider on her bench, grunted, and squished it with his thumb.

Something inside of Tori snapped. Rage flooded through her body. She was fed up with this place, she was fed up with Haruka, she was fed up with Snarly-nin, she was fed up with Kabuto, and she was really fed up with Keizo.

"Of course," she said with a sweet smile, and did her usual pre-op work. Orochimaru made an appearance for the first time in weeks, and the surgeries went about as well as they usually did.

When all three bodies inevitably had bones erupt form their skin and die, Tori said to Orochimaru, "Maybe we need a better screening method. Don't you think the chances of success might be higher with people more genetically related to the Kaguya clan?"

Orochimaru tilted his head back in interest. "And how would you suggest determining that?"

"Hmm, I wouldn't really know how to set up a genetic test like that here…" Tori said, drumming her fingers on the edge of the surgical table. "But, I suppose, people from the same country are bound to be more similar, right?"

A suggestion like that wouldn't have worked in Tori's home country, where people descended from populations all over the world. Here, though, it was a credible idea. Orochimaru thought on it a few days, and then sent word via Kabuto to preferentially take the spleens of people from Water Country.

Tori felt bad, but then the screening process did go better, so she didn't feel that bad.

Orochimaru did not check in in person again for another week, when they'd removed twelve Water Country spleens and Tori had spliced Kaguya genes into about half of them.

"They look a lot better," Tori said as Orochimaru flipped through her lab notebook.

"I'm glad you're enthusiastic about this," Orochimaru said mildly. "How confident are you?"

"Very," Tori said. "Although the sample size is a bit small. How has Keizo's project been going?"

Orochimaru laughed softly. "So you have a little meanness in you after all."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Tori said as innocently as she could.

"You're not very subtle," Orochimaru said, then patted her shoulder and called Keizo over.

Keizo was a former Kiri nin.

They removed his spleen.

Keizo disappeared for two weeks while in recovery. Orochimaru also disappeared, and Tori was left alone in the lab. They were the best two weeks of her time in Oto.

She went through the spleens, of course, and earmarked people for the full-body experiment. Keizo's spleen barely had any bone in it at all after treatment, and Tori added a little note next to his name about how she wasn't sure since he was so helpful in lab. She ended it with a smiley face.

She passed the note to Karin, who showed up daily to make sure Tori was actually working.

"I'm sure Orochimaru-sama will be pleased," Karin drawled, folding the note up and pocketing it.

"Where is he?" Tori asked conversationally.

"According to Kabuto, he's 'indisposed,'" Karin said boredly. "Which means he's ill again, if your moronic self hasn't picked up the lingo yet. Convenient for me, though, since they pushed my transfer to the Southern hideout back a week."

"You're chatty today," Tori observed, grinning. "Friendly, almost."

"Of course I am," Karin said, popping a hip and crossing her arms. "Sasuke just got back from a mission and I want you to come up with an experiment you need him for."

Tori decided that Sasuke should come see what chakra looked like in a disembodied spleen, and Karin went to fetch him. Sasuke took one look at the spleen and informed Tori she was an idiot.

"Wow," Tori replied. "I am so offended and outraged. I have to go walk it off."

Then she walked out of the lab while Karin grabbed for Sasuke's arm, and Tori found herself free to roam Oto by herself for the first time. She wandered for several hours, power walking to look like she knew where she was going whenever she passed other people.

A lot of hallways were blocked off and required a key. They were mostly residential, she remembered from the brief tour she'd gotten when she'd been working inventory. She found locker rooms and training areas, refound the laundry facilities, discovered a kitchen where they seemed to be making actual good food, and then found a room full of organs.

It was some sort of storage room for human organs, which of course Oto had. They were all floating in jars of blue liquid, dimly illuminated in a dark room like the world's most morbid aquarium. There were rows and rows of them, organized by organ system.

It was quiet and dark and oddly peaceful. Tori moved through them slowly, examining them one by one. They were all carefully labelled, mostly in Orochimaru's handwriting and a few in Kabuto's, with dates and donor name and any notes of interest. Most of them were from people with bloodline limits, but some were from interesting sounding experiments.

One side of the room had some tables with lab equipment, and then one huge tank filled with liquid. Tori wandered over there, hoping to find a pen and paper to write down some of the experiment names and dates she wanted to look up later. She ignored the big tank, since it appeared to be empty.

When she finally produced a pencil and some scratch paper, there was a loud bang behind her and she squeaked and whirled around. A naked boy was floating in the tank.

"S–Suigetsu?!" Tori cried.

"Who are you?" Suigetsu asked, his voice muffled by the glass, but not as garbled by the water as she would expect.

"Doesn't matter," Tori said. She was trying very hard not to look at his lower region, but she did note he had both hands. "Can you just cut your body parts off and stick them back on?" she asked without thinking.

"Oh, you're the lab girl, " Suigetsu groaned. "Are you going to be taking over from that glasses guy? Please say yes. He's boring. And terrible."

"Sorry," Tori said. Suigetsu groaned again and then continued to complain about Kabuto's bedside manner, and Tori wandered away.

There were too many organs to read all of the labels before she had to leave, so she stuck to the longer captions. Some of them where interesting stories about how the specimens were found, and some of them were descriptions of experiments that she jotted down. She mostly ignored the donor names (although there was a set of gills marked Hoshigaki ), until she reached the hearts and found her own name.

She stared at it. In Orochimaru's neat print, it had the date of about a month ago, and then:

Tori Mendoza.
Organ cloned from DNA isolated by novel technique described by donor.
Surprising clonal stability. Lack of elemental alignment preventing typical interference between endogenous and exogenous chakra? Or artefact of donor's otherworldly origin? Further testing needed.

What the fuck.

"Hey, Suigetsu," Tori yelled, cutting him off in the middling of the whining session she had absolutely not been paying attention to. "What is this place?"

"How do you not know?" Suigetsu said, squinting down at her. "It's Orochimaru's private lab."

Tori went back to her regular work in a daze. When Karin showed up to demand more alone time with Sasuke, Tori asked her about the private lab and Karin's eyebrows shot up.

"How did you– I guess he keyed you in to his privacy seals since you're lab personnel. I would not spend a lot of time in there, Tori."

Tori, of course, went back as soon as Karin let her go so she could bother Sasuke. She went through the lab notes Orochimaru had over there, pulling the one on her cloned heart. Whole organ cloning was a technique he'd had around for a while, it seemed, but it didn't have a great success rate.

Except he had perfect clones of her heart, spleen, and pancreas, and he had outlined ideas for further testing, and he hadn't even mentioned it to her .

Then Suigetsu sneezed and Tori remembered she wasn't supposed to be there and left.

Karin came to her a third time and sighed wistfully about leaving that night. They faked another stupid experiment for Sasuke, and Tori very determinedly went to see if she could find a store of actual food– like bananas or something, since everyone was obsessed with them. She somehow ended up in Orochimaru's private lab instead, flipping through his notebooks.

"What are you doing?" Suigetsu asked. "I'm absolutely going to tell on you."

"If he didn't want me here, I wouldn't be here," she said. These notebooks were better than the ones in the regular lab. The handwriting was all rushed and and excited and harder to read, but she found things like modifications to the Impure World Reincarnation and Orochimaru's old experiments on cloning Senjuu Hashirama.

Tori went back to lab feeling refreshed. Keizo was sitting at his bench, looking haggard.

"Nice to see you're back," Tori greeted cheerfully. "Your spleen processed beautifully. Only two bone slivers, not even that big."

Keizo glared at her, and Tori hummed as she went back to work.

Things, of course, went terribly wrong immediately after that.

Tori was summoned to the infirmary before breakfast, which wasn't out of the ordinary. Karin and Sasuke were sitting around, which also wasn't strange. Kabuto made them wait while he shuffled through some paperwork, which was typical obnoxious behavior for him.

Karin stood at least ten feet away from Sasuke, shuffling nervously and pulling at her sleeves, which should have clued Tori into something being off. It didn't, though, and she only whined a little bit about Kabuto rolling up her sleeve and injecting her with a clear liquid.

Tori sat on the edge of an examination table, swinging her legs and waiting for the drug to take effect. She was feeling a little light headed, and Sasuke seemed to be so bored he was nodding off in his seat.

It was… cute. Sasuke was what one would call a "handsome young man," and it made for an adorable sleepy face.

Karin was leaning against the edge of another examination table, examining her nails. Tori was just beginning to think Karin must be pretty upset over something to not being cooing at Sasuke, when Kabuto stood up, crossed the room, and then slit Karin's throat.

She was dead before her body hit the floor.

Tori would have thought she'd scream in this situation. She didn't. She was perfectly quiet, and her entire body tensed, her blood suddenly running cold and frantic. She sat perfectly still on her place on the table, hands gripping the edge as hard as she could.

Sasuke let out an annoyed tch.

Kabuto moved over to a sink to wash off his kunai.

"Well, Tori-chan?" he asked. "What does it look like to see someone's future cut off?"

Tori's mind shut down. Had she made specifications about if the future could be changed? Surely she had. What should she say? That all the strings of fate snapped? That they faded? That– that–

Surely Kabuto hadn't just murdered Karin just for this.

Surely Karin was too useful, too valuable.

Surely Sasuke would be upset and not just mildly disgusted.

Surely Karin had left for the Southern hideout by now. She had no reason to lie about her transfer.

How stupid did Kabuto think Tori was?

Very stupid, maybe– he'd seen her vomit and cry and beg to be let free. He'd listened to her ramble about all sorts of stupid shit, like passion fruits and potatoes and drug-induced nonsense that occasionally came out in Spanish. He thought she didn't understand how to do a jumping jack. It followed he might think she couldn't see through whatever sort of sick trick this had to be, because nothing else made sense.

Tori was feeling very overwhelmed and wanted to cry. She could probably stop herself. She didn't, though, and let her voice crack a few times to cover up her delayed response.

"Why did you do that?" she sobbed. "I don't even know who this is. What kind of an experiment is this?"

"It's Karin," Kabuto insisted. "You can see her fate. What does it look like now?"

"No, it's not Karin, because I couldn't see her fate, and I'm definitely not going to see anything now." Tori hiccuped and rubbed tears from her eyes.

Sasuke stood up and told Kabuto that Tori's chakra still hadn't change at all, except in the way chakra usually changes when civilian women panicked.

"If you're not going to let me question her," he concluded, "I'm not participating in these anymore."

Sasuke left. Tori continued to cry uselessly on the examination table until Kabuto kicked her out. He didn't even have the patience to summon someone to escort her.

Tori wandered back to her cell. She was still mildly lightheaded and upset. Given the experiment was to trick her with– with a genjutsu or a bunshin or a henge or something– and then see if it affected the way she saw the fake Karin's future, Kabuto had probably just given her a placebo injection. The lightheaded feeling was just her own nerves.

She didn't like people being killed on her behalf. It filled her with guilt and made her sick to her stomach. At the same time, though, she wasn't going to lose sleep over it. This wasn't the first person who'd died because of her, and it wasn't going to be the last.

She hoped she never became so numb to it she couldn't cry over it anymore. Aside from her own moral integrity, crying on command had become her lifeline here. No one was going to push her too hard if they thought she was already at her breaking point.

By the time she got back to her cell, Tori's limbs felt heavy. She was going to nap until someone realized she'd never shown up for work and made her do something. Yes, that sounded good.

When she got to her cell, she paused at the door. It swung shut behind her with enough force to make her stumble forward step.

Someone had been in her room. Her futon– which she folded up every morning as per the rules enforced by Snarly-nin– was rolled out, and someone had filled it with a curiously macabre sight.

A pair of disembodied eyes stared up at her, on either side a severed ear. A nose and someone's lips sat beneath the eyes on the bed, arranged as a human face. Below them, a heart nestled between two lungs, and below them a liver, a stomach, a pancreas, the spiral of intestines.

It stunk of formaldehyde.

The face looked almost funny. It was certainly silly-looking, like building a face out of emojis.

At least whoever did this was thoughtful enough to do it the day before laundry day. She'd have the sheets cleaned and then… and then…

Her legs wobbled. She leaned against the door and sunk to the floor. What did this mean?

The organs were clearly from the lab. They were too clean to come straight from a person– no blood, and all the fat had been cut away. She was sure there were some organs sitting around in the infirmary, but they wouldn't smell like preservatives.

So, either someone snuck into the lab and stole them for an elaborate prank or…

She forced herself to stand and regarded the almost-person with critical eyes. Stomach, pancreas, liver with the gallbladder, but no spleen.

It wasn't a prank. It was a threat.

Notes:

Next chapter some SHIT HITS THE FAN and we will meet another Akatsuki member! Maybe even two, depending on how many words it takes me to get there. ;)

The next time a chapter ends up this long I am just going to split it in two– you'll get updates faster and I won't be stuck editing a 30 page document through my own frustrated tears. I didn't do that with this one because I don't actually really want to be writing about Tori in Sound, so I didn't want to end up with five chapters about it. I like worldbuilding Sound, but it's meant to be more like a practice run for navigating an entire organization of S-rank ninja. :P

Chapter 5: tori slam dunks canon into the trash

Summary:

In which Tori does her very best not to die and makes a friend.

Notes:

Warning for human experimentation (including on children!) is still in effect.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Tori sat in the corner of her cell, staring at the organs on display in front of her.

In the best case scenario, someone– and by someone she meant 'almost definitely Keizo'– wanted to scare her. In the worst case scenario, he was threatening bodily harm that he intended to follow through on.

She couldn't ignore this. She had to act.

The cell doors could not be opened from the inside unless you were a ninja trained to break out of locked rooms, which Tori wasn't, so she had to wait for Snarly-nin to come let her out. When he did, he didn't comment on Tori's futon filled with horrors. She dutifully followed the line of murderous children to the mess hall, grabbed one of the metal trays, and left the hall. She marched right past Snarly-nin as if it was her right to do so, and he didn't say anything.

She kicked off a shoe to jam the door to her cell while she loaded the organs onto the tray. Then she took her tray of human remains to the lab and slammed them down on the seal Keizo was currently working on.

"Next time put down a tarp first," she hissed.

She went back to her own bench, pulling open the drawer she'd hidden make-up and hair ties in. The hair ties she'd found scattered all over the lab– Orochimaru liked to tie his hair back to work, in his only demonstrable commitment to standard lab safety– and she'd gathered a few for herself.

Before she was done twisting her hair back in a bun, Keizo appeared behind her, silent as a cat. She jumped as her elbow brushed the front of his lab coat.

"You were so confident," he said, quieter than he normally spoke, all tight and controlled. Tori froze with the hair tie halfway on, suddenly remembering the sting of Keizo hitting her face. "I just wanted you to know, fuuinjutsu relies on conviction. You didn't prove anything and you're not that clever. Orochimaru-sama was letting you placebo yourself."

Tori very carefully kept her face straight. She finished tying her hair back.

"Just so you know," Keizo concluded, then moved away.

Just so you know, so it's not a placebo anymore, Tori finished for him.

"You sound awfully overconfident yourself," Tori said back. She didn't say it very loud, which was lucky because once it was out of her mouth, it seemed like a deeply stupid thing to say to a mean ninja man whose spleen she'd stolen.

Keizo didn't respond, and Tori very awkwardly went back to what she was working on, which was getting a scent containing seal to work. It didn't look like anything else she'd learned, but it was useful for surgeries that went wrong and were therefore… extra smelly.

She was practicing with a bottle of beta-mercaptoethanol, which smelled like the devil's farts. It was good motivation to get the seal right, and so she was concentrating so hard she didn't even notice Keizo had left until he was back with a child.

The kid was one of the new recruits– the little girl who'd been so offended over Tori's missing eyebrows.

"Prep her for surgery," Keizo commanded. "I have a lot of work to make up."

The girl stared at Tori, wide-eyed.

"But…" Tori started.

"Prep. Her," Keizo gritted out, and Tori did.

In all the surgeries Tori had seen here, the standard procedure was to cover the face with a cloth that had a complicated seal for keeping the patient alive and anesthetized. When she had the girl properly sedated and laid out, Keizo come over and removed the cloth.

"But–" Tori said, and Keizo put a scalpel in her hand.

"Make the first incision," he said.

Tori stared down at the girl's face. It was the face of a child. The face of someone Tori had shared meals with. Her stomach churned.

"Go on," Keizo urged. "Cut her open. You've done it before."

Tori's hand shook as she hovered the blade over the girl's skin. "Her chances of survival are higher with the stabilizing–"

"I don't care," Keizo said, cutting her off. "We're doing it this way."

Tori went through with it, robotically. She cut the girl open, and then Keizo shoved her aside to apply his seals. He did it faster and sloppier than normal, and didn't stop even as the girl's organs began to swell. Her abdomen bloated as tumors grew, and her limbs twitched as her eyes fluttered, and then–

Tori walked out. Her head felt like it was floating. If Keizo said anything, she didn't hear.

Her feet took her on autopilot to Orochimaru's private lab. It was quiet in there, with cool, soothing lighting, and she stood among the rows of jarred organs and very quietly allowed herself to have a panic attack.

"Ah, Suigetsu said you'd been sneaking around here," Orochimaru purred.

He stood at the end of the aisle, wearing a white yukata that might have been his pajamas. He had bags under his eyes, not quite covered by his make-up.

Tori started to stammer out an apology, flinching away as he approached, but Orochimaru simply said, "If I didn't want you in here, you wouldn't be."

Tori shut her mouth. Orochimaru leaned over her to examine the jar she'd been looking at. It was some ninja's brain and spinal column.

"Imagine," Orochimaru said, tapping the glass with one manicured finger. "This is all that you are, just a bundle of nervous tissue."

"Is it?" Tori asked, and Orochimaru looked down at her. "Um, I mean, because… because, chakra seems to hold some personality…"

Orochimaru tilted his head at her. "What do you mean?"

Tori meant that she knew you could put your chakra into something and come back as a ghost when plot convenient, but instead she said, "I mean, you can transfer bodies without moving your nervous system, right?"

"Ah, yes," Orochimaru. "You are also your heart, I suppose, the source of chakra."

"Poetic," Tori said, and Orochimaru laughed softly.

"You found your heart," Orochimaru said. It wasn't a question. "And you've been reading all my notes. How nosy."

Tori felt herself tense again, but then Orochimaru let out another soft, humming laugh.

"They were fascinating," Tori mumbled. Orochimaru raised a delicately shaped eyebrow at her, and Tori continued, "You cloned the Shodaime Hokage's DNA into an infant just by applying the cells. I can barely wrap my head around it. In my world, we'd have to use, like… zinc fingers or a retrovirus, and even then you can't just write in an entirely new genome to a complex organism..."

"Ah," Orochimaru said, gesturing for her to follow him back towards his work table. He settled into a chair. "Poor Keizo has been begging me to let you go, you know. But how can I, when you always say such interesting things?"

Tori had to work very hard not to let panic show on her face. Orochimaru leaned back in his chair, studying her.

"Speaking of Keizo," he drawled, "why aren't you in lab?"

"Oh, um…" Tori averted her eyes, and mumbled out an explanation about Keizo behaving aggressively towards her, to the point where it even made his own work sloppy. "I want to work hard, I really do," she concluded, "but I don't know how I can if I have to be worried about my safety every second of the day."

"Hm, that is a tricky situation," Orochimaru said sympathetically. Tori felt hope bubble in her chest, and then he said, "I wonder what you'll do?"

"I'm not– I can't–" Tori stuttered out. She didn't have any power here, socially or physically, she didn't have any allies, and she wasn't tough enough to deal with it on her own.

"Nonsense," Orochimaru interrupted her, waving a hand. "You're smart, you're creative. I'm sure you can find a solution. In fact–" he leaned forward, gold eyes warm with excitement, "I am fascinated to see which of you manages to kill the other first."

Tori's legs went weak. Kill? Kill?

"I think I'll tell Keizo he can do what he wants with you next time he asks," Orochimaru continued, drumming his fingers on the table. "So I suppose you have until then to find your solution. Unless you think you can fend off a ninja actively trying to kill you?"

He smiled at her.

Tori heard herself say she needed to get back to work, and then left.

This was… this was bad.

She paced the halls randomly, thinking furiously about her predicament.

She didn't want to die. She definitely didn't want to be murdered by Keizo of all people. She had been complicit in enough murder and death by now to be confident she could kill a person for her own survival, provided she had the opportunity. But how could she get such an opportunity?

Or… maybe she could find an alternative solution. Would Keizo still want her dead if she transferred out of the lab? Probably, and probably Orochimaru wouldn't let her. Was there a way to get Keizo transferred to another hideout, maybe…?

Tori nearly collided with someone as she rounded a corner. He was sweaty and carrying a water bottle and a banana, probably a post-training snack. He neatly sidestepped her, and it took Tori's brain a couple seconds to register she'd just walked past Sasuke.

He'd already paused and turned around when she called his name in desperation.

"I've been wanting to talk to you," Sasuke started to say, and Tori interrupted with, "I want to make a deal with you."

Sasuke paused, looking her up and down. She probably looked extra frazzled. "A deal?" he repeated.

"Yeah," Tori said. "You do me a favor, and then I tell you everything you want to know."

"What type of favor?" Sasuke asked.

"I just need you to take care of someone for me–"

"No deal," Sasuke said, and moved to walk around her.

Right, okay, Sasuke was still a good shounen protagonist who didn't kill people at this point. Tori knew that, stupid–

She blocked his path, holding her arms out like some sort of demented crossing guard.

If Tori had had more time to think things through and plan, she might have asked for protection from Sasuke, or for some sort of weapon or blackmail she could use against Keizo. But in that moment she was panicked and desperate, and so she went with the next idea that sprang to mind.

"You want to know about your brother, right?" she said, and Sasuke's eyes widened slightly. "Give me that banana, and I'll tell you everything you want to know."

Sasuke glanced down at the fruit in his hand, looking beyond confused for a moment. Then his face cleared and he said, "Deal."

Tori told Sasuke about Akatsuki, that they wandered around in pairs committing dastardly deeds for money and searching for jinchuriki. She told him where he'd eventually meet Itachi. He asked about Itachi's eyes, and she told him about Susanoo and the eternal Mangekyou sharingan.

Caught in the moment like this, Tori did not tell him about Danzo or Itachi's illness or Obito, because he did not ask. She wanted to move through this conversation into the next part of her plan as quickly as possible, and it did not even occur to her to tell Sasuke any more than what he was asking for.

"Do I win?" Sasuke finally asked.

"Yes," she said.

Sasuke forfeited his banana, and Tori shoved it into her pocket and ran off. Dinner was soon, and she needed to talk to someone there.

Tori sat down across from Haruka in the mess hall. "I need you to do me a favor," she said.

Haruka snorted and did not even look up to acknowledge Tori's presence.

"I can get you a banana," Tori said.

Haruka paused in the middle of breaking up a chunk of gross dry fish into her rice.

"It's perfectly ripe," Tori said. "No green but still firm. I'm tempted to eat it myself…"

"Do you honestly expect me to believe you have a banana?" Haruka asked. She met Tori's eyes then, the line of her mouth hard and displeased.

Tori leaned back in her seat and poked the banana under her shirt, exactly the way she'd seen people in movies show off their gun under their clothes.

Haruka stared at it and her face twitched as she fought back the expression of lustful yearning that briefly flashed across her features. In a deeply unhappy voice she said, "What sort of favor?"

"I'm having, um," Tori said, "a sort of… interpersonal problem."

"I can't kill our warden," Haruka said flatly, as if Tori was stupid enough to think that was an option.

"No, it's the other lab tech," Tori answered. "I even have permission from Orochimaru-sama to get rid of him, I just, you know, can't."

"I don't really see why you can't," Haruka drawled, returning to mixing up her food again. "Other than you being a coward and a weakling and a moron. But alright, give me the banana and I can make that happen for you."

"I have your word?" Tori asked, leaning forward over the table. She extended her pinky finger.

"Oh my god, are you really doing that?" Haruka asked incredulously.

Haruka shook her pinky anyway. The banana was passed under the table, and for a quarter of a second, Haruka looked exactly like a kid in a candy store before she wrestled her scowl back onto her face. Tori went to bed feeling more hopeful than she had in a while.

Unfortunately, that night the entirety of the Village Hidden in the Sound went to complete and utter shit.

When the morning lights came on, Snarly-nin never came to let her out and herd all the new recruits to their assigned placements. Although it had never happened before, Tori wasn't immediately worried. Leaving her in isolation with no explanation seemed like something that would happen in Oto.

She curled back up on her futon and drifted back off to sleep.

She didn't know how much time passed, but eventually she had to pee and became annoyed with her predicament. When she couldn't hold it anymore, she squatted over the drain in the floor and attempted to aim.

It was very fortunate she had a towel.

Eventually she couldn't even nap any more, and she was hungry and thirsty, and the scenario still didn't seem off to her until there was a lot of noise outside her cell– yelling and then some crashing.

It was quiet for a long while after that, and hunger bit at her stomach and nervousness started to hitch in the back of her mind. They wouldn't let her starve to death, surely. Or, no, she'd die of dehydration first, wouldn't she? How long could a person go without water?

The lights went out again, signalling the end of the day, and Tori laid back down on her futon and thought about how terrible it would be to die like this.

It took weeks to die of starvation. This was just torture, surely, and eventually Kabuto would pull her out and coo condescending things to her while he stuck an IV in her, and possibly make her beg for food, and it would be humiliating but she wasn't going to die –

There was more yelling, suddenly, and she bolted up and threw herself through the pitch black to the door.

"HEY," she yelled, banging on the door as hard as she could. "HEY, what's going on?!"

The yelling paused, and voice said, "Who's that?"

"Tori," Tori replied. "Tori Mendoza."

"Oh," said the voice. "Nevermind."

"What do you MEAN?" Tori yelled back. "What's happening?"

The voice was gone though, the yelling moving down the hall, and Tori pressed her ear to the door. She caught a lot of shouts to hurry up and before that glasses snake comes back, and then someone closer to her door said, "...he's really dead?"

Another voice answered, coming closer as it spoke, and Tori caught the last part of the explanation: "...found his body."

"Who? What if they're lying?"

"I don't know, the cleaner. You really think civillains are good enough to lie to a shinobi?"

"But which cleaner–"

"Fuck, Touma, I don't know who cleans Orochimaru-sama's rooms–"

The voices were too far away to be heard after that. It didn't matter. Tori's brain was in the process of rebooting, her body stuck frozen with her face pressed up against the door.

Someone was dead in Orochimaru's room. That was not weird, in itself. In fact, that just sort of sounded like an inevitability. It wasn't something to start a ruckus over.

Unless it was Orochimaru himself who was dead, which seemed unlikely. If he could come back after Itachi had literally sealed him away with a mythical sword, then being a corpse wasn't likely to slow Orochimaru down very much at all. Besides, what in this stupid ninja world could do him in, anyway? The mysterious illness that made him "indisposed"? Tori had just sort of assume it was the chakra version of organ rejection, easily solved by hopping bodies, even if Sasuke wasn't available–

Oh.

Sasuke.

In the manga, Sasuke had definitely ambushed an infirmed Orochimaru and killed him, once he'd decided it was time to go after his brother.

Because of her, now Sasuke knew where to look for Itachi.

"Oh no," Tori whispered into the dark.

The lights came back on, and Tori concluded that she was abandoned and in very real danger of starving to death in her cell after all.

No one was coming for her. She had to get out herself.

This was literally the second time since she'd gotten to this world that she'd accidentally created a situation where she was locked in a room while the world outside went nuts. If she got out, she was definitely learning to pick locks, or break them, or… or however you got out of locked rooms.

The door didn't even have a handle on this side. There was a metal disc that marked where the handle existed on the other side, and the seam around the door was so flush is was barely visible. There weren't even hinges on this side.

Snarly-nin had lectured them a few times about not breaking out of their cells, meaning he thought literal children were capable of it. Granted, they were ninja children, but Tori was smarter than a child, right?

Tori scanned the room for items to help her. Her neatly folded spare clothes and bed linens didn't seem very helpful, but she managed to pry the rusty drain cover up. A tool!

But what did she do with her tool? What would a ninja do?

She attempted to wedge the drain cover under the the metal disc of the handle to maybe pry it off, but it was set too firmly into the door. Then she tried sticking it between the door and the wall around where she knew the hinges were, but dropped it when it cut into her hand painfully.

She had no idea what a proper ninja would do, but she had an inkling of what a poorly trained ninja lab tech might try.

Tori cut her finger tip on the edge of the drain cover, and then set about painting a seal in blood on the door. Fuuinjutsu did not require ink– just something containing chakra molded into the correct the shape. Blood was ill-advised as it wasn't a stable conduit, according to one of the texts she'd read, but Tori was not currently interested in making a stable seal.

Fingers, it turned out, did not contain that much blood, so she had to stop halfway through and reassess. She cut the fleshy part of her forearm, then, and dipped a section of her hair into it, just like an improvised paint brush.

Her hair had gotten so long here it pooled in her lap when she sat, and twice had gotten caught on drawer handles in the lab. At least it was good for something now.

When she was done, she ran to the other side of the room and threw her futon over her as cover. She waited for several very tense minutes while nothing happened.

She was still very bad at timer components, it seemed.

She approached the seal again carefully– it was just the cooling seal, same as the one she'd exploded before, but with what was supposed to be a timer to set it off after she'd moved away. If it had exploded with just a little too much blood before, surely it would explode again if it were all blood.

She carefully rubbed off the circle threading through her array with her thumb, disarming it. She rubbed off some other parts and redrew others, and the resulting seal also failed to explode.

"Come on," Tori hissed at it, then tried making a completely new one, which her shaking hand ruined. She stepped back, took a few calming breaths, and tried a new strategy.

She made the simplest version of the seal, dabbing on an extra thick blob of blood at the very end. The blob would drip while she protected herself, completing the circle, and then it would go off.

The seal exploded when she was only halfway across the room, sending her stumbling over herself, banging her right knee painfully as she fell, and throwing wooden debris into her hair.

The explosion didn't take out the door, but it made a large enough hole that Tori was able to snake her arm through and reach the handle.

The outside did not look as a apocalyptic as she's imagined. Most of the cell doors were open, but the only other real sign of chaos was a mysteriously abandoned pair of shoes and Snarly-nin's dead body. His shirt was stiff and dark from dried blood.

It was eerily quiet. Tori felt a wave of dizziness that might have been from dehydration or not eating or blood loss, but it passed after a minute and she stumbled around to open the rest of the cells. They were empty– everyone else had already managed to escape themselves.

Food, then, Tori decided. And water. And a tetanus shot.

Outside of the Hall E, there was more evidence something had gone wrong. Splotches of blood, discarded weapons, another couple of bodies. She found a severed ear, just sitting in the middle of the corridor, and toed at it with her sandals. When she heard people running further down the corridor, and Tori pointedly walked in the opposite direction.

The clinic was in this direction, so she went there first. Other people had clearly had a similar idea, as almost all the cabinets were wide open, with all sorts of random supplies and papers spilled across the room.

Kabuto's desk had been left alone, though, which was weird because it was where he kept all his snacks. The second drawer had a package of some sort of vaguely spicy rice crackers, and as she ate, Tori contemplated that it might just be the greatest thing she'd ever tasted.

The clinic didn't have tetanus shots, because this place didn't have vaccines and was inhabited by madmen, but Tori found bandages on the floor and a tube of disinfectant that had rolled under an examination table. She dressed the cuts on her arm and finger between shoving crackers in her mouth.

There was a package of candied nuts in another drawer in Kabuto's desk, and Tori thought about how that might be the second greatest thing she'd ever tasted for about a minute before she remembered she'd literally stepped over a dead body to get here.

Oto. Imploding. Right.

She should run away. She had no idea where she would go, or what she would do there, but anywhere was better than here.

There had previously been a line of ugly beige backpacks on a shelf by the door, marketed for EMERGENCY DEPLOYMENT. Tori assumed they contained supplies for people who had to run out quick, and certainly all but one of the bags had been taken. The last one was crumpled on the floor, and whoever had moved it had elected to partially empty it and leave the rest behind.

Tori pulled it up and examined it. There was a canteen of water fastened to the side, some type of thin, silevery blanket folded at the bottom, a couple of glowsticks, a roll of senbon, and a plastic case that contained five pre-loaded syringes.

Tori examined the syringes and wondered if the bags were meant for field medics, or if local anesthetics were just normal ninja equipment.

She dumped the roll of senbon– she had no idea how to use them, and now wasn't the time to try and learn– tossed in her bandages and disinfectant, and sipped the water as she went through the clinic for more supplies. Most of the obvious ones, like food and common medicines, were gone, but she did find a box of seriously strong painkillers. She chucked it into the bag, along with two ration bars she found in the back of a cabinet.

At least if she hurt herself, she had enough drugs to never feel pain again.

She refilled the canteen from the sink and wandered out of the clinic. If she was going to flee into the wild unknown, she probably needed other things, like… more food and… water purification tablets…?

She didn't actually know what she needed. She knew what she wanted, though, and that was the secondhand make-up Karin had given her, still in the lab.

She took a strange route to get to the lab, dodging around two teenaged shinobi arguing if they should hunt down someone for revenge or not, and then went straight for the drawer she'd been keeping her things in.

It wasn't even about the make-up, really. Tori had barely worn it in her regular life, and her eyebrows and lashes were mostly grown in by now. It was that they were things that were hers.

She justified it by remembering where she'd seen a flashlight laying around, and that the lab had tools to start a fire, and that hair ties were actually very useful. She shoved them all into her bag and then without even really thinking about it, shoved her lab notebook in too. It was her work, after all, even if she'd resisted doing it.

She blinked down into her bag. The lab notebook was needless extra weight, but she wanted it.

She wanted it, but it wasn't very very useful by itself. She dug up older notebooks, ripping out pages she wanted to keep and chucking the remaining books into a pile on the floor. It was hugely disrespectful to all the work Orochimaru had done, all the work he'd forced other captives like her to do, and…

And. Well, good. Let all of Orochimaru's research burn.

She dumped isopropanol over the pile and set it one fire. She marched out of the lab feeling overly satisfied.

She hoped he really wasn't dead, and that he'd come back and be upset all his work was gone. She hoped it hurt him. In fact, she decided that she could put off escaping for just long enough to go back to his private lab and burn even more of it.

The first thing she did when she got there was cross to her cloned organs and carefully set her heart in her backpack. It was hers, after all. She was taking it with her.

The notebooks up here were spread out, because Orochimaru did not organize himself in a way that made sense to anyone who lived outside of his brain, and Tori piled them all up on a table.

She had sudden doubts about destroying all of them. Most of it was, like, cool…

"HEY," a voice yelled, and Tori was sure both her real heart and her cloned one had an attack.

Suigetsu was glaring at her from his tank.

"What's going on?" he asked. "There's shouting outside, and no one came to feed me yesterday…"

Tori felt a pang of sympathy for him. "Orochimaru is allegedly dead," she said.

"Oh shit," Suigetsu said, wide-eyed. "Hey, hey, then you can let me out, right?"

"Um…" Tori's eyes drifted back down to her pile of notebooks.

Suigetsu deserved to be let out. It was only human decency, after all. But he was also a not-very-nice ninja, and Tori was worried about what he'd do once he was free. He might hurt her, or do something to attract the attention of people who might hurt her. Then again, she had no idea what she was doing, and making friends with a shinobi would help…

"Tell you what," Tori said, moving over to the tank's control panel. "We'll help each other out. I let you out, you help me escape."

"Sounds fair," Suigetsu agreed immediately. He walked her through how to open the tank, a lot of water splashed over Tori's shoes, and then she was suddenly pulled down into a headlock.

"You're part of the research team, right?" Suigetsu said, sounding cheerful but also holding her very tightly. "People mentioned there being a civilian girl."

Tori went very still. She didn't know where he was going with this. She didn't say anything.

"Orochimaru-sama mentioned you were from another world," Suigetsu continued, "but I guess girls from another world can be plain looking too, right?"

Tori really didn't know where he was going with this now.

"Hmm, but you know," Suigetsu continued, and his arm tighten around her. He was still naked, and wet, and Tori was trying very hard not to think about how he'd angled her head down to stare at his bare hip, except that she could perfectly feel the way his muscled moved around her face and neck. "I really haven't liked anyone from the research department. They're all mean, and nasty, and they like chopping parts of me off…"

Right, okay, this made sense. Tori also hated everyone here because they were mean and experimented on her, after all. It was a very sympathetic sort of hate.

"I've never chopped parts of you off, though," Tori managed to squeak out.

"But you're one of them," Suigetsu shot back. "Maybe if I kill you, I'll feel a little better."

"W-well," Tori replied, "if you kill me, how am I going to help you get what you want?"

Suigetsu's grip loosened the slightest bit.

Thank god, Tori thought, followed closely by, What the hell does Suigetsu want?

"Sword," she managed to choke out. "I can get you Momochi Zabuza's sword."

Suigetsu let her go, and Tori staggered away, rubbing at her neck.

"Kubikiribocho?" Suigetsu asked, eyes narrowed at Tori suspiciously.

Tori had forgotten the sword even had a name. "Exactly," she said, fumbling toward her pile of lab notebooks. She'd just take them all. Yes, that was fine.

Suigetsu jabbed her in the upper back with his index finger as she shoved books into her bag. "And how do you know where it is?"

Tori swatted his hand away. "Haven't you been paying attention? I can see people's future. I can see where you find it a year from now."

Suigetsu frowned at her for a long time, studying her face with his purple eyes. Then he grinned. "I like you, lab girl," he said. "Lead the way."

They raided the lockers for supplies, but not before Suigetsu executed some sort of water jutsu that made all the tanks of organs explode, flooding the lab. It was… satisfying.

Tori had never been to the locker rooms before– they were meant for active-duty ninja preparing for or returning from missions. There were three or four other ninja poking around it in, but Suigetsu threw a scruffy looking genin into a wall and the remaining scavengers fled.

The lockers were mostly picked over– as were the adjacent supply rooms where ninja could pick up rations and weapons.

"Aw man, they took all my stuff," Suigetsu whined from what Tori assumed was his own locker. "My favorite water bottle was in here."

If Tori were him, would be more upset about all his clothes being stolen, since he was still standing around in the nude.

"Who cares?" Tori said. "Once you get out, you can buy whatever water bottle you like."

Suigetsu looked thoughtful for a moment as Tori pulled out someone's sweaty shirt and held it out to him.

"We don't have any money," Suigetsu said, dropping someone's dented water flask into the duffel bag he'd found and ignoring Tori's offering. "What a civilian thing to say. Missing-nin steal."

"Oh," said Tori, wadding up the shirt and shoving it in her bag. If nothing else, it would pad her cloned heart. "I forgot about money."

Suigetsu did manage to find a pair of pants and a hoodie– thank God – and Tori added a handful of squished an expired ration bars to her bag. She figured she'd get Suigetsu to take her to a town and then she could… hmm.

He had a good point about them not having any money.

She rummaged through her backpack and pulled out the box of the painkillers she'd swiped form the clinic. "Could I sell these?" she asked, waving them under Suigetsu's nose.

Suigetsu raised an eyebrow as he dropped a half-full sheath of kunai into his bag. "I mean, not legal– oh ." A mischievous, toothy grin spread across his face. "You could get a pretty penny for that."

"How much, do you think?" Tori asked, casually dropping the box back into the backpack as she opened another locker. She found a set of toiletries.

He gave her a price. Tori had no idea how much that was relative to, say, the cost of rice. She nodded and examined the toiletry set's toothbrush. Was she daring enough to use a used toothbrush?

"You're going to share profits with me, right?" Suigetsu asked. Tori kept the toothbrush and they moved on to the weapons supply room.

Tori rolled her eyes. "Sure, if you actually get me out of here alive."

Suigetsu casually walked up the wall to grab a very large sword that was mounted on the wall. It was not a particularly practical weapon to flee for your life with, which was probably why it was one of the few weapons still there.

"I think we should split them 70/30," he said, experimentally swinging the sword through the air a few times.

"I get the 70%, right?" Tori answered dryly. She didn't want anything in the room– she was more likely to chop off her own hand than defend herself with anything in here.

"Obviously not," Suigetsu said, jumping back down to the floor. "I'm doing all the hard work, after all."

Tori scowled at him as he brushed past her to see what they could find in the ration's closet.

"And you would still be stuck in a tank if not for me," Tori countered. "Plus, I found the damn pills."

There were no food supplies left, but Suigetsu filled several flasks with water from a tap. They argued the entire time, and all the way up to the exit of the hideout. Most people seemed to have already evacuated– they only saw a handful of shinobi scurrying around, and no one tried to stop them.

"I don't get why everyone was fighting," Tori said as they picked their way over a pile of bodies right at the front door.

"Ah, well, probably some higher ups wanted to keep order," Suigetsu said, "and then, you know, people wanted revenge on the higher ups, or they got into a fight over who got my very awesome water bottle..."

The door out of the hideout was set into the face of a cliff, wedged open by the body of someone Tori vaguely recognized from the dining hall.

"Shit," Suigetsu said as they stepped out into sunlight. "I forgot the outside was so bright."

"Me too," Tori said, and they stood blinking stupidly at the forest around them for several minutes.

It was bright, and the sunlight was warm, and everything was so green, and the air was fresh…

"We should run," Suigetsu said. "Can you run?"

"No," Tori said. "Not like a ninja."

They awkwardly finagled Tori climbing onto Suigetsu back. He whined the whole time about it being humiliating and how it forced him to carry his sword all wrong.

"It's not like I'm happy about being carried," Tori snapped back at him. "Makes me feel like a child."

Suigetsu didn't answer, but instead tensed under her.

"Suigetsu?" Tori asked tentatively.

"Shit," Suigetsu answered, and then shot into the trees. Tori let out a startled yelp and clung tighter to his shoulders.

"The glass-bastard is back," Suigetsu called over his shoulder at her. "I don't know why he'd follow us when the whole hideout is up in flames, but just in case– what direction are we going?"

"Whatever direction Wave Country is," Tori shouted back, right into his ear.

Suigetsu changed course slightly, and then after a couple of minutes said, "Fuck, he is following us."

Tori gripped Suigetsu's shoulders tighter. She didn't think Kabuto was much of a fighter, but she also wasn't sure if Suigetsu could take him or not.

Suigetsu sped up and said, "You sure we need to go to Wave Country?"

"Yes," Tori said, focusing on Suigetsu instead of the rising panic that Kabuto might catch her. Why would he need or care about her? Surely if they got far enough ahead, he'd give up on them. "Zabuza died on the bridge between the Wave Country and Fire Country, and his grave is nearby."

A kunai whizzed by them, and Suigetsu swore some more and started zig-zagging through the trees.

"And what, you think he was buried with Kubikiribocho?" Suigetsu asked through gritted teeth.

"It marks his grave by the bridge," Tori said.

Suigetsu grunted, then dodged another two kunai. Tori found herself vaguely hoping that she'd filled her backpack with another random stuff it would defend her against a shuriken in the back.

"Just so you know," Suigetsu said after a bit, shifting her weight on his back. "This is nothing personal; you're just heavy."

Tori was already falling when her brain proceeded what he'd said. The bastard had dropped her, effortlessly prying her arms from around his shoulders.

Stupid, she thought, you already told him what he wanted.

A branch broke her fall, then she broke the branch, and it deposited her onto the forest floor. She landed on her back, and for a few terrifying seconds she couldn't breathe.

Kabuto appeared over her, glaring down at her prone form. Tori glared back up as her lungs finally forced air into her body.

"I see you've been busy," Kabuto said lightly, even as he grabbed her harshly and dragged her from the ground.

Tori didn't say anything. Instead, she focused the entirety of her mental energy on not crying out of fear and frustration and anger. She'd been so close to escaping.

Kabuto's hands glowed blue and he pinched the nape of her neck. Tori felt her entire body go numb, and she collapsed. She couldn't even yell in panic as she fell forward back towards the ground.

"Don't worry," Kabuto hummed as he caught her. "That will wear off. I just need you to be still while I go to meet a friend."

He heaved her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, then set off bounding through the forest.

Tori's mind was racing. Where was he taking her? What friend? And why? She could think of nothing he'd need her for. At least when Kakuzu had hauled her off to Orochimaru, she'd known what was happening. At least she could still move, still talk. As she was, she could barely breathe.

She had never been more terrified in her entire life.

Eventually Kabuto stopped and gently placed her on the ground. They were still in the middle of the woods.

"Hmm, I'll need you to be able to see…"

From her position, Tori could only see his feet as he paced around a bit. Then he leaned over and dragged her across the ground and through a bush, propping her up into a sitting position against a boulder. He then proceeded to arrange and rearrange her like a ragdoll until he was satisfied she could see through the bush into the clearing properly.

It was demeaning and humiliating. Her face weent hot, but she couldn't even move enough to glare.

"Now Tori-chan," Kabuto said, addressing her cheerfully. "I'm to meet a very important person here, and I need you to watch them for me. See if you can tell anything about their future plans."

He beamed down at her, and Tori wished she could move enough to spit on him. He kept talking, "I thought you were faking your abilities for a long while, but, well, after you saw through the genjutsu of Karin-chan… you convinced me." He laughed, light and condescending. "You're not good enough to break my genjutsu, and you're not quite clever enough to fake seeing through one, are you?"

Deep in her stomach, Tori felt her fear and humiliation hitch and convalesce into hatred.

Kabuto walked back into the clearing, and sure enough she had a perfect view of him as he flashed some hand seals. There was no visual evidence of any jutsu, however, and he simply stood there.

Maybe it's genjutsu, a voice in Tori's head mocked. She didn't even spare a thought to the fact that he'd just confirmed Karin was still alive, off at her new job at whatever hideout.

Tori, without proper control of her jaw, had started drooling on herself. She was going to kill Kabuto. With no way to work her rage out physically, she simply stewed inside herself, fantasizing about stabbing Kabuto in his smug face.

At the very least, she decided, she was going to convince him his weird jutsu had prevented her from seeing anyone's fate. Make him feel like he'd screwed himself over. She imagined the look on his face when he realized how he'd shot himself in the foot, and it was almost as satisfying as smothering him to death with a pillow.

(Okay, it wasn't nearly as satisfying.)

Suddenly, Kabuto made a subtle shift in his demeanor. His posture became less cocky and his aura meeker.

Sasori entered the clearing.

He was wearing Hiruko, his hulking, beady-eyed puppet. He looked like small mountain draped in a black and red cloak.

If Tori had been able to move, she would have gasped.

She had completely forgotten that Kabuto had been a double agent, pretending to be Sasori's lackey.

Oh no, she thought. Oh fuck.

"You're late," Sasori rasped.

"My apologies, Sasori-sama," Kabuto answered, bowing his head. "Oto has been very chaotic, and I had some trouble getting away unnoticed."

Kabuto smoothly gave Sasori a very detailed report of on-goings in Oto, and Tori knew for a fact several key points were complete bullshit. Kabuto did confirm that Sasuke had killed Orochimaru and then disappeared into the night.

Tori missed most of Sasori's spitting rage in reaction to that when something crawled onto her hand. Her hand twitched, the prickly feet of the creepy-crawly disappeared, and a beetle flew past her face.

Tori rolled her eyes down as far as they could go, staring at her hand. It had moved. She concentrated and it twitched again. She tried moving other parts of her body. She felt a toe curl.

Gleefully, Tori commanded her entire body to wiggle, seeing what else she could move. The jutsu was wearing off! If she got herself together before Sasori left, she could use the distraction to–

She slumped over to the side, a sad little gasp escaping from her lungs.

The conversation in the clearing abruptly stopped. She could no longer see through the bush.

"I told you to come alone," Sasori growled.

"I was sure I wasn't followed, I don't know what–"

" Take care of it ."

Kabuto's footsteps were silent, but after a few seconds his face appeared through the bush.

His body was calm, but the look he gave Tori was livid. She stared back at him, her face and body completely lax.

A kunai whizzed by her face and she nearly flinched. Nearly because she'd been concentrating so hard on don'tmovedon'tmovedon'tmove that she wasn't sure she could do much of anything without half a second of mental backtracking.

Kabuto chuckled. "It was just a rabbit," he called.

He reached through the bush and grabbed a dead rabbit from next to her. That had definitely not been there before. He retrieved the kunai slightly further to the left– it had a weird-looking tag wrapped around the handle.

Kabuto stood and returned to Sasori, who seemed to accept his story.

Had the dead rabbit been a summons ? Did Kabuto just walk around with dead-rabbit-summoning kunai or had he planned for this? What the hell was wrong with him?

For a moment, Tori was positive that Kabuto had god-like predictive powers and knew her every move. Hopelessness flooded through her.

Her entire arm moved as she slumped. She almost had control again.

She pushed aside her self-doubt. No, he had prepared the rabbit summons because he was fastidious and hiding someone in a bush had obvious risks. He had probably prepared for all sorts of worst-case scenarios, including one in which she regained control of her body before Sasori left.

Tori closed her eyes and tuned out Kabuto's theories on how Sound Country would react to Orochimaru's death.

Kabuto wasn't so inefficient he'd make preparations for unlikely scenarios, plus she doubted he'd had that much time to prepare. But 'likely' scenarios relied on what Kabuto thought she (and Sasori, she supposed) would do, as opposed to what she'd actually do.

Tori rolled over and pushed herself to her knees. Sasori was already snarling at Kabuto about only a rabbit .

"Hey, Sasori," she yelled hoarsely as she got to her feet.

Kabuto thought she was snivelling coward. He probably thought she'd try to crawl away, if she dared disobey him at all.

"Orochimaru got rid of your jutsu-thing ages ago. He's playing you."

He also probably thought she had enough self-preservation not to yell at angry S-ranked criminals.

He was wrong.

Kabuto made a motion, but then Hiruko's tail shot out at grabbed him.

"If you want to live, you better have a good explanation," Sasori hissed.

Kabuto disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Without even glancing at her, Hiruko fired several senbon in her direction. Kabuto reappeared before she could even dive for cover, blocking them with a kunai.

"I do need to keep her alive," Kabuto said lightly, his fabricated meek demeanor gone.

"So you are a traitor," Sasori snarled.

Kabuto ran at the puppet, dodging smartly around a few jabs from Hiruko's tail. One of Hiruko's hands emerged from the coat, spewing fire, and Kabuto skidded off to the side.

Satisfied the two were keeping each other busy, Tori turned and staggered off into the woods. She didn't have enough control over her limbs to run, but she managed to force her body into a sort of power-limp.

Later, assholes.

She almost immediately fell and stumbled down a steep slope.

At least it's a faster way to travel , she thought to herself as she used a log to push herself back into her feet. Her ankle groaned in protest.

Eventually the sound of Sasori and Kabuto's fight faded away as she put more distance between herself and them. She hoped Sasori killed him. Preferably with poison. Slow, painful poison.

If Kabuto managed to escape from him… well, she really didn't want him to find her again.

The pain in her ankle eventually faded and her body was more or less back to normal. Tori realized she was walking very quickly and very aimlessly through an unknown forest. She slowed down and retrieved a ration bar from her miraculously still intact backpack. She broke off half of it and chewed on the tasteless thing as she traipsed through the forest.

She thought about all the survival shows she'd watched. Those were all about starting fires and building shelters and lasting until someone found you… and she didn't want anyone to find her. Or, people on those shows would figure out a way to get somewhere where they could call for help. She had no idea where that would be either.

Eventually, she found a deer trail and decided to follow it. The deer had to know something, right?

The trail went straight down or up several annoyingly steep hills, but eventually it led to a pond filled with frog scum. It was getting dark, so she ate the rest of the ration bar and settled down under a tree with her thermal blanket to sleep.

In the morning, feeling sore and both physically and emotionally drained, she skirted the pond and found another trail, this one wider than a regular deer trailer.

A people trail?

After about an hour of walking, it led to the edge of a farm and then a wide dirt road with a road sign and she nearly wept with joy. She followed the sign for the closest town.

Notes:

Ah, Suigetsu, my precious murder son...

And ah, Sasori, my precious murder puppet man...

I'm not good at replying to comments, but I wanted to say thank you to everyone who has commented, kudo'd, and bookmarked. You all are seriously the best and I'm glad you've enjoyed reading! Next chapter we meet another Akatsuki. I bet you can guess exactly who!

Chapter 6: improvise. adapt. overcome.

Summary:

Tori tries her best and another Akatsuki makes a dramatic entrance.

Notes:

WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER: Tori sells "painkillers" to some youths. I never actually name them, but I imagine this might be upsetting to some readers? There's also mentions of underaged drinking and smoking.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

The town was all wide, tree-line roads and well-kept row houses with stone fronts. There was a public fountain in the main square, where Tori refilled her canteen. She took a few sips as she people-watched and tried to think of what to do next.

She needed money, first and foremost, because she only had a few ration bars and lacked the skills to forage or steal more food. Eventually she'd need other things as well, like proper shelter and access to a shower and laundry and pads and tampons, oh god –

And transport. She needed to get as far away from here as fast as she could.

And then… and then she didn't know what she'd do but she'd find a quiet place to stay and be safe away from crazy ninja.

She felt her eyes go hot. Even if she got away, she'd never be home . This was her life now, homeless and penniless and with no friends or family.

She didn't cry, didn't let herself cry. She just sat on a bench in the square, miserably watching people pass. No one seemed to notice her.

Eventually she got up and wandered the town a bit more, eyeing a cart selling cold drinks and fried street food enviously. She dug around in the trash can next to the cart, found no edible looking left overs but several plastic cups, and then went back to the main square and placed a cup in front of her on the cobbled ground. By the time the sun went down, she'd eaten two more ration bars and three people had dropped coins into her cup.

She squinted at the coffee shop across the street. She barely had enough for their cheapest pastry.

She dumped the coins into her pocket. She needed to sell her pilfered painkillers.

Tori stood in the bathroom of a convenience store and frowned at her reflection in the mirror above the sink.

She'd forgotten how hideous her Oto uniform was compared to what normal people got to wear. Walking around in matching grey shirt and grey pants definitely made her look like an escaped prisoner. She switched out the shirt for the one she'd grabbed from a locker. It was navy blue with armpit sweat stains and was way too big on her.

She pulled it back and tied the excess fabric into a knock at the base of her back. Now it just looked like a weird fashion statement on a very dirty person.

Her hair was wild, her curls reduced entirely to frizz with inches of dead ends at the bottom, so she braided it to the side, hiding the scar on her neck from when Haruka stabbed her. Then she painted on a generous amount of eyeliner and lip gloss, and transformed herself from a prisoner into…

...someone who definitely had gone through some serious shit, was very dirty, and had no money.

Well. She was trying to sell drugs, she supposed.

The man working the counter of the store didn't say anything when she walked out. This was her second time using the store bathroom without buying anything, and the man had yet to acknowledge her presence.

Tori walked the now dark town, peering down alleys and looking for the type of shady people who might want to buy drugs from a very dirty person. Not for the first time, she wished Suigetsu was with her.

Suigetsu would have at least thought he knew what to do, and any sort of guidance would be comforting, even if it was the guidance of an obnoxious and murder-happy teenaged boy. Having Suigetsu around as muscle would also make her feel better approaching someone to make a deal– what was to stop anyone from just making her give them the pills without paying her? She wasn't a fighter; anyone could just hurt her and do what they wanted.

That's how it would be in Oto, anyway.

On the edge of town, she did find a road of mostly abandoned houses, where a group of loud people had built a bonfire in the street. It smelled like weed. It seemed like it was worth it to at least approach them.

She walked right by them twice, too cowardly to say anything. Suigetsu would be really useful right now.

She paced the streets, thinking furiously about what to say, what to do.

The town was designed so all roads lead back to the main square, where she inevitably ended up. It was filled with teengaers now, divided up into little groups around benches, passing around soda bottles that Tori would bet her cloned heart were watered down with alcohol.

The town had quieted down for the night, making the teenagers seem incredibly loud and boisterous, and Tori hovered at the edge of the square.

She had thinking about this all wrong. She wasn't in Oto anymore; she was in a normal town with normal people and their normal teenaged children. Tori could totally handle civilian teens. She'd spent a good portion of her life being a civilian teen, after all.

Besides, hadn't the drug scene at her university been mostly rich kids buying pot and each other's prescription drugs?

Tori strolled up to the closest group of teens as casually as she possibly could and said, "Friday night, huh?"

She pitched her voice as low and husky as she should could, trying to make herself seem older and world weary.

The group went silent, staring at her like she was some sort of novelty. One of the boys, crouched on the ground, had a cigarette in his mouth. Tori leaned over him and asked, "Yo, got any spares?"

The boy just stared at her. Someone to her left said, "It's Saturday…?"

"Ah," Tori said. "You know, time…"

And then she decided that this wasn't going well at all and moved on to the next group without saying anything further.

"Well, they were boring," she announced to group number two, and that received a round of drunken laughs. "Who's got a cigarette?"

A guy passed her one, and then one of only two girls in group flicked a lighter on for her. Tori placed the cigarette in her mouth and leaned in to light it, cupping one hand around the flame to protect it from the wind and holding her hair back with her other hand, the way she'd seen cool people in movies do.

Then she inhaled and it took every ounce of herself control not to cough from whatever demonic ritual she'd just exposed her lungs to. She kept her face smooth even as her lungs burned with Satan's revenge, and then she exhaled.

Tori had never smoked in her life and she didn't think she would ever again. Her lungs hurt.

"Who are you?" the boy who'd given her a cigarette asked.

To delay having to answer, Tori took another long drag. It was an equally bad idea the second time.

"Just a traveler passing through," she said, her voice now deep and gritty without any acting on her part. She desperately wanted to cough. "Is there anything to do in this town? Seems boring as shit."

The teenagers agreed, whining about how there was nothing to do but hang out here or with the potheads Tori had found earlier. They complained about how the town had started locking up a park they preferred to drink in at night, as if drinking in a park were somehow so much cooler and more exciting than drinking in the street.

"A fence…?" Tori repeated thoughtfully. She'd smoked half the cigarette. She didn't know how far she had to go through it before she could call it quits. Did she smoke it all the way to the butt? Or was it like eating an apple, and it was perfectly acceptable to toss it when there was still a bit left? "No of- fence , but why don't you just climb it?"

The pun went over everyone's heads.

"We'd get in trouble…" one of the girls said.

"Pfft," Tori sniffed. "Who cares? Here, I'll give you something good."

She fished the painkillers out of her bag. They were in a foil roll in a thin cardboard sleeve, just like they came back in her world, if with fewer warnings on them.

"What's it do?" a boy asked.

Tori raised her eyebrows at him as if he were a bit dumb. "Takes you where you need to go," she said. "Makes you feel real good."

Tori actually had no idea what the side effects were. She hoped they were good.

The girl with the lighter recognized the drug name, let out a cry out excitement, and reached for them. Tori yanked them out of her reach.

"Uh-uh," she said. "Unfortunately I'm not quite generous to just give them to you."

There was a bit of an argument then, but eventually two of the teens went off to get their pot money and Tori finished her cigarette. She made a show of counting the wad of bills they gave her. She'd never even seen bills in this world before, and they felt like monopoly money.

"You're a little short," she said, glancing around.

They gave her a bottle of spiked soda to make up the difference. Tori passed them the pills, and swaggered out of the square as casual as she could. That had been easy.

She made a beeline for a hotel she'd seen earlier. It was cheap, and the mattress was lumpy, but it was a real bed. The room came with packets of fruity smelling shampoo, and she stayed in the hot shower for as long as she wanted.

She slept in until the cleaning lady kicked her out, then spent a few hours wandering the town and buying supplies– a hairbrush, toiletries, some clothes from a second-hand store. She bought some cheap canned tuna, two bags of something marked PROTEIN BITS, and some dried fruit. She dumped the soda to make room.

She changed clothes in the bathroom of a cute cafe and bakery, shoving her Oto clothes in the trash. She walked out of the bathroom in much more reasonable clothes and with a spring in her step. She bought a pastry, the woman behind the counter was friendly to her, and for the first time in ages, Tori felt like her life was finally going to be alright.

Yes, she thought as she walked out of the café, muffin in hand– things were looking up for Tori Mendoza.

The only warning she got was a shadow suddenly appearing over her.

Tori screamed and dropped her muffin. The ground disappeared beneath her and she went up, up, up over the roofs of the houses, something pulling her up by the shoulders.

"WHAT THE FUCK," she yelled, futilely kicking her legs in the air. She was flying– she was fucking flying over the town .

"Don't struggle too much, yeah," a voice called from above. "Wouldn't want to drop you from this high up."

Tori craned her head around as much as she could. She was attached– or being held, more accurately– to some sort of white, stone… statue.

She stared down at her shoulder. A bird's talon was wrapped around her upper arm. A clay bird was carrying her over a forest.

"Oh no," she moaned.

The bird jerked to the right and dove, and Tori barely registered Sasori's form waiting for them as the ground rushed forward. The bird dropped her some three feet from the ground and she face-planted at full force. Deidara jumped off the bird and landed lightly next to her, and the clay creature poofed out of existence.

"Oi, Danna," Deidara called, "I brought her, yeah."

Tori groaned and pushed herself into a sitting position. Her nose was bleeding, causing tears to well up in her eyes, and everything hurt.

"Next time get it right on the first try," Sasori rasped as Hiruko's hulking shadow fell over her.

"Next time give me a better description, yeah!"

Tori leaned her head back and pinched her nose to the stop the bleeding as they argued. She needed to run. Running away would be good.

Tori started scooting slowly away from them, and next thing she knew, Hiruko's tail was stabbed into the ground next to her and Sasori was looming over her.

"Search her," Sasori commanded.

Deidara rolled his eyes but manhandled Tori's backpack off and tossed it aside. He then pulled her to her feet and started patting her down.

" Hey, " Tori complained, and then Sasori cut her off with, "Why did Kabuto have you with him?"

"What?" Tori said as she watched Deidara grab her braid and examine it. Being manhandled was very distracting.

Deidara, apparently finished with his his search, yanked her hair hard enough to make her yelp and stagger to the side. "Go on, answer him."

"You're no ninja," Sasori continued. "Why would Kabuto bring you along?"

Tori's upper lip was wet with blood. She pinched her nose again and answered in a nasally voice, "I was running away from Oto and he bumped into me and recaptured me."

Sasori called bullshit immediately. "You're a civilian. You'd be easy to catch after our meeting. Why did he bring you along?"

Tori started to say, still in her nasally Mickey Mouse, "I had another ninja helping me–"

And then Sasori slammed her face into the ground, Hiruko's giant hand covering her entire skull as he held her there. "Kabuto is not stupid enough to bring a civilian to a fight without reason. Why did he bring you along? "

Why do you all hate my face? Tori thought back at him, her brain swimming. Outloud she said, muffled into the dirt, "He wanted my opinion on you."

Much to her dismay, Sasori pressed her head further into the ground. "Why?"

"Mrrph," Tori said, barely able to breathe.

"What's that?" Deidara asked, and then stepped on her right between the shoulder blades.

Like an asshole.

Tori raised her arm to make some sort of gesture to indicate compliance, rolled her wrist, couldn't think of one, and somehow ended up extending her middle finger.

Deidara laughed. He shifted his weight so he was standing fully on her, and then used his free leg to kick her hand.

"Stop fooling around and search her bag," Sasori snapped.

"What's she going to have on her, yeah?" Deidara asked. "Camping supplies?"

Still, he got off of her, and Sasori let go of her head. Tori rolled over onto her knees, cradling her hand, and he leaned his face into hers.

"I am not a patient man," he hissed.

"I know, " Tori hissed right back.

"Oh!" Deidara cried from several feet away, having just flipped open Tori's bag. " Not camping supplies."

Before Sasori could decide she was being disrespectful and smash her face into something again, Tori continued, "Kabuto wanted my opinion because I can sometimes see the future."

"What the hell?" Deidara asked, looking up from her backpack. Sasori continued to stare her down with his creepy puppet eyes.

"Demonstrate," Sasori demanded.

"Um, well," Tori said, making a big show of looking Hiruko up and down. "If I were you, I wouldn't get too cocky around your Granny Chiyo."

"What the hell does that mean, yeah?" Deidara called. "Hey, girlie, if you know so much, what's Danna's hair color?"

"Red," Tori answered. She opened and closed the hand he'd kicked experimentally. It might bruise, but it was mostly fine.

"That's how you knew my jutsu had been removed," Sasori concluded, which was probably better evidence than beware your grouchy grandma. Sasori didn't dwell on this revelation very long and asked, "In what capacity were you affiliated with Oto?"

"Lab experiment…" Tori said as Deidara pulled her heart out of her bag and waggled his eyebrows at her. "...and then lab tech."

"How long were you there?" Sasori said, pointedly ignoring Deidara pretending to be horrified by the heart, then pressing his ear against the glass to listen to it beat.

"Since May," Tori said.

"Did Orochimaru or Kabuto or any high ranking shinobi ever confide in you?"

It occured to Tori then, that if things kept going like this, Sasori would get everything he wanted out of her, and then he'd probably kill her. That was, after all, more or less the mistake she'd made with Suigetsu.

She didn't want to be killed, and she certainly didn't want to die curled up in the dirt and sobbing at Sasori's feet. She sat up fully and crossed her legs.

"Speaking of Kabuto," she said, "you wouldn't have happened to have killed him, would you?"

"Answer my question," Sasori insisted, grabbing her around the neck.

Tori's heart rate shot up immediately, but she forced her voice to be calm as she answered. "No one in Oto confides in other people. But, you know, I'm pretty observant."

"Why do you have zero weapons?" called Deidara, who had emptied her bag completely and scattered its contents around himself.

Tori pressed on, "There's a lot one can learn from old lab records and medical reports. And I'm sure you want to know all the lies Kabuto told you." Sasori's grip tightened ever so slightly on her neck, and without thinking she grabbed Hiruko's wrist. Her hand didn't even come close to fitting all the way around. "And I'm sure you leader wants to know more about Orochimaru–"

"What do you know about our leader, yeah?" Deidara asked, having abandoned all of Tori's possessions in a pile some ten feet away and come to stand behind her.

Right. The Akatsuki was supposed to be super secret. That was fine, though, because if she could convince them she really was some sort of seer, she might have some sort of way to bargain for her life.

"He calls himself 'Pein'–" Tori began, and then Sasori's fingers twitched against her neck.

"Orochimaru could have easily told you all of that," he said.

"Do you really think Orochimaru would tell his lab tech a single detail about his past–" Sasori's fingers twitched against her neck. "Could you let go of me, please?"

Sasori dropped her. "I'm going to contact Leader-sama," he stated and then walked off into the woods.

Tori rubbed her neck, blinking at his retreating back in confusion.

"Ooh, you convinced him, yeah," Deidara said, grinning meanly at her. He was shorter than she would have anticipated– which was still at least five inches taller than her– and his dark blond hair was brassy in the warm sunlight. "Tell me, did you just find a half-packed survival kit and fill it up with random things?"

"No," Tori muttered, even though it was an embarrassingly accurate summation of what she'd done. "I filled it up with things I wanted to keep."

"Like a human heart," Deidara said, crossing to poke at the jar with his foot.

"It's my heart," Tori defended, scuttling over to pick it up herself. The glass was scuffed and there were a handful of hairline cracks, but the jar was miraculously in tact. The liquid inside must have absorbed most of the shock, because the heart inside also looked relatively undamaged.

"Like, you took it out of yourself, or like you took it from someone and now its yours…?" Deidara squinted down at the heart in her arms, interest obviously piqued.

"It's a clone," Tori specified.

"Is that what's in those notebooks?" Deidara asked. He'd flipped through them and thrown them all around before shuffling them back together in a messy pile. "How to clone?"

"Well– yeah, partly," Tori said. It occurred to her that running around with a good chunk of Orochimaru's research on her back was a stupid idea, mostly because now other S-ranked criminals had their hands on it.

Oops?

"Would they contain why Danna is convinced Orochimaru didn't die, even though we found his body?" Deidara asked, eyebrows raised at the pile he'd made.

Tori thought about it. There had been some ideas about cursed seals and transferring chakra networks scribbled here and there, but she didn't think Orochimaru had written out annotated directions on how to store parts of yourself in other people, the way she knew he'd done with Anko's cursed seal.

But maybe it would be bad to tell Deidara she couldn't answer questions for him; she did, after all, want to seem useful. Instead of answering outright, she said, "The possibility of Orochimaru coming back is why it's really important you should've killed Kabuto."

Deidara snorted. "Nope, slipped away like the snake he is."

Deidara had met Kabuto exactly once for about three minutes, and Kabuto had not made a good impression. Deidara told Tori all about it– without actually mention the circumstances under which he and Kabuto had met, or anything that had actually been said– and then ended his rant with an expectant, "Well? What can you see of my future?"

Tori said something vague about red eyes and lightning, and when Sasori returned, she and Deidara were having a shouting match.

"It's not my fault if you are going to make impressively bad decisions–"

"–and why should I believe you, yeah? You're so full of bullshit–"

"Deidara," Sasori chided, and Deidara made a rude hand gesture at Tori before turning to his partner.

"Yeah, what did Leader-sama say? We dumping her in a river?"

" Hey– " Tori squawked.

"He was interested in her information and ability," Sasori said, Hiruko's tail waving lazily behind him. "We're taking her back to headquarters for interrogation."

Tori dropped her heart, and it rolled across the grass.

"Aw, Danna," Deidara quipped. "You're going to break her heart, yeah."

He laughed at his own joke.

They let her hastily shove all her things back into her bag while Deidara made another clay bird. He practically threw her onto it, then sank her feet into the clay up to her ankles.

"Wouldn't want you falling off, yeah," he said with a smile that was in equal parts charming and ominous.

They took off, and Tori immediately regretted dumping her thick-fabriced Oto uniform for a short-sleeved dress and leggings. The wind was cold, and she clutched her backpack to her chest as she shivered. Deidara and Sasori didn't seem to notice, as they immediately started arguing over the true meaning of art, or something equally ridiculous.

This was bad. This was so heinously, hideously bad. She'd meant to use her fake ability to make a deal for her life, but she'd meant something short term, with just Sasori. She was not going to survive Akatsuki headquarters. This was a fact, plain and simple: she would tell them everything, because she wasn't strong enough to withstand any of the many horrible things they could do, and then they would kill her. They couldn't have some girl who knew all their secrets running around. If she was being optimistic, maybe they would keep her imprisoned until their organization inevitably crumbled.

And… and what if she ran into Hidan and Kakuzu again?

"Oh no," Tori whispered to herself, and both her captors ignored her.

She had to escape, and she had to escape now, except how could she escape from a tiny aircraft hundreds of feet off the ground? How could she escape from two Akatsuki in general?

"Oh no, oh fuck ," Tori said.

"What does your intent have to do with mindless destruction?" Sasori snapped at Deidara. They'd been talking about how Deidara's art differed from regular explosions, which Sasori maintained it didn't.

"Of course intent matters," Deidara said. Then he waved at Tori and continued, "Would it be art if she stuck some sticks to a corpse and made it dance around?"

Tori had a brief vision of a floppy, bloated corpse as a puppet on Sesame Street, which was unfortunately sort of funny. She had to work not to giggle.

"Of course not," Sasori growled back. "Who in their right minds would judge that as art?"

"Children might," Tori said without thinking. Sasori gave her an absolutely murderous look.

" Children might, " Deidara repeated gleefully, and Tori instantly regretted inserting herself into their conversation. "Please, Oto girl, tell us more about how you think children would enjoy Danna's art."

"My name is Tori," she supplied, and then Sasori cut her off with, "What does a lab experiment know about art?"

Tori decided she needed to immediately extract herself from this interaction, so she very cleverly said, "It's not like science and art are completely discrete subjects. You think Deidara got clay to fly on sheer artistic merit?"

"The application of scientific principles to art does not necessitate an understanding of art to a scientist," Sasori snapped back, and Tori really was going to stop engaging in this. ..

"The scientific method requires creativity," she said, like a moron.

"Creativity doesn't equal art through, yeah," Deidara cut in.

"No, but both science and art are about applying creative methods to understand the world–"

"What kind of a definition of art is that –"

Tori, unfortunately, had a long history of failing to disengage herself from things that interested her. Her throat still hurt from smoking, and she was hoarse in an impressively short amount of time spent arguing. The topic finally shifted to if art required a certain level of skill to be art, and Tori was able to shut her damn mouth.

At some point, the heavens opened up and it started to pour, cold rain smacking into them.

"God," Deidara swore, "I fucking hate Rain Country, yeah."

"We're still over Grass," Sasori pointed out.

" Ugh," Deidara said, and that segued into an argument over stopping for the night.

Deidara managed to win that one with a reminder about a time when he'd crashed while flying at night through bad whether, and then they switched to if getting a hotel was worth it or not. Deidara said he was sick of sleeping outside, while Sasori pointed that, "You'll be in your own bed tomorrow night. What's the difference?"

"You'd understand if you actually slept, Danna," Deidara sighed. Then he jabbed a thumb at Tori and said, "Are you gonna make a lady sleep outside, Danna?"

"How chivalrous," Tori deadpanned.

"What difference does being a woman make?" Sasori asked, and Tori was glad to know that Sasori was equal opportunity when it came to making people miserable.

They landed outside a small town anyway, because it was Deidara's bird and he did what he wanted. Neither of them bothered to get Tori down from the bird before it disappeared, and Tori landed in an undignified mess on the wet grass.

The rain had lessened to a light mist, but Tori was still shivering and miserable. Deidara looked less bothered, even as he rung water out of his hair. Either that cloak was impressively water resistant, or he was just used to being drenched and cold.

Tori eyed him enviously. Yes, she could see water droplets pooled on the cloak, not being absorbed into the material at all. She really should have thought of getting more weather resistant clothes.

Deidara gripped her roughly by the elbow and dragged her along behind him.

"This is coming out of your paycheck," Sasori said as he followed.

"Shut up, Danna," Deidara yelled over his shoulder. "You always make me pay, and then you set up a damn workshop and take up the whole room–"

The town was similar in design to the one Tori had previously been in, if not less well maintained. The cobblestone roads had cracked and missing stones, where muddy puddles had formed. Wooden structures with corrugated metal roofs were crammed in between old stone buildings, and the town felt more crowded– more people on the streets, busy and loud.

Tori was still shivering, her clothes and hair heavy and cold with water. The air was getting colder as the sun set.

"Hey, uh," Tori said interrupting whatever dumb argument her captors were having now. "Would you mind if I got, um, a coat…?"

They both stared at her. Tori slouched her posture and exaggerated her shivering in an attempt to make herself as pathetic and sad looking as possible.

"Do you realize," Deidara said after a beat, "that we're KIDNAPPING you, yeah?"

He said this very loudly, and a pair of women passing paused and gave them a very funny look. Starting a scene would not help Tori get what she wanted, so she laughed and smacked Deidara's bicep affectionately. The women seemed relieved and continued on their way.

"Then it would be a shame," Tori send through her overly friendly smile, "if you did all that work and I got pneumonia and died."

Deidara glanced down at his arm where she'd hit him, then back up at her with an incredibly scandalized looked.

"You–" he started, looking increasingly outraged with every passing second, and Tori worried she'd crossed some sort of line.

"She's right," Sasori said from behind her. "Deidara, if she gets sick, you have to deal with it."

"Why do I have to do all of the work–" Deidara started, rounding on Sasori.

The argument actually turned into a scuffle, right in the middle of the street, which Sasori ended by grabbing Deidara's entire face with Hiruko's giant hand.

"I'm losing my patience," Sasori said simply, then left them.

Deidara scowled and turned back to Tori. "I'm not buying anything for you, yeah," he said, "and I'm not going to the trouble of stealing for you either, so–"

"It's okay," Tori said, "I've got money."

"No," Deidara said, "You don't. I searched you."

Tori fished a bill out of her bra. It was as wet as the rest of her, and another bill was stuck to it. Deidara's mouth formed into a thin line.

"At the airport, when they search you," Tori said helpfully, "they kind of go around your boobs with the sides of their hands–"

She held up her hands to demonstrate, and Deidara smacked them out of the air.

"Shut up," he said. Then after a pause he added, "What the hell is an airport?"

Instead of answering, Tori turned on her heel and walked into the nearest store. It turned out to be entirely designer dresses, and they walked back out ten seconds later.

Deidara seemed to be bothered by the awkward silence as they wandered down the street, because he said, "Oto wasn't actually paying you, were they?"

"No, I–" Tori frowned. Well, it wasn't like Deidara was going to judge her for morally questionable behavior. "I sold drugs to rich teenagers."

Deidara snorted with laughter. It was a good laugh, friendly and inviting, which was unfortunate because Deidara was an objectively evil person who was taking Tori to meet with more objectively evil people.

At the next store, Tori flipped over the price tag on the first coat she saw and asked, "Is this a fair price?"

Deidara looked down at it, then said as if he were telling a great joke, "Please tell me if you think that's a good price."

Tori stared back down at the tag. There were a lot of zeros. All the prices here were in the hundreds and thousands. She didn't know how to convert them to her own native currency, and she didn't know if that would help even if she did.

"...I don't know," she said slowly. "We have different money where I'm from."

Deidara's eyes lit up like she'd said something especially outrageous, and Tori was left to conclude that different currencies were not common to the Elemental Nations. However, before Deidara could say anything, a salesperson inserted himself into their conversation.

"I assure you, miss," he said, "we never overcharge for our top-quality–"

"So then this is way overpriced," Tori concluded, dropping the tag.

The salesperson looked taken aback. That was perhaps a ruder thing than Tori might have said before she'd lived with a bunch of mean ninja underground, but she couldn't say she cared.

The next store was of the variety that sold clothes out of unorganized bins, and the coats and jackets had significantly fewer zeros. She immediately pulled a bubblegum pink one off the rack.

"That is the ugliest thing I've ever seen," Deidara said.

"It has fringes," Tori said, delighted.

"It suits you," Deidara replied. "You and your dumb face."

She found a more practical coat– dark gray, hooded, mid-thigh, and proven waterproof by Deidara spitting on it in an amazing act of maturity. At check out, Deidara dropped a heather grey scarf on top. She smiled at him.

As soon as they were out of the store, Tori pulled on the coat and Deidara took the scarf right out of her hands and put it on himself. At the disappointed look on her face, he said, "What? Did you think this was for you?"

She rolled her eyes.

Deidara announced she was treating him to dinner since he'd just been so accommodating, and he dragged her between different cheap take-away restaurants.

"Yaki -tori," Tori read off a menu, and beamed at Deidara. Deidara seemed to weigh how much he wanted this food versus the apparent joy it would bring Tori, and moved on to a place specializing in dumplings.

As she followed Deidara through the town, Tori realized that now would be the best time to escape. Getting away from just Deidara would be easier than getting away from Deidara and Sasori. Despite the petty meanness, he was in a fairly good mood.

Currently, Deidara was arguing with a man because the hole-in-the-wall restaurant was out of bakudan for the evening. Tori didn't even know what bakudan was. She wandered over to a stack of menus by the door and started flipping through one. Deidara did not seem to notice or care.

Could she just slip into a crowd? How did ninja track people? How had Deidara found her before?

She fantasized, briefly, about just walking out of the restaurant and away to freedom.

"Some people are just so rude," Deidara grumbled from directly behind her, and she jumped. "This was the only place with bakudan, too."

"What's bakudan?" Tori asked, and Deidara cocked his head at her.

"I honestly can't tell," Deidara said, grabbing her arm, "if you've actually lived under a rock your whole life or you're just stupid, yeah."

Bakudan was some sort of deep fried egg, and also Deidara's favorite food. After he'd whined about it being hard to find in Rain Country, Deidara settled for deep fried chicken instead, watching intently as the old woman serving them fried the meat right in front of them. He did not let go of Tori's arm, and she wondered if he'd been more aware of her planning an escape than she'd thought.

"What about her?" the woman asked, jutting her chin at Tori.

"She'll have the same," Deidara said immediately. Tori was briefly offended that they were talking about her like she was not capable of ordering her own food, but then she realized she was probably lucky Deidara was feeding her at all.

While they were waiting for the woman to make a second entree, Deidara sniffed his own box and let an audible, pleased sigh. He looked down at Tori in a sort of indulgent, half-lidded way and said, "Yeah, you can treat me to breakfast too."

"My pleasure," Tori drawled back at him.

Deidara made her carry the food. He led her on zigzagging pattern, eventually stopping at a dilapidated looking building. It was a crumbling zombie of an older stone structure patched up and expanded with wood, and the sign overhead read COMFORT INN.

Tori barely held back a laugh at the name. She was almost disappointed it didn't have the same logo has the Comfort Inn hotel franchise back in her world.

"This is probably it," Deidara said.

"How could you possibly know that?" Tori asked.

But sure enough, when Deidara asked if a "big, ugly guy" had checked in recently, the concierge nodded and said they were expected. He handed over a single key.

Deidara smirked at her pouting face all the to the end of the hall and into the room. Sasori barely glanced up when they entered.

"I knew," Deidara said, dramatically, letting the door slam behind him, "because I'm a fucking ninja."

Sasori had, much to Deidara's predictions, spread a bunch of miscellaneous tools and body parts around the room. He'd shed Hiruko, too, examining the giant puppet's arm with the blank expression of his actual body.

"Hope you don't mind sleeping in a room with a bunch of dismembered people," Deidara said cheerfully, and kicked a bundle of what looked like ribs out of the way to sit on the floor.

Sleeping in a room with the remains of several dismembered people was, quite unfortunately, not a new concept to Tori. Sasori's spare parts, thankfully, did not smell quite as bad.

Tori sat gingerly, moving some type of serrated blade and a spool of wires out of the way. She wondered how Sasori preserved his puppets, then, if there was no chemical smell?

She wanted to ask him. It was the sort of weird fascination Orochimaru would indulge a person in, and then tease her about, and then leave her to hollow out a rotting corpse by herself. She didn't know enough about Sasori yet to guess if he'd be flattered by her curiosity, or annoyed that she had the audacity to speak to him, or just annoyed at both her and Deidara in general for needing to eat and sleep.

From the other side of the room, Sasori didn't look particularly strange, just young and indifferent in his expression. The longer she watched him pick at the contraption embedded in Hiruko's forearm, though, the more it became apparent that there was definitely something vaguely inhuman about him. Something in the way he moved wasn't quite right– there was no fidgeting, no hesitation in movement, no rise and fall of the chest to indicate breath.

Deidara must have misinterpreted the look on her face, because he leaned over to jeer at her and say, "I know Danna has a pretty face, but have you noticed he doesn't blink yet?"

"I'll be sure to avoid staring contests with him," Tori said, and reached for her own take out box.

It was silly to wonder about Sasori's social skills, anyway. She needed to refocus on escape. Deidara said he wanted breakfast, so she might have another chance to isolate them from Sasori. Unless Sasori came with them? But then, maybe it was easier to distract them with each other. She was sure she could bait them into an argument with each other if she played her cards right.

Tori's thoughts came to a complete stop once she opened the styrofoam take-out box and the smell of delicious, savory food hit her. The box was half filled with rice, layered with steamed vegetables and slices of fried chicken on top, and a dark sauce drizzled over it. Tori pushed aside the meat to pull out an actual, honest to god slice of carrot. Not mystery green mush. Not some sort of sad wilted leaf. A real, solid vegetable!

She nearly cried eating it.

"Fascinating, yeah," Deidara said, sounding exactly as if watching Tori struggle not to cry over vegetables wasn't fascinating at all.

"The food in Oto was shit," Tori explained, and shoved a snap pea in her mouth. It was so good, and she didn't even like peas.

"Was Oto as weird and creepy as I think it was?" Deidara asked, staring at her hopefully.

"Hmm," Tori said. "Yeah, probably."

Deidara had probably not wanted to hear about how bad the food was in Oto, but that's what was on Tori's mind and what she told him about. He leaned over twice to steal strips of chicken from her food.

"...and then we must have chopped up the only cook who knew how to make rice, because at some point I swear we were eating rocks–"

"Wait," Deidara interrupted, "'Chopped up' the cook?"

"Yeah," Tori said. "Everyone in Oto was an experiment."

Deidara looked downright eager. Tori told him about one of Keizo's experiments on regeneration– enough to keep Deidara happy, and enough to make it sound like she could help Sasori figure out how to kill Orochimaru or whatever he wanted to do.

When she was done, she stood and look around the room. It was almost completely bare of furniture, with a couple of futons folded up neatly against a wall. There was a single, large window in one wall.

"There's no bathroom," Tori observed.

"Nope," Deidara agreed, and then took the last piece of chicken from her box.

"...what if I have to go to the bathroom?" Tori asked.

Deidara shrugged. "Sucks for you, yeah."

"I will pee on your bed," Tori said flatly.

Deidara glowered at her, but Sasori cut in, "Deidara, just take her."

"Danna," Deidara yelled, head whipping around to glare at Sasori, "I am not a goddamn babysitter–"

They argued. Tori shifted in place a few times. Was there no bathroom because the bathrooms were communal? She'd never stayed in a place like that, but she knew they existed. A hotel couldn't just not have bathrooms, right?

"Ugh, you know what– you know what–" Deidara shoved a hand in the bags of clay at his side, and then half-heartedly threw two fat spiders at her.

Tori had enough sense in her to jump out of the way of the spiders' trajectory, but then they crawled after her. She made several embarrassing squeaks trying to dance away from from them while not stepping on Sasori's random equipment lying around.

"Based on your reaction," Deidara said, watching Tori comically try to avoid the spiders, "I'm guessing you know what my art does, yeah."

One of the spiders managed to get onto her foot. Tori stared down at it in horror.

"If you leave the hotel, that one is going to explode," Deidara said. The other spider climbed onto her other foot. "And that one is going to come get me, so you better not run off, because I will be pissed, yeah."

Deidara then turned away from her and started rolling out a futon for himself. Tori wiggled her toes. The spiders stayed in place, sitting cutely on top of her feet.

"...then can I shower too?" she asked.

"Whatever," Deidara answered. Sasori said nothing, continuing to blatantly ignore them in favor of picking at a puppet.

Tori grabbed her backpack and made it to the door before she turned back around and said, "You can't listen in through the spiders, right? You won't hear me pee?"

"Oh my god, no, " Deidara yelled and chucked a pillow at her.

Tori hurried out of the room and followed the signs for the communal baths.

That had been pretty good, she thought. Now she was alone, and all she had to do was figure out how to escape without having a clay spider blow off her leg or summon evil missing-nin to capture her.

I'm going to die, she concluded.

Notes:

Sasori: Orochimaru could have easily told you all of this.

Tori: that seems wildly out of character

Sasori: ...oh no she's right

Chapter 7: the fuckening

Summary:

Tori uses her college education to do something which somehow turns out exactly as planned and not at all as planned.

Notes:

CHAPTER WARNING: Brief mention of suicide.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Once upon a time, what felt like a whole lifetime ago, Tori had been a dedicated college student taking courses like "Chemistry 102 with Lab" and "Freshman Writing Elective: Young Adult Fiction." At the beginning of her fiction course, they'd read a few "original" fairy tales, and the one that had left the biggest impression on Tori was "The False Grandmother," an older version of Little Red Riding Hood.

In this version, the girl told the Wolf she had to go to the bathroom, and he let her out of the house to do her business. She ran. There was also some fairy tale-typical accidental cannibalism, but it was the clever trick that had stuck with Tori. Unfortunately, her captors were a little scarier than a wolf.

Deidara's clay spiders clung loyally to her feet as she walked through the hotel hallways. They were fat and cute and would kill her.

It was actually a shame Deidara made his creations so cute before he destroyed them. Was that part of the art? She hoped she was never in the position to ask him.

The baths were in a separate building, across a shabby courtyard of uncut grass. The hotel was truly on the edge of town– trees loomed above the bathhouse, signaling the start of the surrounding forest.

Tori had expected shower stalls, but the bathing part was one big room: one side had an area with low stools and faucets to scrub off, and the other side had a large pool for soaking. Next to the door were several cubbies to leave your clothes, and a pile of thin towels. The entire room smelled vaguely of bleach.

There were two other women in the bathroom. Tori turned her back and ignored them as best she could. She didn't particularly mind nudity, but walking around naked in front of strangers wasn't quite something she was comfortable with. She wrapped one of the towels around her and managed to fanagle getting her dress off under it.

"Could you move, please," she whispered to the spiders once she had her leggings around her ankles. The spiders did not react. She nearly tripped over herself pulling the leggings over them.

From this she learned that the spiders were not going to come off her feet even if she tried to pry them off, but also they weren't going to explode just from rough handling.

Tori sat down on one of the stools, lathered soap into a hand towel, and considered what she knew about jutsu from her work in Oto. She didn't think Deidara's jutsu could possibly be smart enough to know what constituted the hotel and what didn't; it probably relied on her being within a certain range of Deidara. She also didn't think the spiders were smart enough to recognize her beyond– what, her chakra? Her scent? Surely she could trick them and get them to stick to something else.

She massaged shampoo into her scalp, rinsed it off, and went to soak in the tub as far away as she could from the other two women, towel still wrapped firmly around her.

The biggest constraint she had, then, was time. Maybe if she had weeks, she could use Orochimaru's notes to come up with a seal to trick Deidara's jutsu. Instead she probably had less than thirty minutes before Deidara and Sasori would start getting suspicious, and that was contingent on her assumptions about jutsu being true. The Akatsuki did, after all, have a long and storied history of whipping out reality-breaking jutsu at the last second.

She could try cutting off the tops of her feet. She had the Oto medical kit with bandages and anesthetic; it would be fine. Except, as Deidara had pointed out, she had no weapons to cut anything with.

More importantly: Tori did not want to cut off her skin.

She decided, instead, to try to transfer the spiders to her cloned heart. She'd brought her whole backpack with her, so it was sitting in a cubby with the rest of her things. If it was a true clone, and if she was right about Deidara's jutsu, then it would be indistinguishable from her actual body to the spiders.

