#asynchronicity | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mixelation · 1 month

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here have some (a)synchronicity

i skipped to them getting together. as a recap: tori ends up in an iwa prison camp and gets left behind after an escape by konoha ninja. the iwa commander there is..... less than pleased

content warning for torture i guess? it doesn't progress super far, but there are threats of sexual violence

*****

“I’m wondering,” Ishi said, pacing in front of her in tight circles like a lion before his prey, “what a suitable punishment would be?”

Tori kept her eyes glued on his sandals as he paced. It was better to just let megalomaniac ninja get their little speeches out of their system, she’d found, and then just agree with whatever insane things they were saying.

“We could cut your fingers off one by one,” Ishi offered. “Or hang you upside down and wait for your own organs to suffocate you. Or should I give you to my troops for the night?”

They’d thrown down hay all over the tent floor to prevent mud. Tori wondered how ninja avoided getting pieces of it in their toes with sandals like that.

The sandals turned toward her suddenly, and Ishi grabbed her face by one hand, his digging into her cheeks as he angled her face upward to look at him.

“I asked you a question,” he said, voice hard. “What should your punishment be?”

Tori didn’t say anything at first, and his grip tightened. There was a glint of metal out of the corner of her vision.

“You could still answer my questions blinded,” Ishi said.

Well. That would suck. He wasn’t just going to let her yessir her way out of this.

“Personally,” Tori said, “I’m a big fan of Water Country rat torture. Have you heard of it? It’s where you starve a bunch of rats—”

He let go of her face and slapped her with his other hand. It was hard enough she saw black spots and was knocked clean off her feet and into the straw. He’d been holding a kunai or something, and it had sliced into her skin. A long line burned with fresh pain from her temple down to her cheek. Tori instinctually raised her hand to touch it, but Ishi yanked her up by the arm and tossed her onto the table.

He held her down by her head, his thumb pressing into the cut. Tori let out a sad, desperate scream against her will.

She yanked at his arm, digging her own nails into the fabric of his uniform, desperate to remove his hand. This did not so much as budge him.

“Hold her legs,” Ishi commanded, and then Tori’s uselessly kicking legs were also held down. “Now,” Ishi continued, “I do think the troops will complain if I cut off your tits.”

Whoever was holding her legs laughed, and Tori felt her face burn in humiliation.

“But I’ve already ruined your face,” Ishi said, almost conversational. “I don’t think they’ll notice if I do a little more.”

The tool in his hand hadn’t been a kunai afterall. They were some sort of tweezer or forceps, glinting in the lamp light under the flecks of Tori’s own blood. He aimed it at her eye.

You are going to survive this, Tori told herself, even as she struggled not to cry. This will hurt, but you will live. You can bear this.

The forceps gripped her eyelashes and then yanked. Tori screamed. He did it again, and then dagged the tips across her temple and asked for other tools.

“Leave her front teeth in,” someone suggested.

“She dosn’t need her ears, does she?” someone else said.

Ishi pulled at her ear lobe with the tweezers, almost thoughtfully.

“We’ll cut them off in pieces,” he decided. “That will show the little bitch. Scissors.”

Tori watched, panicking, as shadows moved across the tent wall as tools were exchanged. Ishi’s hand on her head remained firm the entire time. She would not be escaping.

The first cut to her ear never came. Someone rushed into the tent, interrupting it. Konoha was attacking.

“From which front?” Ishi demanded. His hand came off her head, although the other ninja still held her legs firm.

“I— we don’t know. It’s like he— he just appeared in the camp.”

No one had bothered to restrain her hands. Tori carefully probed the side of her face with her fingers, and they came away covered in blood.

“What do you mean he? How many forces? Do you know which clans?”

Tori started tracing fuinjutsu onto the table with her fingers. Something that could be made sloppily and still work… something she knew really, really well and could do blind…

“Sir, it’s… it’s just one man.”

Ishi snarled and marched out of the tent, barking orders. The last words Tori heard from him were, “If it’s just one man, then it’s not an attack, is it?”

All but the ninja holding her legs filed after him. Tori sat up on her elbows and blinked at the remaining ninja. Even with his hands around her ankles, the man had not been paying her a lick of attention, watching as the other Iwa-nin left the tent.

When they were alone, he finally turned to her and made eye contact.

Tori activated her seal. He dropped dead.

Technically, because the chakra disruptor she’s made conducted through her, she also dropped dead. This went as terribly as dying always did: the wind was knocked out of her, and then she went cross-eyed as the Shinigami's thoughts seared into her brain.

Usually, the Shinigami was hungry, and then disgusted with her like a starving man being served rotting, inedible meat. Today the Shinigami was ecstatic: A thousand souls…. at last satiation… at last, a feast…

Tori gasped in shock as her body lit up with the fervor of a shark smelling chum. Then it went out of her all at once, and she was alone and plain and normal. Tori rolled onto her side and vomited over the edge of the table. Ah. Gross. The tent spun, but she was alive.

