Uchiha Afoot
RichardSullivan
Summary:
No matter what it took, no matter how hard she'd have to train or how cleverly she'd have to hide herself—
Akari intended on escaping Konoha. She was not going to die with the Uchiha, that she swore.
Reincarnating into an Uchiha is all great and dandy except for the minor issue that they're all going to get massacred in less than a decade. With her foreknowledge, Akari decides that the best course of action for a no-name daughter of two chunin is, in fact, not to try and fight the world's strongest shinobi and/or try to depose the shadow government of the hidden leaf. Instead, she decides that she's going to get the hell out of Konoha.
Essentially an Uchiha character decides that she'd rather just nope out instead of deal with all this bs.
Notes:
(See the end of the work for notes.)
Chapter 1: Lucidity
Chapter Text
They came sharply, lightning-strikes burning through her mind in flashes of lucidity. Burned into her consciousness, shearing through the omnipresent fuzzy blur of exhausted… tiredness, a sort of senseless weakness, impotence that clung to her tightly and prevented her from doing anything .
A blanket, slightly threadbare. Slightly rumpled, in the memory— she'd been laying on the blanket, wrapped in the blanket, vast wooden pillars barring her from the rest of a room dark and quiet. Then she'd fallen asleep. Looking, truly looking — for whatever reason— was exhausting .
An empty meadow, grass and trees and sunshine.
Two figures, a man and a slightly shorter woman, dressed finely and standing over a table as they studied a scroll not quite visible from her vantage—
Moonlight through the window.
A symbol, red and white, and— well, she was a bit embarrassed that it took her almost two months to figure out what was going on. She wasn't stupid, or at least she hadn't been stupid before she'd literally been reborn as an infant, but surely she could be forgiven for being a little slow on the uptake. Even if her clan symbol was plastered on the wall. And every other piece of clothing she saw her probably-parents wear. And the table and family heirlooms and hung on the wall and—
The first thought she truly thought when it all finally came together was that: she was an Uchiha, and she really, really needed to get the fuck out of Konoha.
…
Being a baby was boring. This came as no particular surprise to Uchiha Akari— a name which took some rather intense focus to figure out. There was a whole lot of sitting around and doing nothing, a fair bit of being spoken to in a language she didn't understand, and the occasional excursion out of the house and through what she could only assume was the Uchiha district. That, and no shortage of existential fear, of course. The whole thing was really exhausting, actually, and despite her best efforts she found herself slipping asleep more often or not.
That was fine, probably. She wasn't even one.
The second revelation, beyond being in a fantasy world she used to read bad fanfic of in particularly boring high school classes, was that she had her sharingan. It came as a surprise, even though it really, really should not have— why else would she remember the exact weft and weave of her blanket in exacting detail still if she didn't have, you know, a super bullshit dojutsu that allowed exactly that. She spent a few days worrying that she'd be forced into some super intense ninja training regime— or worse, ROOT— but her parents didn't seem to know, and nobody ever brought it up. To them, she was your very ordinary, perfectly average Uchiha child.
Great. Perfect. She didn't show them, because she wasn't fond of committing suicide, assisted or not. The sharingan could be her own little secret.
She was barely six months old when she kind of haphazardly stumbled onto her chakra. She'd been messing around with her sharingan, driving herself to chakra exhaustion staring and random stuff like bugs or leaves or the whorling patterns swirling through the wood, when she first equated the slight shifting, the feel of faint energy rushing beneath her skin with— chakra, god-tree given, sage spread, king of random nonsense chakra .
Needless to say, she was very excited.
Her first chakra exercises weren't even really chakra exercises in the strictest sense of things, more just things to keep her busy and to avoid the terminally boring baby-ness . They didn't do nothing — pretty much as soon as she was able to crawl there was etiquette and language and all the things you'd do with a baby, but they were… well, for babies. She could listen with the other Uchiha babies as their nanny droned on in a language she barely even understood, or she could play with controlling her chakra in ever finer increments, first within her body and then without. Subtly, of course— she particularly liked the long, not quite tight-fitting sleeves which she could stick and unstick with her chakra and rumple in all sorts of cool ways.
Nine to ten months in, they started trying to teach her letters— or their language's rough equivalent— and kanji, reading at them from little books and smiling patronizingly with the knowledge that literally nothing they said was going to stick. It was awful , and she was lucky that learning the language was legitimately hard because if she'd been given the opportunity to actually speak to people like a normal human, she'd have blown her cover immediately.
Writing was a bit easier, though, mostly because she cheated. The sharingan's memorization ability was incredible , and damn did she wish she'd had the same sort of instant photographic memory in her past life. Studying would have been so much easier …
She still had to really internalize what she saw with the sharingan, but that was kind of easy, and… well, the lessons only got more boring after that. Whatever, she could just do more chakra exercises, working her way up in intensity and complexity both until she could stick her clothes to her arms in precise patterns and even— if she was willing to be exhausted for the rest of the day— stick herself to things and use her chakra to climb up them.
It turned out that interacting with other objects came with its own set of difficulties— her clothes were just so slightly different from stone, and very different from wood. There was a sort of art to figuring out exactly how much chakra it took to stick to anything, but more than that the split second judgment she'd have to make transitioning from wall to roofing tile, or from branch to mossy branch. Do it wrong, and she'd fall.
It was fun. More fun than learning how to speak, certainly.
It was with a dull sense of irony that she figured out how to read before she really made much inroads in speaking beyond a few babbled words and sentences. Knowing how to read told her a lot of things, caught with a furtive glimpse of her sharingan to examine at her leisure later. Tou-san was a chunin running missions outside the village, though sometimes he brought home the fan-marked scrolls that told him to work with the military police. Kaa-san was also a chunin, but a worse one who stayed in the village all the time and only sometimes helped the police.
More importantly, she could read the calendar.
Her first birthday was the second of September, and the party was a pretty formal affair. A bunch of kids came over that she'd never seen before, including some of the older kids who were off doing… older kid stuff, she could only guess, while half the adults there— while all Uchiha— were people she didn't recognise. They'd stuffed her in a kimono and told her to behave herself, then pretty much forgotten about her after all the parents had gotten through their obligatory fawning and congratulations.
Good riddance.
"Akari! Aww, lookatchu you're so cute !" She squeaked in protest as one of the older kids picked her up, rubbing at her hair and getting told off by one of the parents. "Aren't you pretty? Pretty smart!" She froze, briefly, but the older Uchiha was just rambling. He hadn't meant anything by that.
Blushing— half in embarrassment, half in frustration because was it too much to ask for a bit of peace and quiet? She couldn't do any sort of charka exercise with all these eyes on her. It made her uncomfortable. "Go 'way."'
"Nah. You're too adorable. C'mon, lemme introduce you to my best friend! His name's Itachi—" fuck no. Goddamn Shihui was not going to drag her into anything , much less even the slightest bit of interaction with not-yet-genocidal Uchiha Itachi. Why had they even come to her birthday in the first place?
She did have one option up her sleeve, and— like a true shinobi, or so she told herself— she'd use any tool she had on hand, even if that tool was kicking up a fuss and crying like a… well, little kid. "I don't wanna! " Shisui looked hilariously out of his depth, fretting around trying to make her stop wailing. Luckily, her parents took notice— she was a quiet kid for the most part, which meant thay when she did cry they took it pretty seriously. For once, Akari admired her father's bravery as he nervously told the probably-clan-head that he and the kid his son had brought with him would have to leave the party.
She got disciplined for it later, after everything was said and done. A long lecture about how Uchiha should always be composed and collected, how they were one of the noble clans of Konoha and should act like it, etc etc she wasn't really listening. Not like it wasn't anything she hadn't heard before.
She internalized it anyway. It wouldn't do for her to be anything but normal. Not if she didn't want to become the next Uchiha baby ANBU, anyways.
The next month passed quickly, autumn colors igniting the Land of Fire and a bit of bitter chill just barely touching the edge of those last warm days. Everyone was obnoxiously happy , it seemed, except for her. Even her mother caught onto it, when she refused to go out and play with some of the little kids who wanted to splash around in the Naka, and when pressed she simply responded with a, "it's too cold outside."
She didn't tell anyone what she dreaded. She wasn't even sure if it had or hadn't happened yet, anyways. Their current house had been built only a few years back, the clan having grown decently over the past few years. Just generally between her mediocre language skills and all the time spent sleeping off self-induced chakra exhaustion, and the so-very insular nature of the clan, she just couldn't really get a good idea of the timeline.
The tenth of October came too quickly, and she couldn't sleep. Her parents tucked her to bed and went to bed themselves but she just… couldn't. So, carefully, she pulled herself out of the crib she'd all but outgrown, pushing open the window— which took forever with how the mechanism wasn't really meant for one-and-a-bit year olds, and unsteadily dropped out. Chakra sent to the soles of her bare feet stuck to the wall, and after a bit of vertigo induced nausea (and the few seconds to close the window behind her) she unsteadily walked up to the roof.
She'd been here, once or twice before. Kaa-san had leapt up using one of the nearby trees to get her down after she'd climbed up the wall once, and Akari had thought that'd be the end of things, but her mom had just assumed she'd used the stairs. Pretty impressive for a not-quite one year old, but not the prodigy-bullshit that was walking up the walls.
Leaning back against the clay tiles and watching the empty sky, she sighed contentedly, glad that her parents were so stupid. How very foolish of them, to only expect the possible…
She felt it first.
Like—
Hatred itself. Like the sudden-bright, furious heat that literally boiled away skin and and shrapnel bent steel that embedded—
It was pure terror, injected into her veins— no, chakra system — a blanket of wrath that promised with absolute and complete certainty that all things would die as it crashed over Konoha as a whole. The city startled awake, alarms flaring as the once-black sky turned a searing, burning orange .
Her sharingan had activated without her really consciously willing, and so she saw in perfect clarity as the hatred of the Kyuubi no Kitsune manifested; a deity-demon the size of Konoha itself towering over the hidden village. So close. So massive . She heard something vaguely like screaming downstairs, but her attention was wholly fixated on the tailed beast as it breathed , a sea of flames crashing over Konoha, a sweep of its massive tails simply ending a part of the village.
To the sharingan, it was a beautiful, maddened swirl of chakra and madness, the largest fire release technique she'd ever seen by far . Below her, she briefly spied her parents running out of the now-burning house (kind of crazy, how the swathe of flames had managed to set their house on fire already,) her mother sobbing and her father racing off to the center of the clan compound.
She'd probably get in really big trouble for being out when the apocalypse happened, but she'd spent a few sleepless nights wandering recently. Hopefully they wouldn't think too much of it.
As long as she survived, of course…
Akari didn't move from her spot on the roof though, watching as ninja fell like flies, then watching as a lone figure single-handedly fought back the massive beast. Minato, she assumed— and from what little she could catch of his techniques with her sharingan, he was badass .
She almost felt like laughing as her sharingan dutifully recorded the power of Kurama's bijuudama, the instinctive knowledge that you will die if you even try anything close to this simply… too much at the moment. For too long, not very long at all, she just… watched what felt like the end of the world, felt the killing intent burn in her chakra coils, and realized—
This was what true power was. Coincidentally, about the same time as one of the Kyuubi's massive paws crushed half the Uchiha district only hundreds of feet away from her, she also realized that she'd never reach those lofty heights.
Kurama disappeared. The fourth hokage also disappeared, and by dint of reincarnation Akari was one of a select few to know that he'd never return.
Her sharingan blinked off, chakra exhaustion taking its toll as she slipped into a deep, dreamless sleep amongst the flames of a city burning down, her goal finally firmed in her mind. No matter what it took, no matter how hard she'd have to train or how cleverly she'd have to hide herself—
Akari intended on escaping Konoha. She was not going to die with the Uchiha, that she swore.
Chapter 2: A Clan and Conviction
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
ANBU found her before her parents did, which— good? Maybe? She got the chance to observe them jumping from building to building with her sharingan for a second before she got too afraid of being caught and turned it off. Her parents were, understandably, furious at her for wandering off and almost getting herself killed, which— fair, she supposed.
She tried not to care. It was hard, but reminding herself that they'd both die in less than seven years was pretty effective when it came to that sort of thing.
Anyways. The village was in turmoil, and no shortage of blame fell on the Uchiha. Even a regular one year old would've noticed the disdain that was leveled at them in their everyday business, the cold glares and subtle way people shuffled out of their path when they went to the market to pick up some food. Yay. Racism. Kekkei genkai-ism? She really didn't know the exact term, and given that her plans had her 'playing' in the forest like some sort of recluse to avoid the prying eyes of children and nosy ninja, she didn't really care. Hopefully she wouldn't have to deal with too much of that stuff before she noped out entirely.
Tou-san stopped getting missions outside the village after the Kyuubi attack. Kaa-san was increasingly called out to help with the KMPF too, which meant there wasn't really anyone to watch over her at home. For the first few months after the attack they played this hectic trade-the-kids game with some of the other Uchiha, made all the more frustrating because some of the children were still recovering from the Kyuubi's poisonous chakra— but around the the time she could confidently babble out sentences and when it became clear their workload wasn't going to get any lighter, they kind of just… stopped.
If Akari helped that along by being a little shit to all her caretakers until they all but demanded to never see her again, then, well… the free time to play out in the forests behind the new Uchiha district was exactly what she'd wanted.
So. That left her with days full of free time, and so long as she completed her stretches in the morning without complaining— she did a few times, just to make sure they didn't think she was too focused, and because it was kind of fun seeing how frustrated it made them— she could do pretty much whatever she wanted. A particular favorite of hers, even if it did drain her chakra like nothing else, were those long walks through the forest with her sharingan active, kind of just… enjoying nature. Basking in the sunlight, and whenever she felt like she was wasting time she'd practice picking out details and using the sharingan's adaptive-predictive abilities to track the motions of birds and trees swaying with the wind.
After about a… month or two, of that? She had to admit to herself, it was getting boring. More than boring— she knew it wasn't enough. So… she spent the next few weeks practicing and disassembling everything she'd seen from the ANBU squad, the chakra-empowered leaps mostly that let her jump from tree to tree like some sort of really overpowered monkey. She tried a shunshin, but whatever she'd grasped of the technique with her sharingan, the lack of hand-seals the ANBU had used ended up with her crashing face-first into the ground instead of pulling off the deft maneuver she'd hoped for. The less mentioned about her brief few attempts to use fire release based on what she'd seen of Kurama's techniques, the better.
One option left, then. Simple enough, in theory: learn hand seals! In practice… cursing as she shifted her position in one of the trees overlooking the public training grounds, she wondered what had driven her to think this was a good idea. If one of the jonin caught her, or worse, saw her using her sharingan…
She couldn't sense chakra that wasn't hers outside her body well at all yet, so her attempt at hiding her chakra-presence was probably amateur as all fuck. Hopefully it would be enough, because she'd been waiting here all day and if she had to spend a single minute more up in this tree than she had to, she was going to actually try and kill Danzo or something.
Finally the genin team she was watching— stalking— made their way back from whatever D-rank they'd been on, and their jonin sensei immediately put them to work running laps around the training ground. Except for the fact she held her breath in nervousness every time the… Yamanaka? She was pretty sure the man was a Yamanaka— and his team ran close to her tree, it was actually pretty enlightening.
She'd been drawing on her past life's memory to avoid being a total klutz with an not even two-year-old body in the woods, but the jonin was an expert at running. Or at least pretty good, from the way he constantly corrected his genin's form. Her sharingan absorbed every movement the man made, perfectly tracking and recording it for her later perusal, and by the end of the thirty minute genin torture session she'd even found herself predicting the jonin's reptitive— if fast— running.
Damn, the sharingan was such utter bullshit. She loved it. Also, she was starting to feel the chakra drain, so they better get onto— finally . Leaning forward, she focused intently as the jonin had them run through the academy three a few times, which was an absolute jackpot , before they were allowed to work on their personal jutsu.
As she'd hoped, and why she'd chosen to watch this team in particular, the Uchiha girl used the great fireball technique. Clearly it was a bit more complicated than the simple academy jutsu, but that was fine— her sharingan had memorized it, and she was confident so long as she didn't have some sort of stupid water affinity or other disability that she'd be able to use it.
Probably. Maybe once she figured out these hand seal things.
The team started throwing kunai and shuriken, but by that point Akari was really starting to feel the edges of that oh-so-familiar chakra exhaustion, which meant it was time to get back. All in all, a rousing success! Except for the part where she fell asleep in the forest on the way back and scared the life out of her parents when she stumbled in for breakfast, but, eh. She would turn two in a few months. She'd be fine .
…
They grounded her for a week — even going out of their way to hire genin to babysit her so that she wouldn't run off. One of the teams that dropped by even happened to be the one she spied on, so that was pretty cool. One particularly nasty genin team had threatened her to pass the task off onto Orichimaru 's genin team, which— beyond apparently being a thing— no, no thank you at all .
Other than that, she managed to be the perfectly annoying Uchiha girl for the whole week, and she even got to handle some kunai as a treat for behaving once. A waste of time, sure, but not the worst waste of time ever. Plus it helped remind her that she was supposed to be a kid , not a shinobi . The moment her family knew how capable she was… the moment they knew that she thought like a twenty year old instead of a two year old, she was royally screwed.
Hand seals sucked, also. Luckily they'd been made by the Sage's kid, so it wasn't impossible for her to force her pudgy toddler hands to make the seals, just… difficult. They also felt distinctly awkward . With her past-life knowledge she'd kind of thought of them like ingredients to make jutsu, but that couldn't be further from the truth— they were literal, actual seals.
She could feel the way her chakra twisted and conformed differently for each seal, each time in a way that would've stretched her chakra control if she'd tried to do without. Which she did, of course, but even after sinking a few weeks into really pushing her chakra control seals were still more simply more efficient.
What that said about the true monsters of the world, she could only wonder…
Her second birthday rolled around without much fanfare. Busy though they were, her parents made time for her in their schedules— first to give her some gifts and convene a smaller party (she might her mom grumble about how she hadn't made any friends, but that was neither here nor there) and more importantly, to start training her in the Uchiha family style. It was… odd. Over the next few weeks the stretches she'd gotten so used to were replaced by actual moves… or the precursors to actual moves, at least.
The Uchiha style gave her a very… well, the way she put it in her mind was that it was the perfect sort of fighting style to use if you were intending to get accused of police brutality. Her parents waxed prosaic about how they served Konoha to uphold the peace and bring criminals to justice, but to her secretly-sharingan enhanced perception of combat— basically what little she'd seen from that one time stalking and rare occasions beside— it was pretty obvious that the Uchiha style was one meant for brutal, deadly blows. All the better to exploit the natural abilities of their sharingan, really.
With her parents, she stumbled over the forms, giggled when she fell over, scowled when she couldn't quite get the moves to match, and made sure to complain bitterly if the training sessions ever exceeded an hour or so.
Alone in the woods, sharingan spinning, she danced .
…
She used her first real ninjutsu when she was two and a half years old. It felt way too slow, but maybe that was just Uchiha clan perfectionism setting in— after all, she'd been messing with the academy three from pretty much the moment she was confident she understood what she was supposed to be doing, but she refused to call those real jutsu.
Real jutsu meant flashing through three hand seals, molding chakra this way and that, holding her breath until it burned and spitting out a fireball that blazed merrily in the chill December air. She collapsed to the ground after that, coughing around a dry throat as she watched the— admittedly small— fireball burn through the snow and scar the ground. Laughing, because here she was barely two and a half, already completing the Uchiha coming of age ritual. She bet Itachi had nothing on that .
…
Not enough . Fuck! Even using all of her chakra, even with all the effort she put into expanding her reserves, she didn't even come close to having the sort of fireball that any really shinobi would fear. Three measly feet, and two weeks wasted .
Obviously chakra wouldn't have been her strong suit. Here she was, wasting her time learning ninjutsu when she'd be able to use one measly attack any Uchiha worth their salt could do better in the negative zero seconds she'd have before Obito McOP mangekyou eyes bisected her. Useless useless useless —
Akari took a deep breath, and sat down in the snow. Getting upset did nothing. What she needed was a plan. Almost instinctively she reached through her sharingan memories to find something to latch onto, but after a few fruitless seconds she wrested away the chakra flow to her dojutsu and just— sat and pondered.
Kid emotions, she decided with a sigh, sucked.
Back to planning. Obviously, there was the main one: get the hell out of Konoha before Itachi went psycho and turned her family to Uchiha-flavor filet mignon, rare. That'd been the main one, but the goal had been a bit… nebulous. The general idea of what she wanted was there, but other than 'run away' she didn't quite know what she wanted to do.
Crossing her legs beneath herself, she tried her best to relax, and to think , which, in a move that probably would've suprised nobody but herself, was kinda difficult to do on toddler brain. More or less she'd been going on autopilot, if fairly decent— simply get stronger . Getting stronger was useless undirected, though, so…
A plan. It was simple, probably not foolproof, but she was pretty confident that it'd work. All she had to do was get good enough to just… walk out of Konoha. Nobody would expect an average six year old of no notable skill to go missing nin, so it was the perfect cover. The second part of her impromptu planning session was, simply, how . A lot of what she'd been doing already, sure, increasingly difficult chakra manipulation exercises to hone her control down to as fine as she could get it while still being baby, but also a more… tactical approach to ninjutsu.
Conservation of chakra would be key, she surmised. At the absolute oldest, she'd have until she was… six? Seven-ish? To leave Konoha, which meant she'd probably not have enough chakra to throw out A-rank techniques and whatnot. Dreaming otherwise was to hope, foolishly, so… conserve.
Exploit the academy three— she kind of remembered that you could be a really good ninja with just those techniques and a kunai, and kunai didn't take any chakra at all. Taijutsu would suffer without a partner to spar against in order to correct the Uchiha forms for her diminutive stature, and that would undermine the whole 'normal girl' sort of thing she needed to keep up. Maybe if she could steal some ninja gear… or seals, explosive tags would be so cool … kunai would be difficult to throw, they were practically tanto sized to her current stature…
Her thoughts were wandering, but she was satisfied— more satisfied than she'd been throwing herself at the great fireball jutsu, anyways. One more thing, though— the thought came last, mostly because it was so obvious she'd almost missed it.
She had the most bullshit kekkei genkai in the elemental nations, and if she wanted to make a proper escape, she'd need to use and abuse it to the fullest extent possible. The possibilities were endless …
Giggling madly, she let herself fall asleep in the snow, so comforting, so cold…
…
She got in trouble for that, again, but pre-academy children in Konoha could get away with a lot, especially clan children. So long as they were around to complete everything they needed to do, they got a lot more leeway than children back in her past life used to. That or her parents were a mix of neglectful and too stuck as career chunin to either watch their kid or notice how weird she was.
That suited her just fine. The mere thought of trying to deceive her parents if she'd been born into Sasuke's— or worse, Hinata's — family had her shivering.
Anyways. First point of order. Steal a bunch of kunai and shuriken. Both easier and harder than she'd have thought, because for all they were kinda mid at parenting, they at least knew to keep their weapons out of her reach. With wall-walking that wasn't really a problem, but kaa-san was also a bit of a neat freak, and she'd definitely notice if they started losing implements of murder into grubby baby-assassin hands. So, alternate sources: the ninja stores, were, unsurprisingly to her, both not really possible for a kid like her to get into.
A henge would have worked if she had enough chakra to give the jutsu 'substance,' but she didn't, so only the genjutsu component of the technique remained, and that was useless to a two and a half year old. Wishing for more chakra seemed to be a common pastime of hers…
Henge was still useful, though. It was the sort of genius technique that just screamed "Tobirama made me :3" to her: an incredibly simple genjutsu at the weakest level, with more drastic changes requiring more chakra. Put enough chakra into the technique, and you could manifest actual, physical changes, somewhat similar to what she imagined a shadow clone could do. Either that or the technique had inspired the shadow clone, but, meh, she couldn't really bring herself to care about the details. Not with her deadline looming. Anyways, after a week or two of practice, some careful studying of non-obviously Uchiha civilian children, she decided to take a detour in her usual 'go to the forest and beat up trees with ninjutsu' routine.
Perfect memory recall was great for henge. She bet academy students everywhere would be jealous of just how accurately she'd gotten it. It was still a bit nerve wracking to move through Konoha to the red light district. Any second she expected someone to figure out what she was doing and… arrest her, or detain her or something, but—
Really, it was the red light district . The Uchiha barely policed there. She'd know— her father'd complained about it more than once over dinner, even if she probably shouldn't have been able to understand what he was saying…
Anyways. She'd come to learn lockpicking, and genjutsu; the second would hopefully lead to the first. She had her sharingan, which meant she should be able to do the wonky mind-control thing her clan was feared for… probably.
In practice it was… harder than advertised. For a two year old whose thoughts weren't quite the epitome of order to begin with, her first few attempts ended up giving both her and her targets headaches on top of tanking her chakra levels. After that, she was a bit more careful— nothing too strong, just a suggestion, which took a lot less chakra than she expected. None of the people she hit with the genjutsu knew how to pick locks, but eventually one of them knew someone who did, an academy student in training who'd turned some of his meager shinobi skills to making ends meet.
He'd probably get Danzo-ed, or Orochimaru'd— the man hadn't even left the village yet— or something given how obvious he was being with his crimes, including his most egregious: being an orphan. Anyways, she didn't really care about that. All it took was being in the right place at the right time, careful, careful chakra control, and she managed to stealthily follow him long enough to learn how to lockpick with her sharingan.
If she stole the kid's lockpicking kit off his belt when he wasn't looking, then he should've been paying attention better.
Important things had seals on them, sure— like the run-down apartment absolutely plastered with them she was pretty sure belonged, or would belong, to Naruto— but most pre-genin apartments didn't. Such was the crux of her plan— steal from orphans!
Yep. She felt really good about this one. Totally. It didn't take long for her to grab more kunai than she should really be allowed to carry, plus plenty of shuriken, so… rousing success? Good enough, at least.
She even managed to get home instead of collapsing from chakra exhaustion in the middle of the forest. Yippee, great news indeed…
….
Having weapons was great and all, but not when she barely knew how to use them. Thus, the second part of her thievery— stealing the fuck out of Konoha's techniques. Security around the academy was way to tight for her to be comfortable with, but their teaching was kinda sucky anyways so she spent most the rest of the time before her third birthday observing genin teams as their sensei's taught them really basic stuff that a all-but three year old absolutely shouldn't know.
Unfortunately for her, some of the jonin in the village were, shockingly, not blithering idiots. She'd been… spying, to call it what it was, she'd been spying on a genin team lead by an Inuzuka, when the jonin had paused beneath her tree. She'd barely had the time to deactivate her sharingan before she felt the tell-tale flicker of chakra and displaced wind behind her, squeaking with the ignominy of getting scooped up like the… well, little kid she was. "How in fuck did you get up there kid?" Then the Inuzuka straight tossed her out of the tree , and into the waiting grip of a trio of genin who scrambled to catch her, and the dog who actually did manage to grab her before she hit the ground.
That was close. She'd almost substituted away, and that would have been really bad. By the angry— if a bit befuddled— glower on the jonin's face, she was still in big trouble, but more the type of trouble kids were expected to get into than the mysterious sharingan, impossible skills sort of T&I trouble.
"No, seriously," the jonin asked as he landed out of a shunshin— including most of the hand seals, how she wished she'd been able to use her sharingan then— in the field in front of her. "How'd you get up there? Also, good hiding skills, I almost didn't notice you." Hopefully he also didn't notice the way her heart started to race at the potential of it all going belly up so soon.
"Um." Blushing, she ducked her face and made a note to practice Uchiha-brand aloofness a bit more. "I climbed up."
"You climbed up." He glanced at the tree, and— luckily— she'd chosen a tree that was theoretically possible for a decently talented three year old to clamber up. "You— gah, kids are the worst. Hate 'em so much…" his genin conspicuously looked at each other; Akari tried her best not to laugh at the poor fools. "Look, I get you're a little kid and want to see all the cool, flashy jutsu, but these grounds are off-limits to anyone under genin for a reason. Things can get dangerous out here." Yeah, she knew. That was the whole point she'd come . She also didn't say that. "Why don't we get you back to your parents, miss…"
"Akari!" Entirely unhelpful, and the look the jonin gave her made that clear enough. Reluctantly, she elaborated, "Uchiha Akari."
"Wai-wai-wait! You're an Uchiha ?" Ah, of course. With all her twenty and three years of wisdom, Akari noted the civilian-born kid on the team down as the tactless one on the team.
"This was obvious," responded the Abrume, the one she'd paid the least attention to because she couldn't really steal her bug-jutsu, and nor did she really want to. Egalitarian meritocratic mentality was good and all when it came to producing the most cohesive and powerful force of shinobi possible, but… bugs. Ew. Oh, she'd stopped paying attention, and the Abrume had already gone through her whole call-response explain things nobody really cared about— though admittedly the ability to tell that the 'taste' of her chakra was distinctly Uchiha (if strongly yin-flavored, whatever that meant)— was actually kind of interesting.
"Shut up." Finally, the Abrume shut up at the Hyuuga girl's demand, glancing apologetically between the other three in a way she probably thought was subtle, even if it really, really was not. "I am not going to take some snot-nosed, baby-faced, Uchiha brat all the way across the village. She can do it herself."
"What do you think," said their jonin sensei in a half-tired, half aggrieved voice, "will she do if we just tell her to go home?"
"She will climb back up another tree. Why? Because she has already expressed enough desire in observing shinobi to make the long walk to the genin field grounds, and therefore—"
"Sage of Six Paths in heaven above shut up ." The Hyuuga rolled her eyes, but acquiesced to escorting Akari back through the village to the Uchiha district where, predictably, she got in trouble. At least nobody had seen her sharingan…
Anyways, she'd stayed away from the training grounds for about a month, throwing herself into training with kunai and substitution and even the not-very-practical clone technique, which was obviously a primer for later genjutsu. Her henge got a little focus, but she dropped it after chakra-intensity made the technique too intensive to really use. More damning, it made it too intense to really practice beyond the genjutsu portion, which… that was still easy. The sharingan was as bullshit a cheat code as she'd expected.
Substitution was where she saw the greatest leaps. It was a really fun jutsu. Using it at the absolute, most basic minimum, it took about her entire chakra reserve to switch with a log that had to be conveniently the right size. It'd been the better part of a year since she'd been working with absolute minimum, though, and the depth of the jutsu was fascinating .
Essentially, it entailed throwing out a chakra thread— not an actual chakra thread, more a chakra arrow , the greater speed of the hand-seals guided technique allowing it to bypass most of the fine control chakra threads required— filling the object with chakra, and then… swapping with it.
What quickly showed itself more interesting, though, was how adaptable the jutsu was. Literally anything, of any size? Fiddle with the jutsu, balance the chakra loads, make sure the string-arrow thing stayed intact across whatever distance, and bam, switch. A particular favorite of hers were kunai. Shuriken would have been even better, but the way they spun tended to make using chakra strings with them more difficult than it was really worth. Anyways— throw a kunai, deflect a kunai off a kunai, whatever, as long as the chakra thread stayed intact she could switch with the kunai whenever.
Super useful, and she was certain that wasn't even the extent of the technique, just what she'd explored… Switching with the air was probably just discount shunshin…
…
Her third birthday passed with no significant affair. At home, she played the role of the normal, if a little intelligent, three year old girl, and her parents ate it right up.
In the woods, she trained.
…
Eventually, she forced herself back to the training grounds. Not like she was really ever going to be a shinobi that could actually do… you know, shinobi stuff, but she treated the whole thing like a kind of intelligence gathering mission— find out which genin teams had total dupes for jonin, and which teams would catch her, all without actually getting caught . That required her to use a technique she quickly bemoaned as becoming her favorite— kicking orphans while they were down. The lockpicking and blatant theft was bad enough— the genjutsu-assisted intelligence gathering, even if she knew actually using skills she'd practiced in the woods on actual people really, really helped— just felt nasty .
Nonetheless, by the end of the month she knew which teams she should avoid, mainly the tracking ones, and which she could spy on.
So, obviously, she pushed her luck. It wasn't her fault that most chunin were just as stupid as genin, and usually just as vulnerable. It also wasn't her fault that it didn't take much more than sneaking a sharingan-assisted memorization of her dad's foreign-issue bingo book and some simple observation was enough to let her know who was associated with whom.
Even the hardiest chunin usually had someone they could get to that was an easier target. Unfortunately, even the weakest chunin also tended to have genjutsu breaking skills. The first time she'd had to flee a chunin's house by substituting with a paving stone, she'd dropped her hunt for juicy training grounds for almost half a year. It'd been the first time she'd actually felt her genjutsu broken , and it did not feel good.
It scared her, even.
The libraries… yeah, the libraries were always good, and she still had the genin teams to stalk. Her henge-stealth combo was getting pretty good— enough to get her into the public genin library, and from there all it took was flicking through the books with her sharingan active. She'd have to sit and actually digest the material later, but for now… she learned.
Fast.
It was after reading through like five shelves of in-depth medical texts (and only starting on barely beginning to comprehend any of it, minus the odds and ends she'd remembered from her past life) but before she decided to risk genjutsu-ing more ostensibly allied chunin that she had her least brilliant idea yet. In fact, it took the dubious prestige of being an even worse idea than climbing on top of the roof to watch the Kyuubi no Kitsune rampage through Konoha as a kid.
She jumped off the roof, and it hurt like hell . Two breaks in her leg, the med-nin told her as they ran a hand over her injured leg with the mystical palm jutsu. They told her that she wouldn't be able to walk on it for a month, and that she should do light exercise only for two months. They told her that her yin chakra was incredibly imbalanced to her yang, and that it might affect her future shinobi career.
Akari just nodded, squinted her eyes against the pain, and secretly activated her sharingan to copy the technique.
The mystical palm jutsu was… it was what it was advertised. A technique that healed. Nothing less, and nothing more. From every book she'd read and what she remembered from her past life, it was far, far more than that— something that could heal, something that could kill, something that could quickly and accurately diagnose almost any and all medical issue—
So Akari went fishing even though her parents didn't want her to leave the house, and she practiced the mystical palm jutsu until her already deft chakra control was as close to perfect as she dared say for someone who wasn't Sakura.
Also, she sucked at healing.
The fish were bad enough, but the few times she tried healing her own wounds— shallow cuts, scrapes, the usual— it took forever and she'd constantly fretted wondering if she'd done it wrong or not. The cut on her arm had been done wrong, and she'd had to re-do it, which sucked, majorly… and the difficulty . She had not been expecting how difficult it was to push chakra into a body, even if that body was that of a fish.
All in all, by the time she'd recovered from her short stint leg-breaking, she knew she'd more or less been wasting the time she spent training iryo-ninjutsu. It wasn't for no benefit— her ability to sense her own chakra, specifically the component parts of her chakra, had grown by leaps and bounds, but still…
She couldn't help but categorize those months as wasted. She was on a deadline, after all.
The trips to the library had been a lot more useful even if she had more or less at least looked at everything publicly accessible with her sharingan. There was lots of fascinating chakra theory, mostly obtuse— practical stuff, she supposed, was kept out of reach of genin who were likely to blow stuff up— but it was useful for her. Certainly helped her eek a little more strength out of the great fireball jutsu, even if that might just have been the extra chakra she'd gotten from growing up…
Probably not. She hoped.
After spending a week getting fire-aspected chakra to spark above her thumb like a candle-flame— without seals! She kicked a tree in disgust and almost broke her toes. Useless. Not fast enough . She needed more. Enough to escape. Enough to survive .
So she went back to putting chunin under genjutsu.
The attack was twofold— kid her, unburdened her, unworried her who put up a strong front for her parents and played around in the dirt in the forest to come back to smiles and unspoken concern that she should make more friends, pestered her parents about genjutsu. Cool ninja stories, of course— she didn't dare ask them for anything actually useful, but even the 'cool ninja stories' held some grain of truth in them. More importantly, they told her what was possible.
The first chunin she interrogated broke her genjutsu, but she genjutsu-ed him into thinking he'd gotten free and had him spill everything to his tokujo friend. Then she knocked him unconscious, half feeling a bit silly that a three and a half year old little girl had just successfully interrogated a grown chunin, and then half horrified that a three and a half year old little girl had successfully interrogated a grown chunin . The second chunin she was subtler too, hanging as one of his genin teammates and making it so that he didn't see anything amiss in sharing, in detail, everything he knew about stealth, how to hide, and how to spot people who were hiding.
The power she had over them, in those moments… that scared her. The fact that she could get used to having that sort of power over people— that was terrifying. Also the sharingan was absolute bs . If she— one of the weaker Uchiha— could have that sort of debilitating effect on people, then she both understood a lot more about why they were feared, and why Fugaku had thought his coup might actually work.
Slowly, though, despite it all and all her fears, she pressed on, and began to understand Konoha .
…
"The police have been busy lately, it seems."
"No shit." Akari's mom was tired. Akari herself didn't really know why, nor did she care. At least that's what she let herself believe. "It's just my luck that the moment you're finally allowed on an out-of-village mission things heat the hell up. We've got a case ."
"Huh, like a case or a—"
"A case . Apparently, from what Fugaku-sama has been able to suss out, somebody has been using genjutsu on chunin." The soft clack of Tou-san's chopsticks against the plate paused for a moment too long, before he sighed and continued eating. "It's at least decently competent, and even if they don't know whether or not it's sharingan based, the clan is getting a lot of flak."
"Damn," and what could be said to that?
Akari didn't stop, but she did get more subtle.
…
Being three sucked sometimes. Too much thinking all but hurt , it was a strain to deliberately push herself to take a more measured, mature perspective— sticking to the plan helped a little with that, but it wasn't a magic solution— and that wasn't to mention how much sleep she needed. Also chakra. Chakra exhaustion sucked major balls and she kept kicking herself in the face with it every time she overloaded the great fireball jutsu or spent too long training, or even too much time spent leaping from tree to tree or just climbing . A lot of these activities, she surmised, hadn't been designed for tiny little children, and that was even taking into account that she probably had way more chakra than anyone her age should reasonably be expected to have.
Working her way up from chunin was… dangerous. Risky , in a way that set her nerves abuzz and made her lie awake at night sometimes, but it was also fascinating. With the perfect recall of her sharingan even a three and a bit year old mind couldn't stop her— she spent hours just sitting and correlating all the information she knew, thinking about who was good at their job and who wasn't, who people thought were cool and interesting, whispers caught in the image of moving lips and deciphered over hours and days until she had a pretty decent idea of the chunin in Konoha.
Then she spied on them.
It was both different and the same as the genin teams. Easier, in the way that a lot of chunin had fallen into the easy rut of just kind of assuming that Konoha was a safe space, not constantly monitoring their surroundings as they practiced all sorts of techniques that Akari had an absolute blast stealing with her magical eyes of plotium.
Harder, in that the ones that did keep an awareness of their surroundings were actually kind of good at it.
It took everything she knew about stealth to escape the first chunin who'd sussed out that someone was watching her, quick replacements with random branches, sticks, and a particularly big pinecone just barely enough to give her the range she needed to control her presence and hide herself under a genjutsu she'd stolen from the very same chunin earlier. That did the trick— enhanced by her sharingan, the chunin stalked right past without even noticing she was there.
The second time a chunin noticed she was spying on her, she'd had an honest to goodness battle with the man, and— well, she knew that she wasn't a great ninja given she'd not practiced with anyone , so she cheated. Henged as an older woman, after a short battle that'd blurred through the trees around the training ground, she'd thrown two kunai, substituted with one just as he deflected it from in front of his face, and dropped him into a sharingan™ multilayer genjutsu.
She'd wanted to interrogate the man on everything he knew about sensing, but instead she took her victory for what it was and fled.
After that laying low had been more mandatory than she would've liked. She was almost four, and the wait galled her, but she had copied plenty of jutsu so she definitely had stuff to keep her occupied while she waited.
Worse, though, was the Uchiha clan training.
Her parents were constantly busy with a dead-end case the culprit of which they had no idea sat at their dinner table every night, so they'd passed off her training of the higher-level Uchiha family forms to one of the Uchiha clan elders. Also, as it turned out, the clan elders were the absolute worst. Perceptive, too. She could pretend to be a mediocre student well enough— ironically, as much as the sharingan could replicate perfection, so too could it replicate the mediocre stumbling of genin she'd spied on for months on end— but her physical abilities were far harder to hide.
Purposefully failing at the Uchiha family style, purposefully fumbling hand-signs might have kept her from that vaunted death-sentence that was 'prodigy,' but it also meant that the elders would push her to the absolute ends of her stamina as punishment. At least they weren't actively malicious enough to sabotage the sort of development she'd need for being a shinobi, so it was still progress, just…
Too little, too slow.
She spent her free days spying on genin training, or working on elemental jutsu in the forests, or obsessively training with her favorite jutsu-weapon mix— the classic substitution and kunai mix. Or—
She was almost four, and she could barely escape a mediocre chunin. She bet any genin worth their salt could probably beat her up, too…
…
She set herself a challenge. Her parents' case had been punted aside with ferocity after Orochimaru had abandoned Konoha, and in the months after that the paranoia about the ninja spying on them with genjutsu kind of just… died down, slowly. A constant worry for certain sorts of people, probably, but no tangible security risks had come of it, and it was kind of just shifted to the 'shinobi shenanigans' bucket instead of 'active threat.'
Anyways, all that was to rationalize her to herself why she her idea wasn't blithering stupid: essentially, the plan was to use absolutely every skill she'd worked on, the mediocre genjutsu and decent stealth and honestly pretty neat substitution and henge— to take her slow exercise of finding which shinobi she could spy on fast, vertically instead of laterally—
It was probably dumb.
She was bored, and making no progress, and wanted to see what shinobi were truly capable of. So, then—
She jumped from the first chunin she'd talked to to a tokujo who was known for being a bit dull in the perception department even if he was pretty good with taijutsu, then from him a few of the teams he worked with, tamping down her presence as she carefully recorded his spars with the sensor-nin tokujo and tried to apply what she learned to what she knew. It wasn't a lot, but it helped her fix a problem with her kunai-deflection trick, and definitely helped her feel more confident when it came to avoiding sensor-types. Then she mostly bounced around the tokujo, careful to never spy on someone too well-known for their chakra sensing, very careful to never be caught anywhere that couldn't be explained away with childish curiosity.
Then, jonin.
Jonin were another thing entirely to chunin or even tokujo. First of all, they were competent. Universally comptent. She could always assume there was at least one thing tokujo weren't that great at, something that allowed her to relax even if that relaxation was kind of stupid half the time— but jonin were good . Two out of her first three attempts had found her being sensed and only quick chain substitutions to the busier parts of Konoha had allowed her to escape. Once she'd almost been tracked down despite that. It was a knife's edge of existence, but just being on that edge honed her skills, showed her where she was lacking and where she wasn't.
Unlike the chunin and genin and all the other times, she didn't give up. She was almost four, and she was on a mission.
Another small boon, though she kinda hated the implications of this one, was how pitifully easy it was to get the elder Uchiha to teach her genjutsu. Oh, they certainly didn't think they were teaching her, thought that the multi-layer visions of battlegrounds and dying shinobi and blood, so much blood — and also of Kurama, though she'd probably be called insane if she said she found her memories of the fox comforting — were teaching her anything, but even as she complained and dutifully cried like any child would, she was learing. Even as she kept fumbling the Uchiha style in new and innovative ways, almost as though it were a game, she filtered through one of the genjutsu the elders used on her that made it seem like the whole world was made of inky darkness— but more importantly, erased all the elders from her presence— and incorporated it into a memory-deflecting genjutsu of her own to make something that could let her hide in a pinch.
She'd never set out to be good at genjutsu, really. Of course the knowledge that her kekkei genkai was one of the most busted genjutsu abilities of all time was something she'd known literally from birth, and something that most other Uchiha learned before they could really learn , but she'd never set out to get good at genjutsu. Probably a fair bit of that had been that, at least when she'd first started planning, she hadn't really planned on actually interacting with anyone.
Genjutsu came to her anyway, and, surprisingly, she found herself enjoying it. It made her think of her past life, when she'd been an artist, and a poet, the sort of person who said she hated killing but read Naruto fanfiction anyways. It could be subtle, hiding a kunai and making someone think they were a step off of where they actually were, or it could be grand. It could quite literally, to people of weak constitution like civilians, just straight up kill.
It was also pretty chakra-light. Not quite as much as the academy three, but small enough that she could experiment…
Anyways, genjutsu— which were awesome, too bad she hadn't been born with the upgraded eyes of sheer impossibility— aside, combined with her revelations from the mystical palm jutsu, started finally letting her hide from jonin. She memorized every technique she saw voraciously, testing a few in the forest even if trying a B-rank fire jutsu exhausted her and an A-rank would knock her out for the day. She saw plenty of other techniques too, cursed how slow her other elements were going, worked her way from single jonin to tokujo-jonin pairs to full teams which fought blindingly fiercely, to—
Her fourth birthday passed, and she made a mistake.
Honestly it'd been kind of dumb, and mostly her fault for not recognizing the name, but she'd been so fixated on the tokujo-jonin split that she'd thought that dropping in on the team-training for a highly-recognized tokujo with a specialization in senborn— a weapon she was particularly interested in— would be easy. After all, he was just a tokujo.
Big mistake.
Big fucking mistake.
The first thirty minutes had gone fine enough, sure. Genma and a purple-haired kunochi had sparred blisteringly fast, and she'd thought she'd started to understand the multi-senborn handling technique that helped Genma be so fearsome. Then a young man had stepped in and started using fucking mokuton , and she remembered that Orochimaru had done some experiments (and also remembered that ROOT). It was fascinating, though, the way the chakra moved, entwined with itself and something her sharingan couldn't see— natural chakra, she supposed— to make a technique with incredible flexibility that no Uchiha had any hope of copying. Earth was her worst element, because— honestly what did it even mean. Earth? What type? Stupid…
Anyways. She probably should have left immediately , but then a small child stepped in and started using kunai and shuriken with such achingly beautiful precision that it felt like a tragedy not to drink in the sight with her sharingan and replicate it later. Also he used the Uchiha style, adjusted for fighting larger opponents, which was incredible…
Oh no.
That was Uchiha Itachi .
Then the last person stepped onto the field, summoned a bunch of dogs— which, kind of cute, even if it was in a way terrifying— and Akari came to the terrifying, exhilarating realization that she was watching Team Ro train.
Mission definitely success, she guessed? The next thing up would probably be watching the Hokage, and with the ANBU she'd only barely started to perceive, there was no way in hell that would happen anytime soon.