She thought so, at least. It could also be possible that Deidara had just thought "feet" at the spiders and they'd done what he wanted, despite not having any sort of actual intelligence to know what a foot was. Ninja arts were bullshit enough that it seemed possible.

Tori leaned back against the edge of the pool, letting her eyes close as she considered the best approach to this plan. Assuming she could get the spiders to move, she'd have to take the heart out of the jar. There were tiny threads of seal work painted right onto the organ, so it might be able to survive outside the jar, but for how long? Would the heart dying make the spiders explode? There were too many unknown variables.

Her thoughts were abruptly interrupted by a scream from one of the women.

"What? Keiko, what?" the other woman asked, standing in alarm.

"SNAKE!" Keiko yelled, flailing in the water. " SNAKE!"

The other woman looked around frantically, then relaxed once she saw whatever Keiko was screaming about. "It's just a grass snake, Keiko, calm down–"

Keiko did not calm down. Her friend grabbed her shoulders and said some vaguely soothing things, and Tori climbed out of the bath.

"I can get it," she called, walking to perimeter of the pool over to them. "Where is it?"

Not-Keiko shot her a thankful look and pointed while Keiko yelled, "It will bite your head off!"

"It's not venomous, is it?" Tori asked.

"Not at all," Not-Keiko assured her while Keiko screeched something about all snakes being poisonous monsters.

A small green snake was partially wedged in a crack in the cement. Tori tiptoed toward the snake, bending her knees and crouching over it. When she could almost touch the snake with her fingertips, it darted out of the crevice. Tori lunged, which was not something you should do in a towel.

It didn't matter. The women cheered even as her towel slipped. Tori yelped and grabbed the towel with one hand, the snake clasped triumphantly in the other.

"Thank the gods, thank the gods–" Keiko wept.

Tori stared down at the tiny snake in her hand, twisting around and struggling. Tori liked snakes, and this one was a very pretty emerald green.

"Honestly," Not-Keiko chided her friend, "your husband is an elite shinobi, shouldn't you be a little braver?"

"It was going to eat me alive, Akane," Keiko wailed.

"Oh my god, Keiko, you're hopeless–"

The snake was very cute, but still Tori shifted her grasp on it so it couldn't turn its head and bite her.

"It's a grass snake and you live in Grass, Keiko."

"Don't make fun of me!"

"Excuse me," Tori said, cutting them off. She had a new idea for escaping. She kept her eyes open, not letting herself blink so they would tear up. "Can you help me?"

She knew what she must look like at this point, her body exposed in the towel– Deidara had fucked up her face and then Sasori had fucked up her face again. While washing, she'd found bruises and cuts all over her body from Suigetsu dropping her and being lugged all over the forest floor and having ninja manhandle her. She wouldn't be surprised if Sasori grabbing her neck hadn't left a ring of bruises around it.

The change on both women was instant. Akane's posture went lax and her eyebrows scrunched together in sympathy. Keiko shifted seamlessly from hysterics to ramrod-straight posture, expression dead serious.

"I, um," Tori said, and then took in a long shuddering breath to make it look like she was fighting back tears. She still hadn't blinked. "I came here with two men, but I didn't want to… um... be with them..."

She stared down at her feet, biting her lip and making herself very small.

"We can help you sneak out the back," Keiko said immediately.

"I need more help than that," Tori said, nodding down at her feet.

Akane recoiled. "What is that?"

"It's a ninja technique," Keiko said, taking two steps forward. Then she noticed the snake still in Tori's hand and took a step back.

"You said you're from Kusa, right?" Tori said, finally feeling the waterworks coming. She amped up the ham and croaked out, "You can get them to come help me, right?"

"I can…" Keiko started to say, suddenly looking uncomfortable. "Kusa doesn't just go around saving random girls. Maybe if you have some form of payment–"

Tori wiped tears away from her eyes and let out a tiny, pathetic sob.

"Surely we can cover the cost…?" Akane said, wringing her hands. "Keiko, she caught the snake for you."

"Hiring a team to fight other ninja will be really expensive," Keiko replied, and then in a whisper Tori could barely hear over her own sobs, continued, "They're probably Kusa-nin on their week off, anyway, they do thing like this all the time and the village doesn't stop–"

Tori thought that, if she could convince Kusa she was clairvoyant, or that she could do secret Orochimaru-inspired genetic manipulations, she might be able to convince them to come extract her. But she remembered the scars all up and down Karin's arms. It would only be trading one captor for another.

"You don't understand," Tori said, letting her voice slip from controlled sob into outright bawling. "One of them is Sasori of the Red Sand."

Both women froze. Tori didn't know how well-known Deidara or Akatsuki overall were at this point, but Sasori definitely had a reputation. Keiko had to take two long, calming breaths before she said,

"That might be something the village will care about."

Tori thanked them and went to let the grass snake loose outside in the courtyard. When she came back in to change and gather her stuff, she heard the women talking again.

"We can't just let her go back," Akane was saying, sounding panicked. "Sasori is– he's–"

"He's her problem, and we can't do anything for her," Keiko said bluntly. "We're going to leave, immediately, and I'll send a message ahead so we can get an escort–"

Keiko shut up as soon as she saw Tori, who casually waved at them as she pulled out her clothes. It sounded like Keiko wasn't actually going to do anything on her behalf, but that was fine. All Tori wanted was for Kusa to be alerted to Sasori's presence in their country.

Nailed it, Tori thought.

Tori had to knock to be let into the room, which felt very odd as kidnappers generally didn't impose barriers to their victims staying in their prisons. There were a couple of yells on the other side, and then Deidara opened the door. He very rudely grabbed her by the arms and pulled her in before slamming the door behind her. Sasori did not even look up, elbow-deep in the thorax of a puppet.

"Have you been crying?" Deidara asked, as if crying while being kidnapped by evil ninja was a ridiculous thing to do. His hair was down and recently brushed, looking tame next to the pinched and mildly disgusted look on his face.

"I guarantee you this situation is more stressful for me than it is for you," Tori snapped back, sounding exactly like she'd recently been crying.

Deidara had rolled out his futon, his cloak spread over the blanket in a way that was almost cute. Tori bent and picked up a second futon, intent on finding the spot in the room that maximized her distance from both Deidara and Sasori.

"Deidara," Sasori called.

"Oh, right," Deidara said, suddenly in Tori's personal space. "Don't want to waste clay, yeah."

Her first instinct was to back away, but then she thought, no, fuck this guy, and straightened her posture to scowl at him the best she could. Deidara ignored her, though, and tapped each of his clay spiders with his toes. They each burst in turn into even smaller spiders which scattering across the room, crawling in random patterns until they came to rest in neat lines across the bottom of the door and window sill.

"Disgusting," Sasori quipped.

"Shut up," Deidara yelled back. "You could set up something to secure the entrances, but you won't, because I do all the work around here–"

Tori set up her futon while they snarked at each other. Deidara ended the argument by crawling under his own covers, announcing that Sasori didn't know what he was missing, and… just going to sleep. Tori blinked at him, her own bed half-made at her feet.

"...we're going to leave the lights on?" she asked.

"How else am I supposed to work?" Sasori replied, not even bothering to look at her.

Tori considered telling Sasori that maybe he should just switch out his human eyes for an animal's eyes more suited to work in the dark, then, like some sort of morbid Mr. Potato Head. She didn't think he'd appreciate her design input, though, so she said nothing as she flopped down on the futon. Deidara had left his shoes on, so she did as well.

The futon was just as lumpy as the one she'd had in Oto, but the blanket was softer and nicer. She was tempted to take off her shoes off to embrace it fully, but presumably Deidara's shoes were still on in case he had to leap up from sleep and run somewhere. Tori had similar hopes about where her night was going.

She made a show of getting comfortable, shifting and rearranging her pillow and pulling the blanket over her face to block the light. Instead of sleep, she stared at the inside of the fabric and listened to the arhythmic sound of Sasori's ministrations over his art.

Tori hadn't had a lot of free time in Oto, but the vast majority of what she got had been spent in isolation in her cell. It had been agonizingly boring at first; in Tori's old life, she could unlock her phone and access the internet the second she felt bored, after all. She'd napped a lot, paced her cell and gave herself anxiety imaging up new horrors Kabuto and Orochimaru could throw at her, and then finally she adjusted. Now, she was perfectly fine lying in one position for hours on end with nothing to entertain her but her own mind.

"I can't sleep if you're awake, yeah," Deidara said accusingly.

Tori frowned at the inside of her blanket cocoon. How could he sleep through Sasori being the most annoying roommate ever, but her lying perfectly still and quiet was distracting?

"I am upset and stressed," she answered.

"So?" Deidara asked, and Tori wanted to scream.

Instead, she rolled over and flipped the pillow over her head, like she was blocking out all noise Sasori was making. Maybe Deidara could tell she was on-edge and that was keeping him up. She sniffled and hiccupped a few times, like she was poorly hiding her tears from them. That's what they expected, wasn't it? That's what everyone expected of her.

Deidara muttered something that was probably insulting, and then nothing was said for hours and hours.

Tori willed herself into relaxing by trying to recall the entire and convoluted plot of Game of Thrones. After a few hours of entertaining herself, she remembered she'd never know how the series ended, made herself sad, and transitioned into her favorite hobby of over-thinking everything.

What if Kusa didn't intervene and let Sasori go? What if they just decided to run reconnaissance and not confront him? What if the three of them crossed the border into Rain before Kusa got the message?

She still liked this plan better than messing with the spiders, she decided. The variables in this one were less likely to literally blow up in her face.

At that moment, as if to prove her wrong, the window exploded. Deidara was on his feet with his poaches of clay strapped around his waist before Tori even registered what was happening. Cold hands gripped her, yanking her up from her bed.

Her blankets were on fire. Huh. She watched them fall from her as the thing pulled her up.

The thing holding her was a puppet. Its jaw clicked in her ear, and it retreated to where Deidara and Sasori– who'd left Hiruko abandoned in the corner– were standing back to back in the middle of the room.

"Three in the hall and two on the roof–" Deidara announced, glaring at the door. His spiders paraded across the sill. "Can I just blow up the building?"

"Six in the yard," Sasori reported back, facing down the hole in the wall where Deidara's spider had decimated the window. "ANBU masks confirmed. And no, you can't just blow up a building–"

Whoever was on the other side of the door seemed to disagree– or at least decide that triggering a trap was better than waiting for the Akatuski to make their move, because then the door exploded as well. Deidara cackled with glee even as a clay bird appeared to take the brunt of the force.

Tori found herself dropped onto her backside between the two of them, as Sasori moved the puppet that was holding her with a flick of his finger. The thing jittered and went flying at a shinobi that, as far as Tori could tell, had just appeared from the shadows in the corner like a goddamn ghost.

Or– to be fair– like a goddamn ninja.

The shinobi was dressed in all black with a blazing white mask. Tori watched the puppet slash at the ninja from between her fingers, like a kid watching a horror film. The shinobi staggered back from the puppet, then did a series of hand seals that made the floor swallow up the puppet and smash it to bits. The shinobi took two steps toward her and collapsed.

Poison? Injuries she hadn't noticed?

She had no idea. Next to the body, her blankets were smoldering. Her bag was knocked on its side, relatively undamaged and flame-free.

There was a hole in the ceiling now, and Sasori was yelling at Deidara as he leapt through it, and there was metal clanking alarming close to Tori's ear, and it occurred to her that she had given Kusa the location of a notorious missing-nin to take out with absolutely no reason to ensure she lived as well.

Sasori, theoretically, wanted to keep her alive to deliver her to Pein, which was presumably why she hadn't been impaled by a stray kunai yet. That was the catch-22 of this world, wasn't it? If you were important enough to keep alive, you were important enough to kidnap and use.

"Brat, blowing up a hotel isn't art," Sasori was yelling up at the hole in the ceiling, even as puppets shot fire and senbon at people. "I need spare parts left over– DEIDARA–"

On one hand, Sasori was moving further away from where she was squatting in the middle of the hotel room with her arms over her head. If she followed him, he'd probably intervene in her dying in the crossfire.

On the other hand, the Kusa-nin didn't specifically want her dead, and based on the general roar of screaming form the building, the other civilians bystanders were mostly still alive and kicking.

Tori took a deep breath. She shot forward, going directly from her squat into a clumsy dive for her backpack. Scooping it up, she hopped the smouldering remains of the door and ran like hell down the hall.

People were wandering around, confused and terrified. Tori ignored them, dodging around bodies and clutching her backpack to her chest and following the signs for the back exit. She burst out of the hotel, and then–

"HEY!" Deidara yelled, landing directly in front of her. "What did you do?"

Tori actually screamed then, in some mix of shock and anger and fear.

Another puppet appeared, wrapping two sets of arms around her in a bear hug from behind, forcing her to drop her backpack.

"Why are there so many?" Sasori asked, appearing at Tori's shoulder. "This isn't a normal team."

Sasori had crawled back into Hiruko at some point while she'd been distracted, and even with half the face covered, he gave off the impression of being livid.

Tori kicked at the puppet holding her a bit, to no avail. Sasori didn't even look back at her as he batted projectiles out of the air.

"Annoying," Sasori said, then slowly started wading across the hotel's yard to the treeline the projectiles were coming form.

Deidara sort of glanced at Tori and said vaguely, "Eh, you'll be fine, yeah," and jogged after Sasori to leave her standing around, restrained by a puppet and undefended.

"HEY!" Tori yelled after him. "Hey, come back here!"

She fumed and kicked some more at the puppet as she watched Hiruko start pulling men out of the trees like apples. Deidara whooped and summoned another bird; a Kusa-nin using some sort of air jutsu propelled himself into the sky after him.

Tori actually felt sort of bad for the Kusa-nin. It was really obvious Kusa was putting a lot of effort into this– they'd sent this many shinobi, after all– and it wasn't doing them much good. Deidara and Sasori had both taken damage, sure, but it was almost sad how many men in ANBU masks they'd mowed down.

Then, Deidara yelled, "Oh, fuck, Danna–"

Later, Tori would learn what happened was this: in a last-ditch effort, two of the remaining Kusa-nin had compressed all their chakra and then released it all at once, in what was colloquially known as a "suicide jutsu."

What she experienced in the moment was a shockwave that flung her off her feet into the building wall behind her. The puppet shattered, the wall crumbled, and Tori's back exploded into so much pain she blacked out for a moment.

When she came to, she probably would have assumed Deidara had just done something massively stupid, had her brain been up to thinking enough to make assumptions. Sasori was out of Hiruko again, screaming insults at Deidara while they… fought some other dudes. Or each other? Unclear.

Tori moved gingerly. Something was very wrong with her back. Or shoulder? Also unclear.

Moving seemed like a bad idea. Not moving seemed like a worse idea. She rolled over onto her knees and fumbled around; her backpack had painkillers. Anesthetics. What was the difference? Didn't matter– they'd let her run.

It took her a few moments to find it in the rubble. The glass jar of her heart had finally broken, leaving weird heart-goo all over her things.

She'd have to mourn its loss later. She shoved the bits of glass and the heart itself aside, pulling out the now-cracked plastic case of pre-filled syringes. Only two of the syringes inside survived, which was fine. Tori flipped the plastic cap off the needle and stabbed it into her shoulder, right through her sleeve.

She chucked the needle aside and stood, pulling her bag onto her good shoulder. She could only see three Kusa-nin left, but Deidara and Sasori were slower than before. She turned and ran.

Tori refused to be grateful for anything Kabuto had put her through, but before his experiments she wouldn't have been able to run very far, even with the help of adrenaline, and she definitely wouldn't have been able to run at all with a fucked up arm. He'd taught her to keep moving even when she just wanted to lie down and cry.

She knew she couldn't get very far. She was no ninja, and she'd have to stop soon or collapse. She needed to figure out how to hide.

She skirted the edge of the village, ignoring the occasional civilian yelling about fire and running towards the hotel, and then heading into the forest. She found a creek and walked upstream in ankle-deep freezing water. It was the type of thing someone in a movie would do, but she didn't know if it would help keep shinobi off her trail. She pretended it would.

Eventually the stream fed into a river, and she walked along the shallow parts until it became too muddy to continue.

She was too tired to run anymore. Hours had passed and the sun had come up and she didn't know how far she'd come. Her shoulder was starting to throb again.

She found a particularly thick patch of bamboo and managed to wedge herself into it, just like the little snake she'd found in a crevice in the bathhouse.

She fell asleep, and then woke to rain.

Her shoulder hurt so much she almost couldn't stand it. Her skin was oddly tender in several places– apparently she hadn't escaped burns from the explosions. She found rips in her clothes she didn't remember. Her feet ached.

She pulled up her hood and made herself walk.

She trudged along the river bank in a daze, indulging in vivid fantasies of laying down in the soft grass and napping for seven years. Imaging all the running from missing-nin she could do well-rested!

There was a town on the other side of the river. That was nice.

She came to a bridge. She slowly walked across it, absent-mindedly fantasizing about the hospital bed she could maybe find and then take a nap in.

At the end of a bridge was a small building and a gate. A toll?

She approached the building.

It was a border checkpoint into the Land of Rain.

All good things must come to an end, she supposed.

The man inside had asked her a bunch of questions which she may or may not have answered, she couldn't remember. He let her sit down and gave her a juice box.

The man was writing a note. He rolled it up and gave it to a falcon. He looked at her and sighed. He went away and came back with a box of cookies and a paper plate.

"You're calling them in, then?" she asked, swinging her feet from the chair.

"What?" The man said. He poured the cookies on the plate and set them down on the chair next to her.

"You know, my escort." Tori took a cookie. Why was he being so nice?

"Your escort?" The man seemed sincerely puzzled, scratching his temple under this Ame headband.

Tori bit into a cookie. "Oh my god," she said. "You don't know who I am."

The man blinked at her. "Er… should I? No one mentioned anything about–"

No wonder he was being so nice. This man was only seeing a small, injured girl who'd wandered across the bridge in a confused haze. He was taking pity on her and, unfortunately for him, that was something Tori could use.

Tori sighed dramatically and dropped the half-eaten cookie back onto the plate.

"You mean word hasn't reached yet?" she asked, trying to make her accent sound as over-the-top entitled as she could.

"Word?" the man was shifting nervously. "My supervisor said–"

"My father," Tori drawled, "the inventor of cup noodles, is on a very important business trip in the Land of Wind, and I am to join him post haste."

Apparently her interpretation of entitlement was Gretchen Wieners-meets-Draco Malfoy. Well. It's not like anyone here knew who any of those characters were for comparison.

The man was starting to look concerned. "The inventor of cup noodles?"

" Yes , pay attention," she sighed, exasperated. "I am a very important person." She gave a flourish of her hand and flipped her hair, which was disgustingly frizzy from the rain.

"But… why are you…"

"I was attacked, obviously ," she screamed with such over-the-top-energy she pushed herself to her feet. Her shoulder throbbed. She gripped it dramatically. "My party was ambushed by a team of vagabonds and my shinobi escorts were all murdered."

She rolled her eyes, as if the entire concept of death was ridiculous.

"Honestly, Kusa chuunin are simply not up to standards anymore. Now, Kumo ninja, those are some fine…"

She started babbling. And pacing. And gesturing with her good hand. She was losing control of this situation.

The man was becoming visibly upset.

"But that's horrible! You poor girl, how did you survive?"

She stuck her nose up vainly. "You think simple thugs could kill the daughter of the inventor of cup noodles?"

"No! Obviously not!"

"Obviously. Now," she sniffed, " where is my escort?"

The man suddenly looked very sad. "I'm sorry, Miss Cup Noodle, but Rain has closed borders. You need resident papers or special written permission from the Amegakure leader to enter. I'll write my supervisor–"

Tori rolled her not just her eyes, but her entire head. " Ob-vi-ous-ly ," she stressed, "I have written permission. My father, the inventor of cup noodles, arranged it so I could peacefully pass through your silly little country months ago."

"Then– the papers–"

"I think I just said that I was ROBBED?" she interrupted shrilly. "They took e-ver-y- thing, obviously."

"Ah, of course, obviously," the man said, nodding profusely. "I completely understand. I'll send another note to my supervisor and then–"

"Ugh, don't bother," she said, rolling her eyes again and picking up her bag. "I don't have the time or patience for this. I'll go into town and hire my own escort."

"But–"

She headed for the door.

"You can't–"

She flung the door open.

"Miss Cup Noodle, please!"

She let the door bang shut behind her. The man made no attempt to stop or follow her, instead diving back toward the note he'd been writing earlier.

His supervisor would not be pleased.

She found a clinic in town, and as soon as she walked in an exasperated nurse was pushing forms into her hands and asking her questions about her injuries.

She wrote her name down as Noodle Cup (age 17, from the Land of Lightning) and easily lied her way through how she'd dislocated her shoulder.

The clinic had no overnight services, so after resetting her shoulder, putting her arm in a sling, and bandaging the worst of her burns, the nurse shoved a few pieces of medicine into her arms and sent her back onto the street.

The rush Tori had gotten from lying to the border guard had faded and she was so tired she sat down right on the curb outside the clinic. She wearily transferred her new medical supplies (a box of painkillers, some ointment for the burns, gauze and medical tape) into her backpack and simply stared into space for a while.

Eventually the clinic closed and the nurse came out and scolded her. Tori trudged down the street, found a park with a single tree, and laid down in the dewy grass under it.

Some time later, in a half-asleep daze, she heard a familiar voice say, "Is this for real?"

She blearily opened her eyes. Something blue was in her face. She blinked her eyes a few times to clear them.

Hoshigaki Kisame was leaning over her.

"Aw man," she said, rolling over onto her side, away from him. Maybe if she went back to sleep he'd go away.

Something foot-like poked her back.

"I take it you recognize us, Tori-san?" Kisame asked, sounding amused as always.

Us? "Is fucking Itachi with you?"

Kisame laughed, and then his strong hand was wrapped around her good arm, pulling her up to her feet.

"Yes, fucking Itachi is here," Kisame said good naturedly.

Itachi stared down at her, looking completely apathetic.

"Please kill me quickly," she said to Kisame. He raised his eyebrows slightly.

"Ah, no, Tori-san," Kisame said. "We're not here to kill you. Leader-sama wants to meet you first." Kisame paused, and then his grin took on a sort of mean quality. "Then he'll probably decide to kill you."

Tori felt her legs go out. Kisame and Itachi, being super fast ninja with lightning-like reflexes, could have easily caught her. They didn't.

"You're not going to make me walk, are you?" she said, staring into the sky. "Because I'd rather you just drag me along behind you while I enjoy my last few moments in peace."

Neither Kisame nor Itachi said anything, but then a hand wrapped around her ankle and started dragging her across the grass.

"Hey," Tori yelped, craning her neck to see what was going on. Kisame's blue hand was pulling her along behind him. Out of the corner of her eye, Itachi bent and picked up her bag. "Hey!" she repeated and kicked Kisame's forearm.

Mistake. The shift in her weight dug her bad shoulder into the ground, and she saw black spots. An embarrassing sound of pain escaped her throat.

"Kisame," Itachi murmured. His feet were her next to her face, and her bag dangled form his hand.

"It was her idea," Kisame replied, and stubbornly kept dragging her along.

Tori relaxed her neck. Being hauled along did, technically, hurt a bit, especially as her dress rolled up and her bare skin dragged along the ground. But the ground was mostly mud, so it was sort of like the world's most unfun slip-n-slide.

"This is very immature," Itachi said after a while, and it was unclear if he was addressing Kisame or Tori.

Tori crossed her arms over her chest, glaring up at the overcast sky above. She was so done with ninja, and she didn't care if it was over dramatic or immature to refuse to walk. She didn't care if she messed up her shoulder again, or if she cut up her back on rock and underbrush. If it inconvenienced ninja even the slightest, then good. Good!

They left the town, and the muddy road was dark as it crept through lush trees. At her level Tori could see all sorts of mosses and ferns, dense between the trees. The sky above was a solid, angry grey, and she heard the rumble of thunder twice before it actually started raining.

The rain, hitting her mouth and eyes relentlessly, did tempt her to agree to walk like a normal human. But the hood of her coat was definitely filled with mud by now, so instead she flung her arm over her face dramatically.

She gave up when the road turned from mud to cobblestone.

"Hey," she croaked, tapping Kisame's wrist with her free foot. "Hey, my beauty sleep is over now. I can walk."

"It's what you wanted," Kisame called back at her and made no move to let her go. "It's not my fault you didn't think this through."

Tori almost asked, Why are you being so mean? As if accusing Kisame of being mean would convince him to stop.

The one good thing about being dragged through mud was that she was now so thoroughly covered it formed a thin layer between her and the cobblestones. A layer that was being slowly shaved away, and her bare skin was next in line to be shaved.

"You're being awfully rude," Tori decided on, and that got Kisame to turn his head at look at her. "Worst kidnapping ever. Three out of ten."

Kisame raised his eyebrows. "What did we get points for?"

"Well," Tori said, blinking water out of her eyes to meet his gaze. "Itachi was nice enough to carry my bag."

Kisame stopped walking. In her peripheral vision, Tori could see Itachi pause as well. "How did you rank the artist duo?"

Tori had absolutely no idea what Kisame's relationship with Deidara and Sasori was like, so she couldn't guess an answer that he'd want to hear. She did know he hated liars, though, so she went with the truth.

"Eight out of ten," she said. "They gave me food."

Kisame burst into laughter and dropped her leg. Tori rolled, stood, and staggered several paces to the left as blood rushed to her head. Her limbs were stiff and felt light as she stretched.

Now that she was upright, she could see the walls of Amegakure in the distance. Tall buildings with neon lights poked out from behind it, all silhouetted by dark clouds.

"If you're done," Itachi said, sounding entirely unimpressed with both of them. In person he gave off the air of someone who was too tired for feelings, and he probably would not have been intimidating at all if something if the back of Tori's mind wasn't going, Holy crap, it's fucking Uchiha Itachi.

Kisame clapped her on the back, nearly knocking her over again and making pain shoot through her shoulder, and said, "Let's go, Tori-san."

Kisame, in contrast, was intimidating even without prior knowledge of his criminal record. He was big, and broad, and he had a giant sword on his back. Plus he was a light shade of blue, which was… not even that weird in the grand scheme of genetic anomalies in this world, now that she thought about it.

They waltzed right into Ame, then through the town center, and not one person gave them a second glance. Ame had a lot of covered walkways between buildings, and the roads were lined with deep gutters that rushed with water.

"Does it always rain this hard?" Tori asked.

"Hmm," Kisame answered, which was the sort of answer she'd gotten in Oto when she asked for information above her clearance. She knew the rain had to do with a jutsu, but how could amount of rainfall be too sensitive to tell her?

While the center of Ame was teaming with people, the outskirts had plenty of what were clearly abandoned buildings. There were no people on the streets, which were left quiet and dark. The shops that lined the streets weren't just closed, but nonexistent, with window after window opening into empty rooms filled with dust. There was a story here, and probably a sad one, and Tori didn't have much headspace to ponder it because she was still hung up on the stupid rain.

The building they led her into was a lone beacon of light in the dark neighborhood. The first floor was very clearly a lobby– unmanned desk with potted fake plants and all– and Tori's mind completely short circuited. She didn't know what she had expected from the Akatsuki hideout, but it wasn't a lobby. The front desk had a shiny marble top and the opposite wall was lined with mirrors and there was a floor directory posted next to the stairs and a chandelier. It was a modern one– a nest of brass arms ending in light bulbs– and half the bulbs were out, but it was still a chandelier.

"You didn't look up very much," Kisame said, sounding disappointed.

"What?" Tori asked, trying to mesh "secret rainfall statistics" with "chandelier."

"Ame has the three tallest buildings on the continent," Itachi said dully. "Usually visitors find them quite impressive."

Tori stared at him. Why the hell was it okay to tell her records for building heights but not weather patterns? Ame's buildings weren't even that impressive; she'd seen Manhattan. Even her mid-sized hometown had a more impressive downtown.

"Where are you from?" Itachi asked, and Tori supposed his actual question was, "What's your background that made you not even notice the skyscrapers, which are a rarity in this universe?"

"Uh…" Tori started, and abruptly realized she did not know the name of a single town that wasn't a hidden village. "Hot Water Country?" she tried.

"You don't sound so sure about that," Kisame said, his polite-but-mean grin back on his face.

"I am definitely from Hot Water Country," Tori said as convincingly as possible.

Itachi didn't even really do facial expressions, but even he managed to look incredulous.

Luckily, Tori was saving from continuing her incredibly awkward lie by someone bounding down the stairs into the the lobby. Unluckily, that person was Hidan.

"Yo," he greeted, casually twirling his scythe in a way that definitely endangered the fake potted plants. "Why the fuck did we get called back in?"

Tori dove behind Itachi.

"We're to discuss what to do with Sasori and Deidara's discovery," Itachi answered blandly.

"Yeah, and what's that?" Hidan asked. "This girl?"

He took a step to side to get a look at Tori. Tori took a step to the side to keep Itachi between them. Hidan looked at spot behind both her and Itachi, and Tori glanced over to find he was staring at her reflection in a mirror.

Their reflections made eye-contact. Hidan's eyebrows furrowed. His lips parted slightly. Tori could almost see the gears working in his head. She watched the exact moment he face turned to inhuman rage.

"CHOCOLATE SYRUP!" Hidan screamed and lunged at her, scythe swinging. Kisame hitched Samehada off his shoulder and blocked the scythe.

"HOW FUCKING DARE YOU," Hidan was screaming at Tori as she cowered behind Itachi. "YOU FUCKING HEATHEN, YOU BLASPHEMOUS BITCH!"

Itachi didn't even blink.

"You've met before?" Kisame asked pleasantly. Hidan answered with a string of obscenities that didn't even make sense.

"What are you DOING?" Kakuzu hollered from the stairs. "Can't you be quiet for one–"

"The bitch came back," Hidan yelled, pressing down harder with his scythe. "Kisame, you're blocking my divine duty to eviscerate her–"

"Oh, her," Kakuzu said, appearing behind Hidan. He stared at Tori, dark and menacing and surprisingly tense, and briefly she was terrified he was about to attack her too. Then Kakuzu's weird eyes over to Itachi, who was standing there calmly and scratching his forearm.

Kakuzu sighed deeply and wrestled Hidan into a headlock.

"You pile of FUCK," Hidan bellowed and aimed a kick at Kisame, and it was unclear who he was yelling at.

"Shall we?" Itachi said dully, inclining his head at Tori.

He headed for the stairs, still holding her bag in one hand. Tori did not want to go wherever he was taking her– be it to a dungeon or to Pein or to a literal guillotine– but Itachi seemed like a safer bet than whatever fistfight was happening in front of her.

She scuttled after him, not even giving Hidan a second glance.

Notes:

Tori: why do you have a lobby

Itachi: lots of buildings have lobbies

Tori: ?

(If you're curious about the fairy tale Tori refers to at the beginning of the story, you can read a short version of it here.)

Chapter 8: fake it 'til you make it

Summary:

In which Tori fails to predict almost everything that happens, and we meet the rest of the Akatsuki.

Notes:

This chapter was incredibly frustrating to write, but at some point you just have to scream GOOD ENOUGH and post it to move on. As a wise man once said: when in doubt, yeet it out.

A NOTE: One of my rules for writing this is that Tori's not allowed to know anything about canon that I don't know off the top of my head. So, there's a part where she gets canon a bit wrong. This is on purpose, and not a mistake you need to tell me about. :P

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Tori followed up Itachi up the stairs, and as soon as she stepped into the corridor at the top, there was an awful crash from below that could be nothing but the chandelier hitting the floor.

Itachi's expression remained as apathetic as always.

He led her past several doors with frosted-glass windows that gave off the impression of being offices, emblazoned with metal plaques that listed the room number and a blank space where a person's name could be engraved.

Tori checked every plaque for a name. If any of the Akatsuki had regular offices with their names engraved on the door, she was going to lose her shit. That was the weirdest, funniest thing she'd ever thought of. A strangled half-giggle escaped her, and Itachi turned slightly toward her.

Tori schooled her face. Right, her imminent demise. She needed to focus on that.

It was hard to be afraid of Itachi when he had so far displayed no aggression. No threats, uninterested body language, a blank face. She wondered what he'd do if she just turned around and walked away. Based on what she knew of him, probably… something really terrible involving genjutsu. Yes, that seemed in character. She followed him obediently.

The door at the end of the hall was marked CONFERENCE ROOM A. They had a conference room. Worse, the "A" indicated the possibility of a conference room B. What did they even do in there? Give seminars on murder? Present powerpoints on pillaging?

If anyone tried to show her a powerpoint in the Akatsuki base, she was going to expire on the spot.

"You know," Tori said, because she said stupid things when she was nervous, "I was expecting a cave."

Itachi didn't grace that with a response as he opened the door. The meeting room wasn't the dim underground cave Tori had envisioned: the room was lit by dim mood lighting ringing the ceiling, and was dominated by a dramatic dark-wood table.

Pein sat very dramatically at the head of the table, his hands folded in front of him. His orange hair caught the soft light of the room and haloed him in bloody red. Konan sat at his right, and she looked up as they entered, her indigo hair swaying around her chin. They both watched them with reserved, ominous eyes.

Tori felt her knees go a little weak and her stomach did a backflip of nervousness. This was it, this was–

Suddenly, Deidara's finger was in her face. His entire arm was bandaged and a piece of gauze was stuck to his cheek.

"You've got some nerve, you fuck-hat," he said, teeth grinding together, possibly in all four mouths. "Who the fuck runs away to the country that's after them, yeah?"

Pein sighed deeply. "Deidara."

"No, really," Deidara kept going, his voice steadily rising in volume, "who the fuck tells border control they invented cup noodles, then goes around town telling people their name is Cup Noodles? You think a ninja village can't figure that out, yeah?"

" Deidara ."

Deidara huffed and sat down, kicking a chair as he passed. He took a seat next to Sasori, at the table in his own body, drumming his fingers against the glossy wood in an oddly human gesture.

"I said my father invented cup noodles," Tori mumbled.

Itachi gripped her forearm and steered her into the chair at the end of the table, opposite Pein. Her skirt, covered in mud and soaked by the rain, made a distressing squelching noise as she sat. Her muddy hair was unnaturally heavy around her face, and she suddenly became acutely aware that her sling what now filled with mud and water.

Itachi dropped her soggy backpack in front of Konan, who flipped it open. "There's a chemical smell," she observed.

"It's not caustic," Itachi replied.

"It's just heart goo," Tori supplied helpfully. Konan sent her a brief but sharp look like, Who said you could speak?

Tori clicked her jaw shut, suddenly feeling very small. The weak-kneed, stomach-churning feeling from before crept back into her.

Deidara waved in her direction and said, "You see? Everything she says is like that, yeah. I paraded her all over town and all I found out was that she doesn't know how money works and Oto is filled with sickos—"

"Can we start this properly?" Sasori interrupted, and Deidara pouted at him. "I have work to do." He shot Tori a look that made her want to hide under the table. "Repairs to make."

"Where's Kisame?" Konan asked, turning to Itachi. She'd removed all the notebooks from Tori's bag and piled them up neatly on the table in front of her.

As if to answer her question, Kakuzu kicked open the door and entered, Hidan's head swinging from his hand by his hair. A wad of fabric was shoved into his mouth. Kisame followed them in, Hidan's body over his shoulder.

"What is this?" Pein asked.

"The only way to have a productive meeting, apparently," Kakuzu answered and dumped Hidan's head on the table.

Kisame propped the body up in a corner, and Tori noted that one leg warmer was missing, and that it would be the same color as the cloth Hidan was currently trying to scream through. The veins in his neck were taught with anger.

Where is the blood coming from? Tori thought, mesmerized by it.

"It's Hidan's turn to take minutes," Konan was saying. Tori had not previously considered Akatsuki might behave in any way like a regular organization, but she guessed they had to keep track of themselves somehow.

"Why do we even bother–" Deidara started to say.

"It's necessary for organizational purposes," Konan said, her voice final. "Kakuzu, put his head back on."

How did Hidan even talk with his head detached, anyway? Tori wasn't exactly an expert on human anatomy, but she was pretty sure talking required lungs.

"I can take notes," Itachi volunteered.

"No, I want to do it," Deidara insisted, in the exact contrarian tone a child might use to say, No, me. "My handwriting is better, yeah."

"It is not," Sasori objected. "And you doodle."

An argument broke out, impressive in its childishness. Pein said nothing, even as Sasori grabbed Deidara's ponytail to stop him jumping across the the table. Instead, he stared Tori down, his grey-purple eyes intimidating even from this far away.

Tori kept her eyes on Hidan's head, trying to ignore the fact that she low-key wanted to vomit with nerves, and focused on contemplating how divine intervention in human physiology might work. Perversely, it made her miss Orochimaru, which somehow made her feel even worse. No, she wasn't going down that train of thought. She lifted her gaze and met Pein's eyes.

Pein hadn't yet blinked. That was an animated corpse, she remembered. He was just like Sasori– too still, unblinking, a little unnerving.

Under the table, Tori clenched her fists in her lap. This was a different game from Oto. No one was going to think she was cute because she knew some college level biology; no one was going to brush her off and ignore her if she broke down crying. The only way she was living through this was if she could convince them she had something they wanted, and that she needed to stay alive to give it to them.

"The girl can do it," Pein said. Everyone shut up.

Now that Tori had locked eyes with him, she wasn't going to look away until he did. She felt one eye twitch.

"You can read and write, can you not?" Pein asked.

"I can," Tori agreed. What the hell kind of game was he playing?

Konan sighed and slid a notebook with a pen tucked into it across the table. It was a completely normal composition book. Tori didn't know what exactly she had expected, but given Akatsuki kept meeting minutes, she thought the notebook would be more… evil, somehow.

Not that Orochimaru's notes had seemed particularly evil until you actually read the contents.

Itachi leaned over and flipped to a blank page for her. Some part of Tori was insulted by the gesture, but another part of her would kill to read the rest of that notebook. Those minutes had to be at least as interesting as Orochimaru's notes.

"Zetsu," Pein called, and Zetsu emerged up to his shoulders from the ceiling. Tori glanced up at him briefly while she dated the page.

Zetsu's presence was upsetting. Tori knew he was the source of all evil in the world (or... something), but right now he just looked like a pair of golden eyes peering out between a couple of fern fronds. She elected to ignore him. She had more immediate problems to worry about right now, like whatever type of half-assed psychological torture "take notes on our meeting on whether or not to murder you" was supposed to be.

"We called you all back to discuss Orochimaru," Konan started. "Sasori and Deidara located a base and confirmed rumors of his death."

Tori glanced up, even as she wrote Orochimaru's death and started a bulleted list under it. Should she say something? She definitely wasn't going to say anything unless asked.

"We found a body, yeah," Deidara said. "Pity Danna wasn't the one to–"

"Start at the beginning, brat," Sasori interrupted.

Deidara leaned back in his chair and crossed his feet on the table while Sasori recounted summoning Kabuto to confirm rumors of upset in Oto, Kabuto's subsequent betrayal, and Tori running off into the woods. While that had happened, Deidara had scoped out the base and investigated that himself.

"It was a little further west of the fake village than we thought," Deidara said, and Tori wrote down the exact location he gave. "The base went to shit fast, yeah," he continued, eyes lit up like it was great entertainment. "The whole fucking lab was on fire, it was great–"

Tori paused writing briefly. Had she done that? She'd lit a fire in the middle of a lab full of chemicals and just left it unsupervised...

She went back to writing; it was oddly soothing to have something to do with her hands. Deidara had found Orochimaru's body, still in bed with a single stab wound through the shoulder. Burns around the wound and across the body indicated a lightning jutsu, the likely cause of death.

"And then I blew it all up, yeah," Deidara concluded, sounding extremely proud of himself. "It was all carved into a mountainside, so I think mostly I just collapsed it, but from the outside, you could see the whole cliffside cave in and rocks went everywhere and there was an avalanche –"

"And then you went after this girl?" Konan said, gesturing at Tori.

"Uh, yeah," Deidara said, frowning at being cut off. "Danna thought she'd have more information since Kabuto was dragging her around, yeah."

"You said she could see the future," Pein prompted.

Kisame leaned forward. "Wait, seriously?"

"Let's talk about that later," Konan interrupted, and Pein glanced at her briefly. "Did you not say you suspected Orochimaru wasn't dead?"

"Orochimaru had several theories on immortality," Sasori said blandly. "Even as my partner, he was very secretive, but I'm fairly confident he had provisions for the death of his body." Sasori's eyes darted in Tori's direction. "That's why I brought his lab tech."

Suddenly, everyone's focus was on Tori. Even Hidan had stopped trying to yell through his gag and was glaring at her half-heartedly. She paused in the middle of writing provisions in the event of death.

"She was pretty evasive about her rank in Oto," Sasori said, drumming his fingers on the table again. "But she showed enough insight into Orochimaru's character that she most have worked one-on-one with him."

Are you FUCKING kidding me, Tori thought, nervously setting down her pen. She barely remembered what she'd even told Sasori. She licked her lips. "Um– yes, I did," she said.

"Then tell us," Pein said, and even though his voice was completely flat, Tori got the impression he was making fun of her. "How has Orochimaru avoided death? And don't stop writing," he added.

Sasori's eyes narrowed ever so slightly, as if he too thought their leader was poking fun of the situation.

Tori's mind scrambled to try and put together an answer that would make sense. "Um, Orochimaru spent a lot of time, um…"

Pein gave her a pointed look, and Tori picked up her pen to keep writing her own defense of her right to be here.

This was very mean.

"He spent a lot of time working on how to transfer chakra networks between bodies," Tori finished.

"You think he's in a new body," Konan said.

"Well," said Tori, "maybe."

"Maybe?" Konan repeated.

Tori sounded like a blabbering idiot. This was not going well.

"Are you familiar with his cursed seal technique?" Tori asked.

"A bit," Itachi said, "It's a method to enhance physical abilities."

He sounded incredibly unimpressed. It was possible Itachi just sounded like that when he talked, but Pein and Konan also seemed increasingly unimpressed with her. In fact, Tori could feel the room getting more and more bored with her with each passing second. Kisame was picking at a scab on his hand, and Deidara was examining his hair for dead ends.

Sasori was staring her down quite intently, as if her floundering was embarrassing him.

Should have thought of that before you kidnapped me, Tori thought.

"Orochimaru's cursed seal technique works by grafting his own chakra into the host," Tori said, taking a deep breath to steady her voice. "The chakra maintains itself by feeding off of, um… I think you call it nature chakra?"

Tori stood, leaning across the table and pointing at the pile of notebooks in front of Konan. "I have notes on it on one of the loose sheets of paper; it says something like 'exogenous chakra extraction'..."

Kimimaro had had a cursed seal, and since she had been working with his genetic material, there had been some concern the cursed seal could interfere with genetic manipulation. Sometime before she'd gotten there, Orochimaru had figured out a way to decouple his own chakra and Juugo's… enzymes or whatever else was in the seal… from the source tissue. Tori had never had to do anything with it herself, but at some point she'd been pointed to the protocol he scribbled down. She'd pulled those pages to take with her when she'd run.

Konan stared at her. She had a very intense stare, with her hooded, golden eyes, and Tori felt vaguely like she was reading in her mind.

Well, there was no way Tori could make Konan do what she wanted, so she just kept talking.

"Anyway, it wouldn't be too difficult for a dedicated shinobi to pull Orochimaru's chakra from a cursed seal and revive him."

Tori sat back down. Konan's gaze glided down to the notebook she'd indicated, and very slowly, she started leafing through it.

"How many people have the seal?" Itachi asked.

"Not many; the survival rate was really low," Tori said. Surely Itachi knew Sasuke had one. Maybe he was worried he'd be a target? "In the future I saw, Kabuto used Mitarashi Anko to revive him."

"I'll find them," Zetu rasped from the ceiling. Then in a decidedly scarier voice he added, " We'll hunt down every last delicious morsel. "

Itachi continued to look uninterested, despite Zetsu threatening to literally eat his brother.

"Right," Kisame chimed in, grinning meanly at Tori. "You saw the future. You're really sticking with that story."

Tori scowled. "Yes," she snapped.

"We'll come back to that," Konan said. "Sasori, Deidara, how did she get away from you?"

Deidara dropped the strand of hair he'd been eyeing and slammed a fist down on the table. "By being an underhanded bitch– "

Through the gag, Hidan started screaming again.

"She's smarter than she looks," Sasori said, followed by an extremely succinct summary of events. Belatedly, Tori remembered she was meant to be taking minutes, and she grabbed her pen.

It occurred to Tori as Sasori told his story, that she'd only mentioned one S-rank missing-nin to the ladies who had helped her. Maybe if she'd mentioned Daidara, they would have sent more ANBU and she'd be free. Or maybe they would have considered it too much trouble and not sent anyone at all. Either way, she'd gotten a lot of people killed. Troubling.

"Why does Hidan hate her, though?" Kisame asked, ripping Tori out of her thoughts.

The question was clearly geared toward Kakuzu, who'd spent the whole meeting glowering at the opposite wall, his arms crossed over his chest.

"We've met," Kakuzu answered after a very long pause. "He summoned her."

"WHAT?" Deidara practically screamed at the same time Sasori said in a much more level tone, "How?"

Konan made a sharp noise of exasperation, leaned over the table, and ripped the gag out of Hidan's mouth.

"For FUCK's sake–" Hidan yelled.

"Hidan," Konan snapped, and he glared furiously at her but went silent. "Give a proper report," she commanded.

"Well, I didn't summon her on purpose," HIdan said. "I was summoning a shinigami–"

Deidara burst into laughter. Hidan gnashed his teeth at him and let out a few choice swears.

"Boy, did you miss the mark," Deidara jeered, wiping tears from his eyes. "A shinigami? Seriously?"

"She came out of a coffin full of blood," Hidan protested, which elicited for laughter from Deidara.

Kakuzu stood, circled around the table, and easy plucked squawking Deidara out of his chair and threw him across the room. Sasori, sitting right next to them, watched it happen with the vaguest interest.

"For what it's worth," Kakuzu said, as if he hadn't just committed an extreme act of violence, "She is from another world."

Deidara looked shaky as he picked himself up form the floor, but he didn't seem otherwise bothered. "Aw, are you defending poor Hidan's honor–" he started.

"Kakuzu," Konan said, cutting off Deidara. Her voice was very tight. "You found a girl from another world who could see the future and didn't say anything?"

He had also made a deal with their defected member Orochimaru when he definitely wasn't supposed to, Tori realized. That might be good blackmail. Or… it might make her a murder target. Extremely troubling.

"We didn't believe her," Kakuzu simply shrugged.

"It does seem far-fetched," Kisame drawled.

"This is off-topic," Pein said, and Konan raised her eyebrows at him. She'd been the one keeping the meeting on-task, but it seemed even she could get derailed by this insane place. Deidara staggered back into a chair, Kakuzu took his old one next to Sasori. "First, we deal with Orochimaru."

He reiterated that Zetsu was to find everyone with a cursed seal, and assigned Sasori and Deidara to hunt down Kabuto.

"Is there anyone else who could revive him?" Pein asked Tori.

She blinked up at him from her notes, which she was still taking, even if it felt like an overwhelmingly futile task.

"I can't think of anyone else with both the knowledge of motive," she said slowly. "There are other people who'd know how, but I don't think any of them are loyal enough to go to the trouble."

"Lower priority missions, then," Pein concluded and watched Tori write that down. It felt oddly like taking notes for a difficult class that had an extremely important test looming. "Now you can argue about what to do with the girl."

Hidan started yelling again, and Deidara joined in almost immediately. Tori shot Pein an affronted look, but he simply stared back, face blank. Right. He was the terrifying, big-bad of this group, and he was going to let a bunch of people who hated her decide her fate.

Tori had not played this well. She wanted to dig a hole in the ground and hide forever. Or maybe just burst into tears?

"Do any of you have any constructive comments?" Konan called over the din of Hidan bellowing that if Tori had crawled back to him, it was his divine right to send her back to Jashin.

"I believe her," Sasori stated. "If she convinced Orochimaru and Kabuto, then she really can see the future, or she's the world's greatest infiltration specialist."

He said this last part as if Tori simply being a good liar were nigh impossible.

"It is true that she'd be unlikely to survive Orochimaru without some sort of special ability," Itachi spoke up. "We should interrogate her for any more insight and then kill her."

What the FUCK? Tori thought. Itachi was supposed to be a pacifist! A nice guy! Another, more bitter part of her thought: Then make sure the interrogator learns all of his dirty secrets.

Unless the interrogator was Itachi. But, no– working on the premise that they believed her future vision, Obito and Zetsu wouldn't want him to learn their secrets either–

Oh, fuck, Obito. Where was he? Tori's brain wheeled.

Of course if they didn't believe her, she'd just go right to whoever normally did their interrogations, and they'd learn all sort of interesting things from her, which might be better for the world in general, but then she'd be tortured and maybe dead. Surely there was a way– Obito and Zetsu and Pein were all lying to each other and playing each other, but if she could convince one of them without pissing off the others, maybe she could–

It was a complicated, stupid mess with too many moving parts, and her mind swam trying to fit it all together. Around her she was only dimly aware of every member voicing opinions on how they should kill her. Except for Sasori, who wanted her as one of his living puppet sleeper agents. Thanks, Sasori.

"Tori," she heard Konan call. "You stopped writing."

Tori stared at her, mouth half open.

"Aw, don't you have anything to say?" Deidara asked, voice dripping with mock sympathy. "Surely a clairvoyant would be able to-–"

Tori couldn't hear the rest of his teasing through the sudden roar of blood rushing through her ears. She was going to die. She couldn't think of any lie good enough to make all of them want to keep her, and she was going to die for it. If only she had more time to think–

"I was just wondering," Tori said, her voice oddly calm even as she could hear her heart pounding in her ears, "if you're going to kill me– who's going to do it?"

The room went so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Then, in unison, both Hidan and Deidara yelled: "ME–"

"No," Sasori snarled, "I want her–"

"As a neutral party," Itachi started, and was cut off as Kakuzu leapt onto the table to intervene in Deidara chucking Hidan's screaming head across the room.

Feeling oddly like Eris tossing the golden apple, Tori picked up the notebook and pen as the table cracked beneath Kakuzu's fury. She scooted her chair back from the table as the whole thing collapsed. Both Kisame and Sasori were entering the fight now, as Hidan's head sailed across the room.

There. Now she had time.

She picked up her pen and finished up her notes, her mind racing.

"Stop," Pein finally commanded. His voice was pitched louder than normal and filled with authority, but he sounded almost resigned. Kakuzu got in two more punches before the fight stopped; even Itachi was holding a kunai. "Everyone out. Konan and I will handle this."

"This isn't fucking over, bitch!" Hidan screamed at her as he dangled from Kakuzu's hand. Kakuzu dragged his body out after him, and Deidara flipped her off as they left.

"This is our third table," Konan muttered, irritated.

Zetsu, conspicuously, did not leave his position in the ceiling. "I think our mutual acquaintance will be interested," he said when Pein shot him a look. By that, he could only mean Obito.

"Do you want me to take minutes on this too?" Tori asked.

"Let's keep it off the record," Konan said, arching an eyebrow at her.

"Okay," Tori said, and carefully closed the notebook in her lap.

There was a very long, awkward silence as Pein leaned back in his chair and studied her over the wreckage of the table. Tori spread the fingers of her good hand over the notebook, pressing down to stop her arm from shaking, and stared right back.

"You definitely shouldn't kill me," she said confidently.

"Why," he asked flatly.

"You're all going to die," she said.

"We're all going to die," Pein repeated, sounding bored with the notion and not at all like he believed her.

"Yes," Tori said, and then paused. That hadn't come out as smoothly as she'd meant. "Orochimaru didn't keep me around to tell fortunes about everyday events, and I can't see those anyway. The one common denominator in my visions that we found was, well, death."

Pein's expression was perfectly blank, but Konan furrowed her eyebrows into the tiniest, most unimpressed frown.

"Enlighten us, then," Pein asked, and yes, he sounded a bit like he was making fun of her. "Tell us one of your visions of death."

Tori took a few seconds to steal herself so she sounded rational and not at all hysterical or confused. It would be difficult to sell the future as something believable and not the slightly dumb plot of a shonen manga. "You get talked to death by Uzumaki Naruto" was definitely too far-fetched, and "You will be murdered by your friend Madara" could get her in trouble with Obito. But, a vision of murder was also a vision of death.

"You kill Jiraiya," she said evenly. "He's been monitoring Akatsuki on his spy network, and when he realizes you're the leader, he'll come to confront you."

"Why would he come alone?" Konan asked. "Not even Jiraiya is powerful enough to confront Akatsuki's leader by himself."

"I assume for sentimental reasons," Tori said, eyes flicking between the two of them. Truthfully, she didn't remember the details of that arc very well. "You were close once, weren't you?"

There was a long silence.

"I'm not convinced," Pein said. "Orochimaru could have told you this, a lie designed to play on feelings."

"If you're a true clairvoyant," Konan added, "why isn't Orochimaru still alive?"

"Circumstances made it so he died a bit prematurely," Tori said, licking her lips. "Circumstances are, um, easily influenced, if you know what I mean. Which is why you should definitely keep me alive."

That was it, that was her bid: a mix of ominous promises and a bit of a threat. They were going to die, and just having her tell them how wasn't enough to save them, plus the implication that maybe she'd had a hand in Orochimaru's death. Technically, not a lie.

Konan let out a soft little snort that was definitely laugh at Tori and not with her.

Of course, none of Tori's wild stories mattered if they didn't believe her.

"I'd like to talk to your mutual acquaintance," Tori said very quickly, before Konan decided to flick her fingers and kill her.

Pein tilted his head to the side ever so slightly. "And who do you think our mutual acquaintance is?"

Tori's eyes darted up to Zetsu.

"Uchiha Madara, of course," she said. "Your true leader."

"Ah," Zetsu made a tiny noise of interest. Konan's face was back to be being stoney and blank.

"I don't really like airing other people's dirty laundry in public," Tori said. "Which is why I didn't say anything in the meeting."

"You want to appeal to a higher power," Konan said, the corners of her mouth twitching into a smirk. "Because you know you already lost here."

Tori felt her stomach doing a weird sort of flip. "I–well–" she hedged. She been called out rather quickly. "Well, yes."

Konan turned away, leaning into Pein as they had a whispered conversation.

Tori did not know if she'd made a good move or not. She stared at her hand on the notebook. If she hadn't made a good move, she might as well be dead, and she still really wanted to read the other notes…

She opened the cover. The first page was dated a month ago, and contained such incredibly vague notes she didn't know what was going on. It took up half a page, and the next entry was a bunch of very messy, cramped notes written in paragraph form. Who the hell took notes in paragraph form?

The next page was a very detailed table of Akatsuki expenditures. Tori's eyes roamed over it. Kakuzu– and it must have been Kakuzu's– had surprisingly neat handwriting.

"Tori," Konan called, and Tori snapped the book shut and looked up guiltily. Pein was watching her like she'd finally done something interesting. Konan simply quirked an eyebrow and gestured at the lab notebooks that had been knocked off the table and scattered around the floor in the fight. "Tori, can you read these?" she asked.

"...Yes?" Tori asked. "I mean, yes," she repeated more confidently, "of course I can. It was my job."

"I think that should be reason enough," Konan said to Pein, who nodded.

"I'll inform Madara," Zetsu said, and sank into the ceiling.

"Tori," Pein said, standing. "Pick those up and follow me."

Tori had expected to be quizzed more– on things Pein already knew, to prove her ability, and then on her ominous promises of death and destruction. She had absolutely no idea what was happening, but she clumsily fumbled to gather the notebooks as quickly as possible with one arm in a sling. Behind her, Konan picked up her backpack, frowning at it minutely. Pein lead the both of them up another flight of stairs and into an office, and Tori didn't get a chance to see if his name was engraved on the door.

Tori dumped the notebooks onto the desk where he indicated, and then stood there awkwardly as he flipped open the meeting minutes and skimmed through them. Konan peered over his shoulder in an oddly intimate gesture.

"This is satisfactory," he concluded, and dropped the notebook on his desk.

"Thank you?" Tori asked, at a loss for what else to say.

"If anyone asks," Pein said, "you're our new secretary."

"With all due respect," Tori said, feeling emotionally like she'd just been hit by a truck, "What?"

"There are a lot of tasks around here that aren't really suited for shinobi," Konan said boredly. "I don't think anyone will complain if you pick up their slack. We were talking about hiring someone from the village anyway."

Tori thought of the disastrous first pages of that notebook. She guessed since none of them had much beyond a fifth grade education, it would be silly to assume any of them were great at more academic skills, like taking in large and potentially boring pieces of information and simultaneously summarizing them in writing, but still.

Still! What!

"We also might need someone who can interpret these," Pein said, picking up one of the lab notebooks. Behind him, Konan was shoving envelops and scrolls into a cardboard box. "And if we do take on a secretary… I think it fits with Akatsuki's image if she happens to also be from another world."

The tiniest shadow of a smile crossed his face. The Akatsuki's image was, of course, being an organization of otherworldly monsters. Right. Okay. So all Tori had to do was make sure Pein never figured out how painfully boring she was.

Tori was already internally screaming.

"So," Pein concluded, "you better come up with a convincing argument for our acquaintance."

Aaaah!

"I'll show you where you'll be staying," Konan said, pushing past her to the door with her box of random papers.

Tori glanced between her and the stack of notebooks on the desk. She really needed to reign in the sass, but also she'd dragged those across the country.

"Can I–" she started to ask, giving the notebooks a look of yearning.

"No," Konan answered flatly. "Follow me."

On the way out, Tori confirmed that Pein did not have his name printed on his office door. Thank god.

Tori followed Konan down into basement sublevel three, which was a dungeon. A literal dungeon, with prison cells that were even smaller than her cell in Oto, with chains hanging ominously. Inside each one was a narrow, metal shelf that was probably supposed to be a bed, and a small, seatless toilet. The doors, all currently hanging open, were solid metal sheets with a tiny barred window. Each one had a little slat at the bottom, that could be opened and closed and locked from the outside.

"We're not keeping anyone else here, so you can pick your cell," Konan said mildly, dropping her box and Tori's backpack on a table that was probably meant for some sort of guard.

"How kind," Tori said dryly.

"Hmm," Konan said vaguely. "I suppose you can work here," she said, waving at the table. There was a single stool behind it. "And there's a real bathroom and showers through there if you want." She gave Tori– who was still damp and covered in a mud– a critical look. "Maybe take care of that before you start working."

"Uh–" Tori said, feeling overwhelmed. "Working?"

"These are mission requests we've gotten this week," Konan said, placing a hand delicately on the box. "Read through them and summarize what they want and where they want it done. You have food, right?"

"Y-yes," Tori teetered out. "I'm sorry, did you say–"

"Good, I'll figure out who's in charge of feeding you later." And with that, Konan made to leave, but paused at the door. "Make sure you're done with those by morning," she commanded. "In cause our acquaintance decides to to kill you."

She pulled the door to the dungeon shut behind her, and Tori stood stupidly in the middle of the room for several minutes, trying to process what the hell had just happened.

Apparently whispering 'Uchiha Madara' was enough to make a girl his problem, and not Pein and Konan's. It was a pretty well-kept secret, she supposed, and not one they thought she could have picked up from Orochimaru. They probably trusted Obito to figure out if she really had future sight or not… Which. Fuck. This had escalated so terribly from pretending to a shinigami for Hidan.

Tori realized she was panicking– her pulse all weird and out of control, and her brain filling with unwanted fantasies about Obito killing her in various creative and terrible ways– and she went to find something to distract herself with.

First, she tried opening the dungeon door. It was locked. She wasn't sure she'd have the nerve to make a bid for freedom if it had been open. She certainly didn't have the nerve to try setting off another explosion with a poorly made blood seal.

Next, Tori picked up the first document in the box Konan had left her. It was a letter on light blue stationery, and it began:

To whom it may concern,

Having spoken in detail to Mr. Hoshimaki, your previous client whose payment and candor I'm sure you quite pleased with, and please let the reader note that we did this with THE UTMOST SECRECY, I have endeavored to contact the friends, or shall we say the 'dear friends,' of Mr. Hoshimaki, who spoke very highly of the services rendered, and who I should note is a very good friend of mine–

The entire first page went on like this. The second and third pages were about his sister's marriage to someone else who had once contracted the Akatsuki. The final paragraph was a request for the Akatsuki to contact the letter writer, making no mention of what they wanted– if anything– from the group. The entire letter was all of five very long sentences. No wonder no one wanted to read these.

Tori set the letter aside and picked up a scroll. It was written in code. She dropped it, grabbed her backpack, and went to check out the showers.

The showers were actually a tiled room with five faucet heads and absolutely no partition or curtain between them. A single knob by the door, which Tori guessed was meant to be operated by the guard, controlled all five. How wonderfully dehumanizing.

Having the entire room to herself, however, was actually nice. She paraded through all five stream of water, humming showtunes and scrubbing down all her cuts and burns and bruises, and combing an impressive amount of mud out of her hair.

She washed out her muddy clothes and sling next. Most of her extra pieces of clothing were filled with heart goo, and she washed those out too. She then dutifully applied the various ointments and bandages the clinic had given her and changed into the least goo-stained items at the bottom of her bag– clean underwear and a tunic-style shirt. She pulled her damp sling back on and spread her cleanish, wet clothes around the dungeon, hanging them over the doors and across the prison beds.

It seemed a bit counter-intuitive to let a prisoner read through Akatsuki's potential future missions, but Tori guessed they were reasonably confident she didn't have the means to do anything with the information. She carefully balanced herself to sit cross-legged on the stool, opened one of her squished ration bars, and started going through the letters.

Konan had left her a pen, a pile of index cards, and some paper clips to affix her summaries to each letter. Tori went through the first four requests before she decided on a uniform way to format her cards with the requester, the location, the requested objective, any missing information, and then extra information provided. A lot of requesters promised political favors, for example, and one guy offered "riches beyond your wildest dreams." Tori also had to leave a lot of notes along the lines of, "They were not very clear, but reading between the lines…"

As it turned out, a person only contacted the Akatsuki if they themselves were insane. Even the more coherent letters wanted things like "the utter destruction my friend Satoshi's cake delivery service" and "to exorcise a ghost."

There were also, of course, a lot of requests for murder. Just… so much murder.

There were two written in code that she set aside.

When Tori was done, she had absolutely no idea what time it was, but she felt a wave of exhaustion hit. She pulled her camping blanket, with its minor goo-stains, out of her bag, staggered into the closest cell, and then passed out on the bed.

"Good morning, Tori-chaaan!"

Tori pulled her camping blanket further over her head. Someone was being way too loud at whatever o'clock in the morning, and the light was on. Had she forgotten to turn it off? Whatever. The person was still being rude.

"RISE AND SHINE," the voice yelled with an infuriating amount of cheer, and then the blanket was ripped off.

"Fuck," Tori swore groggily, blinking furiously as she tried to figure out who had ruined her sleep, and who she now had to murder.

"Tori-chan!" a man in a swirling orange mask chirped. "Are you awake now?"

Oh, it was just Tobi. Tori let her eyes fall closed again and flopped back down onto her prison bed.

Wait.

Tobi!

Tori was on her feet in three seconds, every sense suddenly alert. Why would they do this to her first thing in the morning? Was it even morning? What was going on?

"Nice to meet you, Tori-chan!" the man cheered, even as she plastered her body against the wall furthest away from him. He jumped forward and threw his arms around her, bringing her into a tight hug. "Tobi is Tobi, a lowly underling of the fearsome Akatsuki!"

Tori let out something like a wheezing squeak. Maybe her soul was escaping her body.

What the FUCK.

"Is Tori-chan alright?" Tobi asked, stepping back and dipping his head innocently. "You look a bit peaked."

"I'm fine," Tori squeaked out, sounding exactly like a dying and very scared mouse.

"Good!" Tobi clapped his hands excitedly. "Konan-sama sent me to tell you to come up to the fifth floor in half an hour! Tobi will leave the door open!"

He danced away, leaving Tori to stare into space, wondering if she was suffering a fear-induced heart attack.

After a few minutes of focusing on not hyperventilating, Tori managed to pull herself together. Somewhat. Her hands still shook as she brushed her teeth and washed her face.

Her leggings were still damp in places, but she had nothing else and pulled them on under her tunic, hopping around as she struggled to do it one-handed. The tunic was long enough, and Tori short enough, that it worked okay as a dress, but she risked flashing her underwear if she had to bend over.

She had absolutely no idea what this day would bring, but she was going to pre-emptively squash any chance that any strange missing-nin might see her underwear.

Figuring that had taken about thirty minutes, Tori balanced the box of mission requests on one hip and headed upstairs. It was enough flights of stairs that when she got to the top, she was slightly winded.

The fifth floor was divided into two parts. To her right was a currently empty communal living room with a couch, a few scattered chairs, and a boxy TV right out of the 90s. Tori had completely forgotten the Naruto world had television. Huh.

To the left was a spacious kitchen, and a dining area where Konan and Itachi were sharing a pot of tea. Tobi was dancing around the stove, preparing what looked like scrambled eggs.

Right. Okay. That was… that was what they were doing today. Okay.

She stayed as far away from him as possible and slinked over to the long table Konan and Itachi were seated at.

"You wanted to see me?" she mumbled, glancing over at Tobi, who'd started to sing. What the hell sort of a game was this? Was she supposed to prove herself by ripping off his mask and going, I knew it! You are Uchiha Obito!

That seemed like a very bad idea. She'd play along with whatever this was instead. Mentally shaking herself, she dropped the box onto the table and plopped into a chair one over from Konan. She was still dead tired.

"You wanted to see me?" she asked.

"Tori, good morning," Konan said, pulling the box to herself.

"Good morning," Tori replied automatically. "And um, you too, Itachi."

He nodded and asked, as if the last time they'd seen each other he hadn't recommended torturing and killing her, "How's your back?"

It took a couple seconds to process that the question was not because prison cots where terrible, but because Itachi had watched in exasperation as Kisame had literally dragged her across the country. She did have quite a few cuts and a couple of nasty bruises back there, but…

"Not nearly as bad as it could have been," she said.

"I'm glad," Itachi said, sounding as if he didn't care at all.

Konan skimmed Tori's summary of a request and then the request itself. "A cake delivery service…?"

"Is it a code?" Tori asked, voice as tired as she felt. "Some of them were in code."

"I don't think so," Konan said, and then passed the letter to Itachi. "Anyway, I called you up to tell you your meeting has to wait until this evening."

Tori stared at her, looked over to make sure Tobi was still there, singing a nonsense song about a frog and spider as he added… raisins… to his eggs, and then turned back to stare at Konan.

"Really," she said, deadpan. "Is this the strings-you-along organization?"

"You're awfully impertinent for someone on probation," Konan said, picking up another of Tori's cards.

Tori pouted. The clock on the wall said it was just past 6:00 AM, which meant she really was up at fuck o'clock in the morning. She had no idea when she'd actually gone to bed, but there was absolutely no reason to be up this early, ever.

"I think this person just really dislikes cake," Itachi concluded, putting the letter down. "Can Kisame and I have this one?"

"I'll see what I can do," Konan answered, taking another sip of tea.

A few minutes later, Kisame wandered in and pulled a bag of coffee from a cupboard.

"Is Tori-san eating breakfast with us?" Kisame asked, looking genuinely confused. She guessed Akatsuki Breakfast Club was pretty exclusive.

Konan absentmindedly swirled her teacup as she picked out another request. "None of you wanted to take care of her, so I put Tobi in charge."

Tori put every ounce of effort into communicating Why would you do this to me? through her facial expression. If she just started hyperventilating at the table, they'd understand that, right?

"Tobi will make eggs for all!" Tobi announced, making a triumphant pose with his spatula.

Kisame shrugged and, as he measured water for the coffee, asked, "Do any of you want a cup?"

"Me," Tori said, sounding embarrassingly desperate. She really, really needed a nice cup of caffeine now, and she hadn't had any coffee since she'd been summoned to this world.

Kisame raised his eyebrows at her as he dumped water into the machine, but five minutes later Tori had a mug of hot coffee in her hands.

Normally, Tori took her coffee with a lot of milk and sugar, but it had been so long, and it smelled so nice… She suddenly felt herself completely overcome with emotions. No, Tori! Don't cry at the breakfast table!

"What is with you, yeah?" Deidara asked, and Tori yelped and spilled coffee all over the table. Konan pushed the box away just in time to save the documents inside.

Deidara had entered the kitchen and gotten his own cup of coffee, and Tori was unsure if he had just been ninja-stealthy or she'd been too caught up in her deep emotional bond with her coffee to notice.

"I haven't had coffee in a while," Tori said, grabbing a handful of napkins.

"Is this like the vegetables?" Deidara asked.

"DOES DEIDARA-SEMPAI WANT VEGETABLES?" Tobi called.

"And you!" Deidara snapped, whirling around. "What are you even doing here!"

"I'm making breakfast!"

"I can see that, idiot, but why are you doing it here–"

"Tobi is charged with watching Tori-chan–"

"Then do it in the dungeon where she belongs–"

The conversation ended with Deidara upturning his hot coffee over Tobi's head while Tobi screamed.

This… was the fearsome shadow leader of the Akatsuki? Tori stared into her coffee. Oh god, what had she gotten herself into?

"You said the tower was just for us," Deidara whined to Konan as Tobi very carefully plated his breakfast.

"You refused to watch her," Konan said. "So now she's here."

Deidara mumbled something incredibly rude about being fine watching Tori starve to death in a cell.

"I'd die of dehydration first," Tori corrected automatically, and Deidara stared at her like she'd grown a second head.

"Ta-da~!" Tobi cried, and slammed a tray down in front of Konan. Miso soup sloshed over the toast he'd carefully arranged in triangles around the plate of eggs.

"I'm eating upstairs," Konan announced, and left with her box.

"Konan-sama, your food…!" Tobi wailed balefully after her.

Since he was the secret real leader, Tori wondered, if Obito really wanted, could he command Konan to eat his weird breakfast…?

Deidara had made a fuss about Tobi's presence, but didn't miss a beat stealing the tray for himself. "Why are there raisins in this?" he asked.

The trays Tobi passed out held a plate of eggs and toast, a glass of orange juice, and a cup of soup. The pickles that usually came with Japanese meals ended up being in a neat little pile under the eggs. He also very proudly presented a disgusted Deidara with a plate of grilled celery. "Your vegetables, sempai!"

"These are some very interesting choices, Tobi," Kisame said diplomatically as Deidara picked up the celery and hurled it at Tobi.

Personally, Tori was just glad for food what had been heated up properly, and that had the texture food was supposed to have. Next to her, Itachi just sort of stared at his food and didn't touch it, presumably because Itachi also knew that Tobi was the evil masked man who'd helped him kill his family.

Tori was not sure how Itachi could sit there and not completely lose his mind as Obito broke a teacup in the process of washing it.

"So are they just hanging out here or what?" Deidara was asking.

"She's working support while they verify her claims," Kisame answered, already done with his food. "Didn't you listen to Konan?"

Deidara, as far as Tori could tell, had never listened to a single authority figure in his entire life. He continued to complain to Kisame about being promised privacy away from dumb underlings and the living conditions being the only real perk of this stupid organization.

Tori got the impression, from Deidara grousing about caves, that the communal living conditions were a recent development for the Akatsuki. That was interesting. She wondered what this building was originally for.

She must have been listening too intently, because Deidara cut himself off and snapped at her, "And what do you want?"

"Uh," Tori stuttered out. "Where's Hidan?"

"What, nervous about running into him again?" Deidara jeered. "You should be more wary of Danna; he's pissed at you–"

"Hidan and Kakuzu are on a mission," Itachi cut him off. Deidara glared furiously at him.

"Whatever," Deidara finally muttered, pushing his tray away from him and standing. "Kisame– sparring?"

Kisame gave him a one over. Deidara was covered in bandages and was obviously favoring one arm. "Aren't you grounded from fighting?"

"I'm allowed light taijustu, yeah," Deidara argued back.

Kisame shrugged and stood himself. On his way out of the kitchen, he clapped Tori on the back and said, "Congratulations on still being alive."

Tori clenched her jaw to prevent a hiss of pain. He'd patted her exactly on a giant bruise that he'd caused by dragging her around.

"Thanks," she said as Tobi leaned over her to gather their dirty dishes. His sleeve dragged through her soup.

Kisame and Deidara left, and Tobi fussed over washing things in the sink. Tori turned to Itachi and gave him a pained look which she hoped communicated: Please tell me how to not lose my mind with him acting like that.

Itachi stared blankly back at her.

Notes:

Orochimaru: An Ongoing Problem For Literally Everyone

There are some more loose ends people asked about that I wanted to cover in this chapter, but then it was 8k words and three months later. So hopefully... next chapter!

Chapter 9: TALK SHIT GET HIT

Summary:

The reader gets a bunch of establishing moments in character dynamics, the writer is dyslexic and deeply regrets Tori's name being so close to Tobi, and Tori suffers a series of unfortunate encounters.

Notes:

A minor warning for this chapter: Hidan says something vulgar to Tori that amounts to sexual harassment. It's not threatening, but given this fic hasn't had any similar language/innuendo, I don't want anyone to get a nasty surprise. :)

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Itachi favored watching his tea steep over paying attention to Tori, and so Tori abruptly found herself alone with her thoughts and Tobi's... singing… as he did her dishes…

Tori stood up. Neither Uchiha reacted. This whole place was very weird and if she thought about Tobi too much, she was going to have a screaming breakdown. So, she walked right through the kitchen, down the corridor, and into the communal living area.

She stood behind the couch, looking around and her and feeling a vague sort of naughtiness, like a child skipping school for the first time. After Oto's rigid policies, it felt rebellious to walk into an area no one had explicitly told her she was allowed to exist in. Nevermind that her current captors no doubt knew exactly where she was and what she was up to.

The couch and armchairs arranged around the TV did not match, but they looked plush and comfortable. There were chairs scattered around the room, some equipped with desks, and the walls were lined with shelves filled with board games and old fashioned VHS tapes and books. There was also a new-ish looking billiards table in one corner.

Tori sat gingerly on the couch. Nothing exploded, and no one came to threaten or murder her. The seat was soft. Wide windows along one wall showed off the bleak weather outside, rain trailing down the glass.

Did they play billiards with each other? Did they fight over the TV? Did anyone sit in that chair under the window and stare angstily into the gray distance? What the fuck.

The coffee table in front of her had one leg duct taped on, and suspicious claw marks across the top. This, at least, was more in line with what she expected.

She should take this moment of peace to plan, to let her mind run through the possible scenarios she might face. Would Obito want to test her abilities more once he got bored with being Tobi? If so, how would he do it? Could she lie through a genjutsu, through torture?

Someone had left a cooking magazine on the table. Tori stared at it. Who in this madhouse was reading that? She flipped through it. A recipe page had been torn out. Tori leafed back to the table of contents to figure out what the recipe had been for so she could figure out whose magazine this was if she ever saw someone making it, and she realized she was not going to make contingency plans, because her curiosity was going to kill her first.

Tori picked up the remote control from where it sat on the coffee table and turned on the TV. If she died today, she was going to die knowing what the hell ninja watched on television. She watched a couple of sketches on a variety show and did not understand a single political joke or pop culture reference in them. An ad for a peanut-based snack played.

Peanuts… also a new world food. Hmm.

There were only five channels to flip through, and she watched a few reports on minor flooding in Fire Country before settling on a historical drama. She left it on as background noise while she poked through the shelves.

There was a pile of board games that were covered in dust, so she assumed no one played those. There were also several shelves of VHS cassettes, including a variety of movies and an entire season of something called Hidden Village.

She had always just assumed the Akatsuki lived in a cave or something. What was all this?

There were also shelves and shelves of books, which were all fairly worn, and Tori wondered where they came from. Were there avid readers among the Akatsuki, or did someone just grab a bunch of things to stock their living area with? The books were arranged at random, with non-fiction bumping elbows with fantasy and nature guides sitting next to cheesy romance.

And then, sitting there so innocently, was a copy of Icha Icha Paradise.

Tori stared at it. As if her arm had a mind of its own, she picked it up. She shouldn't read porn in the Akatsuki base. That was one of the worst ideas she'd had all morning. She shouldn't read porn in the Akatsuki base.

Oh no, Tori thought as she went back to the couch with the book in her hands, I'm going to read porn in the Akatsuki base.

Icha Icha featured a fast-paced and entertainingly ridiculous story. The main character was traveling between islands in Southern Fire Country in hopes of finding some sort of family treasure his grandfather had hidden, only to be constantly distracted and lured off track by beautiful women, and then sabotaged and attacked by a group of incompetent male ninja. Tori reclined on the sofa as she read encounter after encounter with women of various cup sizes.

There was one recurring female character, a kunoichi also after the treasure. She spent most of her time thinking about how well her miniskirt showed off her ass as she seduced men and women alike, but when she wasn't having sex, there were definite flashes of the mind of an actual genius ninja at work. It was bizarrely compelling, as if Jiraiya were forgetting he was writing porn scenarios.

The porn, when it happened, and it happened often, was bad. It was occasionally bad to the point of being hilarious, but mostly it was just repetitive, and Tori fell asleep halfway through a description of glistening abdominals as the kunoichi seduced a man behind a waterfall.

She woke up to screaming and the smell of smoke.

"Help! HELP!" Tobi cried from the kitchen.

Tori did not want to move. Tobi didn't actually need help, because he wasn't actually an idiot, and it wasn't like he was going to let his own organization's base burn down for a joke. Unless he would?

Oh god, Tori thought, reflecting on Tobi's history as a giant troll, he might.

She rolled off the couch and staggered into the kitchen. Tobi had ignited the contents of a fryingpan and was currently filling a bucket with water from the sink. Itachi had left at some point, to do something that wasn't preventing a lunatic from burning down the kitchen.

"Tori-chan!" Tobi squeaked. "Tobi will fix his mistake!"

He lifted the bucket out of the sink and sloshed water down his front.

"No!" Tori yelped as she realized what he was doing. She darted forward, grabbed the lid from the metal trash can, and slammed it down over the flaming pan. She switched the burner off and gave Tobi a frazzled look.

"You have to smother a cooking fire," she said. "If there's oil in it, water will make the fire worse."

She said this slowly and clearly, like she was explaining it to a petulant child. This was it. She was leaning into the Tobi act. She was becoming part of the madness. Full-on, cultural immersion.

"Oh," Tobi said, and dropped the bucket into the sink. Water splashed over the counter. "Tobi was just trying to make lunch…"

"Tobi was trying to freak Tori out," Tori muttered, and removed the lid from the pan. The fire was successfully smothered, leaving behind some very charred lumps.

Tori watched as Tobi very sadly scrapped his ruined food into the trash can. Why was he doing this? Was he honestly just playing mind games with her? Was he waiting for some external force that Tori was unaware of? Was he trying to see what she would do if left alone?

(As it turned out, if left alone, Tori was just going to read erotica and take a nap.)

Well, if he was going to play this stupid game, she could play along with him.

"Do you need help making something else?" Tori asked, stepping forward to open a cabinet. It contained two bags of rice, a canned vegetable medley that was marked DEIDARA in marker, and an onion half that was sprouting. Fascinating.

"Tori-chan is so nice!" Tobi replied, ripping open another cabinet to display an array of spices and sauces. "What should we cook?"

"What do we have…?" Tori wondered, and crossed to open the fridge, which was very full and very disorganized.

"Kakuzu-sempai said there was a sale on chicken livers," Tobi offered.

There were, in fact, four packages of chicken livers sitting right in the middle of the fridge, the little organs all squished together under plastic. Hundreds of chickens had given their lives for this. They were all a few days past their expiration date, and Tori had very little interest in eating them.

"What about this?" she asked, pulling something wrapped in butcher paper. The sticker on it identified it as beef.

"That's Hidan-sempai's," Tobi said, and Hidan had indeed written his name on it.

"Well," Tori reasoned. "He's on a mission. If he wanted to save this, he would have frozen it. It's better we eat it now than waste resources."

Tobi bobbed his head and started unwrapping the meat on the counter. "Tori-chan is so thoughtful," he said.

Tori was so thoughtful that she picked out everything else Hidan had marked as his. There were also plenty of unlabeled items, so she assumed there was some sort of organized procurement of communal goods, but none of them seemed particularly appetizing. See: chicken livers.

"I like spicy food," Tori said, setting a can of chilli peppers and a bottle of hot sauce– both Hidan's– down next to where Tobi was chopping away.

"Could Tori-chan clean the pan, please?" Tobi asked, nodding to his pan of burnt residue.

"I'm sorry," Tori replied, leaning against the counter. "I've only got one working arm. Could you help me?"

"Ah, that makes sense," Tobi said, and set to work scrubbing the pan.

Tori one; Tobi zero.

Tori watched Tobi closely as he prepared their lunch. If he was going to play at being a sweet idiot, and she was going to play at being too helpless to assist him, that did not preclude the possibility of him setting something on fire again.

"Tori-chan said she likes spicy food, yes?" Tobi said, holding up a bottle of chilli powder.

"I–" Tori started to say, and then Tobi had dumped the entire container into the pan.

Welp.

Tori one; Tobi one.

Tori's supervision of Tobi's kitchen antics was interrupted some minutes later by Sasori walking in.

"There you are," he said, vaguely hostile, and Tori remembered Deidara commenting that he was upset with her. Oh boy. "Why aren't you downstairs? Who's just letting you wander around?"

"Tobi is watching her, Sasori-sempai!" Tobi said, bending over to look at Sasori instead of turning like a normal human being. "Like a hawk."

"...right," Sasori said, sounding incredulous but resigned to Tobi not being his problem. He set a metal canister down on the counter. It had a series of seals stuck to it, and Tori recognized them as temperature control. "This is yours."

Sasori made no move to elaborate, so Tori slowly pulled the canister toward her– it was cold to the touch– and pulled the latched and popped it open.

"My heart!" she cried. It barely fit in the canister– Sasori must have just used whatever was on him– and he'd transferred one of Orochimaru's stabilization seals to it. It was sitting in an inch or two of the blue-ish heart goo, beating sluggishly.

"I wanted to study the preservation method," Sasori said, "but it was too damaged."

Tori opened her mouth to apologize but, no, it was his own fault for kidnapping her in the first place. Instead she said, "What, so you just put it on hypothermia?"

Sasori twitched. That had come out a tad critical. Tori plastered her most demure smile across her face.

Sasori was… well, he didn't actually scare her, even though she knew he should. Without Hiruko, he was small and kind of pretty, and very young looking. Even with the no-blinking thing, he wasn't as ethereally terrifying as Orochimaru, or as physically intimidating as Kakuzu, or with the unpredictability of Obito's baffling motivations. Honestly, he felt relatively safe.

Get yourself together, Tori thought to herself, glancing over to note Tobi had emptied the entire bottle of hot sauce into whatever he was making. Her eyes stung as spice filled the air; Sasori still hadn't blinked. Sasori is definitely notsafe.

"Don't look at me like that," Sasori snapped. The demure little smile fell right off Tori's face.

"It's impressive you got it to last this long, anyway," Tori said, resealing the canister. "In my world, you'd have to like… stick it in someone, to keep it alive."

"It will die soon unless you do something," Sasori answered curtly. "Has Leader-sama decided what to you with you yet? I have a task for you."

"Uh…" Tori very consciously did not glance back over at Tobi. "It's… unclear…?"

"Hmm," Sasori said, clearly disapproving. "Usually he's quite decisive."

Decisiveness seemed like a trait someone as impatient as Sasori would value in a leader.

"Well, if you're still here in the morning," Sasori continued bluntly, "I want you to do something for me."

Tori had absolutely no idea what Sasori might want from her, and he turned to leave without further explanation.

"Wait," she called, "what am I supposed to do with this?" She gestured at her heart, which was due to expire soon.

"You're the scientist," Sasori snapped.

Tori bit her lip. She felt more like a lab monkey than a scientist. "Right," she said.

So far, Sasori had been the only person who seemed all that interested in keeping her around. Granted, his interests seemed to be in turning her into a brainwashed puppet, but it was still a step up from "sacrificed to the god of suffering." It wouldn't hurt to try and keep him at least vaguely on her side.

"Sorry I got a bunch of your puppets smashed," she said guiltily, despite not feeling the slightest bit of regret over it. "Deidara said you were upset."

Sasori snorted derisively. "I don't accept apologies," he said. "I accept actions."

Well, alright then!

"Snivelling is an ugly look on you," Sasori finished, and left Tori feeling incredibly called out. Maybe she should have told him to get over himself, because if she got his puppets smashed, it was his own damn fault?

This also seemed like a poor choice of words.

As Sasori glided out of the room, Tori reached around Tobi to turn the stove's fan on. The fumes from whatever absurdly spicy thing he was making were starting to make her cough.

Condesentation was forming on the canister, and Tori eyed it. She knew how to stabilize a spleen and keep the tissue from dying, but those seals wouldn't last much more than a week even if she did them perfectly, and she didn't know if any modifications would be needed for a heart. Consulting her notes might help, but she'd have to convince Konan or Pein to allow her access. Kakuzu had a heart collection, but there was no way she could ask him for a favor. Hey, Kakuzu, would you mind storing my heart in your funky tentacle body for a while?

"Tobi knows what you can do," Tobi said, sliding a plate of terrifyingly red curry in front of her. "Zetsu-sempai could definitely help!"

Tori did not want to talk to Zetsu, basically ever. She also did not want to show weakness in front Tobi and refuse to eat his death curry.

(Hadn't there been a filler episode like this? The 'curry or life' or something? Was filler canon in this world?)

"I think this would taste good with yogurt," Tori announced, retrieving a tub of plain yogurt from the fridge. It had a sticker on it indicating it was on sale because it expired on the day it had been bought, over a week ago.

Unlike chicken livers, Tori was reasonably confident she could identify that the yogurt was still good, even if it had separated a bit. She mixed it and added a few dollops to the side of her plate.

Tori hadn't been lying when she said she liked spicy food, but even with the yogurt to absorb some of the heat, the curry was… intense. She grabbed a handful of napkins as her nose began to run immediately. Tobi had swung his mask to the side to reveal his mouth, and was happily eating it without the aid of anything to absorb the oils.

Was he… okay…? His face wasn't even turning red.

The curry was pretty tasty, though, and Tori happily struggled through eating it even as her eyes teared up. Oto almost never had dairy, and certainly never had anything spicy, and she missed both flavors.

Ah, she was crying into her food again.

Deidara staggered into the room, looking worse for wear. His hair was matted with sweat, the bandage on his face had been ripped off to reveal an ugly gash underneath, and he'd gained a slight limp.

"Did Deidara-sempai lose his spar?" Tobi asked politely.

"Shut up," Deidara muttered, and immediately went for the pan of curry Tobi had left on the stove. "I'm taking some of this."

Tori watched in mild interest as Deidara spooned a large helping of curry into his mouth and then immediately spat it back out into the trash.

"Tobi, what the FUCK," Deidara yelled as he grabbed for a glass to fill with water from the sink.

"Tori-chan said she likes it spicy," Tobi chirped.

"Here," Tori said, nudging the yogurt tub toward Deidara, whose face was bright red. "Fatty things will absorb the capsaicin."

Deidara shot her an absolutely venomous look before chugging the entire cup of water.

"The second Leader-sama gives the okay to get rid of you," Deidara said, voice low and dangerous. "I am going to vaporize you, yeah."

Snivelling is an ugly look on you, Sasori had said, so instead of trying to mitigate the situation, Tori replied, "I'm pretty sure Hidan has dibs."

"We have to go see Zetsu-sempai now!" Tobi cried, sweeping Tori out of the way as Deidara hurled his glass at her. It shattered on the floor.

Tori let Tobi put the canister into her crook of her good arm and usher her out the door. That could have been her face breaking the glass.

Why did they always aim for the face?!

Zetsu, as it turned out, had a greenhouse on the roof. Rain beat against the glass, the sky permanently gray and dark. In contrast, the greenhouse bays were all well-lit, hot, and humid. Tobi pushed her through the rows and rows of greenery, babbling about Zetsu having "lots of spare bodies." The canister, nestled in the crook of Tori's arm, was uncomfortably cold through her shirt.

There wasn't a large diversity of plants. The first bay they passed through had a handful of carnivorous plants Tori would have liked to look at more closely, along with an assortment of various flowers and shrubs, including a large stand of what she was pretty sure was basil. The next three bays were just rows and rows of very young trees, all in their own individual pots.

They didn't find Zetsu so much as Tobi just yelled his name a few times, and Zetsu crawled out of the floor.

"Tobi," he greeted.

"Tori-chan needs your help," Tobi said very earnestly, and then both of them turned to her.

"I have… a heart," Tori said.

"Most humans do," Zetsu replied.

"I mean, I have an extra one," she said, shifting the canister in her arm. She wasn't sure what exactly Zetsu had to do with this– was he meant to eat it? She didn't want him to eat it. "It's my clone. Tobi thinks you can help me, um, keep it alive?"

She passed the canister over to Zetsu, who popped it open and peered inside.

"What is the value of this?" Black Zetsu asked, sounding annoyed.

"It's cool!" Tobi pronounced, waving his arms.

This, unfortunately, was approximately Tori's thoughts on the matter, along with some sort of nebulous but strong feeling about it being hers. However, she didn't think it was a very compelling reason for anyone else.

"It might give us insight into Orochimaru's research," she said. Everyone here seemed very keen on that, after all.

"Zetsu-sempai is making new bodies, right?" Tobi said, bending over one of the saplings.

"Do you have to grow the White Zetsus?" Tori asked without thinking, suddenly interested in the trees. She'd always just assumed he'd grown them from his body, or poofed them into existence like a regular ninja clone.

The trees were all three to four feet tall, with surprisingly thick trunks for their height, and leaves the same dark green as Zetsu's fronds. The bark was white, ribbed with light green. Photosynthetic bark?

