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mixelation · 4 months

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reborn au: end of the chunin exams (some notes + 3k writing)

tonight i've been trying to choreograph the end of the chunin exams. to review, tori and kushina attempt to sneak off to retrieve morino ibiki from captivity during the tournament, but kushina is captured by iwa. tori manages to run off, and they mostly let her because she's a dumb genin child.

things that happen that i didn't write:

tori also has chakra poisoning, and he manages to mitigate the effects by reactivating her anti-genjutus seal, bc it basically scrambles her chakra. this means she's limited in what jutsu she can do.

deidara and itachi are fighting each other in the tournament, so tori has a while to sit in the stands and Plan

tori realizes that even if they rescue kushina and get away, iwa will blame them for any violence and this could turn into war. her solution is to track down kisame and mangetsu and have a hysterical break down about iwa kidnapping her sensei. she doesn't ask for help but she DOES ask they tell the mizukage what happened

she also convinces mangetsu to give her a scroll, which she makes a seal in

when she gets a hold of itachi and deidara, they have an argument about priorities. tori only cares about saving kushina, but itachi wants to complete their mission, and deidara points out they're loose ends iwa will be hunting down as soon as they get an opening

they end up splitting up: tori goes to get morino, itachi goes to find kushina, and deidara goes to distract iwa by showing up to the tsuchikage's booth (where he's entertaining foreign guests) and screaming at him. tori tells him to make sure he lets the foreign guests hear about iwa kidnapped his sensei, and then also don't blow them up???

deidara briefly fights oonoki and them flees to find tori. tori can't transport morino via jutsu without kushina, so they load him on a bird and fly out of iwa in search of itachi and kushina

itachi uses the power of genjutsu and murder to basically walk out of iwa with kushina. but because deidara made a huge scene, iwa knows there's an escape attempt and they send the demolition corps after them

and then this is what i wrote:

Tori peered over the side of the bird. The wind battered her hair, strands partially obscuring her vision. Kushina seemed so, so far away, a little smear of violent red curled up at Itachi’s side.

“Shit,” Deidara swore next to her. “Do you know if Itachi still has his mangekyou?”

Tori had no idea. She didn’t remember him mentioning it at all. She didn’t see him getting out of this alive without it.

Tori had her seal in Mangetsu's scroll all ready to go too, just in case. Its weight on her belt suddenly felt like lead. She had the solution, but she was up here, when she needed to be down there. Her eyes stayed focused on Kushina, like if she stared hard enough, the solution for instantaneously getting her seal down to them would magically appear.

Are you a kunoichi or not? she heard Kushina ask.

Oh, right.

“As soon as I've activated the seal,” Tori told Deidara, getting to her feet. “Go nuts. But don’t jostle Morino too much.”

“What seal?” Deidara asked, but Tori was already diving off the bird.

Tori had always been a little bit nervous, right before jumping off a diving board. But once her feet were off the board, she’d always felt the nerves vanish as she gave herself up to free fall.

This experience was not like that at all, possibly because the fall was long enough that Tori had enough time to realize she was about to seriously hurt herself. What was she supposed to do for extreme falls? Relax her limbs and push out a bunch of chakra and pray? Who on earth could relax in a situation like this?

Also, she didn’t even have access to her chakra.

“ITACHI!” she shrieked as the ground rushed to meet her. She pulled the scroll off her belt. “CATCH ME!”

Itachi turned, and Tori caught a split second of his horrified face before she slammed into him. The scroll went flying as they rolled together, catching itself in the surrounding thorny shrubs. There were shouts of alarm from the Iwa-nin around them, and then a flash of red as Kushina made a belated movement towards them.

The seal activated, and the shrubs unfolded around them. Tori heard a yelp of surprise from Kushina as the shrubs curled away from them, spindly branches raising up and flooding the air with chakra. A pink doom formed around them, just in time to absorb the first explosion.

Itachi rolled off of her, sending her a disparaging look. More explosions harmlessly bounced off the barrier.

“You dislocated my shoulder,” Itachi accused.

Tori sat up with a lot of effort. She had definitely fractured a few things herself.

“I know how to fix that one,” she told him.