I hate doing that, she thought as she wiped bile from her lips. A thousand souls…

She got as far as standing up unsteadily when Ishi barged back into the tent, looking significantly more terrified than he had a minute before. His eyes widened further to see her up, his man crumpled over dead at the edge of his table. Tori stared guiltlessly back at him as more ninja flooded in behind him, all in varying states of panic. Weapons were taken off the walls of the tent.

“Is it the Yellow Flash?” she asked, hopeful.

There was screaming audible outside now. Loud, horrified screams of trained ninja realizing they were going to lose.

She didn’t know why Minato would come if there were no Konoha prisoners for him to free. Konoha undoubtedly wanted this camp gone, but this seemed like an insanely risky thing to try without a more urgent motivation. Just because Tori knew he was capable of it didn’t mean anyone else on the planet– Minato himself included– did. Maybe he didn’t know they’d escaped?

“You,” Ishi said, some sort of understanding passing over his face.

Next thing Tori knew, Ishi had one hand balled in her hair and a kunai at her neck.

Minato strolled into the tent, casual as can be. The whole tent froze.

“Tori!” he said, eyes brightening when he saw her. His clothes were completely soaked in blood.

Had he… had he come for her? Tori felt her bottom lip quiver.

“Ishi-san,” Minato said, his voice hardening and gaze moving up to make eye contact with him. “I was told to negotiate a surrender, but…”

Minato tilted his head and moved his shoulders back, like he was going to stretch. He raised a kunai. Someone threw a shuriken at him, and he disappeared. Tori felt the kunai at her neck start to press into her just slightly more…

And then it was gone. Ishi was gone from her back, and his sudden absence made her stumble.

“...I don’t really feel like it,” Minato finished, foot on Ishi’s neck. A dozen bodies now scattered the tent. A terrible, quiet stillness filled the air.

Tori’s eyes stung with unshed tears. She leaned against the table, her head feeling light.

“Any counterarguments?” Minato asked Ishi.

“Iwa doesn’t bargain with scum,” Ishi replied, voice garbled only slightly by the foot on his neck.

Minato just raised his eyebrows.

“Okay,” he said, and then Ishi had a kunai through his neck.

Minato turned to her. There were flakes of red in his golden hair and blood splatter across his nose.

His shoulders sagged in evident relief.

“Tori!” he repeated, stepping up to her. He held up his hands to indicate no weapons. He grinned at her, and it was like watching the sun rise. “Are you okay? I was worried.”

“Y– yeah,” she replied. She pushed hair out her face, and Minato’s smile dimmed as his eyes traced the line of the gash on her face. “Um… the Konoha prisoners all escaped.”

Minato produced a miraculously mostly-clean handkerchief from his vest.

“I know,” he said. He carefully tucked hair behind her ear and began to dab around the gash, cleaning blood from her face. “I came to get you.”

Tori let out the world's most pathetic hiccup and began to sob. It wasn’t exactly loud, but once the tears started, she couldn’t make them stop. Her breath turned ragged. It was pathetic and deeply embarrassing, but she felt safe to be embarrassing around Minato.

“Hey, hey,” Minato said, and he ran his fingers through her hair a few times, picking pieces of straw out. “You’re safe now. No one can hurt you.”

“It’s not that,” Tori said, wiping tears from her eyes. She took a deep breath and willed her voice to be steady. “No one’s… no one’s ever saved me like this before. You came for me?”

“Of course for you,” Minato said, smile broadening. His fingertips lingered on the uninjured side of her face. Tori couldn’t tell if the metallic scent of blood was from her own face or his fingers. “Um, I did kill a lot of people, though. In case that upsets you–”

“I know,” Tori cut him off. Minato had just become the deadliest ninja in history, just for her. She stared into his eyes. He did look happy to see her, and relieved, but also he seemed… nervous?

“I want to hug you,” Minato said carefully. “But I am… very gross right now.”

His uniform had turned brown with blood. He smelled absolutely awful, too.

“You could kiss me instead,” Tori offered.

Minato blinked down at her in a way that made her doubt for a second that she’d read the room right. Surely the fifteen or so dead men in the room he’d killed for her, plus the way he was metaphorically wringing his hand like a nervous prom date, meant he was into her?

But then his entire face lit up, the force of his smile making his eyes crinkle up.

“Okay, yeah,” he said, his hand cupping her chin. “I can manage that without getting blood on you.”

He tilted her head back and leaned over her, very careful that their bodies didn’t meet. It was a very polite, gentlemanly kiss. Tori very carefully put her hands on his chest and… oh god it was wet and sticky and hot from the human bodies it came out of.

Well, she thought, I’ve done grosser things.

She wrapped her arms around the back of his neck and pressed herself fully into him, bloody clothes be damned. Minato let out a happy little moan at the back of his throat, but then pulled his face away from her, even as his arms went around her waist.

“I don’t want to hurt your face injury,” he said.

“I don’t care,” Tori replied. “I want you.”

She yanked him down by the front of his vest. He complied, his grip on her tightening. Her clothes were damp and sticky where his arms met her body. He walked her back toward the table.