Silent as she could, chakra tamped down to match with the environment as best as her sharingan and honed-senses allowed, she watched. She even used a D-rank water jutsu just to make absolutely sure her sharingan wouldn't be spotted.
Every instinct of hers screamed at her to leave, but… nuh uh. No way in hell. This, the smooth techniques, the expert teamwork, the super cool rare attacks that Kakashi spat out like candy for her to absorb— this was what she'd started this whole thing to see. This was what she thought of when she thought shinobi .
She'd at least thought she'd see it coming when she did—
A splash of water, unnaturally cold like it'd been summoned from a particularly cruel ninjutsu user, woke her up as it drenched her clothes. Akari blinked, resisting the urge to flee or use a genjutsu or… well, any of those instinctive reactions would have been really dumb , because she was being held— loosely, but securely like you would an enemy— by Yuago, with the rest of Team Ro standing in front of her. "Maa, maa," Kakashi drawled, "what do we have here? Nosy little children should be off bothering genin teams to see cool stuff, not sneaking out to watch elite jonin."
"Pretty good stealth, though, kid. Impressive. Kakashi almost didn't even notice your presence, and that's pretty slick." Akari's eyes widened in the moment before she pulled the Aloof Uchiha card and schooled her expressions normal, but she was pretty sure the fact that she'd been trying to hide her stealth capabilities was trivially easy for the experienced shinobi to read. "So… what's a shrimp like you doing out here?"
"Name and affiliation. Under konoha law it is illegal to spy on shinobi without official leave from a superior officer." Yamato's face could have been an actual, literal wooden mask for how little he emoted; his speech was whisper soft, but threateningly cold. Simple, with the knowledge there was literally nothing Akari could do against them. "Please do not resist."
Akari didn't have to pretend to be afraid, because she was straight terrified. "Uchi-chiha Akari! Um, sorry pleasedon'thurtme—"
Kakashi leaned forward to ruffle her hair, cutting off her way-too-squeaky voice with a light chuckle. "Nobody's going to hurt you kid. You're fine. In trouble, yeah, but fine."
"Regulations state that she should be remanded to torture and investigation for interference testing and Yamanaka mindwalk." Again, Akari didn't need to fake being terrified at Yamato's suggestion, though they probably thought it was the torture part she was afraid of. A Yamanaka mindwalk would destroy everything she'd worked so, so very hard to build—
"Um, Sempai. That's… not a good idea. She's not main branch, but… the chief is very on edge right now. Unless you want Fugaku-sama to be more of an angry kitten in clan relations than he already is." Yamato frowned, everyone sighed at the reminder of the Uchiha Uchiha-ness— or maybe the fact that Itachi had spoken about his father so dispassionately— and Kakashi palmed his face with an incredibly exhausted gesture.
She wasn't sure if Kakashi agreed, though, which meant… time to talk fast—
"Okay. Yeah. You're—"
Akari looked up at Kakashi, wide eyed with revelatory surprise, and asked, "are you Hatake Kakashi?"
For a second, Kakashi looked a bit poleaxed before, dumbly, nodding. "Yeah… that's mean. Friend—" Genma hit him, probably harder than he had any right to but it certainly shut him up before he could spill the 'friend-killer' epithet to a four year old . "Copy-nin—" Itachi poked him this time, because— well, Akari was an Uchiha. "Kids are so hard… yeah, I'm Kakashi. I don't think I've ever seen you before."
"My parents told me that there was an evil scarecrow in the village once." Everyone on the team winced. "They said that you stole one of the special eyes all the old people have." Everyone winced really hard , except for Kakashi whose face sank into a blank emotionlessness. "So… theoretically, asking for a friend, how'd you get away with it? 'Cus the elders are really mean and—"
Slowly, astonished (astonished enough to shift Akari and free up a hand) Yuago facepalmed. Kakashi flickered through a bunch of emotions, before settling on incredulity. Itachi—
Itachi laughed. "You're kinda cool. And cute. Senpai, may I be excused to take Akari home?"
"Training just started…"
"I can stay! And watch!" Everyone in Team Ro shared a glance and unanimously decided that was a bad idea . Akari had kind of expected that. She wouldn't have been able to use her sharingan anyways, so it wouldn't have been super productive time anyways. "Please? Please please— shinobi are so cool and I wanna be a shinobi when I grow up," and all the other things literally every kid in Konoha who wasn't being brutally ROOT-ed said all the time. She was four. It didn't have to be convincing, because four year olds were, as a rule, kind of stupid.
Genma, to her surprise, actually looked like he was considering it. Yamato looked like he was considering stabbing Genma extra hard with mokuton before he did anything stupid. "You're alright, kid. Here—" he tossed something at her, only for Yuago to drop her and shift neatly to catch the flung senborn moments before she substituted away. Then there was a whole lot of yelling, and the sound of Genma getting beat up, and—
Itachi sat down beside her, looking… adorable. Like a kid, dressed up in assassin's gear. "They're going to do this for a little while. Pocky?" How odd, that her day would end out like this— sitting next to a genocidal maniac trying to give her pocky.
She did not want to be associated with Itachi, so— "ew. No." The kid deflated . Just— he looked so very pouty at the thought that someone wouldn't accept his overture of friendship that… sighing, she held out her hand and grabbed a stick of pocky. Hopefully this didn't become a thing.
She kinda felt like it'd become a thing.
Genma shunshined in front of her, looking a little apologetic, and a lot beat up as he handed her a senborn. Normally, this time. "Sorry, sorry, just— you sound like a cool kid. Practice with those, and maybe you'll be the cool type of ninja in the future." He stepped away, saw what she was about to do, reconsidered— "don't put that in your—"
With all the glee of a four year old copying things she really shouldn't have, Akari put the senborn in her mouth.
Genma just— sank to the ground, groaning in barely-withheld pain. "Those, kid, are poisoned."
"You," said Kakashi as he flickered over to where Genma was standing with a scowl on his face, "are an absolute idiot ." Huh. She wondered why everything felt a bit blurry, and looked a little faint. Kinda… "come on, we're going to the hospital. And then you're going to have to explain to the hokage and the ANBU commander why you poisoned a four year old Uchiha." Kakshi scooped her up, surprisingly gently…
She closed her eyes, laughed internally at the fact that her first battlefield casualty was a complete, stupid accident, and fell asleep.
…
To say her parents had been surprised when clan prodigy, village hero Itachi had showed up at their door breathless and a little chakra depleted as though he'd just shinshined through the whole village, would have been an understatement. The fact that she'd been spying on Itachi's team training was… unfortunately, not very surprising to them. She'd tried it on genin teams before, and the village's single most team bar maybe the Sanin was… okay, it was a significant step up, but they also hadn't been training in their official ANBU capacity so it wasn't like she couldn't have just… walked up and watched, so long as she hadn't gotten spotted.
The fact that she'd gotten poisoned by one of the ANBU members though had them running for the hospital as fast as they could. They were just chunin, though, so…
Akari woke up for the second time that day to her parents looking incredibly nervous, while Kakashi of the Sharingan also looked incredibly nervous, even as Itachi— sleepy though he was— looked like he was about to nervously fall asleep in his chair. A med-nin standing in the corridor looked like she wanted to kick Kakashi out, minus the fact she was way too afraid to do something like that, and Genma looked the most nervous of them all.
Then the Hokage walked in and things went from bad to worse.
…
He'd been passing by the hospital for totally unrelated— read: Naruto— reasons, but Genma had freaked out, Kakashi had actually looked a bit nervous for once, Itachi had kept being sleepy, and her parents had almost fainted.
Needless to say, she'd been grounded for a month after that stunt.
Not needless to say, because it was a very big deal , was that Itachi had taken to keeping her company. He was also really bad at the whole 'friends thing.' Regardless of the fact that she was an all-but civilian child three years younger than him, waking up to Itachi-McBoogyman staring down at her was not a good way to start the day. "Good morning, Akari-chan." Professional, but… not rude. Not cold, either, she was pretty sure he was genuinely putting his best foot forward. This was, unfortunately, the second time he'd done this. "Would you like some pocky?"
Pocky did actually taste pretty good, to her eternal distaste, and she grabbed the stick just a little faster than a civilian kid really should've been able to. "Can you not wake me up like this?"
"No."
"Fuck."
Itachi frowned— a little cutely, at that. "Fugaku-sama told me that such language is unbefitting of the clan."
"Have you seen what he considers befitting ?"
Itachi shivered. "Yes." He paused, then, very awkwardly repeated— "fuck."
"...it doesn't have the same impact when you say it."
Itachi pouted . "You're right."
"Would you like some breakfast?" Also it was literally five o'clock in the morning. The sun hadn't even risen yet. Stupid ANBU kids and their complete lack of reasonable sleep schedules. The fact that a four year old shouldn't really be making breakfast for ANBU wasn't remarked on.
She cooked up some scrambled eggs and toast. Not traditional food, but it was painfully easy to make and who could fault a kid for coming up with a recipe that more or less amounted to 'throw eggs in a pan?' It wasn't even as though eggs had been a particular favorite of her last life, she just…
It was easy, ok. Cooking was hard. "You'll want to leave before my parents wake up. They weren't happy about you coming over last time."
Another slight frown. "I don't want to leave you with the blame for my actions."
"Nuh uh. Nobody ever blames me for nothin'." Translated out of four year old speech, she was an absolute damn master of getting away with stuff. The fact that her parents were more or less conditioned to not worry when she came home a whole day after she left out to the woods was a particular point of pride to her. "Eat up! Bon appetit! "
Itachi gave her an odd look, but did eat the eggs. Some of them. They were a little burnt, to be fair… "I have something for you." He pulled out a small wooden box, just large enough that it would be awkward for an adult to hold with one hand. For her, that meant it was positively huge. "Genma felt bad about poisoning you, so he asked for me to give it to you."
Akari leaned in curiously. "Do you know what's in it?"
"No." Well that was just tacit permission to— she opened the box and gasped, then squealed with delight. Again, not something that a normal four year old should've been super happy about, but you didn't have to be a reincarnator to get excited about this, just a clan kid. "That," Itachi sounded actually impressed, "is a lot of senborn."
"There's a note." There was, in fact, a note, promising that the senborn were brand new and 100% poison free. It wasn't like her parents went over the costs of weapons exactly, and it also wasn't like she paid for any of the weapons she'd stolen, so she didn't really know how much weapons cost. However, she did know that an entire box full of jonin level senborn (they could be cheaper types, but by Itachi's wide-eyed surprise, she didn't think they were) probably cost more than you could earn on an A-rank.
She slowly closed the box, tip-toeing upstairs to stash them away. She'd have to train with those later.
Itachi was still waiting when she came back downstairs, placid and so very not murderous. "Would you like dango?"
"Hell yeah." How could she say no to that?
…
When it rained, it poured.
Perhaps she shouldn't be saying something like that as a barely four year old, but becoming friends with Itachi and stumbling across Team Ro's practice and not getting caught immediately served to convince the elders that she was… not perfectly normal.
Not a prodigy like Itachi, or Shisui, they were sure of that, but she'd still be starting the academy when she was five instead of six. An entire year she'd expected to have to herself, stolen away before she could know. Plans, destroyed.
Time just kept slipping away .
She didn't spend time spying on genin anymore. She didn't have the time to spy on genin, or interrogate chunin, or even spare even a few days watching the select few jonin she felt confident approaching because it was just— not a good use of her time. The Uchiha clan elders pushed her hard , she pushed herself hard to fail, and to succeed alone in the woods where it truly mattered.
No time. It felt like between everything, she had no time .
Alone in the woods, she practiced her ninjutsu. Watching tokujo and jonin had given her a pretty good idea of what the shunshin was, and it was genius . She might've thought that substituting with the air was crazy, but the shunshin was essentially substituting with the chakra in the chakra thread. And not even just that— you could chain the substitution along the chakra thread, allowing you to bend around corners and do all sorts of crazy stuff. Chakra intense, but epic .
Plus, the sharingan let you do it well . She may not be Shishui, but damn did it feel good dancing around her trees-turned-targets, throwing kunai then deflecting kunai then replacing with the kunai—
Cool stuff.
The other thing she focused on was nature transformation. She might not have a thousand jutsu… maybe a hundred? It was a fair few, a good dozen of which came from that one time watching Kakashi, but she had plenty of jutsu memorized. Now she just needed the chakra reserves— four year olds did not chakra reserves— and the elemental ability.
Elemental ability, she quickly learnt, sucked to practice. She was pretty certain she had a fire affinity at this point, except everything she'd known , everything she'd suspected just… didn't happen. Almost a month was wasted to wind affinity training before she even tried any of the others, and she spent another month— later— before she could even do simple C-rank wind jutsu. Sure, her fire affinity was almost as dexterous as her base chakra control, now, but…
It wasn't enough. It was nowhere even close to being enough.
Her fifth birthday came around to a small party, but perhaps the most lively of her short life so far. The elders came to grumble about how hard she was to teach, and Akari inwardly crowed at her success. Itachi came for the quiet companionship she'd reluctantly struck up with the nin, and the dango she'd made her parents get. Shisui came because Itachi made him, and would not stop talking.
Genma came because he invited himself, and gifted her a package that was almost half her size before fleeing in a shunshin. When she unwrapped gifts, her mom barely let her handle the honest to god , sharpened tanto the man had given her before she hung it up on the walls with all the rest of the weapons.
Damn. A shame, that… if she liberated a cheap enough replacement, she'd switch them out. It'd be trivially easy.
Later, her fifth birthday came to small successes. Fire was by and far her best element, followed by water— chemistry in her past life helped there— and then lightning, if lesser for the fact she hadn't really taken any physics classes. Wind next, which— that was hard, and then earth was a whole other level of difficult.
Still.
Still , she could do all five elements. Her practice with throwing kunai and exhaustive efforts sticking senborn into trees while bringing up memories of all the medical textbooks she'd looked at, of shuriken and stealth and genjutsu —
"Fuck," she breathed out, exhausted after a long day's workout. Doing such heavy exercise as a five year old was probably bad for her… "discount Kakashi." Slowly, she began to laugh. "I'm discount Kakashi, and bargain bin Itachi," and it felt untenable.
It wasn't enough. Itachi would be strong enough to decimate the clan. Obito was already strong enough to massacre it.
She started the academy in less than a week.
Sasuke, a year younger than her Sasuke, was growing up, and she was running out of time .
Not good enough.
If anything, that was what she was certain of.
Notes:
sharingan op pls nerf
Chapter 3: Contract
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The academy was a change of pace.
Her dad brought her there for the first day, and Akari told herself that clinging to him for those few extra seconds was entirely normal, and that she wasn't nervous at all because wouldn't that be silly, a twenty year old being nervous about going to what was basically ninja preschool. Still… the building itself was right by the administrative complex, situated in one of the best-defended parts of the village, and it was also designed to weed out people who shouldn't be there.
The hokage gave a speech, children cheered, parents clapped, and then they all went to school.
Five flights of stairs. Whoever thought that taking five full flights of stairs at a jog was a good start to the first day of class deserved pain. Nothing that she couldn't handle with a bit of chakra, sure, but… Biting her lip, she didn't use chakra. She didn't want to be too unusual, did she now?
The seats weren't assigned, but they might have well been; the clan kids kept together for the most part, and even further to their own cliques, while the civilian kids either tried to insert themselves in to no effect, or just kinda vibed with the ninja atmosphere.
Fair, that. As for Akari, she was already a ninja, so she tried to do her best to not pay attention to any of it. Given that she was already expected by her clan to hold herself aloof, it wasn't that hard.
A loud clap echoed through the room, startling half the students out of their seats and silencing the rest. "Alright!" A shinobi flickered to the front of the room, looking down at the children in front of him with a warm gaze. "My name is Umino Iruka, and I will be your teacher this year. Refer to me as Sensei." A muttering of acknowledgement washed through the room, but Iruka quickly spoke over it. "I'm sure you're all excited to become capable shinobi, but there's a lot of work to do before we get to that point. A lot of you won't make it, but rest assured that everything you learn will end up being important in your future careers."
Akari… seriously doubted that. Also, she doubted she'd learn much of anything though, so…
"How about we start with an icebreaker!" She very much did not groan, because that would have been weird for someone who'd never interacted publically much before, but damn… her past life… the memories of so many awkward icebreakers… "here's how it'll work. I want you all to tell me your name, one thing you dream to do in the future, and… how about your favorite animal? You first," Hyuuga kunochi who Akari wouldn't bother remembering.
The girl wanted to serve her clan well, and liked fireflies. How droll. The Inuzuka liked dogs, no duh, the Aburame also liked fireflies and it looked like the icebreaker might have actually even worked up until fireflies started crawling out of the boy's body, and— well, it was all much the same. Clan shinobi usually just wanted to be good shinobi, or become experts at their family styles, or what have you. The non-clan students were all over the place— a good half the girls had come to find spouses for fucks sake— and their choices for favorite animal were similarily uninspired. Lots of toads for the boys, and even a few slugs for the girls, though cats and dogs and all the common pets were mixed in too.
One liked swallows, which was definitely based, and then— "My name is Uchiha Akari." The pattern had been obvious, but she still let Iruka call on her. "I want to become a shinobi worthy of my clan name." Fuck no, her goal in life was to go missing nin at the ripe age of 'before her clan gets massacred,' but there was no way she could share that . "I like foxes." What, it was true, there was a reason Kurama had always been her favorite character. Iruka better stop with the weird look. The Hyuuga girl too— ok, maybe that was a bit weirder to say than she'd thought, but she was a weird kid.
"Ookay, moving on. How about…" and that was more or less that.
The academy was a change of pace, and not in a good way. She might not be sure about her chances against an actually trained shinobi, but she was sure that she could pass the academy instantly if she so wished. It was just so… boring. She'd been doing harder chakra control exercises as a literal baby.
Okay, maybe it wasn't fair to compare desperate-reincarnator-Uchiha standards to academy standards, but… still.
It was boring .
…
The height of her academy experience was when Itachi came to pick her up. It only happened once, because he'd wanted to take her out for dango at a new place he'd found, but the teachers had flipped out when an ANBU had shunshined into the class the moment they were let out, grabbed her, and disappeared.
She was pretty sure he got a reprimand for that, later, but— damn that'd been fun. Fun with Itachi… it wasn't quite as distasteful as it had been at first, but it still felt weird. If only to spare him the insult on top of injury, she decided that she'd make sure she left Konoha before Shisui killed himself.
Other than that, though… things slowed down. Her own practice, too— she'd been working on an original jutsu to make individual senborn more deadly, to make her chakra reserves go as far as they could, but as it was now having to redo the seals for every senborn was quite no good, very bad.
Her taijutsu continued to suck.
She could throw kunai well, but she could only carry so many kunai.
Other than maybe genjutsu, she couldn't use more than a handful of B-rank techniques without straight up passing out.
It wasn't enough.
Time was running out . She trained herself to exhaustion then further, then had to go to school the very next day.
Her parents worried about her.
Itachi tried to introduce her to Sasuke, that happy kid, as thought to taunt her with how impotent she was to stop anything.
Months passed.
Day by day, months passed, and Akari was no closer to her goal than she'd been before. No, less— she'd been making barely any progress at all. Her makeshift training ground lay in ruins around her, trees shattered and water-propelled senborn littering the ground where she'd shot them clean through the smaller trunks. She'd managed to figure out how to substitute twice, rapid fire dancing from place to place but it still wasn't enough .
Gasping for breath, like she had so many years ago, she sat, and considered. Looked through her memories. Then she cleaned up, put the senborn back in their box and packed away the kunai in their little hole, covered it all with a simple earth jutsu, and walked home.
The next day she came out in war gear.
It was one of the things she'd been working on a lot ever since she'd started going to the academy— getting the equipment she'd need for her eventual escape. The clothes were the hardest part— she'd have wanted proper shinobi armor, like wire mesh or something , but nobody made anything in her size so she'd been forced to make do, sewing in wire mesh to some of her regular outfits and spending a lot of time stalking the people who made shinobi gear. It was really complicated, and she was pretty sure that she'd never be good at it, but the sharingan did tend to make up for a lot of failures.
The rest of her gear was less of a hasty affair. All-purpose shinobi belts and utility pouches, standard issue gear for efficient shuriken and kunai storage that was ridiculously easy to modify— there was a reason it'd been used for practically forever— and even really clever belt that could hold a fuckton of senborn without them getting in the way at all.
Basically, she was ready to do something stupid. She really, really hoped that this wasn't suicide, but…
It would be better than dying with the clan. That she refused to let happen, no matter what — so she called her chakra, settled her focus to be ready for anything, flashed through the hand seals for a jutsu she'd only seen once —
Akari slammed her palm against the ground, and disappeared in a puff of smoke. Hopefully she got foxes…
She came to coughing in a muggy swamp, coughing away the remainder of the jutsu's smoke as she looked up at the entrance to a massive cavern. Not… exactly the place she'd expect foxes to live, but she'd keep her hopes up. Whatever she got, she'd be—
"Who are you? We don't get many visssitorsss…" fuck her life six ways sideways, this had been a mistake . She hadn't even needed to see the summon to realize how totally and absolutely screwed she was, but they presented themselves anyways— a small, colorful snake that stared at her with too-wide, interested eyes. "Ssspeak, or are you mute?"
"Ah… not quite… Snake-san?" That earned her a chuckle so… just to be safe, she picked out a senborn and twirled it uneasily in her fingers. Inconspicuous weaponry was the best, another thing Genma did right. She steeled herself— maybe she could escape the cave? Unless it was actually in another world, which then she'd be really screwed… ah, fuck it. "I'm here to sign a contract with the snakes."
"Oh? You're ssstrike me asss quite young for thisss type of pursssuit…"
"Just take me to the White Snake Sage, will you?" The snake was clearly surprised at hearing that, but nonetheless acquiesced, slithering away into the cave's darkness. Dappled sunlight faded to but faint darkness as she stepped into the cave's cold embrace.
A genjutsu touched against her senses, feather-light, calling her to fear , but… honestly who did they think she was, some civvie kid? She dispelled it with barely any issue, same with the next, and the next… and then they decided to stop throwing weak genjutsu at her and… she wouldn't say that they gave her an impossible task, if that was what this was. She would certainly think it though. Very hard.
That wouldn't stop Manda from staring her down from mere feet in front of her. " Strong willed brat, indeed. You're going no further. Also, you're not going back. " The equivalent to a S-rank shinobi, probably more , right there in front of her. Orochimaru's right hand summon (aka, not someone to use the sharingan against unless she wanted the man on her heels by yesterday), boss-summon of the snakes, right there in front of her . World's largest snake— she could believe it— right there in front of her. Mass murderer psychopath evil fuck, right there in front of her.
His killing intent was prodigious, the sheer certainty that he was just going to eat her , crush her and kill her and— Akari didn't react. It was terrifying, but she remembered the Kyuubi's hatred almost fondly. She wanted nothing more than to run… but that would be a mistake. Instead, she focused, and— demanded, "move aside, Manda."
" Oh? The tiny little hatchling has a bit of bite? " He leaned closer, maliciously — " how delicious . I'm going to savor the flavor of— "
"I already asked once." She didn't speak loudly, but she spoke with that sort of conviction that cut through lesser speech and rendered the massive snake silent. "Move aside, or I'll kill you." Manda froze, just for a second—
Akari was already reacting before the giant snake lunged at her, his intent to kill all but palpable. She disappeared in a substitution, letting manda crunch down on one of his very own scales as she flicked a handful of chakra-empowered senborn into the chink in his armor, substituting with a kunai mere moments before Manda slammed his head into the cave ceiling in an attempt to kill her. Dodging to the side, she chucked two more kunai, substituting twice and clinging to the ceiling with an attempt to conceal her chakra as best as she could.
" You rat . You craven monkey, you dare think that you can kill me? King of snakes, lord of all creation, " arrogant much? She barely managed to dodge a slap of his tail with a quick shunshin, though, so maybe he had a bit of a point there fuck — B-rank time, or else she was going to bite the dust.
Well, nothing but the best for Manda. This was one of the ones she'd copied from Kakashi: "Fire release: fire dragon flame bullet!" Apparently fucking great fire annihilation was also a B-rank technique, but she hadn't managed to get her hands on it— it was treated as S-rank by pretty much everyone who knew about it.
Her jutsu curled away from her, flame's light illuminating the cavern in lurid shades of black and fiery red for a few seconds as Manda twisted in an attempt to dodge. A good attempt— even if the cave confined him, he hadn't become a boss summon by sucking, but it was a nimble technique. It struck him, it burned him, and— it wasn't a great fire annihilation, but it probably hurt.
When the technique died down, lacking the chakra to sustain itself, Manda was left alone in an empty cave.
…
Akari dropped to a knee in front of the White Snake Sage, and not entirely out of deference. The fire dragon flame bullet had knocked out pretty much her entire chakra reserve, for all it did its job distracting Manda. That technique was a total bitch to use, holy hell, even having activated her sharingan at the last moment to control it it was still intense. That had been a weaker version, too— self-tailored to her lower chakra reserves… and the sage was talking. She needed to pay attention.
"Hm… you've done well making your way here. Past Manda, even… impressive, very impressive. The mark of a strong shinobi indeed, especially at your age…" the sage inhaled for a long few seconds, before sighing softly. The sound was immense enough, even if she wasn't as big as Manda, to fill the whole room and more. "You've come to sign. Perhaps if I were Katsuyu or Gamamaru I'd wax prosaic psychoanalyzing you and why you came here, but… no. I don't care. You're greedy." Akari probably would have protested, were she not far too weak to fight at the moment. "That's not a bad thing. Ha, youth… you probably think of Manda when you think of a snake's greed, don't you? Greed can be anything, though… selfish or even selfless. Subtle or all consuming. Here or there, true or false, weak or strong, everything contains an element of greed in it… desire, you could even call it. You came to the snakes because you want something very badly , and we can help you reach it."
Akari nodded, and bowed low to the ground, calling on all her training in the formal ways of the Uchiha. "You speak the truth. If you would let this one sign, I would be honored to represent the snakes of Ryuchi cave well in the world beyond."
"We don't care what you summon us for, companionship or murder, though I'll ask you to try and refrain from summoning the sapient snakes if you plan on using us in a jutsu…" from literally nowhere, the White Snake Sage pulled out an ornate scroll, unrolling it before her. "Sign in blood."
There were three names on the scroll. Orochimaru . Anko Mitarashi . Now… she pricked her finger with a senborn, then hesitated. It wasn't like she hadn't signed her name on something before, but… Carefully, perfect letter by perfect letter, she spelt out something different. Something more true to herself. She and the White Snake Sage stared for a little, before the scroll rolled up and disappeared.
Her sharingan had captured every moment of the writing. It was a moment to remember, after all— and even as flicked through the hand-seals to send herself back home, it burned in her mind. Two words… Amy Rosson .
Her name.
Still her name.
Wiping away the self-inflicted wound with a quick use of the medical palm jutsu, staring up at the night sky, Manda's blood on her hands and all but chakra depleted and victorious , Akari smiled.
Notes:
most of the chapters are shorter than the last one. Honestly I didn't even realize just how long chapter 2 was until I posted it
Anyways, the astute reader might have noticed that the tags changed a fair bit- I didn't really come into this with much of a plan, especially for what happens after Akari gets out of Konoha (other than the vague idea that I wouldn't stop there), but after writing some stuff out I have a much better idea of what's going down and I can honestly tell you stuff gets wild.
Also, snakes. Honestly were it not for how funny the idea of giving Akari snakes was I'd probably have given her kitsune, but especially with some of the stuff I've been working with in the later chapters I'm pretty content with this choice :3
Chapter 4: Freedom
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Signing on with the snakes was probably the best choice she'd ever made. They had so many opinions on how she should train herself, what she should be doing, what was good and what was stupid and so many other techniques besides… she was suddenly very, very busy. She still went to the academy, yes, and the elders still trained her, and Itachi still hung around no matter how much she tried to work up the nerve to scare him off, but the snakes —
She held herself at a remove from Konoha, but not the snakes. The whole thing was slow-going, at first, carefully summoning snakes and getting to know her summons. At first, she was nervous, and the snakes were distrustful— they were too large a clan not to have differences, and though she might be summoner by the will of the White Snake Sage, they didn't know what type of summoner she'd be— but both sides warmed up to each other eventually. As she'd learned, there were certain snakes who were particularly close to either of the other two summoners, but plenty who weren't, and it wasn't hard to summon snakes who wouldn't rat her out to eye-thief McMad scientist man after only a few weeks of practice.
They wanted to teach her so much. How to hide like a snake, controlling her body temperature and breathing. How to hunt like a snake, which was at first a waste of time and then a godsend when it came to bribing the larger snakes to stay around. How to eat like a snake and act like a snake— raw eggs, shell included, were surprisingly tasty and convenient.
More than that, though, she wasn't going to leave them behind. She didn't know the impending sword of their death, or any genocidal tendencies, and so, as the months drew long and she threw herself into learning everything they had to teach, she started to almost think of them as family. It was odd— she hadn't realized how much she'd missed having a real family until she had them once more.
Chikao, an eyelash viper, was the most paternal of the lot, always stern in his instruction and bitter in his complaints, but all the other snakes of her little troupe loved him because he was smart, and wise, and really good at keeping the others in line. Kota and Mako were the big snakes— twice the size of a grown man and willing to throw that weight around— she had to bribe them to stick around if she wanted to spar with them, but throw them a boar and they were willing to fight her to the edge of exhaustion. The two of them were in some sort of relationship, and Chikao kept preventing Rai— his daughter— from being a busybody. Rai, of course, would drag Akari into it whenever she was summoned, which… fun times.
A time passed.
Her sixth birthday neared. Itachi came around less and less, every busier with ANBU work and not quite willing to spend his free time with her when he could spend it with Sasuke instead. They were still friends, he promised, but Akari was secretly relieved at the distance. She didn't hear from Genma again, but she did liberate the Tanto, so… at least there was that?
Her days were long, an exhausting mix of trying to look like the academy wasn't painfully boring, trolling the fuck out of the elders, and so long spent training in the forest— ever more complicated genjutsu, stronger ninjutsu, striving for perfection with kunai and shuriken, and her particular style of chakra-propelled senbon. The clan was drawing away from the village.
A tragedy in slow motion, and she was obsessed with avoiding it… so it came as a suprise when she got a letter. Kota brought it when she summoned her for some battle practice, in the snake style of things— which was to say, spitting it out of her mouth— and it was… interesting. "Do you know who sent this?"
Kota made the half-rippling shrug she'd gotten used to seeing from her summons. "Dunno. One of the other snakes just asked for me to pass it on." The snakes were apparently contract bound not to reveal the locations of their contractors to any other contractor, but… she eyed the scroll, and winced. Clearly that didn't stop them from sending her mail.
It was a fancy looking scroll, wooden end caps carefully carved into the shape of coiling snakes. The paper itself had the sort of luxurious golden tint to it that she recognised from the few Very Official Business scrolls she'd seen before, and a fat wax seal had been impressed onto it to keep it closed.
She didn't recognize the symbol— a strange, stylized cloud— but… it wasn't a symbol she recognized, which meant it probably wasn't from Konoha. Which in turn meant not Anko . Activating her sharingan she carefully looked over the scroll for any hint of a trap, letting no detail escape her gaze. They'd been better, ever since she'd fought Manda, which… cool. She'd been surprised at that, given how much fics fixated on the Mangekyou and tended to ignore the rest…
She was delaying. Flashing through some hand seals and sacrificing some of what little chakra she had left after summoning Kota, she pressed a palm to the ground and summoned Chikao. "Can you look over this for poisons, or… anything, really? I'd like a second set of eyes to check my work."
"Hey! I'm right here!" Both gave Kota a look, and the big snake sulked off to curl around a tree. "Fine, be like that…" what a drama queen. After a long few minutes Chikao declared it safe to the best of his knowledge, which only left Akari to open it.
She really hoped it wasn't from the person she thought it was.
It was from the person she thought it was. " My fellow summoner, " it began, in a courtly script that wouldn't have looked out of place in the hands of the daimyo, " it has come to my attention that you recently signed onto the snake contract. Your name… what a fascinating code you've disguised yourself with. For the past few months I have heard my summons whisper about the shinobi who fought Manda in Ryuchi Cave and lived to tell the tale, who bargained with the White Snake Sage and left an honored contractor.
You may color me impressed.
This missive is but a cordial greeting, from one like mind to another. Though I remain thoroughly engrossed in my own experiments and have little time to spare for pleasantries, should you wish to speak further you may find me in the nation of Ame; I will find you if you decide to seek me out. I truly hope we get the chance to speak in person in the future.
Sincerely,
Orochimaru ."
Fuck. Hyper mega fuck. She was holding a letter from Orochimaru , the snake sannin , in her hands, and he'd just invited her to Ame. What a fucking fever dream. "I'm not too chakra exhausted, am I? Because…"
"Orochimaru-sama's methods may be… questionable," Chikao put carefully, "but he is a powerful shinobi. If you seek strength, an invitation such as this will be an invaluable boon." She didn't seek strength, though… she just wanted to live, man, was that so hard?
Apparently, because the next time she summoned Kota, she had another scroll. Her heart raced for a second, but this one was far more innocuous— just the average sort of mission-scroll she'd seen scattered over the house before and everywhere in the academy. " Hey, " it began, and she sighed in relief knowing that Orochimaru hadn't sent a follow-up. " My snakes told me you're a new summoner on the contract, which— good going! Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, snakes are the best motherfuckers in the elemental nations. Anyways, I've heard some pretty wild things— apparently old meanie Manda has been pissed as fuck ever since you beat the snot out of him, which is totally a good thing in my books. Also apparently Orochi-teme sent you a letter? Pro tip, don't go within a hundred miles of the bastard if you want to remain un-juinjutsu-ed.
Have fun with the danger noodle contract, and drop by Konoha sometime! I'll promise to only stab you a little,
Mitarashi Anko. "
She'd laughed at that letter, and put Anko down on the list of People to Avoid.
…
She turned six, and… she was out of time. The clan was pulling away from the village as much as the village was pulling away from them, and she could see the position was untenable. Sasuke would start the academy in just under a year, after he turned six himself, and… her timeline was nebulous, but Shisui was going to die soon. Itachi would be unstable, Obito would be ready to mirk everyone, and… no, she needed to leave before then.
Training continued, of course, as obsessive as ever— more than once she'd fallen asleep in class— but she shifted focus. Just a little bit. Learning how to be a half-decent shinobi was cool and all, but she wasn't going to defeat Obito through strength of arms. The goal had always been to leave… and now, the goal was immediate enough that she could actually begin planning.
Fuuinjutsu was hard as fuck — she was lucky the snakes were willing to at least humor her attempts to learn, but she'd despised coding in her past life and despised fuuinjutsu in her current. A shame, because it looked so promising , but— eh, she'd spent more time making jutsu after she got the fuck out of dodge. Her sharingan at least allowed her to memorize enough to make some simple storage scrolls and explosive tags, so… that was cool.
Sealing away all the weapons she'd left in her makeshift training ground felt wrong, in a way, but she did it anyway. Then came gear — ten sets of clothing, four pairs of sizes she'd be able to tailor to herself as she grew up and a pair that fit her perfectly. Tons of kunai and shuriken, her box of senbon, and her tanto.
Rations, pilfered from various spots around Konoha. She always expected someone to catch her as she stole into the buildings in the dead of night, but in peacetime nobody really cared if a few or a few hundred of the tasteless things went missing. Either that or Danzo had made the guards purposefully complacent so he could take some himself. A tokujo's first aid kit she managed to nab from one of the ones that kinda sucked at perception, complete with chakra and blood replenishing pills, bandages, and stitches.
All of that— about the size of a goodly large suitcase— fit into just three scrolls which could comfortably hang off her battle gear. With that done, then— strategic preparations. She spent time observing the gate guards, the merchants coming in and out of the city, and so much more besides. She memorized her dad's missions map with her sharingan, then— in a fit of daring when she was sure everyone was away— snuck in and memorized the map (and every jutsu scroll she could get her hands on) in Fugaku-sama's office. There was a slight uproar when they found out that someone had been in there, but they didn't find who .
That worked for her. Also he didn't have the great fire annihilation scroll on him, which sucked, because as much as there'd been cool fire jutsu she'd really wanted that one before she left Konoha.
Anyways.
She combined everything she'd ever learnt, made plans— by herself and with the snakes— and prepared as the months ran away from her. Then, after everything was well and truly ready, she decided to focus on something she hadn't really thought about in almost five years. Wrapping up loose ends. A bit of sentimentality.
Then—
Stepping into Itachi's house felt… odd, in more ways than one. She'd been there before, of course— theft waited for no woman— but it was distinctly different from her own home nearer to the outskirts of the district. The whole thing was a work of art, in a way; each plant and careful piece of architecture a statement, demure yet starkly beautiful. The inside was just as formal— the very perfect picture of a high-class Japanese home. Probably. Definitely a wealthy shinobi's home, at least— but not just wealthy, old wealthy, clan head wealthy in a way that had to be shown off for tradition's sake.
It was beautiful. She wondered if it was wrong of her to have not even attempted to save it. "Fugaku-sama. Thank you for having me over." She bowed low to the man, and received a non-committal hum in return. It would be beneath him to do much more— shinobi might not play to the elaborate traditions of the court, but the Uchiha were old blood; a little girl and the clan head were far from equal in standing.
He was arrogant, and kind of rude, and he'd be dead in less than a year, so she ignored the traditional slight and continued inside. Mikoto was nice, really nice, all smiles and soft laughter as Akari adopted the fumbling little girl persona that was so second nature to her. "It's nice to see you over Akari-chan! Itachi has told me all about you…" she spoke sweet nothings for a little while longer before finally releasing her to go meet up with the person the whole party was for in the first place— Sasuke. He was a cute kid, honestly, eager, earnest, and a little aloof like all proper Uchiha were supposed to be, but he positively melted as soon as Itachi shunshined inside.
"Little brother. Akari-chan." He nodded to each of them in turn, before slowly poking his brother's forehead to hold off the younger child. "It's good to see you both." He didn't really sound very happy. He sounded exhausted … ANBU and clan politics would do that to a kid, she supposed.
"I brought presents! Also, did you eat that egg like you told me you would?" For once, Itachi made a face other than shinobi-blankness— bewildered disgust, that was. "It's good, I pinky pinky promise, and you told me you would—"
Sasuke looked up at his brother with wide, adoring eyes, and asked as though he was purposefully intending to fluster the young man— "can you train me tomorrow Itachi-nii? Please? Please please please—"
"Ah— maybe later, Sasuke. Akari too, I'll… keep your culinary tastes in mind." Akari sniggered, but dropped it. No need to scare him off, anyways.
Plus, "I have gifts!" That managed to successfully distract Sasuke, who crowded close to her as she took out a small package and unwrapped it to reveal a pendant. She'd sown it herself, not using her sharingan to make sure it wasn't the greatest quality ever, but it was a pretty cute looking fox banner half as tall as Sasuke. "It's supposed to be—"
"The kyuubi," breathed Sasuke in a kind of shocked awe before Akari snorted and shook her head. "Then what is it?"
"Just a fox, 'cus foxes are cute. Remember me when you put it up in your room ok?" Okay maybe it hadn't been the best idea for a gift from the way Mikoto was looking at her with such a pained expression, but in her defense she'd always liked foxes.
Foxes and snakes and sharingan eyes, god damn was she basically a shoe in for the nebulous boogeyman Konoha citizens used to scare themselves to paranoid sleep. Good riddance.
The rest of the party, more a formal dinner, went well, but there was still one more thing. Eventually everyone dispersed, Itachi made to go upstairs, and— Akari, carefully, followed. "Itachi." Her voice was barely a whisper, but it froze the young man in his tracks. "I know I missed your birthday, so I brought you something too."
She pulled out a canvas— about a foot-square when it was unrolled— and carefully presented it to Itachi. The shinobi spread it, then blinked, eyes bleeding into the oh so familiar sharingan red as he stared at the artwork. "It's…" for once, he seemed lost for words. "It's profound. You're smarter than the elders give you credit for."
Probably not. After all, she'd copied from her old life, one of her favorite images. The sharingan was made for photorealistic paintings, but she hadn't had her sharingan in her past life— so time spent looking at maps, painting marbles and staring at the moon, and just… remembering her past life. Funny, how interested in astronomy she'd been despite kind of sucking at math…
She'd probably gone through more canvases than she dared to count before settling on this one, but… she'd like to think that her Blue Marble of the elemental nations, of the world, was about as accurate as a photo. Itachi was still staring at it in silent awe, and for that… Akari just smiled, said she'd had to be getting home, and left.
It was a small gift. Utterly useless in the end, just something interesting and a note. She didn't really care enough to play 'influence the future' but Itachi was the closest thing to a human friend she had. How very, very ironic…
She'd considered trying to do some Uchiha melodrama type sealing to make sure that Itachi wouldn't be able to read it until after he'd killed the clan, but… nah. Itachi would've noticed. So all she left was a message scrawled in perfect Uchiha hand, a reminder that ' the world is beautiful is it not? Remember the good times when you look at this. '
Her last words to the soon-to-be missing nin. She hoped he didn't stress over her disappearance too much…
…
Not even a week later, it was finally time. She dressed herself in full shinobi gear, strapped her storage scrolls to her side and slunk through the predawn village as stealthily as she could. Thank fuck her parents were used to her running off early in the morning— accidental conditioning for the win! Even at this time of day the gates were busy, carts rolling into and out of the gate as the guards disinterestedly checked each. She waited for almost half an hour, resisting the urge to use her sharingan until— there . A covered wagon belonging to some fruit merchants heading out for the day, which meant nobody would notice as…
Carefully molding her chakra, she flung out a string for the replacement jutsu— grabbing onto not just one of the apples but a whole bunch. It was a bit difficult, but nothing too hard, and then, silently, they switched places. Switching jutsu for the second part of the task was easy, molding it into a thin film over her body that was kind of 'oily' for lack of a better word, allowing her to snuggle down beneath the apples before anyone noticed what was going on.
Passing through the checkpoint was nerve-wracking . Catastrophization never hit so hard until you were hiding from trained shinobi with the full knowledge that if you got caught, it was all over. She was literally holding her breath as the shinobi checked the produce, but after a second she felt the cart moving forward.
For a long while she simply remained hidden. Hours, probably, tense as the cart rumbled down along the road. That was the simple genius of the plan— they expected her to spend most of the day 'playing' in the forest, so hopefully nobody would start looking for her until at least the next morning—
"—did nothing, you can't— have to get back home by night—"
"Our team's sensor detected an anomaly in your cart. We're just going to do a quick search, for safety's sake." Fucking hell it'd all been going so well . Okay, okay… she took a deep breath, quiet as she could, and focused on the situation. Two… no, three shinobi, one of whom was almost certainly a recently promoted chunin with all the noise they were making. The other two could be anything from chunin to jonin, but from what she'd seen teams were usually around the same strength level because teams tended to grow together. That meant three chunin, if she was lucky. Two tokujo and a chunin, if she wasn't. Jonin if some kami had it out for her.
More importantly, she was confident they'd find her. Hiding under some apples wasn't really stealthy , and they had a sensor, so genjutsu wouldn't work as well as she'd wish…
If they took her back to Konoha, she'd die. Biting her lip for a second, shoving the thought down her throat, she let out a breath— and acted.
She exploded out of the apple crate with a shunshin , flickering behind the not-chunin and flinging three chakra-empowered senbon straight through the tokujo's skull. Then she was moving , dodging out of the way of a strike from the other tokujo that swung too high, deflecting a kunai with her own substituting with the tokujo's tumbling blade.
The man barely had a chance to react before she dropped him into a multi-layer genjutsu that had him drowning in a lightless, crushing void. Then Akari was moving, again, rolling out of the way of the chunin's clumsy strike.
She didn't want to kill him, but— the snakes had trained her not to hesitate when hunting, and this was so very close to being a hunt. A fire bullet burst through his heart mere moments after she felt his chakra shift in preparation for— something. A suicide jutsu, probably.
The tokujo flung herself at him, but breaking out of the deep sea drowning genjutsu was only half of what she'd prepared for him. The sharingan was utter bullshit , with how it much it empowered genjutsu— the man's attacks were off balance and clumsy, because he hadn't actually broken out of the genjutsu that made Akari look as though she were six inches to the right, or the genjutsu that set off his balance.
She kicked him in the chest with a chakra empowered blow, immobilized him by flicking a few senbon into his pressure points, and then she vomited out her breakfast on the road. Fuck. She hadn't— she hadn't wanted to kill anyone, but… what was, was. Shuddering, she knelt beside the tokujo, locking eyes with his, reading his fear so clearly. "You're…" he gasped out, the sound slurred because half the muscles in his chest weren't working. "You're just a kid. What the… Uchiha…"
"I'm sorry." She whispered, and realized she was crying. Stupid. Crying was for non-Uchiha and people who weren't going to get slaughtered if they didn't move . "I can't have you remembering I was here." Then drawing deep on what made the sharingan feared , she thrust into his mind and carefully scrubbed what she could of his memory of the fight. The mind was fiendishly complex, and she was certain she'd not gotten all of it— backups on backups, not to mention his chakra , but… at the very least, she was confident he wouldn't remember fighting a kid, or fighting a sharingan wielder.
She strode over to the merchants, who were huddled in fear in their seats. Still softly sniffling, Akari looked up and met their gazes. "You next."
Then she left, all three survivors unconscious, darting off into the forest to flee.
Anywhere but Konoha.
…
They'd sent an ANBU team after her. She'd been running for the past few days, pushing herself to the edge of chakra depletion to stay ahead of the hunter-nin as they tracked her down unerringly. The first day she'd been lax, but after that— not a chance. It was a dance between them, between all the shinobi skills she'd managed to build and the better shinobi tracking her down.
She held no illusions to what would happen if they found her. Death would be the least of her worries. So instead, she ran .
Leaping from tree to tree felt incredible, though— the sheer rush of exhilaration as she darted through the forest, the terror as she held her chakra tight to herself and strode deftly across streams, trying to lose whatever scent they might be using to track her. Twice she'd even stolen enough time to sleep, and that was probably the only thing keeping her going.
Out of time, out of time, out of time— she was running on dregs. She knew she was running on dregs, but if there was anything to be proud of she knew that the shinobi following her were, too.
Seconds felt like forever. They'd split up to follow one of the false trails she'd had Rai make, which was good. Two of them were probably less than a mile away and closing fast, which was bad. That meant… hopefully, this would work.