“Tori,” Kushina said, eyes wide as she stared up at the dome. “What the fuck.”

But the barrier was solid, enclosing them in relative calm as the explosions outside suddenly ramped up. Deidara had joined the fight.

Itachi shot Tori several withering looks as she set his shoulder, but besides a single grunt of pain, he kept his mouth shut. Kushina got very uncertainly to her feet and wrapped her knuckles against the barrier.

“Why’s it pink?” she asked.

“Because…” Tori answered, “someone… told me I couldn’t make it pink…?”

Kushina let out a single, loud laugh.

Deidara’s assistance did not last as long or as thoroughly as Tori had hoped. He was unable to approach as closely as she knew he would if he weren’t also babysitting an injured man, and he wasn’t bothering with his more intricate sculptures that could aim better. His bird hovered above them, out of range of explosions from the ground, but he eventually stopped dropping his own bombs.

“He’s low on chakra,” Itachi said, squinting up at the sky with his sharingan. “He’s likely choosing to maintain the bird over offensive moves.”

Deidara was a monster, but he was only eleven. Also, he might have fought the Tsuchikage earlier? Tori wasn’t sure how that had gone down.

Kushina finally got shakily to her feet. “Does he still have enough to fly us out of here if we make an opening?”

“Yes,” Itachi said after a moment. “But, I don’t have enough chakra unless we–”

“Don’t worry, you did enough,” Kushina said, flashing her teeth. “I can take it from here.”

“But your chakra–”

“I’m over it,” Kushina assured them, cracking her knuckles. “Tori, take down the barrier and both of you get ready to run.”

“You don’t just get over chakra poisoning,” Itachi objected, but he did nothing to stop Tori from reaching for her scroll. Instead, he drew his sword with his uninjured arm.

He didn’t end up using his sword at all. The moment the barrier flickered away, the ground exploded into gold chains, reaching up and whipping around them like the bamboo forest she’d grown up in. Itachi’s eyes widened slightly in shock, and Tori had to grab for his shoulder to keep from falling over.

The disappearance of the barrier caused the number of explosions being hurled at them to ramp up, but the chains easily deflected them, even managing to throw some wads of clay back at the demolition corps.

Kushina stood in the middle of it, red hair billowing around her, hands clasped in front of her to focus her chakra, which was fine, apparently, against all medical knowledge Tori had.

“Due east,” she yelled at them. “On my mark.”

More chains fanned out, zipping through the hard earth like it was Deidara’s most moldable clay. Tori heard the scream of an Iwa-nin being grabbed, followed by another and then another. The screams cut off as soon as they started, bodies crushed by Kushina’s chains. The shrubs around them rustled as chains snaked through them, searching for victims, and as Iwa-nin started to flee.

“NOW!” Kushina yelled.

Itachi grabbed Tori's arm and ran.

“Why are you so slow?” he snarled in her ear as they went.

Tori had shut off her chakra. She wouldn’t be modifying her run with chakra at all.

They didn’t need to be particularly fast, though. Kushina followed behind them, covering their retreat effectively. The movement in the shrubs stopped eventually. If any of the demolition corps remained, they’d gone still and silent.

Deidara flew his bird above them, then eventually took it down low enough for them to hop on. A few minutes later, they were high in the air again, panting and staring at each other.

She could not believe they’d lived through that, and gotten Morino and Kushina back.

Then again, if anyone was going to do it, it would be them.

“Kushina-sensei,” Deidara said after a few minutes. “You’re kind of badass, yeah.”

Kushina laughed.

Deidara pushed himself to get them across the Earth Country border before he landed the bird. The bird dropped Morino less than gently, and Tori yelled at Deidara and hopped over the side of the bird to tend to her “patient.”

With the adrenaline faded, Tori was becoming more and more aware she was hurt. Her landing jostled her injuries and she let out an embarrassing squawking now.

Morino blinked up at her, eyes glassy as he lay prostrate in the grass. Tori kneeled next to him to make sure his pulse was still normal. That god it was, because if it hadn’t been, she didn’t really know what she could do about that, besides maybe slap a stasis seal on him and pray.