“Don’t touch the seal,” Tori said, panting as she broke their kiss. It probably wouldn’t work a second time, but if it did… “It’ll kill you.”

“Of course it will,” Minato replied with a laugh. He picked her up by the waist and sat her on the table.

Kissing him did tug painfully at the gash on her face, but it was doing very exciting things to the rest of her. She wrapped her legs around his hips and her arms around the back of his shoulders.

After not nearly enough time making out, Minato broke away again. His eyes were glassy.

“I do have to do a couple things,” he said, voice rough. “Then we can… continue. Don’t worry. I’ll be fast.”

He winked. Tori pouted performatively at him.

“Here,” he said, handing her one of his special marked kunai. “And here.”

He handed her a bottle of ink and a brush. He did not give her any instructions for them; she assumed it was to make her feel safer while he went off to make sure he hadn’t missed anyone in his massacre.

“Konoha will want the body…” he muttered, turning to Ishi.

Minato was quick about storing the commander’s body in a scroll, and then he vanished into thin air for roughly seven minutes while Tori sat around in a tent filled with dead people, feeling impatient and unsatisfied.

She pocketed the fuinjutsu tools and clutched the kunai to her while she pushed the flap of the tent open. It was dusk, and she had full view of literal piles of bodies outside. The camp was unnaturally silent. The ground was muddy with fresh blood. The air smelled metallic, with just the starting hint of putrid rot setting in.

Deadliest ninja alive… just for her. The thought made her giddy.

Tori reentered the tent. It was a command station, so it had to have a first aid kit somewhere.

“That’s smart,” Minato said when he reappeared, and Tori nearly dropped the bottle of rubbing alcohol she was examining. “How do you feel about relocating?”

Right now, Tori would let him take her anywhere, as long as they could be alone.

He took her to a house, out in the middle of nowhere, near the Fire Country border. One of his old genin teammates had found it on a recent mission. It was recently abandoned, he told her, so it still had running utilities.

It also had most furniture and kitchen supplies in the combined living area and range, Tori noted. It wasn’t unusual for civilians to decide their safest move during this war was to suddenly leave their homes without settling any of their affairs, but it was also common for ninja to just kill a family and use their house.

She decided now wasn’t the time to ask clarifying questions and potentially ruin the mood. If ninja had killed whoever lived in this little two bedroom cottage, it probably was Minato or his teammate. Minato obviously had zero issues with killing, but she knew he found harassing or murdering civilians for petty reasons to be distasteful. If Minat wanted to use your house, he’d just smile and tell you to get out.

Tori was distracted from these thoughts when Minato unzipped his vest and shrugged it off. His shirt underneath was still dark blue, in hilarious contrast to his bloodsoaked sleeves. She let out a laugh as Minato dropped the vest. It made a disgusting squelching noise as it hit the floor. Minato wrinkled his nose at it.

“I am not looking forward to digging my supplies out of that,” he said.

The cottage was a cozy little thing, and Tori made Minato put towels down on the furniture before they sat anywhere, excepting the lid of the toilet. She sat there primly while he cleaned the gash on her face for her, and dressed it with butterfly bandages from her stolen medical kit.

The bathroom was cramped, so they then stepped out of the bathroom into the main bedroom. Tori watched keenly while Minato peeled his disgusting outer shirt and pants off. Underneath he wore mesh armor.

“Oh gods, the blood even got under it,” he complained, pulling the hem of his shirt away to peer down it, looking forlorn.

“Are you injured at all?” Tori asked.

Minato stripped further down to just his underwear, which was enough layers deep to be mostly blood-free, and he seemed surprised to find he did have a few injuries. Tori supposed adrenaline and high speed fights made it difficult to notice.

Minato could dodge basically anything, but sometimes he did have to take a hit in order to make a blow on an opponent. His shins and forearms were a constellation of minor bruises and burns from hits that dragged his armor against his skin. He had a few nicks on his fingers from his own weapons.

“Shout out to whoever did that,” he said of a huge bruise on his lower rib cage.

He identified the shape as probably being from a kick. He did not remember being kicked.

“It was… kind of a blur,” he said. “I was just focused on getting them out of my way. I don’t remember individuals.”

Tori pulled off her own clothes next. They did, unfortunately, now have brown blood stains exactly where she’d pressed herself up against Minato, including darker stains on the inner thighs of her pants where she’d wrapped her legs around him.

Tori also had a bunch of bruises from who fucking knew what. Hers were less cool, in her opinion, because at least some of them were from events such as “tripping in the woods.”

“That is a hand,” Minato suddenly said, his own hand coming up to brush his fingers over a bruise on her upper arm.

“I guess someone grabbed me,” Tori mused. You could see individual finger marks in the bruise.

Minato frowned. Tori fluttered her eyelashes, and she could feel the difference in weight from where half of one eye’s lashes had been pulled out. She decided she didn’t care right now; Minato was looking at her in a way that made her feel sexy regardless.