One last chance.
Shunshining into a boggy bit of forest, she flashed through the hand seals for the summoning technique, slammed her hand onto the ground— summoned Chikao— and not even a second later, disappeared.
…
Seconds after Akari reverse summoned herself to Ryuchi Cave, two shinobi dropped to the ground in the now-empty forest. The smaller of the two scanned the area, keen eyes swirling red and refusing to "The trail ends here."
The larger one nodded grimly, even as the dog beside him sniffed around for anything and failed to find it. It positively stank of pine-tar and fallen leaves, acrid against the moist ground. "They're good. Are you sure —"
"They used advanced genjutsu several times while fleeing. Their mastery of the clone jutsu was enough to almost fool me into thinking they'd used earth or water clones at several points in time." Itachi was silent for a long second as he scanned the clearing. Above, a bird wheeled in the sky, while several animals scurried through the undergrowth. A snake lay curled up in the crook of a tree, unaware of the shinobi's presence. "No. I'm not sure, but I think they were small. Smaller than me."
"Hm. That's unusual for you… what do you think? A kekkei genkai?"
"Either that or malnutrition while they were younger. Potentially purposefully."
Kakshi's gaze darkened for a second before he snapped back to his cold professionality. After all, there was one organization in the land of fire which he knew would do just that… "search pattern. Try and find any trace of the enemy."
"Yes taicho." Itachi nodded his head, then disappeared into a shunshin, leaving Kakashi to merely… ponder.
…
Akari had to down a chakra pill to not immediately die from acute chakra exhaustion after she'd reverse summoned herself, and even then she felt like hell for half a week. Also Manda was out for blood, which yay, how wonderful…
It was difficult, but when Chikao returned, and she sent herself back…
Laughing, she stood in an empty forest.
Freedom at last.
Notes:
Akari when she straight dips:
Anyways I'd actually been trying to get her out of Konoha in three chapters, but the snake stuff made for such a good cut off I couldn't not turn that into its own chapter. I'd also always planned her escape to be relatively seamless- she had every advantage, after all, but I thought it'd be interesting if something outside of her control forced her to be a bit more active than she might be otherwise...
On an entirely different note, this chapter also introduces the snakefam. Gotta love the snakefam. Also, Kakashi-pov. Going forward there's a few non-Akari POVs that I decided to throw in on the rare occasion, pretty much entirely because they were fun to write.
Chapter 5: Hide
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Plodding through the Land of Fire, Akari realized that she'd underestimated its size. Sure, she'd read the maps and mission reports, knew the roads and theoretically had a good grasp of geography from her brief stint as a painter, but it was one thing to know in theory and another to see it in practice. It felt like it took forever for her to get a comfortable distance away from Konoha, and then even longer to find somewhere to lay low.
She checked out a few places in the dark of night, eventually settling on the village of Nosegawa, a no-name tiny town far to the north that it'd probably been tossed around during the great shinobi wars before settling as part of Fire. It certainly looked pretty beat up, still— sure, most of the small village houses had long since been repaired, but the few larger buildings toward the center still showed the marks of a war less than a decade past.
It was no Tanzaku Gai, that busy gambling den, or even close to being one of the larger towns— but it also wasn't a tiny village, either. About five hundred people lived there, just enough for her to slip in without too much fuss.
She wondered if she'd been spoiled by spying on chunin; it was pitifully easy to make a mission plan. Step one— blood.
"Villager… san…" ironic, that she'd injured herself more than any shinobi had managed yet. "Please… water…" modulating her voice to be scratchy and hoarse was easy. She'd gotten sore throats so many times practicing fire ninjutsu that fudgeing a low-power great fireball jutsu was pretty easy.
Having just stumbled out of the forest and onto his muddy field, the farmer froze for a second before shouting for help— and it only took a few minutes for her to be whisked away to the small manor in the village center, wounds bandaged with an expertise that surprised her. She'd not brough civvie clothes— an oversight, admittedly— but leaving most of her weapons in the forest alongside her storage scrolls was enough to make her clothes look more merely fancy instead of shinobi-wear.
It felt straight awful to be without weapons in somewhere so unfamiliar, but… well, they couldn't take her sharingan (they could but they were civilians, there was no way in hell she'd let them) and she always had ninjutsu.
The plan worked somewhat like this— she collapsed on the farm of man next door to a couple who had a daughter about her age, the village helped her, she wove her sob story about her parent's death and subtle genjutsu that gave her an aura of innocence… and within the week, she was a ward in their household. Perfect infiltration, A+ for effort.
Then—
Waiting.
It was a bit jarring. Her schedule had so long been a shinobi 's, academy training, elder's busybodying, and then her own long hours in the woods, that the life of a farmer was entirely different. They woke up before dawn and slept past sunset, but worse, she could barely find time alone to practice jutsu. Unlike in Konoha, they were pretty strongly against her running off into the forest for the whole day. Something about it being dangerous, and what if she gets attacked by a bear (it better be the boss of the bear summons if it wanted to hurt her) or snakes (laughable) or whatever civilians feared. Like, it wasn't the worst — she imagined that a shinobi on a deep infiltration mission would have it worse, given that she did manage to carve out some time to practice every so often, but it kind of sucked. She ended up spending a lot of time meditating on chakra, mostly because that was something she could do while pretending to be asleep.
Her new foster family was nice, though. Kind, in a way that her family back… home, not really home had never really been. It wasn't like her old parents hadn't cared for her, but they were just… busy. Busy with the police and the clan and a village that hated them. Touma was a gregarious man, wide shouldered and stocky from farming, while Bashira was a slip of a woman, constantly amused at something the others could only guess at.
They had an eight year old daughter, too— Hanako, who as the name suggested, loved flowers. She was a ball of sunshine, always bouncing around and jabbering about whatever caught her interest before flitting to the next topic. Intelligent, too— she learnt whatever her parents told her about farming quickly, and had caught the eye of Nosegawa's resident herbalist and had started to learn how to read and write. By all means, she was practically a genius.
To Akari, she was incredibly childish. Hanako had been overjoyed to have a younger sister, as the name suggested, but pretty much from the first day she'd set foot in their home it was obvious that the relationship dynamic would be inversed. Compared to her, she was just— an actual, honest to goodness child. No Uchiha clan breathing down her neck, no impossible memories urging her to become the very greatest and hide that expertise completely— she was just a kid.
It was kinda fun, actually, to play in the dirt with her and pretend to let her win, to find flowers and listen to her talk about all the herbal properties they had. To work the fields, preparing to plant wheat just like they had every year prior to her coming and probably would years and years into the future. Mundane. Boring .
Perfect for hiding.
A few months passed, and then—
Then they heard the news.
Akari had perhaps underestimated what Uchiha meant. In her defense, she'd like to point out that their position in Konoha had never, from her perspective, been good. In her past life they'd been dead, then kind of half-assedly talked about, held up to a standard but never really discussed beyond their importance to whatever world-ending plot the sharingan had a hand in then. In her current life she'd been the daughter of two overworked police officers, in a clan compound with no particular history and the ever-present disdain of the village; she'd been born knowing her clan would die, and so the event itself took on almost a prosaic unimportance in her mind. After all, she'd have been long gone by then.
To the people of the Land of Fire, it was different.
In Nosegawa, the whispers spread through the town like wildfire in the wake of a passing merchant, leaping from tongue to tongue until it was the only thing anyone could talk about. She heard it first when Hanako arrived home early from her apprenticeship, out of breath, wide eyes, already blurting— "someone killed the whole Uchiha clan!" Akari froze, paling before she forcefully wrested control of her motions and returned to the vegetables she'd been chopping. Bashira paused her knitting, slowly dropping the piece of clothing she'd been working on. Touma was out on the farm, still, but… the good mood of the house was ruined.
They talked about it, at dinner, a long conversation that was clearly for adults only. Essentially wondering whether or not they would be going to war again, of how unprepared the village was to handle strife, of all the families who'd said they'd rather take their chances heading south than staying so close to the fighting.
Akari slept poorly that night, trying not to think of— everyone, everything she'd left behind, hoping that the talk died down after a while. Of course, because she couldn't have nice things, it didn't. She probably should have realized it sooner, but the Uchiha didn't just fancy themselves nobility— most the rest of the land of fire saw them as such too. After all, they'd been one of the world's strongest shinobi clans, one present since time immemorial whose rivalry with the Senju had literally shaped history. To the people of the land of fire, to Nosegawa— the sun rose in the east, things fell down, and the Uchiha were powerful. Now only two remained: the child— the heir— and the kinslayer.
It was, in short, a pretty sucky week. At least she had her Uchiha aloofness training to fall back on— yay, emotional suppression, how very useful when it came to coping with trauma she shouldn't even have because she'd fucking left .
"Akari-chan?" She'd been awake since Tomua had climbed up to the loft she was sleeping in, but she made a minor show of yawning, stretching, and pulling herself into a delirious lucidity. "I won't claim to know much about your past, but… you've been distant, these past few days. I just want to talk, if you're okay with that." He was a kind man. A kind man didn't deserve to be burdened with knowledge that one of the last scions of a noble clan was hiding from a mass murderer (and not even the mass murderer they knew) in his village.
"I… knew an Uchiha, once." Was this what being seven was like? Stupid goddamn emotions. "Our family hired a shinobi guard, once, and he was on the team." A blatant lie, but it felt good to just— talk about it. "It's difficult to imagine him dead. He was so strong."
"I see." He said nothing more, just sitting beside her and letting her lean against him; not knowing the depth of her tragedy he offered a shoulder in comfort and Akari learnt into the gentle warmth.
It wouldn't be ok. Her family was dead. It would be okay. She was alive, she was free — at last, at last— everything had come to pass, and she was… alone.
If only for a time, she had a small family in a village near the Land of Hot Waters, in a town called Nosegawa.
…
Her grieving involved the one thing she'd always been really good at— disappearing into the forest and training until she dropped from exhaustion. She knew she'd be in trouble when she got back, but, laying on the mossy branch of a massive tree, staring up into the bruise-purple sky fading from sanguine peach to star-speckled black, she'd needed this.
Mako was curled around her and the branch in a way that Akari bet he used to kill prey with, but the snakes had long since learnt the so-human intricacies of hugs. "You know," whispered the behemoth snake— much bigger and they wouldn't be able to snuggle in the canopy— "Kota and I weren't going to tell you 'til they hatched, but you look like you could use a distraction. So, you know how she's been a bit of a pansy the last few times you've summoned her?"
"Yeah, what about it?"
"Well…" the snake looked almost embarrassed . It was a peculiar thing, to recognize embarrassment in snakes— "she was expecting. The clutch's healthy, you know, and we'd been talking about… do you want to help us name them?" For a long second, Akari was silent and still. A part of her wanted to be angry— they were doing this to distract her from her grief, as though they were trying to replace her family…
That wasn't true though. They were doing this to distract her from her grief, yes, out of love — but they weren't trying to replace her family. That was a nonsensical thought; they'd already been her family for a long time.
They were in luck, too, she had some fire names for some snakes in mind. So they spent the rest of the night— after she'd summoned Kota— talking about ancient myths and legends that didn't exist, of powerful names; they spoke of dragons who gnawed on the roots of the world and serpents who fought with gods and killed sunlight. Ending on three names— Jormungandr, Nidhogg, and Apophis. A little pretentious, yeah, but the snake summons lived for that sort of thing.
It was a fun night. Just what she needed…
…
It was after that, as the rumors finally died down and the other hidden villages tested their defenses and found Konoha strong, still — that Akari found herself a part of the village, truly. Those few months were tight. It was difficult to sell and even more difficult to buy, and the dry spring only exacerbated the problem.
She might still be pretty iffy on what exactly earth was — really, water made sense, but earth? Anyways, working the fields, helping till the soil and feeling it between her fingers (and misusing water release jutsu to get it out from beneath her fingernails) gave her a much better idea of what it could be. She was sure some Hatake in the pure lands was either proud or embarrassed at her attempts to make jutsu to help with farming.
It wasn't even just a problem with her earth element. As it so happened, slamming a water dragon or shooting water bullets was a really good way to kinda screw the soil, so making a good irrigation jutsu had been painful . All those sharingan-memorized library books she'd been forced to remember… At least it was practice making original jutsu? She still had that unnamed senbon technique, and now this odd slow-but-fine-control water release technique, so…. Yay?
Most of the time she just ended up carrying the water from the stream anyways. Cool jutsu were for shinobi, and poor merchant's daughter Akari wasn't a shinobi, of course.
Once, Hanako had come back bragging to her about how well she'd been able to read. She'd been flummoxed when Akari said she could read too, then dismayed at Akari's precise handwriting and perfect comprehension when she told her to prove it. After that, because all actions had consequences and she'd been admittedly maybe a little hasty revealing that particular bit of her skillset— so sue her, non-shinobi could read and write too— because Hanako had dragged her into helping her with all the random stuff the herbalist had her do.
As she found out, they practiced a primitive way of chakra healing. Well, primitive was perhaps the wrong way to put it— it worked , and it was a unique brand of complicated that she couldn't even memorize with her sharingan because it wasn't written down anywhere, but it wasn't quite as scientific as the medical jutsu she'd learnt in Konoha. The idea of it was to mix poultrices from herbs and various other ingredients while infusing chakra into the mixture to make a paste that helped healing, though Akari doubted they knew they were infusing chakra. It was the simple repetitiveness of the task, the will and wish. It was also a painfully small amount. After all, people tended to notice when they were losing lots of chakra, even if they didn't quite understand the reason why.
She remembered the medical textbooks well though, so when Hanako asked for help she helped, sometimes clarifying things that didn't make sense or adding a bit of modern knowledge here and there
All in all— life in Nosegawa went on.
A year passed.
…
Balanced on the edge of roof and vast openness, field and stars, Akari stood shadowed. Her sharingan spun lazily, three tomoe revolving around that point-black pupil in a sea of crimson-bright red, brighter, more luridly red than any color had any right to be.
She'd been meditating on chakra natures. Not natural chakra, though she was kinda interested in that if only for the sheer potential it had when it came to hiding , but the nature of that mystical force. The elements were one thing, a definitely real thing for she could feel the very nature of flame when she spat a fireball or flame bullet or coiling dragon, but chakra was not the elements. Chakra had to become the elements— tainted, or honored? That philosophy was beyond her, but she'd spend lazy days tending to the fields remembering way too many technical details about chakra flow and nature and proper jutsu use from the shinobi library, and just… thinking.
Chakra both was and was not a physical presence. It flowed through bodies, but it affected so much beyond just merely the body. Mind and body, together— that was what made chakra. Yin and Yang, and the natural energy that permeated the world. Then, real energy, and matter— natural energy had existed since before the Shinju, the consumption of it destroyed life and left a world a husk of itself, but left that husk…
She didn't really think that she'd figure out the mysteries of the universe, hadn't put much thought into the; instead, she'd gone for something far more interesting to her. Genjutsu were a strange application of chakra. Almost purely mental, they affected the target's perception of what was real rather than affecting reality itself. They were yin-release, but a kind of… watered down form? Really, all they were doing was affecting the victim's brain via chakra— the Aburame had been rather famous for their kikachu's immunity to genjutsu.
So, naturally— out of boredom, and curiosity— Akari had gone further. Her hands flew through seals, twenty three of them as they slowed down her chakra and stilled its constant rushing movement, not to mention the absolute razor-fine edge of chakra control. "Yin release: starry night." The last seal stilled, and she breathed— as if it were a fire jutsu, though it obviously wasn't— and where her breath touched the night-time shadows they broke and so softly glowed. Like a sea of little fireflies, electric blue to faded, ruddy gold, swirling abstract through the air for a few seconds before fading back to normal.
It was the most stupid, wasteful, time consuming jutsu she'd ever made. It was also the first use of actual, pure yin release— not the yin chakra in genjutsu, but actual yin release . Yin release: starry night was as fake as a genjutsu, sure— but it'd fool a kikachu, and that was pretty damn cool.
…
So much happened, she couldn't possibly talk about it all— but in the same way, essentially nothing of note occurred. It was all very civilian. The neighbors had their first kid, one of the elders came down with a cough and congratulatedHanako on the tonic she'd made to help him, a few buildings were raised, harvest came and went, the daimyo collected a larger than usual tithe in preparation for a war that never came, and they just lived. There was a sense of unimportance in Nosegawa— it was a place where nothing happened, and they liked it that way.
On the flip side of things, it was kinda, just a little, boring .
About a year and a half after she'd first arrived, rumors started spreading— from village to village and eventually to Nosegawa itself, of bandits . It was the talk of the town for a while, hushed whispers of what they'd do if the raiders came around their neck of the woods, of how they'd been roughing up villages, and Akari— didn't really think much of them, to be honest. From what little she'd learnt in the academy, shinobi were rarely sent out to deal with bandits like this— that was the daimyo's job, for all that position had grown less and less important with the rise of centralized shinobi governments. The land of fire was usually pretty good at keeping their roads safe— but they couldn't really deal with enemy shinobi or missing nin. That was where konoha-nin came into play.
"Do you think they're going to come to Nosegawa?" Hanako was… a bit of a gossiper. Sure she knew when to keep her mouth shut— Akari had asked her not to spread around how much she'd helped the other girl academically, and she'd more or less complied— but when something was of interest to the village, it was of interest to her. "I hope they don't, you know. I heard they burned down the fields in Totsuka, you know? With harvest so soon…"
"It'll be fine. The adults will deal with it." One of the neighbor's drainage ditches had slumped in on itself— Touma had been visibly restraining himself from just straight calling them lazy— and the village was helping him get back on his feet. Nobody could afford the loss if the crop got flooded next rainfall. "Give me that shovel, you're going too slow."
"Aww, c'mon, you don't even need the big shovel you're like half my size!" It was annoyingly true— just-under ten year old Hanako clearly took after her father in stature. Akari didn't take no for an answer, though— Hanako was still slow , and she wanted to get back home by nightfall. Plus, shinobi training and chakra and whatnot meant she was a lot stronger than the other girl, despite her size. "Are you sure it'll be fine? They're kind of scary…"
A few weeks later she wasn't sure. The bandit leader had gained an epithet in the retelling, carried on the wind of further atrocity— Fire Demon Masa, who'd apparently led the daimyo's samurai into an ambush with greater forces than expected. The man who'd obfuscated his path by turning the one incident with burning down fields into a widespread pattern.
Shinobi wouldn't come, it would be a few weeks until the daimyo's next— larger, but slower— expedition arrived, and Masa was too close for comfort. So… Akari made a decision. Up in the loft, she flashed through a few hand seals, slapped the floor, and summoned two snakes in a flash of smoke— Chikao, because he was good at what he did, and Apophis, because she was a cute kid who'd been asking for a real job. "I'm going to be gone for the next while. I need you to watch the family and make sure they don't suspect anything. Apophis, your job is to un-summon yourself if there's an issue, and to get my attention. Chikao, I trust you to defend them if it comes to that."
Both snakes nodded, and then… preparations. Thank fuck for not sucking as bad at earth release as she had when she'd left Konoha— an earth clone was durable enough to serve as a replacement. She didn't leave immediately— having grown a little since she'd last gone out, she had to fiddle with one of the larger sets of shinobi gear she'd brought with her, not to mention having to mess with shinobi gear in the first place.
Still, only a day and a bit later, dressed in combat gear and armed for whatever might come, Akari shunshined through the household to the foot of her foster parents bed. Her eyes were scarlet, red and bleeding bright—
They didn't even have a chance to understand what was going on before she put them under a genjutsu. It'd probably be A-rank, if only for its duration— their poor foster daughter was sick, you see, and very contagious. No, that wasn't an earth clone, they didn't need to think about it, it was fine .
For Hanako… she'd get the genjutsu too, but for a second she allowed herself to stand by the sleeping girl, watching with a faint smile as she dreamed pleasant dreams. She wouldn't have to fear, not after she finished… then she tapped her awake and trapped her in the same alternate reality she'd put her parents in.
Grimacing at the chakra expenditure, she shunshined onto a tree and bounded off into the forest.
…
The Land of Fire was big. Which— no duh, she knew that already. That shit was massive, but this time it wasn't large enough to feel daunting. After all, she was comparing her speed to the speed of civilian bandits, which meant that even if they were laying false trails by burning down farms and fields and forests, she was still faster. The snakes had taught her how to track well enough, and the bandits weren't really subtle in their passing. It didn't even take her half a week to find their camp, scattered around a stream and lit by merry fires; laughing, the bandits made a mess eating animals they'd slaughtered and drinking stolen sake.
Reprehensible. Watching the camp from a tree a thousand odd feet away, the scene made clear beneath the perfect gaze of her sharingan, she called them reprehensible . They were the worst of sorts, slovenly and rough— fair weather bandits, the sort drawn to Masa's stature, looking for riches the easy way.
She didn't want to kill them. She'd done so once, and found it pretty distasteful— not to mention her past life's morals, no matter how little they applied. After all, she'd left her family to die… Shaking herself free from grim thoughts, she flicked through a familiar set of seals, summoning Rai into her hands. "I need some venom."
"Are you going to fight a super cool shinobi? Or, or—"
Akari sighed, closing the small viper's mouth with two fingers, a sign to just be quiet . "Mako's kids are just as energetic as you are. You're a bad influence… and no, I'm not going to be fighting any shinobi today. Just some bandits."
"Boooring. Orochimaru-sama fought Itachi , Anko's been on ANBU missions, um, I think, and you're out here hiding in a village!"
"That might be because all three of those shinboi could carve me up and serve me with a side of horseradish sauce." Rai pouted, but allowed her to extract some venom nonetheless. "Thanks… I'm going to do this stealthily, though, so—" the small snake dutifully un-summoned herself, even though it was pretty obvious she didn't want to. That was fine, though…
It was almost easy. She waited until they were asleep, then cast mass drowsiness genjutsu over the whole camp, layered with a immobilizing terror genjutsu just in case they impressed her and managed to wake up. To add insult to injury, she made sure to dose them with Rai's venom, just for that little extra bit of deliriousness. They hadn't even left someone to stand guard… from there, it was easy to find Masa. The man had dressed himself in stolen treasure like some sort of discount-rate daimyo. Perhaps he fancied himself king of bandits? It would explain the hubris of his strategies…
She tapped the man, broke the genjutsu on him specifically— and then the moment he stirred, she locked eyes with him, and—
Faded—
To—
Red.
The mindscape of Fire Demon Masa was a swamp and a cellar at the same time. The very atmosphere of it was cloying, rich with the scent of decay, rot and fetid things redolent; a disgusting place; earthen walls barring sight beyond her immediate vicinity. It wasn't a very structured place, but it had structure— all minds did, except for maybe the minds of mad, mad things.
"Wha-where are we? Hey! What the fuck are you, some kinda demon? Get the fuck outta—" Akari just held up a hand, not even looking behind her, and Masa's shouts turned muffled.
She was aware how it must've looked. To civilians, who found genin so strange when they were doing nothing burger missions, it must look incredibly odd to see a pre-genin age little girl in full battle gear having magically transported them to some strange non-place.
She turned around for a second, then fought back an instinctive wince as she saw the man's mouth literally sewn shut . Ew. The mind reacted weirdly to offhand commands like that. Anyways— "you may speak." She waved a hand, and the stitches fell apart. "I have questions."
"Where the fuck did you take me, you little—"
"The first rule of our conversation, Masa-san," she looked into his eyes, sharingan spinning furiously, and the man froze. "Is that in this world of ours, I am god ." One of her most powerful genjutsu, the logical conclusion of interrogation: literally stepping into the target's mindscape. Sure, it wasn't unbreakable like Itachi's bullshit mangekyou ability, but against a civilian? "Speak, Masa. Tell me your crimes, before I have to get… physical ." The Uchiha had been feared for a reason. He could not possibly resist.
While he spilled the— admittedly kind of wacky— tale of Fire Demon Masa, the farmer who'd become a bandit who'd risen to leader of a small bandit group, and their recent bold success, she was practicing a different technique. She had an idea of what to do to the rest of the bandits, but she wanted to test it out first.
The man was truly disgusting, but when she stepped out of his mindscape, he didn't react at all. A bit of drool leaked out of his mouth and blank eyes gazed at the sky above.
Akari slit his throat, sealed his body in a scroll and moved on. She had a lot to get through tonight, and not a whole lot of time or chakra, so she'd have to be both fast and precise…
…
Hatake Kakashi was not usually called to deal with bandits. Inosuke rarely got called out of the village at all. Here they were, though, in a no-name part of North Fire, standing menacingly next to a confused and somewhat intimidated group of bandits.
Bandits, who— despite Kakashi's initial skepticism about the mission dossier's details— seemed to genuinely not remember the last few months. A lot of them hadn't even been bandits then— though, some had clearly been with the now deceased— and missing— 'Fire Demon Masa' for long enough to corral the rest of the group into continuing with some crime.
The samurai had come expecting a fight— what they'd found instead was a group of confused, paradoxical farmers in over their heads. A slight gasp of air from Inosuke snapped him out of his reverie. "Maa, back in your own body?"
"The technique isn't quite that simple—"
"I know, I know. Copy-cat, remember?" Inosuke all but scowled , which, in total fairness it was pretty poor taste to bring up the fact that you could do secret clan techniques in front of members of the clan to whom the techniques belonged, but how else was he supposed to keep his reputation as an absolute nuisance?
It was better than cold-blooded Kakashi, at least. Inosuke nodded, slowly, looking both aggrieved and somewhat impressed— though clearly not at his antics. That probably meant he'd found something interesting , and to a shinobi interesting meant deadly . "Mental manipulation, as we suspected. Heavy handed, but…" he paused, then, in the way that Kakashi knew all superior officers hated because it meant bad things . "Whoever did this was both a genius and a master of genjutsu. I'm not sure how exactly they did it, but I'd suspect some genjutsu to get into their minds, then some really finicky memory alteration genjutsu. A-rank, at least."
"And the genius part?"
"I don't recognize any of the common 'tells' for these sorts of techniques, and judging by the way the memory erasure becomes noticeably smoother between cases… I think they made this jutsu themselves. Perhaps even specifically for this mission." That was… actually kind of scary. "Though… it does remind me a little of a case report I read, once."
Good news! He'd at least have something to bother the Hokage with, after he gave in his report half a day late! "Do go ahead?"
"One interesting case with two dead chunin and three mind-wiped. Two civvies and a tokujo," and look at that, the sweet sweet taste of regret. "The Sandaime will want to hear about this." Yeah, he really would. A powerful genjutsu user of potentially hostile allegiance, just loitering in the land of fire? Unseeable, untraceable, able to escape even Team Ro back at the height of their strength with clan-killer Itachi chasing them? "...like," oh Inosuke was still talking— "some void ghost. How the fuck are you supposed to someone down if they erase their presence so thoroughly ?" And that, Kakashi thought, was the crux of the question.
The most interesting part of it was… he didn't know.
Notes:
I saw a lot of people theorizing on Akari's powers and/or how she'd survive in the elemental nations, so hopefully this is a good preview of what's going down :3
Anyways, I meant to ask this last chapter but forgor, what sort of things would make an interesting mangekyou ability? I don't have any particular plans to give Akari the mangekyou, but who knows maybe if I get an idea that's interesting enough...
Chapter 6: Adrift
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Uchiha Akari left Nosegawa on a sunny day just over two years after she'd arrived, almost but not quite nine years old. They were sad to see her go, of course, but— she'd had a good time with them. A good two years by all accounts, restful years, peaceful years except for her short excursion to deal with Masa. It was just… boring.
Perhaps that was uncharitable to the village. It was a really nice place! Calm yet busy in a mundane sort of way, growing and happy with the Third Shinobi War behind them— they just… weren't exciting when it came to shinobi standards. That thrill, of training until she dropped from exhaustion, of darting through forests and flickering from branch to branch shunshin and replacement turning her into a ghost— of the genjutsu art, of all the elements heavy in her chakra— it lacked that. She'd escaped Konoha, sure, but you didn't escape being a shinobi.
Plus, ninjas with super powers were pretty cool, actually…
Anyways, she left on a sunny day, having spent the last few days planning a mass genjutsu. Everything lined up perfectly— to Nosegawa it was a heartwarming reunion, a merchant finding family they'd thought they'd lost long ago. The genjutsu on the merchant had been a little more heavy-handed, but all she needed was for him to act a certain way until they were out of the town. The moment they were out of eyesight, she dismissed the genjutsu— leaving behind a half-confused merchant and no memory of her passing.
The last thing she'd said to Hanako before leaving was a reminder— to her, to herself— that there was so much more to the world out there than Nosegawa. She was a smart girl. Perhaps she'd take that unspoken offer, go to the capital and learn some medicine. Maybe she'd take a leap of faith and go to Konoha. Or maybe she'd stay in Nosegawa, learning under the herbalist and preserving the ancient tradition, who knew? She'd see her again, one day.
Akari didn't know that, obviously, not for certain— but it was nice to think at least.
A few hours into her journey— not even chakra exhausted, because her reserves had grown decently over the past few years— she darted across a still lake and alighted on the bough of an old tree, sharingan gaze instantly cataloging the island and it's long-abandoned, decrepit shrine. It was the first she'd seen in more than passing, but she'd known that abandoned ruins like these were pretty common throughout the elemental nations. War had been an omnipresence for so long…
She dropped down, silent as a breath of still air, her movement from rock to rock barely even disturbing the moss beneath her. It felt natural , this perfect balance— much more so than the forced childishness she'd upheld… well, her entire life. Carefully, she brushed away the leaves that'd fallen over the structure, of which more or less only the stones remained.
She wasn't quite sure what she'd been expecting. Something cool and powerful and ancient? Not really, it was just a shrine to… the spirit of the lake? That, if she read the inscription right, which with how weird and old the dialect on it was, she wasn't confident that she had. She might not be the best chakra sensor, but a brief moment's pause told her that if there was any truth to the stories, the spirt probably wasn't around any longer.
What had they prayed for, she wondered? Prosperity for posterity, bountiful harvests, good fishing, peace under heaven? There were no villages in a day's walk of the lake— a civilian's day's walk— so she doubted she'd ever find out.
Shunshining to that same old-tree's bough, she sat and dangled her feet off the edge, feeling, wind blowing through her hair and rustling the tree above her. Water and earth below, sun's sharp warmth almost like fire… uh, there was no lightning around, so that was as far as she could take the metaphor. Nervous system? Meh, she didn't really care—
Free. In a different way than she'd been free before. The greatest danger to her had passed with the passing years, and with all the skills she'd built for herself she was confident enough making a living on her own. Sure, a nine year old girl— short for her age at that— wasn't exactly the sort of person you'd expect to be out and about, but…
Eh. She'd been free for a long while, and now she wanted so badly to use that freedom. What did the air taste like in the dry Suna desserts? What was the difference between Lightning and Earth country's vast mountain ranges? Did they have good tea in Tea? Did Water… actually, she didn't really want to go to the Bloody Mist. Like, at all. It ranked up there in 'places to go only if suicidal' alongside Ame and Konoha.
She wanted to explore . So— she did.
…
The bingo book was an interesting artifact of shinobi culture. There wasn't, actually, one 'bingo book' but rather a set of different books each published by the five great hidden villages. Sensible Akari supposed, because it was actively counterproductive to put information and bounties on your own shinobi , but it sure made it a bit of a pain when different nations and different editions disagreed on stuff.
The bounties were pretty wild, though. That was another strange artifact of shinobi culture— the great nations published the bingo books, but very rarely were they the ones who actually dealt with all the bounty stuff. While certain shinobi— missing-nin, for the most part— could probably get a bounty payout from one of the great nations, bounties on active shinobi went through intermediates. Bounty offices, sometimes, but more often smaller hidden villages or lesser nations' daimyos.
Like… so, everyone knew that Iwa had a huge hate boner for the Yondaime Hokage— they'd refused to remove his bounty even after he became sitting leader of the world's largest military, which was little bit of a political faux pas— and that extended to his sole surviving student as well. However, if someone actually did managed to kill Kakashi and took the corpse to Iwagakure, they'd be all like 'oh no, we can't possibly pay you, that would cause a huge diplomatic incident, go to Bear country and take the money that we totally didn't give them for this instead wink wink wink wink.'
Actually, for Kakashi, they might actually just pay out diplomacy be damned. He was really fucking hated over in Iwa. Kiri had literally put that on his bingo book page 'hated by Iwa.'
Anyways, all that was to say that for all the danger of bounty hunting, for the obfuscation and the potential for one of the five great villages to decide that you deserved a bounty, those very same great nations had to shill out a ton of money to make it worth anyone's while, and Akari wanted some of that money.
She'd picked up some bingo books in Yugakure— nice place, honestly, she appreciated the pacifism even if it was pretty obviously flawed with how they were sandwiched between massive militant nations— and had decided to go after some crazy serial killers. There weren't any names in the bingo book, but the Land of Hot Water as a whole was known for its prevalence of heretical cults that Yugakure just… let the daimyo deal with? Poor man, there was no way in hell that non-shinobi would be able to handle that sort of madness.
So that's why she was in a standoff with a creepy man in robes twice her height in the middle of a forest at night. It was exactly what it looked like, too, the sick fuck. "You know, I was expecting Jashinists, not Epstein Island, the religion."
"They sent a child after us? How pathetic does Yugakure think we are?" The man unsheathed a pretty clearly ritualistic blade, if the strange, wavy pattern was anything to go by— but his stance and confidence told her that he was not to be taken lightly. "I've killed jonin before, girl. You won't be the first kid I add to my list of corpses, and far from the last shinobi."
"Ew." Gross. Also kind of horrifying. Hopefully the calming genjutsu she'd put on the kids would help… she certainly didn't want to add any more trauma to them. "Anyways…" she flashed through hand seals, throwing herself out of the way as the cultist lunged at her— but for him it was already far too late. After all, the man had broken through the first, more obvious layers of the genjtusu— the balance offsetting one, and the one that made her entirely unnoticeable— but between the second and third layer (a darkness genjutsu) he'd entirely missed the half-layer that disguised the hand seals she'd already been performing . Seconds before she should have finished the technique she spat fire and bent it into her trusty fire dragon flame bullet. The man tried to dodge, but the jutsu was faster than he was, wrapping around him and trapping him in a vortex of swirling flame.
He was surprisingly hard to kill, actually. A strong regeneration— some sort of technique— kept him alive for a good minute before Akari lost her patience and hollowed out his skull with a water bullet. Good riddance to that.
An exhausting, if easy victory, but… well, he'd been the only one to break through her notice-me-not genjutsu, so the others… those she could do stealthily . After that bloody affair, all she had to do was get the children to the nearest village and claim the bounty for the missing kids (a bounty she hadn't even realized existed) before noping out. Now that she was rich, she was going to go bother some poor toymaker and buy a whole ton of water balloons. And bouncy balls. God bless the anime for explaining at least one cool technique that didn't involve musical eyeballs…
…
Akari wondered if it was unfair to Naruto that she'd learned the technique so fast. At least the kids she'd given the rest of her bouncy balls to had liked the unexpected gift? It was probably fine— honestly, she had all the advantages for learning the technique and it still took her a week. Naruto learning it so quickly was a serious testament to his skill— the sheer amount of chakra control it required made it difficult for her, much less the jinchuuriki who couldn't even make the basic clone jutsu.
It was a rather unique jutsu. Inspired by the bijuudama, but not quite its match— it was powerful , chakra intense, but also quick and simple in a kind of convoluted way. It used a pretty unique type of chakra control— flow control , rather than the exacting, fine control that most jutsu relied upon, giving it an incredible robustness. It neatly filled a nice in her arsenal— a cheap, rapid jutsu that could grind through barriers or armor or flesh—
Honestly, she wasn't sure how often she'd use it. She'd probably have to adapt it to be less… noticeable to really work with her mission style, but it was cool nonetheless. Plus— as she dodged back from a rock-clad missing-nin who'd been terrorizing the north frost shore enough to earn a B-rank classification and a commensurate bounty, it was useful for royally pissing off Iwa-nin.
The woman had some sort of sensory jutsu, and combined with the lack of eye-holes in her combat armor… jutsu… thing, it was a unique experience fighting her. Kunai deflected off the armor and even her trusty empowered senbon failed to punch through the chakra reinforced stone, so— rasengan!
"You fucking bitch I'll tear out your entrails—" shunshin to the side of the lumbering blow that belied a powerful strength, flash through some one-handed seals, and bang! Raiton jutsu to the face (she sucked at lightning, but it was pretty devastating) and then a rasengan right after. She probably shouldn't be using the battle as a bit of active training, but— honestly, the man wasn't really a big threat. She simply had the counters to his jutsu.
The rasengan embedded in his chest with a spray of blood and viscera, and then the man was finally down. Damn. She hadn't even gotten to use the cool technique she'd been working on… but, on the contrary, she was going to be rich once she grabbed the bounty for this mfer. Actually good shinobi gear, here she came…
Iwagakure was a bad idea. Konoha was an absolutely awful idea . Sunagakure was way too far away. The small villages didn't really have what she wanted, Yugakure didn't really have what she wanted, so… Otogakure, which (really fucking bad idea), Shimogakure, known for being a bit of a nothing burger… or Kumogakure.
Hidden cloud it was. Though, maybe not before she got some more stealth practice in, or—
One summoning technique later, the White Snake Sage looked down at her dispassionately. "No. I'm not going to teach you senjutsu."
"Aww, why not?"
"Your body is strong enough to withstand the ravages of natural chakra, yes, but your chakra is not . The moment you fight it'll be an uphill battle to not die —"
Akari cocked her head. "But I don't want to fight? I'd much rather use it to hide."
"Balancing nature and self requires—"
"Utmost control, yeah I know, my chakra control is top notch."
"You'd need an impeccable control of your body, as well—"
"Which I have."
If the White Snake Sage could've facepalmed, Akari was pretty sure she would've by now. "Fine, brat. Don't say I didn't warn you. The sannin Orochimaru failed to achieve sage mode; what makes you think you're capable?"
"With all due respect, Orochimaru is a bit of a pissant."
The snake sage barked a laugh at that. "You've got the will of a dragon, at least. Fine. Before we begin, humor me; I will tell you the history of the snakes. Long before my forefather's forefather's era, when the Sage of Six Paths had yet to walk the earth and the world of shinobi was as nonexistent as humanity, the legends speak of a great cold that stole over all the lands and threatened to end the ancient snake clans.
Some fled south, and lost themselves in jungle's heat and lonely hunger. Others fled to sea, to become the leviathans of deep water and contend with those who lay claim to the boundless waves. One group harkened back to their primordial ancestors, though, and even as the slugs and toads found their own ways to live despite the cold, the snakes of Ryuchi cave became dragons , and let their internal fire burn away the icy nights."
"...so?"
The White Snake Sage sighed , a long sound that filled the room with the essence of its exhaustion. "Snake senjutsu— dragon senjutsu, truly— is fundamentally about change. About evolution. A snake sage's body is clay for them to mold, but on the other hand a snake sage's image is fragile. A master sage can be themselves when they want, and a dragon when they so choose. A novice… not so much."
"I have a pretty good self image, you know."
"You are truly determined to do this, then?"
It wasn't like she had anything else going on. Everyone she truly wanted to keep in contact with already lived in Ryuchi cave, and bar maybe Manda causing a nuisance of himself she rather liked the place. "Yes."
"The snakes don't believe in taking things slow."
"I'll be fine."
"Overconfident brat."
"Honor to the snakes of Ryuchi cave."
"You're learning how to sit still. Now shut up and sit down," and so began her training.
…
Two weeks of grueling training later— it seemed not even the sharingan's OP-ness could make the perfect stillness of sage mode easy— the White Snake Sage deemed her ready. Likely enough to survive, at least, though there was an undertone to her words that Akari dared not try to comprehend. For the actual event they shared no words; dressed in only a simple shift Akari sat in front of the snake sage and awaited her fate.
Looming, a shadow of death and ancient things, the White Snake Sage hovered over her. Then— she bit down.
The agony was unspeakable.
It was the worst thing she'd ever felt in either of her lives, which given the way she died, that certainly took some doing. It was like something burning at every part of her, rushing through her veins and pulling her apart into a billion little pieces. There was nothing Akari wanted to do more in that moment than to scream, or run, or something other than just sit there and take it, but she knew that was exactly what would kill her. So she stayed put, letting the White Snake Sage's venom rush through her body with every beat of her heart.
Breath by breath, second by second, she came apart— and then, as natural energy began to roar into her, she started to put herself back together again . The White Snake Sage had told her to have an exacting image of herself, a knowledge of what she was, who she was, the very essence of herself— and in the roaring tumult of energy, she held fast to that. The venom was a tool, she realized— just like the toad's staff, if crueler— it prevented her from truly destroying herself with senjutsu.
Slowly, she controlled the energy, mixed it with her own chakra until it was simply a part of her energy, placid and calm as the energy around her… and before she could appreciate the benefits of sage mode, the White Snake Sage injected more venom.
Agony, indeed.
…
"You've impressed me greatly," was the first words she heard on waking, nestled in the White Snake Sage's coils almost tenderly. She'd blacked out at some point, after… days, god it must have been days of that torture, but by the end she'd been able to draw in and balance natural chakra with her own entirely by herself. No venom required.
"Bwuh."On second thought, maybe a part of why the whole deal had hurt so bad had been all the bites. That White Snake Sage's fangs were like the size of a tanto. Ouch. "Did… how'd I… did I?"
"Look at yourself. You've one of the most admirable self-images of any initiate I've ever seen. With only a few years of practice— and maybe some larger chakra reserves— you'll be a master of the art." Rolling off the snake sage— cushioning her ignominious fall with chakra so that she didn't splat on the floor, too— she made a hand seal and summoned a sheet of reflective water.
It wasn't quite an ice mirror, but… "hot damn. I didn't expect that." She looked different . Her stature was the same, and she still at first glance looked like an Uchiha, but… snakey, to say the least. A smattering of scales swept back from her eyes, little plates that gave the space above her cheekbones an almost ceramic look. They were on her hands, too, and there— yup, there were two slight ridges beneath her hair where horns might have been. Thank fuck she'd been able to resist that change. "Is this… permanent?"
"Until you manage to revert it through senjutsu, yes."
"...I dig the look." She hissed at the mirror, and to her surprise saw fangs . Her whole jaw structure was a little off, too— normal for the most part but she could open it just a bit wider than looked comfortable, and the teeth were all weird. It made sense, she supposed— her mouth was one of the parts she'd paid least attention to in her training, so her image of it was perhaps not perfect. "Do you know any cool sage mode techniques?"
"Not particularly. Much as I am loath to admit it, your best bet for senjutsu chakra attacks would be the toad summons of Mt. Myoboku. You don't need that, though— your body is a weapon more powerful than any measly jutsu."
"I'm… not really into taijutsu."
"You could grow wings and fly above the clouds. You could become a snake and hide in the undergrowth from your enemies. I once knew a master who transformed into a cat to sneak into—"
Akari gasped, eyes glittering with excitement. "I could become a fox? That's awesome . Thanks! I'll remember this—" and then she was off, already excited for all the new things she could do with sage mode. Sage mode! With an added bonus of shapeshifting, that was cool as fuck… maybe she'd take some odd jobs on the way up to Kumo? She'd need the money if she wanted to get some actual ninja gear, so probably…
The White Snake Sage merely looked at her fleeing form, smiling in the way snakes smiled. "Children…"
…
Epithets, Kakashi thought, were a strange thing indeed. No shinobi chose them, not really— sure, they might style themselves magnificent, might even make themselves a pretentious title, but in the end it was what other people decided memorable that made an epithet. Kakashi had a long history with the bothersome things; cold-blooded, friend-killer, copy-nin and sharingan no Kakashi , and probably many others which hadn't made it into the bingo books or the wider shinobi lingua, that so unique thing that kind of just came into being as people carved their mark into legend and the bodies of their enemies. He'd chosen none of those.
Much the same, the shinobi they were currently puzzling over didn't choose their epithet. They were notable for what they weren't notable for— mainly, everything. Nobody knew who they were, what they looked like, or even where they were other than a general location of 'somewhere in lightning;' their paranoia rivaled Danzo's (and, oh how that'd rankled the elder.) In fact, they didn't even really know if it was just one shinobi— for all they knew it could be an organization with similar techniques. Shikaku had postulated that particular guess…
Epithets. The shinobi had earned a particularly unique one, from a moment Inosuke waxed poetic on a mission report to a name passed around the puzzle out the enigma, to the bingo books, and then back to him. "Void Ghost. Maa, how pretentious."
Across the table from him, Inonochi shrugged softly. "You know how shinobi can be, sometimes. There's something interesting— something secret — going around, and like a particularly fine flu, they all want a taste."
"I don't particularly see how this involves me."
"You've had the most encounters with our Void Ghost of any shinobi. Plus your mission records suck." Oof, blunt. Didn't he, poor elite jonin, deserve a little bit of love? He'd just gone through the torture that was failing a genin team— the whiny brats— did he really have to do this now? "You have to do this now." Ah, there was the Inosuke he knew. Way too perceptive for his own good. "I need every detail you can remember about our little missing nin. Leave nothing out." Well, at least they saddled him with half a bajillion reports to read through to jog his memory?
Hooray.
If the medics weren't harrying him about chakra exhaustion so much, then he'd have used his sharingan to speed through them. Unfortunately, he had to read through them the old way… though, they were actually kind of interesting. A shinobi who could fight an entire battle with a missing nin in frost— chest caved in, ground destroyed, and some B-rank jutsu flung around at least — with the village not even a hundred feet away not having noticed anything? Multiple reports of people who hired this mysterious shinobi as their guard, operating comfortably under their protection, entirely without having ever seen or even remembering a single conversation with the nin? It was a frustrating, fascinating dichotomy of bewildering skill and mundanity. No bounty greater than A-rank, nothing that would piss off one of the great nations— "Are you sure this isn't just the Nidaime Tsuchikage back from the dead?"
Inonochi gave him an absolutely withering look. "People don't come back from the dead , Kakashi. Anyways, this doesn't fit Mu's modus operandi, either— for a man called the non-person, he was… very high profile. If someone was using dust release in Lightning country, we'd know." Yeah, obviously, they were too small to be Mu. He was just trolling— "and if I hear that repeated by some random no-name chunin then I'm going to open a new T&I wing just for you. " Well, at least he'd fulfilled his mission? (The real one, annoying every Konoha shinobi, that was.)