“Is Konoha recruiting insane children now?” he asked roughly. So, at least he was still alive. Tori smiled weakly back at him.

Deidara’s bird poofed out of existence, and Deidara himself laid down in the grass as well.

“We need to keep moving,” Itachi said, although he was also clearly exhausted. “Iwa will not want any of this to get out. They’ll have no issue crossing a border to pursue us.”

“Shut up, Itachi,” Deidara said. “Kushina-sensei, tell him we need to rest, and he looks like he could collapse at any moment.”

“Kushina-sensei,” Itachi said, turning to her. “Tell him– Kushina-sensei?”

Kushina was still standing, although she was staring unfocused off into the distance.

“What?” she said, noticing her genin looking at her.

“Are you alright?” Tori asked cautiously.

“I’m fine,” Kushina said, then swayed in place a bit. Her expression faltered. “I, um. I’m maybe more tired than I expected.”

“This is why we need to move,” Itachi insisted.

“He’s right,” Kushina said. She buried one hand in her hair, pushing it away from her face as her brows furrowed in thought. “What if… we cheated?”

“Cheated?” Itachi repeated.

“We’re out of Earth Country, so I think it’ll be okay,” Kushina said, more to herself than to any of them. “He’s probably noticed we moved suddenly already, anyway.”

“What–” Itachi started to demand, as Kushina closed her eyes and made a hand sign. “Sensei, this is highly unprofessional–”

Itachi choked on his words when the Hokage appeared. Itachi also drew his sword again, in an act of panic which Tori thought was just a little bit funny.

(Deidara, meanwhile, had sat straight up again.)

Minato appeared very tense, one of his three-prong kunai drawn, but he relaxed when Kushina threw her arms around him.

“Darling!” she cried. “Darling, we’re fine, but everything went to shit.”

Itachi twitched a few times as Kushina leaned back from her embrace and started explaining everything to Minato.

Ah, his inner control freak upset, Tori recognized of Itachi, and then haggardly got to her own feet to limp over to him.

Probably as a result of jumping off a bird, her side was killing her. Breathing was only a little painful, but walking hurt.

“Hey,” she said, poking Itachi’s side. “Why don’t you go see if Morino is stable for transport?”

Itachi scowled at her. Tori was more qualified to make that assessment on every front, and he knew it. But also she was giving him a mission-relevant thing he could do.

“You have a really scary face,” Tori informed Itachi when he didn’t immediately answer her.

“Oi, don’t baby him,” Deidara groused, having gotten to his feet as well.

“I’ll be back in a flash,” Minato said, kneeling over Morino and setting a hand on his shoulder. “Welcome back, Morino-san.”

“Wait, Kushina-sensei,” Deidara said when Minato and Morino were gone. “Are you telling me you could have summoned him this whole time?”

(“Does he… have a catchphrase?” Tori wondered and was ignored.)

“Well,” Kushina said, blinking at Deidara. “I mean, yes? But Minato entering Earth Country would be an act of war–”

“WHO CARES?” Deidara yelled back at her. “Kidnapping you was already an act of war, yeah! Why the fuck didn’t you just summon him earlier?”

Kushina’s expression hardened. “Deidara, the last thing I want is for a war to reignite on my behalf. I know it’s hard for a kid to understand, but--”

“I understand that you think your ideals are more important than your team,” Deidara hissed, and Kushina looked taken aback.

Oh, ouch, Tori thought. What a way to get directly under the skin of a Konoha-nin. She needed to de-escalate this as quickly as possible.

“Deidara, we’re all stressed,” Tori defended. “Kushina-sensei made the best call she could, and she knew we could handle--”

“Uh, no,” Deidara disagreed immediately. Then he grabbed Tori’s wrist and pulled her closer to himself. Tori winced as it jostled her movement. Turning back to Kushina, he said, “Tori’s your subordinate and a genin, and you left her to organize your rescue and the rest of your mission, when you literally didn’t need to.”

Tori was so shocked at Deidara suddenly defending her that she was momentarily at a loss for words. She didn’t say, But I could handle it, and you know it. She didn’t say, But if the Hokage had gotten involved, the situation would have become so fucked he’d probably have to pick one person to save and leave the rest.