"I can make my own," Zetsu said, sounding mildly offended. "These are just back-ups, in case I need one and I'm low on chakra."

Tobi chattered for a while about the joys of parenting, and Tori turned over a leaf with her hand. Was this thing really going to grow into a Zetsu? Were they really 'spares,' or was this part of him amassing an army, right underneath Pein's nose?

"I will never experience the human joy of childbirth," Zetsu stated, and Tori looked up at him because honestly, what the hell? "But maybe today I will learn what a heart beat feels like."

He snapped open his cloak to reveal his bare chest, pulled out Tori's heart, and pressed it into his white half. The flesh rippled and moved, absorbing the heart.

"Gross," Tobi observed.

"What!" Tori yelped.

"This doesn't feel like anything," Zetsu whined.

"It's not supposed to," Tori snapped. "Do you even have blood to– is that really going to keep it– what if I want it back?"

She stared at Zetsu's chest as he buttoned up his cloak again. This isn't what she'd had in mind at all!

"I will take good care of it," Zetsu promised. He twitched a few times and then his dark side added, "I don't understand Kakuzu's preoccupation with this. Your chakra is very boring."

"I'm from a world with no ninja," Tori countered shrilly. It was unclear to her if she should be upset by what had just happened or not, but she definitely felt confused and a little hysterical. "There's no evolutionary pressure for exciting chakra–"

"No ninja at all?" Tobi asked, peering down at her.

"No!" Tori answered, stepping away from him. "That's not the point."

"You promised me the human experience of heartburn," Zetsu said to Tobi.

"Heartburn doesn't occur in the heart," Tori corrected. She had absolutely no idea why Zetsu would want heartburn.

"That's right," Tobi said, snapping his fingers. "You need a stomach!"

Tori didn't know anything about Zetsu's anatomy, but it sounded very weird. "You eat people though," she said. "You must have a digestive system."

Zetsu shrugged. Tobi took Tori's hand in his and started pulling her toward the exit, thanking Zetsu for his hard work and promising to bring him a human stomach next time.

"But where does the food go, then?" Tori asked.

"It's very rude to ask people how they poop, Tori-chan," Tobi chided, and she shut her mouth. This entire conversation was completely inane and needed to go no further.

Despite both Zetsu and Tobi being incredibly worrying people, none of that had been at all hostile, and Tori felt more confused than frightened as she followed Tobi downstairs. The more time she spent with Tobi, the harder it was to be afraid of Obito.

A false sense of security was perhaps part of… whatever this was… but it made Tori brave enough to ask, "Tobi, who bought all those books in the living room?" Who purchased a copy of Jiraiya's porn?

"They were here already!" Tobi answered, swinging her hand in his as he led her back through the greenhouse.

"So someone else was using this building first?" Tori asked.

"Ah!" Tobi exclaimed as he yanked open the greenhouse door. "We didn't clean up!"

He didn't answer her question as he practically skipped down the stairs. Back in the kitchen, Tobi shoved a broom into Tori's hand. Sweeping with one hand was not very efficient, but she managed to at least push together into a neat pile all the glass Deidara had just left behind. Tobi sang while he did the dishes. It was a thing.

Tori was debating how to sweep the glass shards into the dustpan one-handedly when Hidan waltzed in and yanked open the fridge.

"Fuck yes, chicken livers," he announced, and tossed one of the packages onto the counter. Tori stood, frozen, while he ripped the plastic off and yelled something offensive but good-humored at Tobi. His cloak was still on, and mud lined its hem.

"Hidan-sempai is back early," Tobi observed.

"Eh, it was close by," Hidan said, throwing open a cabinet. "Where the fuck is my hot sauce?"

Tori continued to stand there, clutching the broom handle tightly, as Hidan pushed around bottles. He was between her and the exit, and there was no way he hadn't seen her.

Hidan let out a frustrated growl at the cabinet, then gestured at Tori and asked, "Who is this, anyway?"

Tori stared at him. Tobi stared at him.

"Are you kidding me?" Tori asked, and the same time Tobi said, "Ah, Kakuzu-sempai is right! Hidan-sempai is as dumb as rocks!"

Hidan glowered at Tobi, opened his mouth to undoubtedly yell at him, then paused.

"You!" he accused, pointing at Tori.

"What can't you recognize me!" Tori squawked back.

"I've never seen you clean before!" Hidan yelled back. "You've always been covered in shit."

"Also, he's dumb as rocks–" Tobi started, and then Hidan grabbed the front of his shirt, pulled him in, and kneed him in the stomach in one fluid movement. Tobi stumbled back, drew the back of his hand across his forehead like a fancy lady, and then collapsed.

There was a long silence.

"Fucking weirdo," Hidan muttered, stepping over Tobi's limp form as he stalked towards Tori.

Oh no, Tori thought.

Tori - one; Tobi - one gajillion.

"Well, well, well," Hidan said, leaning over Tori. She very consciously straightened her back and did not step back. "You'll be happy to know Leader-sama said I couldn't hurt you."

Tori didn't didn't say anything. Her grip on the broom tightened.

"What did you do?" Hidan asked, voice low and mean. "Suck his dick? Fondle his balls?"

The rational part of Tori's brain knew she should just shrug Hidan off, that she shouldn't rise to his goading. Instead, she felt a snap of rage that overpowered all rational thought.

"No," she said in her most innocent voice, widening her eyes and stepping back so she could look him in the face. "Why? Is that how you won Jashin's favor?"

In the quarter second it took for Hidan to process that, Tori managed to hold the broom up in defense before he lunged at her. It made absolutely no difference– the broom ended snapped in half and thrown aside as Hidan pushed her back towards the table and smashed her face into it, one hand on the back of her head to hold her there, her good arm twisted around behind her painfully.

"You're a cocky little bitch, Chibigami," Hidan growled. "I don't know what you did to fool Leader-sama and Konan, but I know you're just a liar."

He smashed her face into the table once, then twice more, and Tori's vision swam and blood poured down her face. Hidan drew her head back once more, wavered, and then without a word, dropped her.

Acting on autopilot, Tori hurled herself under the table. Hidan didn't follow or grab for her, so she cautiously rose to a squat and looked around. Hidan was collapsed on the floor. Tori crawled to the opposite side of the table and used a chair to pull herself up, her head making her feel woozy. Her face was very wet.

Itachi was at the kitchen counter, measuring a powder out into a teacup. Without looking up at her, he said, "Hiding under a table is not an efficient escape strategy."

Tori just blinked at him. Blood was dribbling down her chin, her nose stung, and her head was ringing in a way that wouldn't let her process whatever useless advice Itachi had just told her.

Feel very unsteady, Tori moved across the room with the goal of examining her face in the nearest reflective surface. She leaned on one chair and then its neighbor and then the wall.

"Are you alright?" Itachi asked, although he made no move to help her.

There were blood droplets in her eyelashes. She gave him an unimpressed look that clearly said, What do you think?

The corners of Itachi's mouth twitched upward ever so slightly. "Nevermind."

Tori made it to the counter and pulled the toaster to her to look at her face in the metal. She couldn't exactly make out fine details, but there was a worrying splotch of purple and red smeared down from the center of her face. It looked like one of her temples was bleeding as well.

"It least I still have a face this time," she muttered to herself, and Itachi looked over at her.

"Leader-sama will reprimand him," he said. Tori did not find this comforting. If Pein reprimanded her, she knew with absolutely certainty she would obey. She wasn't confident Hidan would, though.

"Did you save me?" she asked, and Itachi made a sound of affirmation in the back of his throat. "Thanks," she said.

Tobi made a loud groaning noise and sat up, stretching his arms above his head. Tori wanted to tell him off for letting Hidan beat her up like that, but her rattled brain could not put together words strong enough for it.

"Wah!" Tobi squeaked, crouching down to poke Hidan's side. "Itachi-sempai's genjutsu is scary!"

Tori stared at him, swaying as she clung to the counter. A strong medicinal smell wafted over to her from Itachi's drink. She wanted to grab Tobi and shake him and scream, WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS?

Her head hurt, and she thought any sort of hysterical yelling might make her see spots. Instead she asked, "What are the symptoms of a concussion?"

Tobi yelled some very exuberant promises to take her to a medic, which did in fact make her see black spots at the edge of her vision. Her brain was swimming, and she couldn't concentrate. Hidan was still on the floor, unconscious, but he wouldn't stay unconscious. She fumbled for the drawer below her, which contained the silverware, and produced a butter knife. If she cut Hidan's digestive system out, he couldn't eat, and then he'd die and she'd be safe.

"I'll take her," Itachi said, and plucked the knife out of her hand. "You should clean up."

"Tori-chan," Tobi said much too loudly and with the tone of deep betrayal, "you bled everywhere."

Tori picked another knife out of the drawer. Okay, so she couldn't kill Hidan, but if she gouged out Tobi's eyes, then she solved everyone's problems, and she'd get the sweet, sweet cathartic release–

Itachi gently removed that knife from her hand too and steered her towards the door. No, he was right. She couldn't stab Obito; everything would just go through him.

Itachi patiently walked with her down the stairs, and Tori clung to the railing as she swayed unsteadily. Stairs… difficult.

"Have you not invented elevators yet?" Tori asked, very carefully double checking her leg was going to hold her weight before every step.

Itachi did not answer for a while, and when he did, he asked something completely unrelated. "Have you met Uchiha Sasuke?"

Tori stared at her hand on the railing. What a loaded, terrifying question. She should have just dealt with Tobi being loud.

The stairwell was silent. Tori kept her face blank. Her brain was too muddled to reason through a response that would make Itachi drop the topic. All she knew was that she desperately did not want to involve herself in Uchiha family shenanigans.

"Tori," Itachi said.

"Yes," she answered, catching his eye. "I met him a few times."

"What are your impressions?" Itachi asked.

Right, okay. This was fine. This was a nice, normal conversation about Itachi trying to stalk his brother.

"He seemed very diligent in his training," Tori said slowly.

Itachi tilted his head ever so slightly to one side, and Tori suddenly found herself compelled to tell him more. It would be good if he trusted her, right?

"I think he was getting what he wanted, even if he didn't really have friends," Tori continued. What else did Itachi want to know? "He was in good health. They let him eat fruit and stuff whenever he wanted. They didn't let me interact with him one-on-one, to prevent me from telling him about you. I did anyway, though, so that's probably why he killed Orochimaru."

Tori paused, frowning. Why had she said that? That was way too much sensitive information to just casually hand over. She wanted to tell him more, though, she wanted him to know–

Her vision went blurry and she leaned harder against the stairway railing. Itachi stood impassively in front of her, his form stretching weirdly in her disrupted vision.

"I told him where to find you," Tori said. She couldn't stop talking. She needed to tell him. "I told him he'd win, but not how. I didn't mention Danzo or–"

"Tori," Itachi interrupted her, and felt her throat hitch and swell. She was choking now, she couldn't breathe, her lungs were on fire, begging for air, and the whole building was disappearing around her, so only Itachi remained, his body stretching and curling and deforming–

"Keep your visions to yourself," Itachi concluded, and suddenly Tori was breathing again, with no demand from her lungs for extra oxygen. Itachi wasn't stretched out and distorted anymore, and she was standing with shaking legs in the stairwell she'd started in, her upper body practically draped across the banister.

Itachi continued calmly down the stairs, and Tori thought: Yes, Itachi's genjutsu isscary. She kept a good distance between herself and him as she followed.

There was a clinic on the ground floor, back behind the lobby, and Tori was relieved when Itachi left her alone. She hadn't known that genjutsu could just compel you spill your secrets. That was good to know, but also completely terrifying.

Could Obito do the same thing?

The woman medic on duty was very no-nonsense and barely said a word as she pushed healing chakra into Tori's face. The medic's chakra had a weird stinging quality to it, and Tori thought: Kabuto was much better at this.

She didn't want to have positive thoughts about Kabuto. She mentally listed all the condescending comments and ugly things he'd done to her while the medic moved on to examining her formerly dislocated shoulder.

"One more week in the sling," she said, downgrading Tori's previous sentence with a couple of pulses of healing chakra. "And tell them to go easier on you, would you?"

Tori was absolutely not going to tell them that. The medic handed her a copy of her medical report and sent her on her way.

Tori decided to go back to her cell and try to relax until Obito came to find her. Her vision and equilibrium were back to normal, but she felt dead tired. She barely stepped into the dungeon before Kakuzu slammed her into the wall. Air rushed from her lungs, and the pages of her medical report fluttered across the floor.

Oh, come on! she thought as Kakuzu glared down at her. She glowered back. She'd nearly wet herself from the surprise, but this would honestly be a billion times scarier if he'd tried it before Hidan and Itachi had gotten to her.

"Listen to me very carefully," Kakzu said, gradually applying more pressure to her. His huge hand was over her clavicle, the pads of his thumb and forefinger hovering over the base of her neck, preventing her from breathing properly. He leaned in, and his giant form obscure all light. His voice was a low growl in her ear. "Hidan and I let you crawl away, and you were found by Oto-nin."

"Y-yeah," Tori managed to choke out.

Kakuzu pulled back slightly so he could look her in the eyes, and she scowled at him. After a few moments of study, he relaxed pressure on her chest enough for her to speak properly.

"You said I was worthless and Hidan was taking too long, and I ended up getting away," she said irritably. "Can I go now?"

Okay, so, Kakuzu definitely didn't want Pein knowing he was making deals with Orochimaru, and now Tori definitely wasn't going to try and use it against him unless she faced some fate worse than having her limbs ripped off by an enraged shinobi. Cool. That was fine. Whatever.

"I'll jog Hidan's memory too," Kakuzu said, and disappeared out the door.

Tori leaned against the wall, waiting to catch her breath and for her arms to stop shaking. She was freaked out, but not panicking.

What was with this place! Couldn't people engage in normal workplace sabotage, like throwing each other's food out or stealing office supplies?

Maybe she should have tried to carve Hidan open. That was just expected behavior here, apparently!

Suddenly, she didn't want to be alone in the dungeon, where anyone could easily find her and jump her. She wanted– and could not believe she was thinking this– she wanted Tobi back. She hurried back up to the kitchen.

Kisame and Deidara were at the table, sharing food from a take-out box.

"If your arm was messed up, you should have said something before the fight," Kisame was saying.

"I thought it was obvious!" Deidara shot back.

Tobi was nowhere in sight. Tori checked the living room, but Kakuzu was flipping channels on the TV, and she quickly retreated back to the kitchen. Hidan had stuck a note to the fridge, promising to eviscerate whoever took all his food.

"Yo, Tori-san," Kisame greeted, and waved her over.

Tori snapped. "Kisame, you are at the very bottom of my list of people to worry about right now, and I don't have time for–"

"Whoa there," Kisame cut in, eyebrows raised. Deidara was grinning at her, the way he might grin at someone before he blew them up. "I was just going to ask if you wanted a beer?"

There was a box for a six pack between them on the table, with two bottles left. Tori cautiously took a seat next to Kisame and not next Deidara, because Deidara was mean. Kisame casually opened a bottle with his teeth and passes it to her.

"You're not going to cry over it, are you?" Deidara asked suspiciously.

"Shut up," Tori mumbled and took a sip.

Beer… tasted bad. It wasn't even very cold anymore. She took another sizeable swig.

"Where's Tobi?" Kisame said. "I thought he was supposed to be watching you."

"Maybe Hidan eviscerated him," Tori said.

"This place is a circus, yeah," Deidara said, sounding very pleased with the idea of living in perpetual chaos.

"Speaking of Hidan," Kisame said. "How did the Zombi Combo rank?"

"Huh?" Tori asked.

"For kidnapping," Kisame urged.

"Oh, uh," Tori said, swirling her beer. "A four, maybe."

"You're rating them higher than us?" Kisame asked.

Tori did not remember what number she'd given Kisame and Itachi's kidnapping. "Well," she said, "I got free food out of that one."

"She's very food motivated, yeah," Deidara said. "What are you talking about?"

Kisame explained, and Deidara seemed disproportionately proud of scoring an eight out of ten.

"Fuck yes, Danna and I are great at kidnapping, yeah," he said, then grabbed the last beer and opened it with the mouth is his hand. "Even though Tori is a shit captive."

"Do you not have a bottle opener?" Tori asked, staring at his hand. "Also: holy crap."

Deidara waggled his eyebrows at her.

"Is a good captive one that's compliant," Kisame asked, "or one that escapes successfully?"

Deidara thought about it for half a second. "Either way, she sucks."

"I think a good captive is one that maximizes free meals," Tori joked, and Deidara snorted into his beer.

Tori did not talk much for the rest of the conversation, in which Kisame and Deidara mostly just playfully ribbed on each other. Kisame seemed fairly straight-foward and mellow, which were characteristics Tori could appreciate in a ninja. Deidara, when not actively pissed at you and throwing things, was also a good conversationalist. Tori could see herself socializing with both of them in the future, providing none of them threw glasses at her anymore.

It was a thought which went unexamined for a few minutes, and then Kisame mentioned cutting off someone's legs so they couldn't run away, and Deidara burst into laughter. Tori drank the last of her beer. These were not people she should be willingly associating with, and yet she still couldn't shake the thought of, If I live, hanging out with these two wouldn't be so bad.

It was upsetting. She snagged several pieces of their greasy dinner anyway.

"What were you up to today?" Kisame asked eventually.

Getting threatened by everyone and their mother, Tori thought. Outloud she answered, "I read a book, and Tobi took me up to see the greenhouse."

"Huh," Kisame said, rubbing his chin. "I've never been up there."

"Danna has a bunch of stuff up there, yeah," Deidara said, nodding. "He's always bitching about the humidity doing stuff to his desert plants."

Tori opened her mouth to ask what sorts of plants Sasori was keeping, when Tobi exploded into the room. "TORI-CHAN, I LOST YOU!"

"How did you lose her, idiot?" Deidara snapped. "She's been here this whole time, yeah."

"Thank you for taking care of her, Deidara-sempai!" Tobi said, throwing his arms around Deidara and embracing him. "Leader-sama warned Tobi that Tori-chan is a wiley trickster–"

"GET OFF!" Deidara yelped, and punched Tobi in the head.

Once Deidara had calmed down and Tobi had wiggled out of the headlock he'd ended up in, Tori grabbed an apple to snack on and headed down to the dungeon with Tobi. It was only 8:00, but Tobi had declared it her bedtime.

Tori was feeling pretty good about herself, but once they got down to the dungeon, Tobi carefully closed the door behind them, and then turned to face Tori with such gravitas that she knew she was no longer speaking to 'Tobi.'

"Um," she said, placing her half eaten apple down on the table. "Hello."

Obito crossed his arms, eyeing her. Tori felt a flash of annoyance, as he had been hanging out with her most of the day. What else was there to learn about her!

"Itachi said you finally slipped up," he finally said.

"Um," Tori said. She couldn't see his face, but his head was tilted in a way that gave the impression he was watching her intently.

"Under a genjutsu, of course," Obito continued, and began to pace around Tori in a loose circle. "I wouldn't expect even a seasoned ninja to stand up to Itachi's genjutsu."

Tori remained silent. She had no idea where Obito was going with this, or what he wanted from her, or what secret test she'd slipped up on.

Obito stopped pacing to stand in front of her. He seemed taller than he did as Tobi. "He believes you now though," Obito went on mildly. "He urged me to let him interrogate and then kill you."

Great, Tori thought.

"Do you know my name, Tori?" Obito asked.

Tori felt her pulse increase, but otherwise felt calm. "Can anyone else hear us?" she asked.

"Zetsu, maybe," Obito answered.

"You told Pein and Konan your name is Madara," Tori said, "but you're really Uchiha Obito."

She flinched back on instinct, but Obito did not react. He stood there, straight backed but relaxed, and watched her for several seconds. Then, he started slow clapping.

"Bravo," he said in a weird mix of good humor and sarcasm. Tori felt herself twitch. "You pass."

"I pass," Tori repeated.

"There's not a person on earth who could have told you that, besides Zetsu and myself," Obito answered. "So either you can see the future, or you have some other formidable knowledge source. I don't care which one."

Tori thought this was a bit short-sighted, as "can see the future" had much different implications from "actually, you're a cartoon character."

"Can I ask," Tori said, sounding braver than she felt, "if that was your test, then what was all of that, today?" She waved at the entirety of him.

"Your other test, of course," Obito said. He sounded lazy, with a touch of arrogance. "We can't have you leaking information, even within the Akatsuki. I wanted to see what you would do in a hostile environment."

Tori pressed her lips together. "So loose lips sink ships," she said.

Obito cocked his head.

"Snitches get stitches?" Tori tried. "Snitches end up in ditches."

"You are very strange," Obito replied.

Obito kept talking, leaning casually on the table. She wasn't to report any of her 'visions' to anyone but him or Zetsu, so they could control who got what pieces of knowledge. She was to complete whatever tasks Pein and Konan set out for her. At some point, she was going to have to sit someone down and explain Orochimaru's research. Finally, Obito wanted her to tell him everything she knew.

Tori frowned at him, gathering her thoughts. She knew a lot.

"Go on," he said, waving his hand at her impatiently. "Talk."

Tori felt that odd compulsion again, which was easy to recognize when she knew to look for it, but still impossible to resist. She told him the first thing on her mind.

"I predict that you'll turn out to be the biggest jackass in the world," she said, and then clapped her hand to her mouth.

"Ah, I can never get that illusion quite right," Obito said, with a sort of exaggerated sigh that reminded her of Tobi. The compulsion to tell him you go prematurely gray faded.

The story Tori ended up telling was disjointed, and vague in places– sometimes on purpose, and sometimes because she genuinely didn't know. She focused on what she thought Obito might be interested in– capturing tailed beasts and the deaths of Akatsuki members, one by one and mostly by Konoha's hands. She made sure to mention his Moon's Eye Plan, just to reinforce that she knew her shit. She paused when she started talking about Sasuke.

"Actually," she said as a thought occurred to her. "I don't really know what he'll do. I can tell you what he was going to do before I interfered, and it might be similar."

"That's interesting," Obito said, and he stood up straight from where he had been reclining against the table. "Can you change destiny, Tori-chan?" He made the diminutive sound mean instead of childish. He didn't want for her to answer, and continued, "I think that's enough for now. It's your bedtime, after all!"

He said the last part in something approaching his Tobi voice, and Tori winced at the change. Why this?! Why! This!

Obito left her, and Tori finished eating her apple while sitting cross-legged on her bed. That had been… tense… but not nearly as scary as Hidan smashing her face in, or Itachi's creepy genjutsu, or half of her time in Oto. This seemed surmountable. Difficult, but doable.

Tori stood up and stretched. Obito's list of rules didn't include "stay in your cell." Pein and Konan hadn't really given her a list of rules either. Compared to Oto, it was oddly freeing.

She went to find that copy of Icha Icha.

Notes:

Itachi: I'm a pacifist. I dislike violence.
Tori: I know all your secrets!
Itachi: Kill her immediately.

I have absolutely no idea how to write Zetsu or Obito but I... tried...? Zetsu's preoccupation with the human experience is influenced heavily by AO3 user Loudest_Voice.

Someone of you asked what Tori got wrong last chapter! She said Kabuto uses Anko's cursed seal to revive Orochimaru. This was actually done by Sasuke, although I seem to remember Kabuto kidnapping her for some reason….? The war arc is very confusing. :| It's a pretty inconsequential mistake, anyway.

Chapter 10: we're doing it. we're passing the bechdel test TWICE

Summary:

For once in her life, Tori manages to not make a situation worse. Kind of.

Notes:

I try to get a chapter out at least once a month, but my muse died on me in October and then I did NaNoWriMo. So... this is about two months late... .

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Tori craved raw broccoli.

Tori had never in her life enjoyed raw broccoli, but Oto had done such a whammy on her relationship with food, she didn't know what she enjoyed anymore. Flavor, probably. A satisfying crunch. Actual nutrients.

Broccoli.

She moved the stool she'd used to prop open the dungeon door and slunk out into the stairwell. Last night, Kakuzu had still been watching TV when she'd gone to find Icha Icha, so she'd just sort of grabbed the book and fled. Kakuzu was scary, but not so scary to deter her from reading erotica, apparently. She was paranoid the dungeon door would lock automatically and she'd be trapped, so she'd jammed it with the stool. She'd slept only slightly poorly on the metal bed.

Tori dithered in the hallway for a few moments, debating what to do. She'd seen two heads of broccoli in the vegetable crisper when she'd gone through the entire kitchen. It was right there, but Oto had also done a whammy on her relationship with wandering around a building filled with ninja unsupervised. Just existing outside of the dungeon felt rebellious.

The Akatsuki had a vegetable crisper. That was so weird it hurt to think about. She was just going to charge ahead and if she wasn't supposed to be out of the dungeon, they should have locked it.

Someone had made a pot of coffee, now cold on the counter. Several unwashed dishes were in the sink. Tori stood around awkwardly for long enough to confirm she was alone, then went straight for the broccoli.

Chopping a head of broccoli one-handed proved cumbersome, and Tori gave up almost immediately and just took a bite straight out of the broccoli.

This was fine. Perfectly normal behavior. She was fine.

The entire floor continued to be silent, save the hum of the refrigerator, and Tori wandered out to the next floor down. This level turned out to contain what looked like unoccupied dorm rooms, filled with dusty metal bedframes. Large cardboard boxes decorated the rooms, and Tori pulled one open to reveal yellow-stained pillows. Huh.

The next box had a bunch of weapons pouches, and the next an assortment of mostly broken transmitter radios, followed by a box of blank scrolls. This building was obviously meant to house shinobi en masse, but judging by the dust build-up, had been unused for a while before the Akatsuki had moved in.

It was ridiculously fascinating. Tori opened every single box in the room.

"You're late," a voice snapped, and Tori nearly dropped her half-eaten broccoli head into the box of flak jackets she'd been poking through.

Sasori's face was also fascinating, in that his expression hadn't changed much from his resting face, but he still managed to look irritated beyond all reason.

"Excuse me?" Tori asked, and felt her heart rate increase slightly. Was she about to get in trouble for poking through Akatsuki's stuff? Would Sasori even care? "Late for what?"

"I told you I had a task for you," Sasori said. "Come."

He walked away. Tori stared after him, clutching her broccoli in front of her like a bouquet.

"I said come," Sasori emphasized, and it took every ounce of Tori's self-control not to answer, That's what she said.

Hey, she'd just read all of Icha Icha Paradise in one night.

Tori hurried after him. Sasori did not care at all that she'd just been going through their creepy abandoned dorm rooms, except that it had taken him slightly longer to find her. He griped at her about it as he led her to his workshop.

Sasori's workshop was exactly like Orochimaru's lab in that it was incredibly alarming. Tools of various sizes and horrifying applications hung from the wall, along with things that were obviously preserved human remains. A large freezer chest sat in one corner. The workshop was unlike Orochimaru's lab in that everything was arranged precisely: the tools hung from the wall in neat lines, as did the array of human limbs. A wide bookshelf held carefully stacked scrolls. The two workbenches set up at the center of the room were spotless. One of the benches had a chemistry set, and the reagents were in bottles that had the caps screwed on properly, lined up neatly along one side.

In direct contrast to the careful organization, loud music drifted through the wall from what Sasori had indicated with a tone of disgust was Deidara's workspace.

"Have you ever worked with poisons before?" Sasori asked.

"Not really," Tori answered. She'd been poisoned, sure, but she'd never used one.

"But you worked in a lab," Sasori prompted.

"Well, yes," Tori said. "I mostly did sample analysis and–"

"It should be fine," Sasori cut her off, and selected a scroll from his shelf. He rolled it across the workbench with the chemistry set, and it unsealed a pile of fuzzy looking leaves. "This is mountain nettle. Here."

Sasori picked up a leaf and held it out to Tori, and she took it on reflex. Touching it felt like being stung by a bee.

"Ow," Tori yelped, and dropped the leaf.

"They produce chemicals useful in poison making," Sasori continued, unphased by Tori glaring comically at him. "You're going to isolate them."

Red welts were blossoming over Tori's fingers, worse than any reaction she'd had from nettles in her world. Great.

The first step, Sasori explained, was to grind the leaves with mortar and pestle. He then completely ignored her as he flipped open another storage scroll on his other workbench, and Hiruko appeared. Its arm was mangled and the jaw unhinged, presumably from her little stunt in the hotel. Good, Tori thought . Sasori fucking deserved it.

Sasori set about tinkering with his puppet, and Tori found a set of tweezers and started moving leaves into the stone mortar. Grinding them with one working hand was just as awkward as trying to cut up the head of broccoli, which was now sitting in Sasori's waste basket. After the third time she stung her self, she asked, "Do you have any gloves?"

"No," Sasori said bluntly.

"Well," Tori said, working hard to keep irritation out of her voice, "now the toxins are in my skin instead of in your poison."

Sasori looked up at that. "Deidara should have some," he said. As an afterthought he added, "Ask for a face mask too."

A face mask? Even Orochimaru hadn't asked her to do anything that required one of those.

(Well, okay, they shouldn't have been performing wild ninja surgery without them, but it hadn't been strictly necessary. )

The music coming from Deidara's workspace was even louder in the hallway, and Tori deemed it pointless to bother knocking. She pushed the door open cautiously, lest he decide to throw something sharp or explosive at her, but inside Deidara was too preoccupied with sculpting to acknowledge her.

He was busily working on something lizard-like and huge– as tall as a large dog, but twice as long with the tail. Deidara sat on a stool, carefully smoothing the clay with a tool that resembled a toothless comb. His clothes and forearms were covered in grayish clay, and his tongue poked out the side of his mouth as he worked.

Tori took a few steps into the room and then just stood and watched for a few minutes. The music sounded like a little like '90s grunge from her world, and Deidara had turned his clay-splattered speakers up so high she could feel the bassline through the tiled floor.

Finally, Deidara leaned over and turned his music down.

"What?" he snapped at her.

Honestly, this wasn't even a rude greeting for a ninja.

"Sasori sent me to get gloves," Tori said. "And a facemask."

"What does he need those for?" Deidara said, wiping his hands on a rag that was so caked in clay he might have made himself dirtier. "He's made of wood, yeah."

"They're for me," Tori said. "And I thought he was made of Sasori? Isn't that the point?"

Sasori definitely had human skin. It was a little leathery, but it was definitely someone's skin. She'd assumed it was his own.

Deidara shot Tori a look and tossed the rag aside.

"Yeah," he said. "Good point."

Tori must have said something right, because Deidara pulled out a pair of beat-up gloves and a disposable facemask without further hassle. It took a few moments– Deidara's workshop was a mess of partially-finished sculptures, pails of dried and forgotten clay, dirty tools sitting in piles, and crates of random things. Huge windows revealed the skyline of Amegakure, along with its gloomy skies.

"I don't know if those will fit, yeah," he said, passing her the gloves and mask. "You have the most useless, tiny hands."

Tori banished any thoughts about when Deidara had last cleaned the gloves and pulled one on. "Yeah, the baby hands have been a real hinderance in all the fist-fights I get into," Tori answered sarcastically.

Deidara rolled his eyes as Tori flexed her hands in the gloves. They were cloth, and not as dexterous as the nitrile gloves she been used to in the lab, and the fact that they were about two sizes too big didn't help. Still, she could definitely do a simple task like mash up a bunch of plants with this.

"What is Danna making you do that you need gloves, anyway?" Deidara asked, sounding curious under his front at nonchalance.

Tori explained, showing off the welts on her hand. Deidara snickered.

"He's already working you to the bone, is he?" he teased.

"Well," Tori said diplomatically, thinking back to her old job. "At least the chances of explosions are lower with Sasori."

The mean smile fell right off Deidara's face. It didn't fully hit Tori exactly who she'd said that too until she's already waltzed out the door. Oh well.

The toxin isolation was boring, tedious work, and Tori began to understand very quickly why Sasori did not want to do it himself. Hours later, Tori was only halfway through grinding leaves and getting cramps in her hand. Sasori glanced over and remarked: "You're going too slow."

"I have one hand," Tori replied through gritted teeth, frustration and pain overriding the part of her brain that was afraid of evil ninja. That part of her brain was shrinking every day, it seemed, and she continued, "An injury that is your fault."

Sasori dropped the tool he was holding. "You're the one who tried an idiot's gamble at escape."

"Well maybe if you'd been better at countering an idiot's gamble," Tori answered tersely, smashing away with the pestle like a cavewoman, "you wouldn't be fixing your puppet right now–"

Sasori was suddenly two feet away from her on the other side of the bench, and the jab died in Tori's mouth as she remembered exactly why she should be afraid of evil ninja coworkers.

Sasori eyed her for a few moments, and Tori couldn't tell if he was the type to revel in others' fear or not. She kept her body still and calm and stared him down, resisting her gut instinct to smile sweetly and disarmingly at him. This was a different game than Oto.

"You have enough to continue to the next step," Sasori finally said, and verbally walked her through what she was to do with the crushed leaf-goo she'd amassed. Basically, she was going to push the leaf-goo through a strainer to get out any solids, and then boil the leaf juice at a low temperature to remove all the water without denaturing anything important.

"It should take several hours," Sasori finished, and then went back to rewiring Hirko's jaw.

"Is this the part I need the facemask for?" Tori asked, turning the strainer around to try and figure out how to work it with one hand.

"Only if you're sloppy," Sasori answered. "Don't let it boil over."

Straining the leaf-goo was a nightmare that ended with green goo in her hair, so Tori was revealed when she finally lit the bunsen burner. She hung a round-bottom flask over it and fed a thermometer into it, reminding her oddly of first year chemistry lab. In class, she'd had to look up the safety data sheets of everything she worked with and always wear a lab coat and goggles. Now she had some unknown poison ingredients in her hair, and that didn't even make the top ten list of things she was worried about. She picked the goo out of her hair and flicked it into the trash.

It… made her unexpectedly sad to think about her college chemistry lab. She had hated that class. The TA was mean and made misogynistic comments. The lab reports took forever, and the lab lecture was at 8 o'clock in the morning. Still, it had been normal and predictable and home.

Tori shook herself. It wouldn't do to dwell on that and risk something embarrassing like crying in front of Sasori. Instead, she thought about how Orochimaru had regularly done surgery barehanded. At least Sasori supported personal protective equipment.

Two hours later, the plant juice was a much darker shade of green and had a syrupy consistency, and Tori was still thinking about what a shitshow Orochimaru's lab had been.

"Do you know what," Tori said, breaking the silence between her and Sasori. "Orochimaru was kind of a shitty scientist."

Sasori ignored her, which wasn't a command to shut up, so she kept going. "He'd get something to work one time and get bored and move on. That's not an experiment; that's a case study. Not to mention his approach to isolating variables just just sort of like, 'according to my hunch–'"

Orochimaru had absolutely never uttered to phrase, "according to my hunch."

"And don't get me started on Kabuto– " Tori continued, scowling at her flask of plant juice.

Sasori, apparently, did want to get her started on Kabuto, because he said, "He always seemed like a weak personality to me. Always pandering to the stronger power."

"Yeah, he was a total kiss-ass," Tori agreed, as if she wouldn't heavily invest energy into ass-kissing if she thought it would get her somewhere. "He was even worse at science."

Sasori had actually glanced up to look at her, so Tori launched into an explanation of one of Kabuto's torture sessions disguised as a science experiment on "drug response." She broke down step-by-step what Kabuto had done wrong in his experimental design: no control, wild fluctuation of variables between trials, a poorly defined hypothesis and a sample size of one. Sasori went back to his own work, but the occasional eye-flicker in her direction indicated he was paying attention.

When she was done, he helpfully identified the drug Kabuto had used. "You're lucky you don't have permanent nerve damage," he concluded.

"Well, for all his faults, Kabuto was a great medic," Tori said, double-checking the thermometer showed her leaf juice was at the right temperature and then adjusting the flame. Using fuuinjutsu for a constant temperature had been one of the few advantages of Orochimaru's lab. If she could get someone to give her the right materials, she could definitely improve Sasori's current set-up. "Orochimaru had to have some reason to keep him as his right-hand, seeing as how he'd ruined his body."

"Orochimaru had foolish ideas about immortality," Sasori scoffed.

"Yeah?" Tori prompted.

Sasori shot her an assessing look– Tori was, afterall, someone who'd staked her survival on gathering information. She cocked her head to the side, smiling vaguely and making herself look as disarming as possible. Sasori must have decided this was safe to share, because he kept going.

"What's the point of living forever if you're a slave to someone else's body?" Sasori said. "He had all the intelligence and means to perfect his own body, and he chose not to."

"He thought having a sharingan would make him perfect, didn't he?" Tori asked. Sasori had to have known Orochimaru had tried to take over Itachi's body right before abandoning the Akatsuki. Orochimaru wanting the sharingan had to be common knowledge she was allowed to share.

Sasori wrinkled his nose ever so slightly. "If he wanted to modify his body, he should have just taken the younger Uchia's eyes and been done with it."

A few months ago, Tori might have found that statement horrifying. With her personal definition of horror sufficiently readjusted, she just nodded along. "But you take other people's bodies all the time," she said. "You know, for art."

Sasori's eyes slid over to her, then back down to Hiruko with an almost loving expression. "Other people don't have the right vision," Sasori said. "I have to show them. They're not worthy of anything else."

Ah, okay, that made it onto her list of 'horrifying statements.' Tori sort of wanted to ask what Sasori thought of Orochimaru brainwashing teenagers with interesting bloodline limits into offering their bodies up to him, but Philosophy Hour with Sasori was getting unnerving very quickly. She decided to change the subject.

"Once Kabuto mentioned he thought haiku was the finest form of art."

A very strange noise came from Sasori's throat.

xXx

Tori left Sasori's workshop very late at night, weak with hunger. It hadn't even occurred to her to ask for a meal break until she was running her boiled plant sludge through chemical separation and had a sudden dizzy spell. She'd left her final product out on a paper towel to let the alcohol dry off. Once dry, the isolated purpleish powder could cause serious respiratory problems, so she might as well just leave it to Sasori.

She found a box of cup noodles under the sink and heated one up. Hidan had replaced his stolen hot sauce, and written DO NOT TOUCH across it, and Tori dumped some in before taking her dinner into the living room. Deidara was lounging across the couch, watching a very low budget horror film. Tori settled into an armchair.

"You look happy, yeah," Deidara observed.

"I do?" Tori asked, blowing on her noodles. She certainly didn't feel downtrodden and miserable. Maybe that was the same as being happy?

On screen, a ghost dragged a man kicking and screaming across the floor. Tori liked ghosts. She wondered what the movie was.

"Given you just hung out with Danna for ten hours, you look positively overjoyed," Deidara said.

Tori shrugged. "He's interesting to talk to," she said.

"That's not a common opinion," Deidara said, propping himself up on one arm to peer at her. "Must be something wrong with you, yeah."

"Well," Tori said, shoving noodles into her mouth. "Sasori and I hate the same people."

Deidara burst into laughter. On screen, the ghost howled in fury as the man's wife threw handfuls of salt at it.

The movie ended with everyone dying half an hour later, and Deidara turned back to Tori with a lazy grin on his face and asked, "Are you seriously eating cup noodles?"

Tori blinked at him a couple times and then realized why that was funny. "Can't I be proud of the family business?"

"Nope," Deidara said, still grinning, and stood up and stretched. He purposefully knocked into her armchair as he passed. Tori was unsure if it was a hostile or friendly gesture.

Tori drank the rest of the broth, set the empty noodle container down on the coffee table, and fell asleep in her armchair.

xXx

In the morning, Konan woke her and informed her she was to take minutes on Hidan and Kakuzu's mission report. Tori scuttled down to the meeting room after Konan half asleep. No one wore their cloaks inside, and Konan was sporting a full face of makeup, a dark shirt that showed off an elaborate bellybutton piercing, and a pair of thigh-high boots that Tori was, honestly, a little jealous of.

Who was already dressed up that much at six o'clock in the morning? What was wrong with these people?

The table in the actual meeting room was still broken, so the mission debrief was held in Pein's office. Hidan and Kakuzu were already there, and Hidan looked the way Tori felt: bleary-eyed, with his hair slightly mussed, slumped over in a chair. The room was very cramped with five people, and Tori stood behind Pein's desk with her minutes notebook cradled awkwardly in her slinged arm. She wondered what on earth Pein did that required an office at all. How much paperwork could Akatsuki have?

Kakuzu and Hidan's mission had allowed them to come home for the night because it was in Rain Country. A civilian noblewoman had contracted a series of politically-motivated assassinations in neighboring River Country over a month ago. She had yet to pay, and the zombie combo had gone to collect. It had been unsuccessful.

Four separate times during the meeting, Kakuzu slammed his fist down on Pein's desk with enough force to solicit alarming cracking noises. Tori caught Konan's eye twitching only once.

"You cannot kill a Rain Country citizen," Pein repeated for the third time. His voice was perfectly monotone, even as Kakuzu became more hostile.

"She has refused negotiations," Kakuzu seethed. There was a splintering dent in the desk in front of him from his fist. Hidan blinked groggily off into space.

One rule of Akatsuki– which Tori would have never guessed, but made perfect sense now that she'd heard Konan's reminder to Kakuzu, delivered in clipped tones between his rants– was that members were not allowed to kill the people of Rain Country. It was not that Akatsuki never killed people from Rain; if there was a justified reason, Konan went and did it herself. Using her outsider knowledge, Tori was able to fill in the blanks: at the end of the day, Nagato and Konan were doing all this world domination bullshit for the benefit of their country. If their countrymen had to die, it would be by their own hands, not by the hands of more foreign shinobi.

This, of course, made Kakuzu's preferred negotiation strategy of "extreme violence" less effective.

Every time Kakuzu ranted about the client, the amount she owed and the amount of time that had gone by since her payment due date increased. At some point, Pein turned his face ever so slightly in Tori's direction and asked, "How much does she actually owe us?"

Tori clumsily flipped back through the previous pages of the notebook, trying to find whatever had actually happened. The client had in fact paid for the first assassination, as well as donated weapons, and that had won enough favor to get more Akatsuki missions with a laxer payment agreement. The amount she actually owed was less than Kakuzu was claiming, and Kakuzu ripped off a chunk off of Pein's desk and threw it at Tori.

Pein made no attempt to intervene, but the act of physically ripping wood apart took long enough that Tori managed to get the notebook up to block before the chunk hit her hit her right in the face. Why! Did they! ALWAYS! Aim for the face!

"It's in your handwriting," Tori pointed out, waving the notebook in Kakuzu's direction. The chunk of wood had bounced off the notebook and slid back under the desk from whence it had come. Hidan's eyes had snapped back into focus at the sudden Tori-focused violence.

Tori actually had no idea what Kakuzu's handwriting looked like, but every once in a while the minutes book had a cramped little tables of budgets and projected costs and suggested mission rates, and who else would have written those?

"Why does he get to throw things at her?" Hidan demanded.

Pein tapped his now holey desk with a single finger in annoyance. "That's coming out of your paycheck," he said.

Kakuzu just sort of crunched down in his seat and seethed, crossing his massive arms over his chest.

"We should charge interest," he muttered. "We should just go in there, kill the whole household, and–"

"We're not killing the last member of one of the four noble families of Rain," Konan said, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Explain to me why exactly negotiations broke down."

Negotiations had broken down, essentially, because the client wanted to delay payment and Kakuzu had lost his shit and put a hole through the house. Tori was genuinely surprised this woman was still alive, all things considered. Hidan himself had broken several ribs in the process of Kakuzu having a temper tantrum. Tori could see how, under circumstances in which Kakuzu was allowed to maim and kill people, having one's bodyguard's beaten to death in front of them could be a very convincing argument. As it were, Kakuzu had instead chosen to control himself by marching off into the woods and punching some trees down, instead of breaking this noble lady's face.

Ninja did, after all, very reliably go for face-breaking.

"It's not 'negotiations' if she just doesn't want to pay," Hidan said defensively. "That's just her being a bitch–"

"Hidan," Konan cut him off. Hidan glared at her, but shut his mouth immediately. "We'll figure it out. You two are dismissed."

Kakuzu stomped out the door, still visibly shaking with anger, and Hidan followed him with several complaints about getting up early for nothing. Tori secretly agreed with him.

"We may have to assign someone else," Pein observed when they were gone. "She petitioned Ame for a jounin cell for protection. She's terrified."

Tori continued penning their conversation. Did that mean most people weren't aware Akatsuki was based in Amegakure?

"She might be more open to a less volatile negotiator," Konan mused. Tori scribbled their thoughts down as Konan and Pein debated if they should let Kakuzu– who was in charge of payment collection– try again, or let someone else on-hand try.

"Tori," Pein suddenly said. "You're a civilian. Who would you respond best to?"

Tori nearly dropped her pen at the question. She didn't see how her opinion could possibly matter, but they were both looking at her.

You're all scary as fuck, Tori thought. Outloud she said, "I would just pay the man who was punching down my trees. You know, if I were a rich person who had money to pay."

"You think she doesn't have the funds, then?" Konan said, arching an eyebrow. Turning back to Pein, she added, "She has been publically spending a lot."

That had not been what Tori was trying to say at all, but now that it was said out loud, both Konan and Pein seemed to think that was definitely what was going on.

"Kakuzu is not going to like this," Konan sighed.

Pein nodded once, then leaned back slightly to look up at Tori, who was squished in awkwardly behind his chair.

"You should order a new conference table," he said.

"Uh," Tori said. "Okay. How do I do that?"

Tori had not been allowed to see how Oto got their supplies, but she had assumed it would be as bizarre and foreign as everything else going on in Oto. She had also, for reasons that didn't even really make sense, assumed that ninja shopping would be just a little bit cooler than normal shopping.

It wasn't. Konan gave her an office supply catalogue.

"Have you used a telephone before?" she asked, and Tori was briefly terrified of the implication that there could be some version of her life where she didn't know how to use a phone.

"Are there people who don't?" Tori asked cautiously.

"Not everyone has lives in a city," Konan said vaguely, as if Tori was the weird one for being confused. Which, in this universe, was fair.

Still, the Naruto world had phones. That made sense with the television and the movies and the radios, but then why didn't they ever see anyone using them? Could you call in an order for baby genin to come clean your gutters? Tori had so many questions, and Konan looked very much like she didn't want to answer them.

There was a landline phone at the front desk in the lobby, and Tori found herself seated behind the marble-top counter, flipping through the furniture section of the catalogue. Someone had swept up the remains of the shattered chandelier and then just left the pieces shoved into a pile in the corner.

Tori read through all the table descriptions very carefully before she realized that whatever she was going to get was just going to end up broken. She called and ordered the cheapest one using the account number Konan had written down for her on a sticky note.

"Address for delivery?" asked the person on the other side– an incredibly bored sounding female voice.

"Um," Tori said. Did the Akatsuki just, like, have an address? That one could send mail to? Did they get spam? Laundry detergent samples?

"Do you not know your address?" the woman on the other side of the line said. She didn't sound judgemental, just resigned to speaking with incompetent underlings.

"Er," Tori said, tugging distractedly on the phone's cord. "I'm new…"

"That's okay, honey," the woman on the line said, and her bored monotone nullified whatever sympathy her memorized script was meant to convey. "I'll see what address we have on file."

She read an address off. All Tori got out of it was that it was located in Amegakure.

"That sounds right," Tori lied, scribbling the address down on the back of Konan's note with the account number. The numbers and words were basically meaningless to her, but the woman read them off like they definitely were a real address.

The woman confirmed the order and hung up, and Tori continued to stare at the address she'd written down. This seemed like it should be powerful information. She had the Akatsuki's mailing address! Surely she could do something with that!

Tori flipped the catalogue over and examined the advertisements on the back. A lot of them had instructions for mail-in orders, but a handful also had phone numbers. On a whim, Tori called a company that made cleaning products.

"Hello, yes," Tori said, doing her best impression of a customer service voice. "My office made an order of– for two cases of vanilla almond soft hand soap," she said, squinting down at the photo of random products and reading off a label. "And instead we got–" she squinted harder– "Spring cherry blossoms."

"Okay, ma'am, it sounds like you're calling about receiving the wrong product," the man on the other side said. "Do you have the order number?"

"No?" Tori said.

"That's okay," the man said, sounding much more into his work than the previous woman. "Do you have the PO number? Or the account number?"

"Ah…" Tori said, and then flipped through the catalogue so the man would hear the rustle of paper. "Sorry, I'm new here. I don't really know the ropes yet."

"That's perfectly alright," the man assured her. "Can you give me any other details?"

Tori made up an order date and delivery date, and then said her coworker threw out the shipping label when the man asked if she could get the order number off of it.

"I am so sorry," she said. "Normally it would be fine, but one of my colleagues is allergic to something in the cherry soap."

"Not to worry," the customer service man assured her, although his voice sounded tighter than before. "Can you give me the company name and address?"

Tori said the first company that came to mind. "I work for Toshiba Electronics. The address is–"

Two minutes later, the man was promising her the soap was on its way. Tori thanked him and hung up the phone. She stared down at the company's ad for a few moments.

Why on Earth had she done that? Just to see if it would work? Tori had definitely just gained quite a bit of power. Perhaps, even, too much power, and it was going to her head…

When she went upstairs, Deidara was eating breakfast while Sasori complained at him, and Tori remembered she actually had barely any power at all.

"If you'd let me turn you into a puppet," Sasori said, scowling as Deidara peeled an orange, "I could just fix you when you get hurt, and then we wouldn't have to wait around for missions."

"Screw you, yeah," Deidara retorted. "You know you like the down time to mess around with your creepy dolls."

Hidan was passed out at the table, his head in his arms next to a mug. Tori very purposefully did not give him or the artists a second glance as she marched into the room in search of her own breakfast.

Sasori rolled his eyes at Deidara's insults about his art, and then turned to Tori as she poured herself the last of what was in coffee carafe. "Where were you? You didn't finish yesterday."

"I had stuff to do," Tori said bluntly.

"She's been following Konan around like a little bitch," Hidan called, head still in his arms.

Tori, feeling safe with Deidara and Sasori between her and Hidan, and power-high from scamming a soap company, replied, "Stop calling me bitch, asshole."

Hidan raised his head to glare half-heartedly at her, his hair more mussed than ever. "I call it like I see it," he answered, and took a very long sip out of his mug. "Bitch."

Tori twitched. Deidara's eyes darted between them and he asked with a mischievous grin, "Who's the real bitch, the one with the broken arm or the one with the broken ribs?"

""It's a dislocated shoulder," Tori corrected primly and the same time Hidan yelled, "Shut up!"

Sasori chose to intervene in the riveting discussion by grabbing Tori's said shoulders, turning her and pushing her towards the door. "You're wasting my morning," he snapped.

Tori was not strong enough to physically resist Sasori, so she had to settle for yelling over her shoulder as he shepherded her out, coffee in hand. "Gendered insults make you sound like uneducated dicks."

"'Dicks'?" Deidara yelled back, "Now who's making gendered–"

Sasori slammed the door behind them.

"'Dick' isn't an equivocally powerful insult to bitch," Tori told Sasori, blowing on her coffee. "Because men hold power over women as a social class."

"I cannot describe to you how much I don't care," Sasori answered.

Tori crushed more nettle plants with her coffee sitting on the corner of the bench. It went against everything she believed in in regards to lab safety, but she hadn't had access to coffee in so long, she was fully prepared to accidentally poison herself over it. Plus, if she died, it would seriously ruin Sasori's day, and she was more than alright with ruining Sasori's day.

At some point in the afternoon, while Tori was watching the plant sludge boil, Deidara shoved a bunch of mission requests under her nose.

"Konan says these are your problem now," Deidara said.

"Do people just mail these to you?" Tori asked, examining the the top letter. It was in what was obviously a greeting card's enveloping, with a little rainbow printed in the corner. If anyone could just get the Akatsuki's mailing address, why wasn't everyone spamming them with soap?

"Obviously not," Deidara said, as if Tori had just asked a particularly stupid question. "I swung by one of the drop points this morning."

So then the Akatsuki were probably not publically associated with this address. Did that make them squatters? Did the people of Amegakure know who the weird ninja living in an abandoned building on the edge of town were.

The card contained within the rainbow print envelope was simply an address, written in blood. There was no more context. Tori wrinkled her nose.

"Is this supposed to mean anything to me?" she asked, flipping the card around to show Deidara. Were they requesting a murder? A robbery? Babysitting? Was she supposed to make a connection between the bloody address and the cloud print on the other side of the card?

"That's why no one else wants your job, yeah," Deidara answered, grinning at her. "Good luck."

Deidara left, and Sasori snapped at her to pay more attention to his precious plant goo.

xXx

The next day, someone delivered some boxes of hand soap, and Tori walked into the living room to find Kakuzu yelling at Deidara.

"Why would I turn away a delivery?" Deidara yelled back. "We use soap, yeah!"

"Not this soap," Kakuzu hissed dangerously, brandishing one of the vanilla almond bottles at Deidara. "This isn't in the budget–"

Tori busied herself emptying an entire pack of shredded vegetables into a pan. She didn't have to say anything. Kakuzu and Deidara could settle this themselves, and she could finish up organizing the mission request summaries for Konan.

As she tossed the vegetable bag, Tori noticed Itachi had marked it as his own in tiny, neat lettering. Ah, well. He and Kisame were on a mission, anyway.

The shouting continued, Tori threw a scoop of chili paste onto her meal, and then several alarming banging noises came from the living room. Tori winced and turned off the heat of the stove.

"Hey, guys," she called, and was of course ignored.

Tori scraped her weird meal of spicy veggies onto a plate and walked hesitantly into the living room. The pool table was knocked over, and Deidara was squatting on the wall, yelling threats at Kakuzu with a wad of clay in his hands.

"The soap was free," Tori said.

Both ninja shot her equally frightening glares. Tori had fortunately been threatened by various terrifying violent ninja before and did not immediately wet her pants.

"What did you say?" Kakuzu asked in a voice that was filled with barely-contained rage.

"The soap," Tori repeated, slowly because she was afraid if she spoke normally her voice would tremble, "was free."

There was a long silence.

"Okay," Kakuzu said, and relaxed from his fighting stance. He showed no interest in how the free soap had been obtained.

"Yeah, Kakuzu, you crazy stingy bastard," Deidara fumed, his fist tightening around the clay. It shrunk in size– was his hand eating it? "The soap was free, so I don't know what your fucking problem was–"

"A ninja shouldn't accept mysterious packages anyway," Kakuzu growled back.

Tori walked back out of the living room. It really wasn't any of her business now.

xXx

From the Deidara-Kakuzu altercation, Tori learned that the Naruto world did not have smoke alarms.

"That seems really unsafe," Tori said.

"Tori," Konan replied, her face buried in her hands. "Shut up."

Deidara had set off a minor explosion, which had summoned both Konan and Hidan. Hidan to cackle widely at the scene, and Konan order everyone to stop being dumbasses. Kakuzu had put out the fires with a water jutsu, and he and Deidara had been tasked with cleaning the mess up. They were still arguing in the living room over it.

(Hidan had been tasked with "going and mediating on the benefits of silent prayer.")

Now, Konan was seated in the kitchen with Tori, leafing halfheartedly through the mission requests while looking completely done with how her day had been going. She seemed resigned and tired, and Tori felt bad for her.

"Has switching to cohabitation been tough?" Tori asked in a tone that was meant to be sympathetic to Konan's plight.

Konan's brow crinkled ever so slightly. "You're so nosy," she said, turning over one of the summary cards Tori had written. "No wonder you go through these so quickly."

Tori actually thought she'd been combing through them rather slowly, but she wasn't going to contradict Konan. Instead she said, "If I'm allowed to be nosy: how do you pick missions?"

"I don't know what about anything I just said made you think I was giving you permission to be nosy," Konan said, arching an eyebrow at her. "But in this case the answer isn't a secret. We take all of them."

Tori blinked. Twice. "One of those is about a ghost," she said.

"And we'll gladly take it," Konan said, leaning back in her chair, "if our client accepts the price gouge we give to particularly stupid missions."

"Ah, I see," Tori answered.

They passed a while longer in comfortable silence, and Tori concentrated hard on drawing a diagram of a what one client wanted done to some labor union's leader. He had sent a very in-depth description of exactly how he wanted the body mutilated, and Tori did her best to translate it onto a stick figure.

Deidara marched out of the living room, bleach spilled down the front of his black shirt.

"I hope you're happy," he said snidely, and it was unclear which woman he was addressing. "It's clean now, yeah. I hope your fancy soap was worth it."

Kakuzu appeared behind him, the remnants of a smashed and burned chair in his arms. "I'm going to take this to a second-hand store," he said.

Tori very carefully added a full head of hair to the mutilated stick figure of the union leader's wife. The client had a different, equally horrifying list of things he wanted done to her.

When Deidara and Kakuzu were gone, Konan eyed Tori thoughtfully. "You wouldn't happen to know where the soap came from, would you?"

Tori paused in her drawing. Her gut instinct was to lie; in hindsight, scamming companies for soap was a deeply silly thing to do. However, it wasn't a lie she felt she could get away with.

"I may have run a little experiment," Tori said finally.

The look Konan gave her was one of complete incredulity.

"It was free," Tori defended.

Konan just let out a single, short sigh. "You should know," she said, voice deep and purposeful, "that if you keep testing boundaries, you're going to find one you wish you hadn't."

Tori stared down at her morbid little doodle. Right. Violent, professional murder machines.

"Write out replies to these," Konan said, dropping the card in her hand and immediately shifting to all-business. "You can estimate quotes for them based on previous missions. I'll screen them before they're sent out. When you're done, find somewhere to store this."

She gestured at the boxes of liquid handsoap Deidara had left on the kitchen table.

"And since you're so nosy," Konan continued, standing up and stretching, "You can also catalogue and organize all the things we have in storage on the unused floors."

She must have meant all the boxes of random stuff Tori had found. How much of the building was unused? How much work had she just been assigned?

"Sasori isn't having you do anything labor intensive, right?" Konan pushed on. "You can start decoding Orochimaru's work, too."

Tori had finished with Sasori's current supply of mountain nettles, but he had made an ominous promise about having more things to process. She didn't know how much work that would be, or what "decoding" anything from Orochimaru might entail.

Konan sailed out of the room, her boots silent on the tile floor. Tori's gaze shifted back down to her stick figure diagram. She was supposed to reply to this lunatic, with a price estimate for this? How did one even start a letter like that?

Fuck, Tori thought. I wanted to read the next Icha Icha.

Notes:

Konan: Why did you order two cases of hand soap?
Tori: To test my capacity.

This is kind of a filler chapter to set up what Tori's day-to-day is going to be like, BUT NEXT CHAPTER has actual action and one of my favorite scenes. :3c

Chapter 11: call me a witch like it's a bad thing

Summary:

Tori goes on a mission.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Tori was finally free of her sling, the medic-nin on duty dubbing her shoulder fully healed. Using her new found freedom, she… started on replies to mission requests.

Dear client, Tori wrote. We have received and approved your mission request. For requested services, we charge a fee of–

Tori paused to double-check the figure in one of the tables Kakuzu had drawn up. Prices here contained a lot more digits than she was used to, and she carefully counted them out.

Pein had loaned her the current minutes book on the condition that she not wander too far away with it, so Tori had claimed the neighboring office as her own. It was completely bare of furniture, so she sat on the floor, various drafts of letters spread around her.

Konan pushed open the door, and several pieces of paper went flying.

"Shit," Tori swore, and then made eye contact with Konan, who raised an eyebrow. "Good morning!" Tori greeted in false cheer.

"Here," Konan said, and dropped a stack of paper in front of Tori, sending more of her letter drafts flying. Konan's stack consisted of heavy, textured sheets– the type meant to hold paint and ink. "We need you to figure these out."

Tori flipped through the papers. They were all doodles of seals.

"Are these from Orochimaru?" Tori asked, leafing through them. Barely any of them had any sort of notes or labeling, making it nigh impossible to guess what any of the seals were meant to do, or in what stage of completion they were in. Still, the sheer number of them and the sense of carefully controlled chaos screamed Orochimaru.

Tori eyed an incredibly complicated looking array, which had several transmogrification components and zero recognizable stabilization components. Yikes.

"He left in the middle of developing our bijuu sealing process," Konan said dryly. "Unfortunately, he took most of his work with him. You wouldn't conveniently have a notebook of the completed seals, would you?"

What a weird question, Tori thought. They'd confiscated all her stolen lab journals; surely Konan could just look that up herself? Then again, Orochimaru's notes were both vague and poorly organized.

Or, wait… had that been… a joke? A joke from Konan?

"I don't think so, sorry," Tori said, scratching the inside of her arm nervously. "I'll try harder to plagiarize the entirety of his repertoire next time."

Konan watched her critically as Tori carefully moved the stack of seals aside and started gathering her scattered pages. After a few moments, Konan knelt and picked up one of the drafts, skimming it.

"These don't need to be so formal," she said.

"Well, I wasn't really sure what Akatsuki customer service was like," Tori said.

"We used to let Hidan write replies," Konan said, and Tori let out a choked laugh.

Konan watched Tori for a few more moments, as Tori organized her letters into piles– she had multiple drafts for each of her replies, since she had no idea what she was doing – and then started to leaf through the pile of Orochimaru's old seals. Konan's wasn't a judgemental look, like most of her coworkers in Oto might have leveled at her, nor was it a dissecting look like Orochimaru himself might give her. Instead, Konan just watched her like she might a rerun of TV show.

Tori did not know what to do with that look, so she asked, "None of these are active seals, are they?"

"I don't think so," Konan replied, which was not a particularly reassuring answer. Konan tilted her head ever so slightly, her indigo hair shifting around her face. "I think we've been thinking about this wrong."

"What?" Tori asked. "Thinking about what wrong?"

"Shinobi look at people like they look at tools," Konan said. "Whether we're exploiting them or protecting them, we don't usually think of civilians as particularly sharp tools."

"Um," Tori said. Was insulting her intelligence just some sort of ninja past time? Should she inform Konan that a sledgehammer was a perfectly respectable blunt tool? No, that was definitely too sassy.

Konan stood gracefully, and the movement barely made the paper on the floor flutter.

"We're having a general body meeting in an hour," Konan said, with no further explanation for her thoughts, and then left. The door swung shut behind her, upsetting Tori's piles again. You'd think a person who used paper-based jutsu would have some respect.

Tori stood shakily, and took a moment to stretch her cramping legs. An hour was enough time to find a bunch of paperweights. She knew there was a whole box of unsharpened kunai upstairs.

xXx

They had the meeting sitting around the collapsed table, with the projections of Kisame, Itachi, and Zetsu flickering at the foot of the table. Kisame reported in first, and his and Itachi's mission to track down and eliminate the last member of a rogue ninja clan was going better than expected.

Apparently, there were still villageless ninja families running around, which sounded cool as shit. Pen in hand, Tori raised her hand to ask a question, and Deidara looked at her as if she had lost her mind. She put her hand back down. A question for later, then.

The next twenty minutes were a discussion about if it were better to have Kisame and Itachi pick up an additional set of missions nearby in Wind Country, or deploy Deidara and Sasori, despite Deidara still technically being in a recovery period from The Hotel Disaster. It was a conversation that should have taken about five minutes, except Deidara ended up standing on his chair and giving a very long rant on his superiority to Itachi in every way.

Itachi's bluish projection looked neither offended nor interested. Tori very carefully transcribed Deidara's list of Itachi's personal failings, among which Itachi being neither offended nor interested in anything was listed four times.

"I know Wind better than anyone here," Sasori finally said when Deidara paused for breath, and that settled the matter.

Zetsu gave a report of some sort of complicated political situation in Water Country, and Tori frowned in concentration as she listened. She barely knew anything about politics in her own country, and in this world everything was run by daimyos and noble families and military dictators, and she definitely didn't recognize anyone's names but the Mizukage's. It made taking minutes difficult, and she wasn't sure her notes were coherent.

Oh, he was talking about Dead Water Fever! She knew what that was! Apparently, Water Country was cutting off travel to certain islands.

When Zetsu was done, Pein turned to Kakuzu and said, "I have a time sensitive mission for you two." It was a statement directed all the way across the room to Kakuzu, despite Hidan being two seats away. Hidan perked up anyway. "But first– Konan, what did you decide about the Mizusawa account?"

Mizusawa Asa was the noble lady client who had skipped out on payment, and who had the rare quality of currently being on Akatsuki's "no kill" list.

"If she actually doesn't have the funds, we'll have to make an example of her," Konan said casually, as if she had not spent much of the previous day insisting they couldn't kill her because she was "last of a noble family" and "important to Rain Country's political stability" or whatever. "If possible, I'd rather avoid that. I want someone to go investigate her covertly."

"Then just wait for Uchiha to get back and he can genjutsu-whammy her," Hidan drawled. "What's our new mission?"

"I already investigated her," Kakuzu growled, and his chair groaned as he leaned forward, arms crossed tight over his chest. "She's arrogant and stupid with money–"

Kakuzu had bullied some accounting information out of various groups related to the Mizusawa household. She was spending money she didn't seem to have, which downright offended Kakuzu. Konan held up a hand to cut off his rant.

"I think we should all keep in mind," Konan said, voice somehow both indifferent and compelling, "several recent lessons on civilian capacity for deception."

Tori consciously kept her face straight and focused on writing, even as she felt everyone's eyes flick in her direction. Kakuzu's chair groaned some more as he clenched several additional muscles in restrained anger.

"I should be able to make time to investigate in a week or so," Zetsu offered.

"No," Pein disagreed. "Stay where you are; this is low priority."

"This is money," Kakuzu gritted out between his teeth.

"She's having a gala this evening," Konan said, and then the slightest hint of mischief entered her voice as she added, "why don't one of you attend?"

There was a very long silence, in which Tori could only hear the quiet slide of her pen on paper. Konan makes an ultimatum: who will crash the party?

"Will there be booze?" Hidan asked.

"You don't drink on a mission," Sasori snapped at the same time Deidara said, "I like parties, yeah."

"With all due respect," Itachi's projection spoke up, his voice clear but filled with static, "aside from Zetsu, I am the most suited to infiltration–"

"Genjutsuing everyone around you isn't infiltration," Deidara interrupted snidely.

"I could send a puppet in," Sasori said, tone bored. "Civilians never notice the difference."

Perhaps they are simply too smart to comment on the strange creature walking around in human skin, Tori thought, idly jotting down notes.

"She was Kakuzu and Hidan's client," Pein said. "They should finish the job." Then after a beat, he added, "Take Tori."

There was a very awkward silence. Tori stared down at the notebook, balanced in her lap since there was no working table.

"Could you repeat that?" Tori asked, and her question was buried under several other protests.

"She's a liability," Itachi said, while Deidara made a mean comment about Tori getting distracted by fancy party food. Hidan yelled something about how even he could play nice at a party with free booze.

"You absolutely cannot," Konan said, eyeing Hidan. Turning back to Pein, she asked, "Are you sure?"

Pein gave a sort of half-hearted shrug and said, "You told me you wanted to send someone unintimidating."

Next to her, Deidara burst into loud, mocking laughter. Tori wrote: Deidara does his best hyena impression, unaware he himself looks like he's in a boy band.

They hashed out the details of what Tori was meant to do, without actually consulting Tori on what she was capable of. She was to figure out the true financial state of the client, and then advise Kakuzu and Hidan on how to secure funds as soon as possible, preferably with "restraint from unnecessary violence." Tori did not think she was charismatic enough to convince some noble lady to tell her her financial secrets, nor did she have any idea how one even behaved at a party fancy enough to be called a "gala." Mostly likely, she was just going to embarrass herself. She'd be lucky if she made it through being escorted there by Hidan and Kakuzu with all her limbs intact.

Tori did not even know how banks here worked. Did rich people of this world have off-shore accounts? What did they do if Mizusawa Asa was hiding their money on one of the quarantined Water Country islands?

Chewing on her lip as Itachi pointed out, yet again, that she was a random imprisoned civilian and untrained in undercover work, Tori wondered if she should be nervous. This mission itself was doomed to fail, after all. Yet, she could bring herself to be worried about that– what was a civilian household going to do, kick her out? Call her names? She was more concerned about Kakuzu losing his temper.

Surely her safety here didn't rely on her being able to perform on ninja missions, because that would be absurd. Then again, Akatsuki was an absurd organization. Maybe she should be worried.

"When you're finished with that, this needs to be done by the end of the week," Konan concluded, and passed one of Tori's mission summary cards to Hidan, who read it very seriously. "It's a simple assinsination, but the client has... unique requests."

Ah, it was the anti-labor union guy who wanted his victims horribly and very specifically mutilated. Hidan carefully traced Tori's stick figure diagrams with a finger. Great.

"If you have any questions about the details," Konan drawled on, "Tori knows. You'll have plenty of time to talk tonight. Dismissed."

Out in the hallway, Deidara grabbed Tori and dragged her into an empty office. There was a single filing cabinet shoved into the corner, which Tori noted would be more useful to have in her office. Deidara shoved her lightly and slammed the door behind them.

"Okay, I don't know what you think just happened in there, yeah," Deidara started, and Tori dragged her attention away from trying to calculate if the cabinet would be light enough for her to move on her own. Right. A pissed-off ninja had just cornered her alone in a room. At some point, this would have terrified her for very good reasons, and she needed to remember those reasons. "But every person in there knows Konan could just waltz over there herself and get this done in like an hour."

"Okay," Tori said, because historically speaking, just agreeing with angry ninja had kept her alive.

"It's obviously some sort of stupid fucking test," Deidara continued, voice unnecessarily loud for the room and face screwed up in a scowl. He jabbed a finger into Tori's clavicle. "I don't know what the fuck for, or who it's evening testing, but if you screw it up, it going to look bad for me and Danna, yeah."

"Okay," Tori repeated.

"Okay?" Deidara barked, and then jabbed her in the collarbone again, hard enough to make her take a step back. "Don't just 'okay' me, yeah!"

Deidara took a step forward, closing the gap between them, his face in hers.

Tori opened her mouth to apologize, but– no. Fuck that. She wasn't doing that anymore. If Deidara was mad he'd kidnapped her and she'd made a fool of him, that was his problem, not hers.

"Okay, I get it," Tori answered, and she'd meant to keep her voice calm and rational, but it had just sort of come out in the range of "quiet with suppressed rage." She learned in even further to Deidara, and he moved back ever so slightly. "You can't stand the idea of someone who played you turning out to be a regular dumb civilian girl." Deidara opened his mouth, looking more pissed than ever, but Tori forged on. "Unfortunately for you, now I know you care, and screaming at me just makes me want to fuck up the mission even more."

Deidara looked completely scandalized. "No–" he started, jabbing his finger into her clavicle again, and then spluttered out some enraged nonsense syllables. "You can't. Leader-sama will kill you."

"Bold of you to assume I'm not petty enough to risk it," Tori snapped back, and then very purposefully turned to the filing cabinet. It had three drawers, and a key that was still sitting in one of the locks. Nice.

"God, no wonder Danna likes you. You're a petty bitch," Deidara sneered, crossing his arms as Tori experimentally opened and closed the cabinet drawers. "Oh, excuse me," he added mockingly. "A petty asshole. Asshole is the gender neutral term, yeah? "

"First of all," Tori said, peering inside the empty drawer. "I cannot believe you think you're not a petty asshole."

Deidara snorted. Tori experimentally pushed the cabinet; it was too heavy to lift.

"Second of all," Tori said, pitching her voice over the scraping of the cabinet as she pushed it across the room, "it's nice to hear you've figured out that we both have to take orders from Leader, because we have both been forced into this clown factory, so either suck it up and give me real help, or leave me alone."

Deidara looked thoughtful as she pushed the cabinet by him and out the door, as if being actively helpful were a new concept to him. It did not seem to fully infiltrate his grey matter, though, as he just vaguely followed behind her as she pushed the cabinet down the hall, instead of helping her move it.

"Yeah, okay," Deidara finally concluded. "Then I'll give you a tip: ask Danna for a haircut, yeah."

Tori paused at the door to her office. "What?"

"I respect whatever disaster burnt your hair," Deidara continued, "but Mizusawa won't."

Tori touched the tips of her hair. A lot of it had gotten kind of weird toward the front after being singed, but she hadn't thought it was that obvious.

"It will be the creepiest haircut of your life," Deidara continued. "But he's good at it, yeah."

With a final Don't fuck up, yeah, Deidara flipped his own hair over his shoulder and swaggered down the hall.

xXx

Getting a haircut from Sasori turned out to not just be the creepiest haircut of Tori's life, but one of the creepiest experiences she'd had, ever.

When she asked– haltingly and awkwardly– Sasori actually stopped in the middle of running tests on Hiruko and dropped his tools. He fixed her with a sort of peel-you-skin-off look that could rival Orochimaru for intensity and creepiness, and then slowly crossed the room to stroke her hair.

"Um," Tori said. Sasori rubbed a strand of her hair between his fingers, completely ignoring her personal bubble.

"It is hideous," Sasori said, very rudely, but with a disturbing sort of reverence continued, "but there's is a lot of artistic potential here."

"Um," Tori said.

Sasori proceeded to have her sit on a stool and be as still as possible.

"I'd like to keep the length," Tori said, once Sasori had scissors and a comb in his hands. He had a whole kit, presumably for his extensive puppet collection.

"Yes, of course," Sasori snapped, irritated his puppet-for-the-hour could talk back. "You don't have the facial structure for short hair."

Rude.

Sasori proceeded to push and turn her head as he pleased, with little regard for Tori's personal space as he snipped away at her hair. There was no mirror, so Tori was not actually sure what he was doing, just that it was happening and it involved a lot of very weird, gentle caresses of her hair.

"What kind of hair care routine do you use?" Sasori asked at some point, disgusted.

"In Oto we had like… body gel?" Tori answered. It had kept her clean, but at what cost?

Sasori made a sort of offended noise in the back of his throat, which was about how Tori felt about the whole situation. She informed him that she now owned a travel bottle of conditioner.

"I think I have a mousse," Sasori muttered, and then preemptively told Tori to shut up and not move a muscle.

When Sasori finally declared her finished, Tori still did not know what she looked like, but Sasori had certainly spent a lot of time very meticulously shaping her loose curls and stroking her hair in an impressively unnerving way.

"We should keep you like this forever," Sasori concluded, eyeing her like a purebred at a dogshow.

"That'snicethanksSasori!" Tori yelped and then left as fast as she possibly could, grabbing the bamboo umbrella he was loaning her to protect "his work" from the rain.

Tori assumed that when actual infiltration agents went to fancy parties like this, they either had wardrobes of nice, appropriate clothes, or some sort of budget with which to acquire nice clothes. Tori was to meet Kakuzu and Hidana in less than an hour, though, so it was too late to ask. In any case, asking for something as basic as clothes seemed humiliating somehow…

...although she was definitely going to have to talk to someone about getting personal hygiene supplies, as she was quickly running out. Hmm. A conversation for later.

Tori pulled on her nicest article of clothing, which was a knee-length black dress that she was pretty sure she sufficiently washed clean of heart-goo stains. She also threw on what little make-up she had, and silently thanked the old gods and the new for having eyelashes and eyebrows again.

The tiny fold-up hand mirror she'd bought was not enough to figure out what her hair looked like as a whole, but Sasori had definitely done some layering around her face to get rid of the uneven chunks, and she'd lost a couple inches in length due to dead ends. The product he's put in made her curls crunchy.

Kakuzu was in the lobby when Tori went down, and she was relieved he did not comment on her make-over. When Hidan came down, scythe over his shoulder, he took one look at her and said:

"You look like a fucking storybook witch."

Tori twitched. It wasn't even the first time she'd been told she looked like a witch, and between the dark curly hair and the black dress, she could see where he was coming from. Still. Rude.

"I'm surprised you recognized me at all," Tori said snidely.

"Listen–" Hidan started, dropping his scythe from his shoulder.

Kakuzu sighed deeply and stepped in between them. He grabbed Hidan by the collar and Tori by the wrist and dragged them out the door. They bickered the entire walk through the village. It was a good distraction, Tori thought, from her sandals filling with rain water.

"How do you even have the same stereotype of witches as my world?" Tori asked Hidan as he flipped off the village gate guards on the way out.

"How the fuck would I know?" Hidan asked.

"Well, where do your witch stereotypes come from?" Tori asked.

"I dunno. Books?"

"But where do the books get the idea from–"

Kakuzu cut the conversation off by grabbing Tori roughly and tossing her over his shoulder. She dropped Sasori's umbrella as Kakuzu lept into the trees, and Hidan followed, cackling at the started yelp Tori let out.

Because he never shut up, Hidan took the time spent flinging themselves between trees like very dangerous monkeys to ask Tori follow-up questions about his next mission.

"Did he want this done alive or dead?" Hidan asked, flashing the notecard. It was getting limp from the excess moisture in the air. It didn't necessarily rain all the time outside of Ame in Rain Country, but it certainly rained more often than not, and every jump form a tree limbed flicked water droplets into the air.

"I don't think it matters," Tori said, and then she bounced uncomfortably on Kakuzu's shoulder and let out a said little wheeze. "He just wants to send a message against unionizing. But I guess if you can make it obvious it was done alive, that's a stronger message. What are your civilian crime scene analyses like?"

Hidan had absolutely no idea, but he'd interpreted Tori's response as "while alive" and nodded seriously. Tori had absolutely not meant this, because she was strictly against unnecessary torture, and she suspected whatever police investigation happened would just be like, "oh no, they're dead!" So, there was no point mutilating someone alive.

"I don't see why it's easier to hire extremely expensive secret assassins than to just use the money to pay your workers more," Tori said, and then Kakuzu very purposefully jostled her so her stomach hit his shoulder and partially knocked the wind out of her again.

"Higher expenses on the front end eliminate the need to deal with costly issues later," Kakuzu said.

"But–" Tori countered, and it sounded like a gag because she'd lost her breath with that move, "happier workers are more productive workers, and a working class that's spending more is better for the overall–"

"–then they should have hired us," Kakuzu cut her off. "At the end of the day, money is money, and everyone has a price."

"'Even Hell runs on money,'" Tori muttered under her breath. Kakuzu grunted in agreement.

"I don't know that the fuck either of you are talking about," Hidan called loudly. He then switched the conversation to clarifying what her little mutilation diagram meant. "What does a pancreas even look like? You drew it like a funky cloud."

"Because it looks like nonsense," Tori answered.

Tori did not think the client had a very good concept of human anatomy, because he wanted things like "pulling the spleen out through the intestines," which was not how one removed a spleen, and would involve cutting a new holes to get the spleen into the intestines in the first place. Tori knew. She'd pulled out a lot of spleens.

"Do you guys have special names for different types of mutilations?" Tori asked. "Like– like– a 'Konoha Smile'."

Hidan was not very unimpressed with this question, until Tori explained what a Glasgow Smile was. A Konoha Smile just sounded like when Konoha ninja randomly offered you mercy, according to Hidan, as the stereotype was known to do.

"Cutting your face open seems more like some shit they'd do in Kiri," Hidan said. "All the good shit comes out of Kiri."

"Do either of you ever stop talking?" Kakuzu asked.

The Mizusawa mansion was up on a hill, overlooking a dilapidated town that they skirted around rather than pass through. Several of the buildings that Tori could see had been burned out, which was interesting considering how decidedly wet the climate was.

"From the war, probably," Kakuzu said when she said. "Now, shut up."

They ended up squatting in a patch of scraggly trees at the bottom of the hill, right at the edge of a more wooded area, and Kakuzu asked Tori what her plan was to get into the party.

"Uh," Tori said, because she had honestly not considered this. "I was going to just… walk… in…?"

Both Kakuzu and Hidan gave her incredulous looks. The faint sound of music drifted down from the hill. The sky was dark blue from the setting sun, and the whole mansion was illuminated.

"Do you have any plan at all?" Kakuzu asked.

Tori shifted, suddenly embarrassed. "No," she admitted. She'd spent most of the day concentrating on what she assumed was step one of an infiltration mission: not looking like a complete disaster.

"And you didn't think to mention this at the meeting?" Kakuzu asked, and Tori could hear the rising temper behind his words.

"I didn't really think any sort of protest was an option," she said diplomatically. Hidan was looking more and more delighted as the conversation went on, so at least someone was excited about her inevitable failure. "I don't really know why anyone assumed I could do this."

Kakuzu took a deep, calming breath, possibly reminded himself of all the money he needed Tori to make, and said: "Okay."

"Okay?" Hidan asked, plastering a shit-eating grin across his face and nudging Kakuzu with his foot. "Just okay?"

"Okay," Kakuzu hissed out, the way someone might insist they totally were calm. He then proceeded to give Tori what may or may not have been intended to be a pep talk. "It will be okay. You're smart, and you have your doujutsu. Just talk about… The Goat Herder's Son or whatever."

Tori nodded automatically, as if everything he just said made sense. Kakuzu's unpredictable temper scared her quite a bit, and she wasn't about to tell him she didn't know what the hell The Goat Herder's Son was. A famous person? A movie? Who knew!

She also wasn't going to remind him that 1) her made-up future-sight was not a doujutsu, or 2) it didn't even work like that.

"Don't tell anyone the world would be better if they paid workers more, either," Kakuzu continued. "Rich people hate that."

"Right," Tori agreed quickly, before Kakuzu mansplained capitalism to her. "I knew that."

"Just remember," Kakuzu concluded his entirely unhelpful speech. "It's technically a seduction mission."

What the FUCK, Tori thought, and then stepped out of the bushes much more boldly than she felt. Behind her, Hidan snorted with laughter.

"Yeah," he called after her, "use your feminine wiles!"

Jesus Christ, Tori thought as she made her way up the hill, cutting over to a gravel path before anyone noticed she'd just wandered out of the woods like an actual forest witch. Absolutely none of us know how to do this.

Tori did her best "I'm a hot girl and I can get into any party" saunter up the path, which was not really a walk she'd practiced much. At the last party she'd attended, the Half-o-ween one that had ruined her life, she'd made her entrance by hiding under the host's porch with a friend and making ghost noises at guests until someone chased them out. She assumed it would never even occur to anyone at this party to crawl under a porch.

In other words, Tori was definitely not someone who belonged at a high-class party, but she was about to do her best to trick herself and everyone around her into thinking she was. She attempted to brush by the extremely bored looking man at the door, chanting in her head about how she was hot shit.

"Excuse me," the man said, and a muscled arm shot out in front of her. Tori paused and turned to eye the man as if it were cute he thought she didn't belong.

The man was wearing an Iwa headband. Ah, fuck , Tori thought, and broadened the smile on her face. Panicking outwardly would not help.

"Invitation?" the man asked.

First lesson of the night: they should have done some recon before she just waltzed in. Pein had used his bureaucratic power to delay Mizusawa Asa's request for a squad from Ame, and it looked like she'd just hired out to Iwa. Was that even allowed?

"Did I need a written one…?" Tori asked, not letting her smile slip from her face. She was good at staying calm while ninja scrutinized her.

"It's invite only," the man said.

"I was invited verbally," Tori said, and the man's face shifted into a tiny frown that told her that was a bad lie.

Second lesson: she definitely should have done some research to come up with a plausible story to get her in. Or, alternatively, snagged an actual invite.

"I'm an old friend of Asa," Tori said, winking at the man. She knew from the report she'd written up that the noble woman was about her age, so it wasn't an unlikely story. "I was passing through the area, and one of her waitstaff thought it would be a nice surprise. She's been so stressed lately, you know."

The Iwa-nin eyed her dubiously, like that was the dumbest bullshit he'd ever heard. Tori frowned, feigning annoyance, and crossed her arms.

"Really?" she said. "Why don't you do your job and go find someone to verify who I am, then?"

The Iwa-nin was definitely not going to do that, because abandoning his post was Tori's best bet for sneaking in, and so Tori felt safe suggesting it.

"What's your name?" the Iwa-nin finally asked.

The first name that came into Tori's head was Princess Leia, so she said the second thing that came to mind: "Fujioka Haruhi."

Fuck.

"And how do you know Asa-san, Fujioka-san?"

"We had classes together," Tori said immediately. She had absolutely no idea what schooling was like for civilians, but honestly, she doubted this random ninja knew either. Assuming Mizusawa had hired a full team, the guy assigned to guard the most obvious entry and check civilian guests out was definitely not the team's top billing member.

The Iwa-nin looked her up and down and then with a note of finality said, "Sorry, no invite, no entry."

"Ugh," Tori groaned and rolled her eyes. She sighed deeply as part of her act and mentally scrolled through all of the stupid complaints she'd heard in the Oto mess hall. How did a wealthy civilian ruin a ninja's day? "Well, I suppose I can just write Asa later about how you wouldn't let me in. I hope your mission contract has a low pay deduction for client complaints, because she is going to be pissed."

And with that, Tori turned on her heel and sauntered back down the path. The Iwa-nin did not immediately call her back, so she supposed now she had to go find out if there were other ninja crawling around to keep her from sneaking in a back door.

Or maybe she should go back and face Kakuzu? Who was more likely to stab her? Fuck.

A rickshaw was ambling up the path in the opposite direction, carrying an older couple dressed in ridiculously fancy traditional clothing.

No wonder the guard didn't believe me, jeez, Tori thought, eyeing the couple, and then had the sudden and impulsive idea to wave at them. It wasn't weird to greet strangers in Tori's hometown, and it was a natural instinct. But, after getting odd looks for greeting people she barely knew in the hallways of Oto, Tori could only conclude that here you only greeted the closest of friends.

"Good evening," Tori called. "How are you doing?"

The woman smiled in a sort of baffled-but-polite way at her and waved back. "Good evening, dear," she said, in the tone of voice of someone trying to cover up that they did not remember who you were at all. "We're doing as well as a pair of old bones can be."

Her husband grumbled something to her, but Tori missed the exact words due to the guard calling her back.

Tori walked into the mansion with the older couple, the wife looking bemused at the random nice girl who'd greeted her, and the husband sternly ignoring the both of them. The guard was sufficiently convinced Tori knew other guests, at least in passing.

It probably helped, Tori thought as she pushed her way as far into the party and as far away from the guard as possible, that she was very obviously a small civilian woman, and not even an intimidating one. Tori had the type of gentle face that made strangers pick the seat next to her on public transport.

It only took about thirty seconds inside for Tori learn her third lesson, which was that she should have learned who was invited and what the dress code was. The majority of the guests were older and dressed traditionally, in expensive silks with complicated embroidery. A handful of the younger guests had more modern clothes– slacks and cocktail dresses– but Tori felt like she stuck out like a sore thumb. Her secondhand dress definitely wasn't as nice as that sequined monstrosity a young woman on the opposite side of the room was wearing. Tori suddenly found it a lot harder to walk with that confident swing in her hips.

Tori picked up a tiny plate of heure d'oeuvres and slinked through the party as inconspicuously as possible. The mansion had an open floor plan, with room after room filled with furniture that looked like it had been lifted from a museum. Almost every room had at least one person-sized exotic vase, and all sorts of paintings hung on the walls. There was even a sword over a massive fireplace in one room. The hole Kakuzu had punched in the wall during "negotiations" was just to the right of the fireplace and had been covered by a black tarp.

The guests stuck in tight-knit groups, most of them too involved in their own gossip to give Tori a second glance. She got a few odd looks– ranging from incredulity to distaste– but no one seemed to care enough to question her presence.

Tori spent several minutes standing awkwardly at the edge of a group of middle aged women and waiting for their conversation to turn in a direction she understood. Right now it was about some family's personal business, and something about a brand of…. Ceramics, maybe...?

Very briefly the conversation did turn to the hostess, with one of the ladies saying, "Of course, Ami-san grew up here, during the war, a good and proper Rain Country girl–"

"–Asa-san could take some lessons from her," another woman whispered, clear distaste in her voice. "Did you see her nails? Is that what they do in Iron Country? Her father liked exotic things, but really–"

"Oh, shush," someone answered, her eyes darting around the room. "Have some decorum."

Tori fidgeted in place. That was her chance to steer the conversation in the direction she wanted it– she was supposed to suss out what exactly Asa's financials were, after all. She should ask for more information. No one was just going to just announce the information she wanted.

"Excuse me," Tori said, and was firmly ignored. Everyone was very engrossed in gossiping loudly about inflation in earthenware prices due to so-and-so's affair with some merchant's daughter. The fourth lesson of the night, then, was know what questions to ask and to whom to direct them.

Also, as a sort of four-B: learn how to be less awkward in a crowd.

"Here," a very bored man said, and put a dirty plate in Tori's hands, stacking it on top of her own empty plate.

"I'm not–" Tori started, but the man was already gone. "–a waiter."

Tori found an actual member of the waitstaff– who, very notably, was also dressed better than her– and then nearly blew her entire cover.

The woman was a ninja. No headband, and in a formal haori baggy enough to hide her build, but Tori had been living with ninja for months and she knew. She could see it in her face and in the way she moved.

"Thank you," Tori said as she passed over the dirty plates, and then shuffled away as quickly as possible without looking suspicious.

As she picked her way through the crowd, Tori started noticing more and more shinobi mixed in. Now that she knew to look, it was obvious. She counted five just in this one room.

That was more than a full team. How many had Asa hired? Were there more Tori wasn't recognizing? What happened now, if she got caught? Would Hidan and Kakuzu come to save her?

Somehow, she doubted it. The fifth lesson: have an extraction plan for when things go wrong, and a handler you trust.

Tori needed somewhere quiet to think. Her heart pounded as she walked through room after room as calmly as she could, the hum of conversation and the music of a live band making her skin crawl.

Eventually, she found an empty room and shut the door behind her. It was decorated entirely with taxidermied animals.

There were hundreds of them– posed around the room, and then in floor-to-ceiling glass-front display cases. Tori wondered if guests weren't in here because it was actually off-limits or just creepy. It didn't matter to her; she'd done some of her best thinking in off-limits rooms filled with dead things.