“Are you going to go all overprotective on me?” she asked in her best teasing lilt, only half-joking. It was kind of a dumb, slightly toxic fantasy, but also, consider: it would be hot.

“Well, whoever did that is almost certainly already dead,” Minato replied dryly. “So I think it would be a moot point.”

His hand skimmed down her arm and then wrapped around her wrist. His touch felt hot, and goosebumps covered her arm in his wake. She took another step toward him, so they were only inches apart. He had a few random smears of blood over his shoulders and chest. Tori traced them with her fingers, then ran her hand over the bruise on his torso. Minato shivered.

“Tori, I…” His voice cracked and she raised her eyebrows. “I really, really like you.”

Tori felt her stomach flip over and squeeze in the best way. Her toes curled with the excited warmth that spread through her. She put one hand over either side of his face, and he just stared down at her with a hunger she’d been dying to see on him.

Deadliest ninja alive for me, Tori thought.

Outloud, she said, “Good,” and then pulled him down into a kiss.

They had, maybe, been planning to go back into the bathroom and shower before they did this. But Minato touched her like he wanted her, like he cared about her, and Tori did not have a single complaint when they moved to the bed.

“This is also a hand,” Minato observed of her ankle from between her legs. He absentmindedly kissed the inside of her calf.

“That guy’s definitely dead,” Tori replied. Her cheeks were hot and her stomach was buzzing with excited nerves.

Minato hummed and kissed the inside of her thigh next. Tori watched as his nose brushed against her skin, and he left a trail of kisses moving further up.

The blood splatter over the bridge of his nose continued onto his cheek. It was, very possibly, blood from multiple people. A flake had come off on her thigh.

“Minato…” Tori started, and he paused, lips still against her skin, eyes meeting hers. “You are covered in blood.”

“Oh,” Minato said, sitting up fully. “Do you want us to clean up first?”

His face looked so eager to please, a stark contrast with the blood in his hair. That fact that she was also dirty and gross didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest.

“No,” Tori decided. “Keep going.”

#my writing #asynchronicity

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mixelation · 2 months

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more (a)synchronicity. the meetcute <3

ummm okay so one thing to remember is that minato has met tori TWICE and simply does not remember her because he hasn't realized she's the main character. but she remembers him. not fondly.

*****

There was a platoon of Kumo-nin squatting in a small riverside village. Minato killed them, as part of his general orders to keep enemy ninja out of the smaller countries as much as possible. He also found that getting on civilians’ good sides made his life easier. If he was lucky, they’d tell him some info and offer him food and lodging.

He killed the first three Kumo-nin almost instantly when they came out of a home to confront him. The fourth and fifth took a couple minutes to hunt down, as all the villagers ran around and screamed and fled into their houses. The seventh had taken an old lady hostage in her own home, which was just pathetic. Minato caught the old lady as the Kumo-nin’s body fell.

“Hey,” he said, putting her back on her feet. She was shaking, and he had no idea if that was just an old lady thing or she was upset. He smiled his most harmless and disarming smile at her. “Are you alright?”

He didn’t hear her answer— which didn’t really matter, because no one looked into his nicest smile and didn’t think they were okay— because someone stepped into the doorway.

Like most of the homes in the village, this woman’s house was a single room. The Kumo-nin had darted in here at random and left the front door open. Minato turned, expecting to see a village leader or warrior. That’s usually who came and talked to him, before he could properly trot out his charm. Civilians were often terrified of ninja, especially in the small countries where they could be attacked or displaced by their wars at any moment.

It wasn’t a leader or a fighter in the doorway though. It was a young woman, who watched him with curious dark eyes. Her dark hair was pulled back tightly, and the only thing that seemed slightly remarkable about her was that her frayed dress was an uncommon style to this area.

“Hi,” Minato said brightly, friendly as can be. “Um— I just saved your grandmother here from those nasty ninja...”

“She’s not my grandmother,” the woman replied. She leaned against the doorframe, casual as could be. “But thanks, I guess. You’re not a nasty ninja too?”

“I’m a ninja,” Minato confirmed. He winked performatively at her. “But I’m not nasty. I’m from Konoha.”

She snorted, unimpressed. Well. He supposed his charm couldn’t work on everyone.

The old lady was still shaking terribly. Minato helped her into the big plush chair she had at the foot of her bed. As he did this, an older man he’d bet was the village leader appeared at the doorway, and the woman explained, in a surprisingly bored drawl, he was Konoha and that he’d killed all seven Kumo-nin.

The seventh one’s body was still in the middle of the room. Minato stepped over it to greet the leader.

“Is everyone alright?” he asked first. The leader boggled back at him. The woman just raised her eyebrows.

The leader had barely acknowledged her. Minato was drawing a blank for what her role might be. Not important, not impressed by ninja, even charming helpful ninja… Village weirdo?

“I’m Minato, a Jounin of Konoha,” he introduced himself, jabbing his thumb at his headband. “Those ninja that were harassing you were Kumo. As your ally, I’m happy to—”

“Konoha isn’t our ally,” the woman said, eyes meeting his. A tiny smirk crossed her face. “You’re on the Grass side of the river. The Kumo-nin were our allies.”