Still, with all the reports he'd read, this Void Ghost was so very—
Odd.
Interesting .
…
Void Ghost.
Void Ghost.
If Itachi heard Hidan complain about this Void Ghost one more time, he was going to drop the man into Tsukuyomi, consequences be damned. Well, no, probably not— he had to keep an eye on Madara, and it'd be hard to do that if he didn't have eyes . Still. Void Ghost. An unknown shinobi making a business out of being unknown, cleverly using powerful genjutsu to remain undetected from clients and combatants both. It intrigued him. Had his fate not been set in stone, had he still life, blood not belonging to his brother's hands for his crimes, he might have even been inspired.
As it was, all he had instead was another day spent in this miserable rainy place, by Madara's side as his puppet, their leader, spoke about a dream of world peace and sent them to brutally murder so many.
He hated it.
He knew it was what he deserved.
Notes:
hey look stuff happens isn't that wild
Chapter 7: Bakeneko
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
She'd been having a ton of fun in the Land of Lightning. Really, so long as she avoided competent jonin and sensors, her genjutsu worked well for pretty much anything, and the rest of her actual combat techniques covered the rest— there were plenty of missing nin, too— through Kumo was heavy handed when it came to tracking down traitors— a broad and fairly all-inclusive category when it came to Kumo— the rough terrain lent itself well to criminal activity and just general unrest.
She'd had some battles to remember— on the day of her tenth birthday she'd been ambushed by a sensor-type missing nin who'd been tracking her— A-rank, she found out later, though Akari would have personally called the woman B-rank at best— and they'd fought up the side of a sheer ravine, bouncing from wall to wall. Akari had to adjust for the strange angle of battle, and they'd traded B and A-rank techniques until Akari had managed to duck under her guard and gut her with a kunai.
Honestly, not her most difficult battle, even if she'd been rather chakra exhausted afterwards. On the way up to Kumo though she'd mostly done guard missions— it was wonderful how much she could get paid just for standing around and keeping watch. The best part was that nobody even had to know she was there— a bit of genjutsu on both sides and the job was done without any part the wiser but her. Genjutsu was the best , and every passing day she better understood how stupidly busted the sharingan was. Predictive capacity, copying, ease of genjutsu, not to mention broken mangekyou plotium.
In the space between missions though, when she wasn't tracking some missing-nin, guarding of being tracked by some rando (futility, she was through when it came to covering her tracks), she was experimenting with sage mode. Senjutsu was incredible in several areas she'd been sorely lacking in before. The first time she'd been able to truly sense the world around her with the perfect senses of a sage had been so, so very beautiful.
The world was a magnificent place. Sitting atop one of those storm rounded peaks, feeling the world stretch out for miles and miles in every direction; seeing with the copy wheel eyes all vibrancy, she—
Breathed.
Basked in it all. She'd come so far. Also, she'd literally climbed a mountain like nothing, which— well, she'd climbed a few mountains back when she was Amy , not Akari , and it hadn't even been a hundredth as easy as it had now. Ten years old and probably stronger than anyone on earth.
Epic stuff.
Anyways, she'd been working on a technique. Well, both working on a technique and fiddling with sage mode, but the aesthetic value of symmetrical scales and a blessful lack of horns was of less importance than what she'd been trying to figure out.
Also of less importance than what she'd been trying to figure out— whatever the hell was going on three valleys away from her. If there was one downside of sage mode, it was that it made not being a busybody kind of difficult. The closer she got to Kumogakure it always felt like something was going on to drag her attention away from what she actually wanted to—
A burst of powerful, acrid chakra tinged against her senses, and she opened her eyes with a sigh. Okay, maybe whatever funny shinobi business going down was important. Standing, the moment languid, almost serene with the grace of senjutsu, she took a second to pin down the exact location of… four shinobi, one fleeing and three chasing, then disappeared into a shunshin.
Mist.
Akari paused at the edge of a valley drenched in a cloying mist— not an altogether unusual sight in the Land of Lightning, but she could sense the chakra in the mist. It was one of the few jutsu she remembered from her past life, and also one of the tell-tale techniques of Kiri.
It also meant, kind of obviously given that they were in Lightning country, that shenanigans were afoot.
Akari ran a hand over her hair, grimacing slightly at the horns poking out visibly. Snake senjutsu was a damn bother sometimes… but it wasn't like she had time to fiddle with her appearance right now. Twelve hand seals. That was all her technique needed— a lot, to be fair, but definitely less than twenty three. For a lot more actual benefit, too—
Akari paused on the last seal, whispered: "Yin release: void presence," and— disappeared.
A shunshin carried her behind the first kiri hunter-nin before they even felt her presence, kunai jammed through the back of their neck. The second fell much the same as the first, desperately trying to break a genjutsu that fooled not the psyche but the world . She didn't even have a chance to kill the third— the Kumo shinobi managed to do that for her in a blaze of furious blue fire that seared the very air and prickled acrid against her skin.
"Who's there?" The kunoichi the mist-nin had been hunting dropped to her feet, exhausted and just a little bit bewildered. Like any good shinobi, though, she didn't show that outwardly beyond an intense focus, scanning the forested pass for any trace of another enemy. Unluckily for her, though, void presence did exactly what the name implied— sage mode saw the world, and yin release removed her from it.
The shinobi was familiar. Not completely— not the exact sort of recognition that came from the sharingan's photographic memory, but something altogether more nebulous. She couldn't quite put her finger on it—
Blue fire consumed the clearing, an immense conflagration of immolation that spread in ever expanding circles from the kunoichi, and Akari decided that it was time to get outta dodge. Flashing forward in a shunshin, she stuck a handful of senbon into the (probably) tokujo's pressure points, caught her gaze, and quickly erased—
Nothing at all.
Ah. Fuck. Standing in a massive stone chamber— a prison , staring down a cat made of roiling and very blue flames, Akari realized exactly where she'd recognised Nii Yugito from. Fuck stupid out of date Bingo books fuck trying to do good deeds, look where that got her. "Matatabi-san. Excuse my intrusion."
" Uchiha, " replied the bijuu politely, though there was a distinct threat dancing at the edge of its voice and licking flames. " A dubious honor to be visited by one of Indra's extinct blood. Who told you my name? I thought humans had long forgotten all but the tales of the bakeneko nibi." Double fuck.
It really was 'mess everything up' day, wasn't it. "Um. A story I heard once. It struck me as quite profound."
" Profundity is lost on creatures so base." Matatabi stalked forward. If Akari's motions with sage mode were languid and smooth, Matatabi's were perfect , the epitome of feline grace as she paced the length of her cell as though it was the most magnificent place in the world. " That technique. Yugito-chan was drawing on my chakra, but I didn't sense you at all. Did you put a sharingan genjutsu on her?"
"No," and it was an honest answer. An honesty that wasn't meant to be hidden, at that, and if the slight recoiling of surprise was anything to go by, Matatabi understood. "It's a hiding technique. I don't particularly like announcing my presence, and I erase memories of my passing so I don't get drawn into stupid conflicts."
" Yet you are here."
Akari sighed. "Yet I'm here. Literally had no idea Yugito was your jinchuuriki, I just sensed Kiri-nin getting up to no good and decided to intervene."
" A sensor too? You're an interesting one. Uchiha. Knower of names, kind, master of yin release—"
" I suck balls at yin release, but I can use it to do some hack job stuff."
" No." There was such a conviction there, how could Akari dare refute it? " You are beyond proficient with yin release; unbound from diluted genjutsu and stoic kekkei genkai, you've touched on the quintessence of true imagination. Other than my father, I can think of… there was a deer man who formed a clan, I think, he too touched imagination—" the massive beast paused, then— to Akari's incredulity looked away sheepishly. " Apologies. I can get carried away talking about these things sometimes."
"I mean I thought it was kind of cute." The bijuu was definitely blushing now. What even was her life? "It took a lot of doing to get even a basic effect like that. I had to learn senjutsu. Senjutsu! That stuff hurts, lemme say."
" ...that would explain the scales. And the horns. It's been a long time since I've seen a snake sage… How old are you, exactly?"
"Ten, as of recently?"
" Indra and his progeny of genuses…." for a long second, Matatabi was quiet. " If you remove your senbon from Yugito and promise to drop by later, then I'll permit you to leave. Do not think of betraying me like your forefather, Uchiha. Come within the year." Sheesh, unfair expectations much? Well, she'd already been heading to Kumo anyway…
"Akari! You can call me Akari! Plus I was going to do that anyway— remember what I told you about genjutsu and how I operate—" and the bijuu wasn't listening. In true cat fashion, she'd curled up in a corner of her prision and dropped asleep. "Gah… what a mess." She pulled out of Yugito's mindscape, let healing chakra pool in her palm as she removed the senbon from Yugito's body, and then— before the kunoichi could wake— disappeared in a rapid shunshin. She made sure to grab the Kiri-nin's corpses, too…
Fucking hell that was a trip. All she'd wanted to do was deal with some kiri shinobi being silly and investigate a bit of weird chakra, and she'd ended up embroiled in Jinchuuriki Shenanigans™. How utterly frustrating. At least she'd get whatever bounties the kiri shinobi had on them… eventually…
Might not even be worth it to lug the bodies around. They were kinda weak after all. Now, time to get rid of those horns…
…
Bad news: she had to sneak into Kumogakure.
Good news: it was easy. She'd have ragged on hidden village for terrible security if she wasn't actually pretty sure that their security was fairly decent; senjutsu was just a bit of an out of context problem for them. They didn't have an all encompassing barrier, but rather something much stranger— with her sage mode she could sense the way specific locations around the edge of the village almost served as natural focal points, allowing any half-decent sensort to percive the whole mountain range around them. Combined with the sole road to the village, it was a pretty neat system— not as perfectly precise as Konoha's, but also far broader.
Anyways, against senjutsu, that whole thing was pretty much useless. Against senjutsu and her newly made, half-decent void presence jutsu, it was laughable. She'd pretty much just walked into the village, nobody the wiser to her presence.
Frankly, she would've taken the main entrance if she could, but with the scales she hadn't quite managed to get rid of— no horns, for now! She'd have outed herself as some sort of shinobi faster than Kubo could say 'ooh shiny bloodline.' Which— to be fair, they'd be right , just not for the reason they thought.
Her mere presence in Kumo didn't really end her troubles. She'd come for two things— some new shinobi gear, and to talk to her newest friend. The fact that her newest friend was the Nibi just complicated things. A little. A tiny eensy weensy bit.
Sighing, Akari landed on a shadowed eave in some seedy part of the small city and released void presence. Senjutsu would be kind of awkward at the moment, and that jutsu was a little draining, so— for now, traditional stealth it was. Now that she was in the village, it shouldn't be that bad.
Unfortunately, she quickly found out that Kumo wasn't quite as laissez faire when it came to shinobi gear as the other great villages. They really leaned into the dictatorship part of their military dictatorship here, didn't they— the best stuff was produced by state-owned operations, for the state, with only a few notable exceptions, which meant… oof ouch her poor savings. Literally— all the money from several B-rank bounties (not the kiri-nin tho, she'd left those in scrolls outside Kumo) a handful of guard jobs and what have you had been enough to pay for two sets of simple shinobi gear. She couldn't argue that it wasn't quality stuff, though— incredibly flexible, a perfect dun-ochre color intermeshed with ninja-wire, no flak-plates just as she'd asked, and they'd even given her a hood and fancy monodirectional vizor on request. A comfortable vizor that barely reduced her peripheral vision at all. Chemistry lab goggles, start taking notes.
She looked kind of like a mix between Darth Vader and Orochimaru, which— pretty damn cool in her opinion.
Now for the second part. Sneaking into Nii Yugito's room, when even the location of that room— from the poor chunin she interrogated, how nostalgic— was a tightly kept secret more than 'the Raikage residence.' Whether she actually lived there or just spent a lot of time training with B was a matter of debate between the few she'd spoken to.
So she'd have to sneak into that . Not a particularly fun proposition, especially given that she wanted to sneak in when Yugito was still him. Luckily the building itself was pretty easy to find. Unluckily… she sat, breathing in the sage energies of the world and balancing them (yay, the horns were back) letting the world's whispers tell her of all it saw; it saw all things. Unlike Kumo itself, a sealing barrier surrounded the building, humming with a faint— violent — power, while no shortage of guards surrounded the area too. More interestingly, nobody went in or out in the breif moment of her observation.
Letting her yin-release technique settle over herself, a genjutsu perfect enough to almost deceive reality, she snuck between the guard rotations until she was mere inches from the barrier. Perhaps, if… nope. Shaking a stinging hand, she shunshined away from the barrier before anyone could come check. Void presence might make her practically invisible, but she was still there — and fuuinjutsu was clearly able to exploit that. Maybe if she altered the jutsu…
On second thought, she didn't want to literally edit herself out of reality. That sounded like it could go very poorly. Instead, she bounded over to another part of the seal and observed it for a second. She was no master of fuuinjutsu, but she knew lightning release— the amount of energy to power even a barrier of this size would've been prohibitive. Maybe they were pulsing chakra, and she could slip in between the gaps? No, not that— lines? Like a cage? Also not that, she would've been able to sense it, and the barrier felt like a full shield, so…
Oh! No, it felt like two full shields— vibrating against each other, which made a static shock, which was then turned into lightning release chakra by some sort of clever fuuinjutsu fuckery. That clearly wasn't exactly going on, but it was close enough that looking at it with that in mind she could appreciate the simple genius of the technique. All you had to do was fill the barrier, and then add just a little energy to excite the stored chakra.
It also meant that there wouldn't be an intrusion detection portion— hence the guards— because that would send the chakra cost right back to prohibitive. So… she watched the mesmerizing fuuinjutsu with her sharingan until she was sure she got the general idea of the random movement down (predictive bs for the win!) Took a breath, wreathed herself in lightning-release chakra for a second and stepped inside.
The flash of lightning on lightning was bright even through closed eyelids, but, despite a brief plunge in her chakra reserves, her invisibility technique held stable.
The raikage's residence told a story, empty hallways of finery and relics collecting dust, tapestries fading in the gentle sunlight and ceremonial gardens overgrown and untended. Yet, there was also a kind of serene atmosphere to the place— well kept where it was important, the building upheld though its ostentacity was left to fade, that was so very Kumo . A brusqueness, in a sense, that reflected its kage. The central parts of the large structure were better kept, but also simpler— and just as devoid of life as the rest. Eventually the sound of conversation reached her, and— finally , some servants or something that would help her find where Yugito was—
Nuh uh. Nope. Actually, maybe she could just come back another time… at least she could say she'd surpassed that one time with Kakashi and Team Ro? Probably, because stuck to the roof above A, B, Dauri , and at least she'd found her, Yugito was a whole other level. The raikage and Kumo's top shinobi. The raikage . They weren't really talking about anything important— techniques mostly, a lot of fascinating lightning release minutiae she'd never even thought of, mostly about how it interacted with other elements. Some good natured ribbing from the two non-lightning users got thrown back at that, though they were involved in the conversation too. She gathered that Yugito did, actually, live there—
A paused mid sentence, and grinned— a cruel grin. "I knew I sensed something. Kai! " A pulse of chakra ripped through the room, powerful and dense— and Akari learned that her technique did, in fact, have a weakness as the yin chakra was shredded from her form. For fucks sake—
A tiny motion. Half a shunshin, two threads for replacement not even halfway spooled out as A's hand, wreathed in lightning chakra, cratered the wall she'd been clinging to. The man swung to the side,, and it took the totality of her years-long honed chakra control to make her replacement with the raikage's chair fast enough to avoid her chest getting the same cratered treatment.
For a single brief second, she met the eyes of the most powerful shinobi in Kumo— the man stared into her black, one-way vizor she was really fucking glad she'd picked up— and she unceremoniously dumped the Raikage into her strongest genjutsu. Next— Dauri. B and Gyuuki were already leaping at at her, swords unsheathed for his… whatever the fuck his fighting style was, Yugito was a jinchuuriki and Matatabi was her friend, so— Dauri. Hand seals required for this one. As she shunshined away from B and with the second she'd bought genjutsu-ing A, she cast another powerful genjutsu that had a bunch of layers to trip up the elite jonin but more or less boiled down to connection . Genjutsu influenced the perception of the target on the whims of the caster, but— what if it wasn't on the caster 's whim?
Honestly it wasn't even that difficult a genjutsu compared to the multi-layer monstrosity she'd dropped A into— all it required was a little bit of chakra control, and—
Dauri went for a lightning jutsu, the unique black lightning that made him so very powerful— just as Akari had expected. A also went for a lightning jutsu, the impossibly complex and incredible powerful lightning armor that made him so very powerful— also just as Akari had expected. The genjutsu was, in essence, a simple one— it just made them feel each other's internal lightning chakra as though it were their own—
Both tripped and fell flat on their faces. Akari didn't get a chance to see it, though, as she'd already disappeared in her fastest shunshin. That had been way too close . Given like— one more second, she was pretty sure she'd have been shish-kebabed, sliced, electrocuted, washed, burned, and in general very very dead. How had A noticed her presence beneath a jutsu literally meant to erase it completely?
She shivered, just lightly as she pushed the shunshin to the max weaving through corridors without ever touching the ground— pulling the spent chakra back to herself even though her mind burned with the strain of it all and she knew she'd be laid out for a day. The man was raikage for a reason, and she was pretty sure she understood .
A small alcove in one of the abandoned wings of the residence was a decent hiding spot, and the moment she was sure the rapid-fire thundering of her heart wouldn't turn her to stone she dropped into sage mode and reapplied yin release: void presence. Just in time, too, as the entire residence was swarming with guards for what felt like forever . She spent two days in that alcove, and… the less said about that, the better.
The worst part was that, constantly vigilant as she'd been, she hadn't even gotten to remove her horns again. Damn things…
The second time home invaded the raikage— or maybe the first and a half, given she'd never really left— she was a hell of a lot more careful. Any sound saw her scurrying up the wall to hide, sage mode's limitless energy converted to yin chakra, to an erasure of self that hid her from the prying eyes of the raikage… probably. At least at the distance she kept from the raikage it worked, until she was eventually able to find Yugito's room. It was in its own little second of the building, and she even had a guard— a tokujo by the gear, obviously sensor speciality, and Akari was never so glad as to have made void presence. She knocked him out and snuck into Yugito's room, settling cross legged on the roof, staring down at the sleeping jinchuuriki—
A tiny touch of chakra, a faint bit of water that caused Yugito to involuntarily blink in her sleep— and then Akari's surroundings were replaced by the massive stonework prison of the Nibi. "Matatabi." She bowed, simply— a measure of respect— and the cat nodded back to her. "I've arrived. Apologies for the disturbance, earlier…"
" The memory of A and Dauri falling over is one that I'll treasure for a long, long time to come." How very catlike. " Thank you for coming. Yugito-chan is a nice kid, but she is somewhat unduly influenced by my older brother and… the rapper." Akari shared a shudder with the bijuu— even from what little she'd heard over a breakfast not her own, she could see how that could get annoying quickly . " I suppose I must apologize, too— asking for your presence was selfish of me. I can't bring myself to regret it, though—"
"I'm happy to be here. After all, everyone deserves a bit of company, right?"
Matatabi stared at her for a long while before she nodded, an unreadable emotion in the gesture. " Not many would extend that sort of courtesy to a bijuu. Plenty wouldn't extend it to humans , either…"
"If that's the case, then I'm glad to be an exception."
" You're a good kid. Hold tightly to that…" she sighed, the sound loud for how large she was— " it's been so long since I've had such a naivety… but it reminds me of better times. Anyways!" She perked right back up, also very catlike— " while you're here…" they simply talked, on a myriad of subjects. Matatabi never quite brought up her father, but they did speak about yin release, of the exacting nature of jutsu outside of the traditional five elements and unnatured chakra. She spoke a lot about the deer sage who'd gone on to found the Nara clan (and the Ino-shika-cho alliance in turn). He'd taken the darkness of yin release kind of literally, though the sheer power of his shadow techniques couldn't be overstated— apparently according to Matatabi he'd been known in his time as the most powerful shinobi alive.
They spoke about history, about the falls of truth and the ancient temple constructed therein, and so many other things until Matatabi lightly suggested that Akari get going before she found herself unable to leave the raikage's residence in anything but a body scroll.
"One more thing…" Akari hesitated, though Matatabi was clearly curious. She had no idea how fragile the future was— how much could be sacrificed to keep everyone safe… but she decided that she didn't care. "There's an organization out there, preparing to hunt the bijuu." The cat had been curious before— now she was concerned , a pressing intent obvious as she stared at Akari. "From what little I know, they hunt in incredibly powerful pairs, and they're all S-rank missing-nin."
" That sounds unbelievable."
"That's all I can say about them," she shrugged as if that was all she knew, which wasn't true— she knew so, so very much about Akatsuki, by virtue of fanfic-writers' obsessions with the deadly, insane criminals. And Itachi. Itachi… she didn't want to think about Itachi. "Just… know when to run. Know how to run."
" I'm not the Kyuubi, don't worry. I'll keep Yugito safe— that's a promise." But… Akari didn't know if that was a promise even a bijuu could keep. She pulled back from Yugito's mindscape, blinking away the fuzzy sense of low chakra— and found herself with a knife resting against her throat.
Void presence lapsed while she was doing mindscape shenaniganry. Good to know that weakness— Yugito's face hovered mere inches from her own, looking as though she'd just woken up from the bags on her eyes. "Who, exactly, are you? "
"Matatabi's friend." It was— to her slight excitement— an honest answer.
Unfortueately, it only served to make Yugito even more confused. And aggressive. "What the fuck does that even mean? Speak! Don't think I won't kill you."
"How would you do that?" Her smooth suavity was kinda undone by the fact that she both looked and sounded like a ten year old girl. Still, "if you've been talking to the wall this whole time?" The cool-ness factor as Yugito realized Akari had already escaped her grasp well enough made up for it. Laughing softly— not even to be intimidating or anything, just because it was funny, she threw Yugito a salute with one hand while flashing through the seals for yin release: void presence with the other, and just as Yugito spat a fireball at her— disappeared.
For the second time that week the raikage's residence was swarmed with guards, but this time Akari was long gone.
…
Kakashi saw the book as it was thrown at him. From the moment it left Anko's hand all the way through its tumbling arc, even as he was ostensibly absorbed in his own quality smut. Very, very few shinobi could actually get the drop on him, and it'd been that way since before the Yondaime's death.
He let the book hit him anyways. It was all part of the reputation, you see— distracted, reading smut in public, always late to meetings Kakashi was better than cold-blooded, friend-killer Kakashi. Shikaku was the only one to have figured it out, which made meetings with the jonin commander a blast. You know, when the man wasn't sleeping and all. "Maa, maa, you wouldn't want to make me late for my meeting with the hokage, would you?" He swore the man was getting him to sit in on the most boring, random meetings. Why, though, he had no idea.
Anko just shrugged, sprawling out beside him in the grass with a similar lackadaisical lack of care, though a bit more threatening than his own. "Nah, everyone knows you're not going to be there until at least two hours later. The elders are going to be fur-i-ous!" There was a sing-song cadence to that last word, too. "Anyways, did you see?"
"What? That you threw a book at me?" Anko laughed. It wasn't funny. "Yeah I did see. It's in the mud over there."
"Oh shit—" she darted over to the book's side, then glared at Kakashi. It'd landed in the grass. "You rat bastard. Alright, then. I won't tell you what Kumo has to think about you."
"I don't particularly care." New Kumo bingo book? He'd have to look through it. Those always tended to be interesting. Also, Anko totally knew he was lying, probably because they'd taken plenty of missions together before. Sighing, he sat up and slipped his copy of Icha Icha into a pocket on his flack jacket, motioning for Anko to hand over the book. "Hm… lets see. Mitarashi Anko, torture and investigation specialist, tokubetsu jonin. Allegiance, Konoha. Snake summons, impeccable aim, and— dango! That's new."
"They did not —" Anko grabbed the book from her, then pouted as she read her placement. "Fuck, they really didn't. Has anyone ever told you that you're a bit of a troll, Kakasshi?" Yeah, all the time. He told it to himself until he almost believed it. "Anyways…. Orochimaru. S-rank. Way too many skills for me to read out here, 'cus that would be boring… still not associated with anyone after leaving that missing-nin group… your turn!"
"Jiraya. S-rank…" they traded back and forth for a little bit, like they had many times before, running through a list of shinobi they knew until they'd run out of those, and then scraping the dregs of the new book for anything interesting.
A few mist-nin had dropped, good riddance, and the 'totally not officially sanctioned bounties, we're just reporting the prices' had risen a fair bit. Hopefully it didn't end up with a war…
"Oh, this one is interesting. A completely new entry, for…" he read the title, and his eyes widened just a little bit. Not a lot, but it was the shinobi equivalent of a surprised gasp. "Very interesting, indeed…"
"Aww c'mon just show me already—" she darted behind his shoulder, but for once Kakashi didn't decide to be a brat. Some things were just… important, sometimes. He wasn't a bad shinobi, after all— plus, it was kind of funny the way Anko's jaw dropped for a second before she snapped her mouth shut, lips pressed in a firm line. "So. Void Ghost ." It was an actual, real bounty— the kind that missing-nin got. And not a particularly small one, either.
"Void Ghost. A-rank. Genjutsu master, skilled with shunshin and replacement, advanced stealth jutsu/possible kekkei genkai capable of completely hiding her presence." Huh, so he'd been right about that one. Maybe it actually was the nidaime tsuchikage's technique? That'd be scary, and it certainly made for a pretty deserved A-rank…
Anko hadn't been listening to him, though, not really— even as they got to the bullet point 'crimes wanted for' list (sneaking into the raikage's residence? Hot damn,) she'd been focused on one thing only. The sketch that'd been provided of the Void Ghost. Their first actual glimpse at what they might look like— a hooded shinobi, dressed for battle, with a large vizor covering their face which reminded him painfully of Obito's goggles for a second. It was clearer in the second image, though— what she looked like without the hood. Two horns swept back through her hair, a perfect counterpoint to the scales that dusted her face and the backs of her hands. "She reminds me of someone."
"Maa, maa, no need to tell all the sordid details." She reminded him of someone. Those scales were familiar , and he could just see it… who would make a young-looking girl into a powerful shinobi? Who else was associated so thoroughly with scales and snakes that they'd could alter someone's visage so monstrously… "this reeks of Orochimaru."
"That's not good," said Anko, winning the 'Kakashi award for most obvious statement.'
Sighing, he stood— keeping the bingo book. "I'll bring it up with the hokage in our meeting."
"At an inopportune time, of course."
Kakashi winked, smiling with his eyes. "Oh yeah, the elders are going to be pissed ." They needed to know, though…
Still, screwing with Danzo was one of the small joys in his life, and he was going to take what he got even if it was one of Orochimaru's new abominations…
…
Void Ghost.
Can I call you Void Ghost? I suppose that you might not appreciate the moniker, though as far as epithets go I can honestly say that it's among the better of those I've seen. You've given people in the know quite the scare! To think, they're so used to commanding shinobi who skulk in the night that the moment someone better at skulking then them comes up they suddenly develop a bit of healthy paranoia.
You fascinate me. Did you know that I've tried to replicate Mu's kekkei genkai several times? Whatever allowed him to so completely erase his presence, however, remains elusive. I would love to talk to you in person at some point, though given your lack of response to my last communication I admit I can understand your hesitance. I promise I mean you no harm, from one snake summoner to another—
Send me a message in Otogakure. I have an in with one of their top scientists— ask for Yakushi Kabuto, and he'll discreetly deliver whatever message you have to me. I'm sure you'll be interested… and of course who knows what bad things could befall you if you don't?
Ryuchi Cave isn't a safe place, you know.
I recognize the signs of a snake sage. You continue to impress.
Sincerely,
Orochimaru.
Akari lit the scroll on fire with a sealless D-rank fire jutsu, and watched the paper burn, gaze dark. Not a chance in hell she'd be going to Otogakure— she knew what Orochimaru wasn't telling her beneath his cleverly worded letter, and she didn't like it.
She wasn't going to be some sort of test subject, not if she had anything to say about it. She also didn't want to travel through the land of fire, now that she was apparently known as the 'Void Ghost' whatever the fuck kind of name was that—
Not Fire, definitely not Sound, she was currently high tailing it out of Lightning, so that really only left one option— the Land of Water.
Yay.
Notes:
Okay I know the chapter is kind of mid
yeah
Anyways, a lot of the stuff introduced in this chapter is important for essentially forever, so at least there's that? I'll try to bring up Matatabi again, even if it does end up taking a while...
Chapter 8: Meandering in Mist
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
So it turned out that maritime trade in the elemental nations was totally screwy. First off, tides. The tides were large , and had left large portions of the coast as sheer or vast estuaries or just in general pretty inhospitable. Good locations for ports were few and far inbetween, especially in Lightning country— a side effect of making a whole moon , she supposed. Secondly, shipping. The shipping routes were inane. The price for a kid like her to get on a boat that cut straight to Water country was more than an A-rank bounty, and that wasn't even to mention the shinobi surcharge the top sailing companies charged.
At least she'd got paid for those kiri-nin she'd mirked saving Yugito— two B-rank bounties and one who didn't even have a bounty in the first place. With that money she'd traveled back down to the Land of Hot Waters and paid for a spot on a ship that would head north along Lightning's coast, south past Sky and Honey, then stop in Water. As far as the plan went, it'd be overland from there to a southern port where she could take a ship around Tea, then Wind country. Simple as.
She was pretty sure that the captain didn't trust her. She hadn't genjutsu-ed him… too much— she needed her assurances that he wasn't going to sell her out to lightning country— but it was pretty clear that the man didn't get shinobi. He'd pretty clearly expected her to be like other merchant kids he'd dealt with before, and her constant refusal to fall into his preconceptions of the world kept tripping him up. That and the horns. Goddamn horns — with the natural energy of the sea, so wild and untamed around her, she'd been more focused on not getting gills or whatever than getting rid of those annoying appendages, though she had at least gotten them to be less of a liability in combat. The scales probably terrified the sailors too, for all their ivory sheen was far less noticeable against her already pale skin.
Passing Lightning country was tense, but they weren't accosted by any Kumo shinobi— after all, they were just sailing by, and not even particularly close to anywhere important. Akari spent a lot of time in her small cabin, and maybe she might have summoned a snake or two to pass the time with. Apophis had started helping her mother with hunting, the precocious little thing, and Mako always appreciated when she could take the other two off his hands. Jorgumandr loved the ocean, which was great, but Nidhogg loved to explore, which… not so great. The first time he'd escaped her sight the whole ship had ended up afraid of magic snakes for days. Snakes and horns and scales, they probably thought her some sort of demon.
At least they didn't know about the red, glowing eyes, though admittedly the black visor wasn't much of an improvement…
There were a few things she practiced on the ship, which— given there was not really much for them to do, made sense. Sage mode was probably the main one— sitting in the crow's nest as the ship rocked lethargically beneath her, breathing in the brisk ocean air and tasting salt, meshing with the natural energy of the world— the profundity of that was hard to describe. The captain had gotten mad at her for clogging the crows nest, too, until she'd snapped at him that she could sense everything in the ocean for miles.
Genjutsu memory erasure was a life-saver. She swore she'd have gotten Jiraya or Orochimaru on her tail if that one got out… not that Orochimaru wasn't already being a bother, to be fair…
Mutability. That was the essence of sage mode. If she wanted, with some effort she could cover her whole body in scales or scrub them from her skin all but entirely— though, a few did tend to come back if she wasn't paying attention when she was fiddling with sage mode. Same thing with the horns, too— a pair that swept back across her head from her brow, rough and ridged. They changed a bit every now and then, but for the most part they remained the same unless she was actively experimenting.
What was most interesting to her shipside senjutsu practice, though, was the other changes— what she could do beyond the normal. She couldn't figure out how to make any non-reptilian…ish… changes, but what she could do was pretty useful. Claws, disjointed, flexible limbs, even gills and the precursors to what she was sure would be wings. Of course, having gotten gills on a ship , there was only one thing any reasonable person would do—
Though, maybe she should have told some of the sailors that she was going to jump into the ocean before she did… whoops?
The second thing she worked on were elemental techniques. Yin release, of course— with all Matatabi had said heavy on her mind, she'd managed to commit copyright infringement and remake the Nara clan jutsu! She could understand the whole 'kekkei genkai needed' thing: while it wasn't quite as difficult as yin release: void presence, it was much more difficult than the most basic yin release jutsu and took way too many hand seals. Nara did this as pregenin with like, one hand seal if she remembered, so… yeah. To be fair, she could probably refine the shadow possession jutsu more, it just wasn't particularly something that she wanted to focus on. Other yin release jutsu…
They were works in progress, to say the least.
She actually spent less time on yin release than wind and water. She was good at water, sure— but wind. Wind! It remained the most frustratingly difficult element for her, so there was plenty of time spent trying to patch up that glaring hole in her skills. Beyond that… just normal training, she supposed. Physical conditioning, weapons skills, the lot— with how Water country was, she'd probably need it.
So the journey passed..
They ran afoul of a harsh storm while crossing the strait from Lightning to Sky, the type that came suddenly and sent ships to the bottom of the sea— it'd been a mad scramble to take down the sails and batten the hatches, and though the captain hadn't liked it, they'd needed all hands she he begrudgingly allowed her to help. As it was, chakra was bullshit and her sharingan worked just as well on sailors as it did shinobi, and between shunshin, wall walking, and a few water jutsu she'd misused to keep the ship facing into the waves, she'd probably saved at least a mast.
The captain hadn't really understood how powerful even mediocre shinobi like her could be, and Akari was pretty sure the man feared her after that. A few people on the crew, however, saw it differently— everyone knew she'd done a lot for them, and a few sailors started treating her as though she actually were a ten year old girl. She'd been happy enough to keep the feared reputation of shinobi, but… eh, it wasn't that bad. They were nice, too. In particular one bulky man from Iwa seemed to think he looked just like his daughter, and he kept sneaking her extra bits of food because she 'wasn't eating enough' or something. Minato was a nice man, and she couldn't very well tell him she got a good portion of her energy from magical sage bullshit, so she ate the food.
She told him he shared a name with one of the greatest shinobi who'd ever lived, and he just laughed and said he knew. An unfortunate name for someone who lived in Iwa, for all it was a fairly common one amongst sailors, but he listened to her small story and asked for a longer one.
As they sailed past honey, she told them of Namikaze Minato, the man who the world called the Yellow Flash, and other stories beside. Not stories from her past life, for the most part— she knew a lot more about some of these figures than she really should— but it was enjoyable nonetheless.
It was a shame, really, to leave as they prepared to dock in a port on one of the Land of Water's northern islands, but she'd bid them farewell nonetheless a few miles offshore and ran the rest of the way. She got why it was called the land of water pretty quickly— rainstorms lashed the land irregularly, the seas abutted island shores, and rivers ran through dense jungles. Rocks jutted out from misty waves, the fingers of mad gods reaching up to drag ships into the ocean depths, and the whole place was so very alive. Perhaps only the forests of the Land of Fire surpassed it, and some of the reefs she crossed as she picked her way through the islands made strong contenders. Very strong contenders…
Water country was also a war torn place, something that became increasingly obvious as she traveled south. Cities lay shattered, buildings collapsed and roads torn up by the effect of powerful jutsu. More than once she'd had to make an emergency detour away from shinobi battles that seemed to pop up at random, and god fucking forbid that she take off her hood. She needed sage mode for other things too much to focus on removing the horns, but let anyone catch sight of them and it was 'sleep in the jungle and avoid hunter-nin' o-clock again.
Even the civilians were suspicious. Sure, civilians in Konoha had a sense of self-awareness that people outside the village had lacked, but even then it'd never been paranoia . Keeping her hood on was difficult when half everyone refused to serve a hooded figure, much less someone as small as she was. Small meant unusual, and unusual meant dangerous . Genjutsu were always an option, but that carried its own risks— sensor nin in Water seemed particularly attuned to genjutsu, and with the hiding in the mist jutsu any water nin could be a bargain bin sensor.
All that was to say that between several close calls, a few times where she'd had to put down hunter-nin squads who just would not give up , and the frustrating difficulty of just being able to stick to a simple path , her pace slowed down to a tepid crawl.
Then there was atrocity. Akari had thought she'd seen violence. She'd thought she'd understood the crueler sides of the shinobi world, had come to terms with her family's death and Itachi's cruel fate, had even enjoyed the battles she'd had with missing-nin and the frenetic energy of it all— but she'd not seen atrocity until she'd set foot in wave. It felt like forever— between the month and a bit she'd spent on a ship, all the time she'd spent gallivanting up and down Lightning, and now this awful place…
She spent her eleventh birthday in a village which'd been burned down on the order of the Mizukage. She'd never gotten so much practice with the mystical palm jutsu before… and she only wished that it wasn't to the serenading wails of burned men and children with mangled limbs, of poisoned elders and bloody, pointless deaths.
The bloody mist was a well earned name.
After that, she'd set out to track the man who'd killed a hundred villagers in cold blood and crippled twice that and more— a man who might not have even had a bounty but fuck bounties, he deserved to die .
He didn't even know he'd made an enemy until she attacked him for the first time. Void presence did its job admirably, but the kenjutsu master wasn't an easy target. The paranoia of Kiri-nin saved him from her first blow, her kunai deflecting off a barrier formed from a seal-inscribed choker— and from there they fought . He was smart, too— while void presence made her invisible even in the hiding in the mist jutsu, it couldn't cover every eddy of her passing, and he abused the hell out of that as he fought a fighting retreat— then after he realized that a strong pulse of chakra could disperse her technique, fought her back.
It was the hardest battle she'd ever fought. His technique— a way of cutting through attacks (including some genjutsu if he noticed it being cast, and wasn't that bs) with his sword felt almost purpose-made to counter her, and as her chakra reserves began to flag and she ran afoul of a few bad moves, with him wise to her modus operandi— she fled.
Oh how that burned .
She tracked his chakra presence through the omnipresent mists, staying out of his range until she was far too close to Kirigakure proper for comfort. Then she summoned Chikao and Rai and settled down for the long business of waiting.
She expected to be there for weeks, waiting for him to destress and prepare for his next mission. Instead, he left the very next day in a straight line, murder and madness in his chakra. So, Akari set out to stop him.
She didn't dare underestimate him this time. Sage mode filled her chakra to bursting and honed her senses to a fine point. Void presence hid her from all sight. Her own hiding in the mist jutsu and a razor-fine control created a calm around her— not enough to prevent him from noticing her approach at all, but enough that the same strategy he'd used last time would be null and void.
Then, she went in for the kill. It would be a short battle, that she knew— she didn't have the chakra reserves for a long battle, for all they'd expanded significantly over time. Ten hand seals flashed through a multi-layer genjutsu that was never even meant to land, and as he cut the technique apart and pushed out chakra to end her void presence, Akari hit him with an attack of righteous rage—
Or, to put it another way: bs techniques might be hard to reverse engineer, but with her elemental proficiency, metaknowledge, and all the techniques she'd memorized with her sharingan, she'd just managed to figure out her own S-rank justu.
Or, to put it another way: water release: rasenshuriken.
It was cribbing Naruto's thunder a little , but— hey, fics liked to wax prosaic about the jutsu enough that she'd had a pretty good idea of how to make it. So— she had . It drained practically her entire chakra reserve, forcing her to stumble as she chucked it at the man— but it was a glorious jutsu indeed. Fast, far faster than the kenjutsu master could dodge, powerful in a way that was hard to describe and— as she remotely commanded it to explode into a massive sphere of microscopic water blades and obliterate the fool before the man could try and cut it apart, it was really fucking cool .
"Holy shit, girl." Akari snapped back to perfect awareness— or as close to perfect awareness as she could so chakra exhausted— as a shinobi landed in the fading mist less than a hundred feet away. "That was one fine jutsu."
Akari stilled, readying for battle. "Who are you? Why are you here? Who sent you?" She didn't have enough chakra for void presence, and given that was her most powerful ability, she needed to stall until she could grab some natural chakra.
A light, feminine laugh was the new shinobi's response. "You're not the only one who had beef with Onery Oniyuzu. One of my… informants… told me that he'd gotten beat up mighty bad, and I know that bloody Yagura likes sending him on back to back missions, so I got here as fast as I could." She whistled like a stereotypical discord moderator who'd just seen a pretty girl would, impressed— "I just didn't think that you'd finish the job, pretty."
The mist faded enough for the two to see each other, and Akari was struck with two simultaneous thoughts. One— that was Terumi Mei, future godaime Mizukage, standing right there in front of her. And secondly— "I'm like, eleven."
Mei choked, her perfect composure momentarily shattered, before she laughed. "Damn. Damn , girl! Eleven and beating old Oniyuzu in single combat. That's insane. Do you know that? You're insane. Okay, standard pitch, whatever— join my rebellion."
"I don't want to get involved in Hidden Mist politics."
"You just killed one of Yagura's right hand men. You're already involved."
Akari shifted softly— she had enough natural chakra— any more and she wouldn't be able to balance it with the chakra she already had. Still, it didn't look like Mei would kill her… probably. If she remembered correctly, she'd been one of the most open-minded out of the kage. "I'm leaving. I killed Oniyuzu because of a personal slight."
"Oniyuzu was only one part of the problem. Horrors like what he perpetrated are committed every single day under Yagura's reign, innocent people suffocating in the Yondaime's bloody mist. You might have killed Oniyuzu, but that didn't fix the problem. It only postponed it." Akari didn't respond. She didn't really have a response… after a second, Mei's face softened. "I understand if you're unwilling. I'm not Yagura, and you're not a mist-nin— I won't force you to fight. You're young, too— if you want to leave water and never return, I understand entirely. Think, though, of the chance you have to bring change. To bring hope to millions."
Mei was really good at this 'convincing people to join her rebellion' thing, wasn't she? The worst part was— she was right . How could a moral shinobi just stand by and watch Yagura run the Land of Water into the ground? "Fine, sight me up."
"Yes!" Mei pumped her fist excitedly. "You won't regret this, promise! Now, let's get gone before Yagura's cronies show up." They leaped into the trees, together— leaving behind a muddy crater and the unmarked grave of a man who'd killed so very many.
…
The heart of Mei's rebellion was surprisingly far away, which only further impressed on Akari just how powerful a shinobi Mei was. They went slow to not exhaust her, but even at a decent pace it took almost three days for them to finally make it to the small island the rebellion was holed up on.
Granted, some of that had been avoiding conflict and taking circuitous routes, but even so, Mei impressed Akari. She was also just… kind. Genial, happy to laugh at a joke, filled with a love for her nation and village, it was hard for Akari to imagine a more model kunoichi.
She'd make a great kage, when her time came…
The camp itself was befitting of what she thought of when she imagined a rebellion in the land of water. That was to say, muddy . They'd clearly spent some time working on the soil with earth release, but no amount of D-rank earth jutsu could turn earth to rock and the particularly rainy nature of their hideout actively combatted their efforts. It wasn't a morass or anything, but there was just… mud everywhere, on the tents and shinobi gear and crates, everything looking so very temporary.
Mei chuckled as she took in the sight. "Yeah, it's not much, but… it's home." Some people had noticed their return, a muted cheering going through the camp as weary shinobi celebrated the return of their leader.
A strawberry-haired shinobi shunshined in front of Mei, dropping to a knee. "Mizukage-sama—"
"Not the Mizukage yet, Ichigo-san."
"Mizukage-sama," repeated Ichigo, and Akari had to restrain a laugh— "how did the mission go? Is Oniyuzu dead?"
"Oniyuzu is dead." The cheers this time weren't weary— they were joyous , energetic and enrapturing. "I didn't kill him though. The honor for that bastard's death goes to the young lady here…"
"Akari. Sato Akari." Well it wasn't like she could call herself Uchiha, could she? It worked as well as anything.
Mei grabbed her hand— gently, making sure Akari could see the gesture to avoid any misunderstandings because she was a good shinobi (and also just considerate like that), and raised their hands to the heavens together in triumph. "Oniyuzu is dead. A wandering nin has slain him! For his crimes, he earned his own comeuppance! Remember that our cause is just— for those less fortunate than ourselves, for those suffering under the reign of Yagura, we fight to lift the bloody mists once and for all!" The cheers were deafening . Yeah, Mei would definitely make a great MIzukage. She was great at speeches.
They walked through a camp reenergized by an apparent victory, shinobi coming forward to congratulate her on her victory with easy camaraderie. It died down after a while, though— the camp returned to its normal activity.
A normal activity which was kind of boring, honestly… though, it wasn't entirely without its high points. Mei made some tea for both of them— good tea at that! If there was one thing Akari liked about the elemental nations more than her last life— other than the super powers, of course— it was the tea. Coffee might've been hard to find, but they made a killer tea pretty much everywhere she went.
"So." Mei sipped her tea, suddenly serious. "You're a capable shinobi despite your age— I wouldn't have offered you a place in our rebellion if you weren't. Killing Oniyuzu went a long way to prove your loyalty, but Yagura has done worse for less. I hope you don't mind that if you want to complete missions with us, we're going to have to have you watched— it will be a genial arrangement, but you'll be on a team with at least one other shinobi.
That being said, you're not a kiri-nin so you're also not, technically part of the official chain of command. That can change if you want it to, but it's fine if you don't. You'll have plenty of freedom to do what you want, given that it doesn't unduly endanger the rebellion. Now…" She smiled, back to being the affable person whose company Akari had begun to enjoy on the run over. "Skills. Again, you don't have to reveal anything you don't want to, but having a good knowledge of my shinobi is part of what makes us so effective."
"I'm pretty good at genjutsu and stealth. I specialize in ninjutsu, but prefer to use kunai and senbon if I'm not fighting an enemy that can just straight up ignore that kind of thing. I can stay underwater essentially indefinitely if I'm given a bit of preparation time, have a summoning contract— I won't reveal with whom, sorry— um… healing, nature transformation—"
"Healing?" Mei leaned forward in interest. "How good? I know you're an excellent fighter, but another healer would be invaluable."