She should probably just leave. No one would question an awkward guest leaving early, and even if Akatsuki was mad at her for abandoning a mission, there was no way anyone could expect her to deal with ninja problems. Plus, the ninja were probably specifically here to guard against retaliation from Kakuzu's rage, and Tori should tell him that as soon as possible.

Tori wandered by a pair of monkeys posed in a tree and then peered up at a taxidermy albino bear. Yes, leaving was definitely the only sane option here, but not before she got a look at whatever the hell was going on in this room.

An hour later, Tori was still in the room, examining a platypus, and the woman in the sequin monstrosity burst in.

"I don't care if Yamamoto-san owns an entire fucking army of trading ships," the woman fumed. "He had no right to say that to me! I'm not some stupid country bumpkin–"

"Asa-san, please," the old man with her pleaded, and then abruptly cut himself off as they both spotted Tori, squatting in front of the case with the platypus.

(Where the HELL did this Naruto world have PLATYPI? Tori needed to know, immediately, and this entire stupid mission could go on hold.)

There was a very awkward silence as the three of them stared at each other.

"What," Asa bit out, "the fuck."

"Uh, ma'am," the old man said, and if that was Asa-san, that was probably her second cousin and advisor that Kakuzu ranted about ripping in two long-ways, Oba Takao.

Asa cocked her head at Tori in a sort of Well? gesture, and it suddenly hit Tori how ridiculous she looked. Hair frizzy from the rain and travel, make-up too bold and too dark, ninja sandals under her plain dress– she didn't look flawlessly elegant like the women in the next room. She looked like a teenager that worked at Hot Topic.

Asa shot Oba a meaningful look, a silent communication Tori didn't know how to interpret. She feared they could hear the thudding of her heart from across the room, even though she knew that was impossible.

Tori didn't stand up right away. She didn't know what to do or say. Kakuzu had called this a 'seduction mission,' but she couldn't seduce anyone.

No. There was more than one type of seduction.

She couldn't be sexy. But she could be a lot of other things.

"Asa-san," she said, turning her face up just enough to make eye contact with her. She set her voice low, purring. "You have quite the collection. Do you know what this one is called?"

Tori pointed at the platypus, and then did her best impression of an Orochimaru smile up at Asa.

"This is such a curious creature," she said. "Where on earth did you get it?"

Asa's lip twitched, and Tori made several snap judgements all at once. Asa could dress in fancy old clothes if she wanted to and make all the old ladies coo about what a tragic young lady she was, but instead she was in a glittery dress, with loud make-up and too much jewelry and yellow acrylic nails. Had Tori's time in Oto not been a crash course in teasing loyalty out of young people who were just a little bit different?

"To be honest," Tori said, doing her best impression of Orochimaru on a helpful day: playful and a little mysterious and so ready to tell you how you were special and important. "I snuck in here because I heard your father had exotic tastes. No offense, but this room is so much more interesting than your old fuddy-duddy guests."

"You snuck in–" Oba said, sounding scandalized, but Asa burst into laughter.

"It's a duckmole," Asa said, crossing the room to join Tori. She was wearing a pair of ridiculous suede heels that clicked as she walked.

"Oh, I've read about those," Tori lied, running a finger down its beak. What the hell was a duckmole? Where did it come from? "It's smaller than I thought it'd be. Did you know they laid eggs?"

Asa just raised her eyebrows, apparently not at all interested in learning about monotremes. Tori changed the subject.

"You know," she started, "I was passing through Rain and heard this was the it-spot to be–"

The line of Asa's mouth thinned. "You can't just pass through Rain," she said.

"You can if your family owns Cup Noodles," Tori said, and then winked again. She was winking a lot tonight. She should find a real mirror a figure out what she actually looked like when she did that. "I've heard Yamamoto-san is a huge dick, by the way."

Asa snorted in a very unlady-like way, and then relaxed. "What did you say your name was?"

"Suzumiya Haruhi," Tori supplied. Oh, hell, wrong Haruhi. "Where did you get the duckmole from?"

"I don't know any Suzumiyas…" Oba muttered.

"My father made all of them," Asa said, crossing the room to stand next to Tori. "He fancied himself an ecologist. Bit of a creepy hobby, right?"

She then sent Tori a look so sharp Tori new instinctively there was a right and a wrong answer.

"I don't know," Tori said carefully, "I kind of like stuff like this."

A grin spread over Asa's face. In the next twenty minutes, Tori fulfilled her personal goal of learning where the fuck a platypus might have come from, which was a vague "off-continent" and then "found in an exotic pet market." Was this where they had gotten potatoes from? Peanuts? Tomatoes?

At the end of the twenty minutes, Tori had also learned that Asa was incredibly obsessed with her family's history, an implication that she felt disconnected from it after growing up abroad due to war, and that she wanted to expand and modernize her family's estate. Tori also found out that Yamamoto had slighted Asa by vaguely implying she was too young to understand something, that she was mad at another guest for questioning her maturity, and upset with a whole slew of people for not complimenting her dress.

"This whole stupid country is stuck in the past," Asa complained, raking her fingers through the fur of the albino bear. Oba fidgeted in the background. "I've been trying to improve it and no one is supporting me. I'm so glad I found someone else young and enlightened, like you. Everyone here just wants to talk about The Goat Herder's Son."

What was that? Tori was going to have to look it up once she got back. You know, assuming the ninja running around this party didn't cart her off to some new hidden village.

Tori smiled and said something about not everyone being brave or clever enough to get away from tradition, a meaningless statement meant to pat Asa's ego.

"Let's get something to drink," Asa finally said, slipping her arm into Tori's and guiding her towards the door. "It gets so stuffy in here. Have you traveled much?"

She said that last bit with a little bit of hunger in her voice, and Tori abruptly understood what Kakuzu meant when he said this was a "seduction" mission. It wasn't about sex– it was about offering someone something they couldn't resist.

"Oh, yes," Tori said. "I just came from Sound Country."

The re-entered the loud rooms of the actual party, and while Tori bullshitted her way through a story about meeting with local Cup Noodle distributors, Asa waved down another ninja-waiter with a tray of champagne flutes. Tori pretended not to notice the ninja's eyes lingering on her just a little too long.

"Have you ever had sparkling wine before?" Asa asked.

Tori's one and only experience with champagne was trying to drink it straight from the bottle and the foam going up her nose. She told Asa she'd tried it a handful of times.

"They have an interesting tradition in Iron Country," Tori said, "where they open bottles with swords."

Asa laughed, loud and abrupt. "I grew up in Iron Country," she said. "That is so typical of them, and their silly samurai traditions."

Sabrage was, as far as Tori knew, a French tradition that involved opening champagne bottles with a saber. Her aforementioned champagne experience had involved watching an upperclassman demonstrating the technique with a breadknife.

Asa downed the entire flute of sparkling wine in one go and grabbed another two.

"Hurry up, slowpoke," she demanded, and offered the second glass to Tori.

Tori, realizing she'd made a terrible mistake, drank the flute as quickly as she could, stamping down the memory of the fizz of bubbles up her nose and the distant memory of when she could watch a man wave a knife around and still feel safe.

Asa coaxed two more glasses into Tori and then sent the ninja-waiter away for shochu. Tori was, perhaps, going to die. The most alcohol she'd ever had at once was a coffee mug full of cheap wine her roommate had gotten from somewhere.

(College was… not a classy experience, in hindsight.)

"I heard a nasty rumor about you," Tori whispered conspiratorially to Asa, a shot of shochu later. Asa had made some guests clear off a couch, and now Tori was curled up next to her, listing off random made-up bullshit about her travels as Asa consumed an alarming amount of alcohol. "Yamamoto-san said you've been buying things you can't afford. That you're in debt with some ninja."

"Ugh!" Asa said, throwing her cup at the ninja-waiter, who caught it easily. "Yamamoto-san doesn't know shit. I'm not stupid. My grandmother was from Uzushio."

What the hell did that have to do with anything?

"What do you mean?" Tori asked, but Asa was too distracted and a little drunk.

"Typical of Yamamoto-san to say something like that," she muttered, and then waved down a second ninja, this one disguised as a guest. "Hey, you, let's get this show started. Toss Yamamoto in for good measure, would you?"

Tori did not know what was going on, and it looked neither did any of the guests as they were sheparded into the room. Asa shoved empty champagne flutes off the coffee table in front of her couch and shot Tori a meaningful look. Tori had no idea what Asa wanted and smiled back.

Asa rolled her eyes, grabbed Tori's sleeve to pull her forward, and then used her shoulder to steady her as she stepped onto the table.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Asa announced, surveying her guests like some sort of sparkly, drunk monarch. "I am Mizusawa Asa, the last of the Mizusaawa family, one of only two noble families left in Rain after the War–"

She went on for a while, about how the other living family was a bunch of cowards hiding in Hot Water Country. Then she announced they were here today to recement her family's power.

"And our power," she said, "is Rain Country's power."

She paused, triumphant, and there was some very awkward applause. Tori clapped the way she thought Orochimaru would clap for the latest lunatic in power, which was with restrained enthusiasm.

"In order to progress, of course," Asa continued, swaying on her heels, "obstacles to progress must be destroyed."

This was, if Tori had to pick a turning point, the exact moment where things went from "kind of shaky" to "a complete disaster ordered by Jashin their-holy-self."

Hindsight was 20/20, though, and in the moment Tori just clapped politely and poured herself another drink of shochu.

Notes:

Tori: Orochimaru just treats everything like a seduction mission, all the time, and is to be emulated.
The entire Akatsuki: No?

This chapter was supposed to be the ENTIRE mission but then it was 8000 words and we're only like halfway through. :( Uuuh some actual notes:
-"Duckmole" is an old word for platypus.
-Sabrage is cool as shit and we should all go around chopping open champagne bottles. I highly recommend looking it up on YouTube.

Chapter 12: The worst of messes become successes!

Summary:

Tori completes her mission!

Notes:

Everyone who did their homework and looked up sabrage get bonus points!

This chapter, like Tori's entire life, has more gutted bodies than originally planned.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Lesson number… whatever lesson Tori was on tonight… was actually one that she had already known. Everyone in this world was ready to kill everyone else at the drop of a hat, apparently, because everything was comically terrible.

Asa stood on the table with a smug grin on her face, surveying her twitching audience as some of her non-ninja servants rolled out cages of screaming, writhing rats.

"Some of you," Asa announced, voice a mix of sweet and sharp, "have not been as loyal to this country as you should be. Yamamoto-san, step forward."

Even with her back to the audience, Tori could feel the tension in the room. Everyone was dead silent– there was not even the rustling of clothing from fidgeting, just the scream of the rats echoing through the room.

Asa cleared her throat impatiently, and a ninja pulled an elderly man to the front of the room. Tori held her glass up to pretend to take another swig of shochu and hide her reaction.

This was Yamamoto? He was ancient! Part of her regretted naming him specifically, but…

Most of her was really just glad that wasn't her up there.

Asa went through a list of names, giving increasingly wild and slurred explanations of their betrayal. She accused people of undermining her, of failure to support her, of giving aid to the wrong people in the previous war. No one said a word against her or made a single sound of protest.

Tori wondered at that. Was this what war did to people? Was this what the presence of ninja did to people? Or did everyone just feel the same as the ugliest parts of her– relief their names weren't being called?

Finally, Asa made to step off the table, wobbled, and Tori shot forward to grab her arm and help her down. The sudden movement made her head spin, and both girls fell ungracefully back into the couch.

"Ugh," Asa said, pushing loose hair back from her face. "I just threw up in my mouth a little." She waved vaguely at the line of eight people now at the front of the room. They ranged in disposition from resolute and still to shaking in fear, but all were silent. "Begin!"

Tori knew what Water Country rat torture was because Keizo had threatened her with it more than once. It had never been one of the threats she took seriously– sure, an irate lab partner might hit you or make you work overtime without meals, but starve rats for days so that they would eat you alive? Who had the time for that?

As it turned out, Mizusawa Asa's waitstaff had the time.

The first person in line was old Yamamoto-san, and two blank-faced ninja picked him up and forced him down into one of the cages. He started to yell and struggle, then, and one of the women in line buried her face in her hands as she openly wept.

"I thought you were s'pose to, um," Tori said, her drunk mind struggling to say anything that wasn't: Lady, what the fuck? "Don't you cut the person open first?"

"What?" Asa asked, rolling a champagne flute in her hands. Tori wondered if she'd noticed it was empty.

In a frenzy, the rats started to bite Yamamoto, who screamed in a sort of unholy fear that Tori had never heard from any of the shinobi she'd helped Orochimaru kill. Tori pitched her voice over the sound, desperate just to be focusing on conversation and not on the screaming.

"You cut the abdomen open," she said, thinking back to Keizo's threats, "and put the rats inside. Then they eat the person from the inside."

Asa let out a thoughtful hum, and then leaned forward in her seat to bark more commands. The next person in line– a woman, this time– was lowered into a second cage while a shinobi leaned over it with a tanto in hand.

I don't know where I expected that to go, Tori thought, fighting back a wince. What the fuck, Drunk Tori?

After the third person was shoved into a cage of rats and then sliced open, Asa leaned into Tori and whispered. "I'm going to do this to the entirety of Akatsuki, just you watch."

Tori snorted into her glass. "Hidan will probably like it," she replied.

"No," Asa disagreed, sitting up straight and glaring at her, "he won't. "

Tori backtracked immediately, "You're right. They'll all hate it. How are you going to get them, though? They're ninja."

Asa flopped back into the couch, smiling whimsically at the screaming people in front of her. "How do you think I got so many Iwa elite?" she asked. "I'm going to trade Akatsuki for–"

"Sparkling wine?" one of the waiters interrupted, and suddenly more champagne was under Tori's nose.

"Uh, thanks," Tori said, and took it.

"I think it's a good deal," Asa continued, ignoring the interruption. "I've been selling and trading off– hmm– my grandmother's scrolls, but Akatsuki pissed me off."

The waiter leaned in again and asked, "Mizusawa-sama, would you like me to fetch you anything to eat?"

Tori recognized that it was a bad sign that this ninja kept cutting Asa off, but there was too much alcohol running through her system to get the dots to connect properly. She needed Asa to talk, and Asa was talking, and so Tori ignored the red flag.

"Scrolls?" Tori asked, and one of the ninja pulled Yamamoto's mutilated corpse out of the first cage while another ninja drugged another man– this one in his mid-twenties– forward. "What, like ninja scrolls?"

"My grandmother's dowry," Asa said smugly, taking a sip from her empty champagne flute and then looking down at it like it had personally betrayed her. "The seals on the greenhouse are so good, they survived both wars, and only I can open it."

Asa waggled her pointer finger at Tori.

"What–" Tori started to ask, but Asa had turned around, now demanding a full champagne flute from the waiter that had been hovering over them. The conversation was over, and Asa snuggled back into the couch to watch the show in front of her. Tori copied her.

It was alarmingly easy to stay calm through the entire horrorshow. Tori had seen… well, she wouldn't say worse, necessarily, but she'd seen comparably gross things. The screaming and the crying bothered her more than the mutilation or the stench. She forced herself to relax back into the couch and sipped her drink. Next to her, Asa shifted restlessly and then leaned forward, body tense and brows furrowed in concentration.

Tori tried to put together what Asa had said. Something something dowry, something greenhouse? Scrolls? What?

Also, how in the name of god was she going to hold down anyone in Akatsuki long enough to shove a rat inside? That didn't make any sense.

Eventually, Asa stood up and the ninja waiter helped her climb back onto the table. Tori's vision went sideways and her hearing went all fuzzy so she didn't know what Asa was saying, and then suddenly the old woman Tori had come in with was standing in front of Asa and telling her she would never accept someone so cruel as a leader, and then being dragged off…

Tori blacked out twice more during whatever the fuck was happening, and when she thought she was in control again, the entire room was spinning, there were even more bodies on the pile, and a lot of crying people were kneeling all over the room.

"Well?" Asa asked her, eyebrow raised. Next to her, a ninja chucked a kunai and killed an escaped rat.

"Yes," Tori said. It was always a good idea to agree with the crazy person in charge.

"Kneel first," Asa said, voice sharp. "Kneel and swear fealty, or go to the rats."

Well… why not?

Tori practically fell off the couch and then kneeled awkwardly in the cramped space between the couch and the coffee table.

"Whatever you say," Tori said.

"God, you are so drunk," Asa sniffed. "Typical new money."

Someone else helped Asa off the table, and she stretched and whined about wanting to celebrate.

"I'll open another bottle of champagne," one of the non-ninja waitstaff said.

"Ugh, no, that's boring," Asa complained, crossing her arms and tapping a finger against her skin in annoyance.

Finger… yes… the finger… was needed for…. Something. Something important. In the greenhouse?

Tori needed to get the finger. She stood up, and then instantly had to sit back down, sticking her head between her knees as the room and her body seemed to spin in opposite directions. There was more talking, and Tori missed what happened but Asa was holding a champagne bottle in the fingers Tori needed to get–

Tori stood up and staggered forward. Tori had absolutely no idea what she said, but next thing she knew, Asa was pulling the sword from the mantel place while the kunoichi at her side rolled her eyes.

"'S not hard," Tori said, and gestured for Asa to sit next to her on the floor. She didn't remember how she'd come to be on the floor, but Asa had the sword in one hand and the champagne bottle in the other, so things were going the way Tori wanted. "You run the blade down the side of the bottle and the change in pressure makes it– uh– break."

Tori leaned forward, folding herself around Asa to guide her hands, positioning the fingers around the neck of the bottle and guiding Asa's hand with the sword in slow motion.

"Just like that," Tori assured. "Just go as fast n' strong as you can."

Tori wobbled, moved so she was blocking the kunoichi's view. There were more shinobi present, but they were moving rats and bodies and wailing guests and no one seemed all that concerned with the shenanigans of two drunk civilians. Tori arranged the fingers one more time. "Perfect. To your reign, Princess."

Tori had no idea if that sentence even made sense with the current circumstances, but a manic smile spread across Asa's face.

Asa did just as she was told, running the sword down the side of the bottle as fast as she could. The blade hit the lip of the bottle, and the glass broke off in a perfect ring, taking the cork with it. Foam splattered all over the floor.

Asa screamed. Blood mixed with the champagne on the perfectly polished hardwood floor.

"Asa," Tori cried, voice filled with concern she absolutely does not feel, and she lurched forward to comfort her. Tori was very visibly drunk at this point, though, and she missed as Asa grasped her own left wrist in horror. Tori slipped, ended up on her elbows, and came face to face with Asa's dismembered index finger.

Tori could not believe that worked. She grabbed the finger and did what she always did when she doesn't have pockets: she shoved it down her shirt. (Some hours later, when she was sober again, this will be one of the more horrifying memories of the night.)

Asa let out a piercing scream, and Tori was shoved out of the way as Oba and two ninja swept in to help. Tori blinked dumbly at the scene, sprawled on her butt across the floor. She'd sort of forgotten about the part where removing fingers hurt people.

Strong hands gripped her by the upper arms, and the waitress-kunoichi dragged her across the room and ripped back the tarp to pull her outside through the hole Kakuzu had punched in the wall.

"Okay, you little sneak," the kunoichi said, and shoved her into the wood-paneled wall of the mansion. The back of the mansion was a carefully manicured garden, illuminated by old fashioned gas lamps. "Who are you working for?"

Tori blinked up at the woman, and then into the night sky behind her. It had been overcast coming in, but now it was clear and Tori felt like she could see every star in the universe.

That's so beautiful, what the fuck, Tori thought. She'd have to drive hours out to the middle of nowhere to get a view like this, back in her old world.

There was another shinobi-man talking to the kunoichi– Tori missed how he'd gotten there– and he leaned over and smacked Tori in the face.

"Hey," Tori protested, even though it had barely hurt. Her face was oddly numb. Being drunk was like some sort of superpower.

"She's not normal," the kunoichi said. "I hit her with way too much azylmide for her to still be standing."

Tori felt her world lurch again, and she leaned back against the wall. That was… a drug. She couldn't remember which one. Kabuto had given it to her a few times, though. She was probably more resistant than a normal person.

"Maybe," Tori said, her words sounding to her like they were coming out of someone else's mouth, "you're not as good as you think you are."

Oh no, being drunk wasn't a superpower; it was stupid power. Or… no… she was drugged? Drunk or drugged? Both? What was happening?

"What are the potential alcohol-drug interactions?" Tori slurred, leaning harder into the wall.

"You think this moron is suspicious?" the ninja-man asked, waving vaguely at Tori incredulously. Tori very carefully shifted herself so her back was against the wood panelling. This seemed more stable, even as the stars spun above. "She's so small, you probably just underestimated the dosage."

"She cut off the client's finger!" the kunoichi protested.

Tori stood there and watched dumbly as the two ninja argued. The woman had overheard her comment about Hidan and thought she was suspicious, but the man had seen her walking around with her arm linked with Asa and thought she was an old friend. Tori closed her eyes and focused on not falling over as they mutually agreed they should tie her up and dump her in the basement to be dealt with later.

Tori's incredibly brilliant plan to prevent this from happening was to lean against the wall some more and think: Well, shit. Asa would probably feed her to the fucking rats.

The kunoichi turned to her, grimly, and then suddenly there was blood splashed all over Tori's front and three metal blades coming out of the kunoichi's face and chest. The ninja-man barely had time to reach for his weapon's pouch before Hidan pivoted and kicked him in the chest, his hands still on his scythe in the kunoichi's body.

"What's up, shitstain," Hidan greeted Tori, wrenching his weapon from the kunochi's corpse. Kakuzu snapped the ninja-man's neck. "Did you get sloshed instead of doing your job?"

He said this very brightly, like it was his preferred outcome.

Tori wiped the blood off her face. "Imma multitasker," she said. Blood was going to be so much harder to get out of clothes than heart-goo. "Do we have laundry faci– fusilli–?"

She stumbled over the word 'facilities.' Hidan grinned toothily at her.

"This has been a waste of time," Kakuzu growled. "I'm going in."

He made a move for the tarp, which was flapping gently in the wind as people yelled at each other inside the mansion, and Tori went to block his way, tripped over the ninja-man's corpse, and fell flat on her face.

"No, I know how– ow!" She rolled over to blink spots out of her eyes. Kakuzu glared down at her. "'s been trading her grandma's scrolls for stuff. They're in the greenhouse."

"...what?" Kakuzu asked.

"Her grandma brought old scrolls from Uzush'o for her dowry," Tori said, shakily getting back to her feet. Ooh, now her stomach was rolling. "Asa's been trading them to ninja."

One of the Iwa-nin stuck his head out of the tarp, and Kakuzu grabbed him and literally broke his back over his knee. Tori leaned back against the wall again.

"Aaaand," Tori continued, watching Kakuzu discard the man like a ragdoll, "she was gonna sell Akatsuki out to Iwa instead of paying you."

Kakuzu froze, and Tori learned what 'killing intent' felt like. It felt exactly like dead certainty you were going to be cut open and have hungry rats shoved into your innards.

"Shit," Tori said, and then toppled over again. Was she going to vomit? She was definitely going to vomit.

"Get in there and make sure none of the ninja get away," Kakuzu commanded, pulling back the tarp and pushing Hidan through. Hidan did not resist in the slightest and gave a happy whoop as several shouts of alarm rang through the night.

"Civies," Tori said from the grass. They weren't supposed to hurt them. Konan said so.

"And don't kill the civilians," Kakuzu barked after Hidan. There was some noise and someone's severed arm flew over Tori, its fancy embroidered sleeve flapping in the wind. She hoped it was one of the shinobi in disguise, and not one of the rando old civilians. She didn't want to find out what Konan's killing intent felt like.

"You," Kakuzu said, looming over Tori, "are going to show me these scrolls."

Tori wasn't actually sure how she ended up on her feet and in front of the greenhouse, but it definitely happened. The greenhouse sat in the back of the garden, and the glass panels looked black in the moonlight. Kakuzu jerked at the door, which glowed a dull blue. The ink of a seal bled through the wood, slowly forming a very complex looking pattern.

"She said," Tori said, swaying on her feet, "she opens it with her– um– her finger. Which is why I got this."

If Kakuzu was surprised by Tori pulling a severed finger with a bright yellow acrylic nail out of her shirt, he didn't show it. He took it from her and pressed its pad into the center of the seal. Then he tried around the sides, and then by tracing patterns with it.

Tori watched him, willing the seal into focus as her vision swam. It looked complicated, but the structure was pretty basic. She assumed all the whacky patterns ringing the outside were the… kin-recognition or whatever was going on, but the core of it was mostly recognizable.

Behind them, there was a whole lot of yelling and crashing from the mansion. Nothing happened with the seal.

"Either this needs a living finger," Kakuzu finally concluded, "or you took the wrong one."

He tossed the finger at her, and it hit her square in the solar plexus and fell to the ground.

Kakuzu punched one of the glass panels. It did not break, because the seal had about ten reinforcement components on it to make the place unbreakable. Kakuzu's eyes narrowed at the building, as if it had purposefully pissed him off.

Killing intent was starting to rise around him again. Tori wanted this to stop, because she could feel her stomach flipping over again and she hated vomiting.

"Then why don't you just– hmm–" Tori knelt and scooped the finger up– "dea–deactivate it?"

She wobbled over to the seal and flipped the finger around so she could write with the bloody stump. Deactivating seals was the first lesson you were supposed to learn in fuuinjutsu, and even if she'd… not done those lessons in the right order… Tori had read through and practiced several beginner's guides. Plus, this seal was designed to be deactivated; that's what the whole center bit looked like it was about. Given the seal was supposed to recognize Asa as its owner, deactivating it with her blood as a chakra conduit shouldn't be complicated, even if Tori's spinning head made her write things a little uneven and crooked.

Fingers didn't have a lot of blood in them. She had to squeeze hard to get enough out.

"Ta-daaa," Tori finished, and stepped back as the door swung open. Kakuzu stared at it for approximately two seconds and then stared at Tori for another two seconds. She smiled at him and fumbled with the finger as she put it back down her shirt.

Kakuzu snorted derisively at her and stomped into the greenhouse. Tori wandered in after him.

The insides of the greenhouse were mostly rusted metal shelves with pots of dried dirt and skeletons of plants. A series of trunks were piled up against one wall, and Kakuzu made short work of breaking them open and emptying them of their contents. Ninja scrolls went into his own storage scroll, and a trunk of beautiful but moth-eaten fabrics and another trunk of diaries were shoved aside. Kakuzu paused over a trunk of old books.

"These are rare…" he said, flipping through one with a sort of delicacy Tori had never seen from him.

A ninja interrupted them by hurling a fistful of shuriken through the doorway. They were aimed at Kakuzu, but as Tori was standing partially between him and the door, one ended up in the back of her arm and one grazed the outside of her thigh.

"Fuck," she swore, automatically reaching for the sudden pain in her arm. The mix of drugs and alcohol dulled the sensation, but it still hurt.

Kakuzu snarled and shoved her aside as he stormed for the ninja– now joined by a friend– at the front of the greenhouse.

"Pack those books up!" he commanded over his shoulder.

Tori, now crouched behind one of the metal shelves and clutching a bleeding arm, could not see what happened, but there was certainly a lot of banging and one horrified scream, followed by the sound of shattering glass, the greenhouse walls now no longer protected by the seal.

Tori went with her first instinct and ripped the shuriken out of her arm, and then immediately remembered you weren't supposed to remove things stabbed into you without medical guidance. She didn't have anything to stop the bleeding. Should she put it back in?

No, bad idea, Drunk Tori.

The good news was that the shuriken had not gone too far into her arm and wasn't affecting her ability to move her arm or her fingers at all. This would be… maybe okay….?

The greenhouse was quiet and she crawled towards the storage scroll Kakuzu had left behind. Perhaps he had something in there useful?

Tori had never used a storage scroll before. They were discussed in fuinjutsu literature, of course, although she'd never paid too much attention. The idea was for the user to manipulate chakra into them to make them work, which she couldn't do, but in theory if she just… bled on the right place…

Tori grasped at her bleeding arm again, coating her fingertips.

A while later, she had managed to unseal the Uzushio scrolls Kakuzu had put away, totally undoing the task she was supposed to complete and not finding any medical supplies. Hidan wandered into the greenhouse.

"Yo," he said.

Tori looked up from where she was glaring at the scroll in her lap, now covered in doodles made in blood. Hidan's hair was mussed and pink with blood, and his cloak was cut open. His abdomen was actively bleeding from several puncture wounds, which didn't seem to bother him at all.

"Why aren't you wearing a shirt?" Tori asked, squinting at him.

"You're welcome," Hidan replied, grinning meanly down at her. "Kakuzu went to chase down the runners," He continued, leaning on his scythe and yawning. "He said you had all the scrolls and shit. What're you doing?"

"Um," Tori said. Now that she was slowly sobering up, she didn't have much of an explanation for what her logic here was. "I'm supposed to put these… in the scroll…?"

"Kakuzu and his fucking books," Hidan muttered, and squatted down to start piling things onto the storage scroll. Tori scooted away, delicately touching the wound on her arm. It was tacky with blood, but seemed to have stopped actively bleeding now that she was no longer poking her finger into it.

Platelets, she thought. Gotta love 'em.

And oh, fuck, she'd totally forgotten she'd been knicked in the thigh. It stung when she moved, and now there was a hole in her skirt. She liked this dress, too!

"This isn't working," Hidan said, glaring at his pile. "Did you fucking break a storage scroll?"

"...maybe?" Tori answered.

Hidan made an annoyed noise in the back of his throat and produced his own scroll from inside his cloak. It was black, and Tori vaguely remembered black scrolls meaning something, but she couldn't remember what. Hidan dumped the books and Uzushio scrolls into the storage scroll, re-rolled it, and shoved it into the pack at the small of his back.

"What the hell were you doing?" Hidan asked when he was done. "You broke a scroll, and inside the house there were a bunch of bodies and, like, rats, everywhere– one even bit me–"

He sounded ever so slightly impressed. Tori could feel a headache coming on.

"Mizusawa Asa is a psychopath, that's what happened," Tori answered, and then gave a brief overview of her 'demonstration.' "Top ten grossest things I've ever seen." She paused, and then because she still wasn't completely sober, added, "Number one, of course, is your face."

Hidan picked up one of the pots of dried out dirt and threw it at her. It was a half-hearted throw, slow and lazy, and Tori just barely managed to duck. It shattered against the wall behind her, raining dirt down on her.

Tori wondered, briefly, if it would be weird to go back into the mansion and use a shower to clean herself off. Getting dirt and that kunoichi's blood in her wounds would be bad.

"That would be really fucking weird, yeah," Hidan said when she asked. "We gotta go find Kakuzu."

Tori grabbed the scroll she had broken and followed him out of the greenhouse. Dawn was starting to break, and birds were starting to chirp as if a bunch of horrible violence hadn't just happened. Tori fought back a yawn.

The mansion itself was eerily silent, the garden strewn with bodies and blood. Tori didn't know where any of the civilians had gone, and when she asked, Hidan just snorted and called them "godless cowards."

"It's probably good that bitch hired Iwa," Hidan said casually, leading Tori down the hill into the surrounding forest, not even giving the bodies a second glance. "We got to send a pretty strong message, without Konan ripping us a new one."

Tori nodded along, rerolling the broken scroll as she followed him. Good. Sure. Right. Let's just ignore that Asa hired Iwa by offering up Akatsuki–

Suddenly, there was a sword through Hidan's abdomen.

"Aw, fuck," he said, swinging around to try and elbow his assailant in the head, completely unbothered by the sword. "How many of you are there?"

This ninja, whoever he was, was not in civilian disguise, instead wearing a standard flak jacket. He ducked Hidan's blow and yanked his sword free in one motion, rolling out of the way as Hidan came down on him with his scythe…

...only for the scythe to be blocked by the sword of another ninja, who seemed to come out of nowhere.

Great, okay, it's the hotel all over again, Tori thought, and then took off at a run into the woods, dropping the broken storage scroll behind her.

The Iwa-nin didn't seem to care about her enough to pursue, which was lucky because Tori's only plan at the moment was to avoid being stabbed by more stray shuriken.

Her stomach rolled again, her vision swam, and Tori stumbled to a stop. She stood and breathed heavily for a while, trying to get her head to clear. For a moment, she considered making a run for escape again, fleeing into the night from Akatsuki.

But, no, that was stupid. They would come find her again, and then she'd lose all the freedom she'd carved out for herself. Better to be strapped into a wild roller coaster than fall off of it.

When the noise from the fight finally stopped, Tori slowly counted to 100 and then started edging her way back to where she'd left Hidan. The scene she found wasn't exactly what she wanted to see.

There were two dead and dismembered Iwa-nin laying around in several parts, which was good. Hidan was also laying around dismembered and in several parts, which was bad.

"Mother fuckers cut their own partner's head off," Hidan's head swore at her from where it had rolled away from his Jashinist seal, ground into the grass in blood and mud.

Tori wrinkled her nose as she surveyed the scene before her. Both Hidan's legs had been cut off at the knees, his torso ripped open and innards spilling out. One arm had been hacked off and then hacked to pieces that were thrown around; the other arm was only attached by a few strings of sinew. A similarly decapitated Iwa-nin was sprawled across the ground some ten feet away, although his partner hadn't desecrated the body after beheading it. A second body was slumped against a tree, his intestines spilling out into his now dead hands.

Gross, Tori thought. Outloud she said, "Where did the rest go?"

"Probably to find Kakuzu, if the fuckers didn't show up to hack off your head too," Hidan grumbled, seething in impotent rage as the muscles in his neck tensed. "Probably figured they could hack you to apart at leisure because they saw how much of a useless cunt you are–"

"We talked about calling me that," Tori interrupted, scowling down at him.

"We talked about calling you bitch, and if you don't like that then I'll call you cunt as much as I want-" Tori cut him off by pressing her foot over his mouth.

"No," she said.

Hidan screamed at her some more and tried to bite through her shoe. Tori removed it from his face and glared down at him.

"You talk a lot of shit for someone with no body."

" You talk a lot of shit for a useless whore."

Tori almost replied At least that means I'm getting some, but NOPE, she was not going there with him, and Hidan took her moment of hesitation to say, very quietly and with pink cheeks:

"You're going to have to put me back together."

Tori stared at him.

" How? " She asked, never mind that she'd much prefer to leave him to rot. Unfortunately, that would probably be considered something along the lines of treason. "Shouldn't we just wait for Kakuzu?"

"No," Hidan stressed, his face contorting and his neck muscles tensing again as he futilely tried to move his head. "That fucker could take days if he gets distracted by a good bounty. If we wait too long the wounds will start to heal over and then reattaching everything will be a fucking mess."

Tori peered over a leg in interest, imagining the frayed and bloody stump closing up with scar tissue. She imagined the bones still growing, the tibia poking out through pink skin, and then all of it growing over widely, distorting Hidan's body, like the bodies back in Oto–

She nudged the back of his severed calf with a toe.

"Even the cut off parts?" she asked. Hidan replied with a weird sort of huff that she interpreted as an affirmative. "But if it's not hooked up to the circulatory system-"

"Look," Hidan barked, "I don't know how it fucking works. I've got a medical kit in my pack."

Tori crouched down next to his torso. Every inch of it was soaked in blood and a foul odor seeped from the gaping wounds of his abdomen. She covered her nose and mouth with one hand while she clumsily peeled back the remains of his cloak to reveal two pouches at his hip.

"It's in the bigger one," Hidan instructed. "A black case."

She opened the pack and pulled out a black leather case easily enough, although now her right hand was sticky with blood. She opened the case- all that was inside were two long sewing needles and a wad of thick thread.

"This isn't a medical kit."

"It fucking is," Hidan snapped back. "Now move me where I can see and I'll tell you what to do."

There was no good way for Hidan to watch properly with his head sitting on the ground, so Tori ended up staking it onto the broken branch of a tree.

"OW- you little fuck-faced heathen-"

"You can see, can't you?"

He snarled at her but didn't argue. "Sew up my torso first so it can heal itself. Sepsis is a giant bitch."

"Uh…" Tori stared at the bloody mess at her feet. Entrails were spilling out all over the place. "Do I just… shove it all back in…?"

"Just make sure it's all there and it'll sort itself out," Hidan said with much too much confidence.

Tori threaded the needle and squatted down. It smelled awful, and she really didn't want to think about the source of those smells. The intestines had all slipped out in a gross mess, but the kidneys were still firmly held in place with adipose tissue. She could see the base of his liver, but it didn't look damaged. Not that she knew what a damaged liver would look like.

"Some of your intestines are ruptured," she said, making a face. Intestines leaked gross things.

"Then sew them together, like I fucking told you."

Tori hesitated, staring down at the eviscerated body, needle pinched tightly between her fingers. She couldn't believe she was doing this. She couldn't believe that she'd made exactly the right fuck-ups at exactly the right places in her life to lead her to this, to squatting in a puddle of blood, still a little drunk and high, preparing to sew someone's intestines back together with another person's severed finger was shoved down her shirt.

"What are you waiting for?" Hidan said impatiently. "Don't tell me you're going to chicken out." He said it with a mean sneer and Tori rolled her eyes.

This ain't my first rodeo, she thought, and then wiped clean an unblemished patch of skin on Hidan's chest with her sleeve and started dragging the tip of the needle across it.

"What the FUCK are you doing?" Hidan yelled.

"You smell bad," Tori said, etching patterns into his skin with the needle. Blood welled up slowly. "I'm going to make you not smell so I don't hurl."

She'd gotten pretty good at this seal in Oto. It was standard for all their surgeries. It was a little risky to use blood and flesh as the chakra source like this, but it wasn't unheard of for surgical seals. She'd just slap some extra stabilization components on it, and it'd be fine. Hidan would be fine if she accidentally exploded his chest, anyway.

Well… he'd probably be fine.

"I am NOT consenting to this, you fucking psychopath–" Hidan screamed in the background. She ignored him.

Once she was done, the smell vanished almost immediately, and Tori sighed with relief. She sat back on her heels to examine the job set out for her.

She might as well align everything first. She stabbed the needle into the undamaged part of Hidan's chest to save for later. Figuring she should just follow the line, she started at the part of the large intestine that was still attached to the walls of his body cavity, and carefully tucked and turned the rope of his innards into something resembling what she thought was correct. It was difficult, because she couldn't peel his skin and muscle back like she would a dissected frog, and she was forced to stick her hands into the wound, which she was pretty sure should horrify her but instead she just found mildly annoying.

Having Orochimaru as a boss had been a fucking trip.

Hidan's organs were covered in all sorts of strange things, from bits of dirt to dried leaves to parts of their own contents, and she picked away what she could. Hidan didn't seem too concerned with infections, and if he keeled over because she accidentally sewed a twig into his abdomen, so be it.

She also decided not to worry about minor ruptures since Hidan seemed to think they'd fix themselves. But the small intestine was ripped right through in two places.

"The thread is too thick for the intestinal walls," Tori announced, examining which ends to put where. "I can see your villi," she added brightly, gently peeling back an opening.

"Stop fingering my intestines, you freak ," Hidan told her. "Just throw it in there and maybe it'll be fine."

She gave him a very strange look, because 'maybe it'll be fine'? Really ? She didn't know how Hidan's impossible immortal biology worked, but 'just throw it in there' seemed like a bad idea. Maybe it would fuse into the intestine where it lay and form an extra loop in his digestive tract. That would be weird. But she could think about that at another time.

She put the ribbon of detached intestine she'd been holding down and got to her feet. Her knees and shins were caked in mud and blood and who knew what else. She approached the body of the shinobi that had been sacrificed and rolled it over, patting it down.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Hidan asked. "Wanna feel up someone else's guts too?"

She ignored him, having found what she was looking for: another medical kit. This one was much more normal, and in it she found a tiny needle and much thinner thread. For smaller wounds, not full-on limb reattachment.

Her stitching job on the intestine was messy, partly because sewing a closed tube was awkward, and partly because wiping her hands on the grass and on her skirt didn't completely rid them of the slipperiness of blood. But she'd put the damn thing back together and kind-of-sort-of gotten it all into place, so she was satisfied.

She grabbed the bigger needle out of Hidan's chest and started on the abdominal walls. It took a lot of force to get the needle through enough skin and muscle and viscera to hold everything together, and her stitches ended up too big and uneven and messy. She was pretty sure no normal person could heal with this sloppy of a job, but Hidan insisted that as long as she closed the wounds, everything would eventually fix itself up.

He also mocked her for struggling to push a needle through muscle, but that was Hidan for you.

"Okay, now put that arm back on," He demanded when she declared his torso finished.

She rethreaded the needle and set to work on the barely attached arm dangling from his shoulder. It was easier than his abdomen, but in order to get the best angle she had to pull his shoulder into her lap.

He commanded her to sew his head on next. "Then I can put my legs back on while you figure out what the fuck is up with my other arm," he explained.

This time she ended up with his head in her lap, scowling down at him as he rattled off obscenities.

"I bet you're fucking enjoying this, you little freak," he yelled up at her. The prick of the needle against his neck did not stop him from speaking. "I bet you've got some weird-ass fetishes. I bet you're getting off on this."

Tori snorted. "You wish," she said, carefully pulling thread through his neck.

"You are," Hidan insisted, "and I bet you'll go back and tell this story to your creepy puppet friend and you'll both get off together-"

He went on, and Tori thought about stabbing the needle through his eye. Instead she said, sickly sweet, "You mean you didn't like me inside you?"

He bellowed at her then, hot air right in her face. She straightened, leaning away from him. Accidentally inhaling someone's used breath was the worst.

"If you want to talk shit about my sexual preferences," she called over the din of his constant prattle, "then don't imply things you can't handle being confirmed."

He stared at her in confusion for a few seconds, then a positively wicked grin spread across his face. "So you do have a kink for-"

" No ," she interrupted, stabbing the needle into him with unnecessary force. "I was just fucking with you, the way you were fucking with me." Before he could jump on that particular wording, she added, "I have to get to the back of your neck now."

His grin stayed in place. "So flip me over. I bet you'll love my face in your smelly crotch."

She rolled her eyes, then worked her arm under his shoulder and heaved. He started to flip over limply, and she quickly got her knee under his shoulder blade and pushed. He flopped face-down into the mud and she kneeled on his back.

"What are you-" he started to say, but she pushed his face into the ground.

"If my crotch is smelly," she said, jabbing the needle into the back of his neck, "then it's from having your shit-filled intestines in my lap, you ungrateful fuckwad."

As usual, Hidan continued to try and yell even with his mouth covered, but she ignored him and continued working. When she was three stitches from finished, his arm suddenly spasmed.

"Don't-" she started to say, trying to stitch faster, but Hidan used his one good arm to push himself up, and she rolled off of him onto the ground. He managed to push himself into a sitting position and made a swipe at her, and she scuttled back.

"I wasn't finished!" she yelled.

"You bitch ," Hidan yelled back. "You always have to make things more difficult!"

" You're the one making things more difficult," Tori argued. "I could go faster if you'd stop berating me."

"I wouldn't berate you if you hadn't fucking let them chop me up ."

"Well what was I supposed to do, asshole? In case you forgot, I. Can't. Fight."

Hidan fumed at her for a moment, then said, "And then you stepped on my face! And carved– whatever the fuck this is–"

He gestured at the seal in his chest, and Tori threw her hands in the air. "Because you fucking deserved it, asshole. Now do you want me to help you or not?"

He scowled at her. "Thread me a needle and line my legs up," he finally said.

Tori threaded the second needle without complaint, glaring at him as she cut thread with a stray kunai. She tied it off and threw it at him, then went to drag his legs over to his body. In a fit of spiteful anger, she turned both legs over knee-down and lined the left leg up with his right stub and vice versa, so that they were positioned upside down and switched.

"Real fucking mature," Hidan spat, leaning forward to grab his leg. They'd both been cut rather low, right below the knee, so sewing them one-handed would be extra awkward.

"I'll go find your other arm," Tori spat right back at him, and marched into the underbrush where the ninja had thrown pieces of Hidan's right arm. Luckily, in his rush he hadn't scattered them very much, and she eventually found it all in five pieces, including two fingers. She went back to Hidan, who was concentrating on sewing a leg he turned over right-ways back on. She grabbed the other needle and found a non-bloody rock to sit on while she put the arm back together.

Surprisingly, they worked in silence, Hidan concentrating too hard to talk. It was not a comfortable silence- Tori was seething. She didn't even have a particular reason to seeth; Hidan just got under her skin.

She was just starting about to start putting the fingers back on when Hidan suddenly swore. She glanced up, and Hidan had twisted around to glare daggers at her.

"Did I sew a bug into you or something?" she said.

This, apparently, was not the right thing to ask, because Hidan's glare darkened from 'daggers' to 'straight-up horrifying murder-face.'

He stood up, all menacing murderous intent, and Tori stood as well, fear pricking at the back of her head. The severed fingers fell to the ground and she gripped the arm tightly. Then Hidan stumbled and she realized what his problem was.

He'd attached his calves to the wrong legs.

Tori wouldn't help it. She burst into laughter.

"Dude-" she managed to choke out between laughs- "I'm- so sorry, but- Jesus Christ ."

He was suddenly in front of her, moving too fast for her to follow, but he stumbled when he stopped and his face leaned into hers clumsily. She backed up and nearly tripped over the rock behind her.

" Bitch, " Hidan hissed at her, and Tori suddenly remembered that Hidan was very, very scary.

"I'm going to chop off your feet and put them where your hands go," he threatened, which out of context might sound silly, but when a ridiculously strong, ridiculously sadistic ninja growls threats at you, you take him seriously.

Tori took a deep breath. They were allies, technically. He couldn't murder her. At least, not without repercussion.

"You're standing on your own fingers," she said. She sounded calmer than she was.

For a moment she was positive he was going to rip her face off with his bare hand, but then he deflated.

"Pick them up," he hissed at her, then stomped off to pray over the body of the beheaded missing-nin.

Warily, Tori finished piecing his arm back together, then let it sit in her lap while he prayed over the fallen body, eyes rolled back in his head as he chanted rhythmically.

The last time she'd watched Hidan pray, she mused, she'd been tied up under a food stand while his followers occasionally kicked her. Now she was holding a severed arm while covered in mud and blood and bile. This situation was somehow, and rather regretfully, better.

Not good - objectively it was still pretty bad. And fairly weird. But definitely better.

xXx

Mercifully, Kakuzu reappeared before either Tori or Hidan had to reinitiate conversation about sticking his arm back on.

"The fuck," he said succinctly. He was dragging two Iwa-nin, tied back-to-back, along behind him. Both of them wore the usual Iwa-brown flak jackets.

Kakuzu only listened to their explanation (well, Hidan's angry rant and Tori's equally angry spluttering) long enough to confirm the enemy ninja were long gone, before he kicked his captured Iwa nin to the side and grabbed Hidan's arm out of Tori's hands. He then attempted to beat his partner to death with it.

"My work -!" Tori shrieked at him as the fingers she'd reattached went flying. She wasn't daring enough to intervene physically, but she did dance around the fight anxiously and yell obscenities at them. Hidan would have surely commented on her ridiculous behavior, if he weren't too busy defending himself from and swearing at Kakuzu.

Eventually Kakuzu grew bored and Hidan grew hoarse, and they both calmed down long enough for Kakuzu to stitch his partner back together.

"...are your legs switched?" Kakuzu asked as Hidan flexed and stretched his arm. Hidan shot Tori a murderous look while she became extremely interested in her own feet. "Nevermind. I don't want to know."

According to Hidan, his weird limping was because his insides were too torn up, and not at all because his legs had mysteriously got put back on the wrong way. Kakuzu raised his eyebrows at that but did not comment.

Since Hidan couldn't run, and Kakuzu had to carry his captives (or, at least, drag them along behind him), they headed back to Amegakure at a walk.

"I should scout for more Iwa shinobi," Kakuzu said. "But I doubt any of them have a worthwhile bounty…"

Tori supposed that was his excuse for sticking with them. Hidan, while he swore he was in perfect fighting condition, kept stumbling and staggering off course. Kakuzu didn't comment on it, and Tori followed his lead. That was one nice thing about ninja- they didn't mock injuries. They didn't exactly let you use them as an excuse not to work, but diminished function due to injury was an accepted fact. She hoped that if her wounds got infected from Hidan's insides, that mercy would extend to her too.

Night fell, and with a pang of sorrow Tori realized they weren't going to make camp. Instead, they walked through the night and stumbled into Akatsuki headquarters well after sunrise. Well, Hidan stumbled. Kakuzu stomped through the entryway seeming only slightly more irritable than normal, while Tori dragged her feet and glared red-eyed and bleary at the stairs.

"I'm going down," she said.

"We have to report to Leader-sama," Kakuzu said.

Tori wondered if Pein would accept Tori punching herself in the face as a mission report. Probably not.

When they arrived in his office to make initial reports, Pein barely reacted to their appearance, or to Kakuzu dragging two men behind him like a child drags along a stuffed bear. His eyes lingered on Tori a bit longer than necessary– she was still covered in mud and Hidan's insides– but apparently Hidan's own dishevelled appearance wasn't worth a second glance.

Kakuzu dove right into reporting without so much as a greeting. He asserted Tori successfully talked her way into the gala and struck up a conversation with the target, extracting the required information. While she was inside, he and Hidan had noticed there was a foreign shinobi guard, and they eventually decided to "retrieve Tori."

Kakuzu pitched it as a rescue. Tori thought it was more likely they'd gotten bored and decided to crash the party.

"We successfully extracted the scrolls as payment," Kakuzu finished. "I didn't have time to go through them for content, but any relic of Uzushio is worth at least its weight in gold."

"And who are they?" Pein asked, gesturing at Kakuzu's captives.

Before Kakuzu could answer, Hidan shrieked, "This motherfucker!"

He then stomped very enthusiastically one on the men's abdomens. The half-conscious man wheezed in pain.

"Hidan," Pein sighed. Hidan pouted.

"He cut my head off," Hidan whined. "I just recognized him."

Tori once again considered punching herself in the face.

"You were incapacitated?" Pein asked, eyebrows raised.

"I tried to sacrifice his partner and the asshole cut his partner's head off while we were linked," Hidan mumbled. "Hey, bitchface, how do you make a– what did you call it– a Konoha smile?"

"That would take a pretty in-depth understanding of your jutsu," Pein said, and then turned to Tori with eyebrows raised. Briefly, Tori thought he was also interested in a Glasgow smile, but then she realized he was looking for an explanation.

Was he… accusing her?

("Don't make it harder for him to talk, moron," Kakuzu said, swatting the kunai out of Hidan's hand.)

"They probably watched you take down all those dudes at the mansion," Tori said, thinking over… Hidan's entire personality. "Did you deliver any monologues about how your God works, Hidan?"

Hidan turned bright red. "It is the way of Jashin to inform sacrificial bodies–"

Pein held up a hand, cutting Hidan off. "I don't care how you work, as long as the work is done." He paused. "Are your legs on backward?"

Tori was lucky she had Kakuzu between her and Hidan, because Hidan immediately let out a roar and grabbed at her. There was a lot of yelling between the zombie combo, during which Kakuzu's poor captives were stepped on several times and Tori edged around Pein's desk and grabbed the minutes notebook.

"Should I write down our report?" she asked.

"Yes," Pein agreed, watching Hidan and Kakuzu scuffle in front of him in disinterest. After a few beats he asked, "What was your impression of Mizusawa Asa?"

Tori frowned as she flipped through the book. "She's very… determined. And self-centered in her determination."

Tori told the murder-party story. Pein didn't react beyond humming in the back of his throat.

"Well, those are her vassals," he said finally. "She has a right to do as she pleases."

Tori's gut response to that was: But are you SURE ? Instead of saying anything, she just nodded.

Eventually, Hidan calmed down, and Pein instructed them to chuck their captives in the dungeon to be interrogated.

"You're capable for your next mission?" he asked Hidan, who just snorted.

"What, massacring some civilians? Of course!"

"I can rip his legs off and put them on right before we go," Kakuzu offered. Pein nodded even as Hidan swore and flipped Tori off.

When they left, Tori settled into the one other chair in Pein's office and settled into writing at his desk. As she got into an explanation of Asa's personality, she asked, "Who's even in charge of Rain Country?"

"Currently? Me," Pein answered. He'd been watching her write with an entirely blank look on his face. "Since the last war, Amegakure has held the seat of power, although once our plan is complete, we'd like to return Rain to the rule of its rightful nobility."

That… was so wildly out of line with what Tori had grown up being taught was a just system, that she wasn't going to comment. Military dictatorship to oligarchy was probably a step up for the average citizen, anyway. Maybe.

...perhaps not if the new leader was Asa, specifically. Hmm.

Tori turned back to her report and Pein asked, "Did Mizusawa Asa give any indication of what Iwa wanted from us?"

"Umm," Tori said, tapping pen on page. Should she admit she literally blacked out for chunks of that night? No, not if she didn't have to. "Don't all the villages want to get rid of you in general?"

Pein's perfectly blank face looked, somehow, deeply unimpressed.

Tori tapped the page some more. "Well, you took missions from Iwa, right? Maybe they don't want that getting out."

Pein's head tilted ever so slightly. "We haven't taken any missions from Iwa."

Oh no, Tori thought, and then ducked her head to focus more on her report. "My mistake, then," she mumbled. Hadn't what's-his-face been accused of using Akatsuki? Was she misremembering that, or had it just not happened yet?

Pein let the subject go, though, and waited until Tori declared her report done to drop another, unrelated bombshell on her.

"You're lucky Hidan doesn't need proper legs for his next mission, or much chakra." He leaned back, fixing her with his grey-purple eyes, and Tori suddenly felt pinned in place. "What sort of jutsu was on him?"

"What?" Tori asked. No one had put anything on him, as far as she could tell, except– oh. Oh. "It's a surgical seal," she said, her mouth going dry. She'd never had to think about how slapping seals onto people could drain their chakra; she'd always just assumed her test subjects were going to die anyway. "It's not hurting him. It'll fade when he heals."

"Well, it's good to know you're not all talk, at least," Pein said vaguely. "Go find Itachi and tell him he has a prisoner to interrogate. You'll take minutes, of course."

"Of course," Tori agreed through gritted teeth. She wanted to take a nap. Was this a punishment for being mean to Hidan?

"Dismissed," Pein answered.

Notes:

Tori: Did I complete the mission? Yes. Did tens of people and several man-eating rodents die in the process? Also yes. Was any of that my fault? Debatable.

Kakuzu: Yeah, I can fix him.
Hidan: Bastard, why didn't you do that BEFORE-
Kakuzu, looking him dead in the eyes: Because I didn't want to.

Hmmm a few notes:
-According to the databooks, Kakuzu's hobby is collecting old books. For the purpose of this fic, I'm only using the manga as 'canon,' but Kakuzu collecting books is too cute for me to ignore. u.u This will (hopefully) come back up.
-"Azylmide" is a completely made-up drug name. :P
-Over the course of this fic, several people have shown frustration/concern that no one is making any moves to help/prepare Tori for various things. That's intentional! It's a mix of people actively wanting her to fail and it literally not occurring to some people that she shouldn't be held to the same standards as her ninja co-workers. Maybe... she can make a friend to help her...? Nah...
-The scene where Tori stitches Hidan up is one of my favoritess and was actually written years ago! I didn't edit the dialogue much, so it feels a little OOC now in the context of the whole fic, but I'm not changing it for ~nostalgia~ reasons.

NEXT CHAPTER: Itachi and Kisame! I feel like I have been ignoring them... don't worry, my friends, they'll be here!

Chapter 13: throwing a fit over spilt milk

Summary:

An oddly domestic chapter that's just a day working at Akatsuki HQ, which includes two (2) deaths and one (1) theft.

Notes:

I hope you like stories about food and characters being petty bastards to each other because that's all this chapter is about!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Itachi was, thankfully, easy to find because he and Kisame were watching a cooking show. They sat on the couch, side by side, looking disgustingly normal in civilian clothes. Kisame had a pad of paper and a pen balanced on the couch arm. Itachi, perfectly relaxed, held a mug of tea in his lap.

"Wow," Kisame said when Tori stalked up to them, grinning toothily up at her. "You look amazing."

Tori, currently covered in mud and several people's blood and insides, and not having slept in two days, told him to shut the fuck up. Kisame laughed good naturedly, because he was a dick.

Tori turned to Itachi. "Pein wants you to interrogate two people we brought back."

Itachi just peered up at her with his stupid, blank expression and asked, "Are you witnessing?"

"Yes," Tori answered through gritted teeth.

"...why don't you shower first," Itachi suggested.

Itachi was also a dick, but Tori would take a pity gesture when she could. Or, possibly, a command issued for the exact same reason she'd carved a seal into Hidan: she smelled, and no one wanted to work with a smelly person.

xXx

Down in the dungeon, two of the cell doors had been shut and bolted closed. There were two separate bars spanning the width of the door, plus one vertical bar that embedded and locked into the cement floor. Kakuzu's captives must have been excellent shinobi, though, to take on Hidan, and Tori wasn't convinced the elaborate locking system was enough. She scooted to the opposite wall of the corridor to pass the cells, intent on grabbing a clean set of clothes from the cell she'd dumped her stuff in.

Tori was completely out of clean clothes. She sniffed each article in turn and gathered up the least smelly set. She really needed to ask about laundry. Or was that something she could just find on her own? No one seemed to particularly care about her wandering around, but there had to be some places off-limits. She was positive Sasori, for example, would have a conniption if she set a toe in his workshop unsupervised.

If she just put on her mature adult pants and found one of the members who wasn't a raving lunatic, she could just ask. "Where am I allowed to go?" was a completely reasonable question, but part of her was afraid that she'd get an answer she wouldn't like. She'd rather ask for forgiveness than permission.

Not to mention, asking permission for something as basic to human dignity as clean laundry felt deeply humiliating. Tori was done with setting herself up for humiliation.

She passed by the locked cells again to get to the showers. There was no noise from inside. Tori would just have to trust Kakuzu and Hidan knew how to restrain hostile ninja well enough so that they didn't escape and murder her in the shower.

In the process of pulling off her dress in the shower room, something small hit Tori's foot. She paused with the dress half over her head and suddenly remembered Asa's severed finger. Why– why– had drunk Tori thought stealing a finger was a good idea?

The fabric dug into the cut on her arm. Tori tossed her dress aside.

The finger stared up at her from the tile floor. It was all grey and shriveled; she'd done her best to exsanguinate it while breaking into the greenhouse. Asa's bright yellow acrylic nail was, miraculously, still intact. Tori nudged the finger with her own big toe. What the hell was she supposed to do with this?

In the end, she folded her soiled clothes up neatly and placed the finger on top. She could deal with that when she wasn't disgusting beyond all reason.

Standing under the hot water of the shower was both a relief and a reminder of every aspect of her body that hurt. Her legs were sore from walking for hours, and her head hurt right behind her eyes from too much alcohol and not enough sleep. The cuts on her leg and arm stung under the water. Her mouth was so dry she tipped her head back and drank from the shower. She had the vague, full-body ache of exhaustion.

Part of her was very tempted to lie down on the floor and take a nap in the warmth of the hot shower. She was positive if she stopped moving, though, she'd end up passed out somewhere for hours, and she was supposed to record an interrogation. She would have to push through the rest of the day like this. It was fine– she'd done more complicated things in Oto while recovering from some dumb experiment.

Tori went to great length to scrub her various cuts with soap, and then spent time twisting her body to glare at them from various angles while she air-dried. They were pink around the edges, but they didn't look infected.

When Tori went back upstairs, clean and marginally refreshed, Kisame and Itachi were still watching TV. Tori rolled Asa's finger in wax paper and stuck it in the freezer, to be dealt with later.

The freezer needed some serious defrosting, with ears of plastic bags and corners of boxes poking out from a mass of white frost.

Tori's stomach growled. Maybe she could keep going without rest, but food… food would be useful.

She took a step back and glanced down the corridor to the living room. She could make out part of the couch and the back of Kisame's head, and that an old woman on TV was rubbing spices into a giant cut of fish. Well, if Itachi wanted Tori to do something, he knew where to find her.

She freed a freezer bag of seemingly hand-made dumplings from the frost. Someone had written a label on the bag in sharpie, and what hadn't rubbed off indicated that they were meant for everyone.

That was oddly communal. Weirdly friendly of that person. Unless someone was trying to poison their colleagues?

Tori paused in the middle of pulling out a pan, considering that. Making deadly homemade food for others to enjoy didn't really seem like the MO of anyone in Akatsuki. Even Sasori, who favored poisons, seemed more like the type of person to sneak the poison into a specific target's food and then watch them eat it. Honestly, poisoning communal food seemed more like something Tori would do in a fit of spite.

Plus, she was really hungry. If eating killed her, at least she wouldn't have to watch Itachi torture some guys or whatever she'd been signed up for.

There was a cabinet of various cooking oils under the kitchen bench, and someone had obviously spilled one and not bothered to clean it up, because everything inside was sticky and gross. Tori wrinkled her nose and picked the least gross one to fry the dumplings with.

A few minutes into frying the dumplings, Tori discovered that adding frost-covered food to hot oil made the oil bubble and pop and spew burning droplets everywhere.

"Shit," she muttered, and went in search of something to cover her hands with.

Tobi danced in to find Tori standing as far away from her spluttering food as possible as she very carefully turned the dumplings with a pair of rusty tongs, a dish towel wrapped around her hand and forearms.

"Tori-chan!" he greeted, waving his arms. "What are you making?"

He peered rudely into her pan, and Tori watched as oil popped and speckled across his mask.

"Ouch!" Tobi cried, delayed by several seconds, and leaned away. "Tori-chan isn't a very good cook."

"What do you want?" Tori snapped. The food was getting cooked, wasn't it?

"Tobi has a message from Kakuzu-sempai!" Tobi said, and in a very exaggerated kneel, he presented a folded piece of paper to Tori. "Tobi is a good messenger."

Tori read it. It was a bill, for the storage scroll she'd broken, and for the black scroll Hidan had ended up using instead. The black scroll was expensive– over half the price of a cheaper mission rate.

The bill was a low-quality photocopy of a form, which Kakuzu had filled out by hand. At the bottom in bold it read, If damages are not repaid by the end of the pay period, all fees will be deducted from your pay.

"Do I even get paid?" Tori wondered out loud.

"Tobi does not know!" Tobi answered, stretching his arms over his head. "Tobi is a volunteer! However, it seems to Tobi that paying a prisoner would be very odd!"

Tori opened her mouth to ask how one volunteered for a mercenary group, but thought better of it. Instead she asked, "Did Kakuzu tell you anything else?"

"He only said it was a message for 'that idiot girl'!" Tobi chirped.

"Uh huh," Tori said, rolling her eyes and going back to trying to flip her dumplings over. None of them had fallen apart… yet. "Anything about the message itself?"

Tobi made a big show of scratching his head. "No…?" he said. "Tobi just takes the letters where his sempai tells him."

Tori considered the predicament for a few seconds. The delivery of the message relied solely on Tobi, local moron, handing over a piece of paper, so…

She fed the paper into the flame of the gas stove.

"Tori-chan," Tobi gasped. "Your message!"

Tori blinked back at him. "What message?" she asked.

"Tori-chan!"

"Did you need something?" Tori asked innocently, turning off the flame of the stove. Her dumplings were cooked, and all that was left of the paper was some ash.

"Tobi– sempai– Tori-chan burnt her message," Tobi whined, wringing his hands in anxiety. "Kakuzu-sempai is going to be angry."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Tori said, transferring the dumplings to a plate. "Why would I intentionally piss off Kakuzu? I'm terrified of him. You must have lost something."

Tobi let out a low, pathetic wail as Tori bit into her lunch… breakfast… whatever meal this was. Garlic exploded in her mouth, and she pulled the dumpling back to find someone had packed an entire garlic clove into it.

"Kakuzu-sempai will kill Tobi," Tobi practically sobbed, and Tori ignored him while she inspected her food.

Kakuzu would come to collect the debt eventually, but now she had plausible deniability: she'd either delayed it or redirect his rage toward Tobi for a bit. She didn't have that kind of money, and she didn't really see why she should have to pay for Hidan's scroll anyway.

Also, whoever had made the dumplings had obviously elected to share, not out of the goodness of their heart, but because the dumplings were pretty awful. In addition to full garlic cloves, she also found tiny, whole green peppers that were absurdly spicy.

Crispy, fried dough was good, though, and it wasn't like garlic and chilli were bad flavors…

When Tori ignored him in favor of staring contemplatively into space as she ate, Tobi elected to lie face-down on the floor to cry, which is how Kisame found them.

"What's his problem?" Kisame asked. Tori shrugged.

"Tori-chan is mean," Tobi whined.

Kisame seemed to decide to completely tune out Tobi's dramatics, because instead he focused on Tori's plate and asked, "You're actually eating those?"

"They're fine," Tori said vaguely. Kisame did not seem convinced, but made no further comment.

Kisame banged around the kitchen while Tori cleaned up, and eventually Itachi showed up to rinse out his teacup in the sink. He did not say a word to anyone there, and didn't even give Tobi's hysterics a second glance as he stepped over him.

"We should go," Itachi said eventually, and it took Tori– poking around in the fridge for some sort of dessert– a couple seconds to realize he was talking to her.

"Uh, yeah, okay," she said, tearing her eyes from a lone bottle of chocolate syrup.

(Who was keeping chocolate syrup? Inquiring minds wanted to know!)

Itachi, Tori noted as she followed after him, was wearing house slippers and loose pants that were likely his pajamas. Was getting interrogated by a guy in his PJs more or less scary than a guy in regular clothes?

They paused on the ground floor for Tori to run and grab the minutes book, and Itachi watched her wordlessly with a deeply bored look on his face. He managed to look alarmingly not at all like a deadly assassin, but more like a half-asleep college student. Tori half-expected him to pull a cellphone out, and the image sent a jolt of homesickness through her.

She shook it off easily enough, though– Oto had taught her to squish down sappy emotions and fast. If Itachi noticed, he didn't say anything.

In the dungeon, Itachi opened the first cell door and made a subdued gesture for Tori to enter first, like a nice young man holding a door for a nice young lady. Tori shot him a sour look and reluctantly stepped right into kunai-to-the-face range of their prisoner.

Except the Iwa-nin was not going to be throwing kunai any time soon, because he had both hands shackled to the wall, arms spread wide to prevent the formation of hand seals. Every one of his fingers were clearly broken, as were both his legs. He glanced up dimly as she walked in.

For once, Tori was glad she couldn't do any jutsu or fight, because no one had ever felt threatened enough to break her limbs.

A look Tori couldn't quite interpret flashed over the Iwa-nin's face as his eyes flickered over her– a mix of resignation and confusion and maybe a little fear. Then Itachi stepped up behind her, and the Iwa-nin's full attention immediately shifted to him. His body tensed and then suddenly relaxed.

Tori had been prepared to watch a sad, bloody affair filled with screaming. That was not at all how Itachi's interrogation went.

"State your name and rank," Itachi commanded, voice monotone and bored.

"Takeda Yuji. Jounin of Iwagakure," the Iwa-nin answered. His expression was lax, and he gave the answer easily and casually.

Genjutsu? Tori wondered, fumbling with her pen as she hurried to write. She scooted off into the corner of the cell, leaving Itachi– perfectly relaxed in posture– to stand alone in front of their captive.

The Iwa-nin readily answered several questions about Iwagakure's organization and recent events. Definitely genjutsu, Tori thought. She vividly remembered word-vomiting up secrets to both Itachi and Obito under genjutsu nonsense.

When Itachi started to probe into more sensitive questions– things like Iwa's security and high-ranking missions– the Iwa-nin frowned deeply and started to get evasive. Tori caught Itachi's hand twitching at his side, even as his shoulders were relaxed and his face stayed passive.

"No," the Iwa-nin muttered, frowning to himself. "No, I'm not supposed to… you're not… no…"

He trailed off, and then glanced at the shackle on his right hand like he was noticing it for the first time. He pulled at it uselessly.

"Nevermind then," Itachi said, and his hand relaxed. "Tell me about your last mission."

The Iwa-nin continued to frown at his shackled wrist, his eyes slipping in and out of focus. Tori had just been making a bulleted list of the information relayed, but she wondered if the physical responses were worth noting too. She squiggled some notes in the margin while the Iwa-nin debated his answer.

"It's classified," the Iwa-nin said finally.

"It can't be too classified," Itachi said in a tone that was almost conversational under his usual apathy. "It was just a guard mission, wasn't it?"

"Yes," said the Iwa-nin, and followed it up with, "No."

"No?" Itachi asked.

"We were paid to guard a woman in her home," the Iwa-nin said, rotating his face to look Itachi in the eyes. "But Tsuchikage-sama wanted us to... to…"

Itachi's head tilted ever so slightly and his fingers twitched some more. "To do what, Takeda-san?"

Itachi pried the details out of the man bit by bit. Iwa wanted information on Akatsuki because they were a mysterious and frightening threat to the shinobi world at large, and because Iwa specifically wanted Deidara back in their custody or eliminated. They gladly took the mission to guard Mizusawa Asa in exchange for a chance to capture an Akatsuki member. When it became clear that even a large company of high-ranking shinobi weren't going to capture Kakuzu and Hidan, they opted to kill off who they could and flee.

They had some idea of Hidan's ritual from watching his fight in the mansion. The Iwa-nin was positive they'd killed him. It was fortunate for Tori that they hadn't realized that Hidan could live through even decapitation, because she wasn't sure Akatsuki would be so forgiving if she let random ninja run off with Hidan's head.

(Even if Hidan would have absolutely deserved it.)

"But I don't understand," the Iwa-nin finished, "who the girl is."

He glared at Tori, accusing and confused. She stared right back, keeping her face perfectly blank.

"Who do you think she is?" Itachi asked.

"I thought she was…" the Iwa-nin trailed off, and his glare intensified as he scrutinized Tori. "She's got an accent from nowhere, mannerisms from nowhere… but she's not a ninja…"

He rambled and Tori raised her eyebrows at Itachi. She'd traveled a bit internationally, back in her own world, and everyone always seemed to be able to guess her home country just by looking at her. But, she supposed, if you had no concept at all of her country, then she just seemed… unplaceable.

"Yes, she's very confusing," Itachi said, sounding bored with the whole situation. He did not spare Tori a look. "Who did you think she was?"

"She's a friend of the client's," the ninja said, shifting in place and frowning. "But she's here now?"

"Ah," Itachi said, and then switched the conversation to what the ninja had learned about Akatsuki from the incident. It wasn't much– Iwa didn't even have a full member roster. They knew Deidara well, though, and they had some ideas about his louder missions based on analysis of the destruction left behind.

When Itachi pressed for specifics, whatever resistance the man had to the genjutsu kicked in, and he started pulling at his shackles again and giving non-answers.

"What did Mizusawa know about Akatsuki?" Itachi asked.

"Mizusawa complained about Deidara," the Iwa-nin said. "Said he made fun of her nails."

Tori had to close her eyes and count to ten to stop from bursting into laughter as the Iwa-nin described how they'd been hoping Deidara was the Akatsuki member to show up.

Apparently, Asa had decided to destroy her relationship with Akatsuki on the grounds that when Sasori and Deidara went to talk mission parameters with her, they'd been rude.

Mizusawa Asa continues to be inspirationally petty, Tori wrote.

"Were you in contact with Iwa during your mission?" Itachi asked. The man hummed, and Itachi asked the question again.

"We sent updates every other day…" the Iwa-nin said. "By bird."

Itachi asked a few more questions about communication, apparently trying to pinpoint if anyone had gotten any messages back to Iwa about Hidan and Kakuzu. Itachi had no further questions after that and turned and walked out of the cell without so much as a nod at Tori. She rushed after him, wanting to minimize her time in an enclosed space with an enemy ninja as much as possible.

Not that Itachi himself wasn't an enemy ninja, but… well… technically they were working together.

The second Iwa-nin's interrogation went much longer because Itachi's genjutsu had the odd effect of making the missing-nin give lots of useless information. When asked about who he thought Tori was the Iwa-nin said, "A civilian the missing-nin kidnapped because missing-nin are traitorous garbage."

(He wasn't, you know, wrong.)

The Iwa-nin went on a rant about traitors and it took Itachi another ten minutes to calm him down enough to give actual answers. While he rambled, Tori flipped through pages of previous reports to annotate her notes with what they previously knew. The number of Iwa-nin deployed matched the number Kakuzu and Hidan had killed or captured. She noted that the information this Iwa-nin gave matched what the other one had said. The only notable exception was that he asserted Sasori had insulted Asa's nails.

Hilarious, Tori thought. She was so asking both of them about this.

When Itachi declared them done and re-bolted both doors, Tori asked, "Now what?"

"I'll report to Leader-sama or Konan," Itachi said, and then held out his hand for the notebook.

Tori ignored his hand and asked, "And then?"

Itachi's eyes were focused pointedly at the notebook and not on Tori's face. After a moment of tense silence, he answered, "If the information gathered is sufficient, someone will eliminate them."

Well, Tori thought, I guess that's that.

She handed over the book, and then followed Itachi at his heels as he left the dungeon.

"Was that the same genjutsu you used on me?" she asked as they headed upstairs. When Itachi didn't say anything for a whole flight of stairs, she reiterated, "Well, was it?"

"Similar," Itachi replied.

"How does it work?" Tori asked. Clearly, there were some limitations, or Itachi would have the entire city plan of Iwa by now.

"You ask a lot of questions," Itachi said.

"You don't give very many answers," Tori snapped back. It was the type of observation she normally kept internal, but she was tired and cranky and Itachi was a mean bastard.

He didn't say anything in return, but he did pause at a landing to look down at her for a few moments.

They parted ways on the ground floor, Itachi knocking politely on Pein's office door while Tori dragged her feet into her own office. She really wanted to just go to bed, but she also didn't want to sleep across the way from their potentially violent captives.

Not that being awake could stop an escaping ninja from murdering her.

Tori eyed her piles of paper scattered across the floor: mission requests and replies and Orochimaru's dumb seals. The piles had seemed organized when she'd made them, but it felt like weeks had passed since she last worked on them, and it all seemed arranged at random now.

There was a pile of sleeping pads for camping in one of the rooms filled with random stuff she was supposed to organize a few floors up. She'd brought a couple down to the dungeon for herself, but she could just… take a nap in a nice quiet room…

But also she was supposed to be productive or die so if she did that, she should at least make some sort of effort to organize whatever else was in that room. Or should she work on something in the office until the other prisoners were "eliminated"?

Tori chewed at her bottom lip. The other prisoners. The ones that weren't her.

If the information gathered is sufficient, someone will eliminate them, Itachi had said . That applied to her too, didn't it? She had to be more useful than just her knowledge about the future, which was a limited resource she'd run out of eventually.

(And if she changed enough, would her foresight become useless? She already wasn't sure how Sasuke and Orochimaru's roles in the coming war had changed.)

Tori toed a pile of Orochimaru's seals that she was pretty sure were ones she'd decided were at least sort-of finished. No time for naps; she had to make progress on these.

xXx

The problem with Orochimaru was that his thoughts seemed to jump around all over the place, and even when he was trying to record the thought process behind his experiments, it often read as disconnected ideas and observations arranged in a random order.

And that was if he bothered annotating his seal work.

You could also pick out all of Orochimaru's working notes from his assistants' because he never bothered with breaking down his seals into their separate parts. Seals, at their core, were just a set of instructions for pushing around chakra, and the order of instructions mattered, like how you always added acid to water and never water to acid. That meant that when most people went and wrote down their seals, for their own personal benefit or for others to copy, they broke down the seal into their individual components, making a series of diagrams in the correct order of operation. This was especially useful for more complicated seals, where components overlapped and everything got too complicated to easily read or remember.

Orochimaru, on the other handle, just slapped full and absurdly complicated seals down on paper like a monster.

The best thing to do when dealing with Orochimaru's unique and infuriating process, Tori knew from experience, was to break down the seals yourself and sort of reverse-engineer the process. This, of course, was easiest when you 1) knew what the seal was supposed to do, and 2) knew enough about that type of seal to guess what parts did what.

(And if you didn't know either of those things, your labmate would call you a useless dumbass and throw a book or a scroll at you, and you just had to hope the thing thrown at you contained useful information.)

Tori spread the pile of complete seals across the floor in front of her, eyeing them each in turn. She had absolutely no idea what most of them were meant to do, and most of them were heavy on seal components she'd never seen before.

"Shit," she swore. She was going to have to do so much research. Where was she even going to find material that covered what she needed to know?

There was one seal she was sure was some sort of stasis seal, albeit more complicated than anything she'd attempted herself. Every single aspect of it was doubled, with every command written twice, and the second set of commands looking extra odd.

Oh, Tori realized, it's for a jinchuriki.

She didn't know how being a jinchuriki really worked, but if a normal stasis seal only affected the host and not the demon inside… well, you'd need a whole new crazy seal to restrain the demon, wouldn't you?

With that in mind, it actually wasn't hard to separate out the human pieces of the seal from the demon ones. They were similar to the surgical seals Tori was familiar with, and it didn't take a lot of time to break the human-only part of the seal down into two possible orders of operation. Of course the only way to figure out which order was correct was to actually try the seal out…

Tori wasn't actually sure how she was supposed to do that here, with Akatsuki. In her world, this seemed like the sort of thing you'd try on mice– nice, cheap creatures where it didn't matter if your outcomes were less than perfect, because you had twenty more to keep trying on. Should she ask someone to catch some mice for her? Who the hell would even agree?

(Tobi. Tobi would agree to such a stupid request, and Tori hated both Obito and herself for the realization.)

Also, assuming she didn't fail and get killed, once she figured out the demon half of the seal… how the hell was she going to test that? Demon mice?

If this seal was part of Akatsuki's bijuu sealing process, how had they figured all this shit out in the original canon, anyway?

One problem at a time, Tori decided, and refocused on the easiest and most immediate problem to solve: how to test two possible versions of the human half of the stasis seal?

What would Orochimaru do? Tori wondered, and the answer was obvious. Morally heinous, but obvious, not to mention pragmatic. If the two people currently sitting in the dungeon were going to be eliminated anyway, it wouldn't make much difference if she had a hand in it.

Tori was still glaring heatedly at the stupid seals and debating how to pitch this to Pein or Konan, when she heard voices in the hallway.

"I don't think the mission worked out because of anything Tori did intentionally," Itachi was saying.

"But I was right," Konan countered, "she's not awful at it."

"We could just recruit an actual kunoichi," Itachi replied.

Tori found herself resisting the urge to bang her head against the door. They were purposefully talking about her in front of her office because they knew she'd overhear, because ninja were mean, manipulative people.

Well, if they wanted to criticize her existence, they could do it to her face. She grabbed the notes she was currently working on and threw open the door with unnecessary force.

"Why don't you just recruit a kunoichi?" Tori asked, interrupting whatever Konan was saying. Both Konan and Itachi turned to her, blinking as if they had not known she was listening, even though obviously they had.

(Seriously, she was going to have a nervous breakdown, and it wasn't even going to be because of violence to her person or because she was about to ask about human experimentation.)

"I have a request," Tori said, and then explained her conundrum with Orochimaru's seals. "Can I try it on our prisoners?"

Konan's lips thinned as she eyed the paper in Tori's hands. "You're sure it's for stasis?" Tori nodded. "And what's the worst case scenario if you're wrong?"

"If it doesn't work, the most probable outcome is nothing happens," Tori said, and then considered what else could go wrong. "But I guess, worst case scenario… his insides become his outsides?"

Konan shot a look at Itachi, who tilted his head slightly at Tori. "You could wait for Sasori to test it for her," he suggested.

"Last time we kept captives long-term, you all forgot to feed them and they starved to death," Konan said, frowning ever so slightly.

Tori's eyebrows shot up. What the fuck. No wonder they were just letting her wander around and eat their food.

"Technically they died of dehydration," Itachi said, and Konan shot him a Look.

"It's easiest to just let Tori test them herself," Konan concluded. "With certain precautions, of course."

They reconvened in the dungeon twenty minutes later, Konan having gone to fetch tools for Tori. Itachi was supervising too, as he had magic chakra-seeing eyes that could stop her from… blowing up the place, or whatever they thought she'd do.

"This is my day off," Itachi informed Tori blandly. He'd gone away and returned with a cup of tea.

"Do you ever stop drinking tea?" Tori asked in wonder.

"It's how I relax," Itachi answered, "on my days off."

He raised his eyebrows at her and in a moment of complete maturity, Tori stuck her tongue out at him.

Konan appeared a minute later, ink and brushes and sticky paper in hand. She laid them across the guard's table.

"I can just do it directly on skin," Tori said, picking up one of the brushes and eyeing it. Konan had brought five brushes of various sizes, and two of them were so thick Tori wasn't sure what sort of seal anyone would make with them.

"Seals on skin are less stable," Itachi said, crossing his arms.

"It's a stasis seal," Tori shot back. "It's designed to be stable."

"It's easier to watch you at the table, anyway," Konan cut in with a note of finality, and picked up the tiny bottle of ink she'd brought. "You can't infuse this with chakra yourself, correct?"

A large part of Tori wanted to use her own blood for her experiment, but. Well. It was a lot easier to let Konan channel chakra into the ink for her. She kept her mouth shut.

Itachi and Konan watched Tori way more intently than she wanted anyone to watch her, ever, and she botched her first attempt as a result of nerves and the brand new brush being stiff and unwieldy. She spent a few minutes "breaking it in" by drawing doodles of flowers and cartoon animals on a piece of scratch paper. By then, she'd had Uchiha Itachi memorize the exact way she drew cute little sheep with his sharingan, and her nerves were gone. She drew up two beautiful seals.

"You know," Tori said tersely as she drew, "studies show people perform worse under intense scrutiny."

"If you can't perform properly under supervision," Konan drawled in return, "then what's the point of keeping you around?"

Tori pursed her lips and kept working.

Konan checked Tori's final products against the seal from Orochimaru she was trying to copy, and then opened the door to cell number one.

Tori didn't know if their prisoners could hear of their conversation or what this Iwa-nin thought was happening. She stood at the doorway to his cell for several very tense seconds, in which in an irrational part of her hoped Konan or Itachi would say something reassuring, like You can do it or I'll step in if he goes to stab you in the face.

They stayed silent, though, and the prisoner just glared at her in hatred.

Here goes nothing, Tori thought to herself, and then crossed the length of the cell in three shakey strides.

The Iwa-nin didn't say anything or struggle, which made focusing easier. Tori kept her eyes on his chest, away from his face, and pretended he wasn't a real person.

The Iwa-nin's flak jacket had been removed, and Tori squatted in front of him and pushed up his shirt to reveal his stomach and the bottom of his rib cage. A tiny part of her felt embarrassed and awkward removing someone's clothing, but– well– a bigger part of her was dedicated to getting her experiments done, and getting them done right.

The Iwa-nin's torso was covered in bruises, and Tori was gentle as she applied the seal. As soon as it was on, he dropped dead.

"Aw man," Tori sighed after she checked his pulse. She peeled the seal back off.

"What went wrong?" Konan asked.

"It stopped his chakra completely," Itachi said, taking a sip of tea. "What an efficient assassination technique."

He said it in a monotone that sounded neither complimentary nor sarcastic, but Tori shot him an annoyed look anyway. Why did he have to choose now to get all chatty?

When they went to the other cell, the other Iwa-nin swore and spat at her, the muscles of his arms straining against his shackles. Tori put on her steeliest face, pushed aside her fears of the Iwa-nin smashing her face in, and practically slapped the seal into place.

The body immediately went limp, and Tori automatically reached for his neck to check for his pulse. When she couldn't find one, she clicked her tongue and disappointment and pulled the seal back off.

The man jolted, his eyes snapping open and his mouth sucking in breath. Tori yelped in shock and panic and reflexively slapped the seal back down. He went still again.

"I think he actually died that time," Itachi said. As he spoke, he crossed the room to stand directly beside Tori, eyes narrowed as he eyed the Iwa-nin's body.

Tori pulled off the seal a second time, and there was no miraculous return to the living. Tori shuffled out of the cell feeling disheartened.

"The first attempt slowed his chakra almost completely," Itachi reported to Konan, following Tori out. "I don't think most sensors would have counted him as living."

"Why did he die the second time, then?" Konan asked.

"Stress to the body from multiple applications," Itachi supplied, and Tori found herself twitching.

"You don't know that," she said, and Itachi glanced back at her like she'd said something stupid. "There are five million possible reasons for the results we saw. You're just guessing."

"It sounds plausible," Konan said, and there was a note of warning in her voice– she didn't want Tori picking a fight with Itachi. Several sheets of paper detached themselves from Konan's body, and Tori took a step back. "I'll transport the bodies upstairs for Zetsu," Konan continued, more paper fluttering free. The sheets plastered themselves to the Iwa-nin's corpse. "You're both dismissed."

Tori wanted nothing more than to march across the corridor to her own cell, to fling herself across her stolen sleeping pads and think about how exactly she'd screwed up her current fuuinjutsu project until she fell asleep. However, Konan obviously wanted her out of her sight, so Tori trudged behind Itachi up the stairs.

At the very least, Tori was going to develop awesome calves from living here.

Upstairs, Kisame was at the kitchen table reading a newspaper. He grinned up at them and asked, "How'd the science project go?"

Tori must have looked remarkably miserable, because his smile dimmed.

"They both died," Itachi said calmly as he poured himself a new cup of tea. He sat next to Kisame, pulling a discarded section of the paper towards himself. Tori stayed in the kitchen, staring blankly at the tea pot and wondering what Itachi would do if she stole his tea right in front of him. Some caffeine right now would be nice.

"Uh, are you okay?" Kisame said, and Tori picked up the teapot experimentally. It was empty.

She put it back down. Kisame was currently going through a very awkward speech about how sometimes ninja had to kill people, while Itachi leafed through the paper and seemed to ignore them.

"It's not going to feel bad forever," Kisame concluded.

"What?" Tori asked, staring at him.

"You killed two people," he said bluntly.

Tori blinked again, and it took a few moments for what Kisame was trying to get at to click in her brain. No shinobi had tried to comfort her since she'd gotten here. It was oddly touching that he'd try.

(Except maybe that border guard who gave her cookies, but that hardly counted.)

Still, she'd already written the Iwa-nin off as dead men walking the moment Kakuzu had captured them. She hardly felt bad about their deaths.

"It's not that," she said, which was true. "I'm upset because I rushed into it and my experimental design wasn't very good. It only kind of worked, and I didn't do it in a way that definitively shows what happened."

She definitely, for example, shouldn't have panicked and reapplied the seal when her second patient had come back to life. Now she didn't know if multiple applications killed the patient, or if the seal working the first time had just been a fluke. One person per treatment was an awful sample size, and she didn't have a control to know if they'd just died from their chakra being messed with in a weakened state or if it was a problem the seal itself, and she didn't actually know how much chakra Konan had infused into the ink, which was a beginner's mistake–

"I think you made a very promising sleeping death seal," Itachi said, looking up from his reading, "providing you don't mind eventually killing your victim."

"Thanks," Tori answered snidely, "I'll keep that in mind if I ever want to recreate ninja Romeo and Juliet."

She turned to the kitchen counter, then, searching for something to wake her up. Did ninja have energy drinks?

("What's Romeo and Juliet?" Kisame asked behind her.)

The time on the microwave read it just past 4:00pm, indicating that Tori was currently experiencing the longest day in the history of the planet. If everyday in Akatsuki was like this, she might just start popping soldier pills constantly. Jesus.

She spied the coffeemaker, which was currently half full of room temperature coffee.

Jackpot, Tori thought and poured herself a glass. Room temperature coffee was basically iced coffee, right?

She took one sip and nearly spat it out. It was horrifically bitter and way too strong.

"Did Deidara make that?" Kisame asked from two feet behind her, and Tori nearly dropped her glass. Kisame leaned over her to open the top of the coffeemaker. He pulled out the reusable filter, and held it out for her to see. It was filled all the way to the brim and overflowing with coffee grounds.

"What…" Tori started to say. She didn't really know where that question was going. Maybe she should restart with a 'why.'

Kisame turned and dumped the grounds into the trash. "He always just packs new grounds on top of the old ones," he complained. "Three tongues and no tastebuds."

Tori thought about saying, "Actually, I think he has four tongues," but she wasn't sure if the sealed mouth in Deidara's chest was something other people were supposed to know about. Instead, she said, "It's fine. I can fix it."

Kisame looked unimpressed as she added milk and sugar and chocolate syrup to the coffee.

"You've just made a coffee-flavored dessert," Kisame said, wrinkling his nose. "It probably doesn't even taste like coffee."

"I'm having a bad day and I deserve dessert," Tori defended, taking a gulp. Even with all the added sweeteners, it was strong . She took another sip to make her point. "Why do you guys even keep chocolate syrup?"

"It's mine," Itachi said from directly behind her, and Tori splashed coffee down her front. " Does it taste good?" he asked, staring very intently at her glass.

Tori had not seen him look that intense since he interrogated her about Sasuke. So he does like sweets, she noted.

"Yes," she lied immediately.

Itachi started to pull his own glass from the cabinet above her, and Kisame sighed and said, "Deidara made that coffee two days ago."

Itachi put the glass back.

"You shouldn't drink that," Itachi said, and Tori rolled her eyes and took another sip. God, no wonder Deidara was constantly complaining about how much of a stuck up prick Itachi was. He just never stopped being so… himself.

Itachi twitched ever so slightly, and then turned to put on another pot of tea instead. This one came from a tin label MEDICINAL BLEND.

He really doesn't ever stop drinking it, Tori thought.

Tori took her coffee to the table, and eavesdropped on Kisame and Itachi while she ate. They seemed to be checking the kitchen for what ingredients were available to cook whatever they had watched on TV earlier. Kisame kept gesturing at the legal pad of notes he'd taken.

That was… weirdly adorable. She actually hated how adorable that was. They were her evil judgemental captors; they weren't supposed to be cute.

"The milk is expired," Itachi said, suddenly towering over her.