Minato had known this. He introduced himself as an ally to basically all civilians in the smaller countries, to help with his friendly persona and promote Konoha’s image. People rarely called him out, because during this war, ninja were almost uniformly horrible to civilians outside of their homelands. A lone handsome and friendly Konoha-nin was almost always anyone’s preference, even if their country was technically at war with Konoha.

“Also— why do ninja always talk like we have no idea what their hitai-ate mean?” the woman asked.

Well. It had never occurred to Minato that people in a backwater town might be well-versed in ninja customs.

“Reina…” the village leader said, shooting the woman a warning look. Then he turned back to Minato. “The Kumo-nin were stealing our food, disrupting our work, and harassing our women. We’re thankful you got rid of them.”

Minato smiled. Reina rolled her eyes and walked away.

The leader went on to say that he would happily host Minato for the night as thanks, but he would have to report the attack to Kumo. He apologized that the message would likely reach the nearest administrative camp quickly, only giving Minato a few days to vacate the area before they were alerted.

“It’s okay,” Minato said cheekily. “I’m fast.”

The village buzzed to life after that. The Kumo-nin bodies were moved, rolled in cloth and lined up in the shade of the town square in case Kumo wanted them. Villagers rushed about, checking on friends and family. The old lady’s actual grandson bowed deeply to Minato in thanks.

Minato sat on the edge of the bone-dry fountain in the middle of the square, watching all this. The villagers seemed a little jittery around him— eyeing him in evident fear whenever one scuttled past— so he didn’t want to do anything that might scare them. It was boring, but he obediently sat still and tried not to bounce his leg too much all day long.

The village leader’s wife came over and introduced herself, and then offered Minato with some onigiri to snack on. He asked about the old lady and was assured she was fine.

“I wouldn’t mind,” Minato said, turning up the charm as he accepted the riceballs, “chatting with you and your husband about anything interesting going on around here.”

“Around here…?” the wife said. “The most interesting thing is you.”

She smiled bashfully. Ah, well. At least his charms were working on someone.

“No other ninja?” Minato pressed.

“Oh,” the wife said. “Well, I’ll ask around. My husband will surely tell you more at dinner.”

She left.

The sun lowered in the sky, and the village calmed. Reina sauntered over to him.

“You look bored,” she said. “Do you want to do something useful?”

“Sure?” Minato replied, half-convinced she was going to tell him to go clean something.

“Don’t worry,” she said, and finally offered him a real smile. “It’s interesting.”

Minato hopped to his feet.

Reina led him through the village, seemingly completely unbothered to have a ninja at her back. Civilians were like that, he guessed. It was weird, but it wasn’t suspicious. He watched the bun at the back of her head loosen ever so slightly with every step as she marched down the main road.

(Improperly tied hair… also a very weird civilian thing.)

“There’s a ninja paper down in the river,” she explained as she walked. “I noticed it a few days ago. I guess the Kumo-nin put it there, but I don’t know why.”

“Ninja paper?” Minato asked.

She turned slightly to look at him with one eye as she walked.

“You know the… special paper.” She drew a few random circles in the air with her finger for him. “With the squiggles?”

That was, actually, potentially, extremely interesting. It could be evidence left by their mysterious fuinjutsu user. It could be the final clue Minato needed to find them.

Or, more likely, given the mystery fuinjutsu user tended to paint or carve onto natural objects, it was just one of the Kumo-nin’s fishing traps. But it could be a clue.

They passed the border of the village, and the cobblestone street turned to a packed dirt path. Minato quickened his step slightly to walk next to Reina.

“Is it doing anything?” he asked.

She gave him a look. “Doing anything…? Don’t they just explode if you step on them?”

Not doing anything then, okay. So she just thought it was a safety hazard she’d need another ninja to get rid of.

“You said it was in the river?” he prompted instead.

“Yeah, it’s in the water,” she said. “It’s like… um…” She made a few hand gestures which were meaningless to Minato, and then had the grace to look embarrassed. “Well, you’ll see.”

The path rose over a slight hill, and then they could see the river down below. It wasn’t very big or impressive here, but a lot of trade traffic would come through here in peace times. The banks were manmade stone walkways, to aid with the horses than sometimes lead boats.

“It’s up there,” Rein said, pointing. She stepped off the path to make a more direct route across the grass down to the riverside. “I marked it so I could find it again.”

They walked maybe thirty minutes. Minato didn’t mind. The breeze was nice, and this area of the country was all open fields, meaning he could see down the river for what felt like miles. It would be sunset soon, and the sun was already glinting off the water in pretty ways. He still preferred the shade of Fire Country’s forests, but it was nice to be able to see so far every once in a while.

He did try to talk to Reina, as they walked. She didn’t seem like she had much to say about the maybe-seal she was walking him to, but a good shinobi was always fishing for information.