"Cuts and bruises? Some minor internal stuff—" Mei's eyes were practically shining —
That's how she found herself in the makeshift hospital, adjunct to the one real medic-nin the rebellion had, helping shinobi recover from their wounds. It was… not exactly what she'd expected from joining the rebellion, but she could see the logic behind it. She was only one shinobi, and for all she was a good shinobi, the fast turnover rate for the hundred-odd other shinobi who would come in wounded then have to recover slowly over the course of weeks or months was more valuable. Ryuhyo was an acrid, forceful, rude medic, but she was a medic , and it was honestly not that bad to work under her. Though she did get a few intrusive questions about her horn and scales and what 'kekkei genkai' caused them…
She'd have sworn the most fear she ever felt was when Ryuhyo found out that her sage mode— though she didn't quite exactly know what it was— caused her to have essentially infinite chakra… which meant essentially infinite healing. Being overworked wasn't a possibility— it was a promise .
Still, it was also because of her urging for perfection, the way she berated everything she did and gave tips to be better , that when the rebellion got in major battles, the type where kiri-nin swarmed their camp and a desperate melee for their survival warred in the space between seconds and life and death— or when crowds of shinobi left to destroy some major installation of complete a major mission and Akari knew only a few would return— that she was able to save so many lives.
She was not and would not ever be a true medic-nin, but she saved lives.
Plus, she didn't need to fight the enemy to get her fill of combat. A good handful of people were willing to spar with her, though that number dropped precipitously as the word of her genjutsu ability spread. Yet, even still, there was one person who was willing to fight her more or less no matter what mad genjutsu she put her under.
Mei, Akari thought after being piledrived into the ground by a heavy blow and all but seeing stars, was badass .
They were foils for each other, in a way— by self admittance Mei had never been great at the subtle parts of the shinobi arts, always a bit outspoken and brash. In contrast, she was a kage-level kunoichi whose solution to 'where is the enemy' was 'somewhere I can cover with my lava, probably.' She was also tactical about it— protecting herself in acidic mist that required Akari to use more powerful, ranged jutsu to peirce, while also slowly making more and more of the battlefield inhospitable until there was no option but to become a punching bag for the woman.
Mei unsealed a canteen, tossing it to Akari as she helped the girl to her feet. "It's lemonade. I grabbed some on my last mission."
"Why'd you grab lemonade? "
Mei shrugged. "Yagura's shinobi had killed some rich merchants who were trying to get outta dodge, and I killed the shinobi who killed them. I took the jug of lemonade the merchants had been drinking as a trophy of having defeated them without, you know, destroying the lemonade. Or the ship they were on." They both knew that Mei was perfectly capable of killing shinobi without blowing stuff up, but it was a bit of a joke between them that Mei was kind of a wrecking ball.
They had a weird friendship— the sort of friendship powerful shinobi who fought together for a cause had— and wasn't it weird thinking of herself as a powerful shinobi, because even if Mei was weak against her abilities, the rare victory against a kage-level kunoichi was a pretty good indicator that she at least wasn't weak. They also had the sort of friendship that sparring partners had, even though it was just a little awkward fighting a grown woman more than twice her age. Akari got the impression that it was even more awkward for Mei to beat up a little kid.
Friends with the Mizukage. She was doing a really bad job staying out of things, wasn't she… Mei sighed, leaning back against a conjured seat of stone. Akari didn't sit. "So. The battles are heating up a bit. How have you been handling things over at the hospital?"
"Well enough. We don't have enough medical supplies."
Mei grimaced. "I was expecting a shipment of funds from Zabuza, but the fucker ran afoul of cold-blooded Kakashi and got skewered." There was a sudden sense of dissociation , the oh fuck sort of knowledge that canon was happening, but Akari pushed it down. "You'll have to hold out for a bit." That she was on the wrong side of canon. It was odd— Kakashi had been a hero of hers, in this life and the past, but to know that for all he'd saved the people of Wave from their suffering he'd also indirectly harmed the people of Water…
All actions had consequences. It was fascinating, in a horrifying kind of way, to realize that the triumph of people she'd adored as Amy Rosson had another side to them, innumerable complexities.
"Yeah, yeah, don't worry too much. For better or worse, I don't think this will go on much longer." She paused, then chuckled sheepishly. "For better, of course. We're doing well. Yagura is on the back foot, and we've had plenty of extra shinobi pledge themselves to us. The daimyo— terrified though he may be— is growing increasingly disillusioned with Yaugra's monopoly on the Land of Wave's power structures. We don't have enough shinobi to siege Kirigakure itself yet, but soon—"
"Siege? Why ?"
"Don't you know how you take—" Mei paused, then palmed her forehead. "Right. Eleven. I keep thinking that you're a veteran of the Third War… if you can't decisively end the battle, then conflicts with large shinobi forces tend to end in sieges and battle lines. Sure, battles are plenty fluid— especially when kage and the most elite jonin take to the field— but your average schmuck just isn't as maneuverable. Or as durable."
"A siege would be bloody."
"Yeah." Mei sighed. "Yeah, don't I know it. Not everyone has your gift at sneaking into places, miss Void Ghost—" Mei paused, eyes widening before she visibly forced whatever she'd been about to say back. Okay, maybe it was only visible to a sharingan user, but still the point stood. "Nevermind. That's not—"
"Is there a way to make the siege less bloody?"
"...you know exactly what to say to pull my heart strings, don't you? Trust me, it's a bad idea. Way too dangerous."
"Well then, tell it to me. You know I'm pretty good at calling something dangerous dangerous ." Her paranoia from Konoha had carried over pretty well to risk analysis, plus or minus all the random books on it she had squirreled away somewhere in the back of her sharingan brain.
"Girl, you're going to give me gray hairs." Akari just looked at her, and Mei didn't really have a counterargument to that. "Fine. If you could use your funky yin release technique to sneak me into Kirigakure…"
"Then we could end the battle before it starts. That's genius ."
Mei dropped her head into her hands, but Akari's sharingan caught a glimpse of her sudden excitement. The idea that it might finally be over "...and that's what I thought you would say—" and Akari knew that, even if Mei had to take a few days to deliberate on it, she was in for the mission of a lifetime.
…
Whereas before they'd sparred together with some frequency, now they trained together. It was incredible, really, to see the training of a kage-level shinobi— and that wasn't to mention how awesome it was to be included in that training. What wasn't so incredible was what Mei thought about her training routine. Akari had thought it'd been just fine— after all, she'd cobbled it together from hours upon hours of watching Konoha shinobi train— but Mei had taken one look at it and decided that it sucked. The worst thing was that she was right — the way she trained was so much more efficient.
It didn't work exactly for Akari, but that was another thing Mei was good at. The first few days was finding a good routine for her to hone her skills and keep up with her physical conditioning that fit her, and then they started working on the actual training. Akari had been expecting to have Mei teach her basic shinobi skills, but her training in Konoha had paid off apparently— according to the woman there wasn't really much she could teach her in that regard. What little she could, they did go over exhaustively, sure— but… it was difficult to really wrap her head around, but so very simple in essence.
She wasn't training under Temuri Mei. Their relationship was not sensei and student; they were teammates .
Team formations, though, were a special kind of hell. Sure, she'd memorized the ones she'd seen in Konoha (three cheers for sharingan bs) but having literally never fought in a team with another shinobi, she'd admittedly not been very good at them. At all. Not even the third time they'd tried to coordinate their attacks, Mei had straight told her that it'd probably been good that she'd stayed behind as a medic instead of going on missions.
Ouch. True, but ouch. The art of teamwork for shinobi was a delicate one, she quickly learnt, filled with nuance and subtle subtext. First— teams were formed for a reason . In Konoha, the reason was kinda implied— teams were formed because Konoha valued teamwork— but underneath the underneath, they were also formed for specific tactical considerations. In say, Kiri, where shinobi often took missions solo and teams tended to be largely temporary, the reason for forming a team was paramount to the function of the team.
Obviously the reason a nobody like her was teamed up with Terumi Mei was so that she could use her yin release: void presence on them both and sneak them into Kirigakure. That was the core of their tactics— after a bit of experimentation they found out that the jutsu became both weak and difficult to hold at about ten feet, and impossible after fifteen. So, more or less, they pretty much glued to each other's sides. Staying within ten feet of someone didn't sound that hard, until you realized that both were fast ninja, on top of Akari's already mobile fighting style. It took longer than she'd like to admit, but slowly, they learned to work together— to fight together.
The second thing Akari did in that month and a bit of preparation was crib Mei's chakra natures. Sure, she'd been working on that pretty much since she'd first seen the woman fight, but with the extra time spent together— and a few pointed questions— she'd finally managed it. The first time Mei had walked into her carefully breathing a stream of acidic mist at a rock, she'd facepalmed, grumbled something about how kids kept getting weirder, and walked straight back out.
In theory, boil release would be the easiest for Akari to use— and yeah, that was true to an extent. The actual creation of boil release chakra required a lot of finnecky chakra control, but it wasn't as bad as yin release, for sure. The part where theory failed was when it came to actually using it. Boil release had a tendency to spread, large sweeping swathes of mist settling over anything and everything. It was possible to keep it constrained, but for the same amount of effort it'd frankly be easier to just blow whatever she was trying to melt up with fire release, or hyper destroy it with a rasenshuriken or whatnot. If she'd been immune to her boil release…
That was part of Mei's bloodline, apparently. Immunity to her own boil release made it incredibly useful. Unfortunately, while she could grab the chakra type, bloodlines remained beyond her ability to copy.
Lava release, on the other hand…
Oh yeah that stuff was banger . Her earth release might not have been the best, fair, but her fire release was really good, and combined with the fact that 'lava' was a bit more sensible than 'earth' (at least to her,) she was able to actually use lava release. Plus, the fact that all the jutsu were designed to not be touched, even by the wielder, certainly helped.
She would have liked to have spent more time on lava release. It felt great using her fire release again after having focused on water release for her rasenshuriken— and wasn't that one of the conversations of all time, when she'd told Mei that water release was her secondary affinity, and earth her fourth (or third now, maybe?) Unfortunately, they just didn't have the time. The jutsu she already had would have to work.
A month and a half after the start of their training, Mei called the whole rebellion out into a clearing near the camp they'd been using for training, a grim expression on her face. Hundreds of shinobi stood together, organized into loose groups and their specific teams— ready for what'd been planned. "Today," began Mei, her voice carrying across the entire camp on the winds of sudden silence— "we take back what should have always been ours. Too long has Kirigakure languished under the reign of despots and tyrants, petty murderers allowed to turn a sanctuary into a place of fear and the upstanding put down. For too long have cruelties and injustices been heaped upon our people. Genocide and atrocity. Yet today, those horrors will end." She paused, and it seemed like the very world in that moment held its breath. "This will undoubtedly be the hardest battle of some of your lives. Our enemy is not weak, but we do not do this because our enemy is weak, we do this because they are wrong . We fight for a righteous cause. For all who suffered and will suffer no more. For a new Kiri!"
A cheer spread, slowly at first, then picking up until the whole camp was ready . For a battle that would define the Land of Water for generations to come— Akari, hood up, visor as untouched as ever, standing in the shadow of the soon-to-be Mizukage, smiled .
She was kind of bad at not sticking her nose where it didn't belong, but… maybe that was for the best.
The entire camp departed with the setting sun, traveling through the night to the staging areas situated loosely around Kiri proper— but Mei and Akari continued forward, to the village itself. The Village Hidden in the Mist was an accurate description, she thought, standing on one of the craggy rocks in the dense fog that surrounded the village. Only a very few lights shone out from deep within the dense mist, the village almost oppressively silent as they dropped down into the deserted streets and stalked forward through the Mizukage's tower. Apparently Yagura almost never left the building, having destroyed the former Mizukage's residence for… no reason, apparently.
It was like Water country in microcosm— dilapidated and half destroyed, worn down by the constant fighting and bloodshed. What few shinobi they did see were clearly heading off for some mission or another, or just… despondent in a way that Akari hadn't seen in any of the other hidden villages she'd traveled to. Natural chakra filled her placidly, the most she dared handle at once, and void presence hid them even as they climbed the Mizukage tower.
Things were going well.
That whole going well thing was never meant to last long anyways.
She'd forgotten about fuuinjutsu. Both of them had, to be fair— Mei had been a trusted jonin before she'd left to start her rebellion, and whoever her agent in the village was, they were obviously pretty close to the Mizukage. They'd been given the seal key, so it should have been smooth sailing, but—
Nope.
The side of the tower lit up beneath their feet as a sealing array detected intruders — a different sealing array than the internal one, one that'd kill friend or foe, and Akari only had a second to think that she should have expected as much from the bloody mist. Only a second to react—
Mei coated herself in a sphere of protective high-density lava— tried to coat them both, but Akari was too fast in her own planning— and Akari threw herself through the window, shattering the glass with an empowered rasengan.
The seal detonated, and Akari's shunshin destabilized, throwing her into a wall as a wall of heat and flame gouted through the building. A quick fire release technique parted the flames around her… and then, nothing. They were inside now, which meant their seal key would work…
Or rather, she alone was inside. Shunshining to the broken and burning edge of the tower, her sharingan-enhanced perception caught Mei plummeting into Kiri nigh on a thousand feet away.
"I should have expected Mei to try and come herself. She always had a bleeding heart for the week." The voice behind her was soft, almost childish— but it held a cruel, cold quality that Akari couldn't help but fear. "You, though? I don't recognise you… and for someone able to survive my sealing trap, that's interesting indeed." Karatachi Yagura stood behind her, signature long hooked club held in hand. "I'm going to kill you. And I'm going to enjoy it."
Fuck her life. Alone with Yagura — and then they were fighting. The first second and a half were a flurry of blows, kunai and a handful of empowered senbon thrown from various different angles around Yagura as she flickered around him— but the man managed to deflect each one. Then, jutsu. Akari sank back into void presence, and Yagura breathed out a hiding in the mist jutsu— and unlike Oniyuri, he was precise with it. The chakra in the air was almost cloyingly dense, acrid with a bijuu's hateful essence, and he took full advantage of the sensory advantage allowed by it to grab the upper hand.
Then Akari was on the back foot, leaping out of the way of attacks from a man who wasn't affraid to blast prodigious amounts of chakra in a very 'fuck that general direction' sort of attitude. Decisive. She needed to be decisive —
Really, there was one thing that would work for that. The sharingan allowed her to doge attacks for just long enough to collect the vast majority of her chakra, swirling, tempestuous and placid with the energy of senjutsu, and with nary a word she chucked a water release: rasenshuriken at the man.
Yagura's eyes widened at the technique— then, as though by instinct— he spun his staff in a circle and created a mirror of water— from which an exact replica of her attack emerged. God dammit — she tried to control the copy like she could the rasenshuriken, but no luck. That had been like— most of her chakra—
She shunshined back and forced the rasenshuriken to explode outwards to its largest extent, the attack and its double combined large enough to catch a surprised Yagura in its radius. The man encased himself in coral, which gave her a second— just a second— to think.
She needed a way to defeat him, while she had limited chakra reserves and he had an entire bijuu up his— her mind ran through innumerable techniques and discarded them immediately, before— in the second of his emergence from that coral cocoon, she had an epiphany.
It would've been nice to say she'd thought through the consequences, understood exactly what she was doing— but nah, she was just trying her best to not die.
Her sharingan spun madly, and she dropped into Yagura's mindscape.
It was a terrible place. An island that had clearly once been calm and placid, now surrounded by an immense storm that roared furiously, whipping at the battered trees and beach sands. Isobu was chained down in the center, bound by links blood red, his furious— mad — roars echoing through the storm with all the power of crashing thunder. Paradoxically through the sheeting rain above she could see the moon so clearly… a mankegyou sharingan, looking down at them and spinning madly with all Obito's hateful insanity.
She only had a moment— not even— before Yagura skewered her in the waking world, but that was all she needed. Hands seals weren't super necessary in a mindscape, but she did them anyways—
The technique she used wasn't finished. In most other situations it would be essentially useless— she'd been working on it in an attempt to make a jutsu that could replace her sharingan when it came to wiping memories, but all she'd managed to do was make something that could deliver a nasty mental shock.
A nasty mental shock, though, was exactly what she needed . Her hands slammed together in the last seal, and she intoned: "Yin release: eternal sunshine of the spotless mind." And then there was light . Bursting through the entire mindscape, blinding the eye of the moon and searing the storms away, shattering the heavy genjutsu which had so heavily laid upon Yagura for so long and wiping away the remnants with its searing brilliance.
The moment she left Yagura's mindscape she crumpled, gasping for breath around the dregs of her chakra— but Yagura caught her before she could fall all the way. "Thank you. I…"
"We need to get out of here."
"I owe it to the village to—" Akari didn't even argue with the man. They both knew that Mei was going to kill Yagura when she arrived— he'd done too much, the wounds were too fresh and sore— so she just grabbed on tightly to the small man and shunshined away to a far rooftop.
She might have left a genjutsu on one of the jonin up there, inciting him to shout out over the village that the Mizukage was dead. Just maybe.
"Kunoichi-san!" Yagura hissed as they slammed into the rooftop, clearly not as uninjured as he'd seemed— though his jinchuuriki healing seemed to be working overtime to patch him up. "Please, I need to—"
"You were under a genjutsu." Yagura nodded, and made as if to jump back at the tower, but Akari held tightly to his hand. "Listen to me, the genjutsu were under a heavy genjutsu for a large portion of your life. Isobu was trapped in that same genjutsu. Now, I'm not a fan of fucking suicide , so are you going to go back to your office and get yourself pointlessly killed, or are you going to flee the village with me?" God knew he wouldn't be able to escape without her, not in the state he was in. For a long second, Yagura didn't respond. "The man that put a genjutsu on you is still out there—" and now she had to deal with the consequences. She could allow Yagura to just— go, get out of her life, get lost, and maybe that would be the better… but she'd already screwed with canon.
Maybe, though, that was a good thing. After all, it wasn't just canon when there were millions of lives in the balance. It wasn't just canon when Karatachi Yaugra was standing in front of her looking as though rebellion-assisted suicide was a real option.
It was just… real life. "That man is still out there," she said, softer. "I know a lot about his organization and goals… but you can't help stop him if you're dead. C'mon, let's go." She extended a hand, an opportunity— to her or him she didn't know— and slowly Yagura took it.
With a few hand seals she voided their presence, and then together they fled the village and into the cloying mists.
…
Sunlight streamed through the small forest clearing, dappled light playing off rain soaked mosses and hanging vines, the vast jungle canopy sparse above them. The sounds of nature echoed around them, life so vibrant— the chattering of birds and insects, wind rustling leaves, the small creek so softly burbling as it cascaded down some small boulders.
Yagra slashed through the small metal square he'd laid on the ground, the singular motion of his club sharp and smooth— and then he returned both weapon and protector to a storage seal. "You know, I think this makes me the first kage to have gone missing-nin." Akari snorted at that, because… yeah, it was true. It was also very funny. "You said you had information on Madara. Given that you're an Uchiha, I believe it. I thought your clan had been killed entirely."
"I managed to escape." She weighed her choices. There were plenty of routes she could go with this, but… honestly, not many of them were good routes. "I have… limited foreknowledge. Honestly, saving you has already probably rendered most of it null and void, but I know enough that we can still do some stuff…"
The former Mizukage blinked, clearly surprised. "That sounds useful. I've heard tales of a similar ability from the Land of Demons, though they largely stay out of shinobi affairs… ah, I digress. An Uchiha with foreknowledge sounds dangerous indeed. I'm glad you chose not to align yourself so closely with Konoha." The man could not have been more different from his genjutsu-ed self. Whereas before he'd been a violent, bloodthirsty and most of all cruel person, now he was just… demure. Not quite shy— his shinobi skills leant him an air of subtle confidence, but reserved nonetheless.
"Konoha is a nice place." She laughed slightly at Yagura's slightly disbelieving look. "Really! Danzo's a bitch ass motherfucker, but on the whole the village isn't actually that bad."
"…I suppose I have no place to argue. Didn't your family get… ?" He didn't complete the sentence— he didn't need to.
Akari frowned softly. "He was ordered." That earned a dark snort from Yagura— if anyone could understand being ordered to commit atrocities, Yagura could. "I was friends with him once. I've always hoped…"
"Hope is a powerful thing. I think I hate Madara for crushing mine."
For a while they sat in companionable, vulnerable silence. Yagura without his weapon or the symbol of a village he has— even if unitionally— failed, and Akari, for the first time in over a year, without her visor. It felt weird to not guard the sight of her sharingan from prying eyes, but Yagura already knew, and if this was to work the man deserved a little trust.
Trust… "I'd like to know how much you're committed to this. I… uh, I'm not good at speeches—"
"You're eleven. Of course you aren't."
Akari scowled lightly, and knew that without her visor it came out looking more cute than threatening. "Yeah. No speech, I just want to know if you're really willing to help out. The stuff I know could cause a lot of harm in the wrong hands."
"What else am I to do?" Yagura looked so very broken for a second— "all I am is undone. This at least seems like a worthy cause. Justice at last." Now Akari could see how Obito had recruited all those missing-nin; she'd known that the disillusioned were the easiest to prey on, and who was more disillusioned than the powerful and defeated?
She didn't want to be Obito, though. Screw Uchiha melodrama. "For Isobu, if nothing else. For your village. There's plenty of reasons for us to fight back."
"You're right." He nodded, looking firmer. "I made a promise to Isobu-san a long time ago, and I failed that promise."
"It wasn't your fault."
"But I failed nonetheless. I won't allow him to come to more harm." A bit of life there, for a previous person— even if that previous person just so happened to be a bijuu. "So… from your foreknowledge, what should we do?"
"Orochimaru has been threatening my summons, and he's both a vicious enemy and potentially powerful ally in the future. Itachi… he's a man in a bad position, dying of a terrible disease. I don't want… Suna's jinchuuriki has a shit seal, and he's about to become Kazekage. Ame nin are doing some sillies, and Danzo is the basest creature to walk the earth." The answer was obvious, even as much as she hated it. "Konoha."
"I would have thought you wouldn't want to return."
"Yeah I really don't, but… if I'm careful, I can hide some things." She waved at her eyes. "Everything comes together at Konoha. I'm not sure if we can make it in time for the third round of the chunin exams—"
"From what I know, it's scheduled for tomorrow. You'd have to be the yellow flash to get there in time." Fuck. She really hoped Naruto didn't hold a grudge. "But if we go at top speed we could arrive not long after."
Akari almost dreaded asking, but she did anyway. "Top speed? Even if we took a boat directly across the ocean…"
A small smile spread across Yagura's face. "I'm a jinchuuriki who can transform fully into their aquatic bijuu. What are these silly 'boats' you speak of?" And after a second— Akari grinned too.
…
"What a time to be alive." Kurenai's exhausted remark reminded him a little of a curse he'd heard once, as a mist nin lay dying beneath his feet. "Just hurry up and tell us, would you?" 'May you live in interesting times.' He hadn't understood it back then, but he certainly did now.
Asuma would usually interject here, trying not to be obvious about his romantic feelings, but the man wasn't at the current jonin meetup. His fathers death was far too fresh on his mind. On everyone's mind. Most of the people here had at least one gripe with the old Hokage— Kami knew that Asuma had plenty— but none of them had wanted to see him gone . He'd been such a good man…
This wasn't a time for mourning, though. They'd done that, had so much of that left to do on their own and with their ghosts— this was a time to just do something normal.
Well, normally the good majority of the village's elite jonin didn't meet up in a bar to discuss missions and intel— that's what the jonin lounge was for— but this wasn't actually normal. They just pretended.
Everyone was crowded around Shikaku at the moment. The man had barged (as much as a tired Nara could) into the bar with an amused look on his face and something funny— his words— to share. Bad news, probably— the man was a bona fide genius, and his sense of humor jumped straight over the heads of most shinobi. That and it was a little dark, too… he'd said he'd needed a drink before he shared (also a bad sign,) and now everyone was waiting for what he was going to say.
"So," Skikau set down the half-empty cup of sake he'd been drinking, "Orochimaru's kages killed count is up another."
"The fuck?" It was Anko who broke the silence. "What does that even mean?"
"Sato Akari. Hero of Kiri, apparently ." The man slapped some redacted reports on the table, looking incredibly tired. More tired than usual, and given he was essentially acting Hokage, that took some doing. Kakashi surreptitiously scanned the document with his sharingan, and… oh. "Yeah," Shikaku agreed, even though Kakashi had said anything yet. Nara would be Nara. "Our very own Void Ghost. I just got the missive from one of our undercover agents in Kiri— their rebellion just concluded, and guess who killed the Mizukage."
"No way. She was a genjustu master— how the fuck did she kill the Mizukage , a jinchuuriki. " It was Kurenai, actually, who was the first to voice her doubt— which made sense, what with how she was a genjustu master herself and all.
Shikaku just shrugged. "I dunno. The reports are inconsistent aside from a few key details— Terumi Mei, the now-Godaime— infiltrated Kirigakure with the Void Ghost, but got separated while trying to assassinate the Mizukage. By the time Mei dealt with the shinobi assailing her and got to the Mizukage's office, the whole building was a wreck, people were decrying the death of the Mizukage, and both Karatachi and Sato were gone." That was pretty damning. Sato Akari might be alive, what with her ability to slip beneath the noses of kage— but Yagura? Unless he'd had his own help, it was likely he was dead.
Given that Orochimaru had likely made Akari… Kakashi groaned, dropping his head onto the table. "This is the worst. I'm going to have to pay out so much to Ikibi." He'd voted low on her ranking, and Ikibi had bet high. How annoying. "What even was that report? Healing? All nature releases? Lava release?"
"The reports agree her killing attack was some sort of massive water-storm ninjutsu. The inconsistency in the others I've chalked up to genjutsu." Well that certainly explained some stuff. Not why she even existed, and how she'd possibly killed a Kage level shinobi, but… Kakashi was so, so tired. No rest for the weary, though, and it looked like the elemental nations had a new monster on their hands.
The next day he fought an old student of his, and could only thank all the kami that Sato Akari was in Kiri . Konoha had enough on its hands.
Then: torture.
Notes:
This is probably my favorite chapter of anything I've written so far, so hopefully it doesn't suck too much. Anyways, what with spring break ending and school ramping up, I have less time to write and all, so I'm going to be making these updates a weekly thing instead.
Also I forgor last chapter but shoutout to whoever reminded me Mu was a person who existed in Naruto, that inspired me a lot when it came to Akari's abilities.
Chapter 9: An Old Friend
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Mist had disillusioned her to her void presence technique a little— it was fragile, didn't really hold up in actual combat, and for all it was a powerful technique that rendered her all but imperceivable it didn't remove her from existence— but there was no better boost to her confidence than sneaking into Konoha.
It wasn't even hard. For all the sealing barrier was an incredible piece of chakra technology, far, far more complex and effective than the barrier around the Raikage's residence, void presence was perfect for sneaking in. It was impossible to sense the entirety of Konoha, what with it being the largest hidden village— Akari knew that well from her long years spent practicing. No, they sensed egress and entry on the barrier specifically .
To anyone but a sage, a mangekyou user (maybe) or the bearer of the rinnegan, the seal would've been completely invisible. To anyone who couldn't either completely erase their presence or use some sort of space time jutsu, it would be impossible to pass unnoticed. That wasn't to mention the inherent dangers of sneaking into a shinobi village— dangers entirely avoided by her jutsu and a bit of careful preparation. Though Yagura did bring up a good point about how many children had scars stitched shut on their faces…
It was easy to get into Konoha, yes, but that didn't alleviate her concerns. Actually, it only made it worse. The fact that she could sense literally everyone in the city except a sage, that she knew for a fact that ROOT shinobi weren't trailing their every move was the only redeeming factor in what was otherwise an incredibly tense infiltration.
"So. This is Konoha." They'd stopped in one of the parks, between the old Uchiha district and some open land which had— apparently— been converted into civilian housing. "I never had a chance to visit before. It's surprisingly nice."
"Not wet enough?"
Yagura snorted as they hopped up onto a tree— tightening his chakra enough to make him feel like a genin. "It's not wet enough." A strong genin, maybe.
Akari rolled her eyes, and dropped void presence— though she kept her own signature non-existent via senjutsu. "You, Isobu, and your water." Yagura just laughed. The trip from across the ocean had been… illuminating, in what it revealed about Isobu and Yagura's character.
In another world they could have been protagonists. Their friendship was the most fulfilling type, the close bond between true comrades who'd gone through hell together and truly trusted each other… she couldn't help but wonder the story behind it.
She couldn't help but mourn the tragedy it'd become in the original timeline.
"It must be difficult for you to come back here. Here, specifically." The Uchiha clan symbol was still plastered conspicuously over every building. Clan pride, and all that— just like she'd remembered but for how dilapidated it all was— there was some obvious wear and tear, brickwork crumbling, paint peeling, a general aura of neglect. She was sure her ancestors would be rolling in her graves over the collective stupidity of…
No, she knew her ancestors. They'd probably get moody and try to kill Itachi without looking underneath the underneath or whatever. "Yeah." She sighed, forcing herself out of the Uchiha aloofness she'd unconsciously slipped into. "No point moping about it. Doubt they left anything interesting in the compound, though I could take you to see my old house?"
"...I would like that, if you're comfortable with it. If not, don't push yourself."
"It would be prudent to check up on Sasuke, at least. C'mon." Walking into the Uchiha compound after so long felt almost… anticlimactic. She hadn't really imagined coming back often, so walking through the weather-worn streets felt strange . Both familiar and not, a memory of something she'd long left behind. A snapshot in time, slowly crumbling apart… "that was a dango restaurant that Itachi and I liked to eat at. There was my grand-aunt's house— she was estranged from my mother. She always thought that she should've spent more time at home instead of doing shinobi work. Taking a right here would bring us to Fugaku-sama's house, and a left… home."
"You admired Itachi, did you not?"
"He was a kind, polite kid before… well, you know." They took to the roofs, masking their presence as they ran to the outlying few houses where, half a decade ago, Akari had once lived. From her sage's senses, it was clear that they were the only ones in the entire district. Not even Sasuke was home, though that was more a guess— it'd been long enough that she wouldn't have recognised his chakra signature. "He deserves better than his lot in life."
"So many of us do. The bijuu are enslaved. This… Akatsuki… promises to become a great evil unchecked. Even Orochimaru, if what you've told me is true, could somehow be… not as comically evil as he is right now?" Akari snorted. It was hard to remember sometimes that Yagura was a veteran shinobi as much as Mei was. He just looked so chibi — but his advice was sage. "Whatever we do, we need to take care, and more so be decisive ."
"That's the plan, yeah." It was worth repeating, though. Akari still felt weird about the whole idea— it was just so different from what she'd done for so long— "we're here." A slight lump of anxiety formed in her chest as she stared at the decently sized house she'd lived in for the better part of her life, the traditional Uchiha architecture that she'd gotten to know so well over time. There was the window that she'd climbed out of so many times, the same window that Itachi used to visit through.
The door hung so slightly ajar, creaking as she pushed her way in. Silence, a solemn quiet as she moved through the building reigned, sharingan immortalizing the memory of its decrepit state and mind involuntarily comparing it to what it'd been like before.
"It's… not much right now." Her voice had a little waver in it, how odd. She'd long since stopped grieving for her parents— really, she had— so it shouldn't have been difficult to stand in this room. She'd come to terms with their death long, long before they'd actually died. "I'm sorry that it's in such disarray, but it'll be as good a place as any to rest." They'd booked it double time to Konoha on half a plan and a conviction to stop being so passive, but… standing here, beneath a ceiling bowed by water trickling down discolored and buckled walls to a floor scattered with dried leaf detritus and splattered blood never been cleaned… "yeah. It's kind of run down."
"We don't have to stay if you don't want to. You don't have to push yourself. Nobody is asking you to relive bad memories."
"There were no bad memories, though. My parents were… distant, and I liked it that way. I kept myself removed from Konoha. This should be just another building to me."
"We love despite ourselves."
"You're too wise."
Yagura chuckled. "Isobu's influence, no doubt. I don't think I've done a wise thing in my life." There was grief in his wry statement, perhaps deeper than Akari's own— it was cruel, what Obito had done. The things he made Yagura do— it was perfectly designed to force Kiri to despise him, to make the people who he'd trusted so much and been trusted by in turn spit at the mention of his name. "How about we get some rest." At least the mattresses were decent enough, especially for shinobi who'd long gotten used to sleeping in the wilderness. Yagura was even a deft hand at sealing— apparently all Kiri jinchuuriki were taught, their village's philosophy far more reliant on using the bijuu themselves as weapons (hence, Rin's death, Uzu's bijuu bash)- and he could set up a decent privacy seal for the night.
"Tomorrow, we'll figure out what's going on, and then… Orochimaru or Akatsuki." They'd have to make a choice. Or maybe they didn't. It was all so very confusing…
"Which we will find out how, exactly?"
Akari flashed him a smile. It wasn't a particularly nice one, either. "Genjutsu, of course."
She dreamt that night of fire and shrapnel punching through flesh, and all the things she shouldn't regret, but managed to regret anyway.
…
There were a lot of people she'd expected to run across. No-name chunin, any of the many shinobi she'd spied on… maybe even a particularly well connected civilian. They tend to know more than they let on, cometimes…
They didn't run across any of those, though. Well, they did, but everything was very hush-hush when it came to one of Konoha's top shinobi getting indefinitely put out of commission. Probably a good decision when it came to their already tenuous international relations, but it was a bit frustrating when it came to getting the information she wanted. Poor luck that kept up until they— almost literally— stumbled across a haggard genin jogging through the streets, a medical textbook under her arm.
"I'm sorry." The most shocking feature about her, though, was her startlingly pink hair. "I don't recognise you? The chunin exams are over— are you lost?"
"Ah, sorry." Akari smiled sheepishly, fiddling with the hair beneath her horns in a way vaguely similar to what she remembered of Naruto's mannerisms. "Kata-kun and I got separated from our sensei and teammate. We're on a C-rank delivery— do you know…" she frowned, as though struggling to remember—"Hatake Kakashi?"
"Kakashi-sensei? No, he's indisposed." Bingo. The real coup de grace wasn't her completely bs story, though a good story was a necessary component of it— it was the genjutsu. The first layer was a general one, but perhaps the most important— it influenced her trust . The second one was minor— a little break in the clouds, a slight bit of dopamine, and an incredibly watered down inverse version of the hell viewing technique. A few other effects too, finely tuned, subtle — and then capped off with the trust genjutsu a second time.
"Perhaps a student, then? Sorry, we're just trying to get this mission over with." To Sakura, it felt like a brief break from the monotony she was no doubt feeling after Orochimaru's invasion. The genin hesitated— but Akari spiked the trust genjutsu.
"Oh! Yeah, there's me, and Sasuke-kun— he, um, ran off— and Naruto… he's training outside Konoha…"
"Thanks, Sakura."
"I didn't tell you my…" Akari leaned close, their gazes locking— and then shunshined away with Yagura. Thank fuck. They still had time…
"Huh?" Alone in the street, Sakura slowly frowned. "What?"
…
Sakura was having a no good, very bad day. First, Kakashi had fallen mysteriously unconscious, and nobody could wake him up. Secondly, as if that wasn't bad enough, Sasuke had just up and ran off. Then… then… then…
Cha! Outer, you baka! Snap out of it!
What? No, she wasn't… the medical textbook slipped out of her hand, crashing against the cobblestones as Sakura staggered. Why was Inner being so awful today? She wasn't usually like this… ow, though. Clutching a hand to her head, she barely realized she'd run into a wall before a gentle hand prevented her from slumping to the ground.
"—akura? Sakura! Can you hear me? Are you okay?"
"Oh, yeah— I have to return this book to the library, and I've got to get back to the…" she glanced up, blinking in surprise. "Iruka-sensei? I thought you were out of the village?"
"That was temporary. I have to stay with the academy students, you know." That didn't explain why he looked so confused . Inner was yelling about something, the whole world seemed woozy— "stay with me! Fuck, this is bad—" oh. She didn't think she'd ever heard Iruka-sensei swear before. It might've been kind of funny, if she wasn't feeling so, so… off . "Sakura. You're bleeding."
"I… am?" She lifted a hand to her nose, and only then realized the viscous warmth she'd been feeling on her face was a nosebleed. "Oh. I didn't realize."
"Can you withstand a shunshin— no, of course you can't, hold tight. I'm taking you to the hospital."
"You don't need to bother yourself… was go'n there anyway…." Inner was screaming. Blood was dripping off her chin, scarlet droplets catching the sunlight for a brief moment before they splashed on the stone before. She'd left her medical textbook, oops—
You have to remember — Inner paused, her headache fading just a little— no, no you can't remember… she couldn't really see inner, so to say, but she got the distinct impression that her inner self was flipping her off. No, not flipping her off, making some sort of… hand seal? Like a triangle? Please, please, you have to remember—
A jolt of chakra passed from her mind to her itself, and Sakura jerked in Iruka's grasp, gasping out loud before coughing out blood. "I— they— put me down!"
"Rank privilege. If the hospital says I can put you down, then I'll be happy to, but you're in bad shape."
"No, no— I figured it out!" Really, her headache was gone and everything , and a nosebleed could heal on its own, no need to bother the medic-nin. Iruka clearly didn't see it that way, what with how he kicked open the hospital doors and demanded a med-nin to see his student. He wouldn't even listen to what she had to say until the woman was done with her check up (a more or less clean bill of health, and an order to stop stressing out and rest.)
It spoke a lot about Iruka's reputation in the village that the med-nin didn't even ask questions.
Iruka sighed, looking far too old for his age as he settled down in one of the old creaky chairs that the hospital head always complained about. Kept grousing about how they were a distraction and annoyed patients, especially shinobi with sharp hearing… "you were saying that you'd figured something out? Is it important? If not, just rest."
"Um. I think ?" Wait no, scratch that, it was definitely important. "I was put under a genjutsu." She noticed Iruka subtly tossing a note out the door, which… yeah, she definitely wouldn't have seen that before she'd graduated. "I ran into two genin while on my way to the library. They said they were on a C-rank delivery mission. They asked me about Kakashi, and my teammates… and… and I told them so much —"
A pit of horror started to sink in her stomach, but Iruka grasped her hand firmly in his own, offering a reassuring smile. "You were under a genjutsu, and— don't take it personally! You were just a genin. Don't worry… can you tell me anything else?"
"They had some sort of technique, or something , and I forgot having met them until you were bringing me to the hospital."
Iruka nodded, frowning— oh, was that Team 10's jonin-sensei? What was she doing here? "Do you remember any details about the genin?" Her confusion must have shown on her face— either that or her hesitance to answer— because Iruka was quick to explain Kurenai-sensei's presence. "She's Konoha's foremost genjutsu expert— a genin being put under a genjutsu inside the village is pretty serious, so she's here to help us figure out what happened."
Oh, that made sense. Hm… "I remember what they look like. There were two of them— one of them was a girl with a hood and black hair, while the other one was really pretty and had short blond hair and these shockingly purple eyes. He kinda reminded me of Hinata a bit…"
She must have paused for too long, because Iruka prodded her to continue. "Anything else?"
"Um. I didn't catch much of a glimpse, but the girl had this vizor? Goggles-vizor thing that covered most of the top of her face. It looked kind of intimidating, and it reminded me of what those rain-nin wore." Hinata saw Kurenai stiffen , though Iruka seemed not to find any significance in the description. "Oh! And the other had a weird, stitched scar running down from his left eye—"
A fuzz of chakra cut her sentence off, and she barely caught Iruka's surprised whirl as he turned to face Kurenai— the jonin holding a hand seal."I cast a privacy genjutsu." Irkua relaxed slightly, but not fully. "I'm labeling this an A-rank secret, not to be shared beyond this room. Sakura, you're lucky to be alive. Those weren't genin ."
"What? But they looked so young!"
"Age can be—" Iruka shut up a bit sheepishly as both he and Kurenai tried to speak at the same time.
"Age can be deceiving." Kurenai frowned, but whatever internal argument the jonin had just run through, it was gone in a moment. "I don't think I'll get in trouble sharing this info with you, because you're already involved and I don't want you to tip anyone off by pawing through bingo books— don't do that, by the way— but I think I know the two shinobi you ran into. Sato Akari and Karatachi Yagura."
Iruka choked on nothing. Even Sakura, who hadn't quite gotten the chance to look through a bingo book like she'd wanted to, recognized one of those names. "Isn't Yagura the Yondaime Mizukage ?"
"He was, before he got— supposedly— killed by— according to our intel— Sato Akari ." Oh. That was… "They're both S-class shinobi. Dangerous S-class shinobi." Oh. Oh . Sakura felt faint, though she wasn't sure if that was because of the blood loss or the fact she'd stood in front of one of the bloodiest dictators to ever live and thought he was pretty .
Yeah.
Sakura was having a no good, very bad day.
…
They picked up the trail quickly enough, because Gai was about as unsubtle as it got when it came to jonin. Cratered footsteps, crushed trees, you name it— it was both not very hard to figure out the direction he was going in, and not very hard to figure out where he was going. Turns out that all those maps of the Land of Fire she'd poured over in her youth were good for something after all.
The trail ended eventually, but Akari didn't worry— they'd just passed Gai. Sasuke was also somewhere in the forest, probably, but she wasn't sure which chakra signature was his— either way, it didn't really matter as they landed in the small village they'd been heading to. She could sense the massive chakra signatures of… well, there were four S-class shinobi and two bijuu in the village, which certainly sounded like a recipe for disaster. The… toady (she didn't quite know how that was a sense, but it was) presence was off in an onsen, probably, while the other three signatures were clustered together in a hotel.
Dark like ravens, like an old friend. Fathomless and serrated— and then fiery , warm and energetic and tinged with the remnants of a feeling she still remembered so strongly from when she'd only been a single year old.
Akari didn't hesitate to tuck into a shunshin, dropping through an open window to the scene of a kind of confused Uzumaki Naruto greeting Kisame and Itachi. She hadn't voided their presence, mostly because if A could see through it it would be trivial for Itachi to as well, but she did shove a genjutsu into Kisame— a subtle one that'd come in useful later.
The two Akatsuki members froze as they landed, various expressions of shock between them. Itachi's gaze darted across them, sharingan spinning as he tried to catalog their presence and what it meant , while Kisame just stared with his mouth open. "Yagura? Dafuck?" The big man blinked, rubbing his eyes and subtly nudging Itachi. "You didn't put me under a genjutsu, did you?"
"I don't genjtusu comrades. Unless I have to. Though… Karatachi Yagura. Of all the shinobi I expected to possibly run across today, you were not one of them."
Yagura shrugged. "Sorry to disappoint."
Kisame smiled, his sharp teeth flashing in the dim hallway's sunlight. "On the contrary. Not having to wait for the Sanbi to reform means you've helped us a whole lot. That, and Samehada is hungering for your blood."
"I was under a genjutsu."
"I know." The killing intent rolling off Kisame didn't lessen in the slightest, which— this wasn't at all how she'd wanted things to go. "We're taking the Uzumaki brat. Try to stop us— Samehada's feeling a bit… peckish today."
"Focus on the mission, Kisame. And…" Itachi's gaze landed on her form, and Akari instinctively sidestepped a genjutsu that tried to worm its way inside of her— only barely catching the secondary technique that she was sure would've incapacitated her. Genjutsu master, indeed. "Interesting. That confirms my suspicion, Sato Akari." Itachi's genius strikes once again. An attack with both an overt and covert purpose, perfectly
"Wait, this little fucker's the bitch Hidan can't stop complaining about? I've been hearing him whine for years! "
"Huh?" The new voice in the conversation momentarily derailed the grandstanding and what not, as all four of them turned to look at Naruto. "Wait wait wait— what's going on here? I thought big Sasuke was trying to kidnap me for his pervy dungeon, but now there's two more kids? Who're you?" Itachi facepalmed, and Kisame snickered at… all of that, probably. "Hey! That's what pervy sage said missing-nin do! Orochimaru takes kids to his dungeon!"
"Orochimaru is a special case amongst missing nin," explained Itachi patiently, though the pre-battle tension was clear on his mind. "Hm. Kisame. I think this fight might be beyond us. We're leaving." Wait, no, that wasn't how it was supposed to—
Thankfully, Yagura took the initiative, summoning his staff and letting a dense layer of Isobu's chakra shroud him. "What makes you think we'll allow that?" Then— because there was no way in hell that Jiraya hadn't felt that , he threw himself at Kisame before anyone had a chance to respond.
Naruto yelped and hit the ground, rolling away from the sudden blur of movement as Akari and Itachi blurred through where he'd been standing only moments before. Akari's enhanced senbon deflecting a brace of thrown kunai away from her as she flickered around him— both weapons, even after impacting one another, sinking deep into the hotel's wooden paneling. Itachi was fast , and he kept trying to put genjutsu on her— she knew better to look into the man's eyes, sure, but he didn't need to look at her to throw her under genjutsu. Their fighting styles were disturbingly similar— multilayer genjutsu that focused on subtle effects with a few heavier parts thrown in as shocks or red herrings, speed and weapons, chakra conservation—
Itachi didn't have sage mode, though, and she'd been practicing sharingan-assisted shunshin for almost as long as Itachi. It wasn't enough to run circles around him, no— but she was distinctly faster , and that made her feel a bit warm and fuzzy inside. She also felt the acceleration inside quite accurately as she danced through Itachi's fire release: phoenix sage flower nail crimson. A jutsu she'd seen , but never really devoted time to mastering because shuriken weren't her weapon of choice—
Seeing Itachi use it so seamlessly, though, perfectly covering areas so that she was forced to retreat towards where he wanted her— strategic, always strategic — she regretted that just a little.
Well, two could play at the ninjutsu game, and she was calling him away from Kisame and Yagura's (now outside) battle as much as he was guiding her to defeat. Two sets of hand seals flashed by quickly, sheer effort of chakra control bridging the difficulties of using two techniques at once— if she'd tried anything more than c-ranks, she might not have been able to do it at all— and then she breathed . The great fireball jutsu surprised him, extinguishing his shuriken as it traveled overtop it, but it was the modified water bullet— formed from the water Yagura and Kisame's battle was throwing around everywhere — that ricocheted off the wall and exploded the fire jutsu he'd just spat at her in his face that really surprised him.
He shunshined out of the way of the blast, clearly singed slightly despite having— somehow, which was utter bullshit — avoiding the brunt of the fire. "Impressive. You weren't particularly known for your combat skills, but you've held up better than I could have imagined. Consider me surprised that not a single one of my genjutsu caught you."
"Likewise." No, not actually, she knew Itachi was a mega prodigy, and she'd have been astonished if even the S-rank genjutsu she'd thrown halfway through the battle had done anything at all. She was pretty much just playing along. "Your reputation doesn't overstate your prowess— if anything, it understates it." Also true. Itachi was just that good.