"What?" Tori answered, blinking up at him.

"The milk is past its expiration date," Itachi insisted. Then as if he were spelling it out for a child he added, "Your coffee contains milk."

"So?" Tori asked, suddenly feeling defensive. "It tastes fine."

"It'll make you sick," Itachi said, and then reached for her glass of half-drunk coffee.

"Why do you care?" Tori snapped, and then grabbed the glass and held it to her chest. He could try and micromanage her experiments in fuuinjutsu, but he wasn't going to micromanage her coffee consumption. "Food doesn't just magically go bad when it reaches its expiration date. It's fine."

Itachi's mouth twitched ever so slightly– his version of a frown, maybe– and then he leaned over and tried to pull the glass out of her hands. "It's a full week past the date."

"Hey!" Tori half-screeched, scooting back defensively, and Itachi put his hand on her forehead to hold her in place while he easily pried the glass from her hands. "What kind of a fucking control freak are you–"

Tori called Itachi several rude words, but there was really nothing she could do to stop him from relieving her of her food.

"Did you really have to–" Kisame started, an extremely pained look on his face as Itachi poured Tori's coffee down the sink.

"You complete psychopath," Tori yelled, on her feet and in Itachi's personal space as he very calmly cleaned out her glass. "There's nothing wrong with the fucking milk–"

"It wouldn't do for you to get sick," Itachi said blandly. Then ignoring the beginnings of a pissed rant from Tori about sell-by dates, he raised his voice slightly to add, "Kisame, add milk to your shopping list, please."

Tori clenched her jaw and fumed as Itachi went back to making his tea. Kisame shot her a sympathetic look.

"There's really no point in arguing with him," he said. "He's right– we're supposed to keep you from doing things like poisoning yourself."

He said this as if it were highly probable for Tori to do so, and she couldn't help but think about the face he'd given her over the dumplings, even though they were perfectly edible if not horribly made.

He didn't even know about her drinking drugged champagne!

"I'm not going to poison myself with milk," Tori answered through gritted teeth. How the fuck were these people sending her to face down hordes of enemy ninja but thought she'd die from expired food? Why couldn't she just have one fucking moment of peace around here? "That's not– the milk hasn't even gone off yet!"

Whatever Kisame said in reply, Tori ignored it as she spied where Itachi had left the milk out on the counter. She stalked over to it, picked it up, and opened it.

"Tori-san," Kisame started, sounding completely and painfully resigned, and Itachi looked up.

Tori looked Itachi dead in the eye and chugged the rest of the milk.

"You're incredibly childish," Itachi said, but made no move to stop her.

When she was done, Tori hurled the now empty milk container into the trash can and hissed, "Don't tell me what to eat."

Kisame pinched the bridge of his nose. Tori continued to stand in the middle of the kitchen, scowling at Itachi as he made his tea, willing the blood vessels in his head to spontaneously burst. Itachi was lucky he was the one with magic eyes and not her, because if she had the sharingan, he'd be on dead and on fire and, did she mention, dead?

"Do you want to come with me?" Kisame asked, and it took a moment for Tori to tear her eyes from glaring daggers at Itachi. "To go shopping," Kisame clarified.

His eyes darted meaningfully to his partner, who was calmly stirring honey into his tea and ignoring both of them, and then back to Tori, who was seething in rage.

She… could go outside? To a grocery store? Why did that sound so freeing?

"Uh– yeah, sure," Tori answered, suddenly very distracted from her fantasies about smothering Itachi in his sleep with a pillow. "Do you mind if I grab some cash first?"

She met Kisame in the lobby. He'd put on his Akatsuki cloak, along with the straw hat to guard from the constant rain. That style of hat was actually quite common in Ame, Tori had noticed.

She pulled her hood on and followed him out and into the center of town. Despite passing two, they didn't stop at a grocery store.

Ame's central market was held in a giant open-aired pavilion. Stalls were arranged in a neat grid, and every few blocks there was a square with a sky shower– a hole purposefully built into the ceiling letting rain down into a fountain. Some of the fountains had fish, and all of them were lined with pretty colored tiles. Narrow gutters brought the water away from the fountains and zig-zagged through the pavilion floor.

The market wasn't particularly crowded, but people still rushed to get out of Kisame's way as he led Tori through. She trailed along behind him, eyeing stalls as they passed. They held everything from food to hand-made jewelry to clothes to live animals, all arranged in a seemingly random order.

Tori paused at a stall selling personal care items. Several feet ahead of her, Kisame stopped as well.

"Do you need something?" he asked.

Tori picked up a bottle of shampoo. "Yeah," she said. "How much does shampoo normally cost?"

The woman running the stall raised her eyebrows but didn't comment. Kisame also gave her an odd look, but told her how much he usually paid.

"Itachi's preferred brand is twice as much, though," Kisame said, watching as Tori opened the bottle and sniffed it.

"Of course it is," Tori muttered and then set the bottle down and wandered away from the stall.

"Itachi's really not that bad," Kisame said, falling into step beside her. "He's just…"

"A control freak?" Tori finished.

"Well, yes, a little," Kisame agreed. "He's not as bad as Sasori, though."

For some reason, that made Tori laugh. Kisame grinned back at her, showing off all his pointed teeth.

Kisame obviously had some preferred vendors he went to for his groceries, but he didn't seem to mind Tori stopping to look at things along the way, and offered to buy her a passionfruit when she stopped at a fruit vendor and gasped: "They do exist!"

Kisame also helped her determine fair prices without much hassle or mocking. (Bananas, it turned out, were very rare and very expensive in Ame.)

"Should I be haggling?" Tori asked. "This seems like a place where you should haggle."

"Deidara was right," Kisame said, eyeing Tori as she examined some pretty hand-bound journals. The person running the booth was involved with a deep conversation with another customer. "You really don't have any idea how money works."

"Don't tell Kakuzu my dark secret," Tori answered with an actual, genuine smile.

By the time Kisame had stocked up on all the nonperishables and produce he wanted, Tori thought she had a much better idea of how much money was worth here. She didn't really have any idea what brands were good though, and Kisame abandoned her to pick out hair products while he went to buy meat and dairy.

Tori very meticulously read labels and sniffed bottles, but there wasn't actually much variety in brands. She aimed for products more in the price range Kisame described Itachi going for because, well, Itachi had nicer hair and skin.

God, she hadn't even thought about lotion in months, and now she had two different types.

Tori figured whatever money she had left over would eventually be confiscated by Kakuzu, so she decided it was best for her sanity to just spend it on things she wanted now. When she'd stocked up on all the toiletries she'd need for a while, Tori wandered the stalls at random. She spent a long time at one that sold pretty clothes she couldn't afford, bought some cheap clothes she could, and invested in a towel and fluffy blanket. On her way to re-find Kisame, she paused at a stall selling small animals.

She squatted to peer into a cage of dwarf hamsters, and reflected that hamsters were better experiment fodder than humans. They were small, cheap, easy to care for, and easily replaceable, and she'd have to worry less about why she didn't really mind doing horrible things to them.

"How much are these?" she asked the old man running the stall, who was currently sipping from a thermos.

The man eyed her up and down and then said, "Wouldn't a nice girl like you be more interested in a pair of rabbits?"

"No," Tori said, standing at her full height of five-foot-nothing. "How much for a hamster?"

"I have some rare lionhead rabbits," the man continued, ignoring her question. "I can sell you a cage and food and everything."

"I don't want a rabbit," Tori said, fist tightening on her plastic bag of hygiene products in irritation. "I want to know how much a hamster is." As an afterthought, she added stiffly, "Please."

The man started to show her a collapsible enclosure to keep rabbits in her garden, and she nearly screamed.

"What is wrong with you?" she snapped, and the man blinked at her, taken aback. "I'm asking you about hamsters." She paused, and glared at the cage he was holding. "That's not even big enough for rabbits!"

"What a rude mouth on you," the man said, shaking his head. "Here, I'll let you hold one of the lionheads, and maybe you can calm down."

The lionhead rabbit the man picked up had a lot of extra whisps of hair on its head that fell over its eyes. It was very cute, and Tori hated herself as she took it from him. The rabbit was very sweet and warm and soft and didn't struggle at all.

"See?" the man said. "A pretty rabbit for a pretty girl."

Tori noted that the man needed a crutch to stand and that no one around them was paying much attention at all. She turned on her heel and walked away, rabbit in her arms and bags dangling from her elbows.

"Hey!" the man called after her, hobbling out from behind his stall. The woman at the next stall over– who was selling crepes– looked up and yelled something at Tori, but she was minding two small children and made to move to intervene. Tori walked as fast as she could without running, weaving through the market, and when she looked behind her, the man was nowhere in sight.

Kisame was very large and blue, and it was easy to find him. He was contemplatively watching some eels squirm in a bucket.

"You bought a rabbit?" he asked, frowning at her when she appeared.

"No," Tori said vaguely.

"Then why do you have one?" Kisame asked.

"I don't know," Tori said, feeling very stressed. This was the same way she'd felt with the soap she'd scammed– she'd seen an opportunity to do a thing, executed the thing, and no one had stopped her. She very briefly explained what happened to Kisame.

"You stole a rabbit?" Kisame asked, looking extremely confused.

"No," Tori said. "Yes. I don't know!"

"We're not really supposed to steal from Ame citizens," Kisame said, eyeing the rabbit doubtfully. "You should take it back."

Too late, Tori thought. She couldn't remember where the stall had been, but even if she could, she wasn't going to give the rabbit back to that jerk.

"I don't understand," Kisame said. "Why was he trying to sell you a rabbit?"

Kisame, Tori thought, feeling extremely frazzled, probably hadn't had a problem with a person ignoring his demands since he got big enough to lift Samehada. Luckily, the eel saleswoman was watching them with interest, and she seemed to understand Tori's predicament much better.

"My daughter keeps rabbits," she said. "One more couldn't hurt. I'll trade you."

Tori didn't particularly like eel, but the woman also sold all sorts of fish. Tori and Kisame walked away with a large cut that Kisame seemed very pleased with.

"I can't believe you think Itachi has control problems," Kisame observed as they left the market pavilion. "You can't be left alone for five minutes without terrorizing someone."

He said it in a lighthearted tone that made it obvious he was joking, but Tori still had to fight back a mean snear.

"Well, I don't have control over anything else," she muttered.

"Ah," Kisame said, and the single syllable was surprisingly understanding. Shinobi, Tori supposed, didn't have much control over their own lives, either.

xXx

Since Tori had technically paid for the fish, she was invited to share in Kisame and Itachi's adventures in trying to recreate a recipe they'd seen on TV.

To Itachi's (very meager) credit, his control issues expanded to everyone around him, not just Tori. He hovered around Kisame as he prepared the fish, micromanaging the whole way. Kisame took it in stride, ignoring Itachi's concern about acidity and flavor palettes, and pushing a knife and a handful of potatoes to peel and slice at him.

"Granny Saeko used more ginger," Itachi said, eyeing whatever Kisame was doing even as he chopped the potatoes into neat pieces. Tori could only assume Granny Saeko was the TV chef they were trying to copy.

It was… still sort of cute what they were doing. As cute as murderers-for-hire got, of course.

Instead of responding to his partner, Kisame told Tori's rabbit story in a sort of "Can you believe that?" tone.

Itachi's eyes briefly slid over to Tori, who was leaning against the counter and watching them intently.

"You do give off the strong impression of someone who's easily taken advantage of," Itachi observed in the same bland way one might announce the outdoor temperature.

"Thanks," Tori answered, voice heavy with sarcasm.

"It wasn't an insult," Itachi answered, turning to scrape potato peels into the trash. "You're adept enough at using it to your advantage."

Tori rolled her eyes and turned to her part of dinner prep, which was assembling a salad from a random assortment of vegetables that Kisame had purchased simply because they'd been a good deal. This included a comically large mesh-bag of lemons.

Tori, being a lazy person who only dealt in juices from a bottle, had never juiced a lemon before. It ended with lemon juice all over her hands and a bunch of cuts she hadn't even known were there stinging like mad. Her lemon-and-oil dressing better be delicious.

They made their plates, and in an act of camaraderie that seemed wildly bizarre to Tori, they sat down in the living room together to eat and watch TV.

The salad dressing tasted 100% like undiluted lemon juice, and was awful.

"Lemon and fish should pair together," Itachi said, eyeing his plate like he didn't quite trust it.

"It's probably off because I added way too much ginger," Kisame said, sounding vaguely apologetic, despite the addition of more ginger being the result of Itachi's constant badgering.

Still, the fish was perfectly flakey and the potatoes were flavorful and the vegetables were fresh, and it was easily the best meal Tori had had since… since whenever the dining hall at her university had last served chicken nuggets. It was so good she was willing to forgive Itachi. It was so good she was promoting Kisame to number one kidnapper.

She told him as much and added, "Besides, I like intense flavors."

"I've noticed this about you," Kisame said diplomatically, and then turned and said to his partner, "She ate your death gyoza earlier."

"Hmm," Itachi replied, flipping through channels.

Tori paused, a lettuce leaf doused in lemon juice halfway to her mouth. "Itachi," she said, working very hard to contain laughter, "do you not know about chopping garlic?"

"It was an early cooking attempt," Itachi said blandly, "as I'm sure your salad is."

"We own a garlic press now," Kisame said helpfully.

They settled on a movie, which started with a quick interview from the main actor, who talked about how he'd been drawn to this role because of the amazing twist ending. The movie itself was a drama, set in a world where warriors seemed to be ninja-samurai fusions, and where an evil king had taken over twenty years prior.

Very important to Tori's interests, the main character had a sword made out of scorned ghosts. Were those real? She'd take seven.

Not five minutes into the movie, Tori asked, "So is the twist that the sword guy is the son of the evil king?"

Kisame twitched. "I'm sure we'll find out," he said.

A few scenes later, an evil sorceress (kunoichi?) announced she had a "truth jutsu" that could destroy the main character.

"Yeah, he's definitely the king's lost son," Tori concluded.

"I don't understand how this jutsu is supposed to work," Itachi said. "Where is the information coming from?"

"I'm sure," Kisame said, voice oddly strained, "that the movie will tell us eventually."

Itachi, however, couldn't seem to hold himself back from critiquing the ghost sword (which, to Tori's disappointment, was not a real thing), or everyone's fighting technique, or the bizarrely prevalent use of "summoning jutsu" to summon plot-relevant items to various characters.

Snarky movie commentary was actually a game Tori loved to play, so she jumped in with: "I am 100% sure his love interest is the sorceress in disguise" and "Why can't I save my grandmother's ghost in a storage scroll for wisdom about conquering evil kingdoms?"

At some point, Itachi got up and came back with a bowl of ice cream, covered in chocolate syrup. Ten minutes later, the love interest revealed herself to be the sorceress and the main character learned he was the son of the evil king, followed by a dramatic freak out session.

"I bet all the ghosts in the sword drag the King to hell," Tori predicted.

Kisame sighed and stood up. "You know what?" he said. "I don't really want to watch this anymore."

Tori watched him leave and then remarked to Itachi, "I thought we were having fun."

"Sometimes people don't appreciate when you criticize things they like," he answered, dragging his spoon across the bottom of his bowl.

"Hold on," Tori said, and sorted through the mess of papers and magazines on the coffee table for a piece of scratch paper. She found Kisame's legal pad, and she held it out to Itachi. "I'm going to need you to write that down and sign it, for reference the next time you start talking."

Itachi eyed the notebook, then eyed Tori, face completely blank. He licked his spoon clean without further comment.

They watched the last bit of the movie in silence, and watching all the scorned souls drag the evil king to the "shinigami's kingdom" was very cathartic if not highly predictable. When it was over, Itachi quietly wished Tori good night and gathered his dishes and left.

Tori watched the credits scroll for a few minutes, listening to Itachi cleaning up in the kitchen. She found that, despite being exhausted all day long, she was now wide awake and ready to do something. Drinking caffeine in the afternoon had been poor planning.

Eventually the credits switched to reruns of the same cooking show from before, and Tori switched off the TV. Standing up and stretching, she crossed to the bookshelf to see if she could find the next Icha Icha.

First, she found a book called The Goat Herder's Son, which was whatever Kakuzu had told her rich people liked. She skimmed the back– it was a "classic" epic about a boy from a rural village going on a quest. Huh.

Tori put it back, making a mental note to read it later, as it was apparently an important piece of culture here. For now, though, she wanted to ready a sleazy, smutty romance disguised as a ninja adventure story, and she laid back on the couch with Icha Icha Onsen.

This Icha Icha focused on the buxom kunoichi character from the first book, who was sent by her village to investigate a murder at a hot springs resort. When she arrived, the kunoichi discovered another female ninja from a rival village was also investigating.

The discovery was made, of course, in the hot spring while they were both naked. This allowed the blonde kunoichi to spend an entire page comparing her body (sunkissed and lushious with curves) to the new kunoichi, who was thin and lithe and had silky smooth black hair down to her knees and moon-pale skin.

Tori sat up slightly on the couch. Hold on, that sounds familiar–

"Tori-chaaan~!" someone called and then Tobi flopped down on her in what was some sort of combination between a hug and an elbow to the stomach. "Tobi apologizes for his tardiness!"

"Oof!" Tori choked back, and felt bile go up her throat from the hit. Fortunately (or unfortunately?) she didn't vomit into Tobi's dumb mask.

"Tori-chan," Tobi gasped, leaning over her with his face way too close to hers. "That book is for after-hours."

Tori had dropped the book onto her chest, and as she moved to sit up, pushing Tobi out of her face, it fell to the floor. ""It is after-hours," she pointed out. "What do you want?"

"Tobi is here to protect you!" Tobi cried, and then stood up and did a pose, flexing his arms at her.

"From what?" Tori asked, and bent to pick Icha Icha up off the floor. She'd lost her place, and she was on the brink of an important realization about Jiraiya's books.

"From Itachi-sempai, of course!" Tobi cried, and then leaned over to whisper conspiratorially into her ear, "He wanted to kill you, remember?"

Tori paused in the middle of flipping through Icha Icha. Yes, Obito had mentioned something about Itachi wanting her killed, only a few days ago. Itachi was supposed to be a pacifist, but he was a ninja first, and Tori knew a lot of secrets that could ruin his whole plan.

Tori had very little interest in stopping Itachi from doing whatever he wanted to do . She hadn't really given the whole ordeal much thought, given the wave of brand new ordeals that had followed immediately after.

"You left me with him all day," she said slowly. It came out accusatory, even though Tori didn't want help from Tobi. She didn't want help from anyone, really, but ninja were so stupidly overpowered it was inevitable she'd need some form of assistance to stay alive.

She just didn't want it to be stupid Obito, of all people. He'd probably laugh at her first and then intentionally screw it up.

"The hero always arrives late!" Tobi cried, and then struck another silly pose.

Tori pressed her lips together, watching him. Absolutely nothing about Tobi's body language gave away that he was anything but a sweet idiot, and she hated it.

"He seemed pretty intent on not letting me accidentally poison myself," Tori finally said, tightly. She was still bitter about the milk.

"Silly Tori-chan!" Tobi said, wagging his finger. "If Itachi-sempai wanted you dead, you wouldn't notice. He'd use a scary genjutsu to make you forget to eat, or he'd make you drown in the shower, or he'd–"

Tobi rambled, and Tori rolled her eyes and went back to skimming Icha Icha for where she'd left off. Vague death threats hardly scared her anymore. Except Tobi mention another food genjutsu and–

"Mother fucker," Tori swore and dropped Icha Icha.

"Language," Tobi gasped, scandalized, but Tori ignored him in favor of sprinting back into the kitchen.

The expired milk carton she'd thrown out was still in the trash, now covered by remnants of chopped vegetables and fish bones. She pulled the cartoon out and shook it– it was still at least half full. She opened it and gave it a good smell; it was fine.

Itachi had genjutsu'd her into thinking she drank it all and tricked her into throwing it away, that asshole–

"What are you doing?" Tobi asked as Tori pulled the new milk and a lemon out of the fridge.

She ignored him, chopping the lemon into wedges and then carefully squeezing the juice into the new milk Kisame had bought earlier. The acidity in the juice would make the milk curdle.

Fuck you, Itachi, Tori thought, and then put both the new milk and the trash-milk back in the fridge.

"Tori-chan," Tobi said, very slowly. "That milk has been in the garbage all day."

"It's fine," Tori snapped, glaring furiously at him. Tobi shrank back.

"Tori-chan is mean," he whined. "Itachi-sempai might seem nice, but doesn't Tori-chan know Itachi-sempai killed his whole family?"

Tobi said this with a sort of reverent fear in voice, like he himself hadn't been there to help. Tori took a deep, calming breath so she didn't throw herself down on the floor and scream.

Itachi had previously threatened her, sure, and he'd been low-key mean to her all day long, but it wasn't worse than Kakuzu yelling at her, or Hidan yelling at her, or anyone else losing their tempers at her. Tobi was just fucking with her because he was a troll who wanted to see what would happen if she initiated a screaming match with Itachi.

(Which– okay– he'd gotten her to sabotage Itachi's milk, but that was besides the point.)

"Itachi is not nice," Tori said through gritted teeth, "and he's not going to kill me. Now if you excuse me, I'm going to bed."

She stomped down the stairs, and Tobi called after her, "Tori-chan, you forgot your porn!"

Notes:

(long notes today because this chapter slapped me directly in the face)

Kisame: What if you– and hear me out here– what if you stopped being Like That for ten minutes and let us make work friends?
Itachi, sipping tea: Absolutely not.

Tori: WHY is everyone JUDGING my FOOD CHOICES?
Tobi: Because Tori-chan got boiling oil everywhere!
Kisame: Because you keep eating food that tastes terrible.
Itachi: Because you eat expired food.
Tori:
Tori:
Tori: I still think I'm right. 8C

Itachi, a neurotic bastard: I've noticed several unrealistic details in this film.
Tori, a know-it-all: I love this game! Here are all the predictable story beats.
Kisame, a guy who just wants to watch a movie: thanks guys i hate it

This chapter was meant to be centered around Tori crossing a sort of moral event horizon, but she decided to step over it way more casually than originally anticipated, LOL. Instead we get… the writer projecting her personal fantasies about life post-social distancing. Dinner-and-a-movie nights with friends… going shopping and touching all the things… lab work…!

(Again, I promise Tori is on a slow journey to get respect for her work. I know this is frustrating to many readers LMAO.)

Also notable with this chapter, we've crossed 100k words! I've never written something this long before, and I wanted to thank each and every one of you for reading along on this self-indulgent story. I read every comment (even if I'm terrible about replying), and I thank each of you for taking time out of your days to write them. Also, of course, thanks for all the bookmarks and kudos, and thank you to all the lurkers reading too!

The world is a rough place right now, and it makes me happy to know that people are enjoying my weird little SI. Stay safe and stay strong, friends.

Chapter 14: take chances! make mistakes! get messy!

Summary:

Tori makes progress on achieving the rank of Low Budget Orochimaru.

Notes:

Pandemic-induced scatterbrain made me start a bunch of other projects, but PLASTICITY LIVES!

This chapter was literally just supposed to be a 1000-ish word introduction to what will now be chapter 15, but as per usual with this fic, things got wildly out of hand. Luckily this is a self-indulgent and intentionally meandering fanfic designed to be extra long, so I can just DO WHATEVER I WANT and LEAVE EVERY EXTRANEOUS DETAIL IN.

I'd warn for wildly unethical science this chapter, but if you weren't expecting that at this point then I don't know what to tell you. Also, an apology for naming Tori something so close to "Tobi." I regret everything.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

In the morning, Tori woke to find the stairs missing.

She stood at the door to the dungeon, staring for a very long time at the place where the stairs were supposed to be. The stairwell had been reduced to a small room with nothing there. The stairs were just… missing.

That really shouldn't be possible.

There was a note stuck to the wall. It read: I am to inform you we're having a meeting at noon, food poisoning or not.

Food poisoning…?

Itachi found the milk, Tori concluded, scowling at the empty stairwell. Perhaps antagonizing a genjutsu master had been a bad idea.

Does this illusion count as being pranked? Tori wondered. She walked further into the room very slowly with arms out, fully expecting to trip over invisible stairs or walk into something. She didn't.

How the hell did genjutsu work, then? Was she actually still standing in the doorway, hallucinating walking around when she wasn't, or was she so high on Itachi's genjutsu she'd walked into the banister multiple times and not noticed? When had he even cast this on her? Did Itachi sneak into her cell at night like a creep?

Well, there was at least a way to figure out where she really was. Tori took a couple seconds to debate the part of her skin she valued the least, then dug her nails into the back of her forearm as hard as she could. When nothing happened, she pinched and twisted her skin enough to draw blood.

The illusion fell apart, and Tori found herself three steps up the stairs. The shock almost made her lose her balance, and she grabbed at the handrail to keep from falling.

How did she get up here, when she hadn't adjusted her gait at all to climb stairs? She had about three dozen questions about this.

Tori found Itachi in the meeting room, looking bored and leaning against the wall while he supervised three men installing a new conference table.

"Did you genjutsu me in my sleep?" Tori asked, marching right over to him.

"This should really be your job," Itachi answered, gesturing vaguely at the men. "You didn't schedule a pick up for the broken table, either. I had to be very persuasive to get them to take it away."

Persuasive, Tori would bet her last thirty ryo, meant genjutsu'd to my will.

"Is that how you solve all your problems? Illusions?" Tori asked, crossing her arms. She was still in her newly bought pajamas, which were very cute but very pink. She probably looked ridiculous.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Itachi said blandly, and then turned his attention back to the table. "This table isn't as nice."

It wasn't. It was all plywood and gray plastic. The last table had been a solid chunk of wood.

"We can have nice things when people stop breaking them," Tori said. Itachi tilted his head ever so slightly, which she was going to interpret as agreement.

When Tori attempted to quiz Itachi on how his illusions worked, he told her she could easily look up that information in any shinobi library and left her to supervise the table assembly.

Fucking Itachi.

"Are you authorized to sign for this?" one of the men asked, holding up a clipboard. He stared down at her violently pink pajama bottoms, a doubtful look on his face.

"Yes, of course," Tori said in her friendliest voice. "What's the warranty on this, again?"

Tori had never used the warranty on anything in her life. However, she suspected that learning to navigate warranties would be essential with the Akatsuki.

The meeting later that day was mostly just her and Konan and Pein trying to organize and delegate the next round of missions, with Itachi and Kisame making commentary. Or rather, Itachi made commentary, and Kisame seemed perfectly content to just sit there and clean Samehada on the new table.

Tobi hovered around in the background, occasionally offering to bring them snacks, including tea that contained milk he said he's rescued from the garbage, "just like Tori-chan liked it." Tori drank it with much determination, and didn't even get a twitch from Itachi for her efforts.

Tori had a map spread out in front of her, trying very hard to memorize as it as quickly as possible because Konan would say things like "where would the zombie combo be at that time" and Tori would know the answer was a specific town in Fire Country, but not at all where the town was exactly or if it made sense for Hidan and Kakuzu to travel from there to Tea Country.

"Do you not know how to read a map?" Pein asked, as Tori paused awkwardly over it, trying to find where the fuck the city of Hojicha was. "It's the capital of Tea Country."

"I have literally never seen a map of your world before in my life," Tori gritted out, finally finding Hojicha and slapping a ruler down to measure the distance between it and a border town in Fire Country. God, she missed Google maps. "And I don't know what the capital of any country is."

"Maybe Tori-chan should read a geography book instead of porn!" Tobi suggested, and Tori shot the fiercest glare she could muster at him. Kisame looked up from Samehada, grinning meanly at her.

"How did you make it anywhere at all without knowing any geography?" Itachi wondered out loud.

"My incredible tenacity," Tori answered through her teeth. "It's a two day trip at standard speed," she told Konan. Basic math, at least, she could do quick enough no one mocked her for it.

The benefit to Itachi and Kisame sitting in, it seemed, was that they could try and claim the better missions when they came up. Itachi gave a pitch for the two of them taking a cushy escort mission through Hot Water Country– some tour of schmoozing with local business representatives in hot spring resorts– and Tori frowned at the mission request card, penned in her own hand.

"Hold on," she said, reaching for the minutes book. "I'm pretty sure you killed this lady's husband."

They had, four months prior, as part of a very high-paying political assassination. It was the exact reason the widow had gone to a private group; she'd incorrectly assumed it was the work of her local shinobi village.

"Ah, is it the same family?" Itachi asked, looking thoughtful. "I don't see why she'd recognize us…"

"Better not to risk it," Konan said.

"Agreed," said Pein. "We might have something more pressing for you two, anyway."

Konan straightened her posture ever so slightly, folding her hands in front of her.

"The Tsuchikage has reached out to us," she said, "for the purpose of a mission unsanctioned by the Earth Daimyo."

Itachi visibly perked up, and Kisame let out a low whistle. Konan gave Tori a very meaningful look, the smallest smile on her lips.

Tori supposed she had, technically, predicted this when she'd asked if they'd done anything for Iwa yet.

Thank god it came true, she thought, because they're not keeping me around for my ability to read maps.

"Konan is to meet with them in the coming weeks for details," Pein continued, "but given you two are our most… subtle pair, the mission is likely to go to you."

Tori pulled some nearby missions for Itachi and Kisame, so that they could be called back easily for whatever the Tsuchikage wanted.

When the meeting was over, Pein turned to Tori and said, "Tobi is right. You should educate yourself."

Tori was pretty sure she had more formal education than everyone else in the room combined, but she pressed her lips together and kept her thoughts to herself.

"I'll get her access to the library," Konan said.

xXx

In the evening, Tori spent a few minutes perusing Itachi's tea stores. He had an entire shelf of teas, ranging from gross-smelling medicinal blends in foil bags to expensive looking tins of loose leaves. One of the blends had dried chrysanthemums which would "bloom" in hot water.

Tori was pretty sure that if she slipped something into one of the medicinal blends, Itachi wouldn't notice. The strong taste would cover up anything suspicious. What could she add? Nutmeg? Something nicked from Sasori's section of the greenhouse?

Then again, if she rigged the microwave to explode using some extremely creative fuinjutsu, everyone would just blame Deidara… There was definitely ink sitting around somewhere, and she could pass off a cut finger as a cooking accident…

"Fuck," Tori swore, and put the tea back. She couldn't poison or ambush Itachi just because he genjutsu-pranked her. That was insane. Normal people didn't think like that. Tori didn't think like that.

Or, at least, she hadn't up until recently.

She went to go find the next volume of Icha Icha instead.

xXx

And so Tori's days settled into something approaching a routine. She met almost daily with varying members of Akatsuki– either Pein or Konan or both were always there, and sometimes the holo-projections of other members– and Tori recorded mission reports and helped organize missions and called in orders for supplies and ran for references when someone wanted information on a target's known techniques or where some obscure village in southern Lightning Country was.

She spent hours and hours hunched over Orochimaru's notes, trying to dismantle the sealwork so she could put it back together again. She was not permitted to actually do any sealwork herself without supervision, and so her greatest piece of headway was just making a series of hand-drawn spreadsheets to keep track of which seal was what, and what common symbols and arrays were between them, and what components Tori could identify on her own and what needed to be researched.

Konan gave her an ID that said Tori was a civilian research aid to the village, which functioned as a library card.

"If you try anything, like escaping," Konan warned when Tori was given permission to go outside by herself, "Pein will know."

"Right, the all-seeing rain," Tori acknowledged, because everyone always respected her slightly more when she reminded them she did know what was what in regards several very key things, even if that didn't include the capitals of nations or famous trading roads or whatever.

(And she was learning those quickly, so everyone could stop making fun of her, thank you very much.)

Technically Konan had only given Tori permission to walk to the library and back, but she decided to willfully misinterpret Konan's vague instructions as a free pass to wander the village unsupervised. She wasted small amounts of time meandering through shops and wished she hadn't purposefully spent all her money. Her life would be greatly improved by sitting somewhere for a fancy coffee or shaved ice.

Ame, between its blocks and blocks of abandoned buildings, was more metropolitan than the other towns Tori had seen so far. There were a couple of huge malls with indoor parks people could meet and play in to escape the rain, and a surprising variety of shops and cafes and restaurants Tori couldn't afford. The people were not particularly open, but they were polite and acceptably friendly.

(Despite all the unused shops in the malls and entire neighborhoods of buildings in disrepair, Tori didn't see any obvious signs of poverty among the people. She never once saw anyone begging on the streets, and all children were bundled up in water-proof jackets and straw hats.)

The library's main floor was open to everyone in the village and was not much bigger than the suburban library Tori had grown up going to. However, there were floors and floors of shinobi archives above, and the entrance to each floor had more and more guards as you ascended.

"Excuse me," Tori said to the woman on the main floor, sliding her card across the desk. "I'm working on a– a historical dossier, for young ninja. Could you give me some recommendations?"

"Hmm," the woman said, boredly picking up the card to read its fine print. "What type of history?"

"It's a generalized review of modern history," Tori said, feeling it was going to be blatantly obvious to this woman that she just was pulling stuff out of her ass. "We're revamping some textbooks."

The woman nodded approvingly and wrote down some specific titles for Tori. Most of them were on the ground floor, but Tori had to wander upstairs to the first and second floor for a couple of shinobi-focused items. These two floors seemed to contain the world's most basic ninja texts, and Tori grabbed a couple booklets that were obviously "beginner shinobi" manuals for children.

Hey, if she was going to be ordering weapons maintenance equipment, she might as well know what they needed, even if the information was presented to her in the form of fun cartoons for kids.

While the librarian was wrapping her books in plastic so they wouldn't be damaged in the rain, it hit Tori that lying about writing a textbook had been completely unnecessary. She could have just asked for history textbooks, and no one would have found that odd.

Tori didn't actually end up reading most of the books, because history had always been her least favorite subject, and she learned more about this world's culture just from watching the local news in the evenings. Little by little, she started recognizing names of some of their clients as important families.

Should NOT have made the Water Daimyo's son's mission request low-priority, Tori thought, curled up on the couch with a blanket and watching said Daimyo's son give an interview about refugees from villages affected by the on-going Dead Water Fever epidemic. Oops?

The how-to-be-ninja books and scrolls were decidedly more interesting, as they gave concise information on practical things like geography and ecology and chakra theory. They did not, annoyingly, explain how genjutsu worked in any detail, nor did they touch on any of the advanced chakra mumbo-jumbo Orochimaru and Kabuto would go on about.

(On the bright side, the kunoichi guide had all sorts of advice on cute hairstyles that could pass you as a civilian woman but also keep your hair out of your face in a fight. Tori enthusiastically tried out one and managed to get a hair tie completely lost in her curls.)

The only useful guide on fuuinjutsu Tori could get from the library with just her access card was a book she'd also been given to work with in Oto. It was a good resource for the basics, and it helped fill in the gaps in her memory, but also it wasn't going to help her make progress on the mess Orochimaru had left.

"You'll need to petition Pein-sama for the third floor and above," the front desk woman told Tori. Her name was Kimiko and she and Tori swapped funny stories about Kimiko's children and Tori's little sister who Tori had invented just for conversation. "It usually takes a couple of months for low-priority requests."

Tori showed back up with the relevant forms two days later. "Pein-sama takes education very seriously," she said when Kimiko looked hilariously shocked.

Going into the upper floors as an approved civilian meant that an Ame-nin followed her everywhere to make sure she didn't look at anything that wasn't strictly on approved in her paperwork. This was a shame, because he barred her from even touching a scroll labelled Chakra Biogenesis.

"I'm sure you can find an easier to read text on the first floor," he said, sounding bored.

"What's your name again?" Tori asked innocently.

"What, going to file a complaint?" the shinobi asked, and then rolled his eyes.

Tori had not realized "filing a complaint" was an option. It was good information to know.

It turned out no one had bothered to write an advanced guide to fuuinjutsu, or even an intermediate guide, and Tori ended up accumulating a large pile of scrolls on disjointed topics related to sealing. She made more spreadsheets just to keep track of which thing told her what. It reminded her of reading scientific papers on very narrow topics with the occasional review for synthesis, except that she couldn't just google references and terminology when she got lost. When a book made a claim about the famous scrolls of Uzumaki Whomstever, she had to just assume that they existed and that the author was reporting on their contents accurately.

It was frustrating. Whenever she felt a headache coming on, Tori read her way through the Icha Icha series to cope, finding herself increasingly fascinated by whatever the fuck was going on in Jiraiya's mind. And when she got so mad at Orochimaru's stupid notes and the sealing scrolls she thought she might scream, she took breaks by exploring the building.

The Akatsuki base was obviously once meant to be some sort of living facility for shinobi. There were rooms of metal bed frames that must be dorms, dusty training rooms with half-assembled equipment, bathrooms with bone-dry toilets and sinks, and boxes and boxes of shinobi equipment in various stages of decay. She made even more spreadsheets of what they had and where, for Pein and Konan's reference. She identified one floor as being where most of the Akatsuki lived (in… officers' quarters?) and found a working laundry room at the end of the hall.

(Tori read in one of the history books that Ame had invested a lot in infrastructure as a way to rejuvenate itself after the second shinobi war, and that was why they were more modern in architecture than other shinobi villages. Then another war had happened, and left behind half a village of abandoned buildings.

She also read that wartime was almost always profitable for shinobi villages, even as the people in the surrounding countryside starved.)

Overall, Tori's life was a vast improvement from Oto. It was unclear to her if it was just that Akatsuki was less invested in precise control of their membership and captives, or if her time in Oto had forced her to perfect pushing the boundaries of her captors, or if Akatsuki simply found more value in her running free than Oto had. It certainly wasn't that the Akatsuki were kinder, although they seemed to have accidentally succeeded in making her feel better off with them than anywhere else.

(It had to be an accident, because while the Akatsuki were devastating in pairs, they tended to turn into screaming children in larger groups.)

Beside Pein and Konan, Tori didn't see any other Akatsuki in person for weeks, as they'd had an influx in mission requests. When Deidara and Sasori finally got a few days off to recoup at headquarters after two weeks chasing a false lead on Kabuto, Tori was horrified at herself to discover she'd missed talking to people, even when those people were mass murdering ninja criminals.

And so, when the artist duo came home several hours later in the evening than anticipated, Tori chose to hurl herself into conversation without much thought for regular social convention.

"Deidara," Tori panted, having run up several flights of stairs.

"Um?" Deidara asked, looking up from a styrofoam cup of soup he must have bought on the way in. He was still in mission gear, his cloak singed around the sleeves.

"I've figured it out," Tori continued, taking a seat across the table from him.

"Good for you…?" he answered, blowing on the cup.

"He's writing porn about his teammates," Tori hurried on. "It doesn't get obvious until Icha Icha Violence, but it can't be anything else–"

"No offense," Deidara interrupted her, his spoon forgotten halfway to his mouth. "But what the shit are you talking about?"

"Jiraiya is writing a monument to his sins," Tori pressed. "The black and white morality and clear-cut conflict are obviously his personal power fantasy about morally good options always being available–"

"Tori, it's past midnight, yeah," Deidara cut her off. "Could you have your nervous breakdown at a more convenient time?"

"But I'm right!" Tori snapped, slamming her fist on the table. "Jiraiya wrote weird porn about his teammates going down on each other!"

"Is this…" Deidara gave Tori a very suspicious one-over. "Is this a come-on?"

"What?" Tori asked.

"Because if it is, it's a weird one–"

"No," Tori said, slapping the table again. "I'm trying to talk literature with you. Don't you like talking about art?"

It had been a while since Tori had had her Revelation about the Icha Icha novels, and since then she'd worked together an entire theory about Jiraiya's psyche. She'd been dying to explain it to someone. If she didn't get to have this talk with Deidara, she was going to break and have it with Konan, and she didn't want to know Konan's reaction to her analysis of Jiraiya's pornography.

Deidara just watched her with eyebrows raised, slowly eating his soup as she ranted about the clear parallels between the two main kunoichi characters and Tsunade and Orochimaru.

"Except he didn't give Satsuki the tongue, because he's a coward," Tori continued.

"Mm-hm," Deidara answered.

"But then," Tori went on, leaning conspiratorially across the table, "it gets really weird."

"Weirder than you explaining porn to me in the middle of the night?" Deidara asked.

Tori ignored him. "Icha Icha Violence introduces an author avatar–"

"A what?"

"Like– like Jiraiya's self-insert–"

"Ah, sorry, I just remembered I don't care, yeah. Go on."

"All I'm saying," Tori said, taking a deep breath, "is that Jiraiya wrote about himself getting a blow job from Orochimaru. Do you think that was intentional or his subconscious–"

"Let me stop you there," Deidara said, chunking his now empty cup across the room into the trash bin. It bounced off the lid and rolled across the floor. "First of all, why the fuck do you think Jiraiya the Toad Sage of all people wrote the Icha Icha series?"

"Because he DID!" Tori shrieked, throwing her hands in the air. It was published anonymously, but she knew! She knew!

"Is this one of your doujutsu things?" Deidara asked. "Because if it is, this is the single stupidest bloodline limit I've ever heard of."

"But I'm right!" Tori insisted. "Jiraiya wrote a whole book about his teammate sucking him off and then literally stabbing him in the back!"

"I'm going to bed," Deidara said, standing. "Let me know if you try to explain your insane conspiracy theory to Danna, because I want to watch, yeah."

He tossed his spoon in the sink and left without picking his soup cup off the floor. Tori sat for a few minutes more, fuming and frustrated that she hadn't even shared half of her findings, and seriously considered going to see if Sasori was in his workshop so she could ask if Orochimaru had ever mentioned his ex-teammate writing weird porn about him.

In the end, she managed to calm herself enough to wait until morning to say anything to Sasori, and he informed her that her eyeliner was uneven and that ugliness was offensive.

"What?" Tori said, completely losing her train of thought.

"What did you do to your hair?" Sasori asked, and Tori reflexively put her hand up the fancy kunoichi braid she'd tried to copy from the book. It was a little off-center and some hairs had worked their way free from sleeping in it. "You should wear it down. It hides your hideous scar."

Tori's hand dropped to the scar on her neck, from where Haruka had stabbed her. Had she really missed talking to these people?

"Here," Sasori said, handing her a fistful of glass ampules. "I need one-to-fifty dilutions of those in mineral oil."

"I have other things to do," Tori said.

"Those are fatal on skin contact at their current concentration," Sasoir continued, ignoring her. "Wear gloves."

It was literally faster to just do the dilutions than to argue with Sasori. Tori asked Sasori about Orochimaru as she went. He did know Jiraiya had penned Icha Icha (and made a derisive comment about Kabuto, who'd included this detail in two separate intel reports), but agreed with Deidara that Tori was spouting crazy conspiracy theories.

"Literature is barely art," Sasori told her when she'd tried to take that angle to get him interested, "and Icha Icha isn't even literature."

"But I'm right about it," Tori emphasized and slapped the workbench so hard she nearly knocked fatal poison onto herself. "If you just read one–"

"Deidara is more receptive to complete nonsense," Sasori countered. "Talk to him next time."

Tori nearly screamed.

xXx

Deidara and Sasori were only around for two more days, during which Tori completely failed to convince either that Jiraiya had subconsciously written his teammates and then himself into a his erotic novel series. She never even got as far as talking about how the novels clearly outlined Jiraiya's personal struggle with reconciling being a murder-y ninja and being a good person at the same time, or that he definitely had a fetish for girls in uniforms.

Not that Tori spent much time with either of the artists, because now her time was entirely dedicated to glaring at fuinjutsu.

"You know, progress is pretty much impossible if you don't let me try any of the seals out," Tori informed Konan at their next meeting. Deidara shot them both a delighted, anticipatory look, like he expected Konan to do something awful and violent to Tori for her sass.

"When someone's available to watch you," Konan said dismissively, because Tori had been bringing this up in gradually snippier tones for weeks. "Deidara, why did the client send a complaint that you destroyed half their caravan?"

Tori did not know what everyone thought she was going to do with free access to sealing equipment, besides maybe accidentally set herself on fire. She had made a single joke to Konan about raising the dead, and she supposed she could probably do some major property damage if she put her mind to it, but that wasn't any greater risk than spending ten minutes with any given Akatsuki member. Honestly, if she were really desperate to cause chaos with fuuinjutsu, she could just use her own blood and any number of supplies sitting around.

It would certainly be easier with the proper resources, though. She weighed the pros and cons of going rogue and practicing seals with regular ink and blood while recording Sasori's new plans for tracking down Kabuto.

Probably… probably it was better for her physical health to just do what Konan said, even if she was mentally dying.

xXx

"Tobi will supervise," Pein told her one day.

"I would prefer literally anyone else," Tori countered.

She was in his office for the afternoon, shifting through stolen court documents Zetsu had dropped off. The language was incredibly dense and painful to read, which was unfortunate because the man they were trying to blackmail had some wild legal drama, including falsifying his wedding date to cover up that his heir was born out of wedlock.

"You don't have anyone else," Pein told her.

She didn't argue further, because one did not argue with Pein.

While she worked, Pein shifted through his own stack of papers. Tori was trying to be polite and not snoop, but it was difficult to keep her curiosity in check when Pein wasn't even doing anything to block her view. It looked mostly like boring work for Ame, anyway. She caught the words Chunin Certification printed across one paper.

It was sort of funny, the feared leader of Akatuski sitting around and signing off on people's pay bonuses.

"You'd be more useful if you were a more subtle spy," Pein commented after a while. It was less a criticism and more of a conversational observation.

"Good thing you're not paying me to spy then," Tori answered, flipping through various hospital records. Ninja just insulted you for being a regular human being sometimes. It was fine. "In fact, you're not paying me at all."

"Everyone in Akatsuki has multiple roles," Pein said, ignoring her jibe at the end. He ignored most of her snarky comments.

Tori blanked on a clever response, because something she read madee her bark out a laugh. "Ha! Pein, his precious heir isn't even his."

She pointed triumphantly at the kid's blood type. She had records for both parents' blood types too– two Os did not make an A.

"That's a good start," Pein said, leaning forward slightly to read the documents.

He kicked her out of his office after that, but first he handed over a bunch of ancient looking scrolls.

"These are the Uzushio scrolls you found," he said. "Look them over, copy whatever information they have, and then report to Kakuzu about our prospects on selling them."

"You don't want to keep them?" Tori asked, piling the scrolls up in her arms carefully.

"Perhaps if they have particularly valuable information," Pein answered. "But I don't anticipate that. Why?"

Tori blinked. "Because… you…?"

Jesus, did he know he was an Uzumaki? She couldn't remember. Should she tell him?

Tori really, really didn't want to be the one to break potentially life-altering news to Pein.

She fumbled her response and said, "Well, I don't want to 23andMe you."

"What?" Pein asked, and she winced.

"Sorry, it's… other dimension slang…" Tori fidgeted, desperate to change the subject. "Could I get the notebooks I stole from Orochimaru too? They'd probably help deciphering his work on the bijuu sealing."

"I'll think about it," Pein said after a few moments of thought. "I don't want them to distract you from your actual work."

By that he probably meant, "I don't want you running weird genetic experiments on us."

Frustration station, here we come, Tori thought as she left his office.

True to Pein's word, Tobi showed up the next morning with a shopping bag full of sealing supplies and told her they had all day together. Tori moved them to one of the empty offices and spread her notes across the floor while Tobi whistled and unpacked.

"Most of these require a live subject," Tori said, tapping her finger one of Orochimaru's mostly-complete seals, "but this one is some sort of barrier."

Konan had confirmed that all the work Tori currently had from Orochimaru were meant to be for the Akatsuki's bijuu sealing ritual. She assumed the barrier was to keep them safe during the ritual, but who fucking knew what Orochimaru had had in mind. It certainly wasn't what they ended up with in the manga, as far as she could remember.

Tori had copied the seal in question over several times in felt-tip pen, so her first few tries with a brush and ink weren't completely awful. Tobi laid down on his stomach to watch her, chin in hands, and summarized his favorite romantic comedy to her, scene by scene.

"Here," Tori finally said, shoving a seal forward. "Try that one."

"Eh?" Tobi asked, cocking his head far enough that it made him look more like an owl than a man. "How do I activate it?"

Tori stared at him. Then she pulled her seal back and stared at it. She'd just sort of assumed… all ninja knew how to activate seals…

Well, Obito likely could, but Tobi was an idiot. She had to walk him through what pieces to channel chakra into, and how much. The seal would do the rest.

"Start small," she decided when explaining how much chakra to use.

A tiny, purple bubble flickered into existence, and Tobi audibly gasped like it was impressive. It wasn't more than a foot across– the size of the seal itself– and formed a translucent dome. Tori poked it with the wooden handle of her brush, and it was as hard as poking the wall.

"Ah, we should test it!" Tobi declared, then hopped to his feet and stomped on the dome as hard as he could. His foot flew off it, causing him to lose balance and topple over. The barrier dome flickered out of existence as he crashed to the floor.

"Huh," Tori said, then pushed another variation of the seal at Tobi as he pulled himself into a sitting position. "This one should last longer."

The next one lasted for a full twenty minutes, but Tori was able to puncture it with a pen fairly easily. She made more. The whole day, in fact, was passed with them churning out tiny little domes and then trying to break them. It ended with Tobi setting one on fire; the barrier burst, Tori screamed some mean words at him about setting fires in a room filled with paper.

"Tori-chan is very brave," Tobi said with utmost seriousness.

"Bastard! Stop setting things on fire!" Tori yelled back, stomping out the fire as more of her papers caught. There was a moment where she felt cold fear that she'd just succeeded in setting her shoe on fire, but then the flames dimmed. Staring down at the burn mark now etched into the floor forever, she added, "For that, you can make me dinner."

"I don't think your seal is very good, Tori-chan," Tobi told her later as he presented her with a bowl of noodles. "You'd need a lot of chakra to make it last long enough to do anything."

He was, infuriatingly, correct. The barrier seal, if it was meant for the bijuu sealing ritual, was meant to last through the AKatsuki's crazy three-day sealing ritual that Tori was supposed to somehow reverse engineer.

Importantly, Tori had never made any sort of barrier before, so the day of practice was still worth it in her mind.

"There are lots more barrier seals we can try," Tori said, poking at the fried egg Tobi had tossed on top of her noodles. The yolk broke, dribbling delicious yellow goo over her meal. "In the future I saw, you guys used a five-point seal."

"Ah, that's what Sasori-sempai wanted us to do."

Sasori, if Tori were to fail or spontaneously die, was to take over the sealwork. He was the only Akatsuki member who had any sort of working knowledge of them beyond "push chakra into squiggle, wait for results."

It was simultaneously very bizarre and very natural to eat dinner with Tobi. The conversation wandered from seals and bijuu to a comedy series Tori had started to follow on TV, and Tobi babbled along like he wasn't cold-hearted Uchiha Obito playing the weirdest fucking mind game he possibly could.

Well, if he wanted to pretend to be some nice idiot who was happy doing Tori's dishes for her, she wasn't going to complain.

"Say, Tobi," she said while he rinsed out the pan he'd used. "Could you do me a favor?"

"Anything!" Tobi responded happily.

Tori was also perfectly happy taking advantage of Obito's determination to be like this.

xXx

Tobi left that evening to do whatever the hell he did when not bothering Akatsuki members in their homes, taking all the sealing equipment with him. While she waited for his return, Tori planned her next experiment and read through the Uzushio scrolls. She wanted to find a different barrier seal to try when he came back. The one on Mizusawa Asa's greenhouse had lasted through multiple ninja wars, and it seemed like a good one to learn.

The scrolls were all written like notes to a loved one, with familiar language and forwards telling the recipient how proud the author was of them, and reassuring them they were clever and strong enough to face what was coming. They came in two different sets of handwriting, and at around scroll number three, Tori realized they were parents writing for their child they were marrying off to foreign nobility. There were even a handful of notes signed things like Granny and Auntie.

They felt extra stolen now that they had sentimental value. Tori felt vaguely guilty, but not guilty enough not to start copying things into her own notes. Perversely, she even found the messages reassuring, fantasizing that this random Uzushio couple were cheering her on.

A lot of the basic knowledge of sealwork was assumed- including a few concepts that had to be Uzushio-specific, because Tori had never seen them before- but otherwise, the scrolls were written with the intention to be understood by someone isolated from other seal users to ask for help. The diagrams were drawn out over yards of paper, carefully going step-by-step. They had exhaustive troubleshooting procedures. It was an amazing breath of fresh air compared to Orochimaru's mess.

None of the scrolls explained the specific seal on the greenhouse, but there was a lot of talk about how to make seals last indefinitely. Basically, you had to recycle the chakra you put in, or you had to make a seal that drew on nature chakra. The first option was tricky but doable; the second option was so difficult the author didn't bother to explain further.

When Tobi finally showed back up some days later, he was carrying a burlap sack of twenty-four mice.

"Are these wild caught?" Tori said, wrinkling her nose as she watched them squirm at the bottom of the bag.

"Of course!" Tobi answered. "Where else would I get them from?"

Tori had wanted human raised mice, from a pet shop or a lab or something.

"These are probably diseased," she complained. "What if we get Hantavirus?"

Still, she liked the biomedical seals the most. She was excited to try her tweaks to the stasis seal that had killed the Iwa-nin.

The next few hours she spent running around and finding jars and plastic tubs to hold individual mice, then digging up thick work gloves so they couldn't bite her when handled. Now all she had to decide was if she wanted four experimental groups of six, or six groups of four…

When she opened the bag again, two mice had been smothered to death by their fellow captives. She decided on five groups of four, then: four groups to try different versions of the seal, plus one group she'd put under using a weaker stasis seal she knew wouldn't fuck them up, as a control.

If she were developing this for medical purposes, she'd also throw in a group she didn't expose to a seal so she could see how long the mice would normally be expected to live for. Unfortunately for her future victims, the seal was just to hold a jinchuriki still while they cracked their bijuu seal open, and it really didn't matter if the host died later, as long as they lived long enough to extract the demon.

And so, she drew up twenty seals and scattered them around the room at random, and she assigned twenty mice to the seals at random.

"Okay," Tori said, stepping back and surveying her work with satisfaction. It was like looking at a very tiny, very weird zoo, with all the mice in mismatched containers. "You can activate them now."

"Hmm," said Tobi, squatting over one of the mice. "Tori-chan is repeating them over and over to figure out which one works the best, the most often, yes?"

"Yes," Tori confirmed. "So we know the result isn't a fluke of the mouse being diseased, or me messing up a brush stroke."

The results of which one worked and which ones didn't would hopefully also inform her decisions to try and improve the seal further.

"So you should also include flukes from the user," Tobi concluded, nodding seriously.

"Uh," said Tori.

"For example," Tobi continued, placing his fingers on the edge of the first seal. There was a half-maniacal meanness in his glee- his inner Obito shining through. "Itachi-sempai has fire release."

"Stop," Tori said, moving forward, but Tobi had already activated the seal. The mouse dropped dead immediately, smoke coming off of its fur. "Tobi, you little shit-"

"And Kisame-sempai has too much chakra!" Tobi continued moving to the next seal, and the mouse in that jar actually exploded.

"Tobi, you motherfucker," Tori hissed, and then tried to pull him back by his hair.

Tori had never physically attacked someone before, unless you counted when she was twelve and still picked fights with her younger sibling. But Tobi was ruining everything and yelling wasn't working, and she dug her fingers into his scalp on pure, rage-induced reflex.

It didn't work, of course, and Tobi killed another mouse.

"Stop it," Tori demanded, and then wrapped her arm around his neck, yanking him backwards.

"Waah!" Obito cried, and then fell backwards, crushing Tori. "Tori-chan is attacking me!"

Tori gasped in pain, feeling two plastic containers crushed beneath her. The mice wiggled. It was disgusting.

Still, she had the shadow leader of the Akatsuki in a headlock. She wasn't just going to let go.

"I said to stop!" she yelled, exactly like she'd yell at her little brother.

There was the sound of one of the glass jars breaking as Tobi kicked his legs. He rolled over a few times, breaking more mouse containers and doing absolutely nothing to get out of Tori's hold as she spider monkeyed onto his back. After a few minutes, he calmed down.

"Tori-chan is mean," he whined as she dug her nails into his scalp.

"Are you going to behave?" Tori asked.

He agreed and she let him go. As if to remind her this was just a fun game to him, he pulled himself free before she fully loosened her grip, his shoulders phasing right through her arms.

She made him recatch the mice that he's freed from their containers by his flailing, while she redrew seals that had been ripped or smudged. Tobi pouted through activating the seals that hadn't been ruined, and Tori discovered that one of the mice she'd fallen on had been squished to death and its guts were in her hair.

On the bright side, one of the experimental seals knocked all its mice out without killing them. The sample size had been reduced to three by Tobi's shenanigans, but it was still something.

"A winner!" Tobi cheered, holding up the square of paper.

"Hooray," Tori said. She was actually happy, deep down, but also exhausted, and it came out deeply sarcastic. "You can make me dinner again to celebrate."

He literally made her instant ramen, because he was an asshole.

"What will you do with the mice that lived?" Tobi asked.

"You can keep them as pets," Tori told him, and Tobi released them outside into the city streets.

xXx

The worst thing about the experiment she'd done with Tobi was that his shenanigans pointed out something very important. Tori wasn't the one who was going to be executing the seals; Akatsuki were. Who knew what those assholes would do to her seals?

Tori started a list of things she needed to troubleshoot. The first item: People being assholes.

Speaking of assholes, the next pair to show up at headquarters again were Hidan and Kakuzu.

Their initial meeting with Konan and Tori, to review their latest string of missions, was awful. Hidan's retelling of events rarely matched mid-mission reports given via holo-projection (and Tori had written documentation to prove this), which left everyone but Hidan with the vague sense something was missing. Kakuzu also had a habit of exaggerating events, although usually only when he was framing his reports in terms of money lost, and did not care for his partner's shenanigans enough to confirm or deny most of Hidan's recollections.

The meeting ended with Kakuzu promising to have a write-up of Akatsuki's current financials by the next afternoon. His promise sounded alarmingly like a threat to everyone in the room.

Konan left immediately, and Tori took a few moments to gather up her things. She got two steps to the door before Kakuzu's shadow fell over her.

"Can I help you?" she asked, as sweetly as possible.

"Tobi should have given you a bill," he said.

It took a lot of self-control not to tense up, but Tori managed to keep her posture relaxed and smile in place. "A bill?" she repeated.

Kakuzu's eyes narrowed, and Tori felt sweat start to accumulate on the back of her neck. He leaned into her, killing intent coming off of him like heat from a radiator. "You owe me money," he said.

"For what?" Tori asked, projecting a mix of confusion and annoyance into her voice, and then took several steps backwards. The only other person in the room was Hidan, who was still in his chair, leaning back on two legs with a shit-eating grin on his face. Goddammit.

"Tobi gave you the bill," Kakuzu insisted.

"No?" Tori said. "He did have a fit a while ago about losing a message for me. Was that it?"

Kakuzu took one very menacing step towards Tori and then paused. Tori could practically see the gears in his head working: who to flip out on and murder, Tori or Tobi?

"I'm sure Tobi has more details about it than me," Tori said helpfully. She didn't think Kakuzu could kill Tobi, of course, but she'd love to see him try. "If you need help finding him–"

Kakuzu cut her off by grabbing the front of her shirt, dragging her forward, and growling a price into her face. It was a couple thousand ryo higher than what the bill had actually said, which just wasn't fair.

"I want my money now," Kakuzu demanded.

"I don't have any money," Tori snapped back, pulling at the fabric of her shirt to free it from Kakuzu's fists. It didn't work.

Kakuzu responded by lifting her by her shirt, so that her toes scraped the floor. Tori abruptly remembered that Kakuzu had a habit of losing his temper and murdering comrades and that he was perfectly capable of doing that to her too.

"I have an extra heart," Tori said as quickly as possible, immediately backtracking on her plan to trick Kakuzu into beating the snot out of Tobi. "Why don't you sell it on the organ blackmarket?"

"What the hell are you talking about?" Kakuzu asked.

"Do you not have an organ blackmarket?" Tori asked, feeling increasingly nervous. Did her world actually have an organ blackmarket? Another question she'd never be able to find out the answer to. "You guys seem like you'd have an organ blackmarket."

"Don't take her heart," Zetsu rasped from the ceiling, and Kakuzu was distracted enough to lower Tori to the floor, glaring up at Zetsu. "It eats people."

"What?" Tori asked, tilting her head back to look up at him. She hadn't been aware he'd even been in headquarters. At the same time, Kakuzu said, "What the hell are you talking about?"

Zetsu emerged further from the ceiling, so that he was now standing on his feet. "Look," he said, and unbuttoned his cloak to show a pink rash across his chest.

"Huh," Tori said, momentarily forgetting Kakuzu looming over her. That was… that was weird. "Can I–"

Kakuzu decided he was done with the direction of the conversation and cut her off by picking Tori back up by the front of her blouse and shaking her.

"You will pay me back," he hissed, nearly nose to nose with Tori.

Tori put on her bravest face and grabbed at his wrists, digging her nails into his skin. "Pay me a wage then," she scowled back.

("Yeah, Kakuzu!" Hidan yelled, watching them like this was his favorite sitcom. "Pay her!")

"I will break your limbs one by one," Kakuzu threatened, shaking her some more. Tori had to mentally beat back a surge of panic. "Just like you broke my scrolls."

" Have her make you a new one then, " Zetsu suggested. He then sort of… let himself drop from the ceiling, rather than jump, and twisted himself around so that he landed on his feet behind Tori. " That's what she's here for, isn't it? "

Kakuzu looked thoughtful. Tori pounced on the idea.

"It wouldn't be hard," she said. "Storage scrolls are very basic. You'd just have to convince Pein and Konan to let me have the supplies and work unsupervised."

Kakuzu glowered down at her, but the heat was gone. He dropped her, and Tori's ankle rolled on landing and she stumbled to the side, grabbing a chair for support. Hidan complained loudly that he wanted to see Tori's brain matter splattered across the floor.

Kakuzu dragged his partner out of the room, leaving Tori with an ominous promise about how she would repay her debts.

"I think your heart is attacking me," Zetsu said amicably to Tori. "This has never happened before. It's itchy and I don't like it."

Tori turned warily to him. She'd yet to have a one-on-one interaction with him, but he'd never seemed particularly menacing, even though she knew Zetsu was the person she had to walk on eggshells around the most.

White Zetsu was just…. sort of aggressively unintimidating and prone to benign rambling. Tori supposed this was more or less how she seemed to everyone else, except worse because she looked more girl-next-door and less ninja-plant-monster.

"Do you mean my heart is rejecting you?" she asked slowly. If she'd somehow given Zetsu host-vs-graft disease, that would be both fascinating and hilarious.

"What a romantic sentiment," Zetsu said. "Is this what human heartbreak feels like?"

"Itchy?" Tori asked. "I don't think so."

"Huh," Zetsu said, and they stared at each other for several very long, very awkward seconds. "I'm going to put the heart in a different clone," Zetsu said eventually. "Please don't break that one too."

"I don't really have control over that," Tori said. "Can I– can I monitor what it does?"

"Do you want to see?" Zetsu asked. He took a single step towards Tori.

"Er–" Tori started. She wanted to be afraid of Zetsu, because he was a threat, no matter how innocent White Zetsu could make himself sound. Then again, she also wanted to know what was up with her cloned heart. "Yes," she said.

Zetsu took her by the arms and then sort of gently manhandled her right into the wall. His shoulder sank into it, melting right into the wood panelling, and then he pulled Tori in with him.

It felt like falling into rapid water. There was the sensation of moving quickly, but also of shifting and painful pressure all over her body, and she couldn't breathe. When she was suddenly standing in the greenhouse, she was left gasping for breath with a spinning head.

Zetsu held on to her arms for another couple of seconds, preventing her from falling over.

"I did not like that," Tori blurted out once she could see straight. She shrugged off Zetsu's hands and staggered over to lean on one of the greenhouse tables.

"Ah, that's exactly what Deidara-san said," Zetsu said mulishly. "Would you like to see my clones?"

Tori watched, only slightly cross-eyed from being pulled through the walls of the building. Zetsu pulled up one of the larger of his trees from its pot, showing off a child-sized body in its roots. The body was pure white and did not have much in defining features, although its face resembled Zetsu.

"Before we were all from separate seeds," Zetsu said. "But I read about propagating plants and wanted to try something new…"

Separate seeds? Tori wondered. Does he mean… people?

Zetsus were made out of people, right? Or… Hashirama cells? Tori couldn't quite remember.

Zetsu snapped her out of her thoughts by asking a question about childbirth.

"What?" Tori asked.

"It's a quintessential human experience, right?" he asked. "What's it like?"

"You're going to have to ask someone else," Tori said slowly.

"Hmm," Zetsu said, and then pulled her heart out of his chest and stuck it into his clone. It beat sluggishly as he transferred it. "I hope you don't kill this one. Like an extremely slow assassination."

It would likely be better for the whole world if Tori could figure out a way to kill Zetsu.

"Do you want me to take you back down?" Zetsu asked.

"No thanks," Tori answered, pushing herself off of the table she'd been leaning on. "Could you put a marker on that clone so I can check it later?"

Zetsu stuck a piece of bright red tape to the pot.

xXx

At their finances meeting, Kakuzu did make a pitch for Tori being allowed to practice seals unsupervised.

"It would be dangerous," Konan said blandly. "It's unwise to let a prisoner practice jutsu, and she's known to be… duplicitous."

Tori bit the inside of her cheek to keep from speaking up. 'I promise you I like you guys better than my last boss I betrayed, and I won't try and murder anyone' wasn't a very convincing argument, especially given… you know… that they were Akatsuki.

"I don't see why trusting her with sealing ink is worse than trusting Deidara with clay," Kakuzu said, leaning back in his seat with arms crossed. "Not letting a sealing master seal is wasted economic opportunity-"

Tori was by no means, shape, or form a "sealing master," but she wasn't going to disagree with him.

It took another half hour of arguing, but Kakuzu managed to get Konan to cave. If Tori had realized how easy that would be, she would have offered to make Kakuzu scrolls a month ago.

xXx

The supplies Konan dropped off with her weren't "top of the line" by any definition. The paper was poor quality. The ink was mass produced and pre-infused with chakra, labeled with bubble letters and likely for younger ninja doing extremely basic sealing. It was either a calculated move from Konan to prevent Tori from trying any potentially apocalyptic seals, or Kakuzu had set the budget himself.

Luckily, a basic storage scroll was one of the easiest seals to make. The forms were slightly more complicated than an explosive tag (the other common seal a young shinobi might make themselves), but there was a lot less danger of accidental explosions. The basic fuuinjutsu guide had walk-throughs of several types, and even one of the baby how-to-ninja books had a diagram of how to make one.

Tori did her first attempts on butcher paper rather than waste blank scrolls, as Kakuzu told her she'd have to make a working one for every failed attempt. Sealing scrolls and tags were made with special paper meant to be extra chakra-conductive, but Tori had successfully made seals on operating tables and bare skin and a prison door. She didn't see why something as basic as a storage seal needed to be done on special paper.

She tweaked the basic formula a little bit, so she could activate it with blood. She couldn't channel her own chakra, and asking another shinobi for help defeated the purpose of being able to work alone.

Attempts one through eight were trashed immediately, as storage seals had a lot of components she was unpracticed with, and her first attempts looked too messy to have any hope of working. Attempt nine she managed to seal and unseal a fork into, although it emitted a lot of smoke.

Smoke clouds are an indicator of excess chakra, the fuuinjutsu guide said. Usually they mean that chakra is not being used efficiently within the seal.

The how-to-ninja book for babies read: Don't worry if your seal has lots of smoke! As long as the seal works, you've done it!

Medical seals– the type Tori was used to– went on living things that made their own chakra that caused interference, and so any excess chakra in the seal could make the whole thing fail. She wasn't in the business of inefficient chakra use.

When Sasori and Deidara came back several days later, she painted a seal on a scroll, leaving out her "tweak" so that it would be triggered by channelling chakra, and then went to ask Sasori to try it out.

Sasori had a dead man out on his work bench, and told her she'd only get his help if she helped him back.

"Just pull out all the soft tissue," Sasori said, waving at the body's abdomen. He'd splayed it open and pinned back the skin, just like dissecting a frog.

"This seems like an unfair trade," Tori said, peering over the man and wrinkling her nose. It smelled awful. At least, unlike all the people whose insides she'd examined in Oto, the man wasn't one she recognized.

Tori had come to Sasori over anyone else because he was the only one who dabbled in sealwork in any meaningful way. She regretted her assumption he'd be the most helpful.

"My time is valuable," Sasori snapped.

Sasori had, somewhere along the line, obtained a size small box of latex gloves. Tori assumed these were specifically for her, and it was probably the most thoughtful Sasori ever got about anyone.

"You know it wastes my time too that everyone here is actively unhelpful," Tori told him, pulling on a pair of gloves. She eyed where Sasori had lined up all his tools very neatly along one end of the bench. Orochimaru would have just dumped them in a pile.

"Maybe learn to use chakra properly and you wouldn't be so helpless," Sasori sneered at her, even as he picked up the scroll she'd left on the other bench. Pointing at the body, he asked, "Orochimaru taught you how to do that, right?"

It wasn't Tori's favorite activity, but yes, she could neatly cut all the internal organs out of a body.

"This is off-center," was Sasori's first comment on her scroll. "And lopsided. Absolutely hideous."

Absentmindedly, Tori covered a gloved finger in the dead man's blood and drew up her favorite smell-cancelling seal. If the blood was too old it wouldn't work, but it was worth a try. To Sasori she said, "Ugly seals still work."

Her smell seal only kind of worked, but it was still an improvement. She went to work cutting away the fatty tissues that held the man's organs in place.

Sasori first sealed a small object– a wrench– into the scroll. Then he tried one of his larger tools, and then the trash can in the corner, which was the upper limit in size for the type of seal Tori used. Then he pulled them all back out.

"No smoke," Sasori observed, sounding annoyed.

"I thought no smoke was the goal," Tori answered. This man's stomach was enlarged. Ew.

"It is," Sasori agreed. After a moment of very irritated silence, he said, "I don't understand how you can have such bad calligraphy and still make a perfect storage seal."

Tori's calligraphy wasn't that bad, honestly.

"I wouldn't call it perfect," Tori said diplomatically, and poked the stomach experimentally with a pair of surgical scissors.

"I wouldn't call it perfect, either, because it's ugly," Saosri replied. "But by definition, a perfect seal is one that performs its intended function with perfect chakra efficiency–"

Tori, now fascinated by the man's stomach, was only half-paying attention to Sasori's lecture.

"Holy shit," she cried in delight, having snipped the organ open. "Sasori, his stomach is completely full of hair–"

It was one of the best autopsy discoveries she'd ever made. Sasori rewarded her excitement for his work by kicking her out.

"What's the weirdest thing you've ever found inside someone?" Tori asked.

"Get out," Sasori commanded, throwing her scroll at her.

Fumbling the catch, Tori asked, "Does the gut microbiome produce its own chakra–"

"Out," Sasori snarled. He shoved her out the door and slammed it in her face.

Rude, Tori thought.

xXx

Do microbes produce chakra? was actually a great question in Tori's opinion. Everything she'd read claimed 'all living things' made chakra, but no one had ever seemed to have really tested it. Sensors could probably confirm that microorganisms had chakra, but…

Well, it wouldn't actually be that hard to test.

There was a big tub of yogurt with Hidan's name on it in the fridge. Tori had seen him dump it into curry, but more importantly, it had a sticker on it that claimed it was probiotic.

Tori spooned some of the yogurt into a bowl and then diluted it down with water until it was thin enough to write with. Then she used a new brush– one she hadn't yet contaminated with chakra-infused ink– and painted a storage seal right on the kitchen counter. She dropped a teaspoon into the middle, and then added a glob of yogurt to the trigger mechanism she usually used with blood.

There was a lot of smoke, but it worked.

She had to wait a while for the microbes in the yogurt to make more chakra, but she eventually got the spoon back out.

As a control, she microwaved a portion of the yogurt in hopes of killing the microbes, just to make sure there wasn't some sort of inherent magic property of yogurt. That seal didn't work, matching up with her expectations. If she repeated everything a few more times, she'd have something like actual science.

(To actually prove microbes made chakra, she'd probably have to isolate them and figure out some chakra-monitoring tool, but this was pretty good evidence in her humble opinion.)

This, Tori felt, was an important discovery. Someone needed to know.

"What are you doing?" Deidara asked, yawning as he shuffled up to the fridge. "Making a mess?"

"Look," Tori said, and sealed the spoon away again.

"...okay," Deidara said, utterly unimpressed, and poured himself a glass of juice to take to the living room.

xXx

It turned out the Tsuchikage wanted a certain tradesman who was close friends with the Daimyo murdered. It was a fairly boring mission request, although Konan seemed confident it would lead to more nefarious missions from the Tsuchikage.

It only took Itachi and Kisame a few days to do it once assigned, and when they got back, Kisame seemed disappointed in how dull it had been.

Kisame had arguably been the nicest to Tori out of anyone, and she felt bad that he seemed down. While he was drinking a beer at the kitchen table, she slid into the chair across from him and asked if he wanted to hear a funny theory about Jiraiya the Toad Sage.

"Why are you explaining porn to me?" Kisame asked when Tori was only a few sentences into explaining Jiraiya's homoerotic fixation with his former teammate, and how that translated into a very indepth description of how sexy Satsuki looked while sensually murdering someone.

"I'm explaining Jiraiya to you," Tori said. "Do you think he knows he's writing his teammates?"

"I don't understand how you know that's what he's doing," Kisame said.

"Textual evidence–" Tori started, but Kisame just watched her with a deep sense of doubt in his eyes. This wasn't going the way she wanted.

"Do you want a beer?" Kisame asked, holding up an unopened can. "You seem stressed."

"Want to see a neat trick?" Tori asked, switching cheer-up tactics. Kisame shrugged and opened the can, taking a sip himself. Tori got up, grabbing tools and Hidan's dwindling tub of yogurt.

Kisame did not look cheered by watching her seal a set of chopsticks into the table in front of him. He smiled at her, but it was obviously very forced.

"I used yogurt," Tori explained.

"Oh," Kisame said. "That's very nice."

He drained his beer. He very clearly did not see what the big deal was.

"I used the chakra from the yogurt," Tori stressed, motioning emphatically at her sealing array.

Kisame's brow furrowed ever so slightly. "Weird," he said.

They both stared at the seal for a few moments. Kisame still seemed bummed, and not at all excited that Tori had used presumed microbe chakra to do something.

"Actually, I have a question," Tori said, and then grabbed a sponge from the sink and wiped the counter clean. Then she redrew the seal and tried to unseal the chopsticks. Nothing happened.

"Did you guys just let my lemons rot?" Kisame asked, standing from the table and picking up the mesh bag of lemons he'd bought over a month ago, abandoned in a corner of the counter. They were all white and blue from mold.

"They're your responsibility," Tori said lamely. She'd thought about chucking them, but everyone else seemed determined to be slobs, and she wasn't anyone's maid. "About the yogurt seal–"

Kisame dropped the bag of lemons in the trash and left, telling her a very polite goodbye but pointedly not engaging about the yogurt.

Rude, Tori thought.

But, well, since she was testing non-animal chakra…

She dug the lemons out of the trash.

xXx

"I have several important questions," Tori told Sasori, having shown up at his workshop with a plastic bucket of supplies.

"What–" Sasori started.

"First of all," Tori said, painting a seal on his workbench, "do you have any petri dishes?"

"Tori," Sasori started. He was getting all twitchy, which meant he was starting actions and then immediately deciding against them. Tori had only seen him get like that when Deidara was being really annoying, and Sasori was debating whether to yell at him or shut him up via violence.

If Tori were less personally fixated on the matter at hand, she might have spared some thought as to if Sasori might use violence on her. As it stood, she had information she wanted from him, and she was willing to risk pissing him off to get it.

"Secondly," Tori continued, and sealed a plastic spork into the bench. "Okay, so I sealed this here." She wiped the bench clean with a damp sponge. "Where did it go?"

"Was that yogurt?" Sasori asked.

"And if I make a new seal," Tori pressed on, starting on a new one, "the spork won't come back!"

"I– you–" Sasori spluttered. There was some more twitching. Then he reached forward and snatched the brush from Tori's hand. "You didn't seal it into the bench. You folded it into another dimension and then destroyed the key. Is that yogurt?"

"Hmm," Tori said. Basic guides said diddly-squat about folding dimensions. She would have remembered; she was from another dimension, after all. The power to fold dimensions seemed like it should be a bigger deal than it was.

"If you want to seal away something important," Sasori said, dropping her brush back into her bucket, "you have to key the seal for a specific dimension, so that if the original seal is destroyed, you can still access the same dimension."

"Huh," said Tori. "Thanks."

"Now get out," Sasori spat.

Tori left.

Someone must have reported to Pein or Konan that she had fallen down a rabbithole of useless experiments, because Tobi showed up the next day to "keep her on track."

"What on earth is Tori-chan doing?" he asked, ambushing Tori in the kitchen. She had a handful of potato slices in a cheesecloth, running it under water and occasionally squeezing off excess liquid.

"You don't have penicillin here," Tori said, "and I'm going to invent it."

"Hmm," said Tobi. "That doesn't sound at all like what Leader-sama wants…"

"Penicillin is one of the greatest medical discoveries in my world's history," Tori said. "And you can make it from mold."

She waved at the bag of rotting lemons on the counter, rescued from the garbage.

The potatoes were meant to be a nutrient source for the mold. She knew potato dextrose agar was a thing you could pour into a petri dish to grow stuff on, and on her last meandering walk to the library, she'd shoplifted a box of agar from a grocery store. (Agar, thank God, was a common cooking material here.)

"Has Tori-chan been pulling things out of the garbage again?" Tobi asked, sounding severely disappointed with her. "Rotting food will make you sick, you know! This is nearly as bad Hidan-senpai stabbing himself…"

He managed to usher Tori out of the kitchen and back down to her office, dropping the lemons back in the trash despite her protests along the way.

It took Tori a few minutes of staring at all the papers and notebooks she had strewn across the floor of her office to refocus her brain on the task at hand. Akatsuki. Sealing bijuu. The one thing keeping her alive, which apparently she couldn't focus on without constant outside pressure.

"Right, okay," Tori said, kneeling and grabbing for a scroll. "So I've been comparing what information we actually have on bijuu…"

Ame had never had its own jinchuriki, and so all of the information on sealing and unsealing a bijuu from a host was either completely theoretical or from the rare stolen scroll. With hours and hours and late nights of careful cross-referencing, Tori had managed to trace what information Akatsuki had on-hand to what Orochimaru had been working on.

The process itself was three steps basically everyone agreed upon: unseal the bijuu, contain it for some amount of time, and then reseal it.

No one could really seem to agree on how exactly to do any of those steps, especially the middle one. A report from a spy in Fire Country implied that the containment process for the Kyuubi relied entirely on Uzumaki chakra chains, which was useless to Tori unless Nagato wanted to suddenly reveal yet another ability. Zetsu's reports from Kiri suggested they just fed chump shinobi to the bijuu until the seal masters could get their work done, which was also unhelpful.

Orochimaru's approach seemed to be to immobilize the bijuu while it was still in the host, using the stasis seal Tori had been working on. Then there was supposed to be a chakra-siphoning seal (which was referenced a few times but didn't seem to exist), and then finally, a seal to lock the bijuu into the Gedo Statue, of which Tori had a random assemblage of partially-developed ideas.

'Chakra-siphoning' wasn't like anything Tori was used to, but there were tons of scrolls on moving chakra around, as well as a decent number on sealing away chakra. There were also lots of scrolls and theory work on cracking open seals, which would be useful since every jinchuriki had a different demon-containment seal on them. The hardest part would be the stasis seal, which was probably why Orochimaru– always one for intellectual challenges– had invested the most into it. As Tori had been trained by Orochimaru himself in related seals, Tori was uniquely qualified to figure it out.

"The problem is that demon chakra is different from human chakra," Tori explained. "I can perfect the seal for the host, but I literally have no idea how Orochimaru was inferring what changes needed to be made for the demon."

"Hmm," Tobi said, tapping his chin. He made a few more exaggerated thinking noises before he snapped his fingers. "Ah! I know! He must have used what he knew from being a Konoha researcher!"

"But that doesn't help me," Tori said. "You said Sasori likely did this in an alternate timeline– does he have experience with bijuu chakra?"

"Tobi doesn't think so, because he sure complained a lot!" Tobi answered. "Then again, Sasori-sempai always complains about a lot of things…"

Tobi rambled, and Tori went back to flipping through her notes. Unless someone could cough up some very detailed explanations of how demon chakra worked, she wasn't going to make much headway. Even with such a description, she had no way to test any demon-related seals without a demon itself on hand.

"...and then, Sasori-sempai called Tobi a very rude word and said that Tobi's skin wouldn't even be worth back-up supplies…"

Tori sat back on her heels, mulling the problem over. What would Orochimaru do?

She had a very bad idea.

xXx

"But there's no point experimenting on a baby," Tori said, tying a rubber tourniquet just above her elbow. Kabuto had shown her how to draw her own blood for sealwork the other day, and she was determined to get the vein on the first try this time. "You'd want to do the gene editing on as few cells as possible. You'd want an embryo."

Orochimaru kept his eyes on Kabuto, anesthetizing their latest "patient," but hummed in a way that meant he was listening. Tori talked about the CRISPR-baby scandal, where a scientist had unethically used the CRISPR gene editing technique on human embryos and then kept it a secret until the babies were born.

She trailed off when she missed her vein for the second time, and Orochimaru turned to her and asked, "But did it work?"

"I don't know," Tori said, glaring at her inner elbow. She mentally added the fate of the CRISPR-babies and their own personal mad scientist to the increasingly growing list of things she'd never be able to find out about again. "The technique hasn't been perfected yet, so there's a pretty good chance the babies have additional deleterious mutations, but in theory– fuck."

"I told you your right arm has better veins," Kabuto said, and they switched to discussing the experiment at hand and how much blood Tori was to mix with the sealing ink.

When they were finished, Orochimaru commented to Tori off-hand, "Remind me to tell you about the Meristem Phenomenon one day."

"Meristem… like a plant?" Tori asked, but Orochimaru was already turning to lecture Kabuto on what he wanted to try next, and the topic never came up again.

The conversation rang through Tori's memory as she climbed the stairs of the Akatsuki headquarters, Tobi trailing behind her. Orochimaru-style experimenting on babies was ethically reprehensible and not even that likely to work, but… what if…

Hear her out…

...what if she experimented on babies?

The door to the rooftop greenhouse was unlocked, and Zetsu was off on a mission. Tori headed straight for the pots of Zetsu-plants growing in the second bay. She tried to lift one, but it was heavy enough to give her problems.

"Tori-chan," Tobi gasped when she pushed the pot off a table. It shattered on impact with the ground, sending dirt everywhere. "That's very rude."

Tori ignored him. The roots of the weird Zetsu-tree had human shaped lumps, like a bunch of vaguely baby-shaped potatoes. Tori used her foot to break off the narrow trunk of the tree, and then pulled up the bundle of Zetsu-babies and dropped them back on the table.

They were white under the layer of soil. The smallest was the size of Tori's palm and did not look like a human at all, while the largest was the length of her forearm and had defined arms and legs and a head with something approaching a face.

It was very, very weird.

"Are all Zetsu genetically identical?" Tori asked.

"Um," said Tobi.

"How do I get one to mimic a human?" Tori asked. "I know they can do that."

"Oh no," said Tobi.

xXx

They couldn't get any of the Zetsu babies to mimic individual people, but Tori did manage to kill several with stasis seals. The larger ones all survived one variant of the seal for three full days, though, and so Tori concluded that one was the best candidate.

"You did what?" Zetsu asked when Tori next saw him.

"Anyway, I want some that mimic humans better," Tori continued.

"Those are my children," Zetsu whined.

"Tori-chan is a heartless monster," Tobi said, nodding sagely.

Tori ignored him. "Also, I need you to find a way to– to, like, make telescopic generations."

"What is that?" Zetsu asked. He turned away from her, leaning over the greenhouse table to examine the living Zetsus that Tori had repotted, because she wasn't a complete monster.

"You know how aphids are born with babies already inside them," Tori said, waving vaguely, "and then those babies have even babier babies inside of them? Like that."

Zetsu raked his fingers through the topsoil of one of the repotted experiments. The broken stem of the tree Tori had snapped off poked out of the dirt.

"You mean you want to seal a White Zetsu into another White Zetsu?" he finally asked.

("Tori-chan, that was the most confusing possible way to say that," Tobi complained.)

"Yes," Tori said. "And if you could figure out how to make the inner Zetsu, like, demon-like–"

White Zetsu looked very pained by the idea of generating complicated clones just to experiment on, and an argument with Black Zetsu broke out.

"They're my babies," White Zetsu whined. "You said I could try being a human mother."

"We need this to work, and you have plenty," Black Zetsu pointed out. "You will never be truly human again, anyway."

In the end, Tori's proposal helped everyone's end goal. They spent the rest of the afternoon hashing out details.

Notes:

Tori at the beginning of this fic: I'm only going along with this because I don't want to die. :(
Tori after fourteen chapters: GIVE ME YOUR CHILDREN, ZETSU, I WANT TO SEAL THEM INSIDE OF EACH OTHER

Maaaan, guys, I got such a bad writer's block on this chapter. Don't ever try to incorporate the scientific method into a fanfic about magic ninjas; you'll just upset yourself.

Also! I've been thinking about making some side-fics for Plasticity. They'd be things like other people's POVs, concepts that were too crack-tastic even for this fic, scenes from my incomplete 2015 draft that didn't make it in, weird AUs, etc. I have a list of "prompts" for myself, so feel free to make suggestions if you're interested. This is NOT a guarantee I'll follow through on anything, but like… a gauge of reader interest.

Chapter 15: this is a pen

Summary:

"Guys really be out here thinking I won't smash a wine bottle over their head" -tumblr user babyangel-jpg

Notes:

PLASTICITY LIVES! Last time: Tori started experimenting on Zetsu clones and also bacteria and thought about culturing penicillin-producing fungi. This first scene in this chapter picks up directly from the last scene of the previous chapter, so I suggest rereading that if you haven't looked at this fic in a while (it's pretty short).

A note: the ongoing epidemic of "Dead Water Fever" is a feature of this fic that was developed pre-pandemic and will not be going away. I'm giving a heads up because Tori gets into an argument with someone about it, and I know infectious disease-related discourse is more exhausting in 2021 than it was in 2018 when I started publishing this fic.

Oh, also warning for a whole lot of drinking and someone's drink having… things added to it.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

"If I could mimic a bijuu, we wouldn't need to steal them, would we?" Zetsu pointed out not for the first time in their now mostly redundant evil plotting, and Tori pouted.

"But if you know what they feel like, why can't you fake it?" Tori asked for what felt like the fifth time. She needed a working demon model, or else they were all going to go into the whole bijuu-sealing thing on guesswork. She knew from various old reports from across the continent that that usually ended with a bunch of people dying.

"It's been a while."

Tobi- or Obito now, because he'd gone all quiet and thoughtful- was leaning back on a greenhouse table, drumming his fingers across the bottom of his mask while Tori and Zetsu continued their dishearteningly cyclic conversation.

("You're making a very toxic work environment," Zetsu complained of Tori's demands.)

The fronds of the potted Zetsu next to Obito were wilting. The pot had a piece of right red tape stuck to it, indicating that clone was currently keeping Tori's cloned heart alive. She eyed it even as she opened her mouth to argue her point about the utility of models in research.

"What if you were just in proximity to a bijuu?" Obito asked, cutting off Tori demanding Zetsu explain his biology to her.

"Maybe," Zetsu said after a few moments of muttering to himself. "You'd need to lure the demonic chakra out of the host, though."

Obito groaned, like Zetsu had just told him needed a lift to the airport at 6AM.

"We could find the sanbi," Obito suggested after a few more moments of thought. "It should have reformed by now."

Reforming…? From Yagura's assassination…? Is that how it worked? Was there just a giant demonic turtle stomping around the countryside somewhere? Tori wracked her brain for any memory of what the manga had said on the topic of bijuu, and remembered something else instead.

"The mask," Tori said, snapping her fingers. "The funky death mask."

Both Obito and Zetsu stared at her.

"It's a, uh… Shinigami mask?" Tori tried. She didn't really remember this part of the manga, but she did know lots of people on the internet were mad about it. "You can use it to bring things out of the Shinigami's stomach."

She kept talking. The Fourth Hokage had sealed half the kyuubi into himself, and then he'd been eaten by the shinigami. Ergo, there was kyuubi chakra floating around in the Shinigami stomach.

Probably. Tori was pretty sure.

"Finding a bijuu so we can develop a way to seal a bijuu is awful circular planning," Obito observed, sighing dramatically and crossing his arms.

"Well no one else is offering up any better ideas," Tori answered snidely. "Worse comes to worst, maybe you can genjutsu the Fourth Hokage's undead soul into explaining how he did it."

Obito… giggled. Why.

"Where's this temple?" Zetsu asked.

"Uh," said Tori.

Obito laughed at her. It wasn't a nice laugh.

"Zetsu can find it," Obito decided. "Very cute of you to only remember your doujutsu when it'll save your skin."

He patted her shoulder, and Tori gritted her teeth to stop herself from rising to Obito's baiting. He'd already hinted he thought she wasn't wasn't telling the absolute truth about her "future vision," and she didn't want to give him more ammunition for that theory.

"I'm right," she answered, after Zetsu melted into the floor. "You'll see."

"Oh, I don't keep you around because I think you're wrong," Obito answered, then grabbed her hand and said, "Come on! Tobi wants to make red bean buns!"

Tori felt oddly relieved "Tobi" was back, and resolutely didn't think about Obito while she helped him look for azuki beans in the kitchen.

xXx

Tori's morning routine– if no one bothered her, which happened often– was to work on mission requests and replies over breakfast. One morning Hidan sat across from her and pulled her plate of half-eaten toast toward himself.