She seemed cagey at first, but with some light, half-joking flirtations that made her make unimpressed faces at him, he got her to open up about her life. She complained the village had nothing to do and that she had to walk to another town if she even wanted to buy a book. When he asked why she didn’t leave, she looked at him like he was stupid.

He was almost starting to take those looks personally.

“Because I have no money, and ninja are shooting fireballs at each other all over the place,” she said. Then she looked away, kicking a pebble down the embankment and into the river. “Plus someone has to raise my little brother.”

At some point, Reina’s bun loosened to the point where she had to take it down.

“Ugh,” she said, pulling the tie and then shaking out her hair. “Did you know war can make hair tie shortages?”

She held up a deformed elastic tie for him, as if making some sort of point.

“Why don’t you just… use a ribbon?” he tried. He knew Kushina liked the elastic ones because she was always complaining about snapping them, but Kotone had only ever used cloth ties.

Reina stared at him like the thought had never occurred to her. Minato smiled uncertainly back. She was a village girl. Surely she knew about traditional hair ties? Or pins? What were hair pins for? He’d picked them out of lovers’ hair before. They must have been doing something.

Minato suddenly felt like he’d only ever known two women in his entire life.

“Your hair is curly,” he observed, and then immediately felt deeply stupid.

“Oh,” Reina said, a hand resting where her hair fell over her shoulder. It was quite long too, although not as long as Kushina’s. It was also clearly tangled and unwashed. “Well, right now it’s more like a mess…”

“I think it’s pretty,” Minato said, flashing his best, most charismatic smile at her. “It suits you.”

He wasn’t even lying. It really did make her look like the village weirdo, suiting her perfectly.

She turned away, her cheeks clearly pink.

Ha! Gotcha, Minato thought. Finally.

They came to the right part of the river a few minutes later. Reina had stacked up a tower of flat river stones right at the edge of the embankment. Minato stood next to the tower and peered down into the river. It was only maybe knee-deep at the edge, and the water was clear enough that he could easily make out every stone at the bottom.

“It’s further out,” Reina said, pointing.

Minato watched her over his shoulder as he stepped out onto the water, waiting for her look of wonder as she realized what he was doing. Instead, she just sort of smiled blithely at him and squatted next to the rock tower. Minato felt bizarrely disappointed.

What are you expecting, Namikaze? Minato chided himself as he plodded out across the river. What had he become, that his ego needed him to be able to impress this random civilian woman? She’s just the village weirdo. Who cares if she doesn’t think you’re charming?

He spotted the “ninja paper” soon after. It was a standard tag tied to a kunai wedged in the rocks below, waving gently in the current. Minato squatted, squinting down at it. He couldn’t make out the actual seal on the tag, but it was the wrong shape for an exploding tag.

“Well?” Reina called. “Aren’t you going to go get it?”

He turned his face to look at her. One of her hands was absentmindedly tracing a pattern over the top rock of the tower. She was watching him eagerly, more eager than she’d been all day.

“Go on,” she said, a nearly flirtatious tease in her voice. “Dive down and get it, Konoha.”

“No,” Minato said slowly. Something was wrong. “It could be a trap. Reina, how did you see it all the way out here?”

“Hm?”

He stood fully. His hand twitched at his side, itching for a kunai. But— no— she was a civilian. He didn’t want to scare her until he was certain. He could still get info out of her village, and he’d make that job a lot harder for himself if he freaked out their weirdo.

“The ninja tag,” he said. “How did you find it?”

“Oh,” Reina said, blinking at him in what seemed like full understanding.

Then her little smirk was back, sure of herself in a way that almost looked dangerous. The setting sun glinted in her hair, caught in her curls and turning them almost red. She pushed the rock tower over, the stones plopping into the water.

Minato did not react immediately, because she was just a civilian tossing some rocks in the river. But then, suddenly, he was underwater, and the water was boiling.

The pain kept him from reacting immediately. Every inch of his skin lit up in pain. There was a force sucking him down, preventing him from moving his limbs and escaping the way his brain was demanding. He squeezed his eyes shut to protect them and grabbed mentally for any Hiraishin marker. He had no idea where the one he picked was— his brain was confused and screaming at him about the pain and he couldn’t tell which way was up or down.

Then he was on land, cold air on his blistering skin. He took a deep, calming breath. Everything hurt, but now it hurt in a way he was more accustomed to. He could focus. He was in an empty field. The civilian woman had tricked him— had— had— he had no idea what she’d done. He didn’t know anything that could make that happen, except maybe a very creative and pissed off Kiri-nin.

He teleported to the Konoha hospital next. Leaving a marker there had seemed like a convenient idea to him when he’d done it, but he’d left the marker in the room he’d been staying in when he’d made the decision. The nurse currently in there screamed.

He got immediate medical treatment, though.

Kushina came to visit him on the second day of his hospitalization, and he succeeded in not crying in front of her. She succeeded in holding back on making fun of him for being a light shade of pink.

“Stupid,” Kushina told him from her seat by his bed. “You’re lucky you didn’t boil your eyes out of your head.”