"Your unique style of fighting invisibly doesn't work against an Uchiha. You cannot possibly hope to win." Nah— oh, sneaky. He'd tried to put a subtle fear genjutsu on her by filling the entire area with the technique— it would affect him, too, if he somehow was bad enough not to neuter the technique in his own coils.
She broke the genjutsu anyways, grinning near madly. "Oh? Won't it?" Behind her back she made the last hand seal for yin release: void presence, and—
Disappeared.
Itachi jerked in shock, disrupting his chakra in as the catch-all attempt to dispel a genjutsu you didn't understand, but his advanced chakra control worked against him here. While most others might let the chakra pulse wash out, which might have disrupted her technique if it was strong enough (and Itachi's was certainly strong enough) he wrested control of his and prevented it from leaving his coils to conserve chakra.
Void release wasn't a great combat jutsu, especially against high rank shinobi— but those few seconds could go a long way in a fight. That's why she'd saved it until now—
She needed to end this quickly. Decisively . Pushing her technique to the max, staying within the ten foot range— she chucked three invisible kunai as sharply as she could. Itachi was still looking for her—
His hand snapped up, catching one kunai by the handle and deflecting another, and grunting as the third gouged a slash through the meat of his thigh. "Air movements. That is an incredibly powerful jutsu, Sato-san. Not even the sharingan could perceive your kunai— I only noticed it due to the wake it left in the air." Damn genius Itachi. That was like the mist jutsu exploit (yeah she called it an exploit, so sue her) but with normal air. "Amaterasu."
The black fire flew fast , impacting against her sleeve as she shunshined out of the way. Then she had to extinguish the inextinguishable fire, which— nuh uh, not happening. Instad, she replaced with a broken floorboard she'd slapped a chakra string onto halfway through her shunshin, leaving behind her sleeve and the black fire. So things were getting serious now—
Then, with all the infinite grace of a clown car blasting a bad funk Entry of the Gladiators parody, Sasuke jumped into the burning hallway. "Itachi! I'm here to kill you!" Chidori chirped its harsh sound, and it was almost funny to watch how Itachi looked a little panicked for a second at his brother's unexpected appearance, but poor Sasuke probably thought— if he could even see it— that Itachi was panicked about fighting him. Which… the very idea was laughable. Itachi could beat Sasuke with both hands and arms tied behind his back, a blindfold on, and probably without saying a word.
Unfortunately, protective older brother Itachi meant that he was done playing around. An immense burst of chakra pulsed through the room, shredding her jutsu and stopping Sasuke's chidori dead in its tracks. Susanoo's spectral ribcage was an ominous thing, the sheer power of the technique self-evident even in its incomplete state— "forgive me, Sasuke. Some other time, okay?" Sasuke was so pissed — but then she was fighting Itachi for real , and she had no time to care about genin.
Musculature began to form over Itachi's susanoo as Akari weaved and dodged, suddenly on the backfoot as none of her basic attacks were able to find purchase on the spectral armor. Flashing through some hand-seals, throwing the full force of water release: great waterfall against Itachi. Enhanced by sage chakra and with enough force to blow through stone, it should have been enough to at least do something — but as the water fell back, all she saw was a susanoo clad in skin, standing in a way that Sasuke was just 'accidentally' protected from the attack.
Dammit, she had to tone it down. She didn't want to actually hurt Sasuke— and neither did Itachi, though Sasuke seemed determined to get Sasuke killed. Their battle turned into this strange, farcical thing where both threw powerful attacks at the other and played a game of 'try not to squish the genin like a bug.'In the end, as she was pushed to the very edges of her ability—
She had a second to think that maybe she should have practiced a fighting style that didn't involve so much eye contact before she involuntarily made eye contact with man, and, and saw Tsukuyomi.
It was a glorious, beautiful, awful technique, nigh instantaneous— a bundle of yin chakra shot out from his eye, arrow straight into her own, then bloomed in a complex flower-like shape, like roots, expanding into a lattice-work superstructure that turned her mindscape into a reality and enforced it real . A pure yin technique, similar to yin release: void presence— similar in the way that slide rulers and TI-84's were both technically calculators, at least.
She found herself bound to a cross in a strange world greyscale and iridescent, a bloody sky oppressive overhead. Copies of Itachi surrounded, each holding wickedly sharp looking blades… but they all stood dumbfounded. Even the Itachi in front of her was just staring up at her, eyes wide as he looked at her…
Face. Her face— in a world of his own making, of course Itachi had removed her vizor. "A-Akari?" The name was whispered, almost unbelievingly. Brokenly, for sure. This… wasn't how she'd wanted this talk to go. "I— I thought you were dead. They told me you— you were dead ."
"...surprise?"
Itachi was still for a long time, and then— the genjutsu shifted . The yin chakra threads weaved into a different essence of imagination, red sky fading, cross disappearing, all the Itachi clones snapping together into a single real version of his own. What was left was this strange, not quite real place— a sky off-color blue and a blank grassy field around them. "I kept your painting. Of all the things that have kept me sane—" he dropped a hand to a scroll on his side, a passive gesture, unconscious born from long repetition— "your memory was one of them. How… how did you survive? Was it Orochimaru? I see you have some new… horns."
"Those horns are absolute bothers , I tell—" Itachi wasn't her friend. She didn't deserve to speak to him like this. "No. It wasn't Orochimaru. I am contracted to the snakes, but Orochimaru had nothing to do with that."
"I…" Itachi sat wearily on the ground, looking so old for all he was barely four years older than her. Maybe not even. "How? I was so sure you'd died. You just… disappeared. MIkoto was furious . Fugaku almost had your parents exiled for negligence."
Akari restrained a laugh. Okay, maybe her parents had been a bit negligent. "I suck out of Konoha. Didn't want to get massacred, yo."
"I wouldn't have—"
"Look me in the eyes and tell me you would have left me alive if it was between me and Sasuke."
Itachi didn't, because the answer was obvious, but there was something there. A hesitance, or— Akari couldn't quite tell, but it wasn't the abrupt refusal she'd expected. "How did you escape? Konoha might not be perfectly secure, but a five year old wouldn't be able to escape the village by themselves."
"I hid myself in a merchant's cart and snuck out beneath the guard's noses."
"...an apple merchant." He laughed, and it was a sharp thing. "You wanted to escape Konoha so much , had so little trust in our village that you were willing to kill to get out. I trusted you. I trusted you, I looked at you and saw the civilian side of the village, the children whose future was still laid out before them, but the whole time you'd been a shinobi in training. Who? Danzo? Orochimaru, before he left? Someone else ?" He spat, and the sky quivered with his anger—
"I always knew you were going to kill the clan." The soft surety of her voice both visibly calmed Itachi and set him on edge, the noticeable disturbance in the genjutsu transforming into a tight keen, a whistling wind over the empty plain they shared. "I… I regret killing those shinobi. Truth be told, I regret killing anyone who doesn't deserve it— but to me, staying in Konoha was a death sentence. More than that… I've enjoyed my time in the world outside the village. I've been given the opportunity to do so many great and wondrous things, Itachi."
There was one thing that Itachi hooked onto from that little speech, genius that he was. Repeating, softly— "always? How long was always ?"
There was plenty she could say to that. Some things she should say. One thing she had to say, even if it could endanger everything, even if it could defeat the subtlety she and Yagura had decided to pursue; sitting there beneath that fake sky, embraced by the yin of Tsukuyomi, she could bring herself to do nothing less. Maybe it was civilian of her. Maybe it was that Amy Rosson's morals were different from Uchiha Akari's. It wasn't because she feared Itachi's torture; maybe it because, at the end of it all, Itachi had been her friend. " Always . From the moment of my birth, my eyes were sharingan-red and I knew that the clan would die."
Itachi looked shell-shocked. "You… you told no-one ? You— you didn't even try to save the clan? You just left —"
"I'm not you, Itachi. I couldn't. I just couldn't! I had a whole life before, a home, a world, a family torn away from me and the clan —" she spat that word— "wasn't it! Konoha was not it! What was I to do? A child, without the protection of being born to the clan head, ripe for the plucking? Danzo with his private army breathing down my neck? The pressure to be the next Uchiha prodigy , to offer my life and on the sacrificial pyre of clan and village and family until nothing else remained but an empty husk of a wreck of a girl? All for what? " She breathed in a shuddering breath, heaving, slowly reaching up to touch damp eyes and realize that she was crying. "Itachi. Itachi… I couldn't. Forgive me. I wasn't strong enough."
"...you had a family?"
"Yeah." Akari, Amy, sat back down on the grass. "Thanks. I… here I am, as much a clan-killer as you, and your kind genius doesn't even leap to blame. I don't deserve this, Itachi." Fuck, she'd bottled up her emotions on the Uchiha clan for so long. Not even after she'd left Konoha— being outside of the village had made it easy to not think about them. No, it was the constant pressure of secrecy from when she'd lived in Konoha.
She met Itachi's eyes, two sets of sharingan staring into each other, and she saw… empathy.
She'd always wondered why Naruto and Hashirama and all the others had been able to laud Itachi as a good person after all he did, even if he had helped them in the end. She'd chalked it up to one of the show's idiosyncrasies, the strange shinobi morals and just straight up plot weirdness the series had plenty of…
Looking into those eyes, seeing not judgment but love, not disgust but an understanding despite the vast difference between their circumstances, a quiet solidarity that she didn't deserve… for all Itachi's flaws, she understood now.
Perhaps sensing the need for something light, Itachi looked away, sighing heavily. "I… despite it all, it fills me with great joy that someone I knew, someone that I thought dead is alive . If you don't mind me asking… can you tell me about it?"
"The preknowledge? I trained a lot. Obsessively—"
"No, not that…" Itachi paused, clearly trying to phrase his question delicately. "You said you came from a different world. Can you tell me about it?"
"...yeah. It was a place without chakra…" and so she told Itachi about Earth, and as the hours passed the conversation grew more animated, the missing-nin fascinated by all the details of her home as much as she'd been in regards to chakra. They talked a little about her life before— a freelance artist— about where she'd lived, even skirting towards the topic of her once-family. They didn't talk about her death, even though it was clearly the only thing traumatic enough in her life to have activated the sharingan, and they didn't talk more than a little about the hit media franchise Naruto, but…
At the end of it, it was shaky and weak, so tenuous, but they almost felt like friends again. "I'm going to release the technique, Akari. Apologies, but I believe I'm going to fall unconscious after such an expenditure of chakra. Could you please prevent my little brother from getting too stabby?"
"I'm pretty sure that even if you were bound an unconscious Sasuke still wouldn't be able to kill you." That earned a small smile from the man, something that— holding true from when they'd both been children— meant he'd found something she'd said amusing. "Don't worry, though. I won't let Sasuke do something he'd regret."
"...thank you, Akari." He nodded to her, stood— and not making a single hand sign, the yin-chakra threads reacting to his desires— bowed, ending Tsukuyomi.
The real world returned back to her in a crash of sight sound sensation rushing through her as she stumbled, the graceful leap she'd been in the middle of transformed into an awkward half-roll. Itachi had it worse— Susanoo collapsed, chakra crashing down on him like a wave as spectral skin peeled back, muscle broke apart, and bones dissolved. Not even a second after that, Itachi slumped unceremoniously to the ground, chakra exhausted and asleep.
A dozen feet away from his older brother, Sasuke stared at her in shock. "You— you beat nii-san? That's impossible." Still, he was already pulling out a Kunai, attention refocusing on the crumpled man in front of him. "You had this coming for a long time —"
Without even using her sharingan, Akari shoved him under a strong sleep genjutsu and caught him before he could hit the ground. A few quick jutsu made sure that he wouldn't get hurt by the environmental dangers around him, and then— carefully picking up Itachi— she shunshined out of the building.
Notes:
This chapter is firmly on the mid side of things, but I did enjoy writing Itachi and Sakura. Itachi gets some sense knocked into him, yin release gets more established, etc etc whatever, and Sakura gets some of that Protag Energy (TM). I don't want Akari's achievements to be framed against that sort of facetious dumbing down of team seven, so I've tried my best to show that they're young shinobi with lots of potential.
Except for Sasuke I don't really mean to, but his character makes it so easy to clown on him lmao.
Chapter 10: The Three Little Sannin
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Kisame had fled rather than fail the mission. According to Yagura, that fit with what the jinchuuriki knew of the man's character. Unlike her battle with Itachi, with— for all battles between high rank shinobi ended out pretty universally destructive— had been rather tame, not even destroying much more than the hall they'd been fighting in and a bit of the hotel, Yagura's battle had been devastating .
It was kind of awe-inspiring to think that the water she'd used throughout the battle— enough for a water release: great waterfall technique and several other water jutsu— had been the vestiges of the fringe edges of the pairs battle. A decently large lake had been carved out of the forest about half a mile to the east of the village, and more trees than that had been flattened by the tail-less tailed beast and the sanbi's battle.
Not the best outcome, but… crouched around a small campfire, Itachi sleeping serenely next to the flame's gentle warmth, Akari was content that it wasn't the worst outcome either. Not by a long shot. The snakefam had kept watch overnight, which meant that they'd all gotten some good rest. Yagura tended the fire with his club, deftly moving the burning logs with the hooked ends. "Quite the eclectic band of Shinobi we make. Two S-rank Uchiha and a jinchuuriki meet by a campfire. I'm sure you could make a joke somewhere there."
Akari chuckled softly, gaze flicking to check on Itachi as it had every minute for the last two hours. "I'm not S-rank."
"Please." Yagura rolled his eyes, a bit of genial exasperation evident in his voice. "The fact that you can still deceive yourself into believing that you're not S-rank is actually a bit funny. I'm not even exaggerating. I can hear Isobu laughing in the seal."
"I'm… high A-rank, at best. I've only defeated the S-rank shinobi I've fought on technicalities."
"And when you were sparring with Mei—"
" Technicalities ."
"The fact that you've defeated S-rank shinobi, plural , at all is a mark of your immense skill. The fact that you've done it at your age is nothing short of astonishing. Oonoki would throw a fit if he heard that you deposed a Kage at eleven."
"He is a bit old, isn't he…" they both laughed for a long second, before leaning back in companionable silence until Itachi stirred.
He was still wearing his Akatsuki robes, and between that and the sheer weariness on his face— the lines etched into his visage by stress and poor health— he looked double his true age. "Where… ah, I remember now. I almost managed to convince myself that I'd been dreaming, but you're really here, Akari." He sat up, leaning closer to the fire. "I'm afraid my eyesight isn't what it used to be. That, and I'm in particularly poor health. I'm not sure how long I'll be of use to your plans."
Akari scowled— playfully, but a scowl nonetheless. "I don't need you to be useful , I need you to be alive . I just got back a friend, I'm not going to lose them to stupidity . That goes double for whatever plan you had with Sasuke— hold still, let me check your condition."
A rictus mix of pain and guilt flashed across his face, but Itachi had always been a composed shinobi. "He needs to become more powerful. Powerful enough to defeat—"
"Uchiha Madara."
"You know?"
Akari paused her check up to give her old friend a pointed look. "Always knew, remember? Plus, he's not even Madara."
"I figured, but he is a monumentally powerful shinobi nonetheless. Konoha isn't safe. Sasuke isn't safe."
"Itachi. Let me lay this out a bit more plainly—" she looked into his eyes— having removed her visor— her sharingan meeting his coal-cold gaze. "I know you've always had a bit of a blind spot for your brother, but have you considered that it goes both ways? You would do anything to protect him, but right now Sasuke's biggest danger is himself . At the rate he's going, he's going to end up missing-nin or dead. Or both." They both knew that Sasuke, for all he was smart, wasn't Itachi smart. More so, he didn't have the years of experience in being a shinobi that'd allow someone with such an obvious target painted on his back— his eyes — to survive in the brutal missing-nin world. "You're good at thinking. So think ."
"...so, Madara is not Madara?" Akari chuckled, but she knew that Itachi wasn't just changing the subject. Even if he was trying to do that, the double-edged blade of his intelligence meant that he'd end up thinking about what she'd said anyways.
"Yeah. Madara did actually survive his battle with Hashirama, but he ended up being like, geriatric and whatnot by the time his plans were coming to fruition. So he more or less just nabbed the first Uchiha he could, shoved a zetsu in him, and made him into a shinobi to be feared the world over."
Itachi made an expression of confusion, which— on Yagura's confusion at his confusion, he elaborated: "Uchiha are incredibly possessive when it comes to our dojutsu. There's only been a few missing but not confirmed dead Uchiha over the years since the village's founding, and none of them would be not-Madara's age. Well, except for Sayuri, but she's… a girl."
"You're saying not-Madara can't be a girl?" Itachi blushed, and Yaugra laughed, warm and bright. "Yeah, you'd have figured that out, he's not Sayuri. It was Obito."
"...Uchiha Obito? Kakashi-taicho's genin teammate? The boy generally remembered as being incompetent and not befittingly aloof for the Uchiha's clan reputation?" Akari nodded. "That is…. beyond impressive."
"Yeah, Madara would've made a great academy sensei. Probably." The three missing-nin shared a look, then burst out in another round of laughter. This time even Itachi joined in, scratchy and capped off by a few hacking coughs.
After they'd all calmed down a bit, apropos of nothing Yagura blinked— staring at some far distance. "Isobu says that some things make a lot more sense now. He'd never understood why he'd been sealed into Rin-san before…"
"Right, Madara orchestrated that… probably . Madara and Zetsu. Hold on one second, I need to make sure we don't have any… hidden observers." Akari paused her diagnostic technique, sitting still and connecting with the nature chakra of the world, feeling the scales on her face shift slightly as she entered sage mode and firmed her mental image of herself. She'd more or less given up on removing the horns for now. "No observers. So, what do you know about Zetsu?"
"He's a useful member of the Akatsuki, and Madara… Obito's right hand man. He's also…" Itachi paused for a moment, and Akari could almost feel the face he wasn't making— "extremely weird."
"I'll give you the crash course. Yagura, you've more or less heard this before but some of this stuff is new so you'll want to listen." They all leant in closely— and if the sudden peak in Isobu's chakra was any indication, that 'all' included the tailed beasts too. "In the year A Long Fucking Time Ago, Kaguya Ootsutsuki and some rando came to Earth. From space. No, I'm not making this up. Kaguya kills the rando, plants a god tree, and subjugates the entire world and subsequently has a kid. Two kids, but Hamura's unimportant. That kid is actually the Sage of Six Paths—" she rolled her eyes at the doubtful look on Itachi's face, though Yagura looked a bit stunned, clearly fact-checking with Isobu. "Anyways, Kaguya goes mad, turns her tree in the Juubi, then Hagoromo— that's the sage by the way— hyper beats her up and seals her corpse into the moon. And also turns the Juubi into the nine bijuu at the same time. Following so far?"
"No."
Itachi shook his head. "I don't believe so."
"Great, moving on. So, Kaguya actually left a bit of her will— Black Zetsu— behind, and he goes on to fuck everything up super hard. Causes Indra to go all betrayal on his brother— Indra is our ancestors by the way— and then he goes and edits Hagoromo's cool tablet which causes the Uchiha to do dumb stuff forever. Then he goes and manipulates Madara, who manipulates Obito, who manipulates Nagato into getting all the bijuu for him so he— Zetsu— can resurrect his mother. Kaguya."
A long silence hung between them before Itachi spoke up, almost hesitantly. She didn't blame him, honestly. "I… believe that we are missing several crucial details, Akari." Yeah, she figured. Sighing, she continued her check up as she answered questions on an old, familiar story, apologizing where her knowledge wasn't enough to give a straight answer.
Despite the heavy nature of the conversation, though, it was a decently fun evening spent together. Mako and his clutch got back from a self assigned hunting mission, and all the snakes bar Apophis (who refused to leave her watch) and Chiako (who was making sure Apophis didn't do anything stupid) joined them for a quick meal.
It was difficult, distracted as she was, but as the others ate Akari finally got a chance to finish Itachi's check up. She'd been hoping that it was something within her capabilities to heal, but… "Itachi. Do you even have any idea what you've done to yourself?"
"I am aware of my degenerative lung disease, Akari. I've been unable to treat it with conventional medicine, and the only one amongst our number with decent medical skill was unable to assist me himself. He did offer puppet lungs, but…" by the slight distaste in his voice, Akari could only imagine what sort of organs Sasori would make. "I refused."
"Your lungs are almost completely destroyed. Frankly, I don't know how you're still alive . You have some sort of… rot, or something that you've sequestered away, except you keep crushing your alveoli and the disease keeps spreading. The jagged rips in the sequestered, useless parts of your lungs are what cause you to cough out blood— and it's good you do that, or else you'd have like… sepsis or whatever a rotting chest cavity is called."
For a long moment, Itachi was silent. "I… did not realize it had progressed so far. I've been able to mostly operate without undue difficulty, but I did notice severe tightness of breath." Though, he didn't look mad. He looked silently accepting, resigned— and there was no damn way Akari would let Itachi just fucking lay down and die .
"Look at me." It took a while, but Itachi turned to see her— "we're going to find a cure. A lung transplant, or something— antibiotics to ameliorate the disease itself, whatever therapy and medical attention you need—"
"I'm able to pull my own weight, Akari—"
"Not if you're dead ." That killed the mood quite thoroughly, as Akari breathed in a shuddering breath and stepped away from Itachi. "I might not be able to help you— I'm a mediocre med-nin at best — and Sasori couldn't help you either, but there is one person who definitely can."
"...she won't."
"No, it's a good idea," Yagura spoke, for once— because he'd discussed some plans with Akari before, and knew— "Tsunade is going to be in Tanzaku Gai in less than a month's time. I have decent expertise in sealing but a discussion with Jiraya would be invaluable if we ever want to do anything with the other jinchuuriki," and they did, "and… Orochimaru is conveniently there to be dealt with at the same time."
"What about Lady Tsunade's hemophobia?" Akari just grinned, and didn't answer. A question like that, from Itachi , meant he at least wasn't dismissing it out of hand.
"I'm relatively sure that won't be a problem." She affixed her visor to her face, pulling up her hood to cover her horns. "If not… we could always make a bet." Itachi blinked, Yagura groaned— mumbling something about how both he and Isobu were bad at gambling— and Akari… Akari just laughed.
…
They'd gotten some new clothes for Itachi, though he'd kept his Akatsuki cloak. Apparently it was really comfy. His new getup didn't quite look civilian , but it was certainly the least ninja of the three— befitting. It wasn't like they were doing much shinobi stuff either, though— they wanted to take their time to get to Tanzaku Gai, and they were all content to have at least a bit of a break after such a frenetic… forever.
For Yagura, it was the first real dowtime he'd had since she'd broken the genjutsu, and for Itachi, Akari got the impression that it was the first time he'd allowed himself to slow down since the massacre. The sheer weight that'd been lifted from his shoulders as he tossed his Akatsuki ring off a cliff and into the rushing rapids of some random river on the way was almost tangible, and even if his physical health didn't magically improve, he was a lot more… relaxed? Energetic, still cool and collected but more like the Itachi she remembered, that she knew he'd have become after his reincarnation.
They also talked about jutsu. Itachi had been fascinated to hear her insights into the Tsukuyomi, even though he hadn't quite managed to actually perform even yin release: starry night. They spent a long time theorizing on their shared dojutsu— on heritage, evolution, on its design and who could have possibly designed it. She mentioned the rinnesharingan, that dojutsu from which descended two of the three great dojutsu, and Itachi had posited in turn that someone had broken down a magnificent tool to find what was useful for killing, like madmen tearing apart a doctor's office and using scalpels as knives.
It made sense, she supposed, but Akari personally thought the rinnesharingan had always been designed for conflict. The Ootsutsuki were a violent clan, after all— world destroyers who went from place to place with complete exploitation their only goal.
Even Isobu and Yagura joined in on the theorizing at times, though both didn't really have the technical basis to understand. Isobu at least knew the capabilities of the Rinnegan— and the tensingan , something Akari had almost completely forgotten about— which had derailed the conversation for a second into 'unfairly overpowered dojutsu territory,' and then even more unproductive discussions about whether a transplanted rinnegan would give Itachi the eternal mangekyou sharingan (yes, probably), or the tensingan (no, that didn't make sense.)
Then they talked about nature releases, which lead to Akari showing out some lava release jutsu she'd copied from Mei and Isob— via Yagura— using some coral techniques which weren't technically a nature release but were close enough.
They weren't productive discussions. Really just baseless speculation and trading fun techniques— but they didn't need to be productive.
It was a rather refreshed trio of S-rank missing-nin who crested the lip of one final hill and saw, sprawled out before them in the distance, the town of Tanzaku Gai. Keen eyes memorized what all the details they could see, of the streets and the abandoned castle looming in the distance— but really, at least for Akari, one detail stood out more than most—
There was a festival going on! She'd known what to expect, but to see the bustling streets of the tourist town, even from a distance…
She hadn't been to an honest to goodness, bona fide festival since her past life, and she was practically bouncing in eagerness as they walked through the gates and into the busy city. The three of them almost looked cute together— tired dad Itachi, excited kid Akari (not really fooling anyone, what with the visor and all, but a woman could dream. And use genjutsu) and polite kid Yagura. Yeah. That totally wasn't a misrepresentation of their ages at all. Except for maybe her, because she was actually eleven.
Itachi was… not uncomfortable, or at least not uncomfortable because of the crowds. "Should we split up to search for Tsunade?" There was something putting him on edge, but maybe it was just the impending whole convincing Tsunade to give Konoha's second-most infamous missing nin surgery and not kill him while she was at it thing.
Who knew? Certainly not her. "Nah, I already knew where they are." She tapped her horns through her hood. "I actually don't know Tsunade's chakra signature, but Jiraiya— and Naruto's , especially— are… somewhat obvious." Tanzaku Gai was a crushing medley of signatures, a bit similar to any of the big cities she'd been to except more… in motion, in a sense. As energetic as the festival they were walking through. "We'll get to them eventually, but I want to try some games!"
"...you are an S-rank shinobi."
Akari rolled her eyes at Itachi. "And? A festival is a festival?" She played the first few games alone— a lot of them remarkably similar to stuff she might have seen at the fair in her past life. There was one where you had to throw little balls into those glass jars to get some cute bagged toads, which Yagura jokingly suggested she feed to the snakes. They didn't even like toads! She gave her prize from that one to a passing boy who'd been failing to win one himself.
After acing a game where you had to balance on an unsupported pole for ten seconds, despite the clear sabotage from the increasingly desperate owner, she finally managed to draw a reluctant Itachi into her schemes and shenanigans. There was this one particular game which she'd noticed next to a marketplace and the casino they'd been making their way towards, large stuffed prizes hung just out or reach.
The prizes, of course, were only one reason she'd picked the game. She couldn't help but snigger as her sharingan immortalized the memory of Itachi picking up a dulled kunai with a half-bewildered look on his face.
The game itself was actually pretty clever. A bunch of targets moving on tracks with jerky motions that were clearly supposed to be random, but to her sharingan were painfully obvious. Knock down enough targets and you'd get a prize. Knock down the special target— twice as small and thrice as mobile as the next hardest target— and you'd get to pick one of the big prizes from up top.
Akari picked out her first kunai— their quality was straight trash, probably second hand— palmed it, and threw it lazily towards the smallest target with full surety that it'd hit. It didn't hit, though— the small target weaved out of the way at the last second, completely out of line from its prior pattern. Narrowing her eyes beneath her vizor she picked up her second kunai and threw it, with the sort of snap-harsh force that kunai were supposed to be used with—
The loud clang of metal against metal rang through the festival air, and Akari's kunai was deflected neatly off to the side. Looking up at Itachi's soft, so slightly smug smile, his sharingan spinning slowly… oh it was so on .
The poor stall owner had to deal with clearly-shinobi now as they dueled over preventing the other from hitting their target, their sharingan making for some truly awesome plays. They had ten kunai each— Akari had used two, and Itachi one— which meant that the trick to the game was using less kunai than your opponent.
They could be completely direct about it, but… yeah, that was no fun. Itachi threw three, Akari two, deflecting one off the other and curving the topmost up into an aborted arc, as she threw one of her own and Itachi deflected the kunai she'd juggled to intercept her own and send his at the target. Akari threw hers, but Itachi flung his own at the last moment, knocking down a few side targets and nailing the central one.
He still let her pick the plushies, though, and she got this massive fox plush and three smaller ones to match the sannin's summon clans. They had one left, so— probably because he found it funny, Itachi grabbed a crow plushie which he quietly passed off to one of his summons. Apparently her explanation that she was going to give the fox plushie— which looked adorable, by the way— to Kurama had Isobu rolling with laughter in Yagura's seal.
They were in consensus in not doing any more of the festival games after that, though. Instead, they'd move on to their next great pursuit— gambling! There were plenty of slot machines and other random no-skill games, but they quickly headed for the poker tables instead.
A gruff man, muscular with a scar along one of his arms, glared at them as they took their seats. "No kids allowed." Akari pulled out a wad of cash— not much, about as much as you'd make from a C-rank mission, so more or less pocket change for her, and threw it on the table. The man stared for a long second, before looking at her vizored, hooded face and deciding it wasn't worth it to argue. "I'll make an exception just this once." He pushed her some chips and dealt her in.
One minor problem. She carefully sent a non-intrusive genjutsu to Itachi. "One problem. I, uh, have no idea how to play this." Itachi just facepalmed, but was at least courteous enough to send back an image of a player's manual he'd read at one time.
She didn't win , but by the fourth round of the night, she hadn't lost either. Several players had ducked out by that point, the stakes either too high or their money too gone to continue, while a few had bought in. As it was though, the game was looking to wrap up soon, probably with Itachi as the winner— Akari was a sage and she didn't know how he'd cheated (there was no way he hadn't) which was damn impressive .
"—let me, baka." The whole table rattled as a newcomer slammed down a thick wad of cash. Well enough to buy in and more. "Deal me in, baby! And deal in the pervert there too!"
"Ah, Tsunade-hime, all the ladies are waiting on—"
"Certainly not you." Tsunade— because who else could that… distinctive… person be? Grabbed Jiraiya by the shoulders and manhandled the man into a seat. "Now sit down. You said you wanted to catch up, and you weren't lying, were you?" Jiraiya looked like he wanted to say he had been, but a look at Tsunade's fist convinced him otherwise.
"Oi!" A little mop of bright yellow hair poked above the table for a second before Naruto clambered up onto one of the high seats. "I can play too obaa-san, belive it!"
"You don't have any money, brat. Plus, they don't even allow kids to—"
Akari tossed another wad of money onto the table. More than a C-rank this time, enough that it was actually a pretty big dip in her immediate funds. She'd have to look into getting a few more bounties after this… "deal the kid in." The dealer didn't argue, just handing Naruto a hand of cards that— adorably— he had no idea what he was supposed to do with.
Jiriya glanced at her, then jerked back as if he'd been stung. "What are you three doing here? Tsunade isn't a pushover. You won't find a stronger kunoichi in the elemental nations, so just— forget what you're planning."
"What are you rambling about, you perverted…" Tsunade really looked at them, eyes widening. "Karatachi Yagura. Last I heard, you were busy being Mizukage. What brings you to Tanzaku Gai?"
Yagura shrugged nonchalantly. "I was under a genjutsu, and then Akari-chan here deposed me. Thought I'd let things cool down before I consider heading back to Water country."
"Mizukage? Is that like the Hokage?" Yagura nodded. "Awesome, dattebayo! Wait. Hey! You're just a kid, you can't be a Mizukage, that's unfair . Jiji said I couldn't be Hokage until I was older!"
"I'm much older than you, Naruto-san," responded Yagura wryly. "I merely look young. Partly from genetics, and partly due to my… unique situation."
"Oh, that makes sense. Hey! It's the creepy guy who tried to steal me, Big Sasuke!" Naruto glared across the table at Itachi, who in turn mumbled something about being no longer associated with Akatsuki. "What're you doing here? I'll have you know that Pervy Sage taught me a super strong jutsu, believe it! There's no way you'd win now, you know!"
Jiraya looked torn between dropping his head into his hands and watching to make sure that Itachi didn't try anything. "Naruto." Instead, he settled for a bit of a lesson. "S-rank shinobi won't be defeated by the rasengan. Especially not an incomplete rasengan."
"Hey!" Naruto crossed his arms with a huff. "Give me some time! I'm working on it!"
"Alright!" Tsunade punctuated the word by slamming her sake bottle onto the table hard enough to both shatter it and the wood below. "I'm to fucking sober for this… show of hands, how many people at this table are S-rank shinobi." Jiraiya raised his hands with a puff of pride, Tsunade exhaustedly— though she'd asked the question— Yagura a bit shyly, and Itachi after a second of silent contemplation followed. A long few seconds later, Yagura propped her arm up with a deft motion of his staff, and Akari got the point. "Five damn S-rank shinobi. I have the worst luck."
The dealer was really looking like he wanted to dip about now. The other two players had already decided they'd rather be somewhere far away from here. "You could argue that there's seven, technically. The bijuu might not be shinobi in the traditional sense, but they're certainly S-rank threats." Oh, well would you look at that. Even the dealer had decided that self preservation was worth it after all.
"That's dangerous territory you're stepping into," warned Jiraiya—
"Bijuu?" Asked Naruto, talking right over his sensei. "Like the Kyuubi? There's more ? C'mon Mask-chan you can't leave me hanging like that!"
A whisper of acrid, bright chakra burned off Yagura's palm, faintly visible for a moment before it dispersed into the air. To Akari's— and no doubt Jiraiya's— senses, it was like lighting a flash grenade in the center of the room. "Jinchuuriki. The power of human sacrifice. Each great nation has bijuu to their name, put into people and turned into weapons. I personally have Isobu, the Sanbi."
"Woah. So you're just like me?"
"Well, we get along pretty well, so not really." Naruto sulked for a second, but Yagura ruffled his hair before he could get too down— oh and didn't that put Tsunade and Jiraiya on edge. "You could be better friends with the Kyuubi if you wanted to. He's the grumpiest of the bijuu, but none of them are truly evil ."
"Don't listen to him. You three— I think you've overstayed your welcome." Damn, Jiraiya could get defensive over Naruto. Also maybe the fact that Kurama killed his (ostensibly) only living student might have had something to do with it too.
Akari gave him a slight smile, playing up the childish angle— though her mask did defeat the effect a bit. "Aww, but we haven't even told you want we've come here for!" She didn't wait for them to respond. "Yagura needs to know a bit more about bijuu seals, and I want you to heal Itachi. At least look at him."
"I'm not going to heal clan killer Itachi —"
Subtly, Akari sent a genjutsu-encoded message to Tsunade. " He was ordered, and he had external help ."
At least Tsunade was actually considering it. "This is one of those things you're going to keep bothering me about until I acquiesce, isn't it?" Akari didn't nod, but the slight incline of her head was enough to get the message across. "Fine. I'll heal Itachi if—"
"Yourself. Not via Shizune."
Tsunade practically snarled at that. " Now you're asking for it, brat. Fine. I'll heal Itachi if and only if you can get Naruto to use the Kyuubi's chakra consistently by the week's end." Naruto, who was already trying to learn the rasengan, and Kurama, who fucking hated humans… Akari shared a glance with Itachi, who nodded slightly.
Clearly he didn't really care about whether he actually got healed or not, but Akari cared. "Fine, but only if Jiraiya goes over seals with Yagura in the meanwhile." Jiraiya squawked in indignation, but Tsunade just nodded her acquiescence.
The end of the week.
Damn did she have her work cut out for her…
…
"You look like Sasuke!" Was the first thing Naruto said to her as they sat down together in a clearing just outside the city. She hadn't even taken off her vizor yet, though, given she'd be doing sharingan bs to get into Naruto's seal space, there wasn't much point in keeping it on . "Sasuke doesn't have scales, though… ooh, are they real? I knew this kid who put fake scales on his face once and it totally freaked out Ino-chan—"
"Yes, they're real." The boy's eyes gleamed. "I'm going to show you something secret, Naruto. Whatever you do, you cannot tell anyone. Okay?"
"Got it!"
"I'm serious. If you share this secret, if I think you'll share this secret, I won't teach you. This is important to me." Hopefully that impressed on Naruto the need for subtlety, though it probably wouldn't last forever. Actually, she'd consider herself lucky if her secret remained, well, secret until after Sasuke tried his whole daring escape thing. Though, maybe that wouldn't even happen? Eh who knew, she was just glad that she could… probably… protect herself if her secret got out. "Look into my eyes, Naruto."
"Huh? But you have a vizor thing… oh, you're really pretty." Goddamnit Naruto. She felt like face-palming a little. Preteen boys, really. Instead, she just activated her sharingan and pulled . "Oh that feels weird— ow! Huh? Hey! How'd you bring us to the fox sewer!"
"I used my sharingan. Yes, like Itachi and Sasuke have. No, I'm only distantly related to Sasuke—"
" Sharingan? You dare bring an Uchiha here, little brat? They are sniveling, untrustworthy fools with egos bigger than their good sense, always willing to mess something up for no reason other than their own hubris. " A massive shape loomed out of the dark mists beyond the golden seal-work gate. Hateful eyes burned, echoing the sheer killing intent of the Kyuubi no Kitsune as it glared down at the two of them.
"Oh lay off. Indra was an idiot but that was millenia ago, and Madara was a super idiot outlier not representative of the clan as a whole." The fox, fragment of divinity famed the world over for its destructive rage, gaped at her in stunned shock.
"Hey! Don't be mean to the Kyuubi!"
Akari considered for a long moment how she'd possibly gotten in this position, then sighed, shunshining over with nary a drop of water spilled to lean against the seal-space's walls "...this is stupid." Naruto shouted something, Kurama just growled, and Akari sighed. She really had her work cut out for her in the future. "Alright! Both of you. Quiet for a second. We're going to use the world's most powerful technique."
" My father was more powerful than you could ever be, human—"
"The world's most powerful technique! You've gotta show me dattebayo!"
Akari smirked. "That's right. The world's most powerful technique." She had firsthand experience, in two lives— "proper communication. Both of you sit down, we're going to have a talk ."
" Like I would — "
"Riddle me this, Kur— Kyuubi. You are stuck in a jinchuuriki. But have you ever considered that your jinchuuriki is stuck with you?"
Kurama narrowed his eyes. " They're worthless humans who only want power, and I am the one enslaved. Of course I don't care that they're stuck with me. They're the jailor, I'm the one jailed."
"But— but that's because you were committing crimes dattebayo! You attacked the village and the Yondaime sealed you to save people!"
" Is that what they teach you humans? I would have expected as much from your puny human brains—" Akari held up a hand, a clear warning. " I didn't attack the village. I was perfectly content to mind my own damn business, but those idiot Uchiha—" a glare, her way— " went and forced me to attack the village."
"What? But that doesn't make sense! Sasuke wouldn't be able to make anyone attack the village, no way!"
"It's true." Naruto looked at her like she'd told him the sun rose in the west, and even Kurama gave her a strange look— though she figured the latter was more due to the fact that she was both Uchiha and clearly backing him up. "Kurama is no saint, but he's also not guilty of those two crimes in particular. I mean, think about it. The bijuu aren't dumb beasts. There's no way he'd do something stupid enough to get himself sealed like he is—"
" Who told you that name?" Ah, oops. She'd been trying not to reveal that… " who told you that name! Tell me! That name is mine! "
"Ah… sorry, Kurama-san." She really was, actually— a short bow and all. "I'm simply too used to referring to you by your given name in my thoughts. Forgive the overstep."
Naruto stared up at Kurama with a look like wonder, confused— "you have a name?"
"Don't you, brat? At least I'm not named after ramen."
"Hey! Ramen is the best dattebayo!" A few seconds later Naruto realized the significance of what Kurama had said, leaping to his feet in shocked excitement. "Wait— I was named after ramen? Did you know my parents?"
" In a way. First I want to know how this human knows my name though!"
"But you—"
"Enough!" She wasn't as loud as either of them— eleven year old girl and whatnot, but it was plenty enough to force the both of them into a slightly sheepish silence. "One question at a time. Kurama: I'm friends with both Matatabi and Isobu, but I knew all of your names beforehand. A… bit of history knowledge that I stumbled across. Naruto, Kurama knew your parents, but he doesn't have pleasant memories of them at all, so don't press him, okay?"
"Oh! Sorry my parents were mean to you Kurama-san!" The blonde bowed apologetically— clearly copying Akari's earlier gesture, but a genuine copy nonetheless. Little bro was trying his best, absolutely adorable. "I won't press, honest!"
Kurama gave her a look, sort of incredulous, and Akari tried to get the idea that, yeah, Naruto was just like that across in return. "Now, going forward, the most important thing between you two will be communication. At least three other jinchuuriki have managed to bond with their bijuu, so I believe in the both of you." Naruto nodded eagerly, while Kurama huffed and curled up in a corner of his cage, turning away in disinterest.
Akari canceled her technique, coming to outside Naruto's mind, faintly nervous. At least Kurama hadn't outright said no… Watching, as Naruto returned to figuring out the rasengan with such dedicated focus, she could merely sigh and hope it would be enough.
…
Two days later, Jiraiya all but ambushed her before she could meet with Naruto. "Hey, bratling! I need to speak with you for a moment!"
"And I need to get somewhere, so…"
"Whaat?" He made a gasp of mock-affront, clasping a hand over his chest. "Who wouldn't want to speak to the gallant Jiraiya! The man, the myth, the legend!" It was actually kind of impressive the way he used his reputation and character to bulldoze her over her response and try and get her to respond in a way that he could predict, and thus corral.
She'd even have been interested, if he wasn't getting in her way . Luckily for her, he was kind of limited in what he could do— which was to say… "I didn't know your tastes were like that, but I suppose all powerful shinobi have their eccentricities…" she laughed inwardly as Jiraya stuttered out a denial that it totally wasn't like that at all , nuh uh. Very convincing, Jiraiya. "Naruto's waiting on me, so…"
"Right! Naruto! As his sensei, I just want to have a short talk with you about—"
"Teaching Naruto how to use the Kyuubi's power? Weren't you going to do that anyways?" As though she had any doubts on the matter. "Anyways, I think I'll be—" she released the genjutsu she'd put Jiraiya under, reappearing twenty feet in front of him on the other side of the gate. "Going now. Bye!" Shunshining away from Jiraiya was amazing. Using void presence to hide with Naruto (the boy thought it made for a great prank) while the man tried to track them down with sage mode was hilarious .
Good times, all around.
…
Good times came to an end.
Good times came to an Orochimaru, which was more or less because good times and Orochimaru were mutually antagonistic terms. Unfortunately, Orochimaru was more powerful than fun , too, which meant that she was straight out of luck when it came to having a good day today.
However—
The snake bastard really had no idea what was coming for him. He might have thought he had the upper hand, battling against Tsunade McHemophobia, a drugged Jiraiya, and a blond brat with his trusted Kabuto by his right hand to ensure that things went well, but… nobody expects the spanish inquisition! Or at least, S-rank shinobi that were actually sneaky seemed to be a rare commodity.
As Akari decapitated Kabuto with a single chakra empowered strike of a kunai and immolated his body with an A-rank fire technique, she really only had a second to think about how much she was changing the future before the heat of her technique died down and Kabuto was nothing but ashes on the wind. "Screw that. Orochimaru. You and I have unfinished business."
"You've made an enemy of me today, Void Ghost." He angrily shoved chakra onto a seal on his arm as the other two sannin flicked through hand seals, and three huge plumes of smoke erupted over the already wrecked castle. "Manda! Kill her! Then purge Ryuchi Cave of her associates ." Oh. Oh . Akari's sharingan spun furiously as her killing intent, subtle and vicious, clinically sharp and dark as the yin chakra she'd built so many techniques off of, blanketed the clearing with much the same force as those of the sannin.
She rarely used it, because it was so inimical to stealth and all, but… "Orochimaru. You are the one who's made an enemy today, believe it or not. Itachi trounced you…" the smile she sent him was positively evil— "and I beat Itachi ." She threw herself into a shunshin towards him, throwing a handful of empowered senbon around him— to restrict his movement— before she slipped easily to his other side and chucked a kunai straight at him.
For any other S-rank nin, perhaps, it wouldn't have worked, but she knew the snake sannin. Even if she didn't really know him, he was a true disciple of Ryuchi Cave, which meant… they were more similar than he really realized. He'd expected her to blink behind him, and he as he deflected each successive kunai she threw at him, smirking—
He didn't realize he was underneath a genjutsu until Tsunade's fist impacted his stomach and blasted him through the side of the castle.
"Manda! Take me—" Orochimaru never got a chance to finish his sentence. Not because anything happened to him— on the contrary, he leapt out of the way of the attack with graceful ease, a quick shunshin-variant carrying him in a straight line hundreds of feet away from the giant snake.
No, it was because Manda exploded.
Or, more accurately, Isobu had got involved. For as much as Itachi had clearly wanted to join in the battle, she'd absolutely refused— what with the state his lungs were in… but it wasn't like Yagura couldn't. They'd planned this— because, honestly, there were S-rank jutsu, and then there were bs jutsu like bijuudama.
The beam of incandescent chakra lanced out from the mountaintop Isobu had claimed, crossing the distance in less than a second. Enough for a shinobi to dodge, maybe— but Manda didn't have that same mobility, and the snake was blasted into the air. The subtle prickle of chakra— hidden by their killing intent but so obvious now— filled the air as Isobu began to charge up another bijuudama— but before it could hit, Manda disappeared in a poof of smoke.
Jiraiya and Akari crossed the space between themselves and Orochimaru in only a handful of seconds— though only Jiraiya could be seen— and then the battle was back on. Jiraiya was doing some sort of… routine, or something, asking Orochimaru to reconsider, something something Will of Fire drivel and what have you, but it was clear Orochimaru was increasingly hard pressed to defend against them. Even when he figured out the trick to get rid of her Void Presence, it wasn't like she was a bad shinobi by any means— and she took a lot of pride in the fact that her genjutsu were doing an absolute number on him.
Orochimaru leapt away from them both, a brief lull opening in the battle as they caught their breath. She'd used too much chakra— maybe her decision to leave Itachi behind had been a bad one… "Be honored. This body was nearing the end of its usefulness anyways, but you alone have made me shed my skin in such a dramatic way. I copied this jutsu from a cultist who'd journeyed all the way from the Land of Fangs! Fire release sage art: immolation of—" Akari flickered forward in a shunshin to stop him—
But it was Naruto who slammed a rasengan into sannin from where he'd snuck up behind him, a wreath of fiery orange chakra boiling off his form. Orochimaru bounced off the ground, kicking Naruto away from him with a sickening crunch of ribs breaking— before substituting away, his momentum fully lost.