Tori kept her gaze focused on the letter in front of her. Hidan was just trying to mess with her, and she was already full anyway. She was not going to let him pull her into a petty fight.

Hidan shoved the entirety of her last crust of toast into his mouth and asked, spewing crumbs, "Anything interesting today?"

Tori opened a plain white envelope. It contained a postcard, which was… weird, because that wasn't generally how one packaged postcards.

Hidan kicked her under the table. She finally spared him a glance, sneering at the shit-eating grin on his face.

"Not really," she said. "No disembowelments or baby barbecues for you."

The postcard had a generic print of a cottage with a garden overflowing with an absurd amount of flowers. A black cat sat in the cottage's front window. Tori flipped the card over. Instead of a message, someone had drawn a cartoon penis.

Real mature, Tori thought, and she set the postcard aside.

"What the hell is a baby barbecue?" Hidan asked. "Is this one of your crazy other world things, like OSHA?"

"No, it's…" Tori started to answer, then suddenly felt a wave of vertigo. "Like, if you barbecued… babies…"

She'd really just said the first absurdly evil thing she could think of, but she was seeing spots and her fingertips were going numb and her brain was shutting off, and she couldn't think of a snappy retort to Hidan being obnoxious.

She missed whatever Hidan replied.

Oh no, she thought, pushing herself out of her chair and falling to the floor. Shit. Fuck.

Someone was supposed to check all their mail before bringing it to Ame– they pretty regularly got letter bombs and tracking seals– but it was a cursory check that didn't toss out weird spam or death threats. Apparently they also didn't check for poisons.

Tori made a wild grab for the kitchen counter and hauled herself up.

Flush the affected area with water for at least fifteen minutes. That's what every set of lab safety instructions said, ever. Tori turned on the sink with her elbow and stuck her hands under the water, putting her weight on her elbows on the sink's rim to keep herself upright.

Her head was swimming, and her vision was very quickly turning into blinding brightness punctuated with dark spots.

"Don't touch that," she managed to say, because she was very explicitly told not to kill Hidan. Or maybe she'd just been told not to carve seals into him? Those seemed like they should go into the same category, but her thoughts were jumbled. Her voice sounded too loud in her ears.

"What, this card?" Hidan asked.

Through very great effort, Tori managed to turn her head. A less-bright shadow that was probably Hidan reached forward and picked something up. He laughed. It was basically a cackle.

"Chibigami, are you freaking out because you saw a dick?" he asked.

Tori didn't have an answer for that, because she suddenly had to focus very hard on not falling over. Hidan kept prattling about… whatever Hidan prattled about… and then he said:

"Oh, fuck."

There was a thud, followed by silence. Tori assumed he had died. That seemed to be the only way to get him to shut up.

She still couldn't see properly. She focused on the feeling of the cool water moving over her hands.

"Tori," a voice said behind her. It sounded mildly disappointed. "Did you kill Hidan?"

"Don't touch the card," she said. It came out garbled, and the words might not have been in the right order, but she was pretty sure she'd conveyed the message.

Except maybe she hadn't, because a blob that was some type of person was bending over to touch something next to the probably-Hidan lump. She tried to explain No, you idiot, that's what killed him , but what came out of her was just a nonsensical scream.

Whoever was talking to her must have understood what she meant though, because instead of dropping dead like Hidan, they left.

Tori didn't know how to tell if fifteen minutes had passed, but it sure seemed like a lot of minutes went by. Standing was hard. The probably-Hidan lump groaned. Tori blinked at it a few times, confirmed it actually was Hidan, and then realized her vision was returning.

She decided that was good enough and slumped onto the floor. The water continued to run.

"You fucking bitch," Hidan said, and rolled over sadly onto his back.

"I told you," Tori replied. Her head hurt, but it was starting to feel clearer.

There was movement in front of her face– very little noise in terms of footsteps, because ninja were assholes who walked like cats– and then Deidara was yelling, "Hidan, you jackass."

He sounded delighted, crouching over Hidan's body. Next to him, Sasori picked up and examined the post card.

"Hng," Hidan replied.

Kisame stepped into Tori's vision. "You okay?" he asked.

Tori squinted at him. She was still seeing spots, but she could make out parts of his blue face. "Maybe," she said.

The spots were bright light now instead of dark. That was an improvement, right?

"I hate dying by poison," Hidan said, and made a pathetic attempt to sit up. Deidara snickered as he flopped back over. "Why'd the bitch get to live?"

"God won't let me die," Tori deadpanned.

"She washed it off," someone supplied, and Tori blinked more spots out of her eyes. Itachi was here… somewhere…

Oh fuck, it's a party, she thought. She might have said it outloud. No one reacted.

"No," Sasori disagreed, moving to stand over her. "It likely assisted with her recovery, but it's too fast-acting for that to work."

Sasori stared down at her, assessing. The stupid postcard was in his hand. Maybe becoming a puppet was a good idea– Tori was sick and tired of getting drugged or poisoned every other week.

Oh, but my toast this morning was really good, she thought. There'd been peach marmalade. Sasori didn't get to enjoy peach marmalade.

Sasori was still talking: "How did you even make it to the sink?"

Tori had no idea what he was talking about. "With legs," she tried. "Do you miss peach marm- murma- jelly?"

Sasori poked her with his foot. At some point in her life, Tori would have felt embarrassed to be pathetically stuck sitting on a kitchen floor, sick and disoriented, while a bunch of men talked about whether or not she should be dead. Now it was just a regular Friday morning.

My life has gotten stupid, Tori thought.

"What was Orochimaru doing to you?" Sasori asked, and he sounded genuinely curious.

A loud argument broke out between Hidan and Deidara, and Kisame moved over to it.

"You know," Tori said, waving a hand vaguely. The movement made more white-light spots appear in her vision. "'Speriments. If 'm dying right now, I'd like an- an anny-dote."

"If you're lucid now, you'll be fine," Sasori said, sounding dismissive. "Do you know what mithridatism is?"

Sasori really wanted to give her low doses of poison to build resistance. His goal did not actually seem to want to help her or make her stronger, but rather thought that non-lethally poisoning her over and over sounded fun.

Not that Sasori would ever outright use a word as trivial as "fun" to describe his hobbies.

"I think you should know," Tori told him, carefully articulating her words as her head swam, "that me agreeing to experiments while drugged is not consent."

"So?" he said.

"So you," Tori answered, "are a bastard."

There was the telltale sound of a table cracking in two, which ended her decidedly awful conversation with Sasori.

"Fuck!" Hidan swore, stumbling back from the broken table. "Kakuzu's gonna be pissed."

"Hold on," Deidara said, looking around the room. "Are we all here?"

It was very rare for the entirety of Akatsuki to gather in one place, even with them all living in the same building. That day was no exception: Zetsu was off looking for the Shinigami mask, and Konan was in Earth Country meeting with a super secret envoy from the Tsuchikage. Tori knew this because keeping track of where they all went was literally her job. The specifics of Konan and Zetsu's missions were need-to-know-only, but she informed Deidara that at least Zetsu was off fucking around.

"Yeah, but all the fun people are here." He paused and then addended, "Except for Itachi, of course. We should all do something fun, yeah."

Hidan, looking incredibly unsteady on his feet and leaning on the partially destroyed dining table, agreed very loudly and added, "Let's get shitfaced!"

Tori pulled her knees up to her chest and examined a stray thread on her leggings. The men made plans to go barhopping that night, in a town just over the border in Grass Country so Pein and Konan wouldn't get mad if things got out of hand. Eventually they all drifted back out of the kitchen, and Tori laboriously got to her feet.

The dining table had not actually cracked in two; one of the legs had somehow been reduced to splinters, and now the whole thing was lopsided. Tori stared at it for a few minutes. This was definitely going to end up her problem to solve, but her brain was currently too scrambled to figure out what the solution would be. Probably calling someone? Hidan was right; Kakuzu was going to be pissed if she had to spend organization money on a replacement.

Tori's pile of mission requests had been scattered across the floor and she slowly gathered them back up and moved into the living room to keep working through them. The plate she'd been using for her toast and her empty coffee mug were both left cracked and abandoned on the floor.

The next letter she picked up was from someone she called Ghost Lady, a woman in Rice Country who was convinced her house was haunted and wanted a ninja to take care of the problem. Tori's gameplay for missions that were physically impossible (or just stupid) was to keep coming up with excuses for charging higher and higher rates until the person could no longer afford to hire Akatsuki and backed out. Ghost Lady seemed to have unlimited funds.

Money is no object, Ghost Lady's letter started, and Tori collapsed back further into the couch. Tori liked ghost stories, but they weren't real and therefore couldn't be exorcised, and she felt too drained and queasy to deal with this right now.

She picked up another letter. It was addressed to Itachi and contained a long and insane-sounding description of the writer's violent sexual fantasies. It was the third one from this person that week. Tori dropped it back onto the pile.

Tori couldn't deal with this right now. She took a nap.

xXx

Tori spent exactly forty-three minutes of her afternoon trying to make progress on the massive bijuu sealing process. She had set aside Step One (put host and demon into stasis) for now- she had streamlined and perfected it about as much as she could with the materials she had. For now, she'd turned her focus to Step Three: seal the bijuu into something. This seemed like something she'd need to do before she could set up to practice Step Two: crack open a jinchuriki's seal.

And, also: she might have to seal kyuubi chakra into something alarmingly soon. Had she really suggested they go pull kyuubi chakra out of a god? Had Obito really gone along with it? What were any of them doing?!

She'd done some practice trials sealing kiddie Zetsus into each other, and that had gone well, but the Zetsus she had were all genetically identical and might be prone to just melt into each other anyway, and it was still unclear to her how different a demon's chakra was from a human's and how that difference would affect fuinjutsu. After a bunch of arguments with the stupid librarian jounin in charge of making sure she didn't go digging through something she wasn't authorized to see, she'd obtained a very esoteric piece of writing on using animal chakra in jutsu, and… well, the answer seemed to be "they sure have chakra!"

Thanks, random past ninja scientist.

She wondered if, maybe, having all your research and techniques carefully compartmentalized and kept secret from other organizations prevented anyone from churning out cohesive theories or more comprehensive writing on high-level fuinjutsu. Would she still be having this problem if she were in a bigger village like Konoha? The thought was increasingly bothering her, because surely- surely!- someone else had already done all of this. Surely there was a how-to guide out there for transferring a bijuu from one host to another.

On the other hand, the fact that no such document seemed to exist was exactly why Tori was being permitted to stay alive and sit around all day drawing glorified fancy pictures. So. Maybe she shouldn't be complaining?

She had to give up on her fuinjutsu rather quickly, because she wasn't completely over being poisoned and thinking too hard made her head spin.

She went down into her dungeon to check on her fungal cultures, stored in one of the cells no one was using. She'd poured her potato-and-agar medium into a bunch of randomly sized plastic containers she'd recycled from her mouse experiment, then done her best to smear fungal spores from Kisame's rotten lemons onto her make-shift agar plates.

"Ah, Penicillium, my old enemy," she very clearly remembered a graduate student in her old lab saying of fungal contamination on a petri dish. It's how she knew Penicillium fungus was the blue-green stuff that grew on food, and that it was the genus that made penicillin. She also reasoned that Penicillium fungi should be pretty easy to grow, given one could just grow it by accident in a sterile lab.

(That's what she was pretty sure happened to that one guy. (Flamel? No, he was an alchemist. Fleming? Fleming.) He'd come into lab one day to find that a spot of Penicillium contamination had killed the surrounding bacteria on a plate.)

And then, because fuinjutsu was absolute bullshit and you could write commands like "isolate all bone-related genes," Tori figured she wouldn't need to know shit about chemistry to isolate penicillin molecules. Worst case scenario, Sasori would probably have some ideas about doing it by hand.

Tori had indeed grown more blue-green fungi on her make-shift dishes. She'd also grown a bunch of other stuff on all her plates, of various colors and consistency.

Tori had never had this much contamination on any experiment she'd done in her life. She'd carefully wiped down everything with rubbing alcohol and done the spore transfer next to the open flame of the gas stove to sterilize the air, and yet...!

How disgusting was the Akatsuki dungeon? The kitchen? Should she be concerned?

She'd retried the whole process a few days before, carefully picking up Penicillium spores from her plates with a flame-sterilized senbon she'd found under the couch and transferring them to a new plate, but… nope. Everything was contaminated again.

She squinted down through the plastic wrap she'd stretched over the tupperware. Perhaps triple layering cling wrap was insufficient for keeping airborne spores and bacteria from contaminating her stuff.

"Are you gonna kill the contaminants?" she asked of her fungi. "Please?"

Tori liked having her own project that was hers and not just a gear in her bosses' world-domination plans, but it seemed like she couldn't even get this working easily. Exhausted again, Tori closed the door to the cell and went to take another nap.

xXx

By evening Tori decided she was feeling much better and could probably stomach alcohol. No one had actually invited her, but Tori decided she would annoy someone into letting her tag along on their little adventure that night.

Tori heated up some leftover chicken Tobi had baked and ate it right out of the tupperware as she sorted through her clothes, which she kept in a hard plastic box in one of the dungeon cells. She was too young for bars in her country, but she'd been to shitty university house parties and assumed the dress code was about the same. All her clothes were picked for functionality over fashion, so she didn't have anything particularly sexy, but…

She ditched her T-shirt for a form-fitting shirt with a huge scoop-neck that was so low-cut she normally wouldn't even consider wearing it without a camisole underneath. Then she painted way more dark make-up over her face than necessary, tucking her wine-red lipstick away in the little pocket in the hem of her leggings for touch-ups. Bam, sexy.

Another thing she learned in university was this: one always drank a little before going out.

There were always a few beers in the fridge, because Kisame liked to drink. Tori found she didn't much like the taste, so she pulled down a bottle of sake that had been on top of the fridge since she'd gotten there, likely forgotten by whoever had bought it.

She'd never had sake before, but the back of the bottle said to serve it warm. Feeling too impatient to heat up a pot of water for a water bath, she poured the entire bottle into a glass measuring pitcher and microwaved it. Alcohol could explode in a microwave, but… well, the volume was probably too big for that.

Luckily, it didn't explode and she didn't have to figure out how to blame Deidara.

The sake had a delicate, thin flavor, ricey and just a little sweet. It wasn't as strong as she had expected it to be and went down smooth.

"Oh good, you're coming," Deidara observed, giving her a once-over as he entered the kitchen with a dirty plate that he dumped in the sink. "Danna said he wouldn't come if you weren't there, yeah. Is that sake?"

Deidara picked up the pitcher from where she'd left it on the counter and sniffed it. Deidara had also dressed up to go out- he had pulled back his bangs to show off more of his face (and his eyeliner) and was wearing pants that were much tighter than necessary.

"Do you want some?" Tori asked.

"Serving it this way is probably a crime, yeah," Deidara replied, but still pulled a cup from the cupboard and set it down on the counter in front of Tori.

Tori raised her eyebrows. "Do you really expect me to serve you?"

"Pouring your own sake is bad luck," Deidara said as if it were obvious. When Tori continued to stare at him dubiously, he continued, "You're so fucking alien sometimes. Here."

He topped off her cup and then poured his own. "You gotta serve everyone else before you drink, or someone's gotta serve you. It's just polite, yeah."

Itachi silently wandered into the kitchen a few minutes later, and Tori noticed Deidara tense up like a cat before she saw Itachi.

"You're already drinking?" Itachi asked. He didn't sound judgemental, but Tori interpreted his comment as judgment anyway.

"This is a special technique I learned at university," Tori said, leaning against the counter. "It's called pre-gaming."

Having to just stand like weirdos at the kitchen counter because the table was broken also seemed like an aggressively "I am a penniless student" move.

"Yeah, Uchiha, it's an academic practice," Deidara said, grinning meanly. "Very cultured of us."

"I assumed you were drinking because you have no money to buy drinks, Tori," Itachi said, and Tori nearly choked on her sake.

"Don't worry so much," Deidara told her, reaching to pour the both of them more sake. "Danna will buy you a drink, yeah. He's very excited about poisoning you now."

"Fuck," Tori mumbled to herself and moved to rub her eyes with her palms. Remembering she had spent a lot of time applying make-up to her face, she went for downing her whole cup of sake in one go instead.

Tori ended up drinking half of the sake, and she had to hold onto the railing of the stairs extra hard as she stumbled her way down. Deidara made fun of her a couple times, but he was easy to ignore.

The only other person who made any effort to dress up besides her and Deidara was Hidan, who had a ridiculous fur-lined leather jacket and a v-neck shirt cut even lower than Tori's. Everyone else was just in their usual Akatsuki cloaks.

...well, Sasori was not in Hiruko like he normally would be to leave the base, which might be something like dressing up. Deidara bragged he'd made him agree to not use the battle puppet, as "they'd get into a club, yeah."

"Very bad boy motorcycle gang," Tori told Hidan.

"Are you drunk?" Hidan asked. He sounded jealous.

"Just a tad," Tori answered. She felt lightheaded, but she could make whole sentences and everything.

"I think we should race to Kayaba, yeah," Deidara proposed. "Loser buys a round of drinks."

"You're only proposing that because you can fly," Hidan snapped back.

"And you're only arguing because you know you're the slowest-"

Tori watched passively while they argued, and Kisame rolled his eyes and left out the door, Itachi following him like a shadow. Honestly, Tori was surprised Itachi had any interest in going, but she supposed he had showed signs of wanting to be social. Well… sort of. He at least liked hanging out with Kisame, she was sure.

Kakuzu moved to loom over her, and Tori was surprised he was interested in socializing too.

"You still owe me money," he said. Behind him, Deidara and Hidan fought like children for the door.

"I've made a couple working scrolls," Tori told him. "How many do you need?"

"Kakuzu," Sasori cut in, suddenly at Tori's side. Hidan finally threw Deidara off and raced out the door. "I want her for an experiment. Don't you dare-"

Tori's eyes slid back and forth between Kakuzu and Sasori as they both postured for her attention. Kakuzu wanted her attention to make threats and investigate her progress on paying off her debt; Sasori wanted her unmaimed and functioning so he could try poisoning her.

Tori thought the stereotype here would be that she'd feel flattered to have two men fighting over her attention. Except, both men wanted it for completely fucked up reasons. Tori, mostly, was interested in fantasizing about if she could goad them into a fight to the death. That would totally make her night.

The argument ended with Kakuzu hefting her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and Sasori following behind. As they ran, Kakuzu quizzed her on how much material she'd wasted making storage scrolls, and how many scrolls a day she could make, and if they were any good.

"You're not going to be able to sell them for much until you improve your calligraphy," Sasori said.

"But they work," Tori insisted. "You said they were perfect."

"No one's going to believe they work well until they try them," Sasori countered. "They look like they'd be awful."

"I'll worry about selling them," Kakuzu growled.

They passed Hidan on the way. He screamed swears at them as they went.

"I HOPE HER DRUNK ASS VOMITS ON YOU, YOU STINGY BASTARD!" he screeched as he faded into the distance.

"I don't get carsick," Tori assured Kakuzu's back.

"I don't know what that means," Kakuzu answered.

The town of Kayaba wasn't very big, but it had a long stretch of packed-dirt road filled with bars. The street was filled with tipsy people, either at outdoor standing tables or moving between bars, and the air was loud with banter and laughter and muffled music. The town was a big draw for smaller farming villages, and Tori realized very quickly that she was somehow over -dressed. Most of the women only had the lightest make-up and were dressed rather conservatively.

Tori did her best to brush her hair in front of her cleavage. Oops.

Deidara, being the one who could fly, had been the first to arrive and therefore the one to pick the bar. It was swanky, with mood lighting and loud pop music and a mural of bales of hale in a field painted on the wall behind the bar.

"This has to be the most expensive one here," Kakuzu muttered darkly.

"Deidara has no sense for subtlety," Sasori sniffed.

Deidara, Itachi and Kisame already had a table, tucked in a corner. Kisame sat between Deidara and Itachi, looking rather unhappy as Deidara yelled enthusiastically at Itachi about some perceived slight. Itachi sipped quietly at a bright red cocktail. It had a paper umbrella in it, and a whole strawberry hanging from the side.

When Hidan showed up a few minutes later, Kakuzu bullied him into going through with Deidara's proposal of buying everyone a round. There was a lot more yelling, and Tori slunk across the cushioned bench at the table to steal a laminated menu from Deidara.

"I want something that's pure alcohol but tastes good," Tori said when Deidara paused in his own yelling about the town's one club being closed to raise an eyebrow at her. "What's your equivalent of a Long Island Iced Tea?"

"Why do you keep saying things like that as if I'll understand them?" Deidara asked her.

"Because I am drunk," Tori answered very seriously, and he shoved her lightly and went back to explaining to Itachi that assuming a club would be open on a Friday was actually very smart of him, and the club owners were the stupid ones for having a weird schedule, and also Itachi should stop looking at him like that.

"Here," Kakuzu offered, pulling the menu from her hands. "I will calculate the optimum alcohol-to-ryo ratio for us all."

Sometimes, Kakuzu was a man after her own heart.

The tray of drinks he and Hidan came back with tasted awful.

"Why did you order me one?" Sasori sneered. He'd perched himself at the end of one side of the table, staring out across the bar like he was checking the other customers out. He probably was, Tori thought, for prettier puppets.

"I-" Hidan started, then turned to Kakuzu. "Fuck you, you bastard, you know he doesn't eat-"

Kakuzu, who had an odd sense of fairness when it came to others being owed something, topped off everyone's drinks evenly with Sasori's.

In an incredibly transparent act of politeness, Sasori picked up one of the glasses and slid it across the table to Tori.

"Here," he said.

Tori stared down at the glass, filled with syrupy amber liquid, and then back up at Sasori.

"Do you honestly think," she deadpanned, "I'm going to drink anything you touch?"

Sasori just stared back at her. "It won't kill you," he said eventually. "That's the point."

Hidan burst into laughter, and Itachi nudged his glass- the umbrella-less one Hidan had bought- an inch towards Tori.

"You can have mine," he offered.

Tori kept defiant eye-contact with Sasori as she took the glass, and Sasori let out a derisive snort.

The conversation died after that, with everyone focusing on their drinks (except Sasori, who turned back around to people-watch). It had more of an awkward feel to it than a comfortable silence. They rarely ever hung out as a group like this, and Tori was sure none of them were exactly social butterflies. Honestly, they were more like a bunch of co-workers at an awkward office party than a group of friends going out together.

She wasn't a social butterfly either, but at least she'd grown up in regular civilian society.

"Okay," she said, tapping her nails against the side of her glass. "Fuck, Marry, Kill: Pein, Konan, Zetsu."

There was a long silence as everyone stared at her.

"...do you not have this game?" Tori asked slowly. Maybe, if you had never heard of Fuck, Marry, Kill, her sentence sounded insane. She was pretty sure she'd heard people in Oto play it, though. Maybe. A lot of time not in-lab was a drugged-induced haze.

"You shouldn't talk about your boss that way," Itachi told her.

Tori leaned back in the booth and crossed her arms. "Shouldn't be a boss if you don't want your employees talking shit."

"Ha!" Hidan laughed, slamming back the rest of his drink. "Yeah, okay. Kill Zetsu, fuck Konan, make God-of-Rain or whatever he's calling himself have a custody battle with Jashin-"

"What the hell are you talking about?" Kakuzu interrupted.

The game devolved into a lot of yelling, and no one else got their answers in. Deidara eventually managed to pitch two more FMKs with celebrities Tori had never heard of, and then Kisame produced a deck of playing cards from his cloak. There was some arguing over what to play, and then:

"You always have weird ideas," Deidara said, turning to Tori. "Know any card games?"

Tori straightened her back slightly, surprised he was asking her. She'd sort of slouched into her chair to listen to them brag and bicker at each other without giving her a single thought, and she'd been anticipating being stuck like that until they got bored with this particular bar.

"Uh– yeah, we could play rummy," she said. She reached for the deck of cards and got about half a sentence through an explanation of the rules before she realized Kisame had not brought a standard playing deck. "What the hell is this?"

"A card deck…?" Kisame answered.

"Were you expecting karuta?" Itachi asked.

Tori had absolutely no idea what that meant. She sorted through the cards, which all looked like some sort of bizarro-world version of a standard playing deck. There were five suits, each having the numbers one through nine and then six face cards featuring characters that meant nothing to her. One was a goddamn nine-tailed fox. What was that supposed to be? The ace? The king?

"Oh, I do not like this," Tori breathed. Itachi leaned over her.

"It's shinobi themed," he said, sounding approving.

This did not answer any of Tori's questions.

Since she was failing to explain a game, the cards somehow ended up eased out of her hands into Deidara's, who shuffled and dealt everyone two cards and then set seven cards face up in a circle around the deck.

"I… have no idea what this is," Tori admitted, and Kakuzu took her cards right out of her hand. One of the seven face up cards was removed.

Tori sat back and pouted for several very rapid-fire rounds where it seemed like the goal was to build a complicated pattern on the face-up card in front of you, and playing certain cards let you steal from other people's piles. The face cards were actually shinobi ranks, but drawn in very old armor that meant nothing to Tori.

Tori had finished her drink from Itachi and the one Sasori gave her was starting to seem… tempting. Tori took a single, miniscule sip. It tasted nasty, but the non-poisoned drink had been gross too.

The actual rules of the game very slowly unraveled themselves to Tori even as she watched intently, although everyone's home country had different variations and they all argued and shoved cards at each other. At some point one of the cards ended up pinned to the table with a kunai, and she thought for a minute Kakuzu might be doing breathing exercises. Even Sasori became so invested in the petty arguments that he told Itachi he wasn't allowed to have opinions, because his country used different cards.

"Why did you even come if you're not going to do anything?" Hidan asked Tori loudly when Itachi finally won the game. It was a very contentious win, and Kakuzu shattered a glass in his hand as Deidara muttered darkly to himself.

"I didn't think your card games would be crazy-town," Tori shot back. "Who the hell has five suits? I'm used to four."

"This isn't Fire Country," Hidan snapped, which made! No! Sense!

"We should play again," Kakuzu said through gritted teeth. "With standardized rules. And for money."

A clay centipede was crawling up Deidara's arm, his glare fixated on Itachi.

"You know what?" Tori said. "I think I'll go get another drink."

She still didn't have any money, but no one stopped her from crawling over Kisame and then walking up to the bar. She took the drink Sasori gave her with her, so she could leave it with a bartender and stop feeling tempted to drink it.

Walking across the room was slightly more difficult than it should have been, and Tori had to pause and blink a few times to get the lights out of her eyes. The beat of the music pounded in her skull. She was drunker than she thought she'd been.

Behind her, there was a burst of yelling about the rules to a card game.

Tori decided that she did not need another drink. She needed some normal conversation with a normal human. She scanned the bar for a moment, then walked up to two women seated at the bar.

"Your dress is super cute," she told one of them, and the woman looked at her like she'd just slapped her.

"Um," Tori continued, backpedaling. "Sorry. I'm new in town. I'm just trying to make friends."

In a polite but awkward tone, the woman replied, "I hope you find some." Then both women shuffled away.

Tori stood there, feeling awkward and dumb, which was a stark constrast from how loose and warm her limbs felt from the alcohol. Well. That hadn't worked. She sat down in one of the seats the women had vacated, unsure what to do while the pop music the bar was blasting thudded through her brain. A man sat down next to her and waved down a bartender, and someone tapped her on the shoulder.

"If you wanted a drink," Sasori said testily, "I already offered."

He set a brand new cocktail down in front of her on the bar, where it joined the one she'd already refused to drink. This new one was clear and had several dark berries floating in it.

"I told you," Tori said flatly, "absolutely not."

"It's not-" Sasori started, but then the man next to Tori turned around and interrupted:

"She said no, dude."

Sasori looked mildly affronted anyone had dared to speak to him. Tori preened.

"Yeah," she said, more aggressive than she'd usually dare to speak to Sasori. "Back off, dude. I'm not interested."

"Stupid," Sasori muttered, and then walked off. Tori, drunk, waved after him.

"Thanks," Tori said to the guy. He had dark messy hair and a plain face, and he was eyeing her up and down with evident interest. "That guy's been bothering me all night."

"You're here alone, then?" the guy asked.

"Oh yeah, I'm new in town," Tori replied. "Haven't made any friends yet. You from here?"

The guy introduced himself as Kenta and he was… very boring. He'd been born and raised in the area and had never traveled further than the Grass Country capital, and he did not seem to care enough about Tori's made-up backstory to listen to her say more than that she'd moved in with some cousins for financial reasons. He talked for a very long time about growing hay for thatching roofs, which wasn't particularly exciting but was at least interesting from the perspective of Tori not having the slightest idea how hay farming or thatching roofs worked.

It was a relief at first, hearing the thoughts of someone so boring and normal. Tori had missed this, being able to just talk to someone and not have them threaten to murder her or someone else. She trotted out her best "you are a fascinating creature" Orochimaru impression and asked a lot of genuine questions. This, it seemed, was the best way to make someone feel special and clever and inclined to keep talking to her.

Kenta's drink came, but he didn't touch it in favor of his ongoing monologue about grass. Grass Country, he lectured to Tori in excruciating detail, was called Grass Country because they had a lot of grass.

"I read the other day," Tori said, feeling like she needed to take control of this conversation before he started to explain that water is wet, "ice grass is the northernmost growing species of angiosperm."

She had actually read this in Jiraiya's obscure charity novel Icha Icha Aurora, fact checked it in Ecosystems of the Northern Countries, and then spent a lot of time being upset that she couldn't remember how many species of angiosperms grew in Antarctica. She was pretty sure it was either two or three, and that they were all grasses, but now she could never confirm it.

(It had used to be one of her favorite fun facts, and now that knowledge was gone.)

Kenta stayed quiet, staring down at his drink for a bit, and did not acknowledge her as she babbled about what she'd read about the thermal range of angiosperms, and how it was so amazing they could grow so far north. Tori wondered if maybe even though Kenta knew everything there was to know about local grasses, perhaps he did not know the word angiosperm, the scientific term for flowering plants, off the top of his head. It was jargon she probably sounded very pretentious using.

"An angiosperm is-" she started, and Kenta rolled his eyes.

"Do you own a TV?" he asked, cutting her off.

"Um," Tori said. "Like I said, I prefer reading. Have you read Icha Icha Aurora because-"

Kenta started to describe a plot of some TV series to her, and Tori found herself very annoyed. She hadn't come over here to learn about some show about ninja that didn't even make sense.

Her rambling about angiosperms was totally super interesting, though!

She decided, if she was to put up with this, Kenta owed her a drink and a science experiment.

"Hey," she said in her sexiest voice when he paused for breath. She continued in her silkiest tone, pushing her first spiked drink from Sasori forward. "Trade you."

She did her best impression of looking flirty and mischievous. Should she wink? She always felt like winking was a good idea. She ended up closing both eyes in a very purposeful blink. Fuck.

"You don't want it?" Kenta asked, looking down at his own drink he'd only taken a single sip from.

"Well, I can't drink something some sleazeball ordered for me," Tori countered. "It's the principle of the matter."

Kenta shrugged and handed her his drink, which consisted of lemon soda and some sort of liquor Tori wasn't an experienced enough drinker to place. Tori drank it very quickly as Kenta determinedly continued describing his little ninja show.

"It's based on our own legendary missing-nin, Batta-san," Kenta told her.

Behind him, Tori watched Hidan tilt his head back and balance a glass on his forehead while the rest of the table argued. Deidara managed to knock the glass off completely by accident as he waved his arms emphatically.

"You like missing-nin, Kenta?" she asked innocently. "Aren't they a bit, you know, scary?"

She said this with a definite tease to her voice and waggled her eyebrows. She thought it sounded like fun banter, but Kenta very enthusiastically took her entirely at face value.

"Oh, very scary," he said seriously. "Batta-san had seven confirmed kills of Kusa-nin, and those are just the ones we know about."

"Just seven?" Tori repeated, holding her glass up to peer conspicuously into the bottom. It was empty save for the ice.

Kenta did not take the hint and bowled along in the conversation. He talked about the show, and what it got wrong and what it got right, including some fascinatingly incorrect takes on what the limits and possibilities of ninjutsu were.

"If I were a ninja," he started, and Tori started to feel her brains melt out of her head.

"Why don't you trade me another drink?" she interrupted, pushing the drink with the berries from Sasori toward him. Perhaps it would be safe to accept a single drink from Sasori after all, if Kenta was still going on like this.

Kenta did not stop talking about Batta and his reign of terror across Grass Country while he ordered her another drink. He expressed disappointment that the third season of the TV show was being delayed due to Dead Water Fever. Most of it was filmed in Water Country, where there were lots of travel restrictions and quarantined towns due to the epidemic.

"The fever isn't even that bad," he complained, sipping the second of the spiked drinks.

"Doesn't it make your organs melt?" Tori asked. The news reports she'd seen made it sound awful.

Kenta shook his head. "My cousin was in an affected town. He said they just called in a priest and it went away. Anyway, Batta-san-"

"Hold on," Tori said, frowning. "What do you mean, it went away when a priest came in?"

"You know," Kenta said, sounding oddly condescending for a man who thought seven was an impressive body count, "a priest came in and blessed the pond with the bad water and all the evil spirits left."

Tori, drunk as she was, was almost certain her spirit left her body for just a second.

"Kenta," she said slowly. "What do you think the causative agent of Dead Water Fever is?"

Kenta very clearly did not understand the question, as he started explaining how priests worked to her. Granted, Tori didn't know a thing about any local religion but Jashinism, but she understood that blessing water didn't do anything unless it was somehow simultaneously getting rid of whatever was causing the disease.

She said some of this outloud, and Kenta answered in a very exasperated tone, "Yes, they got rid of the evil spirits. Keep up."

"Did they…" Tori's head was spinning. "Were they those chara-using priests?"

Maybe the "ritual" Kenta's cousin had watched, where he claimed he'd literally seen the spirits leaving a pond, was chakra sterilizing the water and he'd mistaken the glow for something supernatural. Tori had assumed the fact that the disease was associated with stagnant water meant mosquitos were the vector, but now that she thought about it, no news report had actually said what the causative agent was, and maybe if it was a waterborne bacteria or a worm or something, chakra could cleanse the water somehow?

"Were they drinking the pond water?" Tori wondered, and Kenta made a face like she'd suggested something disgusting. She guessed not.

But… surely sterilizing water to that extreme would cause a small ecological disaster?

And surely even such an aggressive strategy wouldn't make Dead Water Fever disappear immediately, even causing the lessening of symptoms in the currently afflicted, the way Kenta's cousin claimed.

"Are you sure your cousin wasn't bullshitting you?" Tori asked. "Or are you bullshitting me?"

Kenta looked offended.

"Rude words, for a lady," he chided. "No offense, but I don't think you understand how disease works very well."

Kenta changed the subject to explaining to Tori how even though most of his stupid show was filmed in Water Country, some scenes were filmed on location at Kayaba Castle, which was famously haunted.

"Oh, but you probably don't want to hear about that, since you're afraid of missing-nin and disease and all," Kenta blabbered on.

Tori did, actually, want to hear about a haunted castle she could potentially go visit. That sounded like something she'd love.

But, also: she was done with talking to Kenta. No amount of normalcy was worth this.

"Oh, it's late," she said. "My family will be expecting me."

She turned to leave, drink in hand, and Kenta grabbed her other wrist.

"Don't be scared," he said, smirking up at her. "You're being silly. Nothing can get you out here-"

Tori stared down at his hand on her wrist. Kenta's breath was sweet with alcohol.

You don't have to put up with this shit, a voice in the back of her head reminded her. He's not even a ninja.

Tori didn't think about it further. She slammed her glass into his face as hard as she could, and it shattered on impact. Cold, sticky alcohol washed over her fingers. Her skin burned as the glass cut into it.

Kenta yelled in surprise and pain, letting go of her and holding his hands up to his now bloody face, and it occurred to Tori that even if he wasn't a ninja, he was larger and stronger and worked on a farm, and she probably couldn't take him in a fight.

Tori picked up the nearest barstool and set it between them, as if such a meager barrier would help, and two guys turned to ask Kenta if he was okay. (He wasn't.) Tori ducked around a woman, turning away from flagging down the bartender to see what was happening, and elbowed her way through the crowd to get to the opposite corner of the bar.

This was… this was okay. This was fine. She'd just forgotten that boring normal people could also be their own brand of unbearable, that was all.

That guy deserved a drink in his face, okay?

"What are you doing?" Sasori asked, suddenly in her face. "I only brought so much of that poison, so if you're going to waste it–"

Tori opened her mouth to ask if Sasori had anything to bandage her hand and also, could he please shut up about poison, but was cut off by her Kenta reappearing.

"HEY," Kenta yelled, shoving people aside to glower down at Tori and Sasori. His face was bleeding freely, a shard of glass sticking out of his cheek. "You little slut. You had a boyfriend? You think you can just hide behind him?"

Sasori looked offended, his lips curling back to snarl something mean and derisive at the man.

Hiding behind Sasori was a good idea, though, and Tori took an unsubtle step back to put the puppet master between her and Kenta. Kenta looked at her, his eyes dark with fury, and then down at Sasori spitting very mean insults at him.

Sasori, for all his frightening strength, was small and had a pretty, delicate face. This must be the reason Kenta made the stupidest decision of his life. He decided to punch Sasori.

Sasori stepped out of the way of the mad swing, grabbed Kenta by the face, and then rotated ninety degrees to slam his head into the wall.

"Oh, Jesus," Tori said, hobbling back further. She retroactively felt terrified for sassing Sasori earlier.

Kenta slumped, and the whole half of the bar went dead silent. Two minutes later, they found themselves being asked to leave.

"Why did you guys all insist on matching uniforms?" Deidara complained. Staff had asked their table to leave too. "They knew we were together, yeah."

"It's regulation," Itachi replied.

"I can't believe you got us kicked out for fighting and didn't even invite me," Hidan whined.

Kakuzu, who had been a major player in forcing his coworkers to leave the expensive bar when asked, had taken the initiative to find the cheapest bar in town. They were currently milling around on the street while he searched.

"What even happened?" Kisame asked.

Tori was sure they were all paying at least enough attention to their surroundings to see she'd spontaneously decided to throw a glass in someone's face, even though she felt justified about it. In hindsight, now that she was considering how to explain her reasoning, she had no idea why she'd thought that was a good idea. They'd been in a crowded place, and she didn't think he was intentionally threatening her by grabbing her, and her motivation had definitely been more that she'd felt annoyed that he was too into Batta-san to be discussing cool facts about grass. Spending all day considering murder and torture and sabotage was getting to her.

(On the bright side, Kenta would likely think twice about trying to physically trap a woman in conversation with him again.)

Then again, "he was annoying me" was sound reasoning for attacking someone amongst the Akatsuki. She didn't have to explain herself.

"I can only assume," Sasori answered for her, eyes narrowed, "that Tori is so obnoxious that anyone engaging in conversation with her is moved to violence."

"Checks out, yeah," Deidara agreed, smirking at Tori.

"Does anyone have a bandage?" Tori asked, rolling her eyes. She had cut up her hand pretty badly.

Itachi produced a whole first aid kit from his cloak. After Kakuzu led them to a sleazy bar with an empty table, Tori worked on picking glass out of her palm and then tying up her hand while the rest of Akatsuki re-started their card game. This bar was stickier and less well-lit than the previous one, and the drinks were cheap enough that Kisame bought one for her and told her to pour it over her injury.

"What's the proof on this?" Tori asked. "If it's too low, it can make it worse-"

"You're such a fucking nerd," Hidan cut her off. "Jashin states that wounds should be let to fester whenever possible."

"You know," Deidara said, cocking his head at Hidan. "I still have no idea what the draw of your religion is, yeah."

Kakuzu groaned and then got up from the table and just left, even before Hidan started on a rant about suffering being the one true unifying force of mankind.

"It's about solidarity," Hidan insisted. "Not everyone likes to drink or fuck or read the bitch's little nature books for pleasure, but everyone understands suffering."

Tori watched them go two more rounds of their weird card game while messing with her hand. She flexed it experimentally a few times, then downed the shot Kisame gave her and asked to be dealt in.

"You don't know how to play," Kisame said doubtfully.

"Nah, I got it," Tori said with all the confidence of a drunk person. "Five times fifteen is seventy-five and the guy with the weird hat is high."

"That doesn't make sense," Kisame said, but gave her cards anyway.

Tori made a few illegal moves in the first game, embarrassed herself in the next one, and then won the third one.

"How," Hidan demanded.

"I'm real good at cards," Tori slurred. "Fifteen times five is seventy-five."

"I believe she's saying that calculating probabilities for this game is not particularly difficult," Itachi offered.

Hidan threw up his hands and went to go bother Kakuzu, who was drinking alone at the bar and glaring at anyone who got too close. He had a very scary glare, and there was an impressive radius of empty seats around him.

"Okay, real talk," Tori said as Kisame shuffled cards. She blinked spots out of her vision. "You guys know germ theory, right?"

Kisame paused, then turned and grinned at her.

"Did you break a civilian's face because he didn't know about germs?" he asked slyly.

"No!" Tori answered, slapping the table. It hurt her injured hand. She didn't care. "But also: why did he think evil spirits cause hemorrhagic fever?"

"You often seem to think people should have an intrinsic right to knowledge," Itachi observed, picking up the cards Kisame had dealt him.

"What do you- of course they do!" Tori started, waving her arms, and Kisame very gently pressed her hands further towards her chest so she wasn't showing her entire hand to the table. "People have a right to know what causes disease. It's part of nature, not some fucking state secret!"

"If you're talking about Dead Water Fever," Sasori said, drawing a card and starting the game, "Water Country has been keeping research related to it classified. Even my spies don't have good reports on it. They probably want that man to think it's evil spirits."

"Oh my God," Tori half-yelled, and Kisame fixed her hold on her cards again. "Why?"

"I don't get what you're so upset about," Deidara said. "It's not like it affects you if some backwater town doesn't know about bacteria, yeah."

"You should be allowed to know things about the world you live in!" Tori yelled, waving her arms even more. "This is why you jackasses don't have vaccines! This is why there's no unified theory of fuinjutsu-"

"You are not going to do well at this game," Kisame told her over her rant.

Tori spent the rest of the round ranting about John Snow taking the handle off the pump of a well contaminated with cholera in London in 1854, and how that had pioneered epidemiology, and how people benefited from understanding what caused disease and how it spread and how to avoid it. No one did anything to acknowledge anything she said, but also no one interrupted her.

She came in second, after Sasori.

Deidara leaned back in his chair, sighing dramatically.

"Welp," he announced, "if I'm too wasted to beat a drunk person flashing their hand and screaming nonsense at me the whole game, then I'm out, yeah."

"That was a bit humiliating," Itachi said mildly after Deidara basically fell out of his chair and stumbled away, not sounding humiliated at all. "Although a large part of this game is luck."

"Yeah… luck," Kisame, who had not won a single round yet, muttered. "Actually, I don't want to just play with the three of you."

He, too, left. Tori grabbed his cards and took over shuffling and dealing.

"What else did you talk to that man about?" Itachi asked, watching Tori's hands as she shuffled. Tori did, in fact, love card games, and she could shuffle like a pro even when so drunk she could barely read the cards.

"Types of grass," Tori said, focusing very hard on counting out the correct number of cards. "His entire life story. Someone named Batta."

"The missing-nin?" Sasori asked.

Tori paused. "So is he actually famous?" she asked.

"Not really," Sasori answered. "I only know him because I killed him. He was not as handsome as the rumors made him out to be."

Oh my god, Tori thought, blinking down at the card deck. Spoilers for season three!

"What did you talk about, with Batta the missing-nin?" Itachi pressed.

"He's a monster that killed seven ninja," Tori said, dealing the three face up cards the game required for three players. She turned to Itachi and very meaningfully added, "That we know of."

Sasori snorted.

"Itachi just wants to know if you mentioned us," Sasori drawled. He shot Itachi an annoyed look and added, "She didn't. I was eavesdropping."

"I want to know her mindset," Itachi murmured back. "It appears she gets talkative when drunk."

("Loose lips sink ships!" Tori crowed and was ignored.)

"Why does that matter?" Sasori sneered. "I told you, I was watching her."

"If she was thinking about it, there's a risk she'd reveal something under other circumstances-"

Tori watched, baffled, as Itachi and Sasori proceeded to bitch at each other over her conversation with Kenta, even as they played. The point, it seemed, was not that either felt a certain way about Tori- they both just felt that their method was the best one, regardless of what anyone was trying to accomplish.

Could she goad Sasori and Itachi into a fight over her? No, she wanted to play cards. Card games were fun.

"I will tell you my thought process," Tori informed Itachi. Sasori scowled at her. "Listen very closely."

As they played several rounds, Tori related all her fun facts about grass along climatic gradients, and then transitioned into the really interesting part she hadn't been able to tell Kenta about.

"Icha Icha Aurora contains a random aside about ecology that's almost verbatim from an Earth Country textbook-"

"Are you still talking about that?" Sasori snapped.

"Why is he plagiarizing a textbook, Sasori?" Tori shot back. "I have four theories-"

She only got through one- that he'd been in Earth Country when he wrote it and possibly more concerned with something else than writing- before Itachi won the round. Sasori declared he was done with this "waste of time" and broke off a chunk of the table as he stood.

"We can't play with just two people," Tori complained. "Why'd you all quit when I started?"

"I'm getting you a drink," Sasori told Tori. He sounded very aggressive about it.

"Fuck you," Tori told him, despite vowing only an hour before to be less sassy to him. She got up, nearly tripped over her own chair, and staggered away in a random direction.

The bar was fairly big, and the clientele skewed toward rough-looking men. There were a handful of men playing pachinko machines against one wall, and against another wall were some targets for darts, where Deidara was amusing himself alone.

What sort of entertainment could a ninja get from bar darts? Tori, drunk and easily distracted, headed over to him.

"Your partner is still trying to poison me," she said, "and he won't listen to my literary theories."

"Hmm," Deidara replied, and chucked a dart. It made a bullseye. "Do you know how to play?"

He passed her a dart and watched as Tori threw it in the vague direction of a target. It hit the wall sideways and then clattered to the floor.

"I'm gonna blame being tipsy," Tori told him.

"Sure," Deidara replied, eyebrows raised. He clearly thought this was funny.

"Why are you even playing this?" Tori asked. "Surely it can't be… target practice?"

She had no idea what Deidara or any of the Akatsuki did when they practiced ninja stuff. She assumed practicing throwing knives had to happen at some point, but she also assumed Deidara was way beyond the level of practicing with a close-range, stationary target.

"Habit, yeah," Deidara told her, and a smirk tugged at his lips. "Not actually interested in anyone here, but it's one of my many pick-up tactics, yeah."

"Oh yeah?" Tori asked. "Because men who are good at darts are just so sexy."

"Hey," Deidara replied, hurling another dart at a different target with pinpoint accuracy. "You came over here, didn't you?"

"Wow," Tori replied dryly. "Nevermind, I'm going to go play with the pachinko guys instead. Maybe they want to hear my Icha Icha headcanons."

"I'm sure they'll love to hear about epidemiology too, yeah."

Deidara offered to show her how to throw darts. He was actually bizarrely nice about it, checking her hand to make sure she was holding them right without insulting her like she expected. After a few hilariously bad throws, she managed to actually get a dart in a target.

"Victory!" Tori declared.

"See?" Deidara told her. "Incredible pick-up strategy, darts. Now you're basically in love with me, yeah."

Tori snorted with laughter. "Does this- does this make you a pick-up artist, Deidara?"

She then nearly tripped over her own feet when Sasori was suddenly next to her, shoving a cocktail into her hands.

"Itachi said you'd like this best," Sasori said. "It's got cream and coffee liqueur."

Tori stared down at the drink. Unfortunately, that did sound really good.

"Only if we play more cards," Tori said. She had a chance at winning that, and she liked winning sometimes.

Sasori did a sort of full body twitch. "If you keep resisting, I will make you-"

"Danna, that's no way to make friends, yeah."

"We're not friends, we're coworkers-"

Tori watched as they argued, wondering if she could goad Sasori into fighting Deidara. It definitely seemed she should be able to get Sasori to fight someone by the end of the night. Oh, but he'd fought Kenta for her, hadn't he? No, that didn't count as a fight…

Tori absentmindedly took a sip in her inebriated haze, and then instantly regretted it because it tasted really, really good.

"Okay," she said, interrupting the artists. "I will drink this if you tell me what poison you used and show me a dosage curve."

Sasori eyed her for a second. "I don't have one," he said eventually.

"You don't-" Tori gestured so emphatically that the drink sloshed out of the glass and over her hands. Sasori hissed at her. "If you don't have a dosage curve, how the FUCK are you deciding how much to give me, you piece of SHIT?"

"Tori," Deidara said, barely containing laughter. "Clearly he's lying, because Danna is too much of a paranoid piece of shit to share, yeah."

"It's not lethal," Sasori insisted. "It's…" He paused, tilted his back ever so slightly, and leveled Tori with a fierce glare that probably should have scared the shit out of her, but she was drunk and unfortunately acclimated to Sasori being pissy. "One eighth of the usual dose. You might feel nausea, although I imagine it may be indistinguishable from your determination to spend the night inebriated."

Deidara's lips twitched. "Danna," he said, "have you ever been drunk?"

"No, of course not- why are you smirking?"

Tori eyed her drink, taking a big step back when Sasori looked like he might take a swing at Deidara. A body couldn't develop resistance to every type of poison, but mithridatism was certainly a thing. Not a thing she knew a lot about, but she imagined it was along the same lines of the extreme caffeine tolerance some of her high school friends had developed in college, and she was now demonstrably more resistant to certain drugs than she had been when she'd first become a human science experiment. It would probably work, if they did it properly.

Plus, Kenta had had two of Sasori's drinks and not keeled over dead. Symptoms were probably as mild as Sasori was promising, right?

Making her decision, Tori took another sip. If Sasori was downplaying the adverse side effects of his poison, she'd simply vomit her drink back up on him, like a vulture defending itself.

"Hey, I was wondering," Deidara said to Tori a few minutes later, suddenly pulling his attention away from making fun of Sasori's arguments for why alcohol was a disgraceful poison. "Remember when you said art and science were inseparable?"

"Uh," Tori answered. Sasori looked for a moment like he was going to tell Deidara off, getting all twitchy the way he did when he couldn't decide how exactly he was going to act on his irritation, then schooled his features. "No?"

"It was when we first met," Deidara said. "You know, when we kidnapped you, yeah."

Sober Tori might have been offended he'd say that so casually. Drunk Tori did not care.

"Right," Tori agreed. "You owe me a muffin for that, by the way."

"You said it was because they were both creative, yeah," Deidara continued, ignoring her comment. "Which is a phenomenally bland take. But I've been watching you work away at your weird fuinjutsu experiments, and I was thinking maybe you were on to something, yeah. Did you mean science is art because they're both acts of creation?"

Sasori twitched like he wanted to add his own two cents but remained silent. Both of them stared at her. Tori thought this might be the first time any Akatsuki genuinely wanted her personal opinion on something.

(...unless you counted Tobi quizzing Tori on her opinions on a sitcom they'd been watching together the evenings he was around, but she didn't. She was pretty sure everything about creating a situation where there was a "their show" was just some sort of convoluted psychological warfare on Obito's behalf.)

"Well," Tori said slowly. "No. Science can- um, you know- can lead to creation, but it isn't necessarily about creation. It's about understanding how the world works."

Sasori broke his silence, cutting in with, "That's what she said. She posited art and science are both methods for understanding the nature of things."

Deidara rolled his head back in thought. "But you've been creating things, Tori. That's why I was like, 'Hey, maybe there's some art here,' yeah."

"Right," Tori agreed. "I-"

"Are you saying art necessitates creation?" Sasori asked. He pointed accusingly at Deidara. "Yours is nothing but destruction."

"Destruction is creation, yeah!"

Tori finished her drink while the three of them debated the roles of creation and invention and seeking new understanding in art and science. Sasori's facial expressions and body language were tricky to read when he wasn't being outright aggressive, but he was definitely invested in the conversation. There was also an excited air to Deidara as he talked, like he'd found some juicy new things to think about. Tori agreed- this, she thought, was the kind of conversation she had actually been craving all evening.

"What if," Deidara posited, "Tori took a seal someone else designed and repurposed it. Is that creation?"

"Give me an example," Sasori snapped.

This, somehow, ended with Tori pulling one of the dart boards off the wall with the intention to make a seal that would ensure a dart hit the bullseye every time.

"It'll work," she insisted.

"You're proposing to use an incredibly advanced chakra funneling technique in the stupidest way possible," Sasori griped. "It's not going to work on a dart."

Tori was pretty sure she could use the technique she was trying to make for funnelling and then sealing bijuu chakra into the Gedo Statue for numerous stupid activities. Deidara leaned against the wall next to her, looking like he was watching his new favorite movie.

"They did it with a kunai in an Icha Icha book," Tori said, examining the plastic back of the board. "Jiraiya's a sealmaster, isn't he? It's gotta be possible."

"Do not start talking about that idiocy again-"

Sasori trailed off as a group of men ambled over to them. Or rather, Kenta from the previous bar stomped up to them looking pissed, while five or six other guys ambled along behind him. They all carried make-shift weapons- butcher's knives and a few scythes. They fanned around Tori and the two Akatsuki.

"You," Kenta growled. He had a bandage tapped to one side of his face, and several fresh cuts across the rest of it.

"Us!" Deidara replied. A mean, dangerous sort of grin spread over his lips. "Can we help you?"

Kenta held up his own scythe. It had a much shorter handle and a smaller blade than Hidan's, and was probably one of Kenta's tools for harvesting grass.

"Yeah," Kenta said. "Your two friends lured me into a trap and attacked me. That sort of behavior doesn't fly in Kayaba."

Tori eyed him up and down. It was actually unclear to her how much danger she was in right now. Deidara didn't move from his position to cover her, nor did Sasori, and she wasn't sure if either of them would actually step in if one of the men attacked her. She was sure they'd flatten the group if they were attacked, but she just couldn't see them going out of their way to defend her. Even if they were playing nice with her tonight, they were both still murderous assholes.

Tori cocked a hip and put a hand on her waist. She might as well try to take care of the situation herself and scare him off, then.

She thought she could probably just diffuse the situation by crying and apologizing, or maybe making a scene to get help from onlookers. She refused to do that in front of the Akatsuki, though.

"Have the adventures of Batta-san gone to your head?" she asked. "You're being ridiculous. What are you even planning to do, show how manly you are by beating up a woman and two pretty boys with no weapons? You need all your buddies and a bunch of knives for that?"

A few of Kenta's friends had reactions to that- shifting and looking doubtful- but Kenta was dedicated to the idea that Tori had no idea what she was talking about. He glared at her, opened his mouth-

-and then vomited all over the floor and collapsed. There were a few moments of silence. Kenta did not move.

"Wow," Deidara intoned.

"Sasori!" Tori accused, even as she dove to hide behind him before any of the men figured out what happened.

"Were you giving him your drinks?" Sasori asked, annoyed.

"And look what it did to him," she half-screamed. She'd already ingested the stupid poison because she'd thought Kenta had been fine!

"I don't see why you're mad at me," Sasori answered snidely, "when you're the one who poisoned him."

"A witch!" One of the men cried, looking at Tori in a sort of hateful awe usually reserved for scary ninja.

Tori did not get to see if being a witch meant people fled in fear or tried to burn her at the stake, because Deidara announced he was going to demonstrate that destruction was art, and Tori turned and fled before he could properly finish his declaration. An explosion- relatively tame and small for Deidara- went off, and Hidan yelled something like, "NOT WITHOUT ME THIS TIME" and threw a chair. Chaos erupted, and Tori ducked around two scraggling looking men rushing to intervene in Hidan bashing an employee's head against a table.

("This is pointless," Itachi sighed, continuing to sit at their original table and serenely drink a daiquiri without making a single move to intervene.)

There wasn't anywhere in the bar that wasn't in violent motion- Kisame and Kakuzu were squaring off and she didn't even understand why- and Tori threw herself through the closest door. She'd been hoping for an exit, but it just led to a cramped storeroom with not even a window.

There was a lot of horrified screaming in the bar behind her. She slammed the door shut.

She was still holding the dart board. Why.

Her heart was pounding, and Tori wondered if she was panicking. She'd gotten good enough at ignoring and then shutting down the physical symptoms that she couldn't always tell. She supposed the current situation was one in which she could get seriously injured, or even killed, and also she might have signed up for more than she thought with the poison.

Yeah, okay, that was definitely panic.

There was no way she was going back out into the bar to try and find another way to escape, so Tori decided to distract herself until things calmed down. She pulled the bandages off her hand.

Her plan was to use blood from the cut on her hand to try the seal she'd been planning on the dart board. She got as far as picking some of the scabbing off before she realized she had nothing to write with. Her finger would not be able to write fine enough to make the seal fit on the board. She'd used her own hair, once, but that had been hard to control…

There was a pen on the ground next to her feet. Tori picked it up. She pulled off the back of the pen with her teeth, exposing the ink cartridge, and did her best to bleed into it.

Come on, capillary action, she urged the blood, tapping her palm on the end of the cartridge. Blood didn't want to go in the narrow tube at first, but once she'd managed to tap a single droplet in, more blood wanted to follow. She shook the pen and tapped it against the back of the dart board as hard as she could to get the trickle of blood down into the ink.

Since her hand now had a bunch of blue stains on it, she assumed things were getting… mixed. Maybe.

The pen didn't actually write on the smooth plastic of the dart board, but now that Tori had made a blood pen, she wanted to see if it worked. She pulled back the collar of her blouse and set to slowly etching lines into the underside of the material. Halfway through she realized that just because she was writing on the inside of her shirt didn't mean she wasn't staining it forever, but, well, she'd already stained the outside…

Tori had managed to seal the dart board and an entire shelf of liquor into her shirt when Kisame pushed open the door.

"There you are," he said cheerfully, and behind him, the bar was a bloody mess. "We were going to head out."

The bar was strewn with bodies and broken furniture, with a few ominous scorch marks next to the dart boards. Hidan had drawn one of his Jashinist symbols on the floor, but instead of doing a ritual, he and Kakuzu were wrestling. Kisame chivalrously put himself between Tori and the tussling pair as they walked by.

"Nice spar, Kakuzu!" Kisame called.

Itachi, Deidara and Sasori were outside, where Deidara was complaining loudly that no one else in town was going to let them in. It had gotten a lot darker outside, with the streets of this town poorly lit by just the windows of its buildings. It was chillier now, too, and Tori shivered. The sound of the bar behind them was muffled.

"It's nice to see stars," she said, blinking up at the sky. Leaning back made her drunk body unsteady, but there were so many, like someone had just spilled a whole jar of them.

"Yeah, the sky gets a little claustrophobic when it rains all the time," Kisame agreed.

"No, I mean," Tori said, "my hometown barely had any stars. Too much light pollution."

"Every story you tell about your country is weird, yeah," Deidara told her. "What the hell is light pollution?"

Word about violent bar fights hadn't spread very quickly, apparently, as a bar further down the street did let them in. Hidan staggered in a few minutes later covered in blood, and they were asked politely to leave. Tori thought that if the group were just Hidan and Deidara, they might have used force to stay, but somehow the combined might of Kisame and Itachi herded them back out.

Kakuzu was outside, counting a wad of bills.

"Did you mug people at the bar?" Kisame asked, sounding bemused.

Kakuzu grunted.

Two policemen walked by, seemingly did not even see them, and continued on in a hurry. Itachi blinked after them, his eyes red.

(Genjutsu? Genjutsu.)

The group managed to move half a block further into town before they got into an argument about what to do next, and Tori ducked into an alley as soon as fists started flying. She leaned against the wall, examining the seal work she'd done on the inside of her shirt. The ink had bled a little bit, making the lines go all fuzzy, but it was surprisingly still intact.

Suddenly, someone grabbed her, and Tori yelped and swung her arm wildly. The person shifted slightly to dodge her flail, their hands still firmly on either side of her waist. With a grunt of effort, her assailant lifted her over their head.

"JOIN YOUR BRETHREN," Deidara cackled, raising her above a dumpster.

"WHAT THE HELL," she yelled back, planting one foot firmly on the lip of the dumpster. Deidara pressed her forward over it. She locked her knee.

"'M sending you home," Deidara said, pushing harder, "into the garbage, yeah."

"You're not funny," Tori retorted, managing to get her other foot on the dumpster's edge as well. She assumed this was some sort of joke and Deidara wasn't being serious about throwing her in the dumpster, as if he had been, she'd already be in its putrid embrace and also on fire. Still, he was pushing her awfully hard.

"I'm hilarious, yeah," he insisted. It occurred to Tori that part of the reason he was holding her so easily was that her body was naturally trying to balance in his hands. She jerked herself to the side and he dropped her.

" Ow ," she stressed at him from the ground.

"You're no fun," he pouted.

"You're not funny ," she repeated, because there wasn't much else to say. She'd slapped her hand down automatically to break her fall, and she'd succeeded in both hurting her wrist and re-opening the cut from the broken glass. Even if he was being nicer than normal tonight, Deidara was still a certified asshole.

"We're going to try drinking somewhere outside, yeah," Deidara said. He was rubbing his jaw, presumably from where someone had hit him.

"Buying from a store is much more cost effective," Kakzu was saying when they rejoined the group.

"But there are no hot girls if we go drinking in the woods," Hidan complained. He gestured at Tori and added, "All we've got is that."

Kisame wrinkled his nose. "I don't want to drink in the woods. Can't we go down to the river?"

The argument started again, and Tori swayed on her feet, eyes darting between yelling men as she debated going back to hide in the alley. Eventually, they decided whoever agreed to chip in the most on booze would decide where they went.

"Oh, wait," Tori said, and then reached her bleeding hand into her shirt and pulled out a bottle of amber liquid. A lot of smoke came out with it, because writing on one's shirt made a functional but not very good seal.

There was a very long silence in which she had enough time to pass the bottle to her other hand and pull out a bottle of sake.

"What the fuck, Tori," Deidara said, sounding delighted. "How much do you have in there?"

"So much," Tori replied, swaying. "Do I win?"

She made them take her to the town's haunted castle. She was just a touch tipsy, and she wanted to meet a ghost.

Notes:

Itachi: It would be really bad if Drunk Tori decided to give our (my) secrets to someone.
Drunk Tori: HERE ARE ALL MY OPINIONS ABOUT GRASS FACTS FROM A PORN NOVEL. JOHN SNOW-
Itachi: Hmm.
Itachi: Never mind.

It's been a while! I had some writing burnout for several months (except for a few brief stints where I very feverishly worked on other projects), and this was probably the most frustrating chapter to write yet, but this fic is not dead! I hope this relatively silly and meandering chapter appeases you, lol. It was meant to include them hanging out in a supposedly haunted castle, but I stopped here due to length. So the next chapter will cover that and therefore may or may not end up shorter than normal, depending on how long Castle Shenanigans go.

Plasticity now has a dedicated tag on my tumblr. I post updates, musings, and snippets (previews, cut text, silly dialogue) to the tag, and you do not need a tumblr account to view.

Don't microwave alcohol unless you wanna risk it exploding. It was not the smartest thing Tori has ever done.

Chapter 16: kore wa pen desu

Summary:

"You may live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension." -Nikola Tesla, but like, imagine this printed on the back of some booty shorts

In which there is a lot of fucking around and a little of finding out.

Notes:

Me, a liar: It'll be short! It'll be out soon! (takes an entire year to write the longest chapter yet)

Is this... technically... a Halloween chapter?!

Mild content warning for Tori referencing a... porn trope that's usually dubcon?

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Kayaba Castle was not as impressive as Tori had hoped. It sat in the middle of acres and acres of flat grass farms dotted with little houses and bales of hay. The building was less of a castle and more just a rather large house. The only thing that set the castle apart from the surrounding farm homes was that it was much bigger, that its roof was tiled rather than thatched, and that it was built on top of a man-made hill with a thin strip of forest along one side to block it off from its closest neighbors. A lake spread out at the base of the hill, its still waters pitch black in the night.

Tori thought the lake would have looked especially pretty on the night of a full moon. It reflected the half-moon and surrounding stars of that night perfectly, like looking at the entire galaxy spread out at their feet. The surface of the lake was only interrupted by some sort of raft sitting at its middle and a small dock jutting out into the water.

"This place doesn't look that haunted," Tori remarked, just a little disappointed. She'd wanted something spooky.

No one replied, as the Akatsuki fanned out, ignoring each other in favor of scoping out their new space. Next to her, Kisame stretched his huge form, then grinned down at her. His pointed teeth glinted in the moonlight in a way that Tori thought would be frightening if she didn't know him.

"Why don't you leave me the drinks before you go ghosthunting?" he asked.

There were a handful of dilapidated pieces of furniture by the edge of the lake, all wooden and half-rotten and clearly abandoned for a long time. Tori followed Kisame down to the lake shore and pulled the rest of her ill-begotten alcohol from her shirt, lining the bottles up on the single picnic table even as it groaned under the weight. In total there were twelve bottles plus the dart board, which Tori set aside.

"Oh good, we can all get alcohol poisoning, yeah," Deidara said, appearing behind Kisame and grabbing for one of six sake bottles.

Tori had been taking from a single shelf of the storage room, so they were six bottles of the same sake because the store room had been organized that way. The rest were a variety of hard liquors and liqueurs.

Hidan turned from inspecting the dock and then was suddenly next to Tori. Alcohol had dulled her reaction enough she didn't startle, but she was used to interacting with ninja in controlled, indoor spaces. They rarely just casually flash-stepped around inside.

"You didn't grab any mixers?" Hidan asked, reaching over her to take a bottle at random.

"No," Tori replied dryly. "God wants you to suffer, Hidan."

"This is supposed to be served cold, yeah," Deidara complained of his bottle of sake, turning it over in his hands.

"What are we supposed to drink out of?" Itachi, also spontaneously appearing, asked.

"This isn't very good whiskey," Kisame observed.

"Beggars can't be choosers! " Tori stressed, throwing up her hands. "Fuck you guys. I'm going to go find a ghost."

She grabbed a violently green bottle of melon liqueur for herself and stomped up the hill. The castle had a low stone wall around it, enclosing what was probably once a well-manicured stone garden and now just looked like a sad mess of weeds and gravel. Tori made it right to the edge of the circular gate in the garden wall before some sort of invisible force suddenly made all her hairs stand on end and somehow made gravity increase. It probably would have only disoriented Sober Tori, but as it were, she was knocked on her ass and dropped her drink.

"It's warded," Itachi told her, squatting down next to her. He picked up her bottle. "We should share this."

"What?" Tori said dumbly. Itachi opened the bottle and sniffed it. A ghost wall?

"Are you kidding me?" Deidara asked, having apparently followed them up the hill. "Are you telling me civilians think this stupid barrier is the work of a ghost?"

Ah, right, fuinjutsu existed out in the wild too.

"I don't think we know enough to conclude that," Itachi replied mildly. "We don't know how long the wards have been up compared to how long the ghost stories have existed."

"Gods, you're so full of yourself, yeah," Deidara sneered.

Itachi drank directly from Tori's bottle. She wished she'd spat in it first.

"I didn't say you were wrong," Itachi replied. "Just that you could be wrong."

It was unclear to Tori if Itachi was intentionally baiting Deidara or if this was just what his personality was like or both. Either way, Deidara ended up flopped down on the ground next to them, snapping at Itachi that he was a pedantic asshole.

Tori would have perhaps indulged in the fantasy of getting them to fight each other, except Deidara had put her squarely between himself and Itachi. She did not want to get in the way of him losing his temper.

"Here," she said, pulling out her pen. "You wanted that cold, right?"

Deidara paused in the middle of a mean quip, raising his eyebrows at her and letting her ease the sake bottle out of his hands. Tori chewed her lip as she turned it over in her hands, looking for a place on the label she could write.

The label was textured in a way that took ink easily and was easier to write on than her shirt had been, but the space was smaller and the lighting poorer. The seal was shitty, but also making things cold was the first seal Tori had ever learned. The bottle likely didn't go all the way down to four degrees celsius, but it got markedly cooler.

"Ta-da," Tori announced, passing the bottle back to Deidara. "Problem solved!"

Deidara stared at the bottle in his hands like Tori had just passed him one of Sasori's poisons.

"What?" Tori asked, and then Itachi was suddenly in her space, grabbing the pen out of her hands. His eyes were red.

"This is a pen," he said tightly. "You did that with a pen."

"Yeah…?" Tori said slowly.

"That shouldn't be possible." Itachi sounded ever so slightly stressed. He turned the pen over in his hands, staring down at it with his sharingan.

"Well, obviously it is; you're looking at it," Tori responded. "What are you freaking out about? Fuinjutsu has never needed inks and brushes."

Fuinjutsu was, at its core, just a set of instructions for moving chakra around. Specialized ink and brushes and paper were just, you know, traditional writing tools and easiest to work with both in terms of drawing and chakra conduction. She didn't think she could do anything complicated with a pen, especially since the blood inside was surely clotting and its chakra fading.

Itachi dismantled the pen, picking off the back of it just like she'd done to make it. Deidara watched in curious silence.

"You infused chakra," Itachi observed. "How? You can't mold chakra."

His tone, tight and controlled with only the smallest of affects, was vaguely accusatory, like Tori was keeping secrets. Which, to be fair, Tori was keeping a lot of secrets, but not about this.

"Blood," she said, opening and closing her injured hand at him. "How do you think I smuggled out half a bar?"

Itachi's lips thinned ever so slightly. Deidara seemed to be getting over his own confusion over… whatever they were confused about, and he smirked wickedly at Itachi.

"You didn't know she could do that," Deidara concluded smugly. "You thought Leader-sama was just letting her paint storage seals into her clothes for fun, yeah."

Tori, even drunk, thought it was rather obvious this was just what Deidara thought she'd done.

"Blood is considered an unstable chakra source," Itachi said, clearing expression from his face altogether and passing the pieces of the pen back to Tori. "I wasn't aware Tori could make working seals with it. I don't think Leader-sama realized either."

"Oh," Tori replied, blinking down at her dismantled pen. She hadn't… she'd been politely letting Obito infuse chakra for her because it was easier and safer, and the Akatsuki were going to have to use their own chakra eventually anyway, so she'd might as well streamline everything for a ninja's chakra. She'd thought they'd known she'd always had back-up options if she wanted to disobey Konan's ban from her practicing unsupervised.

(Which, to be clear: she hadn't disobeyed the ban because she liked being alive with all her limbs attached, thank you very much.)

Itachi, stretching out his legs in front of himself and eyeing her warily, had definitely watched her kill two ninja with fuinjutsu. Maybe Tori going rogue was… actually something even a shinobi might be worried about.

Tori started to put her pen back together. She probably shouldn't mention to him the number of Zetsu clones she'd exploded into horrible mixtures of blood and goop that smelled like boiled turnips.

"What, you thought I was helpless this whole time?" she asked, adding an affronted tone just for show.

Itachi took another swig from the liqueur bottle. "'Helpless' isn't the word I would use."

Deidara tilted his head back and cackled. Itachi did nothing to stop Tori from prying the melon liqueur out of his hands and taking her own sip. It tasted nothing at all like melon, and more like children's cough syrup.

"This is vile," she assessed, then took another drink.

"I like it," Itachi said.

"What would happen," Deidara asked, turning his sake bottle over in his hands, "if you used the seal on a person?"

"Nothing," Tori supplied. "Their innate chakra would fuck it up."

She mused for a bit out loud that she could, if she really wanted to, screw around with modifying it to work on a person's body and make some sort of… hypothermia seal? She didn't really see the point.

"I'm sure there are medical reasons to adjust human body temperature," Itachi said blandly.

"Also murder reasons, yeah." Deidara leaned in drunkenly, grinning meanly at her.

Itachi tilted his head. "Not everyone is so dedicated to creativity in murder."

Tori crab-walked backwards on all fours towards the castle gate before Deidara completely lost his shit on Itachi. She took the liqueur with her, balanced on her stomach. She couldn't believe that only recently she'd been working hard to get into a medical school. Now she was sitting around with murderous assholes and talking about the merits of giving people hypothermia.

Whatever, she thought. Ghost time!

The invisible barrier, now that she expected it, didn't knock her over. It still made her stumble a bit, and she scanned the wall for whatever was powering it. There was a piece of sealing paper stuck to the inner part of the gate, glowing ever so slightly in the night. Tori squinted at it.

"There's nine of them," Kakuzu said, suddenly appearing on the inside of the gate. "All identical."

"That's a lot," Tori said, taking two very careful steps forward. She swayed in place, eyeing the seal. The hairs on her arms stood straight up from a buzz of static that did not let up.

Tori did not think she was good enough to recognize any random piece of fuinjutsu shoved in front of her, but these were clearly meant to be a barrier, and she has very rapidly made herself somewhat of an expert in that topic. Not such an expert she could tease apart anything too obscure or complicated without a lot of time and references, but. Well.

Whoever made this was not very good. The brushstrokes were smooth and controlled, but the seal was just a tweaked version of one she'd seen dozens of times in basic fuinjutsu references. It was not very strong, easily broken, wore off within the day if not reapplied, and now that she had felt it herself, she wasn't sure why manuals recommend it for anything besides deterring civilians and animals from accidentally wandering in. Kakuzu, evidently, had simply walked through like a dog ignoring an electric fence. She thought any competent ninja with enough determination could break it, including any of the Akatsuki, and she felt a flash of confusion that Kakuzu hadn't done so himself.

"The seal's effects continue throughout the property," Kakuzu told her, crossing his arms and sounding deeply aggravated. "It's annoying and distracting. Get rid of it."

"You know," Tori said, picking at the scab in her palm again, "all this needs to be disrupted is a pulse of chakra. Any ninja could do it."

Kakuzu twitched. "Analyzing fuinjutsu and what needs to be done with it is your job. Go on."

Tori shrugged and slapped her hand– now bleeding again– over the paper, smearing blood across it. Using a lot of different seals for a barrier could either mean the barrier was really dangerous, or that the person trying to set it up just really sucked and needed more to cover their deficiencies. She supposed that for someone who didn't know how to tell the difference, or who maybe felt unconfident in their knowledge, just brute-forcing your way through a slightly uncomfortable barrier was less risky.

Tori smushed her hand into the paper a few times, and then an electrified zing made all her hair stand on end, and then… there was nothing. The night was still again.

Kakuzu disappeared without so much as a thanks.

Further down the hill, Deidara was staggering up to her, sake sloshing in his bottle.

"Yes!" he whooped. When he caught up to her, he slung his arm around her shoulders, and Tori tensed. "Let's find us a ghost, yeah!"

He dragged her, unsteady but friendly and yelling about ghosts, through the front garden of scraggly, overgrown plants. Tori found herself relaxing, leaning into Deidara as he related some Earth Country super superstition about how whistling at night could attract ghosts and other bad omens.

"Do it," Tori told him. "Whistle, then. I dare you."

Deidara stopped, right in front of the main door, and whistled. He wasn't very good at it, letting out three sad little tones.

Nothing happened. The castle continued to be frustratingly un-spooky.

"I thought you'd be better with your mouth," Tori drawled.

"Oh, shut up, yeah," Deidara replied, but there was no heat behind his words. He let go of her and pushed the heavy front door open. It wasn't even locked. "You try it then."

"It's just a superstition," Itachi said dully behind them. "Tori, we were sharing that."

He reached for the bottle of liqueur dangling from her hand, and Tori let him have it in favor of pushing under Deidara's arm to get into the castle first. Deidara elbowed her in the back of the shoulder harder than was probably necessary, but didn't actually stop her.

The interior of the castle was lit only by moonlight filtering in through the windows, and the front room was wide and filled with ominous shadows. What was left of the furniture was covered in thin white cloth that swayed ever so gently in a breeze from a window missing a pane. The castle was quiet except for the groan of floor boards under Tori's feet, and the whole place smelled distinctly of dust.

Tori's mind buzzed in anticipation. This was she was talking about!

They stood there in silence, just taking in this supposedly haunted place, and then Itachi sneezed.

"You are drunk?" Deidara demanded.

"No," Itachi answered immediately.

"Hey," Tori said, a faint note of hope in her voice. "I was thinking, just now. Are ghosts in this world, like, real?"

Both Itachi and Deidara stared at her.

"What?" Deidara asked, sounding like he couldn't decide if he wanted to laugh or not.

"Because you have a shinigami," Tori continued, completely serious even if they were making fun of her. "You can summon him and give him your soul, so you have souls and some sort of afterlife is real. And you can like–" she mimed putting her hand through a C formed by her other hand, as if it might clarify what she was saying– "put your chakra in things and then later a spirit or whatever comes out."

Itachi continued to stare at her, unblinking and nonplussed and possibly secretly drunk. Deidara squinted.

"I don't think that's real, yeah."

"It totally is!" Tori waved her arms. "I saw it." After a beat she added, just to credit herself, "In my future vision."

"Uh huh," Deidara agreed, unimpressed. "C'mon, I wanna see if there's anything interesting here before Kakuzu ransacks the place."

They did indeed find Kakuzu in a bedroom on the top floor of the castle, rifling through a dresser drawer by drawer. He was uninterested in talking to them beyond informing them that he'd laid claim to any valuables left in the castle.

There wasn't much of anything to look at, really, except seeing that rich people had giant bedrooms. Someone had come in and bothered to cover the furniture on the ground floor, but no such care was taken on the floors above. In one room they found a bed frame collapsed under a rotting straw mattress; in another they found a tray of molded-over silverware and a bowl and a plate, abandoned in the middle of a meal; in one room Itachi had to stop Tori from waltzing directly into a hole in the floor.

It was empty in a way that was more sad than spooky. Tori did not know much about Grass's history specifically, but Rain was supposedly covered in abandoned homes like this. When war hit, those that had the means to leave left, and those that stayed behind risked being driven out unwillingly or killed. All the noble families in Rain, including Mizukawa Asa's family, had vacated the country or been killed, and only Asa had come back to reclaim her birthright.

Grass had allied early on in the Second Shinobi War with some of the major countries, and therefore faired better overall than Rain. And yet, the castle was still empty.

The only really interesting thing they found was in a backroom of the ground floor. There were a few piles of ratty blankets on the floor, along with two travel packs and a meager number of personal items strewn around.

"Oh!" Deidara cried. He squatted in front of one of the packs, and a mean grin tugged at his lips. "What's this? Is someone living here?"

Itachi, swaying just slightly on his feet, toed what looked like someone's toiletry bag, lying next to one of the bundles of blankets. "I suppose we found the source of the wards."

"Distinctly not a ghost," Tori diagnosed, grabbing the pack that Deidara wasn't going through.

She wondered if the owners of what was clearly ninja gear were still actively camping here. If she'd been here by herself, the risk of them coming back would make her vacate the building immediately. Fortunately, she wasn't by herself, and she felt perfectly at ease rummaging through other people's things.

"But, okay," Deidara leaned back on his heels, a tin of instant coffee from the pack in his hand. "If ghosts were real, don't you think one of us would have seen one by now?" He waved vaguely at Itachi. "This guy would definitely be haunted by his sins, yeah."

Tori thought this was a good point. If ghosts were real, at least one vengeful Uchiha spirit would be floating around, ruining Itachi's life. It was just statistics.

(You know… discounting Obito.)

Itachi, for his part, ignored the conversation to loom over Deidara. "Are there snacks?"

"Are there–" Deidara started and then continued in a high-pitched, mocking tone that sounded nothing like Itachi: "Are there snacks? What are you, a child?"

Itachi blinked down at him.

"So you're not going to eat those chips?"

"Back off, Uchiha! Obviously I'm going to eat them, yeah!"

Tori's pack was more "useful tools" than food, and so she dug out two flashlights and carefully balanced them on the floor between them to give them more light. Deidara eventually let Itachi and then Tori dig through the food bag, and then they sat there in the half-lit room, eating some random ninja's abandoned snacks.

"Deidara," Tori started, "did I tell you about grass facts?"

She started with the fact that apparently if baled incorrectly, hay was at risk for spontaneous combustion. That Kenta guy had not elaborated on the science behind this, and Tori wanted to pick Deidara's brain on his theories for it. Somehow, she found herself listing increasingly unexciting facts about alfalfa.

"Wait," she said, cutting herself off. Why the hell was she still talking about grass? "Itachi, did you genjutsu me again?"

Itachi chewed and swallowed a potato chip.

"I'm testing how much of a liability you are," he said. "You have a lot of important information to the Akatsuki, you have no relevant training, and you enjoy running your mouth. It's a dangerous combination to let out of the hideout."

Tori scowled at him. Deidara's eyes flitted between them, eager to see how this confrontation was going.

Tori knew Itachi didn't trust her– Obito had reported he'd advocated for killing her over what she knew, even if Itachi never acted violently towards her or anyone else. She knew he had more personally at stake than anyone else if she did go around blabbing Akatsuki-related secrets, because Itachi's insane Sasuke-themed plans involved certain aspects of his life staying very secret. However.

"Itachi," Tori said, very seriously. She reached forward and put on hand on his in a comforting gesture, which seemed like a natural thing to do now that she was a little drunk. "I'm not going to reveal any of your secrets, because I do not give one single shit about them. I give a shit about ghosts."

Deidara let out a loud guffaw. Itachi slowly withdrew his hand.

"Thank you," he said, because he too was drunk. "I too would prefer not giving a single shit about you."

With that settled, they lapsed into a comfortable silence. The room was sort of pleasant, softly lit by flashlight and a bag full of snacks. Definitely no ghosts.

"What if we made a ghost?" Tori offered eventually. "Empirical testing."

"What, like kill someone and then see if a spirit comes out?" Deidara asked through a mouthful of chips. He said this with the bland attention of someone discussing ideas for a band name.

"No," Tori answered, wiping dust from her weird crab-flavored crackers on the floor and then reaching for the ninja pack to dig through it more. Her stomach was starting to hurt a little, likely from Sasori's poison, but… meh. She'd be fine. "I think you could just seal someone's chakra into something and then– I don't know– let it back out?"

Itachi had taken a travel mug out from the ninja pack and was currently sanitizing it with isopropanol from his medical kit, his face screwed up in deep concentration.

Oh my god, he isdrunk, Tori thought.

"I think you could use a bijuu seal to shove someone's 'soul' into a lamp," Tori concluded.

"Huh," Deidara said, opening a second bag of chips. "You jumped right from snacks to fucked-up murder. I love it, yeah. Who are we killing?"

"I'm not sure that counts as killing," Itachi said, sniffing his newly cleaned cup.

"The body would be dead, wouldn't it?" Deidara snapped back.

"Sure," Itachi said, now carefully pouring liqueur into the cup without so much as looking up at Deidara. "And yet Sasori lives."

Tori was pretty sure, if they were getting technical, Sasori had simply reduced himself to a sad flesh chunk that was indeed technically still alive. She opened her mouth to tell Itachi as much, had a vision of Sasori peeling her like a banana for revealing secrets, and instead went with:

"Are you volunteering, then?"

She leaned forward on her arm, putting on her silkiest Orochimaru voice, and then waggled her eyebrows. Itachi's lips thinned ever so slightly.

"I bet Danna could puppet a lamp if you trapped his soul in one, yeah," Deidara said thoughtfully, ignoring whatever was going on in front of him.

Deidara went on for a bit about what he thought Sasori might do if tramped indefinitely in a lamp as a malignant spirit, and Tori bit her tongue to prevent herself from asking for everyone's opinion on what would happen if they carved out one of Kakuzu's hearts and used that chakra to make a ghost. Would they get a Kakuzu-ghost or a ghost of the guy whose heart he stole? Didn't matter! Tori was too drunk to remember if anyone knew Kakuzu was made of tentacles and stolen organs, and she wasn't going to give him another reason to murder her.

Instead what eventually came out of her was: "I bet Hidan would volunteer."

She had also found, in a side pocket of the travel pack, the sealing ink and paper that whatever ninja had been camping out here had used to make the barrier.

"No," Itachi said flatly, eyeing the things now in her hands.

"Why not?" Tori asked, pouting. "If anyone's going to live through it, it'd be Hidan."

"Great," Deidara said, tossing aside his empty chip bag and stretching his arms over his head. "Tori, I'm voting you least likely to murder someone on purpose, but also most likely to accidentally murder an immortal, yeah."

"What kind of a ranking is that?" Tori asked.

"It's two separate rankings, yeah," Deidara informed her with the air of someone very confidently making things up on the spot. "For example, Danna is extremely likely to murder someone on purpose, but he's not ever going to murder someone on accident."

"Contrasted to your body count being largely the by-product of careless art," Itachi said lazily.

An argument broke out– well, it was more Deidara yelling at Itachi and then nearly falling over from a failed attempt to drunkenly kick him in the head, while Itachi made very quiet and calm but also very mean replies. Tori took it upon herself to gather up their discarded trash and arrange it neatly in a pile of one of the blankets. Then she slung the 'useful tools' pack over her shoulder and grabbed one of the flashlights.

"Okay!" she announced, standing. "Now we have to look at the murder basement!"

It was a testament to how engrained she'd become in the group that Deidara, rather than ignore her in favor of continuing to yell at Itachi, took a break from his rant about how his art was always with purpose, to glare at her and ask, "What fucking murder basement?"

"There were stairs down, weren't there?" Tori asked. "Aren't ghosts most likely to be in the basement?"

"...because that's where the murders would be?" Deidara repeated, high voice getting louder at the end, like he thought Tori's train of thought was both very stupid and also very enteratining.

"Where else would you murder someone in your home?" Tori asked. "The bedroom? Come on."

"If we're operating on the theory I am most likely to be haunted," Itachi said, getting to his feet with just slightly less grace than usual, "then yes, I think the bedroom."

Tori gawked at him, feeling as if she'd very firmly put her foot in her own mouth. Deidara broke the silence by bursting into hyena-like laughter.

"Alright," he said, propelling himself to his feet also with much less grace than normal. "Let's make it an experiment, yeah? Ghosts weren't in the bedroom– will they be in the basement?"

The stairs downward, which Tori had spotted in the kitchen, led to what looked like a food cellar. The floor was packed dirt, and rows of what were probably once dried meats and vegetables hung from the rafters, although most were shriveled beyond recognition and some animal had been chewing on them. Likewise, a sack of rice almost as big as Tori had been burst at its seam, leaving grains strewn about the ground.

It was just as boring as the castle proper, with more of a stale mildew smell.

"Not a murder basement," Tori said in disappointment.

"What does it mean," Deidara drawled, jabbing Tori in the side with his elbow, "if your experiment gets negative results?"

"It's just a design flaw," Tori countered. "If we really wanted to test it, we'd have to murder someone in every room and track how many became ghosts."

In the light of the flashlight, Deidara's lips quirked upwards. "What if some are just more vengeful than others?"

"I'm sure we could figure out a way to induce even vengefulness across subjects," Tori replied. Then as a joke she tilted the flashlight under her chin and added in her spookiest voice, "That's what they teach us to do in Oto."

The door above them creaked, and Kakuzu stood in the doorway, blocking what little light came from the kitchen.

"Is there anything down here?" he asked.

"Rotting food," Itachi answered dryly.

"We found non-rotting food, yeah!" Deidara called back, holding up the other backpack.

Kakuzu was not impressed. He'd even tried pulling some paneling off the walls to see if there was wiring with valuable metals, but the best thing he'd found was a designer tea cup that might be valuable if it weren't cracked, and a literal silver spoon that had gotten lost behind the stove.

"The whole country is filled with useless buildings like this," Kakuzu said darkly as Tori fumbled her way up the stairs, followed by Deidara and Itachi. In frustration, he put a fist through the wall, and Tori's foot slipped on a step.

"Don't you dare fall on me, yeah!" Deidara snapped, shoving her back into her feet.

With the castle a bust and Kakuzu having gained a dark aura about himself, they headed back out to the front garden. Tori put a wide distance between herself and Kakuzu.

At the garden gate, Hidan and Sasori were engaged very intently in conversation. As they approached, Hidan beamed up at Kakuzu in what was nearly child-like glee.

"Oi, Kakuzu!" he called. "Sasori said he could take all my skin off in one piece!"

Kakuzu snarled wordlessly and unnecessarily shoved Itachi to the side to stomp over to his partner to intervene.

"Do you think if you grafted Hidan's skin onto someone else–" Tori started, but Itachi put both hands on her shoulders and spun her around to face the lake.

"Don't," he commanded, voice very firm. "Focus on whatever useless thing Deidara wanted you to do."

"HEY–!"

They stumbled back down to the lake, where Kisame was sitting cross-legged on the surface of the water in the shallows. He had his head tilted back to look at the stars, and had creatively cooled off his own bottle of sake by sticking it in the water. The neck poked out of the surface next to him.

Deidara kicked Itachi, who melted into several crows that weren't quite loud enough to drown out Deidara's swearing. Tori decided she didn't want to have anything to do with this developing situation, and propelled herself toward the table of booze.

The dart board was still there. Nice. She moved it aside to make room on the table, setting the sealing supplies she'd stolen out in front of her. These included several very small bottles of ink, two brushes, and an assortment of papers in varying sizes. Behind her, she could hear the ongoing argument between Itachi and Deidara, now with Kisame's input, and she half-paid attention to it while she picked the scab off her palm and did her best to get blood into one of the jars of ink.

It was dark and she'd been drinking and blood got…. Everywhere. It was fine.

Tori drew one of the cooling seals directly on the moldy wood of the table and then shoved all the alcohol onto it. Behind her, Kisame's efforts to organize a "formal spar" to replace the argument had collapsed into him suggesting Deidara make a bonfire for them if he wanted an artistic outlet, and Deidara had stomped off muttering.

"Are you drunk?" Kisame asked Itachi, sounding resigned. "Your cheeks are pink."