She didn’t get why he was upset about this one thing in particular, when he’d seen her run screaming through equally tricky situations before and come out fine. But… oh, he’d seen her cry, hadn’t he?

Did he really care that much?

“My intention was never to put that much responsibility on Tori,” Kushina responded, just as Minato reappeared. “Tori, I apologize we never discussed this more clearly, but Itachi is an ANBU captain. The chain of command falls to him next.”

Minato’s head swiveled to look at them, clearly trying to piece together why the air had gotten so tense in his absence. Deidara gripped Tori’s wrist tighter. She was… very tired.

“I think Itachi did technically take command,” Tori said eventually. She pulled her wrist free of Deidara. “And I appreciate you defending me, but I can make my own decisions about what I do.”

“I didn’t take command so much as Tori put a plan into motion and then told me about it,” Itachi deadpanned. Kushina, who had not yet heard their side of the story, looked startled at this revelation. “Speaking of which, Hokage-sama, there’s a few key things you should know before you do anything else.”

And that was that Tori’s first move had been to make sure as much of the international community knew what Iwa had done as quickly as possible.

Both Minato and Kushina looked mildly horrified, which was not the reaction Tori would have predicted. She thought this had been a pretty good move, given the next thing they’d done was “fuck up as many people as possible.” Now whatever happened next, Iwa couldn’t claim innocence.

“I don't think she realized how outside of her purview it was to make such high-impact claims to foreign powers,” Itachi said in his perfect monotone. “I apologize for failing to intervene earlier.”

You agreed with me! Tori thought, and Deidara bristled.

“I’ll willingly take any punishment meant for this inappropriate behavior,” Itachi finished.

Oh! Tori thought. He was on her side. Okay.

Minato pinched the bridge of his nose.

“We will talk about Tori’s fast and loose decisions about Konoha foreign policy later,” Minato said. “For now, I think I have to have a chat with whoever is approaching.”

The Iwa-nin, when they came into view, numbered about ten of whom Tori assumed were Iwa’s best and brightest, minus their Demolitions Corps, which may or may not exist any more. They froze on the horizon when, presumably, one of them recognized Minato.

“Hi there!” Minato called, waving at the group. “Does your leader want to come over and talk to me?”

No one moved.

“Or do you want me to come over there?” Minato offered, projecting his voice across the field, and Kushina had to hold up her hand to hide a grin.

Someone eventually paced over to them. It was a kunoichi with a somber expression and dark hair tied back in a tight bun.

“That’s Kurotsuchi’s cousin,” Deidara whispered in Tori’s ear.

“What are you doing outside of Fire Country, Hokage-sama?” the kunoichi asked stiffly.

“We have a free passage agreement with Grass,” Minato said, friendly smile not slipping an inch. “And I’m helping my wife and her exhausted genin pass through. What are you doing here? Did you finally negotiate your own free passage agreement, or are you perhaps on a mission sanctioned by Grass?”

The kunoichi didn’t say anything, her lips thinning. Tori was pretty sure the free passage agreement was more complicated than Minato was making it sound, but it was more of a leg to stand on than Iwa had if this conflict moved to a more international stage.

“I have to say,” Minato continued, “my team didn’t think very highly of your village's hospitality.”

The kunoichi resolutely lifted her chin and looked Minato in the eyes.

“No matter what you do to us here,” she said, “the world will know you attacked us first.”

Minato raised his eyebrows.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “I think the world already knows you attempted to kidnap my wife. My shinobi assured me they were very loud about it.” He produced a kunai from his sleeve and casually twirled it around his finger. The tag on it shone extra white in the sunlight. “I think Mizukage-sama would side with me pretty quickly if I lost my mind in a love-fueled rage, don’t you think? She’s supposed to be a bit of a romantic.”

The kunoichi had tensed, her gaze focused on the kunai. Minato twirled it one more time and then it disappeared back up his sleeve.

“But, fortunately for you, my wife is fine and standing here, with me. Tell Oonoki I’ll be awaiting his apology and explanation, and nothing else.” Minato’s grin widened, showing teeth. “Now, run along, won’t you?”