A few seconds later Tsunade landed beside them, seal covering her body as she knelt beside Naruto. "That brat …" she took a deep breath, then laid her hands on Naruto and began to heal him. "How'd you do it? I gave you two impossible tasks, and you managed both of them."
"I…" his voice was weak, but the massive grin on his face all but lit up the forest around them. "Just had to realize that they didn't have to be two tasks… and that everyone deserves a friend. I had Kurama help me make the rasengan!" Instead of the clone, as per canon…
Bijuu assisted rasengan? Yeah, Akari decided— that was badass.
Tsunade smiled too, and with Naruto around? The joy was positively infectious. "You'll make a great Hokage one day, brat." Gently, she rested her necklace around Naruto's neck, a bit of sadness touching her eyes for a moment as the crystals glowed softly against the bijuu's chakra. "I know it. Guess I owe Itachi a surgery, don't I?"
"It would be much appreciated." Jiraiya looked like he'd eaten a lemon at the whole, everything, but… he managed to wrest control of his emotions and congratulate Naruto for his success, and so long as he didn't try anything against Itachi she could slot him into her 'decent person, actually' group. The man hadn't even made a single advance her way!
Well, maybe the fact that she was eleven had something to do with it. Jiraiya was a lot of bad things, but at least he wasn't a pedo.
Anyways. The chakra exhaustion was getting to her. She really needed a bit of rest and some food—
"I do have a question, though," Jiraiya asked, "what did Orochimaru mean about your associates in Ryuchi Cave?"
Akari groaned. This was going to be a long explanation.
…
The hospital foyer was deserted. This might, just maybe, have been due to the fact that pretty much the entire snakefam was spread out across the room, discussing how they'd have to up their game of keeping away from Manda. The big snake had, apparently, been particularly unkind to them even before Orochimaru's most recent command.
She had half a mind to go kill the big snake herself, immediately, but she was still chakra exhausted and frankly too normal exhausted too. She had summoned an unaffiliated snake and told it in no uncertain terms to go tell Manda to keep away on pain of death, but she wasn't sure how much that'd help…
"So let me get this straight. You're a snake sage," yeah, she nodded— "have a decent mastery of all five elements, lava release, boil release, and yin release whatever the hell that even means, alongside a decently wide repertoire of jutsu, including that one S-rank water jutsu I kept hearing about—" a nod, again, though she didn't clarify that 'decently wide' meant like a few hundred. "You're also a genjutsu master." Obviously. That was half her whole schtick. "All of that, and you're eleven."
"...yeah? Well I'm actually almost twelve."
Jiraiya dropped his head into his hands. "What was I even doing with my life? S-rank at eleven, that's insane…"
"I'm a baby S-rank, at best."
"Hey! Brat! C'mere, I need some more help!" Called Tsunade from the operating room, and— well, if she needed help for Itachi, then of course she'd be there. Ignoring Jiraiya's mumbling— something along the lines of 'of course she has medical expertise, ' she stepped into the operating room, and didn't stare, though she wanted to. She'd worked with medic-nin long enough to know what to do when there was an operation going on.
Itachi did… not look like he was in good shape. Actually, visibly getting a look at the mess that made her want to gag, and given some of the things she'd seen in her shinobi career, that was rather impressive. Most of it was this blackened… rotting, sickening thing.
Tsunade put her on assistant duty, which she took to easily enough. It was more or less what she'd done before, anyways. Plus, whatever Tsunade was doing… it was far beyond her own meager medical knowledge. Her sharingan recorded the procedure dutifully, carefully keeping track of everything in case it became important enough in the future.
The fact that they'd made the trek to the nearest hospital to do the operation instead of staying in Tanzaku Gai certainly said… something. Probably that it was going to be difficult — "how's your chakra control, kid?" Akari blinked out of the assistant-autopilot she'd gotten used to over long hours working in the mist rebellion's hospital. "Regrowing his lungs is impossible, so what I'm going to do is remove the rotten parts on a cellular level and replace them with healthy, regrown cells. Think you're up to grabbing the residue and disposing of it?"
Shizune was busy doing life support, which made sense, and she supposed the fact that she was an S-rank genjutsu master did suggest decent chakra control… "I have decent chakra control. Not quite where I want it, but…" she was still working on it, okay. Chakra control exercises were an endless path. "Can you show me the technique? I'll only need to see it once." Tsunade rolled her eyes, but had Shizune help her through the first part, a blackish sludge leaking off of flesh that grew in at a visible past. Shizune wasn't just picking up the stuff, either— she was actively moving it out of the way as Tsunade worked. "Yeah. I can probably do that." Tsunade looked surprised, but it was more or less just chakra control. With Tsunade there to guide her, it wasn't like she needed to do the hard parts of medical techniques— all she had to do was do a simple task and do it well.
So, she did.
It was honestly a bit dull, but she made sure to put… most… of her focus on it. She still dealt with managing the tools and waste and whatnot, but that was a similarly brainless task.
It took ten hours. Akari had been forced to use sage mode thrice to replenish her chakra even with how precise their ministrations were. By the end of it, though… pristine lungs, free of rot and death breathed steadily in a body that was no longer at risk of catastrophic failure, healed . As Tsunade closed up Itachi's chest cavity and listed all the things Itachi should and definitely should not do for the next year, Akari was struck that she wasn't the only one beaming.
…
It had been so long since Tsunade had done a life saving surgery, that she'd almost forgotten the euphoric feeling of success as she finished, sure that whatever she'd done had well and truly changed her patients lives for the better. The fact that the surgery had been for clan-killer Itachi had been… surprising, but the young man was perfectly pleasant for the most part. Quiet, a bit sad, but… normal.
Ordered, huh. She could see it, now.
They'd left the day prior, all the snake un-summoned the three S-rank nin gon in the night. Naruto had been a bit disappointed to learn that 'Akari nee-chan' had left so quickly, but he had been forewarned that they wouldn't be staying… and now, here, in a deserted inn a day's run from the hospital, she couldn't help but think.
"She's an odd kid, isn't she." Sato Akari. Void Ghost. Hero of Kiri, according to her idiot of a teammate's spies, but wandering Fire country with the very Mizukage she'd reportedly killed. Of all three of the powerful trio, she was perhaps the least remarkable— both Yagura and Itachi were renowned genocidal maniacs, though they'd both been… not that, at all , in her experience— but Tsundade's thoughts kept returning to Akari . "Her chakra control…"
"She's a sage." That hadn't been in any of their reports, but it certainly made sense. Especially with how she'd somehow managed not to get chakra exhausted during the procedure… that brat . Using sage energy in another person's body! Next time she saw her, her fist would tell her exactly how bad an idea that was. "With her chakra reserves, she'd need to have an incredibly fine— and firm control not to straight turn to stone."
"It's more than that." More than the fact she was integrating natural chakra into her own reserves, which was already arcane. "Her chakra control… it is incredible. "
"Perfect?"
Tsunade shook her head. "More than that. Her technique— yin release: void presence," she'd gotten a vague description of what it was, which even though it wasn't even close to useful information, was a lot of trust for a missing nin. "She doesn't have the Nara kekkei genkai—" she was too much of a go-getter, though she was certainly intelligent enough— "but she's using pure yin chakra in techniques. I can't do that, Jiraiya." For a long second, Jiraiya was silent. The idiot probably couldn't even imagine that someone had better chakra control than she did. In all fairness, she did have pretty good chakra control.
Understatement of the century.
The toad sage hummed softly before carefully flicking through hand seals, a privacy fuuinjutsu blooming around them. The hum of her teammate's chakra, despite it all, was pleasant around her. "I have a theory. Naruto wouldn't share the technique Akari used to get the Kyuubi to work with him, and we know she's affiliated with Orochimaru. Itachi is clearly close to her. Far closer than two all but strangers should be." Tsunade had the feeling that this was going to be one of the rare moments of intelligence that would only cause problems for her down the line. "They look similar, if you ignore the horns and scales…" she could already feel the headache— "I think Akari is an artificial Uchiha."
Damnit. She wasn't even Hokage yet, and she was already regretting it.
Notes:
Kurama and naruto's thing really just came to me while I was writing the chapter and I thought it would make for a fun thing. Protaganist abilities really be like
Anyways
Hopefully this chapter didn't suck to hard. I've barely been working on this project recently, tho I do need to wrap it up before it gets left as another unfinished fanfic... eh, whatever, it'll be fine either way.
Chapter 11: Immolation
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
She had to hand it to them, they'd tried pretty hard to keep their village actually hidden, and that was frankly admirable compared to literally every other 'hidden' village out there. For pretty much any other shinobi, it might have worked, but… yeah. Sage mode. It was such a cheat code when it came to sensing, and the Hero Water— not to mention the big tree, and the whole ninja village — stood out against the backdrop of natural energy. Well, the tree didn't so much stand out as it was the backdrop of natural energy, a locus in the weft of the world breathing vibrancy into the land around them.
Pretty cool. It almost felt designed, though it didn't look like a shinju, so it probably wasn't Ootsutsuki make. One of the summon clans, maybe? Either way, it didn't stop the three of them from dropping down through the branches of the great tree, void presence hiding them from detection as they walked across the central lake and into the small village.
Shopping time! Itachi still had some funds from his Akatsuki days, and Akari had some stuff of her own— only Yagura was broke, but he was also the only one who didn't really need anything new either. Itachi looked sharp dressed in actual shinobi gear, then almost normal with a simple brown cloak overtop, blending easily and seamlessly into the village. Getting a new visor was a relief, too— the old one hadn't quite fit her that well anymore, with all the growing she'd done— and some new shinobi gear was nice too. Senbon… yeah, she'd been running out of senbon, so it was an excited Akari indeed who left a shop fully restocked.
A few weeks passed, nobody was the wiser that three S-rank nin had taken up residence in their village, and Akari turned twelve.
Itachi had remembered her birthday, and had decided that embarrassing her was the absolute best thing for an S-rank, world-feared shinobi to get up to in his free time, which meant that the birthday party came as a complete surprise. She'd been focusing on sage mode techniques, mediting in one of the big tree's highest boughs and contemplating on the meaning of nature or whatever the fuck sages did as she worked on something really cool, except when she'd tried to make her way down to the bit of unoccupied mountain they'd claimed as their own she was intercepted halfway and all but pulled to a picnic spread out across a small crook on the tree.
There was plenty of dango, which was her clue as to whose idea this whole thing was. Yagura was already tucking into some seafood they'd somehow managed to get— they must have been planning this for quite a while, to take detours on their missions to grab all this stuff. A girl about her age, maybe a bit older, was sitting uncomfortably on the opposite side of the blanket from her, and it was all Akari could do to restrain herself to just a sigh. "We don't need to be so melodramatic, you know. It's a family stereotype, not a clan tradition."
" I didn't invite Fu-chan, though I've heard good things about her. " Oh, it wasn't Yagura eating seafood, it was Isobu . That made sense, actually. " Rather, I invited Chomei. "
"Um. Hi." Fu blushed, carefully reaching for the food, eyes a little wide as nobody tried to stop her. Oof ouch her heart, she was so adorable . "I got a letter that asked for Chomei, and, uh, Isobu sent it? That's the three-tails, right?"
"Yeah. Nice to have you here." She'd have to meet Chomei in person later, but at least Fu was pretty cool herself. "Hey… actually, what can you tell me about flight?" She was just curious, totally. There was no way Isobu's facepalm was because she was being about as subtle as a brick to the face.
To be fair, a brick to the face could be plenty subtle. Probably. With enough genjutsu, anything could be subtle.
They ate a companionable meal, and by the end of it Fu even opened up a little. Apparently she only had one friend in the village, and barely at that. Pretty traditional jinchuuriki stuff, so this was like christmas come early for her.
Wait, they didn't even have christmas in the elemental nations. Solstice celebrations? There were some, she knew, but she hadn't gotten the chance to celebrate them much before… eh, whatever. They didn't tell her who they were, though she figured out that Yagura was Isobu's jinchuuriki pretty quickly.
Then, gifts! That had been the main reason for the whole thing— Itachi had got her a new set of paints and a brush, which was surprisingly considerate of him, while Yagura had gotten her a brand new cloak woven of Aburame silk. Somehow. She had no idea how he'd managed that one, but when she asked he'd only smirked and said that you didn't need to sneak into Konoha to steal some fabric.
It was a great day, in the end, and she'd spent the evening speed-painting a portrait of the four of them together, posing with Takigakure in the background. Props to the misuse of the once-Mizukage's A-rank signature mirror jutsu for that one.
She let Fu keep the painting, sealed away in a scroll for safekeeping. After all, she'd remember it perfectly for all time. The girl could use some comfort…
Some more time passed. Someone tried a coup d'etat, but Team 7 managed to prevent that mess from causing too many problems. Fu's standing in the village was a little bit better after her help with that, and the next time they met she was all bouncy and eager about how Shibuki would let her attend the Chunin exams next time they rolled around. Akari offered congratulations. Itachi offered dango. Three guesses for who her new favorite Uchiha was.
As per Tsunade's recommendations, Itachi was mostly allowed only light work— which for him meant anything up to about A-rank, though Akari was pretty sure Tsunade had meant it far more literally than that. There were, perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of missing-nin and 'missing-nin' trying to take advantage of things in the Land of Fire after Orochimaru's invasion.
Even Akari took some bounties. There was this one man who'd been using a subtle genjutsu against civilians to destroy the economies and communities of small villages, which— nuh uh, not allowed on her watch.
She'd allowed herself to be seen turning that bounty in, decapitated head and all. The two Konoha jonin who'd showed up not even half a day later were certainly an unexpected surprise, but they left after determining she hadn't stuck around. Silly them, she'd literally been walking like, half a dozen feet behind them the whole time they were there.
Mostly, though, she didn't take missions. It wasn't that she couldn't— obviously— but more that she was much more focused on figuring out techniques. First of all— shadow clones. She had enough chakra to do a few, and enough sharingan memories of Naruto using them to know the technique, but they were just… unwieldy. She could understand why they were a forbidden jutsu— how the fuck Naruto used so many at once was beyond her.
Sage mode via clone worked , sure, but it felt… distinctly awkward. Part of that was because of how specifically snake senjutsu worked, with the bodily modifications and whatnot always tripping her up when the subtle changes on her clones didn't match the ones on her own body, and part of that was because her own use of sage mode wasn't solely for combat. It'd be useful when she was fighting some tough bastard that she couldn't take out in a single use of sage mode, but for her everyday use, it just… wasn't.
Anyways, cool technique, props to Naruto for figuring that one out, onto the important stuff.
Once while Itachi was back from a mission— more a break from missions he'd protested bitterly in the way that an ever polite Uchiha protested— she'd asked him to show her Amaterasu, fully expecting him to refuse. It was a dangerous jutsu, a self-damaging jutsu, and she'd been well prepared to not see it at all.
Instead, he pulled a leaf off the tree, eyes swirling into the pinwheel of the mangekyou, and ignited it with the black fire that burned forever.
She'd been focusing , and even then it was so fast — which made sense, given the nature of the technique. Yin and fire release chakra mixed together, the yin, the imagination of it enforcing a condition on the fire that made it inextinguishable. Simpler than the Tsukuyomi, but somewhat similar nonetheless..
She told Itachi as much, and only got a 'hn' in response before the young man went to get some rest.
If Tsukuyomi made the mindscape real, and Amaterasu made fire unquenchable… Amaterasu was simpler than Tsukuyomi, even if it was still this odd combination of fire and yin release.
Forty seven hand signs, two months, and the very edges of a chakra control shed hard focused on improving by tracing lines of natured chakra through progressively smaller spaces in a leaf, she laughed with a cathartic joy as blaze (yin fire, really) release: Amaterasu ignited the some leaves in front of her.
Itachi had been ecstatic about the development, even if it was an objectively mid jutsu— following form, it would take almost four hundred hand signs to cast Tsukuyomi, and that was with her control as it was. She wasn't even sure she could at all .
It'd been a long time since her control was well and truly insufficient for something. It excited her.
She went on some missions disguised as Itachi after that, a bit of Amaterasu used in the Land of Rivers to throw some false trails. It was kind of funny to see everyone scurrying around down there trying to find Itachi when he was actually up somewhere near the Land of Iron. It was also… strange, in a way, to be alone again.
Amidst the vast wilderness, surrounded by the rumpled valleys and embraced by the celestial firmament, she felt the part of a lone cloud, unnoticed and unseen but for the brief passing of its rain. Itachi, she thought, thrived in the low-risk missions where a few genjutsu could end the conflict before it started, and she could see why. It was an eminently peaceful kind of life.
The three of them waited carefully for Akatsuki's next move, crows watching Konoha and Suna and snakes the land around Ame, but… nothing. She even managed to grab a zetsu, once, but the thing was infuriatingly single-minded in its inability to give her useful information, so she'd just burnt it to a crisp with white hot fire that probably used too much chakra, but… eh, it was cathartic.
Whatever Akatsuki's plans were now, they'd clearly been set back fiercely by Itachi's defection. Akari could understand— he was a dangerous shinobi, one with an incredibly good reason to bear a grudge and inside knowledge that, although not entirely accurate, was probably enough to cause problems.
So, nothing.
It put her on edge.
Sasuke defeated Konoha. Orochimaru kept on being evil, but it was honestly somewhat of a disturbing thought to wonder whether or not he was safer outside of Konoha. Given Danzo's… Danzo-ness, and the fact that hidden villages could be cruel to defectors, they decided to keep a close watch and nothing more drastic. Not yet, at least…
It was the talk of the nations, though, alongside some disrupted trade through Fang and Bears, and the rising instability in the far countries that threatened to spark into a more serious conflict. She got a bounty from Kiri, too, for associating with the former-Mizukage who they assured everyone definitely wasn't alive. Hopefully Mei was mad. Well, too mad— they'd only put an A-rank bounty on her, so…
Fu ran across her on a sunny day, high in the boughs of Takigakure's great tree where luminance beamed through what sparse canopy remained and few shinobi dared tread. The buzz of her wings roused Akari from her meditation, the perfect stillness balancing her atop the world, as the nanabi jinchuuriki alighted on an equally small branch a few feet away from her. "Whatchya working on?"
Akari sighed, opening her eyes and dismissing her newest attempt at a chakra control exercise: a three dimensional net where each time her chakra thread reached the end of the set space, she had to split it and weave it into the pattern. "Nothing much. There's a technique I want to replicate, but it's… really complicated." It was, at least, better at training multi thread control than the leaf method she'd been using for Amaterasu.
"Aww, that sucks. Anyways! Did you hear? I'm going to the chunin exams soon! It's going to be so exciting , I'ma go to Konoha then Suna? Yeah, Suna, and it's going to be so fun . I'm excited!" Akari couldn't help but smile alongside the girl's eagerness, even though what she knew of Chunin exams was that it was less fun and more life or death . "And I was wondering, I have to find a team, but Shibuku never said they had to be from Taki…"
"Nope. Nuh uh." She chuckled at Fu's crestfallen expression, giving her the 'stop and think' look she hadn't really had to use much since her reincarnation. "Fu. I'm an S-rank shinobi. It would be eminently unfair if I was on your team."
"You're S-rank?! Wha! No way!"
Akari cocked her head in inquiry. "Did you not look for me in a bingo book? Like, at all ?"
"No! That'd be rude, y'know?" Bless her heart, she was just so cute. She knew who Itachi and Yagura were, but she could see how her… far subtler style would have avoided such instant recognition. Plus, with how they'd only talked a few times… "I thought you were like, B-rank, or A-rank!"
"I'm friends with bijuu."
"I'm friends with a bijuu too! Anyone can be friends with a bijuu, as long as they're not mean and stupid." That was… honestly a good point. "I… if you're S-rank, you must have done some really awesome stuff! Like—"
"Did I ever tell you how I befriended Matatabi?" Fu leaned in closer, shaking her head, and Akari snickered at the memory. It'd been stressful at the time, but… "so after saving her from some mist-nin, I decided to sneak into the Raikage's residence because Matatabi was suspicious of me…" she told her story, Fu listening enraptured, and she made a decision. "I'm not getting anywhere with my jutsu, so… want to learn a cool jutsu?" It was a no brainer question. What genin would say no to learning a cool jutsu?
Not Fu, that was for sure. What was more difficult, though, was finding a technique that suited her skill level, one that wouldn't become obsolete in like five seconds flat— and perhaps most importantly— one that would help keep her safe. Various A-rank, and one S-rank wind jutsu she wasn't even sure she'd be able to do herself, were discarded, mind combing through all the list of jutsu she'd copied with her sharingan until she all but stumbled over one that just might work.
It would be interesting adapting it for Fu's use, but she was pretty sure she could make it work. Making a one-handed seal, she dragged her right hand down through the air, a light breeze blowing out to ruffle the canopy around them.
"Pretty cool, huh?" She held back a laugh at Fu's half-hidden look of disappointment. After all, that'd been barely better than a D-rank wind jutsu— not damaging in the slightest. "I'm just kidding, Fu— that jutsu's supposed to be used with a fan. There was this one mist-nin in the camp who thought they'd be able to take Mei in a spar because their fan could blow away her boil release, but… lava." Fu didn't need to know the details of the situation to wince at that one. Arrogant people challenging kage to spars almost never ended well. "Now, I know you don't have a fan, but you do have…"
"Wings! Oh man, that's awesome ." Fu gushed, jumping at Akari to give her a hug, apparently forgetting they were precariously balanced on thin branches. Thank all the kami for chakra sticking. "You're a genius!"
Akari ruffled Fu's hair. "Not really, but I try." Given that Fu was a bit taller than her, it was a bit awkward…
Then they got down to training.
…
Akari was glad that she had fire as her natural affinity, because it was definitely the element that made the least sense out of the five. She had a good understanding of wind, though— so long spent in high places seeking out the essence of the element, tasting the air, watching the clouds crawl across the sky and thinking of pressure, of vast currents and coriolis forces… all that combined to what she understood of wind .
Fu understood wind. Chomei understood wind, in a way that put her meager understanding to shame— and by the time she'd finished teaching them their new jutsu she was pretty sure the girl's teammates were sick and tired of being thrown about Taki. Watching, hidden on rooftops and in the shadowed places…
She had to admit, it was a little funny.
She'd been thinking, though. Itachi and Yagura had been starting to take more and more missions together recently, and less missions in general— more just wandering— and Akari hadn't been out in some months. Tsukuyomi, and the further depths of chakra she'd only barely begun to touch on— those eluded her, and… frankly, she found herself starting to think that there was some merit in going with Fu to the chunin exams. She'd been meaning to go to Suna, anyways— it was on her bucket list of random things to do before the world (maybe) turned into a massive warfield, to talk to Shukaku and maybe Gaara too.
So, reluctantly, she turned away from Tsukuyomi and focused on sage mode techniques. There was a path there, in the snake clan's senjutsu— dragon senjutsu— hinted at cryptically by the White Snake Sage and explored a little by her, and she knew that she could dive deeper into the evolution of the body…
That wasn't what she wanted to focus on at the moment. Adamantine bones and supernaturally strong muscles were cool and all, but there was one thing she'd been promised a long while back that had fascinated her, something she'd been working on on and off for years…
Akari knew the wind. It was an old friend to her, it's caress as broad as the world. Lighter than water and more fluid, expanding until it could no more, thin and thick, heavy and redolent with a million odors and so little. Empty, yet so very full. The way of the dragon was not the way of the wind, but in certain aspects… in certain aspects, they were close .
When it came time for the chunin exams, Akari sunk into sage mode, her body clay to mold— and on the ancient nature of nature, too many textbooks read and a few poor birds whose deaths served the greater good, honest— Akari pushed wings out of her back and took to the skies.
Fu— having gotten her genjutsu-message, met her up in the atmosphere thousands of feet above Takigakure. The Land of Waterfalls spread out around them, rugged terrain and dense forests for as far as the eye could see— water and earth and air, fire and lightning in the faint few settlements she could spy encroaching on the wilderness.
"You can fly now! That's awesome! How'd you get— is it a jutsu? How much chakra does it take? Could anyone —"
"It's not a jutsu." For now and until she removed them with sage mode— or surgically, though that sounded painful — the wings were a part of her and she had wings . "It's a sage thing. I grew them."
"That's so cool ." Fu flitted close to her, dodging between the comparatively ponderous beats of Akari's draconic wings as she tried and failed to feel them. The genin was still more nimble in the air than she was, but she'd put in a lot of effort to adjust the draconic path into something that could be similarly nimble. Two sets of wings instead of one allowed her to hover in place, and there were… well, a lot of anatomy things and whatnot, but it worked . Felt weird, sure, but it worked.
She wasn't sure how much she'd be using it in serious fights— after all, it didn't work super well with her style of fighting, but…
Flight. C'mon, that was epic.
She chatted with Fu a bit more before letting her get back to her genin team— secretly following behind her with a bit of void presence. Leaving a note for Itachi and Yagura when they got back, she carefully followed the Taki genin team as they— really quickly for genin— made their way to the land of fire. To Konoha .
It was the second time she'd been back since she'd left, and it felt… a lot less nerve-wracking, that's for sure. Spend enough time sneaking— literally living — in hostile shinobi villages, and you kind of grew numb to it a little
She landed atop a random civilian apartment, quietly scanning the busy streets below before she— reluctantly— got rid of the wings. She'd regrow them for the flight to Suna, but for now it wasn't worth it, what with how little practice she had with them. They really threw off her balance, even when tightly folded against her back.
The first part of the exam would take place in the academy, but not for a few days yet, which meant Fu had some free time to wander around Konoha. They were genin, so they were ostensibly unsupervised, but she was also a jinchuuriki so Akari could practically taste the ROOT tail on her. Danzo was probably salivating over the opporunity to get his hands on a foreign jinchuuriki, which… nah, not happening.
Genjutsu for the win. After watching the agent for a few minutes, she quietly put a suggestion on him that he not drink out of his water canteen— because the mission was important, and he needed to keep a close eye on the foreign jinchuuriki. Rest was secondary. From there all it took were a few dizziness genjutsu and a tile that shouldn't have been loose, and she left the man unconscious in one of Konoha's many shadowed eaves. He'd be fine.
Probably. Unless Danzo decided to go all Danzo on him, but that wasn't really her problem.
Fu's team, none the wiser, were looking for something to eat, which— perfect. She couldn't have asked for better. Applying a subtle, simple genjutsu that'd make her look like a civilian girl— no horns or scales, and definitely no tell-tale visor— she dropped down to the street and waved at Fu excitedly. "Hey! I heard you were looking for somewhere to eat?"
One of Fu's teammates narrowed their eyes, staring suspiciously at her— though clearly not able to break the genjutsu. "Who are—"
"Yeah!" Fu overrode him instantly, bouncing forward excitedly. "Do you know a good place? Ignore them, they're grouches— we're not from Konoha, so we don't know any of the good restaurants around here." Her third teammate just sighed and facepalmed.
Akari winked at Fu, grabbing her hand and pulling her along with her. Average twelve year old behavior, yup. "I know this great ramen place, it's a bit hole in the wall but I've heard some really good things about them. Did you know that the Hokage used to eat there?" Pulling a jinchuuriki and their entourage of obviously foreign ninja around was not something anyone with a lot of self preservation would do, but civilians had never been known for their self-preservation instinct to start off. Plus, so long as she was a kid she could totally lean into the so-vaunted civilian ignorance .
Also, this was the first time she'd get to eat at Ichiraku's— she hadn't gotten a chance back when she'd actually lived in Konoha, and she was excited . Sitting at the actual restaurant, she had to admit— it was as good as advertised. Fast service, incredible flavor, and Teuchi was a veritable saint. Fu loved the place for that last one alone, and even her teammates grudgingly accepted that it was good .
"So," began Akari around a mouthful of food, "what brings you to Konoha? There's been a bunch of foreign shinobi around recently."
"The chunin exams. Fu is an exceedingly capable shinobi, and we plan on getting promoted such that we can take missions more appropriate to our rank and standing in the village." Fu waved her assent for her teammate's explanation, what with her being too busy stuffing ramen into her mouth to respond.
Naruto would like her. It was a shame they'd never met in canon…
Canon was dead, and she'd killed it. She'd be damned if she let Akatsuki get their hands on the jinchuuriki. "Oh that's pretty cool!" She responded simply, far more calm than she was feeling at the moment. "Some of the Konoha genin are participating. They're really strong! There was this whole attack last time we hosted the chunin exams, lots of fighting, and apparently the genin were a big part in stopping it. One even stopped the Ichibi!" Fu's teammates balanced at that, but Akari pretended not to notice. Again, civilian.
At least she had a whole lifetime of being one to back up her faux-normality. She could only imagine what Naruto would look like pretending to be a civilian… actually, on second thought, he might be so energetic that they'd simply fail to imagine him possibly being as dangerous as he'd ended up in the series.
They wrapped up at Ichiraku's, and Akari gave a subtle suggestion to Fu's teammates to not pay attention to their conversation. "Excited for your test, Fu? You invited me, and I decided that it'd be pretty interesting to tag along…"
"Oh!" Fu's eyes widened as a grin split her face. "You snuck into Konoha ? How'd you manage that! I mean, they're not hidden like Taki, but I've heard that sneaking into Konoha is super hard!" Through shinobi rumors, most likely, subtly encouraged by Konoha shinobi and reinforced by the fact that, yeah, despite how the city was more or less just smack dab in the middle of obvious-to-findville, it was pretty damn difficult to break in. If you had low enough chakra you could get in disguised as a civilian, but sneaking in unnoticed was all but impossible due to the fuuinjutsu barrier.
Well, either that or use yin release: void presence to pretty much completely bypass that. She shrugged as faux-arrogantly as she could, tilting her head up just a little bit and smiling regardless. "I'm simply just that good." Fu snickered, and Akari took that as a win. "Really, though— I'm not going to help you through the exams, because that'd be silly, but I will cheer you on. You and Chomei deserve to win this."
Fu was quiet for a second, but then— smiling, never not smiling, she embraced Akari in a surprise hug. "Thanks. It means a lot to me. Ooh! Did you make that sage wing jutsu… thing… just to follow me to Konoha? That's so cool! How does…" and for a while, they just talked about silly things, basic jutsu and worries and Fu's hopes for the future—
Then Fu had to leave and Akari was left alone.
She'd already been back to the Uchiha district, and maybe it was a bit selfish, but she didn't want to return again. All the hotels were pretty closely watched, so she found a place in one of the training grounds that probably wouldn't see use for a while, summoned Chikao to keep watch, and fell asleep thinking about the future. It wasn't long before she'd be thirteen…
It was odd, she thought as she stared up at hostile stars, to think that in shinobi terms she was a survivor . She'd survived a massacre, survived a rebellion, survived a bunch of missing-nin that had no chance of hurting her and some that did, survived fighting Akatasuki at least once and came out on top for… most of it.
She was twelve, almost thirteen, and a veteran shinobi. She wondered why that felt so… right.
Watching the stars and Konoha's lights, she drifted off to a light sleep—
Woke up, early in the morning before the sunrise, when the village was all but silent. Solitude, predawn— empty streets illuminated for none but the few early birds and the shinobi who worked at all times of the day. Them, and Akari.
Void presence was awesome. Nobody even noticed her as she walked through the streets, checking up on all her old haunts. She remembered comfortable walks in a different city, warm summer nights and long winters, a… a far time past. She must be feeling particularly contemplative, to have dragged up those old memories…
She watched as sunlight split the horizon and bled over the hidden village, ruddy golden light rousing the city, to rise— and she might, just maybe, have stalked some of the genin as they arrived at the academy for their first test. In her defense, she knew where most of the clans lived in Konoha, so it was the others that interested her. Lee lived in the genin housing for orphans, much the same as some of the few she'd stolen from back when she was like… two, god that was so long ago, while Tenten lived close to the Hyuuga compound in a decently nice house attached to a workshop. She recognized the maker's mark on the weapons, actually— it was a familiar one, even if she sucked at the tanto.
Genma certainly knew how to give a good gift, even if he sucked balls at giving good gifts to children .
Lastly, Sakura. Of all the genin, she lived in perhaps the most normal space. She was also the easiest to find, because she remembered her chakra signature. There was something distinctly more… powerful about her now, tight wound and carved into herself— or rather, being carved into her. Perhaps that was the yin seal, which… yeah, yin energy was a bitch and a half to work with, so props to Sakura for being awesome enough to do that.
Her house was just… a house. Her two civilian parents had woken up early and packed her a lunch, clearly not really understanding what their daughter was off to do but supporting her nonetheless. They had the look of good people, which… rip to them, having not just a shinobi daughter, but a good shinobi daughter. Must suck.
She followed Sakura to the academy, where the test was taking place, then noped out to go faff around some more. One of the Akimichi restaurants was open for breakfast, and though she'd never really been a breakfast person before, she henged into a nondescript older woman and enjoyed her meal immensely.
Then—
A bit of senjutsu, some wings— gosh did those still feel weird— and then she settled down to wait. Shikamaru and Temari were giving the test, which— well, that was incentive enough for her to stay out of the way. She was pretty sure a motivated Shikamaru would be able to see her, void presence or not.
Almost too soon, it was over, and then they were told to race to Suna. And that… that was exciting. Akari grinned, and shot into the air with a snap of her wings, shooting south the moment they called start. She'd never been the fastest shinobi for a long distance haul, even though she was certainly up there for fastest at short distance— barring spacetime stuff— but with her wings…
Oh yeah, she was loving the feeling of speed .
She landed near Suna, walked the rest of the distance to find that she was— unsurprisingly— the first to arrive, and waited for the rest. They didn't send the genin straight into the Demon Desert— though that'd probably have made a good test, something about conserving resources while still being able to get somewhere in a timely manner… she got the impression that the desert was dangerous .
The next day, though, the thirty genin came together, listened to a short speech by Gaara, and departed into the desert. Akari didn't follow though— she was far more interested in Gaara . Her sharingan caught the subtle twist of his chakra as he held a small layer of sand protectively over his body, the immense force that surrounded him at all times. She caught the whisper of his presence that stretched vastly, worked into the very sands of Suna, in the grit that covered everything and drifted on the breeze.
So instead of following Fu into the desert, she followed Gaara back into Sunagakure, slipping through the open window into his office with nary a breath out of place. Sage mode revealed unto her the sand infused with his chakra in every corner of the room, carefully tucked into innocuous places— sandstone walls, potted cacti and succulents, in the cracks between tiles and brickwork. Even the Kazekage's inkpot was actually just sand— black sand, but sand nonetheless. It spoke to the ease with which he used magnet release that the fine black sand was all but indistinguishable to ink in every way.
She wondered if it'd make good fuuinjutsu material. Bijuu blood probably made an awesome ink, and Shukaku was pretty much made of sand… and that was a stupid tangent. She stayed perfectly still and silent beneath her void presence as a jonin who didn't feel like a jonin— Kankuro, she thought— stepped into the room and gave a terse report about the state of the opposition. Gaara simply took it all in confidently— stoically— before waving his brother out of the room and returning to his scrolls and documents. At least he had the confidence of a Kage, even if he might not have the power…
Oh, who was she kidding. She was barely a year older than him and here she was getting up to silly stuff like breaking into the Kazekage's office to speak to his tailed beast.
He didn't have a shinobi guard in the room— at least not one that Akari could sense, and given that she was a sage and all… it was interesting. The Hokage had guards, the Raikage hadn't, so… maybe it was just a cultural difference? For that matter, Kiri hadn't had something like that either, even though the ANBU-like hunter-nin were essentially Kiri's whole deal. Maybe there was just more trust in Konoha's ANBU? Eh, it was probably a mystery she wouldn't be able to puzzle out herself anytime soon. She'd come here for a reason, after all.
Dropping lightly off her hiding spot on the wall, she walked up to Gaara's desk— sharingan scanning over a handful of documents that appeared rather mundane, paperwork that the Kazekage had to read and sign off. Funding and whatnot, really, a few missions that had to pass through the Kazekage's desk.
Flicking through a few hand seals, she disturbed the light dusting of sand on the floor a few feet to the right— and wasn't disappointed as a spear of sand stabbed through the area in an instant as the Kazekage's gaze snapped up. "Who's there?"
He wasn't looking at him, not fully, but it was a close thing—
She tapped the desk to get his attention, sharingan already spinning furiously behind her mask as she met his gaze—
A second later, her feet sank into the sand of a dark mindscape. As dark as night, darker — no prison but for the endless blackness that stretched out in every direction. Soft sand shifted beneath her feet, only barely visible in the dim light.
"So. Are you with the rebellion?" The voice behind her was… level. Also, it was present, which was… not exactly how things were supposed to go, but she supposed that all she'd done was step into Gaara's mindscape. The man could find her in here easily enough if he had any practice navigating his own mind, which, apparently, he did. "You are a remarkably stealthy shinobi. I failed to notice your presence before you played your hand. However, your plan will not succeed. While my seal is still weak, I am no longer as susceptible to the demon in my sleep as I once was. It will not escape."
Akari shrugged, not paying attention to Gaara as he stood off to the side— "nah, I'm not here for you." It wasn't like he could hurt her in any way that mattered, really— at least not here. "Hey! Shukaku! Stop trying to give Gaara grief and get over here!" A long second passed before, snarling, the mountain of sand she'd been standing at the foot of shifted, slowly revealing itself to be the body of the Ichibi. "Great. I just wanted to talk."
"Nobody comes to a tailed beast just to talk human. Whatever you believe you can force on me, whatever you've come to beg for, I will relish ripping you apart and drenching the sands in your blood. I will adore seeing your entrails scattered across the desert sun, left to rot for rotten birds and carrion-feeders to feast upon."
"...wow." Akari whistled softly. "Your sister was right. You are a little loose in the head."
" I am not insane, I am Shukaku! Greatest of the tailed beasts and most powerful creature to ever walk the earth! While they ranted and ran and raved, I alone crafted the weapons that would sunder the earth and shield all things! They squandered their power, and they recived favor, while I was relegated to — "
"I think you might have a bit of a complex." Shukaku growled, but Akari didn't wait for him to respond, spreading her wings to their greatest extent and thrusting herself into the air, hovering in front of the tailed beast at eye level. "Look. I didn't come to ask you or anything, other than to maybe get along better with Gaara?" Shukaku grumbled something about that, until Akari bapped him with a light wind jutsu. "Shush, you. You'd like him if you weren't trying to constantly escape this dumb prison. You know you're only writing your own future this way, don't you?"
"I don't care about my siblings. I am myself, and I am going to be free." The youngest of the tailed beasts glared at her, and— Akari just laughed. "Hey! Stop laughing. Stop! I mean it—"
"I'm friends with your siblings, you know? Kurama was just as angry as you were when I tried to get him to work with his jinchuuriki, but it worked out for him in the end. I think. Or at the least, it's been working out so far …" Far below her, she thought Gaara looked like he was having a bit of a big think about all the things she was overhearing. Hopefully that didn't have too many long-term consequences…
Nah, what were consequences anyway? She didn't have consequences, 'cus they fled from her more readily than mists on a sunny day.
"Gaara is trying to do good for his village, and you could be a part of that. It's what your father would want—"
"You," growled Shukaku, low and warning— "know nothing of my father. You, petty worm who crawls along the sands, baking in the sun, feeble-mindedly clutching at the basest patterns of chakra like an ant grabbing grains of sand and thinking yourself atop the world." Angry, blustery as ever but more real. As though he were actually upset—
So, Akari flitted closer and dropped onto his head. Shukaku froze at the sudden contact, before raising a hand to smite her down, but Akari laid a hand atop his head and gently stroked his sand. "It must be hard to have been stuck in a seal for so long. To have been thought a mindless beast for even longer. Remember those you respected, and those who respected you. Know that no man or beast of bijuu can be an island unto themselves. And know—" she leaned in close, whispering for Shukaku alone— "that you are in danger . There are people out there who would love nothing more than to rip you apart and piece you back together into an abomination."
Shukaku never did smite her.
She dropped back down to the ground, giving a confused Gaara a wave, before— she dodged up to get away from a crushing wave of sand, shunshin taking out of reach of Gaara's technique and another shunshin throwing her at the window. A window that Gaara shut, sandstone crushing closed where there'd once been an exit, the bastard— but Akari wasn't even close to the sort of shinobi that could be outdone by a simple wall. Sage art: big ball rasengan was not her most elegant jutsu, as well as being rather chakra taxing— but it was also one of her fastest , what with it requiring no hand signs at all. The wall exploded out under the force of the attack, and then with a quick sequence of hand seals—
Void presence erased her from sight, and she shot skyward and out of the hidden village.
….
That had been Naruto's attack.
Gaara stared at the wreckage of his office as his sister landed beside him, fan outstretched and ready for a fight he was relatively sure wouldn't come. Shukaku had been oddly quiet after meeting the kunoichi, digesting what he'd said— and it wasn't as though there wasn't anything for Gaara to contemplate either. The tailed beasts had a father? What kind of monster could give birth to such calamities, and why had it been forgotten? The girl had said she'd known his siblings, but there was only one Ichibi. The logical conclusion was that she knew the other tailed beasts, but… that was a ludicrous thought.
As strange as a S-rank shinobi specializing in stealth and infiltration breaking into the Kazekage's office not on a mission, but simply to talk with a tailed beast. A sandstorm was starting to whip up in the far distance, endangering the genin in the Demon Desert, Temari was looking at him with concern, he had a rebellion he needed to deal with, and that had been Naruto's attack.
It was the thought he kept coming back to. An S-rank shinobi somehow knew Naruto's signature attack. It didn't make sense …
The Hokage would want to hear about this, but until then, he could keep it to himself. After all, there was so much he needed to do, a test to oversee, and some students in the desert needed him.
…
Akari didn't return until the end of the test, after a whole thing went down with the Konoha shinobi, the Kazekage, Fu — that had been a small heart attack— and some random rebels on a power kick who thought that stealing tailed beasts was a good idea. News flash: they were dead, some sort of internal dissent faction? She had no idea, honestly— was dismantled, and the genin were heading back to their respective villages.
Gaara would make a good Kazekage. Shukaku would make a hopefully less insane bijuu, and some genin would get a promotion and those frankly ugly flack jackets. She was so glad her S-rankosity let her sidestep the dress code, definitely one of the better parts of that deal. Getting back to Takigakure would be great, though she'd probably miss the solitude a bit—
Sage mode sensed two presences lying heading towards Fu's team through the forest at fast speeds, far faster than any genin— or chunin should really be able to do at all but booking it speeds. It didn't seem like they were running from anything though, more like this was a leisurely pace— which meant something was decidedly wrong .
Dropping down onto a tree and tucking her wings to her back, she sat still and tasted the natural chakra of the world, sensing the make of those two shinobi. Large chakra reserves, certainly— their passing parted natural chakra like a stream around boulders— each with a distinctly ugly feel to them. Not dark like Sasuke's chakra, but rather… strange , perverted and unnatural. Both of them felt… stitched together.
One that felt malicious .
One that felt like four and one, together.
She knew who these were.
She leapt into the air, diving to the ground with a graceful shunshin to land right in front of Fu's team. "Fu—" her teammates took up fighting stances, and even Fu flinched back at her sudden arrival— "I need you to run. Right now."
"But— I—" one of her teammates demanded to know who she was, while the other one looked all but ready to throw a jutsu at her— "what? Akari? Were you following us?"
The ready-to-fight genin turned to look at Fu, an expression of shock on his face. "You know this girl?"
"Um—"
"You need to run —" hissed Akari—
Too late.
They entered into the clearing with a particular lack of flare, just two simultaneous shunshin that carried them to the top of a small earth ridge to look down at the genin. An expression of such utter disinterest graced what little of Kakauzu's face revealed, while an almost disturbingly excited smile graced Hidan's. Complete with their Akatsuki robes, they made for an intimidating sight indeed. "Huh? Would ya lookit that." Hidan leaned against his scythe, gaze lazily passing over the three genin and one genin-aged shinobi. "One of you weak-ass motherfuckers might even be worth fighting. Oh, this is going to be a glorious sacrifice to Jashin-sama!"
"Jashin-sama?" Fu cocked her head. "Are you a missionary? Ooh, do you want to be friends?"
Hidan gaped at her for a second before facepalming, and Akari would have done the same if she wasn't so busy warily watching the two exceptionally powerful S-rank missing nin. "Fucking what? I mean, I'm a missionary, but you're not going to like what I preach, pussy. Do you know the first tenant of Jashin-sama, girl? Well, I'll tell it to you free of cost— thou shalt kill thy neighbor . Sorry, but any more is going to have to be paid for… with blood ."
"Um." Fu was looking decidedly less interested in becoming Hidan's friend, now. "I think I'll pass?"
"Just get on with it, Hidan. We're wasting daylight," Kakuzu made two hand seals— two! And kicked the ground, a massive wave of spikes shooting across the field towards Fu's team.
Fu leapt into the air, her wings carrying her high over the attack.
Akari shunshined to the side, stealthily making some shadow clones who fled into the forest to prepare themselves—
The other two genin were just genin, though. They didn't dodge. They could not dodge, it was not physically possible for them to dodge with the reaction speed and chakra levels they had— and Hidan laughed and laughed as the stone spikes split them open and spilled their viscera across the ground. Fu screamed , obviously preparing to dive back down at Kakuzu—
Akari hit her with a strong genjutsu, a compulsion to flee . Fu would live. She had to. Void presence hid her, and Fu rocketed skywards, leaving an empty clearing with two S-rank nin who were looking rather miffed. Hidan looked around, glaring at the two bodies on the sea of spikes. "Is that it? Jashin-damn motherfuckers, I thought this was going to be interesting ."
"No." Kakuzu looked skywards. "This isn't the end of this. The nanabi jinchuuriki is nimble enough in flight to avoid our attacks, but the other one… I would have sensed the disturbance in the air if she'd left too. Which means she's still around ."
Hidan grinned, looking handsome and evil at the same time. "Oh, goodie. I wanted to kill one of 'em."
"Hm. Invisibility? The Void Ghost is known for their interesting method of complete presence erasure, which means they could be running away even now. Of course, she's not." Because that would be useless. She'd talked to Itachi about Kakuzu, and they'd long since come to the conclusion that he'd easily see through yin release: void presence. Seems like the elder Uchiha was right after all…
"Wait wait wait—" Hidan looked positively gleeful— "you're saying that the girl who stayed behind is the Void Ghost ? That motherfucking, Jashin-damned, heathen who dared stand against the will of the great Jashin-sama? My day is getting better and better!"