"No enzyme!" Tori found herself yelling. "He doesn't have the enzyme! Lightweight!"

Itachi simply swayed slightly in place.

"I can still operate normally," he said.

"Aldy… aldeyhyde…" Tori stuttered out. She totally knew this one. Hold on.

Kisame pinched the bridge of his nose. To Itachi he said, "You don't need to demonstrate you can still do genjutsu. Stop that."

"Aldehyde dehydrogenase," Tori finally managed to pronounce. "You don't have it."

"It's rude to diagnose people when you have no medical expertise," Itachi told her.

The rest of the Akatsuki reappeared, Deidara and Hidan dragging furniture behind them. They both gleefully broke down two side tables, and assortment and a chest of drawers in an impressive display of physicality. Deidara set the pile of splintering wood on fire and then went back up to the castle to drag down a mouth-eaten couch.

"Why is there blood all over the booze?" Hidan asked once the bonfire was going. He stood at the table, examining the bottles that now almost all bore at least one of Tori's bloody handprints.

"I made it cold," Tori said.

Hidan accepted this answer at face value, grabbing a new bottle. There had been a tin of canned peaches in the bag of food they found, and Hidan poured liquor directly into the can, presumably to use the syrup as a mixer in possibly the worst cocktail anyone had ever made in the history of cocktails.

"Can you heat things too?" Hidan asked through a mouthful of peaches.

"The difference between a heating seal and a cooling seal is really interesting," Tori started.

"I don't care," Hidan replied before she could talk about how a cooling seal was essentially draining energy out of a system and could therefore sustain itself by recycling that energy for longer than could a heating seal, which was adding energy into a system. "I want ramen."

(Deidara had deemed the couch too gross to actually sit on, and he was busily prying off pieces to feed to the fire.)

There was a single styrofoam cup of instant noodles in the food bag, and Tori plopped down on the ground next to Kisame by the bonfire. She very carefully drew a seal on the cup to see if she could heat it to one hundred degrees celsius for boiling water.

It caught fire.

"Fuck," Tori yelped, tossing the flaming cup away from her. Since she'd been using the light of the bonfire, it ended up in the fire proper. "Oh, hell–"

"What are you doing?" Kisame asked while Hidan laughed hysterically at her. Tori had grabbed a stick and was kneeling next to the fire, trying to pull the quickly melting cup out of it. "Just let it burn."

"It's styrofoam," Tori said, flipping the cup out of the fire and then stomping on its blackened carcass. "Burning it is horrible for the environment."

Kisame still looked perplexed.

"Have you not reached the 'destruction of the environment' part of human technological progress?" Tori asked dully.

"Melted styrofoam is awesome though," Deidara cut in, having been pulled out of a conversation with Sasori by Hidan's guffaws. He picked up the blackened cup, spilling the dregs of burnt dry ramen across the grass. "Danna, here's proof even styrofoam doesn't last forever, yeah!"

He threw it at him. Sasori snatched it out of the air, crumpling it in his hand and glaring at Deidara.

"As immature in action as you are with your artistic theories," Sasori sneered.

"Styrofoam does last forever, even if you burn it," Tori said, watching in resignation as Sasori tossed it into the fire anyway. "You're just breaking it down into environmental toxins."

"Why do you care about one cup?" Sasori sniffed.

It was obviously meant to be a rhetorical question criticizing her for making a big deal out of something they all saw as inconsequential, and Tori felt her face settle into a sour expression.

"You people have no sense of environmental stewardship," Tori complained. "Just you wait, soon you'll have an island of trash bigger than Rain country in your ocean, just like we do. And don't even get me started on the hole in the sky–"

"That can't be real," Deidara accused her. "Of all the shit you've said, that's the most fake sounding thing yet."

"I think," Hidan said, a lazy smirk spreading across his face, "she's just mad about disgracing her Cup Noodle family legacy."

Both Hidan and Deidara laughed at that, and Tori rolled her eyes and retreated back to the table. Itachi had kidnapped her liqueur, and she refused to sober up under these conditions. There was a sour apple liqueur the same brand as the melon one, and she pulled it toward herself as she sat at the table, right in front of the dart board and facing the lake.

It tasted almost exactly the same as the melon liqueur, all artificial sweetness and vaguely fruity. Gross.

The table creaked as Sasori sat next to her. "There's blood on your face," he sneered at her. "It's in your hair. You're disgusting."

"Oh, like you've never been covered in blood," Tori answered testily. "First you poison me, then you criticize–"

He cut her off. "Has your stomach started hurting yet?"

Tori's pursed her lips, flipping the dart board over to examine its back side.

"You sound exactly like Kabuto," she told him. "'Oh, are the drugs I didn't explain to you taking effect yet?' Next you'll be acting like it's my fault if I puke on your sandals."

Sasori twitched. "You agreed," he said.

Which… was kind of true? He hadn't exactly asked, but he was also perfectly capable of poisoning her without obviously handling her drink in front of her and then waiting for her to drink it. Perhaps this was Sasori's deeply fucked up version of asking for consent. Maybe he did respect her, just a little bit.

Obviously this theory required further testing.

Tori stuck her nose in the air and, deliberately to be aggravating, said, "You wouldn't even give me a dosage curve. Didn't even ask for my height and weight."

Sasori rolled his eyes. "I already know."

Tori paused. "Wait, how?"

She pestered him, noting out of the corner of her eye as Kisame literally tugged Itachi's ponytail to drag him away from Deidara trying and failing to physically push Hidan, currently in a power stance with his shirt tied around his head, into the bonfire. They were… they were drunk. All of them. Holy shit.

"My stomach does hurt a little bit," Tori finally admitted as Kisame dragged his partner back toward their table.

"I don't think Tori's stomach is normal," Itachi observed, "based on what she eats."

Kisame pushed him down into a seat. "Alcohol really turns off your filter, huh?"

"No," Itachi replied. He swayed in his seat, cheeks pink. "I am simply feeling talkative."

I can't believe you accused me of running my mouth when you're the same, Tori thought. Then again, Tori etting chatty meant her telling you everything she knew on a topic, which probably seemed like a potential for information leaking, and Itachi just… got really mean.

Tori pointed at her seal. "I made all the drinks cold."

Kisame turned to the cluster of bottles, touching one experimentally. It was humid enough that the bottles had begun to gather condensation.

"Why is there blood on them?" he asked, just a tad more concerned than Hidan had been. Kisame did not, after all, have a god to protect him from bloodborne pathogens.

"Tori can use blood for sealing," Itachi answered dully. He turned to Sasori and said, "Did you know?"

Sasori sniffed. "Figures. She made a storage seal with yogurt. Why wouldn't she be able to do this?"

"Yogurt?" Itachi repeated.

"That reminds me!" Tori exclaimed, slamming both hands down on the table hard enough to make the bottles rattle. Pain shot through the arm of her injured hand. "Sasori, I wanted to talk to you about different types of chakra in seals."

"I really, really don't want to hear you yell about yogurt again," Kisame said, picking up the bottle of low-quality whiskey he'd insulted earlier.

"No, because," Tori made a vague hand gesture in the air loose and wide enough Itachi had to lean away to prevent her from smacking him in the face, "I have most of the bijuu seals done, but also like, you guys have to make it work."

Or, well: she had a pretty good stasis seal, and about fourteen different versions of a chakra-siphoning-and-sealing technique she needed to either pick to streamline or reconcile, and she still didn't know how she was going to crack a jinchuuriki seal open.

Sasori eyed her up and down. "And you want my input about what, exactly?"

Tori had encountered a new problem while attempting to churn out seals even Tobi couldn't fuck up. The best way to eliminate user error from seals was to make them more complex, to prevent someone from accidentally pumping the wrong amount of chakra into it, or trying to fluctuate their chakra the wrong way, or adding elemental chakra. The trade-off was that the more complex a seal became, the more chakra-intense it became, because the transfer of chakra across components almost always lost energy even when drawn perfectly, the exception being completely self-sustaining seals, which were supposed to be so difficult and rare Tori barely had any literature on them.

To make up for this, most fuinjutsu users relied at least in part in manipulating their own chakra throughout the seal, fluctuating it manually rather than let the seal do all the work. Tori, of course, couldn't do shit with chakra without fuinjutsu, and so none of her seals required user manipulation of chakra within them.

Tori could make something incredibly complex and chakra-inefficient on a small-scale, which was user-idiocy-proof enough that even Obito trying his hardest couldn't ruin it. The issue was they'd needed to scale it up by a lot to make it practical for sealing a bijuu, and therefore would need a lot of chakra.

She explained this in as much detail as she could, waving her arms as she went. She knew Sasori was supposed to be the one most versed in fuinjutsu, so he probably didn't need every part of the conundrum explained, but also…

She did like talking about her interests.

"See," Itachi said to Kiasme, "she gets talkative with alcohol too."

"Shut the fuck up, Itachi," Tori snapped at him, this time purposefully swatting at his face. Itachi simply leaned away again, without even a blink. Turning back to Sasori, Tori concluded, "Basically, I have no sense of scale. I don't have the slightest idea how much chakra a normal jutsu uses. I think I could jerry-rig it to use the bijuu chakra to help power it, but then your chances of everything literally blowing up go way up."

"I don't think requiring a lot of chakra will be an issue for this group," Sasori said, his eyes briefly darting over to Kisame, who flashed his teeth at them. "However, I do find it concerning that it turns out you don't even know the basics of using a jutsu. How did you learn anything without knowing that?"

"Uh," Tori replied. "Trial by fire…?"

She pulled out an ink jar and a brush they'd found in the castle. Kisame changed the subject by asking Sasori if he'd gotten any leads on some of the more elusive bijuu, a responsibility he shared with Zetsu. This somehow transitioned to Sasori griping about Gaara becoming Kazekage.

His main complaint was that getting to someone who had the security detail of both a jinchuriki and a Kage would be annoying. His secondary complaint was that Gaara was a child.

"Giving the title to the most powerful fighter with no regard for wisdom is how Suna picked Rasa, and he was a fool," Sasori said.

"Yes, too bad someone murdered the Third," Itachi said in a perfect deadpan. Sasori twitched ever so slightly, and Tori let out a barking laugh.

Sasori shot her a look, then glanced down at where she'd been drawing random radicals and notes into the wood of the table in ink.

"What are you doing, anyway?" he said. "Did you open your wound again? It's going to scar, and then you'll be uglier than ever."

"Wow, rude," she replied, even as he grabbed her wrist and pulled her fingers back. He wasn't rough enough to make her fingers themselves more than uncomfortable, but the movement tugged painfully at the skin of her cut. "Actually, I'm going to make a seal and then see how it does with one of you activating it, as a test."

Itachi leaned forward to peer at her notes. "Because Tobi is not an adequate test subject?" he asked.

"Absolutely not," she replied.

"Is this your stupid accuracy seal?" Sasori asked, now poking blue chakra into her hand. Unlike medical chakra, it stung, and her fingers twitched.

"It'll be similar to the bijuu sealing seal," Tori answered, eyes on Sasori's hands. "What are you doing?"

"I'm fixing your hand," Sasori replied. "You already have a hideous scar on your neck, and I won't be able to stand looking at you if you get uglier."

"How nice," Kisame drawled. "What, exactly, are you doing with the bijuu seal and a dart board?"

"I'm going to make it so a dart hits the bullseye every time," Tori answered. "It's basically the same thing."

Kisame's eyebrows shot up. "It's not."

"No– see–"

Deidara wandered over to them, now with scorch marks in his pants and a sloppy grin across his face.

"Hidan and Kakuzu went to hunt down some meat," he said, sitting next to Kisame. "Hey, are you making a ghost?"

Tori opened her mouth, closed it, and spread a hand over the back of the dart board. "Sealing a bijuu, making something hit a target, and sealing a human soul are all basically the same thing–" she started.

"They're really not," Itachi told her.

"Let's play a game," Deidara proposed before Tori could argue. "Would you rather listen to Tori explain literally anything for an hour, or listen to Hidan explain Jashin for an hour?"

"Would you rather listen to Deidara explain his art for an hour," Tori shot back, "or listen to Sasori explain– OW!"

Sasori had squeezed her wrist so tightly she'd felt the bones shift. She glared at his offending hand, but also, her cut already looked better from his efforts. So maybe she would not antagonize him.

(Kisame looked her dead in the eyes, grinned, and picked Hidan. Traitor.)

Sasori released her hand, and Tori experimentally opened and closed it. It was tender, but she couldn't see any visible evidence she'd injured it at all.

"Thanks," she said. Sasori just turned back to the conversation at the table, seemingly losing interest in her.

They traded would you rathers for a while (or, rather, Deidara and Kisame did while Itachi made increasingly bizarre commentary and Sasori made increasingly cranky criticisms), and Tori listened with half an ear. She hovered her brush over the backside of the dart board, debating how she wanted to do this.

The chakra-siphoning technique she'd been working on to seal bijuu should… probably be able to guide a physical object to a set mark. The version of the technique she was currently leaning towards was a pair of seals, one to identify a body and a matching one to draw chakra from it, but it had started the design process as one seal that pulled at a specific chakra, set within the parameters of the seal. She thought that, if she were a proper ninja who could mold her own chakra, she could coat a dart with her own chakra, and then have a seal on the target board that would guide her chakra to it. The object holding the chaka could theoretically get dragged along with it.

If she had access to more resources on fuinjutsu, she thought maybe she could modify the seal itself to attract objects of a certain specification instead of chakra– a specific material or size, or projectiles moving at a certain speed. There was definitely literature on such subjects, usually scattered throughout readings on making traps that Tori had not paid enough attention to remember off the top of her head. But moving chakra around was definitely something she could… well, that she could theoretically do while sitting around in the middle of nowhere with no other resource than her own slightly inebriated brain.

She had, after all, been spending the last weeks driving herself crazy making different design tweaks, and she was itching to test some of them.

So… how to mark a specific object with specific chakra…? Bleeding all over something seemed like a bad idea…

("So?" Deidara prompted Kisame. "Where do you rank?"

"I don't usually kill people on accident," Kisame said.

"You drowned a whole family last month," Itachi said, sounding bored. "Remember? You flooded their farm."

"Oh yeah. Bummer.")

Hidan solved her problem in his usual Hidan way, by being the most obnoxious person in the immediate vicinity. He snuck up behind her, pulled the collar of her shirt back, and dropped a live animal down it.

"Are you five?" Tori yelled, on her feet with the thing in her hands before its squirming body had time to make its way out of her shirt. It was… squishy.

Hidan laughed in her face, even as she stared down at the frog now clutched in her hands. Its fat little body dipped under her fingers, its limbs twitching. Tori stared down at it thoughtfully.

When she didn't freak out over the frog, Hidan's joy faded from his face and he stepped up into her personal bubble and threatened to open its guts over her head. Tori felt her upper lip curl back into an ugly snarl her parents had made fun of when she was younger.

Now, she was just annoyed and drunk and brasher than was smart.

"Do it," Tori snarled back, shoving the frog into his chest. "Go on! I want you to!"

"Ugh," Hidan replied, slouching away from her like she'd offended him. "It's not fun if you're into it."

He wandered back towards the bonfire, where Kakuzu was currently disemboweling a deer, tossing its innards into the fire. The smoke smelled like meat.

Tori turned back to the table to find no one had been interested in her and Hidan yelling at each other at all. The frog was still in her hand, cold and soft and just a little slimy. She stared down at it, and it stared back with wide eyes. She could feel its heartbeat in her hands.

Oh no, I've imprinted on it, Tori thought. Now she'd feel bad if she killed it.

"Can I borrow a senbon?" she asked Sasori as she took her seat again.

"Are you going to do something stupid with it?" he asked snidely.

Tori looked him dead in the eyes and replied, "Yes."

He rolled his eyes at her, but a bundle of senbon were dropped in front of her nonetheless.

Tori pinned the frog down by its feet. This was undoubtedly cruel, but she'd release it eventually, and it would probably be fine if not a little traumatized. Animals had survived worse. Besides, frogs could regenerate stuff. Or… at least, she'd once read a paper on how African clawed frogs could do some sort of tissue regeneration.

She poked the frog's fat belly with a senbon enough for a tiny bubble of blood to well up and dabbed a brush directly into it. She only needed a little to tell the seal what to recognize. The frog would be fine. It could regenerate.

Ah, wait, maybe it was only tadpoles that could regenerate…

(Deidara and Kisame were currently arguing over if Itachi or Sasori should rank higher in "kills people on purpose." The exact parameters of this ranking were unclear. Itachi was not engaging with the conversation except to make the claim that he'd never hit someone with friendly fire, which Sasori immediately called bullshit on.

"It's a literal giant fireball," Sasori hissed. "Either you're not using it as often as you claim, or you've hit someone you didn't mean to with."

Itachi blinked placidly back at him. "Are you so sure of this fact because you've done this, Sasori?")

If any of the Akatsuki thought it was strange she'd decided to torture a frog, they didn't comment on it. When Tori was satisfied with her work, she stood at the table and presented the dart board in Deidara's general direction. Or, well, she meant to offer it to Deidara because he'd been part of the planning process, but she ended up proffering it to the space between Deidara and Kisame.

Kisame took it politely.

"Thank you?" he said, clearly confused.

"I need you to activate that," she said, "for the test."

"Oh…" Kisame looked much more dubious of the board now.

To his credit, he did amiably stand and step away from the table, smiling at Tori with a sense of bewildered doubt as he went. This was good enough for her, and she turned back to her captive frog while Kisame flipped the board around and examined it. The frog had died, possibly from stress and being stabbed, or possibly because Sasori had given her poisoned senbon. Both options seemed equally likely.

I don't know what I expected, Tori thought, unpinning the frog corpse. She felt bad, but bodies retained chakra for hours after they died. The experiment was still fine.

"I think I activated it," Kisame said. "What exactly–"

Tori threw the frog at him.

It was not a very good throw, and the frog body sailed much further to the right than any sober person would manage. Kisame was holding the dart board in front of him like a tray rather than face-out like a proper target, which is also something a sober Tori might have requested.

The frog changed direction mid-air, and all the ninja visibly tensed. Kisame actually tossed the dart board away from himself like it was electrified, and the frog sailed after it, smacked into the board midair, and then both objects thudded quietly into the grass.

There was a long silence.

"Huh," said Kisame.

"Success!" Tori whooped, throwing her hands in the air.

"I think you've proven some sort of point," Itachi observed calmly, swaying in his seat, "but I'm not sure what it is. Congratulations on a pointless achievement, Tori."

"I want to see how universal it is," Tori said, pushing herself away from the table. If the seal worked on all sorts of animals and people, maybe it truly was universal, and she wouldn't need some convoluted plan to fake demon chakra. Then again, bacteria chakra seemed to not work as well in seals made for human chakra, and who was to say demon chakra was more similar to humans than frog chakra? Weren't they from the moon or something like that?

"Fish insulin is only fifty percent effective in humans," Tori said, and then took two steps forward and realized that in the past few hours, she'd somehow become significantly more drunk than she'd realized. "Someone catch me more frogs."

First she'd try other frogs to see if it was species-specific, and then… and then…

"What are you talking about?" Kisame asked as she staggered forward in the vague direction of the lake, and no one made any move to help her catch more frogs.

Tori sort of… walked off the pier and found herself abruptly submerged in cold water. She flipped herself around and kicked a bit in an attempt to stand up, but the floor of the lake was soft silt that only threatened to swallow her sandals. She resigned herself to floating, her sandals strangely buoyant and pulling her feet upward.

Kisame had had the right idea earlier, she thought, floating on her back with her face to the sky. The moon and the stars were very pretty. Behind her, she could hear the vague chatter of people talking.

The night sky on the lake's surface was so pretty, in fact, that Tori felt the urge to swim out further, into the black expanse of the lake. Her head swimming from the effects of alcohol, she rolled herself over and started at an unsteady doggy paddle over to the raft floating in the middle of the lake.

Tori was a rather strong swimmer for someone with no appreciable athletic talent, and it didn't take her long to get to the raft. It looked like it had once been a platform to maybe fish or relax upon, but it had long decayed and somehow become partially submerged. The water over the submerged platform was warmer, and absolutely teaming with tadpoles.

Ah, yes, Tori thought as she remembered what exactly she'd walked into the lake for. Frogs. Yes. She grabbed for a handful of tiny black tadpoles, and they all swam away.

"Boo," Tori muttered, then pulled herself up onto the raft and laid on her back to stare up at the sky some more.

She stayed like that for what felt like a very long time, and then suddenly the raft was flipped over and a hand was holding her head underwater. Tori panicked for a few seconds and swallowed some gross lake water, but the hand wasn't actually gripping her or her hair, so she simply swam down and then away, just like a frog.

"Fuck, you can swim," Hidan said when she resurfaced.

Tori coughed lamely, treading water to stay in place. Hidan was squatting on the surface of the water, watching her curiously. His jacket and shirt were long gone, and his Jashinist pendant looked dark against his pale skin.

"Of course I can swim," she answered once she was done coughing. The temptation to try and grab one of Hidan's feet and drag him down was high. "Don't tell me you all let me walk into a lake thinking I couldn't."

Hidan's teeth flashed in the moonlight as he grinned at her.

"Assholes." Tori heaved herself back onto the raft. The wood was slimy with algae under her hands. Her wet blouse was heavy and cold on her skin, and Tori pulled the fabric away from the skin of her arm. Well, if Hidan didn't want to wear a shirt…

Tori peeled her blouse off and tossed it away from herself with a heavy splash. She'd ruined it with blood anyway, and her sports bra was hardly anything for anyone to get too excited about.

Hidan didn't say anything or move to try drowning her again, just cracked his neck and tilted his head back to stare up at the moon himself. It was kind of weird for Hidan to purposefully stay in her company without the goal of physically tormenting her, and it was novel to see him calm. He'd come out to see if she'd be easy to drown and got distracted by the view, she supposed.

Tori watched him, sitting cross-legged in several inches of slimy lake water, and the tadpoles slowly wiggled their way back onto the raft. There were two different types– little black tadpoles not any bigger than her thumbnail, and larger gray ones that reminded her of the bullfrog tadpoles she used to catch as a kid.

"Hey," Tori said after a moment, watching as tadpoles slowly dared to get closer and closer to her still legs. "What does Jashinism teach about ghosts?"

Hidan turned his face to stare at her, eyebrows raised. "What's with you and ghosts?" he asked.

"Ghosts are cool," Tori said, slowly scooping her hands under a mass of tadpoles. My children, she thought.

Hidan watched her for a few seconds, and Tori slapped her hands closed around the tadpoles. Water splashed around her hands, and all but two of the little black tadpoles slipped through her fingers. Tori did her best to shove her captive tadpoles into the pocket at the hem of her leggings.

Oh right, she'd stuck a tube of lipstick in there earlier. Well, that was certainly ruined.

"First of all," Hidan started, raising from his crouch to his full height, "Jashin doesn't deal in souls or death. Other gods rule over that. Jashin is all about the experience, about living–"

"Living in torment?" Tori asked, turning her attention to tadpoles gathered at the other end of the raft.

"Life is suffering," Hidan replied, then took several paces toward her, so he could stand over her and lecture her on how pain was the one unifying human experience.

His ideas and Pein's goals are oddly aligned, Tori thought, watching mournfully as Hidan scared the tadpoles away.

"So if Jashin isn't in charge of death," Tori interrupted when it was clear that Hidan was just going to list his favorite types of corporeal pain indefinitely, "why are you immortal?"

Hidan looked affronted she'd interrupted him for a moment, then dropped back into a squat beside her, his lips tugged up in a knowing smile.

"Because Jashin chose me," he said. "Unlike you assholes, I belong to him, and no other god."

"Huh," Tori replied. After a beat she said, "Jashin's specialist boy."

Hidan splashed her, and the last of the tadpoles disappeared into the depths of the lake. Tori stared down into the dark water for what had to be a full minute, her inebriated brain processing the sudden disappearance of the tadpoles.

"Hey," she said, craning her neck to peer up at Hidan. "If you're Jashin's specialist boy, why'd you try to summon a shinigami?"

Hidan kicked more water at her, guaranteeing a further absence of tadpoles. "Just because I'm Jashin's chosen doesn't mean I don't live in a world with other gods," he said. "Ninja summon the shinigami to spread suffering all the time, or at least that's what that Haruaki bastard said–"

Tori listened to Hidan rant, his words washing over her without much actual comprehension on her part. Tori had always kind of assumed Jashin was the one and only god in Hidan's religion, but in hindsight she had very little to support this beyond the assumptions made by someone growing up with very Catholic grandparents. Part of her wondered, briefly, if her being here in this world made her Jashin's specialist girl, but she let go of this idea immediately. Surely she would already know if that were true.

Realizing Hidan was the closest she had to a religion expert, Tori opened her mouth to ask about priests banishing evil disease-causing spirits from ponds, and also was there a difference between a soul and chakra, but Hidan suddenly turned on his heel and said, "Holy shit, someone's here."

Tori twisted herself around. There were indeed several new figures on the shore, now surrounded by Akatsuki. Hidan skipped across the lake's surface gleefully to meet them.

Tori pushed herself over the edge of the raft and swam back to the shore much more slowly. By the time she had staggered out of the water and over to the group, Hidan was already arguing with Itachi about human sacrifice. The newcomers looked distinctly nervous, but in a sort of oh god, we can't let these people smell fear sort of way.

Tori felt a little bit bad for them. They were basically royally screwed.

There were three people, one woman and two men, now unfortunately encircled loosely by six Akatsuki members. All three were ninja, and they stood much closer to each other than necessary, their bodies tense and eyes weary. They wore Oto headbands.

"Oh, hey," Tori greeted from the shore of the lake.

The Oto-nin, for reasons she did not understand, looked even more panicked. Perhaps it was because she had emerged from the lake like a shirtless swamp witch, with pond scum all in her hair?

"Friends of yours?" Kisame asked as Tori came to stand unsteadily next to him. By her calculations, Kisame was one of the more likely to intervene if one of the Oto-nin decided to attack her specifically. Then again, apparently they'd all watched her drunkenly wandering into the lake fully expecting her to drown, so who knew?

Kisame eyed her bare arms briefly but didn't say anything.

Tori looked the Oto-nin up and down. They were all around her age or younger, and she didn't recognize any of their faces. They had a certain dustiness to them that made Tori think they'd been camping out for a while, although she wasn't sure why they'd still bother with Oto headbands when the village no longer existed.

Sasori and Zetsu, who'd both used their own methods to try and track down anyone who might be able to resurrect Orochimaru or had a cursed seal Orochimaru could be resurrected from, had reported that the village had broken up into vaguely nomadic factions of Oto-nin. They mostly ran around trying to set themselves up as missing-nin groups for hire and occasionally fighting each other, and Tori was aware through her casual eavesdropping that Pein had sent more Ame-nin sentries to Rain Country's borders to prevent any of Oto's dregs from trying to start shit in Rain.

"I don't recognize any of them," she said. The older of the men tensed ever so slightly, and she raised her eyebrows at him. Waving vaguely at the group, she asked, "What hideout were you in?"

None of them answered.

"They're not being very chatty," Kisame said. "We were hoping they'd want to talk to an old comrade."

"Contrary to popular belief, I wasn't very well liked in Oto," Tori answered, eyeing the Oto-nin that had tensed the most up and down. What would be the true Oto-nin, Orochimaru-approved move here? Ah, yes. Psychological tomfuckery. "If they met me, they'd be having their spleens cut out."

The shinobi clenched his fist. Bingo.

"It was nothing personal," Tori told him. He didn't seem soothed. That was fair, really. She felt a little bad she'd helped perform nonconsensual experiments on him and didn't even remember his face.

Or would it be worse if she'd done that knowing exactly who he was…? Hmm.

Sasori turned to Itachi, evidently unimpressed with Tori's failed attempts to make conversation, and said, "So are you going to interrogate them or not?"

Itachi just sort of… stood there, swaying.

"Am I the only sober person here?" Sasori snarled.

"I can still do it," Itachi said.

"I don't see why you need to interrogate us," the younger boy said, looking deeply pained. "When you already have her here. What else could you need to know?"

"See?" Itachi said, facing Sasori and barely paying attention to their captives at all.

"Have you been holding out on us, Tori?" Kisame asked, teasing. "Secrets about your old village?"

Tori had no idea what that guy was talking about, really. She might have had a front view seat of what went on in lab, but she'd been purposefully blocked from seeing how most of the hideout worked. She didn't even know what was happening in other hideouts.

"Do you want a point-by-point analysis of Orochimaru's personality?" she asked.

Kisame's face took on strained quality, like he did in theory but perhaps not at the cost of having to listen to Tori enumerate her various observations.

Everyone but Sasori's attention to grilling the little Oto-nin group for information dwindled quickly. The exact details of how they'd branched off from a larger group after leadership disputes wasn't the most riveting story, nor was their account of how they'd been living off petty robberies for the past month in lieu of having to compete with other low-budget missing-nin for… whatever dumb missions people who couldn't afford Akatsuki hired missing-nin for.

Tori stayed and watched, arms crossed, even after Kisame got bored and drifted back towards the lake, because… well, even if she didn't know them personally, she was interested in what had happened to Oto. Plus, if Sasori went and reported this back to Pein and Konan, keeping track of information was just going to become her problem anyway.

Hidan paced in a loose circle around the Oto-nin and Sasori, grinning ferally at them, a tiger pacing its enclosure. Sasori ignored him easily, but the Oto-nin kept their eyes on him, nervous and fidgety even as Itachi's illusions provoked them into confessing all sorts of things. Hidan had, after all, been the one yelling about ripping lungs out earlier.

She was sure Hidan didn't care about the politics of a collapsed village. He just cared about inserting himself directly into people's nightmares.

The Oto-nin seemed to also be inexplicably fearful of Tori, which was sort of hilarious. When she started shivering and moved to stand closer to the fire, one of the Oto-nin visibly flinched.

Really? What did they think she was going to do?

Sitting on the picnic table and watching the proceedings with his usual impassive expression and his elbows on his knees, Itachi set his chin in one hand and stared at her.

What? Tori mouthed at him, and he didn't even blink. She wasn't sure he could even see her properly while backlit by the bonfire, although his sharingan was now active.

Itachi was… kind of intimidating with red eyes and bathed in shadows. But also Tori was pretty sure he was staring because he was drunk. So. There was that.

It was rapidly becoming very obvious this particular group of Oto-nin didn't know anything particularly useful. Akatsuki was not interested in what happened to low-ranking ninja who just happened to fall in with Orochimaru. These guys didn't know shit about where Orochimaru or even Kabuto had even run off to.

"The oni-baba doesn't know?" one of the ninja asked, face pinched in confusion.

"Who?" Sasori asked, voice turning sharp. This phrasing had clearly piqued his interest, but then the Oto-nin pointed in Tori's direction. Sasori's nose wrinkled in disgust.

"She was clearly one of his favorites," the Oto-nin said. Another one supplied, "I never saw him once since I joined. The lab people saw him every day."

Wrong, Tori thought.

"Don't worry about her," Sasori said. "Itachi, I want to know what they know."

Itachi finally looked away from Tori, straightening his back and then pulling his shoulders back into a stretch.

"Oni-baba?" Hidan hissed from behind her, and Tori startled. Hidan hip-checked her as he stepped around her. "That's your moniker, seriously?"

"It was more like an insulting nickname," Tori defended, aiming an elbow at his ribs. He hopped out of the way with an shit-eating grin on his face. "'Cause most of Oto was just kids, so I seemed old, I guess."

"No," Itachi interrupted from his perch on the table. He still seemed bored, staring dully at the Oto-nin. "Oni-baba was a witch who ate the livers of children. I'm sure it's a reference to your research."

Tori paused. She frowned.

"We cut out spleens," she corrected.

"I'm glad that's the part you object to," Itachi replied.

"Spleens!" Hidan crowed. "And what did you do with them?"

"We…" Tori imagined skin bubbling and then bursting as bone broke through. She blinked several times. "Experimental gene-editing of osteogenic–"

"Fuck, nevermind," Hidan cut her off. He eyed her for a few moments. "I think you and Sasori should race."

"Race?" Tori repeated. Sasori was currently ranting at Itachi that either his genjutsu wasn't up to snuff or the Oto-nin were the most useless ninja he'd ever interrogated.

"To take out their spleens," Hidan said, nodding at the Oto-nin. He said this very loudly, and two of them whipped their heads around in horror. "I wanna know who can do it faster."

"Get me a scalpel and I'll take out your spleen," Tori snapped back. Why was everyone here like this!

Maybe I'm a little like this, Tori thought, remembering the dead tadpoles in her pocket. If Hidan stood still long enough, she probably would like to try and remove his spleen. There were a lot of experiments she'd like to try on his impossible immortal biology.

"No!" Deidara yelled from directly behind her, and Tori actually shrieked in surprise. "She said she was going to make a ghost, yeah!"

"Yeah?" Hidan repeated, jeering. "Is that why you were asking me about them, Chibigami?"

"I am not drunk enough to deal with both of you at once," Tori decided and stomped over to the array of alcohol next to Itachi on the picnic table. She was sort of starting to feel the beginnings of sobriety creeping up on her, and she had no interest in engaging with that while everyone else turned into giant messes.

She paused on her way to the table to note that down by the lake, Kisame appeared to have spread himself out in the grass and was snoring loudly. She didn't even know where Kakuzu was.

There were a lot fewer bottles on the table. They were… how drunk was everyone else?

"Are you sure you should keep going?" Itachi asked. "You're very short."

"At least all my enzymes work," Tori replied immediately and much more forcefully than she meant.

Being briefly distracted was apparently enough for her to miss key decisions happening elsewhere. Deidara's hand slapped against her back with a decisive thud. Tori nearly dropped the bottle she'd just picked up and wheezed.

"GHOST," Deidara yelled. He wasn't yelling at her. He wasn't even yelling at Hidan, who was very distractedly putting his arm directly into the bonfire. Deidara was yelling at Sasori.

"You are all extremely intoxicated," Sasori snapped back. "I will be disposing of them, because I'm only one with any sense–"

The Oto-nin looked extremely upset. Oh no. Well, Tori had kind of figured they were all going to die horribly the second she'd seen them.

Tori opened her new bottle and chugged. It was straight liquor, and chugging was a mistake. Deidara smacked her back again as she choked and then hissed in pain.

"Tori said she could make a ghost, yeah!" Deidara insisted in a tone that was definitely not an indoor voice. "Don't you want to know if the soul is eternal, Danna, or are you afraid she'll fail and you'll have to accept that life is fleeting–"

"You want me to fail?" Tori interrupted.

Deidara turned to her, his eyes bright and dangerous in the light of the bonfire.

"Life is all you get, yeah!" he yelled. "Even if you torture those guys, none of them are going to last forever because ghost aren't real–"

"That's not what I said," Tori half-screamed back, even though she barely remembered how that conversation went at all. She waved the liquor bottle emphatically and sticky liquid splashed out and onto her hand. "I said we could definitely seal a person away and release them in ghost form–"

"What?" Sasori said. "That doesn't make any sense."

"Wait, if we're killing them," Hidan cut in, bounding up to them, "I want to do it–"

"Fuck you, Hidan," Tori replied, feeling frazzled and somehow significantly less sober even though there hadn't been enough time for new alcohol to hit her bloodstream. Apparently if sufficiently pushed by the insane personalities of the people around her, Tori just turned into whatever mess Drunk Tori was regardless. "I'm pro-ghost now. We're making a fucking ghost, Deidara."

"And how do you intend to stop me?" Hidan asked, stepping directly into her personal bubble and looming over her.

"I'll stop you," Sasori said, taking several steps toward them. "I said I wanted them."

Behind him, the for Oto made a break for it. Itachi tilted his head to the side, and then all spontaneously tripped over some unseen force. Sasori clicked his tongue and summoned two puppets by unraveling a scroll with a snap of his wrist. They went after the confused, genjutsu'd ninja, Sasori puppeting them with one hand while the other 99% of his attention was on arguing with them.

Tori paused, watching four ninja be ever so casually corralled and tied and gagged by a guy who was barely even paying attention. She took another bottle shot.

Fortunately (unfortunately?) for her, Deidara was on her side, and he continued to argue for ghost-making even as Tori struggled through a sudden-onset existential crisis.

"I mean," Itachi said lazily, "There's three of them and three of your ideas."

Hidan looked comically thoughtful at this proposal.

Tori shook off her fear of her coworkers and said, "No. I want biological replicates."

Sasori snorted. "Greedy. You are simply unsure if your inane scheme will work, while Hidan and I are sure ours will."

"It's science," Tori retorted.

"Yeah, Danna," Deidara said. "If you had any artistic integrity, you'd understand the importance of experimentation–"

They argued. Tori found herself not quite up to screaming as much or with as much energy as Hidan or Deidara, and so she carefully set the liquor bottle back down and settled for letting Deidara argue her case for her. It was kind of nice, having someone on her side for once, even if they were a shrieking violent maniac.

It would be even better, Tori thought, if she was more confident other people had her back. She felt like half her interactions with them were energy-zapping uphill battles of will.

Besides, it's not like she had to be the one to kill their sorry victims. And it wasn't like she wanted the bodies afterwards, either.

"Wait!" Tori yelled, significantly louder than necessary. She had not meant to be that loud. Sasori gave her a deeply disgusted look. It did, however, make everyone else shut up. "I've got it! I've…"

She paused. Her head swam with alcohol. Sasori teeth ground together.

"The ideas are not mutually exclusive," Tori said.

"How are you pulling out all these big words this drunk?" Hidan asked.

"Big words?" Deidara repeated, incredulous, and Tori put up both hands and said, "No! Shh! I'm having a thought. It's like that riddle. You come to a river and you have a fox, a chicken, and some grain."

"And one only tells lies and one only tells truth, yeah!"

"What? No…"

"I think she is trying to say," Itachi said, sitting serenely above them in his own haughty inebriation, "that you can all accomplish your goals without interfering with each other by doing them in the right order."

"Yes, that's what mutually exclusive means," Sasori snapped. "How are you all this stupid? How much have you had to drink?"

"We have to," Tori realized, and she groped forward and clasped Deidara's shoulder as tightly as she could, "use the power of friendship."

There was a long, pregnant silence.

"She means temporary cooperation," Itachi provided. "For your very creative method of murder."

"Are you her translator?" Hidan asked, and Deidara reached up to pry her fingers from his shoulder and said, "When was the last time you trimmed your nails? You have talons, yeah."

Itachi leaned back on his hands. "Talons like the Oni-baba."

It took… perhaps an embarrassing amount of time, but they eventually organized themselves so everyone got what they wanted. They herded the poor Oto-nin back into the castle, where Kakuzu appeared to be amusing himself by punching through things on the floor above them. Like walls. And the ceiling. There was a lot of frightening crashing noises.

"Ah, yeah, he's just blowing off steam," Hidan said, eyeing the ceiling fondly. "Don't mind him."

"Uh, okay," Tori said, stepping sideways to stand closer to Deidara. "I thought there would be more furniture left. I wanted to seal someone into a lamp…"

Anything on the first floor that could be removed had been dragged out and fed to their bonfire, which was now raging outside unattended. The place felt distinctively empty now, and the banging noises of Kakuzu destroying things above them just added to the haunted house ambience.

"Holy shit," Deidara said, turning around from telling Itachi his ears were red and ugly. "You look so happy."

Tori felt her face go hot. It wasn't even an insult, she just…

"Ghosts are cool," she muttered. Turning to Hidan, who'd pulled a collapsable pike out of the weapons pack at his side and was twirling it casually, she said, "Your… ritual… isn't going to be messed up if I pull of all their chakra, right?"

Hidan cocked his head. "No," he said. "Why would it?"

"I don't know," Tori said, turning to pick a good piece of wall to paint seal on. "I thought maybe you were feeding their souls to Jashin or something."

This statement triggered a wildly outraged theological rant from Hidan, which was quickly cut off by Sasori stabbing him in the stomach.

"Ow, bastard!" Hidan yelled, staggering back. "That better not be poisoned."

"It's a paralytic," Sasori hissed.

This did shut Hidan up for them to work, as he collapsed into a twitchy mess thirty seconds later. Tori wanted to take the time to be careful with her seals, and also she wanted Sasori to watch her, since she was just going to modify the bijuu seal aain and he'd theoretically be the one setting those up once they moved onto capturing jinchuriki.

"Here," she said, handing a bottle of sealing ink to Deidara. "Put your chakra in that."

"I can do it," Sasori said, because he was a control freak.

"I want to make sure it works even with the guy who has explosive chakra," Tori replied. Sasori twitched but didn't argue further.

"So I should try to blow it up, yeah?" Deidara said, entire face lighting up.

"No."

The problem with Sasori observing what she was doing was two-fold. One: Sasori immediately started on a critique of how she held her brush, and then the angle at which she started on the skeleton of her seal. Two: it left Deidara with no one to talk but Itachi, which almost immediately turned into noisey yelling.

Tori's grip on her brush tightened. How had these people gotten anything done as a group?

"So there was this famous artist in my world," Tori said loudly, which had both the effect of making Sasori click his mouth shut and immediately drawing Deidara's attention away from Itachi.

Too easy, Tori thought. Outloud she said, "He'd lived through a war and become disenfranchised with humanity, and so he moved out into a country house and painted the most fucked up things on its wall…"

She babbled, describing the fantastical horrors of Saturn Devouring His Son and WItches' Sabbath . Sasori and Deidara both made frequent interruptions with judgements or questions, but "man paints his own loss of faith in humanity into the very walls of his home" was a compelling topic for them, and Tori found she could work while they were talking at level tones and not actively criticizing her in particular.

Itachi… stood in a corner and ate the last of their snacks. Okay.

Tori distracted herself with a fantasy of trying to shut up Itachi's criticisms of her by tossing a package of candy peanuts away from her and Itachi running after it to retrieve them. She got so distracted by how funny this scenario would be, that when she tried to refocus on the conversation about art on walls, she'd forgotten what the point of it was to keep Deidara and Sssori calm.

"You know," she said, standing back to eye her work, "sticking people in walls is a porn trope. I'm surprised Jiraiya never used it, since he's absolutely obsessed with his own powerlessness–"

Deidara had to wrestle Sasori back from doing something horrible to her.

"You cannot divine an artist's entire personality from their art alone," Sasori said once he'd calmed down. Well, once he'd backed off threatening to slice her like an apple and switched to just sounding very intense. "It doesn't work like that."

"Could you not look at Deidara's art and divine his entire personality?"

"Hey!" Deidara replied, although he didn't look particularly offended.

Sasori's nostrils flared, because clearly Tori was objectively correct.

"I think Goya and Jiraiya are similar like that," Tori said, crossing her arms. "They used their art to wrestle through some really nasty feelings about war. Except instead of actually wrestling with his feelings, Jiraiya throws up stupid distractions like women wrestling homoerotically, and all actual problems in his narratives have easy solutions the hero can solve by just trying hard enough–"

"Stop trying to tempt me into talking about porn," Sasori snapped. "Are you done? I'll give Hidan the antidote."

"Wait," Tori said, turning to the three Oto-nin they'd just sort of left in the middle of the room and whose quiet sobs they'd been ignoring. "I have to paint a seal on them too."

The younger of the two men stared up at her with wide eyes. She paused. Oh shit, she thought. It was one thing to talk about murdering someone in the abstract, but it was another entirely to be actively drawing a seal meant to kill on someone.

"Oh," Deidara said, tucking a strand of golden hair behind one ear. "Do you need us to hold them down or something?"

"I have more patalytic," Sasori said, sounding bored.

"I don't think Hidan would like that," Tori replied automatically. Hidan gurgled from his place on the floor.

She wondered what she looked like, to the Oto-nin. They already knew her as an instrument of Orochimaru's lab, where less valuable ninja went to be eaten up and spat out by horrific experiments. Did she seemed powerful to them, someone acting as one of Orochimaru's hands? Had she been higher on the pecking order than she realized? She'd gotten frequent face time with Orochimaru, after all. Were the lives of run-of-the-mill shinobi in Oto just as pathetic as hers had been, even with luxuries like free-access to the bathroom?

Did she still seem powerful to them, now, taking the lead on doing something even more horrific to them than cut out a spleen? She didn't feel powerful. She felt like she'd been tossed into a tank of piranhas who would turn on her the moment she stepped too far out of line.

But she'd moved the line, hadn't she? She'd proposed something silly and Deidara had backed her up. Sasori had healed her hand. Itachi and Kisame were happy to let her in on movie nights; Kakuzu was making her churn out sealing scrolls instead of murdering her. Even Hidan had answered her weird questions about ghosts. They'd all let her run her mouth and call them assholes to their faces. Even Zetsu was babysitting her cloned heart for her.

I'm becoming one of them, she realized, and if I want to stay one of them, I can't hesitate now.

"Yeah," she decided, "hold them down."

The Oto-nin didn't actually fight them. Orochimaru had trained them for this, after all.

She still tried her best not to make eye contact with the Oto-nin. She went for the older of the two men first, and rolling up his shirt revealed a scar across his abdomen from his splenectomy.

"Just like old times, huh," Tori said. She meant it to be comforting. As soon as it came out of her mouth, though, she realized it sounded exactly like Orochimaru making a bad joke.

Welp.

"Your stitches were sloppy," Sasori sniffed as Tori got to work painting. "What are all these radicals doing? These are for medicine."

Tori hummed. "I thought it'd be more efficient to hijack the host's chakra, the way medical seals do. Save you guys some chakra. This way you just need a little exogenous chakra to start it up, and the seal and the host do everything else."

"Huh," Deidara said.

By the time they were done, Hidan was recovering from being poisoned. He told them their conversations were horrible, and took a knife to the inside of the arms of their victims.

"You think they're all pretentious assholes too, right?" Hidan said, and the woman whose arm he was sliding a kunai over looked up at him with glassy, hopeless eyes. "This is really the start of our divine bond," Hidan told her. "We get to suffer together."

"Be careful with her," Sasori said. "She's very pretty. Don't mess up her face."

Hidan rolled his eyes. "Whatever. Are you ready to meet god, motherfuckers?"

"Remember you have to activate the seal," Tori piped up. "You can do it remotely with–"

"Yeah, yeah, a standard tiger seal," Hidan rolled his eyes.

Hidan's ritual was interesting for about the three minutes it took him to bind himself to his victims and then stab his pike through his ribs and into his heart. He did take the time to make a one-handed tiger seal before plunging the blade into his body, with a crack of bone that made Tori wince. Then he flopped onto his back and… prayed.

He prayed for a very long time.

"Did the seal work?" Deidara asked.

"Yes," Itachi said, stepping out of his little corner. "There's chakra moving from their bodies into the seal on the wall. If they'd had more, I'd imagine you'd be able to see it."

Tori perked up. "It's working?" she said, unable to stop the happy grin spreading across her face.

"Aw, you're excited," Deidara said, sounding indulgent, "you absolute lunatic."

The entire process still took time, and so Tori gathered up the rest of the fuinjutsu supplies and asked if anyone wanted to help her set up an even better barrier.

"I want to see if it works with frog blood," she gushed.

"You know what," Deidara said, "why the fuck not?"

Sasori refused to help them, but when they ran down to the lake to catch more frogs, Kisame woke up and joined in without complaint. Both he and Deidara went about it with a certain juvenile glee, which was largely motivated by the faces and yelps Tori made as she was pelted with frogs.

"STOP!" she screeched, holding up a forearm to protect her face. Why did they always go for the face? "No! This isn't helping!"

Also, it hurt. Why!

Eventually, she thought to retrieve the accuracy seal she'd made. There was a certain sweet spot, between "frogs too far away for it to work" and "so close a small misdirection still ends with a frog hitting you," but if she set it a little over a meter away from herself, most frogs missed.

They were confused and stunned after hitting the ground (or Tori herself), and were easy to scoop up and gut with a kunai left on the ground from… something.

More frog blood and innards got on her than in the ink, but it was still in there. The accuracy seal was rapidly working less and less well with time and repeat activation, so more and more frogs were hitting her. The whole thing was getting very frustrating, and Tori wondered if she'd sacrificed enough frogs to her experiment.

Itachi eventually reappeared.

"IS THIS ENOUGH CHAKRA?" Tori demanded, holding the bottle up in front of him.

Itachi blinked down at her. "I came to tell you I successfully convinced Kakuzu to go into the forest rather than bother Hidan and interfere with your experiment." He stared at the bottle for a moment. "Why are you covered in blood?"

"If you cover yourself in enough frog blood," Deidara asked, stepping up beside her, "Will you be attracted to the frog seal?"

Tori looked thoughtful.

"Your seal finished, by the way," Itachi said.

Tori got through giddily painting all five parts of her five point barrier on sealing paper before they convinced her to go back up to the castle. Sasori was inside, pestering Hidan to finish up even as he laid spread across the floor.

The three seals she'd painted on the wall looked like nothing more than intricate pieces of graffiti. But Tori knew they were each quietly thrumming with a whole person's worth of chakra, pushing into a defined space in the wall the way the bijuu seal would hold chakra in the gedo statue, tied up and held tight. If they left the seals, eventually they'd degrade and all the chakra would run free, because a random castle wall wasn't designed to hold or absorb chakra the way the gedo statue was. But Itachi said the seal had worked with "frightening efficiency," and so whole people were in there!

"I'm losing patience," Sasori said, which was a hilarious way to imply he had any patience to begin with.

Tori had her sealing papers clutched to her chest. This was going to be so much fun.

"C'mon, Hidan," she said as Sasori attempted to pry him from the floor. "Don't you want to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension?"

"Woman -made horrors beyond your comprehension," Deidara corrected. He said it with a sort of cheeky tone, clearly just teasing Tori.

"Actually, I was thinking of what Sasori does with the bodies," Tori answered, and a senbon whizzed by her face and embedded itself in the wall.

"Bitch -made horrors beyond your comprehension," Hidan mumbled from the floor. Then he groaned and rolled himself over. "Fuck, you guys are too distracting. Fine, I'm done."

Tori was vibrating with excitement, bouncing on the balls of her feet. Kakuzu was no longer making the house groan with delightful spooky ambience, but that was fine. She might get to see a ghost! She might have made a ghost!

"Do you want to do it?" Kisame asked, looking down at her with something like a mix of apprehension and amusement.

Tori opened her mouth to say that no, one point of the experiment was to see if people who weren't her could activate the seal. But Hidan had activated one half himself, and the other half hadn't exploded even though it was mainly using Deidara's chakra, and the next step was to undo the seal and release all the chakra. They didn't need to be able to do that part.

"Yes," Tori said, slapping the sealing papers into Kisame's chest for him to hold. She skipped forward, fumbling with her bottle of ink in anticipation, and set about deactivating the first seal with a few brush strokes.

Deactivating a seal meant the chakra had to go somewhere. Tori had designed the seal so that when inactivated, it would all go out into the air the same way at once. This part she was less sure of, because she'd made it up tonight. But still! It was just a reversal of a seal she'd thought about so much she saw it when she closed her eyes, and she had a good feeling about it.

Nothing happened when she undid the first seal. Nothing happened when she undid the next one either. Kisame yawned. Hidan stuck a finger into the hole in his chest. Undeterred, Tori moved on to the third seal.

This time, just for a moment, the apparition of the older man appeared. He looked horror-stricken, standing right in front of the wall with his mouth gaping open in a soundless scream, his eyes bulging. Then he vanished.

He did not vanish before several people screamed.

Tori screamed in triumphant delight. Kisame let out a noise that was not a scream, but was definitely something like a "panicked snort." Deidara bellowed for them all: "WHAT THE FUCK?"

"I told you!" Tori bellowed right back, pointing vigorously at her comrades. "I fucking told you!"

"Holy fucking shit," Deidara reiterated, coming up to the wall to admire her sealwork. The rest crowded after him, with Sasori elbowing his way to the front and Kisame looming over all of them.

"I know!" Tori whooped back.

"That's awesome," Deidara said, turning to look at her with genuine fondness, and something in Tori's heart hitched. She did feel happy, and supported for once in her horrible little life with ninja. Affection bloomed inside her, and she reached out–

"Did you just slap me?" Deidara screeched, jerking back and making Sasori swear at him. He rubbed at his face. "Why?"

"I don't know!" Tori replied, the adrenaline of making a ghost and having people actually happy to interact with her coursing through her veins. "I was overcome with emotions!"

"I'm bleeding," Deidara said, bringing his hand away from his face and blinking down at his fingers. "Did you cut me with your talons?"

Somehow, Tori ended up in headlock, and Deidara dragged her outside, the rest of Akatsuki following along. It wasn't… well, it wasn't Tori preferred way of bonding with someone, but he wasn't actually hurting her. He yelled insults and threats at her as he did it, but she was not under the impression that he meant to follow through on any of them.

"How did Tori even manage to slap you?" Itachi asked, and Deidara dropped her to try and put him in a headlock. "Are you really that drunk?"

They calmed down after that, with Kisame packing up their extra alcohol into one of the Oto-nin's backpacks. Sasori packed the Oto-nin's bodies into black scrolls.

"Do they not go into regular storage seals?" Tori asked, and Sasori dipped his head at her in askance.

"How can you not know?" he said. "There's only one supplier who knows how to make the body-safe storage scrolls. It's why Kakuzu was so mad at you for wasting one."

"Huh," Tori replied.

An argument broke out between Itachi and Deidra over putting out the bonfire, which Kisame watched while rubbing his temples. Tori paced around the castle, slapping her sealing paper onto the wall as she went. Her previous fervor had died a bit, but she still really wanted to see how well a seal worked with animal blood.

Kakuzu staggered out of the tree line.

"Where's Itachi?" he demanded. He looked… furious, even for him, with muscles all tense and eyes scowling.

Perhaps Itachi had not so much "persuaded" him as stuck him in an illusion. That sounded like Itachi.

"Do you want to test out how strong my barrier seal is?" Tori offered.

Her first attempt to activate didn't work, because it turned out there wasn't enough chakra in her ink to power a large-scale barrier. If fact, now that she was considering it while less high off success and further away in time from her last shot of alcohol, she wasn't sure why she thought frog blood would have enough in it to power anything bigger than her little test attempts.

Frog-powered seals not working was disappointing, but then Kakuzu slammed his palm against the activating seal and it lit up with blue chakra. Ink spluttered out of the page, racing down the side of the wall and then disappearing under the wall. Two more streaks of ink zipped along the wall itself, out of sight within seconds. Tori couldn't see it from here, but if everything was working right, the ink would join the other four points of the seal, and they'd drawn out the full seal across the area of the castle.

It was a very dramatic process of events to watch. She'd only ever done it over the space of a single room, but there was no reason scaling bigger would work differently, besides the increased chakra cost.

A solid dome of translucent, dark purple flickered to life. Kakuzu wasted barely a second before slamming his fist into it. Nothing happened.

"Huh," he said, and then stepped back and gathered a ball of fire into his hands.

Tori fled very quickly.

"Did the frog blood work?" Itachi asked, sounding very skeptical as he looked the barrier dome up and down. The bonfire was out, and Deidara was sitting off to the side, pouting.

"No," Tori said. "But Kakuzu did."

"Huh," Kisame said, new backpack full of booze slung across his back. "Should we wait for him…?"

"I'd like to," Tori said. "He's trying to see if it's breakable. I'm cold, though. What happened to Hidan's jacket?"

"You can't wear it," Hidan immediately objected. "I don't want your smelly armpits–"

"I could restart the fire, yeah–"

"Deidara, you juvenile child–"

Kisame and Itachi left, but not after Hidan insisted the booze bag be turned over to his custody. Tori ended up cold for the next thirty minutes, during which Hidan and Deidara returned to playing would you rather. Sasori stayed for some reason that seemed to revolve around burying his hand in Deidara's hair and insisting it be brushed out. Tori sat in the grass with her arms wrapped around herself, missing her shirt and hoping drinking more would give her a "liquid blanket," as the kids said.

"Okay, okay," Deidara said, waving Sasori's hand away from his face. "Would you rather: fuck one of Itachi's exploding clones, or fuck Samehada?"

Tori blinked up at the night sky as Hidan snorted with laughter. "How does clone detonation work?" she asked. "Is it definitely going off, or is there a chance I'd get all the way through?"

"Oh, Uchiha is definitely going to go off before you finish," Deidara answered, and Tori could hear the smirk in his voice.

"Deidara, I know you like explosions," Tori replied primly, "but I don't need to hear your sexual fantasies."

"I think I'd fuck Samehada," Hidan said, dead serious.

"You're all disgusting," Sasori said mildly, then started on a braid with Deidara's hair.

Kakuzu eventually came back down the hill, panting and much more calm.

"It is impervious to all five elements," he reported.

"Itachi said it's eating up chakra quickly, though," Sasori said, yanking at Deidara's hair. "It might not be practical for long-term use."

Tori bit her lower lip. She'd been afraid of that.

"Oi, oi," Deidara said, pulling himself free of his partner. "It can't be completely impervious."

He was on his feet and halfway up the hill before Tori had even completely processed what was going on. Hidan followed, whipping out his collapsable pike again. Tori felt… tired. She was tired.

"Can one of you take me back?" she asked of Sasori and Kakuzu, but they were already following their partners up the hill.

Hidan had abandoned his jacket randomly in the grass. She pulled it on, and it was comically large on her, the sleeves eclipsing her fingers like a child wearing their parent's clothes. Still, she felt a lot warmer as she headed up the hill herself.

"Maybe it is impervious," Hidan said after his pike bounced off the barrier for a third time.

"Why would that work, and not a lightning bolt?" Kakuzu demanded. "Moron."

"Jackass!"

"Hmm," Deidara said thoughtfully, and took a step back.

"Do not," Sasori commanded.

Deidara smirked. "Too late."

The entire castle exploded. The shockwave was enough to send Tori tumbling back down the hill, heat hitting her in the face. Her hearing went strange and she threw her arms out to stop herself from rolling down the hill further, but she could still make out a roar of fire. The side of her body pointed towards the fire was hot, and she stared up at Deidara's creation in something like awe.

It was a huge, swirling vortex of fire. It hit the side of the barrier and then stopped, taking on the perfectly dome shape it was trapped in.

"Wow!" Deidara cried, impressed with himself.

"What would you have done if the barrier hadn't worked?" Sasori demanded, grabbing his hair and yanking much more violently than before. "You could have killed us all!"

Tori got unsteadily to her feet and approached the barrier hesitantly.

"It works fine though," she said, and rested her hand against it. It was only very, extremely hot and she yanked it back immediately. "Ow."

"It works topside, but I could still burrow under it, yeah!"

Sasori pinned Deidara– who was drunk and uncoordinated– to the ground easily enough, but Deidara slapped a handful of mud into Sasori's hair and Sasori let out a noise like a teakettle.

The fire kept burning. It was impressive, Tori thought. Maybe she should apologize to Deidara for slapping him.

"At least we know it's oxygen permeable now," she mused. "It would really suck if I accidentally suffocated all of you." Then, a horrible thought hit her. "The ghosts!" she cried. "Where will the ghosts live?"

"Ghosts don't live," Kakuzu pointed out. He had been completely unmoved by the explosion, although his skin had gone obsidian black from his Earth Grudge Fear jutsu. "They're dead."

"Are you wearing my fucking jacket?" Hidan demanded.

He wrestled her out of it. The barrier still held. The fire, having no access to new fuel, started to slowly decrease in size.

"I'm done with this," Sasori announced. He turned to Tori. "Did you say you wanted me to take you home?"

Home… weird.

"Or!" Deidara countered, getting to his feet. There was a gaping hole in his pants now, from which blood was freely flowing. "We go find an actual club!"

"No," Sasori said. Kakuzu rolled his eyes and added, "Too expensive."

"I'm in," Hidan said, shrugging on his jacket. "Chibigami?"

Tori thought about her options. She was tired, but she was also pleasantly drunk and no longer cold. And this time, she'd actually been invited.

"Sure," she agreed.

Notes:

...this is the second time I've spontaneously brought up Francisco Goya in a Naruto fanfic.

Chapter 17: OMAKE: when your bone marrow is ghosts

Summary:

The part I decided to cut from the previous chapter because it was too f-ing long.

Notes:

Mini chapter! I thought having this at the end of the previous chapter ended it in a weird place, but also a couple things happen that I still wanted to include in the story, but ALSO it'd be kind of weird to slap onto the beginning of the next chapter.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Tori woke slowly, and somewhere between dreaming and reality, realized she was not in her bed. She was on some type of carpet, curled up under a very weird blanket. She shifted slightly, and part of the weird blanket flopped over her side. A sleeve. She was under a coat.

She cracked one eye open and scanned the dim room around her. It was a completely normal bedroom, with a double bed shoved in one corner and a desk in another. There was a poster over the desk that she couldn't make out.

And she was on the floor. For some reason.

Tori's head felt very heavy, and she suspected moving too much would be painful. She had drunk a lot last night. She remembered climbing onto one of Deidara's clay birds after him, which had been a horrible idea in hindsight because he too had drunk a lot. And then… they'd gone somewhere very loud, and… they'd come back… and… and…

She carefully turned her head back towards the bed. She heard the rustle of the sheets moving, then half of Deidara's face appeared over the side, his blond hair mussed by sleep.

They stared at each other.

"Why'm I on your floor?" Tori finally asked.

Deidara blinked sleepily back at her. "I offered you the bed," he said. "But you called it a 'nest of sin' and refused to move, yeah."

That didn't sound like something Deidara would be gentlemanly enough to do, but that definitely sounded like something she would say.

Deidara's face disappeared as he rolled over, pulling his comforter over him. Tori wiggled around and tried to get comfortable under the 'weird blanket'– which she now realized was his Akatsuki cloak. Or someone's Akatsuki's cloak. She was getting fuzzy memories of Hidan drunkenly stripping his clothes. But… no… he'd had a leather jacket, maybe…?

Getting comfortable wasn't hard. The thick carpet of Deidara's room was almost as good as her stack of camping mats in the dungeon.

When she was starting to doze off again, Deidara announced, "Man, I am dead ."

"And yet you're still talking," Tori mumbled. Her hangover was a bone-deep horribleness, and she yearned to be unconscious again.

He either didn't hear her or ignored her. "You got me really fucked up last night, yeah."

Tori pulled the cloak over her head.

"You just kept pulling out bottles of alcohol," Deidara continued. She heard him yawn. "I should've brought you along drinking ages ago, yeah."

Tori snorted under the cloak. It hurt her dry throat. "If you're so easy to win over, I should've bought you booze months ago."

Deidara let out a snort of laughter, which turned into another yawn. Then he was silent.

Tori drifted in and out of sleep for a few hours, and eventually Deidara got up, stepping over her twice as he padded around his room. At some point she realized he was changing clothes and pulled the cloak back over her face. He left the room, and Tori decided to try and drag herself out from under the warmth of the cloak.

She stood up. The room was a bit shaky, but after a few moments she was able to make out the poster. It was for an action movie Tori had never heard of, featuring two actresses in skimpy kunoichi costumes covered in exploding seals. Of course.

There was a tiny bathroom, its door half open. She went in and spent a few moments sitting on the toilet with her head in her hands. Deidara's blonde hair was all over the tiles. Of course.

She looked at herself in the mirror. She looked like she'd been running down a hill, tripped, rolled through some mud into a pond, wrestled with an alligator in that pond, then dried herself off with a blow dryer. Of course.

She was wearing a shirt. She did not recognize this shirt. She had no memory of obtaining this shirt. It was yellow, which wasn't a good color on her, and had short bell sleeves that made her shoulders look incredibly wide. She would never have picked this shirt for herself. It was markedly cleaner than the rest of her.

She opened the door Deidara had exited through and stepped into the hall. It looked like the hall on every other floor of this building, although she recognized this one as the one with the working washing machine in the laundry room at the end. Several Akatsuki members had their own rooms on this floor, although she'd never been in one before she'd ended up… sleeping on Deidara's floor?

While she was standing in Deidara's doorway pondering her situation, Kakuzu came out of his own room.

"I don't want to know," he said. She just stared at him. She was confident she and Deidara hadn't done anything, but she understood what this might look like. "We're having a meeting," he told her.

"Why," she croaked out, but he had already turned and exited through the door that led to the stairs. She followed him.

They were the last to arrive, and the rest of the Akatsuki sat around the table in various stages of being utterly destroyed. Deidara had his head in his arms, while Itachi was slumped back in his chair with his eyes closed. Kisame actually had sunglasses on and was grimacing as he sipped from a giant mug of coffee. Hidan obviously hadn't showered, and he was covered in smears of mud and blood as he snarled at a very tired looking Kakuzu. Hidan's shirt was also missing.

How the hell had they gotten into a club, if both she and Hidan looked like they'd lost a fight with a bear? She was pretty sure that's what the loud place had been. There had been… flashing lights. Music. Gyrating.

"You came back alive," Konan observed to her, sounding surprised.

Tori wasn't sure why the entirety of ninja-dom thought civilians would keel over and die at the slightest inconvenience, but she was too hungover to argue that point.

"I feel like my bone marrow is ghosts," she said.

"What a wonderful sentiment," Konan said, and gestured for Tori to sit down. Her notebook was already in place, pen besides it.

Tori sat. She picked up her pen and stared at it.

"This is an informal meeting," Pein announced. "I want to know what damages you did last night."

They all stared at him. Was Tori going to have to write down all the shit they did? She didn't think she could even write her name. Luckily, Deidara saved her.

"None," he said confidently. "Absolutely none. We were good, yeah."

"Kayaba Castle is missing," Pein said. There was an awkward silence.

"That was us?" Kisame asked.

"It was worthless anyway," Kakuzu said, venom in his voice.

"But the ghosts," Tori protested, having uselessly written half the date.

"Stop talking about ghosts," Itachi, who had yet to open his eyes, monotoned.

"I don't care what you do in other countries," Pein continued, unperturbed. "But the castle is a national monument, and Kusa has already requested any information Ame knows."

There was a long silence, and Tori managed to finish writing the date and Castle: Gone . Hidan looked like he wanted to say something, but that it wouldn't be worth the headache his own voice would give him.

Was the barrier around the castle still going? No, surely Pein would mention that if it were. Tori did not need to speak. None of them needed to speak, like a classroom all silently agreeing not to ask teacher any questions in the last five minutes of class.

Sasori, sitting pretty and hangover-free with a superior look on his face, spoke up. "There were Oto dregs squatting in that castle. Blame them."

Konan raised her eyebrows. "You engaged other ninja?"

"Sasori can give that report himself," Kisame said, standing. "I am going to fry every food I can find in the kitchen."

"Great," Hidan said, getting to his feet as well.

The rest of them stood to file out, slowly and painstakingly. Tori, of course, had to stay to document whatever Sasori reported, because her life was horrible. She grabbed Deidara's sleeve as he passed.

"Hey," she croaked out, sounding much like one of the frogs she'd murdered. "Do you know where this shirt came from?"

Deidara stared down at her like he was just realizing she was wearing anything to begin with.

"Huh," he said. "Dunno. Weird, yeah."

He left. Tori continued to feel flummoxed even as she gave herself a headache trying to follow Sasori's report. Sasori was as concise and to-the-point as usual, and she'd literally watched the events in question, but her entire morning was one long struggle. Or… oh god, there'd been bright sunlight from the window she'd passed. Was it even morning anymore?

"Well, that's good news at least," Konan drawled when Sasori described Tori's modified bijuu seal working.

There was a distant thought Tori's couldn't quite form in her brain. She probably… no one had told her she wasn't allowed to just fuck off to go barhopping, but captives didn't get to do that. Even if her co-workers maybe didn't hate her, she was just some civilian girl and a liability. Who knew what she'd said to people during whatever she'd done to get this shirt? She'd just gone off and done it, and before that she'd been doing secret yogurt-based fuinjutsu experiments and helped murder people and countless frogs, and everyone was just willing to roll with that. Something had changed, had shifted, and it felt like it should be monumental even though her poor brain couldn't seem to fit all the pieces together properly.

In this world, freedom was something you had to take, it seemed.

When they were done, Tori shoved the notebook away from her more dramatically than was strictly necessary. Konan watched it skid across the table with a bored expression and didn't comment.

Sasori turned to her and said, "That shirt is hideous."

He wasn't wrong.

"Or rather," Sasori continued as Pein and Konan left, "there's nothing wrong with the shirt. Your body just makes it look bad."

"I'm never taking any poison from you again," Tori mumbled. Her head hurt too much to start an argument with him.

Climbing back up the stairs felt a little bit like climbing the side of a cliff with weights strapped to her limbs, but she made it up to the kitchen, where Kisame was indeed frying every possible thing. It smelled fantastic.

She filled a glass with water from the sink and sat at their destroyed kitchen table. The rest of the Akatsuki similarly loomed around the table, watching Kiasme cooking in patient, pained silence.

When Kisame turned around to present plate number one of hangover food to Itachi, he asked Tori, "Are we ever going to get a new table?"

This was, technically speaking, her responsibility.

"Ask our treasurer," she told him.

"Eat on the floor," Kakuzu said, standing over the table with arms crossed.

"...ask Pein," Tori amended.

"Hey," Hidan said, kicking a leg under the table to hit the legs of Itachi's chair. "Can you genjutsu away a hangover?"

Itachi took a bite of food and spent a very long time chewing it.

"Maybe," he said.

"God, why would you let him?" Deidara asked. "Isn't that against your religion or something?"

"I was just asking–"

Kisame handed a plate and a set of chopsticks to Tori, and she immediately shoveled several bites of food into her mouth. It was warm and full of delicious umami, and she thought she might be on the brink of joyful tears again.

"Kisame, you're my favorite," she said through a mouthful. He flashed his teeth at her.

Kisame's food was good, but about a third of the way through the plate, Tori decided it could be even better, and she opened the fridge and pulled out the hot sauce.

"SO IT WAS YOU," Hidan suddenly screamed, and Tori instinctively ducked behind the fridge door. "I should have known you were the one taking my shit, you fucking bitch–"

Tori did not need to dodge anything, though, as Itachi made a very pained face at Hidan's raised voice, and then Hidan got up and wandered off to yell at an illusionary Tori in the living room.

"Don't let him ruin the couch too, yeah," Deidara complained when there were several dramatic ripping noises.

"Hmm," Tori said, dumping hot sauce over her food anyway. "That sure doesn't make me feel safe."

They ate, sitting around with their plates in their laps and minimal conversation. It was weirdly communal, but it didn't feel forced or awkward. This was the purest of shared experiences: everyone hungover and tired, sharing the bliss of eating greasy food in their shitty kitchen.

Hidan eventually staggered back into the kitchen and flipped Itachi off. Tori squinted at him while he picked the pan right off the stove and started eating directly from it.

"Is this what Jashinism is about?" she asked.

Hidan froze. Deidara groaned loudly and Kakuzu let out an annoyed huff. Tori waved vaguely at them.

"Shared suffering," she explained.

Hidan stared at her thoughtfully. There was a piece of browned onion stuck to his cheek. He cracked a grin.

"Close enough," he said. "Man, Chibigami, you fucking suck, but you're alright sometimes."

"Hot sauce?" Tori offered, and the grin shrank.

"Don't antagonize him," Itachi told her. "Why do you keep antagonizing him?"

"Oh, like you're one to talk–"

Later, when they were done and Itachi went to clean up Kisame's mess like a good partner, Tori turned to Hidan and asked:

"Do you remember where this shirt came from?"

"No idea," Hidan told her, but apparently he remembered more of the night than her or Deidara because he added, "but you went into the hotel and came back with it."

"The hotel," Tori repeated slowly.

"You really don't remember shit," Hidan proclaimed and then laughed meanly. The sound made her temples throb. "They wouldn't let you into the club because you were shirtless and covered in blood, so you went into the hotel across the street and came back like five minutes later with a shirt."

Tori frowned, digesting this.

Did she… steal someone's shirt? How?

"Oh yeah," Deidara said, eyes widening. "Yeah, yeah– I remember that, 'cause, like, who doesn't let a shirtless woman into their club?"

"It wasn't even a lot of blood," Hidan agreed.

Tori was struggling to conjure up a memory of this at all. She remembered the clay bird fairly well, and she had random flashes of being in the club. She remembered complaining it was the same beat the entire night.

She did not remember robbing someone in a hotel. How would she even do that? Wait for someone to come out of their room and sneak in? Beg for help? Climb up a fire escape?

"Hidan," she said slowly. "You're shirtless and covered in blood."

"Yeah," Hidan agreed, smirking at her. "But people can't stop me from doing what I want."

"So you…" Tori trailed off, feeling her headache returning in full. So Hidan would bully his way into a club, but not help her get into a club, but also he'd stand around waiting long enough for her to go solve her own problem.

Last night was honestly the best she'd ever gotten along with him, even if he'd gone off and murder a genjutsu-Tori twenty minutes ago. Maybe Itachi was right and she shouldn't antagonize him.

"You're fucking welcome," Hidan told her smugly, and all she did in retaliation was pour more of his hot sauce on her food.

Notes:

My tumblr now has Plasticity FANART! Plasticity art tag here. General Plasticity tag here. (I sometimes post previous or rando thoughts.)

Chapter 18: FINE AND NORMAL

Summary:

Another mission!

Notes:

This is an Obito chapter, I guess...?

Remember that pre-barhopping adventure, Zetsu went off to find the Shinigami mask. The point of this is that Tori wants him to copy bijuu chakra to test her seals, and there's half a Kyuubi in the Shinigami's stomach. :)

Also: I LIKE GHOSTS AND I WILL NOT APOLOGIZE

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Zetsu came back a few days later with the Shinigami mask from the Uzumaki temple. The temple had been near the outskirts of Konoha, and it had taken him as much time to judge when he could slip past the Konoha patrols passing through so he could get into the temple and spend time poking around, as it had to locate the temple at all.

"There were lots of masks," he complained. "I had to spend a lot of time reading through scrolls to figure out which was which."

"But can it really summon the Shinigami?" Obito asked, examining the mask in his hands. The three of them– Tori, Obito, and Zetsu– were standing around a grassy clearing in the forest just outside the village. They were far enough away from Pein's reach that the constant rain was more of a natural drizzle that made Tori's hair frizzy.

Tori felt oddly like she'd been checked out like a library book for this meeting.

"That's what the scroll said," Zetsu answered. "Usually the Uzumaki know their stuff, don't they?"

"Here," Obito said, and then passed the mask over to Tori.

She took it without hesitation. The mask was white with gold horns, its lips drawn back in a jeer that revealed pointed gold teeth. It was lightweight and ordinary to the touch, but a shiver still ran through her as she held it in both hands. It glared up at her.

"Did you find out how to use it?" Obito asked. His eye didn't move from the mask, although he was obviously speaking to Zetsu.

"You put it on," Zetsu said, "and then the Shinigami will possess you."

There was a long pause in which the three of them stared down at the mask.

"Possess how?" Obito asked after a beat.

"Unclear," White Zetsu said, and Black Zetsu added, "This coward refused to try it out."

"Hmm," Obito replied, rolling a shoulder. "Well, I certainly can't risk dying. Tori, up and at it."

"I don't think it's going to kill you," Tori answered, wrinkling her nose at him. She couldn't even remember who'd put it on in the manga, but she was pretty sure it was a major character that had lived through the experience. Obito certainly could.

(And, if he didn't, that would just be helpful to all of humanity.)

"Then you should have nothing to worry about, Tori-chan~!" Obito replied, giving her a Tobi-style thumbs up. "Just for a few seconds, as an experiment! You love those!"

Tori flipped the mask over. The reverse side was painted black, and the shreds of two gold cords dangled from behind either ear, eaten away by time. The mask, while creepy, felt deceptively normal in her hands. She didn't feel even remotely afraid that it could hurt her. Besides, Obito or Zetsu could always just force the mask on her if she refused, and she'd rather put it on of her own accord, thanks.

She'd already pretended to be a Shinigami. She might as well become one for real this time.

The cords to tie the mask in place were long gone, but as soon as it was against her face, it suctioned onto her like a second layer of skin.

Oh, this was definitely a bad idea, Tori thought, right before she was slammed with a current of power.

Tori had never stuck anything metal in an electrical socket, but she imagined this is what it would feel like, except in her face. It hurt, crackling across her skin, and her gut instinct was to pull the mask back off, except she couldn't seem to move. Then suddenly it was like she was in two places at once: standing in place in front of Obito, and then outside her body, floating six feet in the air.

It felt like something was squeezing her lungs, making it hard to breathe and making her dizzy.

"Hey, Shinigami-sama!" Obito called, waving.

A pest, Tori thought, except the thought wasn't her own. It was louder, stronger, and it banished any of her own opinions on Obito from her mind. She couldn't breathe. Barely human. Barely even worth my collection. Where is my sacrifice?

And oh, did Tori want a human soul to tear into, to own, to possess, to tuck away into her Pure Lands forever and ever, or even better yet, to hold in her stomach-

"Eh, I don't think she can handle it," Zetsu said. "We should take it off-"

And then Tori's own thoughts were back, because if they thought she couldn't handle things, why the fuckdid they keep making her do them?

Are you my sacrifice? Tori's other mind- the stronger one, the one that belonged to the Shinigami wondered. It buried into her, and it was like cold fingers stroking through her organs and making her stomach churn. No, this can't be. What's wrong with your soul?

How do I open your stomach? Tori asked, clinging to this one idea lest the Shinigami chase away all her coherent thoughts again. With all of her will power, she managed to move one arm so a hand pressed over her belly. It felt like trying to move her arm through wet cement. Her fingers were impossibly long and boney, and her stomach emaciated.

She was so hungry, and she wanted– no, needed— a human soul–

Abruptly, Tori remembered that Orochimaru had freed the contents of the shinigami by gutting himself while possessed. It had actually killed him, except that Orochimaru could just switch bodies when he died.

The Shinigami hissed, and some horrible, awful, inhuman sound came out of Tori's mouth. Obito, who she suddenly realized was peering into her human face through the ghost of the Shinigami's form, took a step back.

You,the Shinigami accused, are not of this world. An abomination. An insult.

What? Tori wondered, desperately trying to keep her mind together, and she could feel the Shinigami's revulsion at her existence all the way in the pit of her own stomach. She wanted to vomit.

Zetsu was in her face now, his fingers curling under the skin of her face, and the Shinigami hissed again. Tori felt dizzy with its disgust.

Some creatures crawl from the dregs of the earth, and still they go to my collection in the Pure Lands, the Shinigami thought. But you belong somewhere else.

Then Tori's skin was ripped from her skull, and she screamed and tumbled back. The Shinigami ripped away too, like a tsunami sucking back all the sea from the land in one violent heave. Except it wasn't her skin, just the mask; Tori was fine and whole and sitting in the damp grass of the forest.

She was shaking. She couldn't breathe.

"Well that was interesting," Obito drawled while Tori hyperventilated. "Congratulations, you lived."

"He called me an abomination," Tori said, shakily trying to get to her feet. Her limbs were too weak and panicky and she fell back on her butt again. "I met a god and he called me a sin."

"Fascinating," Obito replied sarcastically, flipping the mask over in his hands. "Did you figure out how to get the Kyuubi chakra out?"

Tori stared up at Obito and for the first time fully comprehended the degree to which he was completely and totally unhinged. The Shinigami wasn't just a cute concept. It was a god, a being so full of ancient power it had made Tori feel impossibly small. Tori was just some random college student that Obito was using to commit crimes against nature, and Obito didn't give one single shit.

Then again, Tori was some sort of insult to the gods, apparently, so maybe she shouldn't judge.

She felt hysterical. An abomination. What did that mean?

Obito crouched in front of her and tugged gently at a strand of her hair. "Well, Tori-chan?"

Inhale, exhale. Blood pounded in Tori's ears as she forced oxygen into her lungs.

"The person being possessed should slice open their stomach, and that will open the shinigami's stomach as well," Tori said, dragging her fingers through the grass. Every inch of her was trembling. Obito looked down at her thoughtfully and Tori quickly added, "Controlling the Shinigami takes a huge amount of willpower. I wouldn't be able to do it."

Obito snorted.

"You certainly find the willpower when you need it," he sneered at her, but then rolled back on his heels and stood, passing the mask to Zetsu. "Maybe one of your clones could do it."

"They all trend toward extremely weak-willed. Hey!"

Tori continued to sit in the grass, listening to Obito and Zetsu talk logistics while she pulled up pieces of grass and willed her body to stop panicking.

The Shinigami had been disgusted with her. She'd felt it in the pit of her own stomach, churning up bile and revulsion. What did that mean? Should she be worried? Upset? Offended?

"Hey, hey," Obito interrupted her thoughts again, waving a hand in front of her face. "If we yank dear old Minato-sensei out of the Shinigami, are you set up to seal the Kyuubi?"

Tori blinked up at him. Still feeling hysterical, she said, "I thought we just wanted Zetsu to copy him. I thought the whole point was just for Zetsu to copy him!"

She wasn't ready to seal a bijuu, least of all half the Kyuubi. The whole point of this stupid plan was to set up a testable model, not just trial-by-fire the work Tori already had. What if fine-tuning her seal to human chakra made it work less well for bijuu? Was everyone okay with just risking a giant angry chakra monster getting free? Is that what they just did in canon, like juggling Molotov cocktails and hoping no one dropped one? Did no one care about scientific integrity?

"Yes, but wouldn't it be nice if we also got a free Kyuubi?" Obito continued.

Tori felt… well, she still felt like breaking down and crying, but now she also felt like screaming and throwing things at Obito. This was her work after all, and her idea, and she didn't want to experience whatever nightmare situation was "summon undead Hokage, rip bijuu out, hope barely tested fuinjutsu works" because that wasn't the point of why she'd proposed any of this in the first place.

Whatever face she made must have conveyed this, because Obito put his hands up and switched back to his Tobi voice.

"Or we can just stick sensei back in after Zetsu copies him and try again later! Say, Zetsu, do you think gods poop?"

Eventually, Obito stuck the Shinigami mask into his face to store in his kamui dimension for later. He then held a hand out to Tori, who was still sitting in the grass. She glared at him and pushed herself to her feet on her own.

"You know," Obito said as they walked back into Ame. His candor had the sort of childishness of the Tobi persona, and he waved his arms at her. "That was a really good find, Tori-chan! I've got a present for you!"

He very dramatically stuck a hand into his own face and removed an object, bowing deeply at the waist as he presented it to her. Tori was tempted to just smack it out of his hands and stomp off, but then she saw the cover.

It was an officially-backed Icha Icha fanzine. The cover bragged an exclusive interview with the writer himself about the upcoming Icha Icha Tactics.

Oh fuck, Tori thought, and then helplessly accepted the gift.

"I hope you enjoy your porn!" Tobi cried.

xXx

Tori read the entirety of the fanzine in one sitting, which felt like a very strange fever dream in which she ignored her new burgeoning mental breakdown over being possessed in favor of grading the fanart that took up about a third of the zine. This person had put Satsuki in a delicate pink kimono, which was not only counter to canon, but also obviously she would wear purple–

There were also published fan letters, some of which included short little fan stories. Icha Icha had fanfiction. Most of it wasn't very good, but… but…!

She started daydreaming about her own story to write and send in, when the looming threat of existential dread got too close. She could write about Junko accidentally sealing her bra into her shirt, and then some funny situation that could turn into…

Tori thought her little story would make a very good addition to the fanzine. She never seemed to find time to write it, however, because her work was filled with new, weirder situations to deal with.

"Why," Pein asked, staring Tori down from across his desk, "did you file forty-seven complaints against Jounin Furukawa?"

"Um," Tori said, shifting uncomfortably. There was a large stack of papers on the desk between them. She'd signed them all in fake names, but Pein obviously knew her handwriting. "I wanted to see what would happen?"

Pein's gaze drilled into her. His eyes were very intimidating.

"I honestly did not think they'd get all the way up to you," Tori explained.

"Of course they did," Pein intoned. "God sees all."

"Right," Tori agreed.

A very long silence stretched on between them. Tori made herself stop fidgeting and keep eye contact with Pein, even as he stared her down. Deidara had set a bakery on fire the day before. Forty-seven written complaints against the jounin who worked at the library making it hard for her to smuggle out research materials was honestly one of the less ridiculous Akatsuki-related problems Pein could have sitting on his desk. Fuck it, it was one of the less ridiculous Tori-generated problems he could have.

Finally, Pein slowly and deliberately pushed the pile of complaint forms towards Tori.

"Take those to Deidara," he said, "and tell him to burn them instead of my village, or I will end him."

From someone else, Tori might interpret this as a joke. With Pein, though, you did what he said, because if you were wrong about how serious he was being, you might end up squished like a bug. She gathered the papers in her arms and went to find Deidara.

It took about ninety seconds to find Deidara in the kitchen, having gathered an informal meeting around the table. Itachi and Kisame were both seated, empty plates in front of them, and Zetsu stood awkwardly off to the side, edging towards the wall like he'd be more comfortable partially submerged. Sasori stood at the foot of the table, arms crossed and scowling.

Scowling meant Sasori was really annoyed and wanted everyone to know it, because he'd gone to the trouble of rearranging his face. Tori kept her distance from him, even as she dropped the complaint forms on the table.

At the head of the table, Deidara started on whatever posturing he'd gathered everyone for, a wad of wax paper clutched in his hand.

"Who– who –" Deidara started, his eyes darted suspiciously between Sasori and Zetsu, "–put a human finger in the food freezer ?"

Deidara looked both slightly triumphant in having some new thing to call a colleague out on, and also his eyes gleamed with the prospect of chaos. With a jerk of his hand, the wax paper unfurled and the severed finger in question rolled onto the table. It had a bright yellow, acrylic nail.

Tori had completely forgotten about it.

"Oh shit," she said. "That's mine."

Kisame made a choking sound that was either laughter or disgust. Itachi inhaled very deeply through his nose.

"Why would I put a finger in the kitchen freezer?" Sasori asked Deidara testily. "It's not even a good finger. Those nails are disgusting."

Ah, so Sasori had insulted Mizukawa Asa's nails and made her decide to betray the Akatsuki. Fascinating.

"Tori," Itachi said, a touch louder than necessary. " Whose finger is that? " His voice was very tight and filled with hundreds of other, unvoiced questions. How? Why? We put our food in there? Tori imagined it was the closest anyone ever had, or ever would, come to experiencing Uchiha Itachi screaming hysterically.

Ignoring him, Zetsu stepped forward to pick up the finger and examined it. " How long has it been there? "

"A few months?" Tori offered.

Without further comment, Zetsu popped the frozen finger into his mouth. They watched in silence as he chewed and swallowed.

"Ah," he said. "Once again I do not get to experience the human condition known as brain freeze. Perhaps another time ."

He melted into the floor.

"Deidara," Itachi said after a beat. "You waited until Zetsu returned to call this meeting."

"Yeah, so?" The blond huffed, crossing his arms.

"When did you find the finger?" Itachi continued to sound deeply unhappy about the situation.

"This is a waste of time," Sasori announced and stomped out of the kitchen.

It turned out Deidara had found it five days prior and, assuming there was a high probability it was Zetsu's fault, simply left the evidence in place until he could confront him. Obviously Deidara cared about human remains not getting mixed in with his food, but not that much.

"At least I didn't wait for Hidan too," Deidara said defensively. "He was my second suspect, yeah."

"Why would Hidan put a single finger in the freezer?" Kisame asked, as if it were more probable Hidan would put several fingers in the freezer. Which… yeah.

Yeah.

"Why did Tori put a finger in the freezer?" Deidara replied, and then all their attention was on her. "What is with you and carting around random body parts, yeah?"

"What else was I supposed to do with it?" she defended.

"Throw it away!" Deidara snapped back, hands twitching on the counter. "In the trash! Like a normal person, yeah."

"Normal people don't save the fingers they cut off," Itachi said.

Tori almost pointed out that normal people don't cut off fingers , but no. No. They were all beyond doing anything any normal person would even touch.

"Better yet," Deidara continued to rant, his eyes lighting up with the excitement that only ever came with fire and loud noises and utter destruction, "you could have cremated it–"

"Speaking of," Tori said, patting her pile of wasted complaint forms, "I'm supposed to tell you: next time burn these instead of the village, or else Pein will kill you." She waved her hand vaguely. "Y'know, in the unfun way, where you don't explode and make your final art or whatever."

Deidara made a face like he's swallowed a lemon.

"You should work on your death threats," Kisame teased. "Very unthreatening."

xXx

"So I may have done something stupid," Tori admitted.

Konan, seated across from her and Kakuzu at their brand new dining room table with a pot of tea, leveled Tori with a flat, unimpressed look. They were ostensibly reviewing projected missions, current spending, and if Kakuzu thought they should review their rates or not.

"This is not a very good pitch for you getting a living stipend," Konan deadpanned back.

"I think my pitch will be airtight once I run out of deodorant and you have to be in the same room as me," Tori quipped back. She slid a letter across the table to Konan. "I did what you said and gave Ghost Lady an ultimatum she'd have to turn down."

Konan's eyebrows slowly raised further and further up her forehead as she read the letter.

"Ghost Lady?" Kakuzu asked. He was leaning back in his chair, arms crossed and sheets and sheets of tables of numbers spread out in front of him.

"There's a lady in Rice Country who keeps asking us to come get a ghost out of her house," Tori explained. "I kept inventing new fees to get her to turn us down, but she didn't budge. Her letters are getting more and more unhinged, too– I don't think she's well."

Kakuzu grunted. Konan pushed the letter away from her and pinched the bridge of her nose.

"Tori asked for her first born child as payment," Konan said.

Kakuzu's eyebrows furrowed. "Why? You can't monetize an heir if you remove them from their inheritance."

"I didn't think she'd say yes," Tori answered, her voice hitting a high, frustrated pitch.

"Tori," Konan said darkly as Kakuzu picked up the letter to read himself. "Don't make threats you're not ready to follow through on."

Well, yes, Tori had learned this lesson several times over by now. It still hadn't occurred to her that she might have to collect this type of payment, because that was insane.