The kunoichi retreated as quickly as she could and still keep her pride. The five of them watched as she rejoined their group, which then retreated.

Finally, Minato sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. His gaze slid over to Tori.

“Is Terumi Mei going to agree with me?” he asked, sounding tired.

“Oh, definitely,” Tori replied. “I was pretty hysterical. Hoshigaki Kisame and his student definitely bought it, and Hoshigaki is supposed to be super close with the Mizukage, right?”

Minato’s expression turned vaguely long-suffering.

“Do not take this as permission to do this again,” Minato said. “But that might have been a good call.”

He held out his arms and instructed everyone to take hold. Two seconds later, they were back in Konoha, in the Hokage’s office. Minato collapsed into his chair.

“I want to give you three a break,” Minato said to the genin. “But instead I’m going to get you into a room and have you write a report for… for whatever you did. Itachi can make calls on what we need to know immediately.”

“And what about me?” Kushina asked, leaning a hip against his desk.

“You… get a private debrief,” Minato said.

Deidara rolled his eyes and grabbed Tori’s arm, dragging her out of the room. Behind them, Kushina moved behind the Hokage’s desk and collapsed right into Minato’s lap.

Itachi kicked a pair of chunin out of one of the small break rooms that were scattered around Hokage Tower, sending one of them off to get them paper and writing utensils.

“And dinner,” he finished. “You can write off the expense to the Hokage’s office.”

The chunin ran off, not even questioning Itachi’s orders. Deidara sat, resting his feet on his table, and frowned thoughtfully at Itachi.

“Every day you turn out to be more of an asshole than I thought, yeah,” he said.

He didn’t sound upset about it, this time. He also didn’t complain when the chunin returned with a hot meal.

Tori went automatically for the notebook the chunin also brought them.

“I can just write the report,” Itachi offered.

“No,” Tori replied, clicking the pen. “You suck at writing.”

#reborn au #my writing

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electrasev5nwrites · 10 months

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Ninja Daily: Vapors 98

"Are you sure my presence is going to be much of a deterrent?" Jiraiya sighed, stretching the ankle that was crossed over his knee. Tsunade's lips thinned slightly, but she didn't say anything. He tried again, raising his voice slightly. "If I didn't know better, I would say that you were just trying to keep me within Konoha. Are you afraid I'm going to do something stupid like walk into Ame and try to talk Konan down?"

His tone was placid, but Tsunade knew it hid an element of danger. He was emotionally compromised. He knew it, she knew it- hell, Keiko probably knew it, although her poker face had become exponentially better in the course of her employment.

That didn't mean he would react well to her admitting that yes, she was at least partially motivated by fear that he would get his fool head bashed in because that was what happened when fools rushed in.

"What do you think the Tsuchikage is thinking, if he is at all?" she said instead, conjuring up more irritation than she really felt for the missive she had received pressuring and shaming Konoha. He couldn't really believe that Konoha was more liable for their traitors' behavior than anyone else was. It was unprecedented to hold a missing nin's country of origin responsible for their crimes, after they'd been disowned. But Oonoki was trying to force Konoha to pay reparations for what Orochimaru had done years after he had been branded a dissident- something about that damn base in Grass country?

Jiraiya took the bait for now and shrugged.

"Probably wants to get the first rhetorical blow in, before you accuse him of espionage. Now if you retaliate, it just looks like you're pissed that he wants you to take responsibility for what Orochimaru did in foreign countries."

She had already guessed as much. That didn't make it any less annoying.

"What a moron," Tsunade groused, fanning herself with the letter she'd been reading. "As if I'm just anxious to get into another international problem when we already have Akatsuki on our hands. He's really not that important."

Inwardly, she winced. Even when she was trying to change the topic, she couldn't help but reference the organization that was making her old teammate so broody. It wasn't as if their previous subject –Orochimaru- had ceased to be a sore spot either, but he was long past the point of being saved. Konan was too, but if she knew her teammate he was retaining the hope that if he could just talk to his old student she could be persuaded to leave Akatsuki.