"Stay focused." Two masks detached themselves from Kakauzu, aligning. "I'm going to smoke her out. Watch the skies, she could try and escape at any time." That was their first mistake. She was a snake sage — they were fools to assume that her body was anything but exactly what she wanted, and in that moment, her wings were a detriment. So— she'd gotten rid of them.
She was as ready to fight S-rank shinobi as she'd ever been. All the techniques she'd been working on were still incomplete, her focus on stealth was neutered by Kakuzu's intelligence and experience, her weapon-skills by their immortality—
Which just left her strategic thinking, her metaknowledge, and sheer fucking grit. Just like how it should be.
For the first time since… fighting Yagura alone, honestly, and really not even that, Akari wasn't sure if she'd survive.
Chakra exploded out of the masks, fire and air combining into a scorching jutsu that immolated the forest around her in an instant. Her sharingan saw it coming, her honed skill at fire release and wind release caught the blast, sending it around her and insulating her from the searing heat as she shunshined up above the initial blow to stand gently on a scarred and burnt branch that really shouldn't have been able to support her weight. "You two really suck at this killing people thing, don't you?" Then she was gone, flickering to Kakuzu's side with a rasengan in hand to deliver a punishing blow and dancing out of the way of his threads as his blood drenched her shirt.
Then she was forced to fend back Hidan and Kakuzu, the former almost manic in his attacks, ignoring damage or the threat of damage that would make any saner shinobi more wary. His scythe cut gracefully through the air, almost screaming at times as it sliced apart thei very air.
On his own, he wasn't extremely dangerous. But Kakuzu— Kakuzu was a ninjutsu powerhouse , and they worked as an incredibly efficient team. She could outspeed them for the moment, but Kakuzu was strategic in the way he battled, constantly cataloging the battlefield and controlling the vectors she could attack him— rasengan weren't enough anymore— that kept him away from her most devastating attacks and allowed his own to line up perfect shots.
She had to change things up. As it was right now, she wouldn't last long enough to keep them off Fu's trail— she needed to survive for that long, and then she could just straight dip .
Channeling earth release chakra to her foot, she stomped on the ground as she stepped out of a shunshin, the battlefield beneath the ninja shattering. God damn did she wish she had the Tsuchikage's jutsu— there was no way she wasn't going and grabbing that after this, screw subtlety— but she had the next best thing.
Every element, and the knowledge that if you pressurize something, it tends to seek an equilibrium. Violently .
The first of her clones broke, and with all the chakra that flooded into her, she laughed and released the jutsu she'd built, watching as Kakuzu and Hidan both were blown away from her by a massive release of lava erupting from beneath the ground. An earth release technique usually used to make earth spears grabbed onto one of the falling rocks and propelled it down, followed by a wind release that smashed the two-ton stone into Kakuzu like the very hand of god.
She saw a mask disgorge a heart into the broken corpse, and then she was dodging another of Hidan's attacks as the immortal nin took advantage of the chaotic state of the battlefield. One life down, four lives to go.
Fuck, she was already on the very edge of her ability. It wasn't undoable, just… she was pretty sure it was going to be very, very hard. She still had some tricks, though… Kakuzu might have come prepared for her, but while he'd been resuscitating himself Hidan had allowed himself to escape his protection.
She locked eyes with the mad cultist and shoved him under a twenty three layer genjutsu, coating one of her kunai in wind release chakra and lopping one of his arms off. The man laughed at the pain. Laughed! Akari only barely danced back out of the range of Hidan's scythe, her fastest shunshin almost not fast enough . "Good. Good! I haven't had this sort of fight since I first tried to kill Kakuzu!"
"You'll never be able to kill me, Hidan." Kakuzu stood, and he looked furious as he crossed the distance between himself and the scythe wielder in an instant, grabbing the fallen arm. "Maybe I shouldn't bother reattaching this. It would teach you a lesson when it comes to running ahead."
"Aww, spoilsport. C'mon…" Kakuzu sighed and started stitching Hidan's arm back onto it… only for his stitches to all but bounce off , revealing he was holding a rock. "What the fuck? That— you bitch! " Akari dropped the pulped remains of Hidan's pulped arm to the ground, burying it with a simple earth release jutsu. "Now I'm going to have to wait for that to regrow! Oh…. Jashin-sama is going to love the taste of you."
"Impressive genjutsu. However— you're a hundred years too young to challenge me, girl." Strings started pooling out of his body, earth grudge fear blooming, the world's most disgusting vine coming undone in the space between stitches. It was fast , too— "Lightning release: false darkness." Then there was light . The attack crossed the space between them in an instant , faster than she could move, and only Akari's instinctive senjutsu enhanced reinforcement of her arm saved her from losing the limb entirely.
Hidan leapt at her, laughing gleefully, and the battle was back on . Kakuzu's limbs maintained their mobility far beyond where his body ended, hemming her in and forcing her into close-quarters combat with Hidan, which was bad —
For all his intelligence, though, Kakuzu didn't know everything that Akari was capable of. If there was one thing that having Itachi on her team helped with it (that and metaknowledge, too many goddamn fics about these psychopaths) helped when it came to not underestimating the Akatsuki.
Kakuzu didn't underestimate her either, but he certainly wasn't expecting lightning release: false darkness to reflect off a mirror of water and explode. He definitely wasn't expecting an overpowered lightning bullet varient to cross the space between and smash his mask to peices.
Two down. Three to go.
She wove a new set of genjutsu in duplicate, tossing one at Hidan and one at Kakuzu. The ancient bounty hunter's chakra system was weird , especially when it came to the high-rank genjutsu, but HIdan? Hidan was a pushover as far as S-rank nin went.
Akari shunshined away to a crag of stone, taking advantage of the few seconds' reprieve to get her arm back into working condition. False darkness had been… probably the most damaging jutsu to ever hit her. Thank fuck for dragon senjutsu, else that'd have probably blown off her arm entirely.
It was funny to see Hidan attacking his teammate, though. Big genjutsu W once again. The immortal cultist flung his scythe, the scarlet blade impaling Kakuzu— and Kakuzu melted into water.
Sage mode alone saved her as she sensed the incoming wave of fire and wind chakra that converged on where she was sitting and exploded . Bargain bin scorch release or not, it was incredibly powerful— those burns hurt .
"You are incredibly proficient at the art of genjutsu, you know." Kakauzu stood where she'd been only seconds before, threads reeled back into his body. "Genjutsu, ninjutsu, advanced nature release, deep chakra reserves— you are a terrifying young girl. What a shame that it's not terrifying enough ." A premonition— and she ducked beneath Hidan's scythe, knocking the man back with an empowered elbow and shunshining out of the way before he could attack again.
"And you were the one who complains about me talking so much in battle? Motherfucker, see if I ever listen to you ever again—"
"I was distracting her, and you bungled it, you fool—" Akari snorted, then— drawing on so much chakra, the immense reserves of sage mode and her own strength swirling together as she formed a rasengan, dragged water from the air and twisted , rushing rotation long learnt, empowered to the extent of her ability—
She threw her water release: rasenshuriken at Kakuzu, dispelled another one of her clones for the natural chakra— and watched with a wide smile as Kakuzu tried— key word tried— to dodge. Even Hidan was caught at the edge of the blast as it exploded, slicing apart threads and half obliterating his form.
A third mask cracked open, and Kakazu slowly rose. "You are a monster among men, girl. You're dead, though—" and Hidan landed next to her, all but unscathed from the blast while she was still recuperating, shunshining with her shunshins, scythe pressing ever further. It was all she could do to fight Hidan alone right now, and given the jutsu Kakuzu was— carefully, now— throwing at her, she wasn't just fighting Hidan.
Time to escape.
She couldn't escape.
Yin release: void presence failed her, this time not due to any of the techniques flaws in fighting powerful opponents but simply because it was too much to focus on as she played elemental rock paper scissors with Kakuzu and desperately tried not to get cut by Hidan— water, fire, and wind was what remained of the bounty hunter's jutsu, and he used them with an incredibly deft skill.
She needed something — searching, dodging beneath Hidan's scythe again as the sharingan's predictive ability saved her from a grievous wound. Sage mode's sensory ability, the copy wheel eyes— she desperately searched between Kakuzu and Hidan for something . Anything. Their techniques had to have something to them—
Kakuzu was just threads. Should've expected that, but… yeah, threads. Hidan… Hidan felt odd . There was something else drenching his form, suffused in every cell and muscle. Yang chakra? Yang chakra, probably, but it didn't feel like something that came from a bloodline or whatever… and his eighth gate. There was a preponderance of yin there, winding around itself—
That was all useless to her though. She shunshined away again , grabbing a kunai and blocking Hidan's scythe, ignoring the madman's laughter as she spat a great fireball jutsu in her face and dodged away. All she needed was a few seconds…
Something fell from the sky, smashing into Kakuzu, burning with the force of chakra unleashed as it stabbed down. Bloodred crimson, acrid, hateful — Fu in her version 2 mode, and it was a sight to behold as she punted Kakuzu's corpse away from her.
Four down— one to go. "What are you doing here! I told you to run! " Fu was back though, which was entirely against the plan though—
"And leave you to fight two S-rank nin alone?" Fu was bowled off her feet by Kakuzu's threads, but the jinchuuriki clawed back, beating one of her wings fiercely and throwing Kakuzu away with the wind release jutsu Akari had taught her. " We don't abandon friends. " Fu— Chomei— dodged to the side, acrid chakra rending the air as she swiped at the bounty hunter.
Good news— she probably wasn't going to die right now. Bad news, given how relentless Fu was in her attacks and how pressed Kakuzu was looking, and the fact that Kakuzu was a S-rank nin — Fu might. Tailed beast or not, she just wasn't a kage-level shinobi like Kakuzu was.
They had the advantage, though, which meant it was time to press. Wind release: great breakthrough threw Hidan back, and then she was the one tearing into him, even as Fu ripped apart Kakuzu.
For a second, it almost looked like they'd just— kill them.
Too bad you can't kill immortals.
An A-rank water spear exploded through Hidan's gut, spraying his viscera out across the ground behind him but— as the man jumped into the blow— failed to slow him down. His scythe's descent coincided with the second Akari thought she had to kick Kakuzu off Fu, and it sliced a clean line through the flesh on her shoulder. Against all the blood Hidan had already lost, the tiny few drops of crimson were almost anticlimactic, but Akari knew that it was perhaps the most dangerous attack that'd landed on her the entire battle.
Laughing, Hidan drew his ritual circle on the ground, and Akari— with all the precise chakra control she'd trained for so long — replaced the blood on her blade with the Kakuzu's blood from the start of the battle.
Hidan licked his scythe, the ritual activating, and as he slowly dragged his blade down his remaining arm, Akari felt agony . "Yes. Yes! Heathen, feel the deliverance of Jashin! Let thyself fade into the insensate agonies of his blessed form, let—"
"Hidan you idiot !" Kakuzu screamed from across the clearing as a gash on his arm allowed Fu to escape a water jutsu. "You got me in your jutsu!"
"Then you too will feel the embrace of Jashin-sama!" If anything, Hidan looked more excited at the ability to torment his partner. "May his violence be blessed!" Akari looked at Hidan, notcing as his appearance changed he felt sickly, felt the dark wrongness of the jutsu— felt the connection between her and Hidan and Kakuzu extending from the strange bundle… mesh… thing of yin and yang in his eighth gate.
It existed, and therefore— she started flipping through hand seals as fast as she could.
Kakuzu kicked Fu off him, binding her with his earth grudge fear tendrils. "Eyes! Hidan, her eyes! " What— no— how the fuck had he figured that out— "she has something to do with her eyes!" Hidan's face lit up as he raised his scythe to his face—
Desperately, Akari wrenched her attention in half, forming a simple medical jutsu in her eye sockets and— she pushed out her eyeballs. She could feel as they were caught by the vizor, not allowed to fall to the ground— and then she could feel agonizing pain as a gash opened lengthwise across her face.
The pain was blinding. Heh, blinding, given she was blind… she'd put her eyes back in later, but now, with all three of the S-rank nin blind, with the last of her hand seals complete, with sage mode showing her the link between all three of them and the vague impression of something more , she laughed. She laughed, because it was her turn.
"Blaze release: Amaterasu!" Her fire was inescapable, because she'd ignited the links between them. Black flames raced along the ties that bound, lancing into Hidan's body and tracing it further to Kakazu, diving into Hidan's eighth gate—
She'd burnt the connection between her and Hidan, but as Amaterasu burned down the palace of Hidan's corporeal form, she slowly realized that something was watching . Perceiving beyond that…
She could see it , which meant that it could see her .
It reached out to her chakra—
Darkness.
Brightness.
She stood in a field of bones and corpses that stretched out forever in every direction, twisted effigies of flesh monuments to a perverted domain. The sky was blood and punched through with innumerable suns, holes, crystal tears swirling in mesmerizing, maddening patterns. Sitting lazily on a throne of pustulent corpses, hearts that still beat black blood and skulls half hollowed out— lazily leant back over the remnants of a sadistic brutality infinitely more than Akari had ever seen in both her lives, a creature of black flesh and bones looked down on her.
She stood beneath the gaze of Jashin, and quailed beneath divinity.
"Little girl. To think… that someone who wields the flames of the sun goddess, the invader's fire, dares to strike beyond their ken? Do you know the pain that I am going to inflict on you?" Was she already dead? No— she'd have seen even a pure yin genjutsu like Tsukuyomi, so she was pretty sure she hadn't been killed. The space around her was too real to be—
She could see! It was so obvious a realization, but she'd blinded herself not even seconds before. The ability to see the depraved dimension around her meant it wasn't real. Her chakra felt weird too, on second glance— sluggish and stretched , as though it'd pulled over a long distance… "Where is this?"
"Humans these days. Wretched things in need of guidance; don't you recognize the pure lands?"
Akari squinted questioningly at the… god? God until proved otherwise. "Not looking very… pure, is it?"
"I refuse death. I am the immortal one, the one whose cruelty transcended such petty things as my mortal demise. From my throne I watch all who worship me, and give unto them great and boundless power." That felt… she recognized that, somewhat.
It was similar to something she'd thought about, on and off for the last while… "like the Sage of Six Paths?"
Jashin hissed , the myriad heartbeats beating faster as he leaned forward in his throne. "Do not bring up that man in front of me. That interloper , foolish pacifist— and look where it got him. He's dead! Dead and gone to the pure lands, and I alone remain. Here I am. Powerful! Powerful beyond measure , heathen— bow, and I might still let you live."
Something was off about the whole situation. More than the fact that Jashin was apparently real, why had he brought her here? How had he brought her here? Her chakra was sluggish, taunt— like the far end of a chakra string pulled over a distance too long, and she could see— her body was her own, ostensibly, but not really . It was just so subtly… wrong.
A projection of reality. "Why," she asked— "would I bow to you ?"
"I will deliver unto you a thousand agonies unnamable if you do not submit ." Jashin had grabbed her chakra. She was sure about that now— the metaphysical nature of her yin release had opened her up to a counterattack as it burned its way into Hidan, and Jashin had pulled her here. "Look around you, girl! All these are the remains of those who defied me, who thought they could survive my tortures. They're dead now, and from their lives I prosper."
She was putting it all together. Her body wasn't her body , her chakra was stretched because it actually was pulled over a long distance, whatever distance lay between Hidan and his god, and it was sluggish because this was slow time . Like Hagaoromo's domain, wherein he held his sons away from the battle at the end of the world to give them his inheritance.
If that was all right… well, if it was wrong , then it wouldn't matter. "I don't believe you." She waited for the god-spirit to strike her down, but other than his thunderous wrath and the way his whole realm shifted with his anger, he did nothing. "You can't do anything to me. I thought as much."
"I could obliterate you! I could rip you apart and let you bleed until the oceans ran red with your lifeblood! I could tear off your limbs and make mountains of your carrion! I am god !" Jashin screamed, form already tenuous slipping into monstrosity as he stared at her. Then, he stared beyond her. "I could give you immortality. Eternal life in the prime of your youth. Power beyond your wildest imagination." A bit of a change in tune…
Jashin was behaving strangely, even for a god of death and destruction. None of this made sense… but just one more thing, one missing piece, and she was sure it'd make sense. She looked behind herself, tracing the line of her chakra back with Hidan's where it disappeared into one of the suns in the sky, and…
Laughed. "You've overstepped yourself, Jashin. You should have known that there would always be something out there that could threaten you." A speck of darkness in the Hidan-sun bloomed, licking away at the light like so much black fire— the Ootsutsuki's chakra, all their abilities that had vastly outstripped the senjutsu of the far past… a far past that Jashin claimed to belong to. Amaterasu. "How does it feel?" She'd just told Amaterasu to burn every part of that nasty jutsu Hidan had been using for his voodoo-thing, but this … "to know that I didn't even care about you, and I'm going to kill you anyways."
"No! No! I won't allow it!" Jashin stood from his throne, the whole world shifting around him as he stepped forward, each motion heavy. "I— chakra! My worshippers offer me their chakra, and I could give it to you! So much power! Everlasting and infinite, all you need to do it swear to me—"
Amaterasu licked out from the all but consumed cradle of Hidan's sun, burning away at the sky overhead. Slowly, noticeable even in Jashin's slowed time, she could feel her chakra slowly leaking… which could be a problem. Hopefully she had enough to burn all of Jashin, because she got the impression that stopping at any point would be a very bad idea .
Another step. The sun shivered as they bled black, the horizones engulfed in sticky black flame that burned until it reached the firmament overhead. Jashin looked like he could scream , like he was in agony, true agony for the first time in forever as he staggered another step forward. "I— I could make you a god . All my followers. I could make you my mighty high priestess, my beloved. Favor and fortune, all the secrets of wealth I've learnt of over my ancient existence— chakra! I could tell you the secrets of chakra, the fundamental nature of the world and all the details that make our world real , reveal unto you the secrets of samsara, uncover your eyes to the divine secrets—" tempting, but… Akari just stared dispassionately as the whole world was consumed in heavenly flame, black fire following a line down from every sun, cresting over the bleached bones half-rotten flesh throne of beating hearts, still beating, even as they burned. "Please." Jashin dropped to his knees in front of her, weakly grasping at her as the fire reached him. " Please . I cannot die ."
Woozy with her rapidly diminishing chakra, surrounded by a sea of black flames as the god died— seeing, just maybe, as his pustulent realm collapsed around him something pure and glorious in the distance—
Akari smiled— and fell unconscious. Possibly for the last time.
…
"You're an idiot." She could see when she woke up. See with her sharingan, at that, which meant she'd either gotten a good doctor or a Fu was better at medical techniques than she'd thought. Or Itachi. She was pretty sure they were back in Taki, but she couldn't for the life of her remember how she'd gotten back. "If I hadn't been here, or if Fu and Chomei had been any slower, or if she'd not been carrying chakra replenishing pills for someone with large reserves, you'd have died . What sort of idiocy made you fight two S-rank Akatsuki members?"
"Love you too."
"You're… not even Sasuke was that stupid." Oof. Right out there with the big guns. "At least you're alive. I… I don't want to lose you again, Akari." Itachi was right. That had been too close for comfort…
She was alive, though. Alive, not blind, and with nothing more than a cool— and with sage mode, temporary — scar to show for it. Smiling, she stared up at Itachi and said, "you know, I also killed a god!"
Itachi didn't allow her to leave Taki unsupervised for months .
Notes:
Not gonna lie, this is the last good chapter in the fic.
Chapter 12: Epic Pranks
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Chakra intrigued Akari. She'd always been interested in it— who wouldn't be, after all, with the magical eyes of bullshit and the memories of a past life mundane? How any civilian could possibly sit there their entire lives passively enjoying the benefits of a chakra system was entirely beyond her— it sounded so boring . She liked chakra— understatement of the year— but she'd never been more invested in chakra than after her near-victory over Kakuzu and Hidan.
What was it? Why was it? Who was it? That last one was stupid, but— nature chakra, six paths chakra, why were they both called sage mode ? What made yang chakra, and what could it do? How had Jashin stayed alive after death via ritual murder, and why was Amaterasu so effective in killing him? Also, what was up with chakra natures, and could she be up with chakra natures? She didn't know, but she wanted to find out .
Given she'd been more or less babysat by Itachi— he'd come with her on the essentially C-rank mission to cash in the two Akatsuki member's bounties, for goodness sake! She had plenty of time to work on chakra natures. Lava and boil release were ones she already had down, there were plenty of others she could dip her toes in even if she didn't have someone to train her like she'd had in Mei. Blaze release, of course, was another option, but that was… weird. Put yin chakra in anything , and it went wonky.
Also yang chakra existed, but she wasn't going to touch that with a ten foot pole until she had a much better understanding of chakra natures.
Anyways. She'd managed to get a handle on scorch release— really, fire and win together wasn't that hard, though magnet release only worked with stuff that was actually magnetic, and don't even try to get her started on ice release or god forbid wood release . The memories of the mud from that last one… so much mud… Storm release she had some faint sharingan memories of from that one time she'd had to run from the Raikage and his guard, so that one she felt like she was making inroads on… and the list went on. One of the most challenging chakra control exercises for her was controlling as many nature releases she could at a time, and it was definitely worth the look of exasperated disbelief on Itachi's face whenever he came back to see she'd added another to her repertoire.
For all that, though, they weren't really giving her any more insight into what chakra was . For that…
Well, a few months had passed, Itachi had given her a thorough dressing down and an even more thorough training regimen, and she was finally allowed to go out and do things on her own again! Being treated like a little kid had started to get annoying .
Okay, so maybe she was thirteen. That had nothing to do with anything.
She couldn't get out of Taki fast enough. She literally couldn't— even though the wings were a total hassle and a half, and she was still sore all over from training them with Fu (and Itachi), she was well competent enough with most all the techniques that made flight the domain of the truly feared that she shot out across the Land of Waterfalls in what felt like no time at all.
There was one famous flight technique she was missing, but… if all went well, she'd have her hands on that soon enough. It was a research trip, you know? Though if everyone's idea of a research trip involved bothering the Tsuchikage, she was pretty sure science would be a lot further behind it's already sorry state…
It would be fun, though.
Walking into the Land of Earth, watching as the lush ruggedness of Waterfall faded into just rough ruggedness, alone between the heavens and craggy earth, Akari felt… relaxed, almost. She'd been a bit of an introvert even in her past life, but perhaps the whole staying away from everyone thing in her youth had made a bigger impression here then she'd thought. It wasn't like it was bad spending time with Itachi or Fu or the tailed beasts, it was just… there was something uniquely serene about being out here by herself.
There were fewer villages in Earth Country than Fire Country or even Lightning country, apropos the largely arid climate. It wasn't like she'd spent a ton of time looking for villages in the Land of Wind either, but she was pretty sure that there was even less of a population there. It wasn't like she'd spent a lot of time on the subtleties of the art political, but she did have the books memorized (in the sharingan sense of memorization), and she knew there were wars fought over these kinds of things.
That she knew, rested heavy on her shoulders— but their lives were so different from what she'd seen before that she couldn't help but find herself interested. She'd gotten to travel the nations as a refugee, then a ghost of a missing nin, a revolutionary and her recent stint as a resident of an unwitting Hidden Village, but other than her brief stay with Hanako's family, she'd never gotten the chance to see it civilian .
Earth country villages were different from those of Fire; they were little things, tucked into wherever the land could support them, full of hardy people largely isolated from the outside world. If Nosegawa had been technologically backwards even with how relatively easy it was to access, the Earth country villages felt stuck in the stone age. Not really but, eh, puns…
Maybe when she was older, and taller (yeah, she wished) and all the problems in the world were taken care of, she'd come back and build a home in the side of one of the innumerable peaks, carving out a little sanctuary from the world. Actually, maybe that would be a good idea to do sometime soon, what with how Takigakure wasn't the safest place to live out of…
Another thing for the list. Prevent the apocalypse, figure out the secrets of the universe, and get a new home. Easy W's, she was sure…
Thrice, during her trek through Earth country, she felt a chakra signature incongruous with the villagers around them— too tight, too large , well refined and sharp in the way that shinobi tended to be. She hadn't really been expecting to run across shinobi, given she was staying well out of the way of the set routes, but they couldn't be anything but .
The first time, she ignored it entirely. The second time she caught a glimpse from afar, of an old man missing an arm slowly and methodically tilling a rocky field. The third time was after she'd already passed by Iwagakure— having decided to pay the capitol a visit first— and she found herself too curious to pass up the opportunity to find out what the whole deal was. Carefully, presence concealed, she dropped from the sky and into a fallow field, snapping her wings shut to her back and slinking towards the small earth-brick house without even disturbing a blade of grass.
She could sense the shinobi inside, cooking something— vegetables, if her nose served her right. Carefully, she pushed the door open, setting a genjutsu the moment she could to make the old woman think that nothing was amiss.
It was… a villager's house. More or less what she'd expected— were it not for her sage senses, she'd have passed by it entirely. Knowing it wasn't a villager's house, though, little things slowly made themselves obvious— the build, the way it was constructed to control entry and egress, making it easy to escape and hard to assault. The cleanliness, the way that there were far more weapons in the house than any peasant really had any right to have. That, and the storage scroll tucked cleverly under a loose bit of flooring.
Pulling it out, puzzling over the seal for like… twenty minutes (okay, so what if she sucked at fuuinjutsu) and then finally just realizing all she had to do was channel some chakra into the release function, Akari emptied the scroll on the floor. A bingo book, interesting… some real weapons, exploding tags, a tanto and an ANBU mask, damn old lady had some skills. Given that she was missing some fingers and looked a bit banged up… retirement, probably. Interesting.
She resealed everything into the scroll, put it back where she found it, and flew away— leaving the shinobi she'd visited none the wiser about her presence. An interesting strategy, sending old and injured shinobi out to live in backwater villages, ostensibly for peace, obviously for war. How very… militant of them.
The capital of the Land of Earth was a magnificent place. She'd come in from an odd direction and had thus missed the famous sweeping cultivated valley, the ancient cradle of Earth country's civilization. She'd also missed the roads along which a vast majority of the nation's commerce— at least that which didn't make its way to Iwagakure— flowed, but the city itself was a beautiful thing. Three sets of large walls, engraved with massive symbols— not Fuuinjutsu, she would have sensed that— but a domineering sight nonetheless. Once a fortress, do doubt, the Daimyo's palace was itself a city within a city, a mountain keep carved into the peak to look down over all it ruled.
She almost couldn't resist sneaking in, but— no, the Daimyo's were boring, political figures that Akari didn't care about. She hadn't come here for the Daimyo, anyways.
Well in complete fairness, there wasn't much reason she had gone to the capital other than the fact that she'd been curious. It certainly didn't disappoint, even if trade was still a bit strangled with the whole Fang dispute thing. They were selling some crazy stuff, but perhaps most of all, they had books . So many books, it was awesome . She'd visited Taki's library once or twice, finding it decidedly inferior to Konoha's, but here? The variety was incredible. More than that, even they had a preponderance of fiction books, something that she'd not really gotten much of a chance to look at before.
So what if she bought one of the trashy Shinobi Adventure series? It wasn't like anyone could tell her what to read, her parents were dead and she was an S-rank missing-nin.
There was plenty of stuff on science too, some honestly kind of terrible theories on astrophysics that she skimmed through just for the fun of it, and a quick glimpse into the Daimyo's college allowed her to be bewildered by the traditional literature of the elemental nations. Why that was a bigger part of the curriculum than any sort of practical knowledge, she'd never know…
After grabbing some snacks for the road, a copy of the Tale of an Utterly Gutsy Shinobi to prank Jiraiya with the next time she ran across the man, and managing to unwillingly learn about how annoyed everyone was with the trade situation (and water country, for some reason) she took to the skies, unnoticed as she flew east to Iwagakure.
The entire city none the wiser to the two weeks she'd walked amongst them.
Too easy. She wondered if this was what Obito thought as he strolled casually through the shinobi world, manipulating the world's most powerful nin into his stupid bijuu capturing scheme. Might be, honestly. They were both Uchiha, after all.
What an odd thing to think about.
She spent some time with her snake summons, around a fire far in the lonely stretches of Earth Country where earth met sky and her fire was the only point of light for miles and miles. Apophis had been growing, almost as big as her mother now, and she eagerly accepted the action-adventure books Akari gifted her. Then, almost before she knew it— flying tended to be pretty fast, after all— she was standing atop one of the mountains surrounding Iwagakure.
Epic.
Time to go bother the Tsuchikage and see some dust release!
Infiltrating Iwa was just as easy as infiltrating any of the other hidden villages, but there was that slight bit of risk involved— as ever— that made it so very exciting. She skirted around shinobi, careful not to leave a physical trace of her passing as she ghosted towards the Tsuchikage's office, climbing up the wall— while being very careful to avoid any fuuinjutsu traps along the way. No need for a repeat of her Kiri battle.
Clinging to the wall just outside Oonoki's office, she considered for a short moment exactly what she wanted to do. Her goal was to see dust release, but it wasn't like she could just ask nicely … or maybe she could? Honestly, her other plan was to blow up the wall and try not to die, which sounded kind of mid, so…
Henging into Deidria— an image she'd gotten from bingo books— she slipped into the Tsuchikage's office, dropped void presence, and waved at Onoki. "Hey! How are you?" The old man vaulted off his chair, defying gravity as he twisted into an attack position in an instant. "So I was wondering if—" a cube of white light snapped into existence, rotating and expanding as it shot out towards her.
She might have included a little killing intent. Just a little. Also, that technique was fast — fast and flexible, befitting of a Kage who'd been a powerful shinobi since the time of Uchiha Madara. The actual one, not Obito. Luckily for her, she'd already prepared— before his dust release could trap her, she'd already replaced herself with a random stack of paperwork—
The Tsuchikage's killing intent was prodigious , now, cloying and thick as he glared at her.
Oops?
Half an exhausting hour later, after an awesome aerial battle with a master of fighting in the sky, she landed on a nearby peak and laughed, until she cried, grinning wildly. Onoki was so much fun to taunt, and the best part was that he was mad at Deidrea and not her. Well, he probably suspected something, but he had no proof. Proof which was definitely needed for a military dictator to do whatever he wanted.
Yup. No coping there whatsoever.
The next few days she spent ghosting through the village, carefully observing Onoki for his other famous jutsu, the light-weight rock technique. It was a frankly genius jutsu, using earth release in a complicated way to change… mass? Yeah, given that it significantly impacted how hard she was able to hit while she had the technique on, it definitely affected mass.
The ability to hover, wings outstretched and menacing, was epic , and she was so going to show it to Itachi when she got back. Dust release, on the other hand.
Ignoring the fact that learning advanced nature releases was purported to be impossible, and that she already had a handful of them under her belt, dust release remained elusive. Kekkei tota, an elusive higher ranked technique of immense power… and immense annoyance , because it wouldn't work! She'd been hoping to learn more about chakra from it, but… nope.
She'd meditate on it later. For now…
Light as a feather, wings catching the air so powerfully, lark-free, she left the Land of Earth and fled south.
…
Fu met up with her while she was skimming across the coast through south Wind country— or rather, it was less that Fu met up with her, and more that Akari found Fu . She'd turned in a few bounties for a missing-nin that'd been causing trouble, what with how far away from Suna they were, and hadn't been all too subtle about her jinchuuriki-ness.
The real question though was— "why, pray tell," she asked as she landed in front of Fu, neatly tucking her wings behind her back as the girl squeaked at her sudden arrival, "are you here ?"
"I'm a missing-nin now!" Fu bounced excitedly on her feet, beaming smile entirely incongruous to her declaration of criminality.
This reminded her far too strongly of some of the shenanigans her family— past life family, that was— had gotten up to. Children, she swore… " Why are you a missing-nin, exactly? Also, why are you so unsubtly a missing-nin?"
"Aww, c'mon, I'm plenty subtle?" Not at all . "It's okay though! I have a plan! I was talking with Shibuki and he was all worried that Taki would be targeted by Akatsuki because of Chomei, and I couldn't let my friends get hurt! So! We talked, and we came up with this awesome plan where I go missing nin for a bit, run into Jiraiya who's supposed to be somewhere around here, and then— I get to go to Konoha! I have friends there so it's going to be… fun." She was a little somber towards the end there, no doubt remembering what happened to her last few teammates.
Konoha was not safe. It was safer than Taki, safer than any place bar maybe Kiri, and tensions between Water and Earth over the whole Fang fiasco and something on the eastern continent were just a little too high for Akari to feel safe sending her over there. So… Konoha it was, for now.
There was one part that stuck out to Akari in particular, though, and she couldn't help but grin with just the slightest touch of malicious eagerness. "Jiraiya is near here, you say…"
…
Jiraiya woke up to a girl landing on top of him. While this would normally be a cause for celebration, he'd failed to notice her coming . That shouldn't have been possible, especially not when she sprouted wings and flew off him. Very obvious wings that practically bled chakra into the surrounding environment.
"Hi! I'm Fu! Uh, here—" she dug around in her pockets for a second, before pulling out a very recognizable book. For fucks sake, someone had to be trolling him. "I was told to give this to you! Also I'm coming with you."
"No—" but she was already busy making friends with Naruto.
Kami above, now there were two of them. Tsuade was going to laugh herself to death when he got back to Konoha…
Notes:
almost forgot to post this
Chapter 13: Deception
Notes:
remember when I said that the rest of the fic kinda sucked? Yea. This is it. This is the suck.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
She met with Yagura and Itachi back in the boughs of Taki's tree, the three of them sitting precariously close to the edge for most anyone else. Entirely safe, for shinobi of their caliber, not even mentioning Akari's abilities with flight…
It was a beautiful sight, but it wasn't safe .
The natural energy of the world wrapped around them, so smoothly sluggish in the great tree beneath them, breezy in the air and alive in the moss and ferns growing even up here. Hundreds of feet below, the serene lake sparkled beneath them, a million diamonds on the crest of a wave only to disappear in the very next breath. Moment after moment, again and again.
They'd met for a reason. Akari liked operating alone, had the skills to operate alone, but operating alone had become markedly more dangerous. The hidden village in Stone country had been destroyed, and missing nin that hadn't been spotted in years were making appearances again as Iwa moved to a more aggressive footing over what was happening in Fang. What'd started as a simple trade dispute was clearly amping up to be more, and everyone was on edge. The Land of Swamps, on the opposite side of the world, had recently invaded Forest country to their north, and while that was still just a war between samurai, their proximity and importance to the recently-strengthened Water country couldn't be overstated.
Everything felt precarious, a balance across things she couldn't possibly predict by herself or with a thousand other minds, political chicanery she hated suddenly far more important than she'd been treating it, and Taki wasn't safe.
That was the unfortunate truth of it. They'd stayed here for years , and… almost, it felt like home. Too bad it'd probably take like a bajillion years or Hashirama to grow another one, or she'd slam one down wherever they decided to make their next base…
On second thought, though, that would be the opposite of subtle. "So. First order of business. Somewhere to live. A place that isn't too far away from… everything, but also remains defensible and most of all secret . I have a few ideas— there's plenty of nigh completely impassable land in Earth country, and Itachi and I know enough earth release jutsu to set up a place. We could try basing out of Fire, but…" there were difficulties with that, too. "Tea country has tea, so that could be cool… I bet Mei would allow us to stay in Kiri if we explained nicely—" Yagura winced at that, even if he did look momentarily wistful— "but any further than that is probably a bad idea." She paused for a second, thoughtful. "We could go to the moon."
Itachi raised an eyebrow at the last one. "The moon?"
"The moon it is! Ow!" Yagura snickered as Akari shoved away the staff he'd used to lightly bonk her. "Fine, the moon is a bit too out of reach. I swear as soon as I figure out how, I'm making a teleportation jutsu… visiting the moon would be pretty cool." Though, she didn't fancy her chances against Toneri. Maybe he was less overpowered without the tensingan? She could only hope.
"We could also base ourselves out of Wind country." Both Yagura and Akari grimaced at Itachi's soft statement. It made sense, it was close enough to everything but also largely wilderness, just… Wind country. Deserts. Eugh. "Perhaps… at least temporarily we could try Otogakure? It interests me."
"That is ballsy as fuck." She was already grinning, though. "You know what? I've been meaning to give that snake a piece of my mind. Plus, maybe he'll have a better idea about this chakra stuff. I like it." Yagura— or Isobu, or both— facepalmed, but didn't protest.
As it was, Oto wasn't actually a real shinobi nation. They figured that one out quickly enough— rather, it was a bunch of hideouts and immoral experiments all bundled together in a vague Orochimaru…ness. The number of disgusting experiments she saw… she was rapidly losing faith in the strange future version of himself that had managed to be a good parent.
She had an argument with Itachi, while they were investigating one of Orochimaru's bases in Earth country, after a long day of fleeing from shinobi they really didn't want to kill. He wanted to be more involved in his brother's quest for strength, and Akari had advised him again to stay out of it.
Both options could be right. Both could be wrong. The glorious, terrible thing was that Akari didn't know which was which.
Eventually though, they found Orochimaru. As it was, though, neither of them had a spy network, their contacts were next to nonexistent outside of Fu— a Konoha genin on probation— it was honestly all but impossible to find him. A few tales circulated— Orochimaru testing his apprentice against a hundred shinobi and finding him satisfactory, Orochimaru kidnapping people from somewhere another, Orochimaru dodging hunter-nin from Kiri—
Orochimaru, dead at Sasuke's hands. Early.
Akari didn't win the argument with Itachi that time— irregardless of their own precarious state, he beelined across the elemental nations straight to where Sasuke and his friends were making a nuisance of themselves, stealing a sword from Water country and then heading north, skirting the border of Lightning for some unknowable reason and—
It didn't really matter. They met in a rainy clearing in the Land of Waterfalls, not far from Takigakure, beneath stormy skies and across a stream overflowing with turbid water turbulent. Four and three, the former entirely outclassed by the latter but still so foolishly confident .
It was odd. She wasn't expecting to have to do this for at least another year, but… Itachi stood across from Sasuke, his team looking defensive at the appearance of the infamous missing-nin. Who wouldn't be? Sasuke was making a name for himself, but he wasn't Uchiha Itachi , whose name was known the world over. Yagura was far more obscure as far as missing-nin went, despite his comparatively flashy battle style— but team Hebi clearly recognized him. He was a known associate of Itachi's, after all…
Karin was even looking around for her , her impeccable sensory abilities trying and failing to pierce the perfect illusion of yin release: void presence. Smart. It would take them far against most enemies, maybe even S-rank missing nin— but Itachi was no S-rank missing nin.
The sounds of the forest felt muted, and far too loud.
Sasuke stared at Itachi, and refused to meet his eyes.
Itachi barely breathed, the cloak pooling around his shoulders cascading water down onto the springy moss beneath him. "Little brother," he stated, the words taciturn and laden with so much barely perceptible emotion that Akari could spend a year dissecting them. Karin jerked to attention, staring behind her— but not towards Akari. Curious. She'd almost thought she'd found her for a moment… she turned back to Itachi as he quietly stared at Sasuke, the weight of guilt on his shoulders making him look twice his age. "I'm sorry it had to come to this."
"Itachi. I only want one thing, and that is for you to die ." The hum of Sasuke's chakra pulsed , staticky like lightning, and even Akari frowned slightly at the killing intent. The technique had always had little effect on her— earlier, she'd neutralized like she would any genjutsu, and now she could care less about all but the strongest killing intents anyways.
This was one such killing intent. The sheer hatred that hung on his every word, driven deeply enough into his chakra that it was tinged noticeably darker . In response to that… Itachi just sighed. "I was a fool. You've allowed your hate to consume you. It is no longer a tool, little brother, but a fire burning you out from the inside—"
"I am fuel, then." Lightning crackled along the length of his arm as he called to himself the power of storms, the strength to fight the second most feared Uchiha after Madara himself. "If I burn, then that is the price I pay to end you! "
A lot of things happened at once.
Sasuke's technique speared out across the gap between himself and Itachi, and Itachi blocked the blow with a chakra reinforced strike, then sushined away. It was a good thing he did, too, because the relatively weak— if fast— lightning jutsu was a precursor , a call— for the beam of molten power that slammed into the ground where Itachi had been standing moments before.
At the same moment—
Something twisted behind Sasuke, pulling itself out of unreality and moving forward incredibly fast, a fist-first lunge as it exploded through Jugo's chest.
The figure laughed as Jugo crumpled to the ground. Red robes. A mask, swirling into itself, a mocking, easygoing laughter— "oh? Was there someone there? Oopsie! Tobi didn't mean to do that one!" Jugo slumped to the ground as the rest of team Hebi scattered— all but Sasuke. "Your brother allowed that one to happen. He's a right meanie, Itachi, but… he really likes seeing his little brother tortured."
Akari had never heard such utter bullshit before.
Worse, Sasuke was clearly buying it. Looking down at Jugo's body, frozen in a rictus of surprise in the moment of his death— still and unmoving despite all his strange sage technique. Akari had never really cared much about Team Hebi before— other than Karin, whose Uzumaki-ness meant she got brought up in a fuckton of fanfics— she was relatively confident that none of them died.
Consequences came back to bite them all.
As Sasuke launched himself at Itachi with a snarl, to Obito's too-innocent laughter, Akari shot herself at Obito. As she'd expected, he shifted intangible, but Akari was waiting — the moment he turned tangible, she flickered behind him and slammed a rasengan—
He disappeared.
Then reappeared , swirling out of kamui behind her , with a speed well enough to match her. His body burned with that same sensation she'd felt in Hidan's— not quite the same but similar — and then she had to dodge out of the way of an explosion of grasping vines and verdancy while Tobi laughed at her tauntingly. "Oh! It's the nuisance! " There was something to how he said that last word, where his facade cracked just a little and sheer, fathomless rage echoed out from beneath. Curse of hatred indeed, the man was madder than Sasuke!
Plus, him using wood release was a total taunt. Dust release was one thing, but c'mon, wood release? She had no idea how the Shodaime Hokage had been able to do that stuff, it just made no sense .
"Tobi's been all upset! You're so mean, you made Tobi cry!" Right, the battle. She'd been going on autopilot, and it was pretty clear that Obito had as well. He was treating the engagement as though it were entirely unimportant, a few traded blows instead of the S-rank fight it could clearly devolve into. "Everything was going so well for Tobi, and then you had to mess it up . Hidan-chan was so nice to Tobi, but now he's gone and it's all your fault." He underestimated her. Neither of them had used jutsu, and she was still (unfortunately) a small girl, so…
Akari reduced her weight with Onoki's light-weight rock technique, letting one of Obito's weak blows carry her back far further than the man had expected. Snapping her wings open, she rocketed into the air, bursting free of the forest canopy and staring down at Obito so far below.
He almost looked surprised in the brief second before he slipped away into Kamui and re-emerged on one of the thing branches at the top of the forest, entirely nonplussed. "Ooh! Flight! That's so cool! I know someone who can fly, he's super cool and strong and Tobi's super good friends with him!" Akari held in her hand a weight of chakra, a preponderance of natural energy concentrated into the palm of her hand— a brilliance that lit the canopy in lurid shadows— a concentrated arrow of fire powerful enough to make the very atmosphere around them taste like ozone. "You know," Obito said, falling out of his Tobi persona just a little as he realized that Akari wasn't playing around anymore. "Nothing you can do will be able to hurt me."
"I know," she said, and she chucked the arrow of fire at Obito, watching as it crossed the distance between them in a fraction of a second, a streak of heavenly judgment flung downwards.
She watched as Obito turned intangible— and then she watched as the jutsu hit anyways , burning his robes and gouging deep into his flesh— almost exploding on him before he teleported out of the way. For a long second he stared at her, disturbingly still, before he laughed . "Be proud! Tobi hasn't been caught by surprise like that since fighting the man with yellow hair!" Then— Akari was fighting for her life.
She'd thought she was strong, and she was , but Obito actually trying put her to shame. A flurry of blows came from every direction, kamui swirling around her, her genjutsu rendered utterly ineffective against Obito's mangekyou sharingan. It was like the most dangerous moment of her fight agianst Hidan and Kakuzu, stretched out forever— the knowledge that a single slip up, a single mismatched jutsu as they lit the sky with enough chakra to make the sunset seem a cold and distant thing, as they boiled the rain before it could touch the ground and turned trees to ash and cinders, would spell her doom.
It terrified her.
It thrilled her. There was no space for fancy jutsu, here— rather, she defaulted to that which she knew absolutely . Shunshin, replacement, fine-honed movement and weapons. Sage mode, to keep her from flagging beneath the intense pressure, to keep her energy up just in case there was a moment she could strike, a faint hope that she could turn the fight in her favor—
Then as soon as it started, it stopped. Obito laughed, dodging away from one of her water ninjutsu before waving— and disappearing.
In the forest below, she sensed him appear right beside Sasuke and his team, probably say something stupid and Tobi-like— and then— simply leave.
Taking them with him.
Exhausted, Akari dropped to the ground beside Itachi. "That… didn't go well."
"His hate consumes him." The older Uchiha stared at the space where his brother had stood, amidst the wreckage of destroyed forest. "Madara… Obito… I wasn't strong enough. Forgive me, Sasuke… your fool of a brother has damned you once again."
Akari grimaced. "Don't feel so bad about it. It wasn't your fault this time." Seriously, Sasuke's absolute loathing for everything Itachi was one thing, but believing someone who literally killed your teammate right in front of you?
Blinding oneself so thoroughly in hate was a dangerous pastime, so it seemed.
"We've been played for absolute fools, and now he —" Itachi's killing intent peaked for a second— "has Sasuke. I… cannot allow such a thing. Whatever their next move will be… I am going to make Obito regret it."
"Of course—"
"I am going to burn his organization to the ground. Excise every corrupted thing that made this possible and kill him." The shinobi in Itachi had a merciless side, a cruel side— "and he will choke on his laughter." Yagura— scraped and battered from the battle, leaned on his club as Itachi cursed Obito, chakra thrumming with the darkened promise of vengeance. "So. I. Swear."
Akari shivered, amidst that pouring rain and fading sunset's light, and for the future feared.
Notes:
...
Sorry for this lol. I would've rewritten it but at this point I could honestly care less, and I'm only really sharing this for completion's sake.
Notes:
Anyways, I wrote some other, better Naruto fanfiction in the past, and this is just the tangible manifestation of brainrot sloughed off onto the page. I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this, but... eh, I'll figure it out. Probably.