He’d gotten out quick enough he’d done no permanent damage to himself, at least not with Konoha’s medical intervention, his medic-nin had said. He hadn’t corrected her that any damage done to his person would have been inflicted by a random civilian woman. The report he was going to have to write on this would be embarrassing enough.

If he’d been in the water much longer, he'd have been at risk for boiling his organs, including his brain, which not even Tsunade-hime could undo. He was certain this would have happened if he’d listened to Reina and dived for the tag. If he’d floundered for a minute more, he’d be literally coked.

“I think it was the fuinjutsu user,” Minato explained to Kushina, after he’d filled her in on the whole story. Talking hurt, because he’d damaged almost all of his skin. “The village weirdo must have… figured out how to use the seal, or they taught her how, or something.”

“All that in one little seal, though?” Kushina asked. Her brow was furrowed, like she was trying to figure out a puzzle.

“It’s not impossible,” Minato said, but Kushina looked doubtful.

He was inclined to believe her doubt. Jiraiya liked to brag that Minato was a fuinjutsu master, but the only thing he had on Kushina was more experience in space-time fuinjutsu. If she disagreed with him on anything else, well, she was probably right.

“How have you been?” Minato asked. Kushina puffed up her cheeks and exhaled.

“I spent ten hours yesterday decoding a report,” she said. “I swear to every god there is, training genin was better than this—”

Minato relaxed back into the lumpy hospital pillow to listen to her rant. Kushina had recently switched to a purely office role for a pay bump, and because she wanted a break from training “brats” up to be battlefield ready. She’d thought she’d be spending all her time on fuinjutsu development, but she was frequently being saddled with administrative odd jobs. This was, to Minato’s understanding, just something that happened now due to the war. More and more able bodied shinobi were being sent out, and so there were fewer people to do the gruntwork at home.

“If you're bored,” Kushina said, suddenly brightening up. “You can decode reports, and I can go back to trying to figure out a water purification seal that also fits in a canteen.”

She came back later in the evening with a convenience store bento (which was vastly superior to Minato’s hospital dinner) and a stack of coded reports.

“Have fun!” she cooed.

Minato thought about just not doing the work, with the excuse that he had burns on over 90% of his body. But… he was bored.

Needless to say, when he was finally released a week later, he was itching to do something, even if he’d been warned off anything but “light” exercise. Interrogating a civilian would be light, wouldn’t it?

At least one of his markers was still in the village in Grass Country, left on one of the kunai he’d used in his initial attack. He dressed in his uniform, double checked his weapons, and went in.

He landed on a table, which groaned and shifted under his weight. A man with a Kumo hitai-ate was two feet away from him, and he let out a sad muted scream of surprise. Minato slit his throat before he could properly finish his yell.

There were two other shinobi in the room, but they were both dead a second later.

Minato took a moment to assess the situation. The room matched the same style of single-room home as the village, so he probably was actually there. The rickety table held all three kunai he’d left behind: one of his Hiraishin ones, and two standard issue ones. There was also a scroll unraveled, where someone had evidently taken notes on the incident where he’d killed seven Kumo-nin.

Annoying, he thought, lips thinning. If Kumo was using their brains, they’d have sent more than these shinobi. Minato spun a kunai in his fingers a couple times, preparing for a fight. This still counted as light exercise, right?

In the next ten or so minutes, he combed the village and hunted down and killed a grand total of fourteen more Kumo-nin. His heart rate was barely elevated by the end of it. No way his medic would be mad at him.

When none of the villages came out to speak to him, he went to the house of the village leader and knocked on the door.

“I need to speak to Reina, please,” he said. As an afterthought, he smiled.

“She’s gone,” the leader said, clearly nervous.

Minato raised his eyebrows. “You really don’t want to be lying to me,” he said.

“N-no,” the leader said, putting his hands up defensively. “She really is gone. We thought she left with you.”

Minato narrowed his eyes. “A young woman just disappeared with a ninja, and you didn’t follow up?”

“I…” The leader was fidgeting now. “I apologize if she offended you. She’s not one of us. None of us know who she is or where she came from. If she did anything, it doesn’t have anything to do with us.”

Minato stared. What the fuck?

“P-please,” the leader said. “Kumo is already fining us for the other shinobi you killed. We can’t afford—”

“Tell me more about Reina,” Minato pressed.

He didn’t care about the leader’s cowering or begging that he just leave them alone. He was done trying to charm and play nice; he’d already killed too many ninja in this village. No amount of smiling and happy words would redeem him, and he was feeling too impatient for that today anyway.

Reina, apparently, had shown up only a few days before the Kumo-nin, claiming to be a distant relative of a recently deceased elderly man, sent to clear out his things. She’d presented his death certificate as proof. She’d been living in the man’s home and hadn’t spoken much to anyone. Everything she’d said about her life in the village to him had been a bald-faced lie.

“Anyone can get a death certificate,” Minato said. “That’s not proof. Why did you trust her?”

The village leader was clearly upset. His voice shook as he spoke.