Jiraiya was understandably torn up about discovering that someone he had long mourned was in fact alive and associated with a terrorist organization that had vowed to murder one of his godchildren and had assaulted the other godchild. It was the sort of awkward revelation that you couldn't quite look past, no matter how much you liked a person.

She hadn't entirely been lying when she said she hoped that his presence in the city would deter this 'Tobi' from coming back to harass Aiko. If he had really just wanted to take her with him, he would have.

No, that incident had been about something else. It was quite probably meant for someone else. Tobi had stated his intentions, terrified the teen, and batted around an entire ANBU squad to make the point that he could do as he pleased. It might be a play against Jiraiya in specific, or perhaps Aiko's captain- Kakashi had a lot of enemies. Or Tobi might just be picking a high-value target with a decent reputation to make the point that he was powerful to enhance his own reputation.

For the moment, she was acting on the hypothesis that Tobi hadn't necessarily been bluffing about returning. He might be back, if only because failing to follow through would undermine the effect of his first foray into Konoha. If that happened, it would be better to have another s-class shinobi on hand. It wasn't like Jiraiya found spending time with his goddaughter to be much of a trial. They'd shared several meals while he'd been back from what Tsunade had half-heartedly heard while busy in her own work.

"Hime, you can't keep me here forever. I'm of a lot more use in the field and you know it."

She was saved from having to come up with a response by the blur of movement that occurred when Aiko used Hiraishin to flicker into the office and then immediately ducked and rolled away, popping back up on the floor with the strangely wary expression she used when returning from foreign offices.

'I only tried to swat her the once,' Tsunade thought rather sulkily. It was just a reflex to hit ninja that suddenly appeared a few feet away.

"Tsunade-sama, the Mizukage would like aid." Her voice was unusually high, and Aiko all but ran her words together. Tsunade idly noted that one of her bangs appeared to be scorched, much more interested in the content of the girl's words. Jiraiya had perked up in obvious interest. "She called me because her rebels or dissidents or whatever took note that half her Jounin were out surrounding Ame and they're trying a coup."

"Well, there's your field work," Tsunade noted with biting irony to her old partner. She snapped her fingers—and the ANBU stepped into sight, ready for orders. "Put the village on lockdown, and make sure Shizune knows what's going on. I'm going to go take care of this personally."

It was largely her fault that so many had been deployed to Ame, after all. Or her responsibility, rather. She couldn't fail to come to her allies' aid, but nor did she have the excess of powerful teams on standby to be deployed at the moment. There was no point in risking genin teams on this. No. Three S-class shinobi were standing right in the office, and that was the kind of backup that could make a significant difference in a pinch.

"Aiko-chan, would you be a darling and take us to the Mizukage?" She straightened her haori, wiggled her feet inside her heels, and strode over to the girl even as Jiraiya held out an arm gallantly.

Aiko looked downright confused at their lack of urgency, but gamely slid her hand under her godfather's arm. That was one of the things that separated the experienced shinobi from new shinobi. Worrying wouldn't speed their feet, and they had fought in so many battles that this was just another day out. In contrast… this would probably be Aiko's first large scale battle, wouldn't it? The great nations had been hanging in tenuous peace for so long that the closest thing she'd have experienced would have been border problems. "Come on now," Tsunade added gently, placing a hand on Aiko's shoulder. "Is this enough conta-"

She cut off her own sentence, because they were suddenly a continent away and in the middle of a firefight. The Mizukage appeared to be strangling a young man with her bare hands. Her fidgety bodyguard was fending off some scar-faced swordswoman, but the older bodyguard was nowhere to be seen.

"That was fast!" Terumi called out, sounding not exactly cheerful but not stressed either. The tension in her jaw showed the lie. "I'm afraid that they haven't donned a convenient uniform, so I've just been killing the ones that attack me. That should work for you as well, since they'll know that Konoha nin are my allies."

"Sounds acceptable," Tsunade replied, peering around her surroundings with interest.

At her voice, Terumi actually jerked around to verify the identities of her backup, mouth hanging open. She dropped her prey and shook her head slightly. "Well, this I didn't ex-"

She was cut off by the imaginative shriek of "harlot!" from a new opponent and then the Mizukage was distracted by another fight.