"What normal person–" Tori started.

Kakuzu suddenly sucked in air through his teeth. He went very tense. Tori cut herself off, watching him.

"We have to take this mission," he said finally. He sounded vaguely desperate. The paper crinkled under his fingers. Konan actually raised her eyebrows.

"It is a lot of money in addition to the child," Konan agreed.

"This will be the single highest paying mission Akatsuki has ever taken," Kakuzu said, rereading the paper. His hand was shaking.

"Are we just going to ignore that she offered up her first born child?" Tori asked. "Or that ghosts only exist under a very specific and convoluted set of circumstances–"

"You made this problem," Konan replied, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms. "You can fix it."

"What?" Tori said. "Hold on-"

"Tobi can go with you," Konan said. It was not a statement she was offering for debate.

"Since when do I do missions?" Tori asked.

"It does seem up your alley," Kakazu said, folding up the paper and tucking it into his cloak. "Convoluted and stupid, but with a low risk of violence. There's a ghost." After a beat he added darkly, "If you fail, I will make your risk of violence a guarantee."

"It's inconvenient to do your job when you're not here," Konan continued. "So be quick about it."

Tori didn't roll her eyes, but she made a very sour face that she was sure was equally insubordinate. Unfortunately, she knew that Akatsuki would offer no further support or advice beyond "yes, the problem is dumb, but we're getting a lot of shady money for you to make it go away." It was their raison d'etre.

Tori just didn't understand why she had to be held to the same standard as the actual trained professionals. Oh, Tori, just invent some insane sealing ritual, and then go find out god hates you, and then run this mission to exorcise a fucking ghost; they taught you all that in freshman seminar, right?

"Do we at least have room in the budget for formula if I come back with a baby?" Tori asked testily as she penned herself into the projected mission schedule. She hated everything.

"Absolutely not," was Kakuzu's answer. "Just throw it in with your experiments. Are we sure about sending Tobi with her? I can–"

Tori was glad Konan shut down Kakuzu's bid to take the mission, because Tori would have an actual breakdown if she had to convince a woman she wasn't being haunted, possibly collect an actual child as payment, and also prevent Kakuzu from breaking the client's face when he realized she was a raving lunatic. That was just too much for any one human to handle.

"So if I take missions now," Tori said as Kakuzu started to gather up his papers, "do I get a living stipend?"

"No," Kakuzu replied at the same time Konan said, "We'll see."

xXx

Obito had a very busy schedule, it turned out, so Tori penned a vague reply to Ghost Lady and then got to screw around for a week. She did a few useful things, like seal some Zetsu clones into another Zetsu clone and then rip it back out. She even tried making the Zetsu clones mimic her own DNA, to get some variation. She barely had to do any seal work– the clone babies were happy to mimic her with just some cells scraped from her skin and a pulse of chakra.

The problem was that they then… melted? Rotted? It was very strange.

"Look at this," Tori proclaimed, hefting one up to show Sasori in his workshop. "It's disgusting!"

Sasori and Deidara had come back just that morning, and Sasori was processing several new additions to his puppet collection. He looked up from carefully threading wires into a corpse's exposed jaw bone and gave Tori a very dubious look.

"Why are you showing me an ugly baby?" he asked.

The baby had grown a tuft of curly dark hair and its skin had gained pigment, but then it just… got all floppy and melty. Its face sagged and it smelled weird. There was no sign of life– no breathing or heartbeat.

"I'm trying to make a regular baby," Tori explained. She'd had to move her cloned heart into another Zetsu clone, and it was dying. What was she, an anti-Zetsu? "Can I borrow some DNA?"

She had briefly thought about just taking one of the Akatsuki's genetic material. Ninja tried to cover their tracks, but they were not actually particularly paranoid about leaving their cells and DNA all over the place, at least not in their own home. Tori had thought this was strange at first, because this was the behavior that got people caught in her world, but the only fuinjutsu she'd ever come across that relied on genetic material were Orochimaru's own work and some vague writing on making things "bloodline exclusive" that did not so much as mention genetics.

In other words, Tori was pretty sure no one was trying to stop her from stealing their DNA because the problem had not occurred to them.

Tori had had her DNA stolen and cloned by Orochimaru, though, and she had felt weirdly violated about it. Doing this to her coworkers seemed a little bit mean and also, if they felt the same way that she did, likely to get her murdered.

Sasori let her cut pieces of skin off his new puppets, although he gave her very specific directions on what she could cut or not. Sasori didn't like scars or freckles or most tattoos, but he also valued a good stretch of unblemished skin.

"I think you might be the worst person I've ever worked with," Tori told him cheerfully, transferring a skin chunk to a glass vial. "Like, on a personality level."

"I hope all your experiments fail and Leader-sama lets me skin you alive," Sasori sniffed.

The partially grown Zetsu clones did take up the random tissue sample Sasori gave her, shifting and adjusting themselves into what looked like actual human toddlers. All four samples she had worked equally well, leaving her with four very different, very well-formed and human-looking children.

This turned out to upset Tori, because even though she knew they were Zetsu, she didn't want to hurt a baby! She sat in the first floor office she'd commandeered, watching helplessly as the Zetsu clones toddled around and hoping they eventually magically turned back.

Is this why god hated her…? No, surely the Shinigami would be pleased by this.

Perversely, Tori found herself wanting to seek Hidan out for advice. But asking Hidan for anything seemed like a monumentally bad idea, and so she decided to go back to pretending nothing weird had happened.

She was trying to seal weird babies into each other, and that was fine and normal.

The babies of course didn't turn back into Zetsu on their own, and Tori had to coax one after the other to sit down by offering up her pen as a chew toy. She retried her seal with her eyes partially shut and very firmly internally denying what she was doing. It worked, but it made the clones cry and her feel bad, and afterwards she fled to the basement.

She'd read the interview with Jiraiya in her Icha Icha fanzine seven times now, and there was an entire section of responses to fan letters she still wanted to comb through again.

Oh Jesus, she thought as she hurried down the stairs. What am I going to do if I end up with an actualbaby?

She had a brief and slightly humorous vision of her attempting to raise it as her own, feeding it Itachi's horrible cooking attempts and sending it to Sasori for haircuts. It would almost certainly die. How horrible.

Deidara was in the basement dungeon, looking into the cell she'd claimed as her bedroom with a perplexed look on his face.

"You live like this?" he asked.

Tori thought she'd done quite well with the place, considering she was living in Akatsuki's literal dungeon. She'd neatly folded her clothes and arranged her other meager possessions on the narrow bench meant to be a bed, and then stacked a bunch of camping pads stolen from their storage to make a bed on the floor that was reasonably comfortable. She'd even cut some pages out of library books to pin up some pretty photos of mountains and funny looking flowers and a painting of a ghost possessing an umbrella.

It wasn't a lot, but it was hers.

"You know there's plenty of extra bedrooms," Deidara told her, looking at her like maybe she wasn't very good at making decisions.

"I thought we were playing an elaborate game," Tori said, "where I pretend to be a hapless captive and then you put me in charge of vital tasks and then we all pretend this is fine and normal."

Deidara laughed, slapping her shoulder in a way that was probably meant to be affectionate but also hurt.

"That's Akatsuki, yeah!" he declared. "I tried to kill Danna six times on my first mission and blew up our client and they still made me stay and do important shit, yeah." He paused. Thoughtfully, he added, "I blew up my last client too…"

Tori knew. They asked most people to pay in advance if the mission involved releasing Deidara into particularly artistic circumstances. It drove Kakuzu batty.

"Reassuring," Tori said sarcastically. "Did you come down here for something?"

"Heard a rumor they were making you take another mission, yeah," Deidara said, grinning cheekily at her. "Here."

Deidara produced an honest-to-god dagger. It wasn't flashy or very big, with a dark brown handle and matching sheath, and a blade length of maybe three inches. Still, it was a knife.

Deidara offered it to her, handle out.

"You should stab people before they can stab you," he said helpfully as she took it hesitantly, like this might be some sort of trap. "The pointy end goes into enemies, yeah."

"Shut up," Tori told him, not at all aggressive. "I know how a knife works."

She pulled it out of its sheath. It didn't look new, but it did look sharp. She flipped it over.

"Thanks, Deidara," she said.

"Don't die," he told her. "Also…" He turned on his heel, making a wide gesture at the cell she'd filled with fungal cultures. "What is this?"

"I call it my crucible," Tori told him.

"It looks like a museum of crazy, yeah," he replied, like this was excellent news.

And… well, okay, so Tori had been stacking up failed plates instead of throwing them away. Her collection had increased: a very bemused Pein had given her a note with special permission to collect a bunch of reusable glass petri dishes from the tiny Ame research and development department, and that hadn't solved her contamination problem because glass soaked in bleach and then boiled still wasn't the sterile plastic fresh from its packaging of a lab in her world. Especially when she was using an agar media specially meant to help fungi grow.

She'd also been collecting discarded foods from the kitchen and storing them in old bags to let them mold. This was for completely logical and sane reasons, which is that she needed more Penicillium mold.

She attempted to explain to Deidara that if things were like in her world, then some Penicillium excreted chemicals that would stop cell wall formation, which would kill bacteria, which would be an incredible medical advancement.

"I forget if that's Gram-negative or Gram-positive bacteria," she babbled. "The one that has pepto…. Pepto-glycan…? Shit."

"Uh-huh," Deidara told her. "I'm sure you can call it whatever you want."

She switched over to talking about how useful antibiotics were.

"How charitable of you, yeah," Deidara told her, very sarcastic. "You're basically a humanitarian."

"Of course," Tori continued, "if it does work, it's only a matter of time before antibiotic resistance emerges. That's one of our possible apocalypses, you know."

Deidar nodded once, very slowly. "Like the hole in the sky?"

"No, that one got better," Tori told him. "We're more worried about increasing natural disasters…"

Deidara let her ramble. When she managed to loop back around to penicillin being invented during wartime, he cut in with:

"It's this blue-green stuff, right?" He poked a bag containing the heel from a loaf of bread, completely green in its packaging. "People farm this in Earth Country, yeah."

Tori felt something in her brain shift and break. For some reason, she'd assumed no one had thought twice about one of the most common molds in a kitchen.

"Yeah," Deidara continued, smirking at her shocked expression. "A bunch of villages have their own dedicated caves for growing it. They feed it bread and fruit and stuff, and then they use it to make cheeses and preserved meats."

Tori's mind raced. She knew people used mold in food production, but… wait… was blue cheese Penicillium?!

"You can probably get someone to send you some," Deidara said, eyeing her. "That is, if Leader-sama will let you get stuff into Ame. Hey, I'll look out for it if I get sent to Earth Country, yeah."

Tori was… actually grateful. She could tell Deidara thought her project was silly, but he was still offering. He probably had some ulterior motive for wanting to be in Earth Country since he knew she had some sway over mission appointments, but still.

Now, if only there was a way to pre-screen for mold that was actively making penicillin…

"If you can," Tori told him, "ask for cultures that gave people allergic reactions."

"Wow," Deidara replied, eyes shining, "you're horrible, yeah."

She ended up spending her afternoon in his workshop, mixing clay in a bucket for him while he quizzed her on animals that could fly backwards, and then practicing sculpting dragonflies and hummingbirds while telling her a completely deranged story about how he'd become rivals with another Iwa missing-nin at age fourteen because Deidara had "accidentally" killed and eaten his summon.

"I can't believe you think I'm horrible," Tori quipped. "I wouldn't eat a talking bird."

Deidara waved his arms at her emphatically, "It was a giant chicken, yeah! What else was I supposed to do?"

Later as she was washing up in the workshop's sink, he told her, "By the way, I'm starting a betting pool for how long it takes you to stab yourself with that knife. Try to make it at least a week, yeah."

"I'm not going to stab myself," Tori replied, playing at offense.

"I don't know, I've seen you hold a kitchen knife, yeah…"

xXx

When Obito did show up, he stepped directly onto a seal Tori was actively painting on her office floor and asked if she was "ready to boogie."

"Uh," Tori said, eye twitching as she eyed her ruined work. She was still incredibly upset with him, fanzine bribe or not, she wanted to scream at him. Unfortunately, this was probably exactly the reaction he wanted.

She debated informing him that he was extremely lucky that wasn't an active seal. Instead she said, "I don't have, like… supplies?"

Obito stared down at her. Or at least, his mask face turned to her and then he didn't say anything for several moments.

"Huh," he said.

Tori had some idea of what ninja took on missions. Akatsuki had a food budget that funded basic kitchen supplies and a cabinet of preserved meats and nutrition bars people occasionally raided. She was constantly putting in orders for new kunai and weapons maintenance supplies. She'd ordered packages of unscented bar soap-and-shampoo. Deidara had once come to her extremely upset about his folding toothbrush snapping on a mission.

She was vaguely aware of some camping basics, like that you needed a sleeping pad in cold weather to put a barrier between yourself and the earth. She'd heard some wild stories from family and friends about food left out and bears. None of the ninja ever had such complaints, and she wasn't sure if ninja just had different solutions or no one had needed to ask for a new cold temperature sleeping bag or she just worked with a lot of immortal freaks.

She didn't know how any of this applied to anything she was going to be doing. She didn't even know if she was physically capable of walking as far they were meant to go. She'd been working under the assumption that ninja-y decisions would be up to Obito.

"I see," Obito said, very serious in his infuriating Tobi way. "So Tori-chan is stupid."

He proceeded to attempt to get her to pack an entire shopping bag of canned vegetables, and then to convince her to pack every single piece of her clothes, and then managed to drop and dent a water canteen. Tori felt increasingly frazzled at his complete lack of helpfulness, but at the same time, a sense of I guess this is just how it is was creeping over her.

Even if she was mad at Obito, she'd spent quite a lot of time with "Tobi" and had even had conversations with him that she didn't hate. She'd shared meals and watched bad television with him. But at the end of the day Tobi was a weird act at being intentionally useless, and she'd need to get more Obito for whatever adventure they were doing.

"If you're not going to be helpful," she said in her most measured voice that definitely wasn't hiding deep frustration, "I am going to stop being helpful."

This reasoning had worked on someone like Deidara, who was a maniac but also was rarely intentionally annoying and recognized he was better off with what little power Tori held being used to his advantage.

But Tobi was not Deidara. Behind the mask, his eye glinted.

"I am helping, Tori-chan!" he told her.

Tori felt a tick in her temple. "Yeah? Wanna help me with something else?"

Twenty minutes later, they were both trapped in a little dome of chakra on the kitchen floor. She'd told Tobi she thought they should pack up or freeze the perishables in the fridge so that they didn't go off while she was gone. Tobi had gotten an impressive amount of blood out of a discount pack of steaks, which was predictable and Tori had been counting on it. Now they knew that cow's blood worked similar to human blood for fuuinjutsu.

She just wasn't sure how she'd also gotten trapped in here…?

Tori could take apart the seal if she wanted to. Instead, she crossed her arms and glared at the dome's walls.

"Maybe Tobi can break it with a katon…?" Tobi offered.

Tori understood her mistake, and in fact, if she'd had more emotional space to think rationally before engaging Obito, she would have gone with a different strategy from the get-go. She could literally lie down on the floor and insist on being dragged again, and Tobi would find the roughest patch of gravel to drag her over. She could poison all their drinking water and he'd drink it and figure out a way to vomit it back up onto her. She could lead him into the depths of hell and he'd skip along his merry way.

If she summoned every ounce of her own stubbornness, she might win one battle. But it'd be a long, uncomfortable battle of wills, and it would inevitably end with her doing something extremely stupid.

Still, she wasn't just going to back down because Tobi threatened to set them both on fire. She needed to calm down, think, and switch tactics.

"I think it will fade on its own soon," she said, shifting in the crouch she'd been forced into. Obito sat back-to-back with her, his knees pulled up to his chest. "There can't be that much chakra in the steak-blood." She brightened. "Let me tell you about the fanzine you gave me."

Kisame walked in on them stuck in the dome in the middle of the kitchen, Tori shaking Tobi passionately. She furtively explained that in the fanzine interview, Jiraiya had hinted he was putting coded messages into his books, and that the plagiarized textbook had been part of one.

"-and the message was a ramen order!" Tori shrieked directly into his face. "Do you understand how much effort I put into decoding a ramen order?! I checked out three different cryptography books–"

"Kisame-sempai!" Tobi called, heading lolling exaggeratedly. "Help! Tori-chan is torturing me–"

"I see," Kisame said, eyeing the dome. "You're blocking the fridge."

Tori froze with Tobi's shirtfront gripped in her hands. She would not in a million years had grabbed anyone else while she was talking to them. But she'd wanted to be purposefully annoying to Obito by playing up her enthusiasm for Icha Icha, and they were already stuck in close quarters, and he hadn't stopped her, and she might have gotten herself a little bit excited…

"Did you leave raw meat on the floor?" Kisame asked, moving around the dome. "Tori, did no one teach you how to not get food poisoning?"

The dome fizzled away on its own a minute later, the lifespan of whatever chakra was left in a slab of steak fading. Kisame had picked up the meat with a mild look of disgust on his face.

"They're the shit discount ones Kakuzu gets," Tori informed Kisame, as if that justified her behavior. Kakuzu had some sort of "deal" with a butcher, and he got bulk orders of fresh meat for the Akatsuki, but Tori had cooked one once and it was… it was bad, gristly stuff. Most members preferred buying their own food.

Either way, Kiasme wasn't impressed.

"Kisame-sempai," Obito said, leaping to his feet, "Tori-chan and Tobi are going on a mission."

Kisame's ever-present smile took on a fixed quality as Obito babbled about how cool and awesome it was, and did Kisame have any tips?

Tori stretched her back while she watched this interaction. It actually wasn't clear to her how much Kisame knew about Obito's dual identity. She thought Obito had recruited Kisame himself, but she could be misremembering, and Kisame gave nothing away as he eyed Obito like he was a particularly annoying child.

"We should head out, Tobi," Tori cut in, deciding to be merciful to poor Kisame.

Kisame's eyes flickered over to her. His grin widened. "You'll be fine," he said. "Probably."

"Thanks," Tori replied, her words coming out a touch more sarcastic than she meant. She wasn't too worried about this one, actually. Compared to some other shit she'd done, it sounded easy. Fun, even, if she played her cards right and didn't get lost on the way.

Obito took the stairs down two at a time, waving his arms in excited anticipation, and she followed him through the streets of Ame and then had to take over talking to the gate guard for their exit when Obito started babbling a bunch of bullshit that didn't make sense.

He calmed as soon as they were out of sight of the village, the Tobi persona melting away.

"Do you have, like, a plan?" Tori asked, curious.

Sometimes, for very long journeys, she got tapped in to help make travel plans– looking up ferry routes or checking through official Ame reports that Pein pulled for her to see if certain roads were expected to be passable. Sometimes members would ask her to look up the answers to very specific questions related to geography or local culture or double-checking mission parameters when things got weird. But unless a client wanted to be super involved, the vast majority of mission planning was left to individual members, and she didn't find out what they wanted to do versus what they ended up doing until after the fact. She had no idea how this part of mission planning went.

Obito tilted his head at her. "Do you have a plan?" he asked.

"I have some ideas for when we get there," Tori said slowly. "I've been writing back and forth with Ghost Lady for months. I have a good idea of what makes her tick."

Most of her interactions with Obito had been in his Tobi persona, where he was actively trying to sabotage her for shit and giggles. She had no idea if he was going to keep that up on this trip or not, and to what degree he'd let her call the shots. He was, very technically, the leader of Akatsuki, after all, and this was an official Akatsuki mission.

Obito turned away from her and cracked his neck.

"Yeah, that sounds good," he decided.

"But I don't know how to get there," Tori continued, and he snorted.

"I figured."

She had to do some wheedling to get it out of him, but Obito did have a civilian-friendly plan for getting them to Rice Country. There was a large town about a four hour walk from Ame, a journey which apparently civilians made all the time. They'd spend the night, and then in the morning, take a series of passenger boats down the river into Rice Country, which would take two days if scheduling worked out in their favor. From there, they could probably walk to Ghost Lady's town within the day if the weather was good.

"Four days…" Tori repeated. "That's so long."

Tori was sure there were less time-consuming ways Obito could travel, but maybe whipping out ninja techniques to port around a civilian woman weren't worth it when there was no urgency to the situation.

They walked in an awkward silence for about twenty minutes, before Obito randomly reached over and poked Tori in the side.

"Ow," she complained.

"Hey," Obito said, "have you really never traveled before?"

"What?" Tori repeated. "Obviously I've traveled."

"Four days isn't that long," Obito continued. "Not for a civilian. Not for going across multiple countries."

"Oh," Tori repeated, blinking at him.

Months ago, she'd take this as Obito accusing her of lies or something. Instead he was just peering down at her in what felt like curiosity.

"You wouldn't believe what people can do in my world," Tori said slowly. "We have a lot of… you have trains here, right?"

She didn't quite feel up for trying to explain what a car was, or that her country revolved largely around driving them, but Obito easily accepted the idea of faster and more numerous trains, and then had a lot of follow-up questions about Tori's description of a commercial flying machine. She shared that grandparents were from another country, and visiting her extended family involved flying a further distance than the Elemental Nations were wide.

The conversation lulled when a group of travelers appeared ahead of them on the dirt road, and as they passed, Tori smiled and waved in greeting. The travelers stared back at her, confused.

"I forget people don't do that here," she mused.

"Sometimes," Obito told her, "it's really obvious you're not from here. You should get better at talking about civilian travel methods."

Well. Okay, then. Get better at blending in or get better at being a world-traveler, sure.

The road was fairly heavily traveled, and there were multiple restaurants and tea houses along the way. Obito easily slipped back into the Tobi persona as they stopped for a quick meal at one, and they got into a very intense debate over the television series they'd been watching together before they'd summoned the Shinigami and freaked Tori out.

I wonder if Obito even actually likes this show, Tori mused. This was a lot of effort to put into being very wrong about if Lord Tadashi was actually having an affair or not.

Obito paid for their meal.

("Yaki… tori!" he'd cried, pointing at her order.)

"Do we have a mission budget?" Tori asked after they'd set out again.

Kakuzu was… weird about awarding those. But it seemed like Obito should have as much access to Akatsuki funds as he wanted.

"Tori-chan did no planning at all for her very important mission," Obito accused, still in his Tobi persona. Tori felt her cheeks go hot.

"You control the budget in the end, don't you?" Tori pressed. "We could…. have some fun."

"Kakuzu-sempai would be upset," Obito replied gravely.

"So upset," Tori agreed, stepping forward to meet Obito's eye. She grinned at him, trying to project as much mischief as she could into her expression.

Obito twitched. "Ah…"

Got you, Tori thought. Obito was a maniac with an iron will, and Tobi could not be out-annoyed, but at the end of the day, he was just a troll. Tori just had to convince him that whatever she wanted to do would be really, really funny at someone else's expense.

xXx

The civilian town they stayed the night in was only interesting in that it wasn't Ame. It sprawled along the banks of a massive river, and the air smelled vaguely like rotting algae. There were three parallel streets near the river filled with little shops and boutiques, and Obito complained very performatively while Tori spent the evening on a shopping spree.

If they weren't going to give her a stipend to replace her shampoo and deodorant and the clothes she kept getting inexplicably covered in blood, she would simply manipulate her stipend out of them. It was fine. Obito obediently made a big show off pulling out his wallet and dropping it or remarking loudly that Tori was a pushy and expensive woman, but he did go along with it.

When she could feel Obito starting to lose interest in what they were doing, she turned to weirder purchases.

Fine and normal.

"I think we should pretend to be exorcists," she said, peering at a jewelry display. "So it's totally fair," she said, picking up a completely gaudy necklace with huge chunks of semi-precious stones, "if we spent our mission budget looking the part, right? And we'll need props."

Obito perked up.

"Tori-chan is so smart," he said. "What do exorcists look like?"

"If you can find me a jewel-encrusted skull…" Tori started. "Definitely we'll have to smell like incense. Oh, do you have tarot cards here?"

They ate dinner in a very expensive restaurant. Obito very purposefully got prawn shells all over the table and continued harping about Lord Tadashi conspiracy theories, but the day wasn't bad. It was good, even.

The hotel they stayed in was mediocre and the room smelled strongly of tobacco, but it was still better than a dungeon floor or camping outside. Obito leafed through ferry timetables from the front desk while Tori attempted to seal all her new purchases into a storage scroll she'd been working on. This one had a specific key so she could put her stuff away into a specific dimension she could re-access with any seal bearing the key. That way she wouldn't have to reuse the same seal over and over. Instead, she could just make a new seal if the original one got destroyed because Obito "helped" her too hard or she dropped the scroll in the river.

She wasn't exactly good at this type of seal yet, and it produced a lot of smoke. Obito didn't look up, but he made a big deal of waving smoke out of his face while he read.

Still, she thought it was very cool and sexy of her to just be able to do this now, and she remarked as much to Obito. She'd made up her own little key, which she carefully designed to look as much like a fat little spider in a web of seal script as she could.

"Why aren't all scrolls made that way?" Tori wondered out loud. "It's difficult, but it's not really an obscure technique, and you'd never risk losing all your stuff…"

Tori liked having her own stuff.

Obito did look up from the timetable. "Because it's only practical if you're making the seal yourself."

Tori squinted at him, trying to logic her way through why it was impractical. If she destroyed a storage scroll with a key, she would just make a new seal on any old surface and rescue her stuff. But she supposed if she gave her scroll to someone else in Akatsuki to use, they'd need her to step in and retrieve their lost things… And even a big ninja village probably only had a handful of people making fancy storage scrolls…

"Plus it's a security risk," Obito continued. "If you had two seals linked to the same dimension, and I stole one scroll or stole your key, I could sabotage your items or even gain access to you. Then what would you do?"

That was a good point. Tori mulled this over as she very resolutely said, "Fill my dimension with live bees."

"Wow," Obito replied.

She got ready for bed. Maybe, months ago, she'd be embarrassed to brush her teeth in front of Obito in the little sink in their room, or to adjust the buttons of her pajama shirt in front of him. At some point, however, she'd stopped caring.

"We could pass little notes through the seal," she suggested through a mouthful of toothpaste. "Or snacks."

"Very popular move during the First Shinobi War," Obito told her. He was sitting cross legged on his futon, awkwardly working his fingers under his mask to rub lotion onto his face. For the scars, maybe?

Tori rinsed her mouth. Obito didn't bring pajamas, but he'd removed the charcoal colored outer armor he wore, and this gave him an oddly vulnerable aura. He was still massaging his face.

"I know what your face looks like, you know," she said cautiously. She gestured vaguely at the right side of her face.

"Oh, thank god," Obito replied, and pulled off the mask.

He looked exactly the way she thought he should, although his bangs were longer than she'd remembered. He pushed them back, showing off the black eyepatch over his left eye, and it seemed to her that he looked much younger than she'd expected. He was younger than Pein and Konan, at least. If he was Kakashi's age, that would put him in his twenties, wouldn't it? And speaking of Kakashi…

"What?" Obito asked as she rudely stared at him.

"I was just thinking," Tori said. "Are you worried about Hatake Kakashi getting access to you through your extra special personal dimension?"

Obito stared back at her. She wasn't used to reading his face, and she wasn't completely sure what his expression meant. His body had gone tense at Kakashi's name, but overall his body language wasn't overtly annoyed or upset.

Tori held his gaze. She felt it was good to occasionally remind Akatsuki in general why they were keeping her around: she did indeed know all sorts of interesting secrets.

"Well, you see," Obito said slowly, "I keep kamui filled with live bees, and he's allergic."

This was obviously bullshit.

"I see," Tori answered, just as slowly. Don't ask about Kakashi, she decided was the message. "Did you know bees are enraged by the smell of bananas?"

They made their beds and talked about convoluted plans to trick someone into eating a banana and then shooting bees out of a storage seal at them. It felt like a perfectly normal if not slightly sedated conversation to have with Tobi, but also the most bizarre possible conversation to have with Obito.

She supposed they were the same person, after all.

Notes:

Tori: You are going to give me a nervous breakdown during which I will rip out all your hair and then my own.
Obito: No. Shh. I know what you like. Take this porn.
Tori: Oh fuck you're right

Some ~science notes~:

Penicillin works by inhibiting the cross-linking of peptidoglycan, which is a polysaccharide (sugar + protein macromolecule) that "links" together as part of bacterial cell walls. Tori's comment about Gram-positive/Gram-negative bacteria refers to Gram staining: bacteria with unprotected cell walls stain "positive" when exposed to specific dyes. Ergo, penicillin is theoretically most effective against Gram-positive bacteria… although most papers I read on this have at least one throw away sentence about how it can work against some Gram-negative bacteria. My take-away is to treat this as a general rule rather than a hard law. :P

Not all Penicillium fungi produce penicillin, and I went down a rabbit hole a year ago trying to figure out how common penicillin production is in "wild" fungi to judge how lucky Tori has to get to find one. What I found out is that apparently it's not very popular for scientists to go out and assay random fungi for antibiotic production, even though that seems like a super easy study to export to an undergraduate or even high school lab course. Alas. Anyway, I did find several papers of people assaying Penicillium used in food production (mostly for cheeses like Roquefort or Camembert, or preserved meats) for penicillin. This led me to one of my favorite scientific figures of all time, this bioassay of antibiotic production in different regions of a salami.

Also: bees and bananas! Supposedly the bee "alarm pheromone" telling other bees to go attack something dangerous smells like bananas. I managed to confirm through several beekeeping websites and some scientific papers that the pheromone does smell like bananas to humans, but I didn't dig far enough to confirm that the two scents smell similar to the bees. Any beekeepers or bee biologists feel free to chime in!

Chapter 19: gaslight gatekeep girlboss

Summary:

Tori and Obito gaslight a mentally unwell woman. For fun and profit!

Notes:

Happy Halloween! :)

(Why is this so long? When will I learn to shut up?)

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Obito made them catch a ferry that left just after sunrise, and Tori found herself standing beary-eyed in a line down the dock. The river sloshed against its manmade banks, its waters almost black in the weak light of dawn. The river was wide here, and the morning mist hovering over it obfuscated the trees on the opposite bank almost entirely.

The boat, broad and flat, was bigger than Tori expected. The part meant for passengers was rows of wooden benches under an open air canopy to protect them from the morning drizzle, with a little kiosk offering snacks and hot beverages. Tori went to it immediately to buy coffee, and then ordered a black tea sweetened with honey when there was no coffee for sale.

Obito picked a bench in the back corner of the boat. Tori sat next to him and watched as families dragged trunks and suitcases into an area marked for luggage. A man rushed forward to help an elderly woman with her bag, but other than that people stuck together in the groups they boarded with. Rain Country people helped each other, but they were wary of socializing with strangers.

Obito hadn't trotted out his Tobi personality yet that day, even using normal polite speech to purchase their tickets. Now he sat back sedately and people-watched with Tori. The benches only ended up half-full, and passengers naturally spread out to give each other space. No one else sat on their bench.

The boat finally pushed off, and there was no announcement about life preservers or what to do in case of emergency. The sun was properly in the sky by now, and Tori pulled out her fanzine to comb through for the hundredth time. Someone calling themselves Eggplanted had written into the previous issue with something about color theory that many people had replied to in this issue with shockingly wrong ideas about Satsuki's color palette. Tori was currently attempting to recreate the original comment from the replies.

Obito leaned into her and in a whisper that was at least half Tobi asked, "Reading porn in public, Tori-chan?"

He teased her relentlessly over it, and Tori eventually gave up and shoved the fanzine back in her backpack. A six hour boat ride, and she wasn't allowed to read. She wondered what other Akatsuki members did during their long travels.

She pondered drafting a letter to the fanzine. She could eviscerate Eggplanted with facts and logic, or she could write her mini-fic about Junko accidentally sealing her bra into her shirt, or she could ask after if anyone else had found coded and possibly useless messages. Sending mail from outside Rain Country seemed more likely to reach the fanzine's publisher, and also safer in terms of hiding her identity. But all her writing materials were sealed away, and she wasn't about to go performing fuuinjutsu in front of a bunch of random civilians.

Instead, she pulled out a pair of boots from their prior shopping spree. Tori had no idea what an exorcist was meant to look like in this world, but she'd gone for a definite aesthetic, which also happened to match up with the type of impractical clothes she went for on days when she was feeling particularly goth. The boots were pretty, ridiculous things: black with decorative purple leather roses, a lone pair found in the back of a shop that otherwise stocked frilly pastel accessories. They were a size too big, and Tori had shoved some napkins into the toe to make them fit.

They also had a sizable heel, and Tori had never been good at walking in heels. She needed to practice.

Obito remained silent as she switched out her shoes, and then when she stood uncertainly, his shoulder gave a little twitch which Tori had come to recognize as Obito spotting the beginnings of a truly hilariously situation.

"Did you buy shoes you can't walk in, Tori-chan?" he asked with all the restraint of a man barely holding back mean laughter. "How are you going to pretend to be an expert if you can't walk?"

"I've got like three days," Tori told him, and then very unsteadily paced down the bench and then headed up the center aisle toward the front of the boat.

There were a handful of passengers at the front, leaning against the rails and watching the scenery. The water was too muddy to make anything out below, but the banks were lined with thick trees and ferns, and the breeze felt nice. Tori very carefully paced the perimeter of the boat, her fingers brushing the rail for whenever the boat lurched and she needed to steady herself.

The ferry line had four stops before it dead-ended at the Rain-Rice border, and at the second one, vendors came on board to sell hot meals. Obito leapt up to buy them onigiri, and when he presented them to Tori, he announced that one and only one was the vendor's "extra special super spicy challenge flavor."

"Ah, but…" He stared at the little bamboo container they'd been packed into. "I forget which…"

"Russian roulette," Tori stated sagely, and then found herself having to describe what Russian roulette was.

The filling of the first onigiri she bit into was incredibly spicy. She did her best to pretend it was totally normal, even as her sinuses started to run. The second onigiri was also spicy.

"I seem to have made a mistake," Obito said, and then made an exaggerated noise of sucking snot back up into his nose.

"Why do you keep doing this?" Tori asked. "You know I like spicy food. It's not going to work."

She was, actually, in tears. She shoved another bite into her face. She wanted to go buy more tea, but that would be admitting defeat.

"That's why I keep doing it. Eventually it will work," Obito replied, and he was close enough to her that she could see the rims of his eyes were red. "Russian roulette isn't a fun game."

"Well, you're playing it wrong."

The ferry route ended at the Rain Country border. The border was marked by a random little building at the river's bank, and by the two bored-looking Ame ninja standing in the middle of the river. Further down, more squarely into Rice Country, Tori could just make out dots of little boats.

International travel was not common across Rain Country's border, and only three other passengers besides themselves remained. They were all herded across a shaky pier by the ninja pair and directly into the little customs building. It was already crowded on the inside with a family of six looking to board the ferry going the other way. They stood around while an ancient looking kunoichi studiously read every word of their travel documents.

The family had three children under the age of ten. They were amusing themselves by playing a game where they climbed onto the one guest chair in the room, then jumping off and screaming as loud as they could when they landed. Tori eyed them. What if she ended up with a kid like that? She hoped Ghost Lady's first born was quieter.

For whatever reason, it took a very long time for the kunoichi to process the family. She grilled the parents and their oldest kid, who couldn't be more than fourteen, about what they were doing in Rain Country and how long they'd be there and when they were leaving. She got up and went through all of their things. The whole process took over an hour, during which Tori started tapping her foot impatiently. This woman was way more anal than the guy Tori had talked to when she'd wandered into Rain Country.

When the family was finally let go, the kunoichi settled back behind her desk.

"Who's next?" she asked, and Tori elbowed her way past the other three passengers with her and Obito's travel documents already in hand. She was the one carrying the documents, because she was the one who'd taken the liberty of fishing them out of Pein's desk and stamping them.

(He'd sent her to do something similar once, to get Sasori access to R&D facilities. She basically had permission.)

The kunoichi's eyebrows rose slowly as she skimmed the papers. Then her eyes slowly scanned Tori up and down, and Tori smiled brightly back at her. She knew she didn't look like the type of person one would expect to have special travel permissions to leave the country, directly from Pein. She wasn't a ninja, and she wasn't a fancy important noble person, and she was walking in a sad little waddle from her new shoes.

"Is there a problem?" Tori asked sweetly when the kunoichi didn't stop staring. Obito leaned over her shoulder. He wasn't particularly intimidating, but any ninja would recognize him as one of their own.

"None," the kunoichi said at length, and then they were let go without further questioning.

Rice Country did not have their own border control, to screen and monitor both the people coming in and leaving the country. This was generally uncommon, as far as Tori understood. Rain was just weird.

There was a little dirt path along the river, and she and Obito only walked a couple minutes before an older civilian man waved them down and offered to take them to the next ferry station on his boat. He made them wait another an hour while the other passengers were processed through border control, determined to squeeze as many coins out of as many passengers as possible.

At this rate, they weren't going to make the evening ferry that day.

"What's taking so long?" Tori wondered out loud, and the boatman gave her an odd look that signaled to her she had yet again asked a weird question.

"How'd you get through so fast?" the man asked, frowning at her.

"Don't tell anyone," Obito whispered at him conspiratorially, "but Tori-chan is a genius forger who made special fake travel passes."

The man rolled his eyes at the obvious lie, but didn't pry further. Tori excused herself from further conversation by tottering up and down the grassy bank of the river, very carefully practicing walking.

When they all finally piled into the man's little row boat, one of the other passengers had to grab Tori's arm to prevent her from falling over.

"Why are you wearing those?" he asked, eyeing her shoes.

"If I can walk in them here," Tori explained, "I'll be able to walk in them on flat land later and look like I didn't just learn today."

"Ah, I see," Obito said sagely. "Intense training. Why don't you walk in the boat?"

"No," the boatman objected, because his boat is barely big enough for the six of them and clearly not one meant to be walked around in.

Somehow, to the chagrin of everyone but Obito himself, Obito prevailed in having Tori pace up and down the center of the boat, a practice which took about three steps in each direction and inconvenienced literally everyone.

More than once she had to set her hand on someone's head to not fall over, each time making the whole boat lurch. The boatman looked extremely stressed. So do the other three passengers. She imagined Obito was grinning under his mask.

"Where, exactly, are you going?" asked the only other woman. She was traveling with a man Tori assumed was a husband or boyfriend.

Obito answered, giving the actual name of the town.

"Ah," the boatman said, eyes glimmering with recognition. "The village of spirits."

"The village of what?" Tori repeated, turning on her heels and setting her hand on Obito's head to steady herself.

"You haven't heard?" the boatman said, a smile cracking over his face. "It's a famous story…"

A long time ago, during the Warring Clans period, a group of shinobi had attacked the then tiny village. All the women and children and elderly had fled into a cave to hide while the men fought to protect their village. The fight had been long and brutal, lasting through the night. The ninja ransacked the village and took what they wanted, and most of the men were killed. The next day, when the ninja had left the semi-destroyed village, the surviving men climbed down into the cave to tell the rest that the coast was clear.

"Every single person in the cave was collapsed," the boatman said, watching Tori's face with the studious intent of a man trying to frighten a young woman for his own amusement. "Not a mark on them, either. Like they'd all gone to sleep, but none could be woken. The men went around checking pulses, and all but one woman were dead. They carried the woman back to her home, and she slept for two days before waking. She had no memory of what happened."

"Ninja have all sorts of terrible techniques," the third passenger offered up. "They must have done something."

"Ah, maybe," the boatman agreed. "The men decided they couldn't stay there, and abandoned the village. It was only resettled about twenty years ago by the Fujiwara Group."

"And these spirits?" Tori asked curiously.

The village was, naturally, said to be terribly haunted. A few years after the village was first abandoned, family members of the deceased had gone in to remove their remains from the cave and erected the only shrine specifically dedicated to the Shinigami in Rice Country. It was still maintained there to this day, even with the village resettled.

Tori did find herself stiffening at the mention of the Shinigami, and the boatman's grin broadened at her expression.

"It's said the people of the village still see the spirits of the dead sometimes," the boatman said. "Did you not know? Hope your business doesn't keep you there too long."

"Oh, don't scare her," the woman chided. "Here, sit down."

The woman scooted over, pushing her partner along with her to make room.

The boat ride only took about half an hour, leaving them at a tiny port unconnected to any town. There was a closed restaurant and supply shop, with a hand-painted sign on its door saying the last ferry had left for the day.

"Boo," Tori said. "Must've just missed it."

"Ah," Obito said, leaning over her shoulder to peer performatively at the sign. "Bad luck all around!"

The woman eyed them up and down. "You two have food for tonight, right?" she said slowly. "Or will you walk into town?"

She looked doubtful of Tori's ability to walk. To be fair, Tori had not been doing a very good job of it.

The port serviced three separate villages, which meant its location was equally inconvenient to all of them. It would be annoying to walk into town tonight and then walk back in the morning. They did have food, but it was disappointing ninja rations.

The woman was eyeing Tori with evident worry. Tori, of course, being the young woman too unused to travel to wear proper shoes, was a good target for worrying strangers. There was a huge pack on the woman's back, and her partner had an even bigger one. These two must surely have come even more prepared.

Obito twitched, and for the first time Tori felt like they were on the same page.

Tori let her eyes widen and worry cross her face. "Oh no!" she exclaimed. "No, we thought we'd make it…"

She did her best to look alarmed by the prospect of going the night with no food. Obito carefully patted her back.

"It's okay," he said, voice as comforting as she'd ever heard from a ninja. "We have one onigiri left. You can have it! I'm not even hungry."

The port had an adjacent campground, with bamboo awnings to sleep under and a handful of fire pits. The couple offered to share their dinner, and Tori sat primly on a low bench being completely useless while the couple cooked and Obito "helped" by spilling a bucket of water directly on their fire.

"Oopsie daisy!" he cried. If any of the passengers had suspected him of being a ninja, they certainly wouldn't anymore.

The fifth and final passenger, an older man who took out a pipe the second they were on dry land, was also invited to dinner.

"I'm from Rice originally," the old man explained of himself. "Ended up in a refugee camp in Rain during the war. They let me stay, but my brother is still here in Rice. I'm going to visit his new grandson."

"How cute!" the woman said. "We're both jewelry makers. We go up to Earth Country at least once a year for supplies. There's better tax breaks for buying local, but for some things…"

When they all turned expectantly to Tori and Obito, Tori smiled demurely and blatantly lied. Obito nodded along, adding little details. She introduced them as cousins, the only able-bodied people left to go to oversee the funeral of some distant relative neither of them had ever actually met. Obito picked a town for them to be from and then a very long story about how their parents had all injured themselves in the same freak wheelbarrow accident.

Obito had tilted his mask to the side enough to reveal his mouth to eat, which must have prevented anyone from asking any questions about the mask. The scars were obvious.

"But I didn't know the whole village was haunted," Tori hedged. "Do you think that will affect things? With it being a funeral and all."

The old man shook his head. "The village was resettled after I left Rice. But visiting a Shinigami shrine is good for funerals, I think. People pilgrimage to the shrine there. My aunt got a vision, going there after Grandpa died."

"A vision?" Tori squawked.

Usually she'd dismiss such a story as nonsense. But the Shinigami was demonstrably a real god, and the only thing up for debate in Tori's mind at this point was how likely he was to fuck with the living. Maybe the aunt had some sort of hallucination borne of religious devotion, or maybe the shinigami had talked to her.

(Tori wasn't sure if she wanted the Shinigami to have talked to the aunt or not. Were there other people out there, who thought about the Shinigami's gaunt stomach?)

"We went through there last year," the woman's partner interrupted Tori's thoughts. "No ghosts. But be careful of that Fujiwara group. The whole family is a piece of work."

Ghost Lady also happened to be the wife of the Fujiwara patriarch.

"Eh? Really?" Obito asked the man.

The man nodded. "You know how it is, when one person thinks they own a town."

Tori blinked very slowly to indicate that actually, she had no idea.

"Maybe you're too young to remember," the old man with the pipe said. "Rain would be the same, if God hadn't taken over."

The old man went into a very passionate speech about how good God was for the country, preventing petty gangs or foreign invaders from taking over where the noble elite had bailed or been eliminated. It took Tori almost a full minute to realize that by God, he meant Pein.

What the fuck, she thought. Then she opened her mouth and did her best to redirect the conversation to talking about the town, and the Fujiwara, and the shinigami shrine.

There was still a lot of content about how good Rain's God was and how Tori should send a prayer. The Fujiwara had resettled the town in order to set up a rice processing plant, and then used underhanded tactics– like hiring ninja to harass local farmers– to force everyone in the region to sell to them and them alone. This would never happen in Rain Country, the man promised her, because God wouldn't let some random wealthy family hire foreign ninja to bully the common folk.

(He would let a random nobleperson hire foreign ninja and torture random other citizens because being noble gave you that right or something, Tori knew, but she didn't say that outloud.)

The man also divulged the rest of his aunt's story: she'd gone into the cave, started hearing voices at the shrine that told her the chicken coop needed fixing up, and then gone back to her hotel and vomited twice. When she finally went home, a fox had gotten into their coop and killed all their chickens.

"God warned her," the man said, chewing furiously on his pipe, "just like our God warned us–"

Tori wanted to ask if the aunt had gone into the cave already knowing her chicken coop needed repairs and the fox attack was a completely predictable outcome. But Tori had gotten told off for asking questions about people's religious devotions before, back in her own world where some people thought questions were the same as criticism, and so she held her tongue.

When the man took a break from his rambling to pack more tobacco into his pipe, Obito stood up and loudly announced he would sing a song for them all as their evening entertainment. He then tipped his head back, and Tori had to work very hard to keep her face straight as he belted out a love ballad.

She'd heard this song before, a few times on the radio. Obito's voice wasn't bad, but she was pretty sure most of the lyrics were wrong. The strained looks on everyone else's faces when he started singing about a fish falling in love with an octopus were, admittedly, pretty hilarious.

When Obito was done, everyone moved to start cleaning up for the night, and Tori finally got off her ass to help the woman wash out her pot and bowls. There was a big utility sink behind the supply shop, with a sign indicating the water was potable but discouraging bathing in the basin.

"Is your cousin, um…" the woman shuffled uncomfortably. Around the corner, there was another shriek from Tobi and he inevitably got himself tangled in his own sleeping bag.

"They put me in charge of him, yes," Tori replied.

The woman sighed sympathetically.

"You seem close," the woman continued. "That's good. It's dangerous for a young woman to travel alone. You can mind each other."

She beamed at Tori, and Tori did her best to smile back.

xXx

Their little group didn't talk more, after they'd packed up for the night. The God-obsessed old man went to stand at the river and smoke some more, and Tori unrolled her camping mat next to Obito's under the canopy farthest away from the couple's own camp. When she took off her boots, her feet were bloody from new blisters.

"Interesting placement," Tori said, examining her foot and flexing her toes. She had blisters on the bottoms of her feet. That had never happened before.

"Gross, Tori-chan," Obito told her, shaking his head in performative disappointment.

The character Tori was crafting in her head– the hyper-competent semi-mysterious exorcist she was going to pretend to be to oust a ghost– was going to need to completely command the show, directing and managing their client's expectations. Such a woman wouldn't get blisters, and she wouldn't totter around with a limp from the blisters, and she wouldn't be wearing the ninja sandals that were Tori's only other piece of footwear. Tori could definitely suck it up and ignore the pain for a while, but…

"How long do you think this will take?" Tori wondered out loud. She'd been imagining maybe a weekend, but it was already going to take at least four days to get there.

"You wanted to be the mastermind," Obito told her, a distinctively non-Tobi meanness bleeding into his tone. "You tell me."

He did, however, offer her a roll of athletic tape. She carefully covered her blisters, and the places that were rubbed red but weren't quite blisters yet.

"You did a good job," Obito said at length, watching her fold up pieces of tissues to cushion the blisters under the tape. "It's hard to get people to open up that much, especially Rain Country people. We got a lot of info and they don't even know it."

Tori frowned as she bit off another piece of tape.

"I think it's totally normal for people to open up like that," she said.

It was normal, in her experience, for strangers stuck together by circumstance to tell little unimportant details of their lives. The only thing she'd really done was provide an excuse for everyone to share a meal, and the rest had just happened. Maybe ninja were more paranoid about it, but even Akatsuki members would share random things if you sat around and engaged them when they yelled about art or god or whatever they were into.

Obito tilted his head at her, like he had no idea what she was talking about. Maybe to him, and to watever fucked up circumstances he'd had to live through as a teenager, completely normal socialization was trickery and manipulation.

"It was just a normal conversation," Tori said.

"If it was a normal conversation, you would have started talking about ergotism again," Obito countered. "That's your normal. This wasn't. You'd be a more effective manipulator if you recognized when you were doing it."

"I'm not–" Tori started. "When was I talking about ergotism?"

Obito made a vague gesture with his hands. "Something about witches and mass hysteria. You had a lot of convoluted questions about mass hallucinations and fungal rot."

Tori frowned. She still had no memory of this, but it definitely sounded like something she'd say. Had she really spent so much time with him that she'd started forgetting conversations?

"I believe it was after you lit a piece of bread on fire," Obito said sagely.

"You did that!" Tori countered, remembering the incident. She'd wanted to try yeast in fuuinjutsu. Obito had been… very Tobi about it.

"I think it's totally normal for bread to catch fire like that," Obito replied in a very bad imitation of her, and Tori pulled her thermal blanket out of her backpack and tossed it over her head.

xXx

They didn't chat with the other Rain Country travelers much more in the morning. The supply shop opened early, and so they bought breakfast and packed lunches instead of sharing food again. The Rice Country ferry setup was similar to the Rain Country one, and Tori spent the day on the ferry reading, practicing walking, and then playing a game where she and Obito made up backstories for the rice paddy workers dotting the banks of the river.

Incidentally, they decided roughly 70% of rice farmers were undercover ninja and government agents. Tori watched a group of women walking along the riverbanks with babies on their backs and toddlers at their heels, and wondered out loud if she could just leave a baby with a nice family.

"Release it into the wild," Obito said. "I see, I see. Well, why not?"

They spent the night at a riverside hotel so isolated that it didn't have electricity. Their room was lit by gas lamps, and Tori arranged them around the cracked full length mirror leaning against one wall as she practiced her walk. She stuck her hips out and forward the way Mizusawa Asa had, trying to mimic her confident walk.

As she did this, she attempted to explain her plan to Obito.

"Here's how all the good paranormal investigation TV shows are set up," she said. Paranormal shows were not a thing in this world, which was a shame, because they were Tori's ideal mindless entertainment. "When there's two people, it's a medium who's sensitive to seeing ghosts, and then the person who actually does stuff."

There was always a mundane explanation for weird house noises or cold spots or whatever, of course, but that wasn't what the point of paranormal shows and it wasn't why she and Obito were hired. It almost always worked better, Tori had come to realize, if she just gave people what they wanted, and this lady wanted her delusions of being haunted validated and then excised. It was exactly what Orochimaru had done to manipulate and charm so many people, and Tori didn't see any reason to mess with a winning strategy.

The point of the TV medium was to hype up the audience, to convince them the paranormal was real. This, Tori reasoned, was the way to give their client exactly what she wanted: they'd take control over the ghost narrative and then give her an ending to blow her socks off.

Tori's plan, then, was that one of them should pretend to sense ghosts and be very dramatic about it, convince the Ghost Lady they were possessed by her house's ghost, and then the other person could pretend to exorcize them, the more dramatically, the better. They might also have to figure out why the woman thought she was being haunted and address it to prevent relapses and preserve their credibility, but how hard could that be? Probably there was just a raccoon in her attic or something.

Tori paused briefly, staring at herself in the cracked mirror. That guy in the bar had said monks had exorcized Dead Water Fever from his cousin's town with a dramatic light show. Was that their game for making people think they were managing disease? But he'd said it worked…

Tori shoved these thoughts aside. She could ponder lies of the state later.

"I think the format is based on a real husband-wife paranormal investigator team," Tori said. This format was probably also why the medium was always the woman of the pair, but she didn't need to tell Obito that. "It's a pretty compelling combo. Can you pretend to be possessed?"

Obito had seemed perfectly happy to let Tori take the lead on this part of the mission, and so she was going to do all the talking and be the exorcist. Obito was, however, also excellent at being the most dramatic person in the room.

He hopped to his feet and made a big deal of tapping his chin and asking Tori what she thought being possessed by a ghost might look like. He'd taken off his mask to eat, and his Tobi voice extended into him widening his eye at her in childlike curiosity.

"It doesn't really matter," she said. "Just be convincing. Bonus points if you do something no normal human can. She'll love talking about that, later."

She had expected maybe, like, some wallwalking. Instead, Obito made a big deal of clasping at his face in evident pain, then his face turned an inhumane shade of gray and started bubbling. A centipede emerged from his check, and then a cockroach came from his neck, and then a spider. He let out one long, agonizing scream, and bent over backwards into a perfect backbend before collapsing. Various bugs and spiders scattered across the floor.

Genjutsu, Tori realized. How useful.

"Yeah, like that," she said when he was done.

"You sound excited," Obito observed from the floor, his voice pouty. "I wanted to be scary."

Obito's little horrorshow wasn't nearly as bad as watching a person grow an entire second skeleton in Oto, but Tori wasn't going to tell him that. Instead, she clenched her fist and declared her undying love for ghosts.

Obito hopped back to his feet and leaned over her, posture inquisitive. "Are there ghosts in your porn books?"

Tori paused. The cogs in her head slammed shut and then rapidly started turning the other way. She groped for the notebook and pen she'd tossed aside earlier.

"No, but that's a great fanfic idea," she said, turning to a new page in the notebook. "Sexy ghosts. I love it."

"Hmm," Obito said, flopping back down on the floor beside her. "Your hobbies are weird, Tori-chan."

xXx

Because they'd been unlucky with the ferries, they were stuck on yet another passenger boat for the next morning. Tori did her best to explain a famous haunted Raggedy Ann doll the husband-wife exorcist pair notoriously had to lock up in a special museum it was so evil.

"I even had a Raggedy Ann," Tori concluded. "I think that's what makes the story extra spooky– a lot of people had them. She was, like, a cloth doll with a frilly white apron and bright red hair."

"Are you aware," Obito said slowly, "that 'haunted redheaded doll' just describes Sasori?"

Tori burst into laughter, leaning forward to clutch the rail of the boat.

"Would a haunted doll go into your sexy ghost story?" Obito asked, patiently waiting for her to get ahold of herself again.

"What? No… Well, unless you think people would be into it…?"

They walked the rest of the day, down an unshaded dirt road that wound through more rice paddies. Tori switched out her shoes for the walk– she was pretty confident she could walk in her boots now, and she'd almost definitely get blisters even with athletic tape wrapped all around her feet.

Even though the weather was cool, Tori felt herself working up a sweat under the sun. When they stopped near a little creek for dinner, she stuck her feet in it.

"Are we camping?" Tori asked, offering Obito a bag of dried plums she had on her that she was pretty sure she'd technically stolen from Kisame. He sat next to her on the rocky bank of the creek, dropping his mask between them and taking the bag.

"We could," Obito replied, shoving a plum into his mouth. "Or I could run us the rest of the way and we'd be there in an hour."

Tori eyed him. From anyone else, she'd just accept this offer. From Obito, it seemed like there was a decent chance of him… running her right into a cliff or something.

Or, unlike anyone else in Akatsuki, he was actually giving her a choice. This option seemed even less likely.

"I'd rather sleep in a bed," Tori said finally.

He let her climb onto his back, which was awkward and a half. "Hold on tight, Tori-chan!" he cried and then shot off with such sudden speed that Tori was almost thrown back. The only thing stopping her from falling off completely was Obito's firm grip on her legs and her iron grip on the back of his shirt.

She let out a handful of infuriated yelps as he ran along, which he either didn't hear or ignored. That this area was unforested was lucky, because if Obito had been doing anything but running straight over a flat surface, Tori would have surely lost her grip. As it were, her abdominals were already cramped from trying to stay upright.

By the time they reached the end of the stretch of rice paddies, Tori had managed to pull herself up and wrap her arms around Obito's shoulders. At the edge of the farmland, the road suddenly dipped down, and Obito stopped abruptly. Tori smashed her face into the back of his head.

"Ow!" she yelled. "Tobi, what the fuck is your problem–"

Obito wolf-whistled, and Tori peered over his shoulder at the view. They stood at the edge of a plateau, and it sloped down sharply into a series of narrow, terraced rice paddies. Beyond that was a valley of trees. The village they were traveling to was nestled among them, a cluster of buildings with orange-red roofs. A little beyond that was another clearing of long, tin-roofed buildings. The rice processing plant, Tori decided.

Rather than taking the dirt path that zigzagged between the terraces, Obito hopped down them like a large set of stairs. Tori grit her teeth and did her best not to bite her tongue at the jostling.

He dropped her just outside of the village proper.

"Your hair got so big," he observed, reaching forward to pull at a curl.

Well, Tori's hair had frizzed out and mostly lost individual curls. It probably looked more like a cloud than anything.

"It's fine," Tori told him. "All exorcists tease their hair."

"Uh-huh," Obito replied.

"Turn around so I can change," she told him. "We should get into character."

"I'm always in character," Obito assured her, even as he turned his back on her.

They walked into town looking completely ridiculous. Obito had not found her a jewel-encrusted skull, but he had found himself a ridiculous hooded cloak with a wildly impractical beaded pattern across the whole thing that was definitely just going to pop off with any extended wear. Combined with the mask and a cheap but large pendant of… some type of bird, he looked ridiculous.

Tori had made attempts to grab items she thought she could wear as part of a more normal outfit in the future, since she seemed to have a shockingly high rate of ruining clothes by getting them completely soaked in blood. She'd found an eccentric wrap-around dress with an asymmetrical skirt that matched her boots, which would probably look cute just on its own. She'd then accessorized it with, just, a truly absurd number of scarves. She'd also bought a tube of dark purple lipstick, which the concerned shop clerk had warned her would make her look like a gangster, so… perfect.

Also, Obito had kept shoving rings at her. Why had she agreed to all these rings? They were all completely mismatched, but she dutifully added them to her fingers.

"Am I cool and mysterious?" Obito asked, pulling up his cloak to cover the bottom half of his mask.

"Let me check my inner eye," Tori replied, pressing two fingers to either temple. "Nope, absolutely rancid vibes."

"I'm the one with an inner eye," Obito corrected, wagging his finger at her. "Keep it straight."

Ghost Lady's real name was Lady Fujiwara Etsuko, and she lived in an old mansion at the edge of town. It was surrounded by a stone wall and a garden that didn't look particularly well maintained– there were stone paths with clumps of weeds peeking out, as well as some half-dead bushes scattered around. The only thing that looked like it was actively being cared for was a bank of bright red flowers which lined the entire front of the house and looked as if they wrapped around the sides as well.

They took maybe two steps into the garden before Obito dropped to one knee.

"The dark energies….!" he cried, gripping his head. "Aaaargh!"

At least he's having fun, Tori thought. Obito was very happy to go along with anyone's stupid plan if it was annoying enough.

She, of course, intended to have fun too.

"What do you sense, cousin?" Tori asked, kneeling in front of him and placing her hands over his at the sides of his face.

A woman had come out to the front porch and then paused. Obito made a show of narrating the evil energies surrounding the house for her, taking big rasping breaths as he went. Tori watched the woman out of the corner of her eyes as she nodded seriously along, patting Obito on the back in an act of comfort. A young boy appeared behind the woman and ran off, only to return with a middle aged woman and man.

Lady Etsuko, Tori identified the woman. She was draped in a fancy-looking kimono, patterned in bright colors, but her eyes were filled with paranoia and anxiety, and her face had turned wide and desperate as she watched them. This show was for her.

"Calm yourself," Tori told Tobi, pitching her voice deep and trying to inject as much cool authority as she could into it. "Close your inner eye. Do not let it wander."

Obito let out a long groan and did a full-body shudder, but then he visibly calmed down. Tori passed him another dry plum and loudly identified it as being fortifying to the soul.

Lady Etsuko stepped hesitantly into the garden. In her barely coherent letters to Akatsuki, she'd bemoaned her lack of sleep and appetite, and under her fancy clothes and perfectly coiffed hair, Tori could see her figure was slight and she had deep bags under her eyes.

"Akatsuki-san?" Lady Etsuko asked, voice hopeful. It struck Tori as absolutely wild that anyone would be hopeful to meet any member of Akatsuki, even whatever the hell Tori's role was.

Tori stood, pulling herself to her full height. Tori was a short woman, but with the boots she was several inches taller than normal, and it made her feel more imposing than she'd ever been. She was still shorter than Lady Etsuko, but the amount of confidence she exuded definitely made Lady Etsuko perk up.

"My name is Reina, from the Hechizada family of spiritual specialists," Tori introduced. "I'll be your exorcist."

xXx

The first thing Tori did was make Lady Etsuko serve her dinner.

"Please tell me about your spiritual afflictions as we eat," Tori instructed.

It turned out listening to someone's unhinged ramblings while she ate delicious home cooked food was incredibly difficult. Whatever food Tori got at the Akatsuki headquarters was fine, but she hadn't had something that was even remotely approaching gourmet since she'd gotten to this world. Did this family have a private cook? Could Akatsuki hire one of those? Or… kidnap one, maybe?

Tori did not follow Lady Etsuko very well, in part because she was busy focusing on not just shoveling an entire plate into her mouth, and also in part because Lady Etsuko was not in a state to be telling a coherent story.

"There is a rattling," Lady Etsuko started. "And a dreadful feeling. Sometimes I can't breathe. My mother used to count brushstrokes…"

These all lined up with complaints in her letters, although it was unclear to Tori what Lady Etsuko's mother had to do with anything. Then Lady Etsuko became distracted by describing how her husband was always wearing red, which was a bad, unlucky color according to… something. He was born with a bad name, Lady Etsuko said. A fourth child; never good; all his brothers dead, dead, dead. Then she suddenly became fixated on the false name Tori had given Obito.

"Pesao, Pesao," Lady Etsuko murmured over and over. "What a unique name. Pesao… Is it common in your family?"

Tori had to work very hard to keep a straight face. "Yes," she said finally. "He comes from a long line of Pesaos."

When they were done eating, Tori asked for tea and for the lights to be dimmed. She went out of her way to hide her face in the billows of steam from her cup.

"My cousin could sense something, when we arrive," Tori said, as authoritatively as she could. "He's a very sensitive medium."

As if to demonstrate, Obito rolled his head back and did another full-body shudder, exhaling loudly as he did so.

Tori listed signs of the haunting Lady Etsuko had described in her letter as things "Pesao" had reported to her: the feeling of a hand around your neck, light-headedness, the ground slipping beneath you, exhaustion, an overwhelming sense of doom. Lady Etsuko's eyes widened and widened.

"Yes, yes," Lady Etsuko agreed, looking to Obito with wonder. "Yes, that's exactly what it's like. So you felt it too!"

"I was barely able to resist succumbing," Obito said, dead serious, pressing the back of his hand to his forehead.

"No one else believes me," Lady Etsuko said, hands clenching on her tea cup. Her nails been bitten ragged. "They say they do, but I can see they don't. Their eyes wander. Rattles, jitters…"

"Some people are more open to the spirit world than others," Tori said, reaching forward and wrapping her hands around Lady Etsuko's. "It's difficult for the uninitiated to understand."

The woman sniffed, eyes watering and desperate for validation.

This is almost too easy, Tori thought.

"I am a very spiritual person," Lady Etsuko said, voice cracking. "I go to the shrine every morning, to pray. It's the only thing keeping me together."

"That's good," Tori said. "Keep yourself strong." Then she said, "I want to meet your household next."

Lady Etsuko sent a maid off to gather people. They lined up obediently in the living room, except for the middle aged man who leaned against the wall and looked incredibly judgemental.

"My husband is away on a business trip," Lady Etsuko started. "He's a very busy man. I miss him dearly, you know. I can barely keep my wits about me without him. The only thing keeping me going is prayer."

The middle-aged man cleared his throat, and Lady Etsuko cut herself off, although she looked unphased. She gestured at him and finished, "This is my husband's trading partner, Satoshi. We've been hosting him."

"How old are you, girl?" Satoshi asked, eyeing Tori up and down. His gaze put her right on edge, like he was assessing a piece of meat. It was both deeply condescending and borderline sexual.

Tori abruptly remembered she'd turned twenty at some point. How sad, that she hadn't been able to celebrate. In hindsight, she almost certainly would have been able to get someone to party with her, if not just for the excuse to have a beer and some cake.

Oh well, Tori thought. She could just pick a new birthday and make someone buy her dinner.

As it were, she didn't like this Satoshi guy. His very gaze felt slimy. She leveled him with her best unimpressed look.

"The spiritual world cares not about physical age," she replied coolly.

Satoshi didn't look convinced at all, and neither did any of the wait staff, but Lady Etsuko nodded very seriously. She was the only one Tori really needed to convince of anything, and so Tori judged this situation handled.

The waitstaff was four people including the little boy, who was the older maid's child. Lady Etsuko additionally had three children of her own: two boys aged twelve and fourteen, and then a twenty-three year old daughter.

Oh shit, Tori thought as Lady Etsuko very brightly explained she was so happy Tori was going to take Erin off her hands.

"She was married, of course," Lady Etsuko said blithely, "but it didn't work out. Honestly, I wasn't sure what I was going to do with her. She won't even come to the shrine with me. If only my dear husband were here…"

Fujiwara Erin had spent the entire time staring demurely at her feet. Her hair was braided and pinned up in a beautiful bun, so Tori could see her full face. She made no reaction as her mother complained about her failed marriage.

What the fuck am I going to do with this? Tori wondered, then opened her mouth and demanded Lady Etsuko show her the full house. Lady Etsuko nodded and turned to the older woman on her wait staff, starting on a series of instructions.

"No," Tori interrupted. "It is of upmost importance to assessing the spiritual afflictions of the house that you do it, Lady Etsuko."

Lady Etsuko hesitated for only a moment before deferring.

Tori made her go through every inch of the house, including waitstaff's personal rooms and a basement pantry area that Lady Etsuko had clearly never accessed herself, tottering uncertainly down the rickety wooden stairs. She made Lady Etsuko narrate where she'd seen evidence of hauntings: hallways where she saw strange shadows, how she'd had dizzy spells in the threshold to her home and in her bed first thing in the morning, where she heard strange noises at night. Tori made her open random things– every kitchen cabinet, a hallway closet, the servant boy's personal chest of clothes. She made her kneel on the floor and look under the study desk in her son's room. She made her pull the sheets off her own bed and open every skin care product in her bathroom. She made her peer into a decorative vase in the living room and then, just for kicks, stand in the middle of the back garden and scream.

Lady Etsuko was hesitant at first, but Tori tossed back her hair and promised it was all very spiritually necessary. Lady Etsuko stopped questioning her by the time she told her that she needed to stand in her own bathtub and knock on the walls, listening for a responding knock.

Obito plodded along behind them, occasionally pressing his hand to his forehand and announcing bad energies. He vibrated with something that probably seemed like nervous energy to onlookers, but which Tori privately guessed was sadistic glee. When she made Lady Etsuko scream, he joined in, like a wolf joining the yipping howls of a lapdog.

The effect of making Lady Etsuko articulate her problems and bossing her around was that she wound herself into a deep fluster, her eyes widening in paranoid fear and her hands getting shakier and shakier. She bit at her fingernails until they bled. Tori was sure she could get the woman to do anything at this point.

It was both a tempting and disgusting feeling. Tori wasn't used to having power over people, and so the idea of commanding someone to do something just for the sake of doing it was appealing. At the same time…

This feels bad, Tori thought, watching as Lady Etsuko threw herself on the floor and begged for help.

Tori kneeled next to her. She placed both hands firmly on the woman's shoulders.

"Don't worry," she said. "We're here for you. Now about our conditions…"

When she'd been trying to get Lady Etsuko to back down from hiring Akasuki, Tori had listed a bunch of increasingly bizarre conditions for Akatsuki's help on top of continually raising the mission costs. Lady Etsuko nodded eagerly and summoned the younger maid to show them to their room.

Holy shit, Tori thought, when the maid opened the bedroom's door to reveal the taxidermy bear statue Tori and demanded for no reason. Just as she'd requested, its paws held a bowl of a very specific brand of candy.

"Aah, perfect," Obito said behind her. He reached forward and grabbed a handful of candy.

"I'll bring your breakfast to you in the morning," the maid said, and then disappeared.

A table in the room had a pile of high-end teas Tori had copied from catalogs Itachi kept, as well as a kit of gold watchmaker's tools and several beetles preserved in amber she'd listed as "important ninja exorcist tools" after seeing a nature documentary.

"Tori, you going mad with power is… interesting," Obito said, unwrapping a candy. Tori had picked that brand because it was the only one she knew off the top of her head, because Obito liked them.

He could only get them in a specific part of Fire Country. He'd complained about it a lot as Tobi. She'd thought it'd be hard for Lady Etsuko to get, or at least that the demand would make Akatsuki seem too unhinged to work with. But no, now Obito just had his favorite candy.

"Can't wait to see what you're going to do with the first born," Obito said brightly.

Tori groaned and sank into a chair. She remembered diagramming a very specific furniture configuration for the room, right under an insane monetary quote for "potential emotional damages relating to ghosts," because this woman wasn't supposed to hire them.

There was an attached bathroom, and after they'd both gotten ready for bed, Tori bemoaned that people weren't supposed to agree to give away their children. Obito, going through his routine of moisturizing his scar tissue, made the observation that Tori had a very cruel mind to even come up with such an ultimatum. Tori attempted to justify her thought process by explaining it was a common trope in her culture. She retold fairy tales, Rumplestiltskin and Rapunzel.

"Tori," Obito said very slowly. "In both of those stories, the parents agreed to it."

Tori stared down at her futon, dumbfounded. She hadn't considered that.

"Still," she said.

"Maybe we can just leave her in the woods," Obito told her, Tobi-esque fake sympathy lacing his words. "I'm sure that as a rich, spoiled lady who's probably never set foot in a forest, she'll be fine."

"Do you think we can still leave her with a nice farmer family?" Tori wondered.

She pulled her bag to herself, unpacking and rearranging things as she and Obito brainstormed increasingly unhinged ways to get rid of Erin. (Perhaps she could be in charge of the kamui bees?) Tori was also concerned that there wasn't an obvious, direct cause of the supposed haunting, besides Lady Etsuko maybe being very mentally unwell. It seemed like the two of them would indeed end up there for more than a few days after all. At least there would be good food?

In the side pocket of her backpack, Tori discovered a small glass vial with a rubber stopper. Wrapped around it was a note from Sasori, with instructions on how to dose herself with poison. This made Tori completely forget about fake ghosts or the Erin situation.

"Are you kidding me?" she said, holding up the vial for Obito to see. "What is wrong with him? He didn't even give me gloves or anything to measure it with!"

xXx

Tori did not add poison to her morning tea, as Sasori had suggested. Instead, she left the vial in her bag and ate leisurely, then wandered out of the room in search of her employer.

Erin was sitting in the hallways outside the room.

"Um," Tori said.

"Good morning," Erin replied, eyes on the floor. "I'm meant to tell you that my mother is indisposed."

Lady Etsuko had gone to the shrine at dawn, then came back and had a "fit of nerves" which now left her bedridden.

"To clarify," Tori said slowly, "this shrine is the Shinigami shrine?"

"Yes," Erin said, gaze still fixed on the patch of floor in front of her. "My mother has become very devoted since my father went on his business trip."

"And how long has this trip been?" Tori asked.

"Six months."

"Are his trips usually this long?"

Erin hesitated. "No."

Well. Okay then. Who knew what that meant.

Inside their room, there was a sudden burst of screams. Tori pursed her lips and pushed the door open to reveal Obito on the ground, failing and screaming with about seven different voices, chorusing all at once as part of his genjutsu. Erin let out a gasp of horror.

Show off, Tori thought, feeling almost affectionate.

Obito kept up his act of making inhuman and horrible noises for only a few minutes, but it was enough to attract the maid who'd brought them breakfast and then Satoshi. The maid was clearly frightened, and even when Obito had stopped and then rolled over and pretended to be asleep, she begged Tori to gather their breakfast things herself so the maid didn't have to enter the room.

"Don't be lazy," Satoshi told the maid. "Go on."

Tori almost intervened, but it felt wrong for Reina to be doing her own chores, so she stood awkwardly in the hallway as the maid visibly held back tears as she entered the room. Obito let out a loud snore that made her jump. Well, at least other people in the house would believe he was possessed.

Satoshi looked Tori up and down. She very consciously attempted to ignore his gaze.

"So you're a kunoichi?" he asked.

What the hell? Tori thought. That this mistake could be made was… kind of funny.

It abruptly became very not funny at all, as Satoshi stepped directly into her personal space, breathing the scent of tobacco into her face. "I heard kunoichi can be paid to do all sorts of things, for the right price. Especially with men."

His voice was heavy with innuendo, and Tori felt her stomach twist with disgust. Seriously? Seriously?

"REINA," Obito called, suddenly on his feet. The maid dropped the tray on which she'd gathered their dishes from breakfast. Satoshi stepped away from her. "Didn't you say you wanted to see the shrine?"

They left the house. The property was on the edge of town, and they had to pass through it to get to the shrine. The town itself was cute; the residential sections were mostly blocks of small apartments, all built uniformly, but the center was a cluster of shops and cafes that Tori would loosely describe as charming. They asked directions to the shrine and were pointed to a wide and well-maintained dirt path that led into the surrounding woods.

The entrance to the cave was underwhelming, a hole in the ground no larger than a sewage manhole, with a sign labeling it as the way to the Shinigami shrine. A stone bench held a small collection of rusty, dinged up metal lanterns, only three of which appeared to have a candle inside, and a lockbox where they could donate to shrine maintenance. Foliage around the hole had been cut away, and someone had built a narrow, ladderlike metal staircase down into the earth.

Tori spread her fingers over her stomach, remembering how starved the Shinigami had felt, then the way its stomach had rolled in disgust at the thought of her. The hole in the ground looked innocuous, but so had the mask…

Obito lit two lanterns and passed one to Tori.

"Okay," he said, leaning over the entrance and staring down into it. "Kind of weird, but not weird enough to make you completely lose your marbles."

Tori was sure Obito knew all about completely losing your marbles in a cave, although she held her tongue on the matter.

"Are there many shrines like this?" Tori wondered. People on TV and in books were always going to shrines for various deities, but it seemed like usually that involved going up into a mountain or something.

"I think Earth Country has cave shrines," Obito said, stepping onto the top rung of the staircase with more hesitancy than Tori would have anticipated from him. "But, you know, they just have a lot of things in caves."

Tori followed Obito down, lantern in hand. The staircase was short, dropping them onto a steep path that spiraled downwards and downwards. Although the path was clearly manmade, it wasn't exactly smooth, and there was no rail to prevent visitors from sliding off the side and into the dark abyss of the cave.

There was an ancient rope installed into the wall of the cave, strung through iron loops. Tori clung to it as best she could with her other hand dedicated to holding her light. In front of her, Obito walked with the confidence of a ninja with no fear of falling, although his shoulders were surprisingly tense.

Tori waited for the feeling of dread to come as they descended, the attention of a god who did not like her. It never happened. The cave was silent.

The path eventually leveled out, snaking off into a low-roofed tunnel. It deadended in a decent sized cavern, where an altar was carved directly into the back wall itself.

Obito paused at the entrance of the cavern, and Tori nearly bumped into him.

"What's up?" she asked.

"Ugh, it's creepy," Obito whined, then marched over to the altar with an air of determination in the face of great hardship. This place did not feel like the Shinigami at all; Tori felt perfectly safe.

Oh my god, Tori thought as Obito lit the wall torches on either side of the perfectly non-creepy altar. Is he afraid of caves?

The altar had about what Tori would have expected: shelves carved out of the earth where people had left offerings and photos of loved ones, a scroll laid out where you could write names and prayers, dusty looking cushions to kneel on arranged in front of it. It also had a feature that seemed bizarre to her: rather than depictions of deities or associated symbology, someone had carved lines and lines of seal script into the wall above the altar proper. They went all the way up to the ceiling of the cavern, organized into dozens of columns.

"This doesn't say 'he who reads this will have hallucinations of ghosts,' does it?" Obito asked, pointing at the script.

Tori squinted up at it. "Seal script" as it existed in this world sometimes referred to an ancient way to write real words and sentences, and sometimes it referred to the specialized symbols used in fuinjutsu. Tori couldn't read the former, but this example seemed to contain mostly the latter.

Seemed, Tori emphasized to Obito, because a lot of it was stuff she'd never seen before.

"But it's not arranged to do anything," Tori said. "It's just… a list?"

She fumbled with the many scarves tied around her skirt. She'd shoved a notebook and pen into one.

"Right," Obito said when she started scribbling copies of the symbols. "Well, looks like you don't need me here."

He left. Tori sat on one of the cushions. She didn't see how the seal script could be at all related to Lady Etsuko's delusions– it wasn't like it held a trapped a soul, or caused hallucinations– but they could be a useful aesthetic touch to their eventual and very dramatic fake exorcism. Besides, she wanted to look these up once she got the chance. Were there maybe monks or something that she could ask?

Would Hidan know? She wondered absently. She didn't think he knew shit about fuinjutsu, but he was definitely an expert on all things religion.

It was difficult to make out the symbols toward the ceiling of the cavern, as the light from the wall torches didn't quite reach. Tori stood to squint harder at them.

She nearly fell over, suddenly lightheaded. She stumbled forward, hand grasping for the shelves of the altar to steady herself. There was a moment of panic, but no– this feeling was fundamentally different from meeting the Shinigami.

Huh, she thought, watching the ground spin beneath her. It eventually slowed and then stopped, and Tori craned her head back, eyes following the seal script upwards like it might tell her what was happening. The script definitely isn't doinganything, though.

The dizziness faded, and Tori set her notebook on the top of the altar to continue writing. When she tilted her head back again to look up at the script, the dizziness returned.

What am I thinking? She decided, putting the notebook away. I can't write like this…

She was genuinely torn about leaving, but also maybe whatever was driving Lady Etsuko insane was the same thing making her dizzy? It would be the more logical move to retreat before she got so lightheaded she might fall off the path back up.

She found Obito outside, sitting on the little bench with the lantern and chewing more of his candies.

"I don't like that," he said when she explained what happened. "I'm supposed to be the one who gets possessed."

She had a hard time walking straight as they went back into town, so they stopped at a cafe.

"Maybe we should go to a doctor," Tori suggested. "Run some tests."

"Maybe it's…" Obito leaned for conspiratorially. "The ghost."

Tori rolled her eyes. There was, as far as she could tell and even with several revelations about gods and souls, no evidence of a ghost. Still. If the cave was somehow the cause, that meant they could make Lady Etsuko's symptoms stop by simply preventing her from going down there. All they had to do was prove causality… or, since that was difficult, at least a very compelling correlation.

"Did you grow up here?" Tori asked the girl behind the counter. She put on her best, friendliest smile. "We were passing through and heard about the shrine."

The girl, who was about Tori's age, had indeed grown up in the surrounding area. Her family was rice farmers, but she worked in-town most of the year to support them monetarily.

"People only really go down there when someone dies," she said of the shrine. "The Fujiwara family hires people to go clean it sometimes, I guess. They're the main patrons."

"We saw Fujiwara Etsuko down there this morning," Tori prompted.

"Oh…" The girl's eyes drifted away from Tori, focusing instead on a stack of menus on the coffee counter. "I guess I heard the rumor that… well, they didn't used to go more than anyone else. It's just that they own most of the town, so they have to at least pretend to take care of it."

"Pretend?" Tori repeated, but the girl changed the subject to retelling the legend of the shrine. It was the same story the boatman had told them, although the girl rejected the theory of a ninja's jutsu killing the town.

"Fujiwara hires ninja all the time," she said. "So I know a lot about how jutsu works. It can't go underground like that."

"Really?" Obito asked in false fascination. "Can you tell us more about ninjutsu? How exciting!"

So, they didn't learn anything else about the shrine specifically, but apparently Lady Etsuko's husband had been very aggressive about taking over the harvest and sale of all the rice in the area, forcing farmers into tight contracts and then using ninja to enforce them, often violently. The girl was not exactly explicit about this, but it wasn't difficult to read between the lines.

I wonder if that's why she's working at a cafe instead of with her family, Tori thought as the girl described a fascinatingly incorrect analysis of how a genjutsu worked. They can't actually make enough money off the rice like this.

When they started on the walk back to the mansion, Tori was no longer dizzy, but she was now in a bad mood.

"I can't believe you can just hire a ninja to genjutsu someone into signing away their land," Tori said, kicking a rock.

"Yeah, way worse than the murder and torture you already knew about," Obito replied.

Which, like, yeah, Tori had been aware Akatsuki would do any horrible thing if you could pay enough for it. But surely actual villages had– had rules or standards or something!

She did not muddle through these thoughts and feelings further, because Obito's wording made her remember Satoshi's earlier comment.

"Also, what the fuck is with this Satoshi guy?" she said. "He's the creepiest thing we've seen so far."

"Good thing you're a kunoichi," Obito told her slyly. "Perfectly capable of self-defense."

"Oh, fuck you," Tori replied, although she wasn't particularly worried. What was anyone going to do to her with Obito around? He might "accidentally" set a few fires, but they were in this together. "Okay, also, why is their garden only those weird flowers?"

When they got to the property, instead of going straight inside, Tori walked directly over to the bank of red flowers. The flowers themselves were quite wide, with thin, spindly petals.

"They're very pretty," Tori decided. "But didn't Lady Etsuko say red is bad luck?"

Obito cocked his head to the side. "You don't know what they are?"

Tori stared at him, then down at the flowers. "No?"

"They're spider lilies," he told her. "They grow on graves."

xXx

Lady Etsuko managed to make her way out of bed for lunch. She bemoaned her state to Tori with surprising vigor while swearing she could consume nothing but a thin broth.

Erin sat with them at lunch, positioning herself next to Tori. She then followed Tori around the mansion while Tori painted "protective seals" on random walls, like her own version of a sad little ghost. Obito disappeared into their room.

"Do you… want something from me?" Tori ventured, addressing Erin.

Erin only blinked at her. She had big, beautiful eyes, like a cow.

Tori also disappeared into their room.

"I don't think I can handle having an adult child," she announced.

"Hmm, sucks for you," Obito said. "Also, I'm leaving this evening."

"What?" Tori asked.

Zetsu had contacted Obito about something urgent that he would not explain to Tori. Obito would be abandoning Tori to run this mission solo for twelve days, at which point he expected her to be done so he could escort her back to Ame and continue doing his mysterious unnamed Obito things.

"Twelve days?" she repeated. No way did she want to be here that long, and alone? How was she supposed to accomplish their plan alone? "You can't just leave the plan! You're a part of the plan!"

"I believe in you," Obito said, sounding very much like he did not believe in her, and that her new course towards failure would be hilarious. "Don't worry. I'll leave you with something good."

Just before dinner, Obito walked into the kitchen and started to wail with the voices of tens of demons. Everything became inexplicably hot, and his clothes suddenly caught fire.

"Stay back!" Tori yelled, ushering Erin and the staff present into one horrified group in the corner of the kitchen.

"What's happening?" Satoshi yelled, bursting into the room and brandishing, for some reason, an actual sword. Lady Etsuko was hot on his heels, hair and clothes disheveled and face in a panic.

Suddenly, the doors to the basement pantry burst open. Red flames shot forward. A gruesome, clawed hand grabbed Obito by the ankle and jerked.

"NO!" Obito yelled, falling to the floor and thrashing. "REINA, HELP!"

Tori reached forward, offering her hand. She knew the fire was fake, but it both looked real and felt hot, she couldn't quite convince her brain to get too close to it. Her fingers brushed the tips of Obito's uselessly.

"Pesao…!" she screamed over the roar of the flames.

"AAAH!" Obito yelled, and was dragged down into the basement.

The flames died. The room went cold and was very quiet. Satoshi approached the door cautiously, sword in front of him.

"He's gone," he said after a few moments, voice filled with awe. "He's completely gone!"

Lady Etsuko fainted. The kitchen erupted into chaos.

Obito, you asshole, Tori thought, joining Satoshi to stare down into the basement and Erin kneeled to fan her mother. Satoshi was, thankfully, too busy trying to regulate his breathing to make a pass at her. Why would you do this to me?

xXx

The good news was that everyone in the house was now convinced ghosts were real, and in a way that positioned Tori as an expert on it. She gave a speech about how "Pesao" was taken by unhappy spirits as he'd been attempting to protect them from said spirits, and how this would be their fate if they didn't all listen to her.

"Don't let his sacrifice be in vain," she said, voice quivering with barely repressed emotion. It was barely even acting; she genuinely wanted to scream.

Then they all listened to her when she said to fill their mouths with salt water and walk backwards to their bedrooms, where they had to stay for the rest of the night no matter what they heard or saw or smelled. She couldn't believe that worked.

(Dinner was half-made, so she fixed a plate for herself and ate it in her room.)

Now she just had to convince them she got rid of the ghost, ideally in an equally dramatic way to match the expectation Obito had set. Oh, and she had to remove whatever was making Lady Etsuko think she was being haunted, which seemed to go way beyond raccoons in the attic. How the hell was she going to do that? She could come up with a reason for Lady Etsuko to not go into the cave shrine, which might clear up some of her symptoms, but that certainly wouldn't be enough of a show for the mess she'd made.

She stayed up late reading Icha Icha Paradise. This one chronicled Satsuki's dramatic redemption arc and subsequent betrayal, and she had been busily annotating it. She wanted to write into the fanzine and correct some idiot's analysis of the "realistic" take on ninja conflicts when Icha Icha had a blatant fixation on the "heroic shinobi always finding a way" in the face of impossible conflict.

You're going down, reader Eggplanted, Tori thought, scribbling away. You and your stupid headcanon about Satsuki favoring pink when she's clearly a purple.

She woke up in the morning with ink on her face. Ugh.

As an afterthought before she left her room to tell the rest of the house it was safe to come out and make her breakfast, Tori folded the knife from Deidara into her skirt. She hadn't liked the way Satoshi looked at her, and now she had no ninja ally hanging around. Hopefully this was nothing but an overabundance of precaution.

Lady Etsuko reported herself too "affected" to go to the Shinigami shrine, and she actually shed tears as she explained from her bed she couldn't go to pray for poor Pesao.

"It's okay," Tori soothed. She hadn't blinked for a very long time, to make eyes wet with unshed tears. "Drink ginger and tumeric tea to calm your soul. I will go pray for my cousin. I desire privacy to mourn him."

She requested a watch from Lady Etsuko, who directed her to dig a pocket watch on a silver chain out of a jewelry box. Tori didn't want to spend very long in the cave, especially without Obito to come fish her out if something happened. She checked the time before she descended once again.

The outside of the cave looked exactly the same as it had the day before. Tori's goal was to copy more seal script, time how long she could stay down there symptom-free, and then maybe go back to Lady Etsuko and tell her some excuse for why she shouldn't go down everyday anymore.

It did not occur to Tori that the cave could contain something far worse that would completely derail her mission. She went in without fear.

Tori took the climb down slower than the day before, now that she didn't have a ninja to grab her if she slipped and fell. Even so, the descent felt faster this time, now that she knew where she was going.

She saw the light before she saw a person. There was a harsh fluorescent glow from the opening of the shrine's cavern, from someone's electric lamp. Tori approached without fear: even if people only ever came down to mourn the dead, people died all the time, especially if your local rice mill monopoly wanted to sic ninja goons on you. She was sure the shrine got a decent number of visitors, and she wasn't expecting anyone dangerous or remarkable.

She was wrong. She stepped boldly into the cavern, recognized the person inside, and actually let out a scream.

It wasn't a terribly dramatic scream– a yelp of shock rather than horror. Still, she stepped right back out of the cavern and considered running. Her heartbeat had already gone from normal to a sprint.

"Tori?" Sasuke asked, staring at her in open surprise.

Except, no. This wasn't Sasuke. It was his face and body, but something was horribly wrong.

His hair had grown out several inches and was tied at the nape of his neck, fanning out and not succeeding at all at making him look like his brother. He'd grown several inches since she last saw him, and he turned toward her and stepped forward with a sort of predatorial slink that she'd never seen on Sasuke. He was dressed in a dark purple yukata, and had applied both eyeliner and purple eyeshadow to his face.

No way, Tori though. Oh, fuck.

"O-orochimaru?" Tori asked.

Sasuke's mouth peeled back into such an indulgent, evil smile that it answered her question for her.

"Fancy meeting you here," Orochimaru basically purred.

Notes:

Obito hasn't learned yet that you can't leave Tori alone without shit hitting the fan immediately. :^)

Important housekeeping:

1. I AM CHANGING MY USER NAME. Change will happen in the next couple months. I will keep Misfit_McCoward as a pseud so you should be able to find me easily even if you're not subscribed. New name will be something similar to my tumblr url, mixelation.

2. Plasticity as been added to a series, also called Plasticity. I will... eventually... add some supplementary ~bonus~ material to this series, so feel free to subscribe if you want an instant notification.

Other chapter notes...

Tori's fake names are all Spanish words.
*Reina - a Japanese given name; also "queen" in Spanish
*Hechizada - bewitched; spelled. Would not be read the same if read as a Japanese word vs a Spanish word, but I kept the Spanish spelling to make the joke more obvious.
*Pesa'o (from "pesado") - an annoying person (literally, "heavy")

Seal script is a real type of ancient writing. I decided the term made sense as a way to describe "script meant for seals," although I doubt Japanese would use the same word for "seal" for both. Don't think about language too much in this fic, shh.

Red spider lilies are associated with death in Japan. I didn't do a deep dive researching this, but what I read indicated they're commonly (intentionally) planted around graves. Obito likes spooky wording. :)