“We didn’t… we didn’t think like that…”

Oh good, so the whole town had just believed her story with zero follow up questions.

The village leader seemed to realize how little MInato thought of him. He tried, “She was useful. She wasn’t afraid to speak to the ninja for us. We never questioned her.”

Minato asked some more questions, but the leader had nothing else to share. Minato made him show him the old man’s home. When he told the leader he no longer needed him, the man ran from him.

Minato searched the house. For a place she was supposedly cleaning out for several weeks, there were still a lot of things left behind, to the point that it was unclear if Reina had taken anything at all. Minato found no valuables, so either she’d taken them, or the man had none to begin with. She had… eaten all of his nonperishable food?

There were a couple of items of women’s clothing tossed into a laundry basket, and a mug decorated with cutesy cartoon crabs on the table that Minato doubted had belonged to the old man. There were still a few sips of coffee in the mug. Minato poured out the coffee and stored the mug and the clothes in a scroll.

He went down to the river next. It only took a few minutes at ninja speed, but with the stone tower now gone, it took him a while to relocate the site where she’d attempted to boil him alive. He spotted the kunai eventually, still wedged into the bed of the river and sporting a tag.

Minato was hesitant to stick his hand back in the water, even if it was now a completely normal temperature. He’d taken a fire poker from the old man’s home, and he used it to hook the kunai and pull it up. The water wasn’t deep; he probably could have stood up if he hadn’t been busy being boiled.

The seal on the kunai’s tag was nonsense. It literally did nothing but move chakra around inside of it. That was, it would do nothing but move chakra around if it had any chakra in it at all.

Minato walked back to shore and sat on the stone embankment, feeling completely flummoxed. The tag was completely nonfunctional.

So, Reina was some sort of run-of-the-mill conartist, but he didn’t understand what her goal had been, or how it connected to the mystery fuinjutsu user. Maybe the Kumo-nin occupying the town had disrupted her plan? But who had made the boiling trap, and how had she known how to activate it? The mystery fuinjutsu user had a history of helping civilians. Had they told Reina she could use it on the Kumo-nin, and instead she’d decided to use it on Minato?

He turned that last idea around in his brain for a while. Setting a death trap for ninja was pretty consistent with the mystery fuinjutsu user’s MO. But seven ninja was more than they usually went after. They did not seem to care about confronting high-ranking ninja, but they usually isolated ninja before acting; for whatever reason, they were opposed to facing multiple opponents. Besides, Minato could not see how this trap would even work on seven people.

And how had the trap worked at all?

Minato sat cross legged on the embankment and closed his eyes, focusing on replaying the moment in his mind.

He thought of Reina, in her out of place dress that was out of place because she was. He remembered her coaxing him to dive, and then her face when he’d asked her how she’d found it.

She hadn’t been afraid. He thought about her eyes, wide with understanding, her lips slightly parted. That wasn’t the face of a woman realizing she’d been caught in her own trap. That was her realizing she’d won.

She won, Minato realized. She’d won the second he hadn’t drawn a weapon, and she’d known it. She’d known exactly how the trap worked, and exactly how ninja worked. She couldn’t be as fast a ninja, but she knew how to take advantage of a moment of hesitation.

No, she won before that, Minato decided. She’d won when she’d gotten him on the water and told him to dive. If he’d not found her suspicious, he might have dived, or he’d be distracted getting the kunai, and she would have activated the trap and maybe killed him. If he’d found her suspicious, she could choose not to activate the trap, and he would have pulled up a useless kunai and left her alone. The worst that would have happened is that he’d found out she’d made up a brother for some reason, but he’d have no reason to be personally offended over that.

But instead of any of those options, he’d found her suspicious and then hesitated like a damn fool, and she’d recognized her opening.

He thought about her triumphant smirk, about how her curls had framed her face, how the sun had lit her eyes up a warm brown.

Then she’d dumped her rocks in the river.

Minato pushed down his nervousness over the water and stepped in, picking up rock after rock along the riverside.

An hour later, he had four rocks with half-faded seals painted on them.

This was a really creative but nasty trap, he had to say. This would have killed most ninja.

It was... almost exciting. He hadn't lost to anyone in forever.

He got out his storage scroll to add the rocks to the things from the house. It was dangerous to seal a seal into another seal, but the chakra on the rocks was long faded. They wouldn’t be boiling anyone alive.

He frowned at the rocks as he put them away one by one, mentally cataloging his first impressions of them.

Even if Reina was given the trap by the mystery fuinjutsu user, why had she been so confident about how it worked? It was clear now that she was comfortable around ninja and had probably worked with them before, but…

On a hunch, he unsealed the mug. He turned it over in his hands. Cartoon crabs marched around it in rings, and every few crabs was a heart.

Village weirdo, Minato thought, almost affectionately. Then he flipped the mug over.

On the bottom, drawn in a practiced hand, was a seal to keep the mug warm.

Ah, he thought.

Reina was the mystery fuinjutsu user.

#asynchronicity #my writing

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