"Nice place they have here," Jiraiya deadpanned.

It looked like hell. Blood was running in the gutters from uphill, which didn't bode well for that residential district. Most of the doors were fastened shut as if civilians were cowering inside, but some had clearly been burnt and then put out with powerful water jutsu. The destroyed building faces were better than a gutted ash pit of a city, but they weren't going to do anything for Mist's tourism.

Tsunade and Jiraiya stayed together, falling back into their old teamwork with the precision and grace of two expert musicians playing a familiar tune. The Mizukage hadn't been wrong when she said that fights would come to them as they basically steamrolled through the village with the Mizukage, clearing streets and breaking up the other fights they found. After a while, Tsunade noted that Aiko was darting ahead of the small group of powerhouses.

"Do you think she painted her kunai with nail polish, or does someone actually sell those?" Jiraiya sounded mildly pained. He was paying more attention to his goddaughter's strange antics than his own fight. After a while, it did get repetitive to smack down C and B class shinobi who really didn't stand a chance.

"Oh, dear," Mei's sissy swordsman breathed, clearly having overheard and then turned to see what Aiko was doing. He had looked just in time to see her dart through a line of the rebels that crowded the streets (the loyalists had figured out mid-battle to re-tie their hitai-ites around their arms as identification). The way that everyone she passed erupted in localized explosions, sending blood spurting out in a wave behind her, was sort of beautiful, if macabre. But…

"Did you see her do more than touch any of them?" Mei asked, caught between amusement and curiosity.

Jiraiya had already turned back to his own fight and Tsunade said nothing. She hadn't seen Aiko touch most of them—but when she did, it was literally just a touch. Tsunade wouldn't be sharing that, though. It was good to be on peaceable terms with Kiri, but that didn't mean it was a good idea to help them dissemble a technique that was unique to Konoha. At least, she assumed it was unique to Konoha. It almost had to be Hiraishin-aided at the least.

Her hands were smeared with blood and her coat spotted with it, but Tsunade felt a grim sort of satisfaction when less than an hour's work confirmed that Kiri was still Terumi's village.

She had to cringe when Aiko found her way back to them, all but soaking in blood. There were semi-clean lines across her face where she'd clearly tried to wipe her nose and mouth clean, as well as her eyes, but it was unattractive at best. "Uzumaki, I think that you're going to have to perfect whatever it is you've been doing," she commented.

Aiko just shrugged. "I was doing well, and then I stupidly tried to go back for one I'd missed and was too close to an explosion," she explained without really explaining at all.

Tsunade let it slide. "Mizukage-dono!" she called out, striding towards where she had last seen the other woman.

After all that had been settled and they finally went home, Tsunade caught Aiko's arm and then jerked away, because the cold blood felt slimy under her fingertips. Uncaring that the office they had just teleported into was already occupied by Shizune, two ANBU, and a couple of slack-jawed idiots from the downstairs offices, she rather bluntly raised her question. "Uzumaki, what was that 'touch of death' monstrosity you had going on?"

The teenager blinked twice, and tugged on her shirt sleeve with her thumb and forefingers. "I'm afraid I don't know what you mean, Hokage-sama," she said in a tone that couldn't be more innocent. The image might have been convincing if she wasn't dripping blood on Tsunade's nice carpet.

Tsunade snorted loudly. "I'm sure," she said dryly. She waved the girl off, eyes flickering over to the people waiting for her attention. She had more immediate concerns than dragging technique details out of a reticent teenager. For all she knew, Aiko might claim it as a clan technique, in which case even the Hokage didn't have a right to an explanation.

'That was more than I had planned when I got up this morning.' Feeling the Mizukage calling her through her seal had put a pit of a damper on breakfast… come to think of it, how long had Sai waited for her to come back? She winced. He'd need an apology in the morning. Aiko had been all but sopping wet when she trudged out the Hokage's office—and then politely thought better of it, transporting herself directly to her apartment. She wrung the clothes out in her bathtub and then carted them directly to the washing machine, not caring if anyone saw her in her underwear on the brief trip. She might have gone to her safehouse instead, if she had gotten around to moving clothes over already. That outfit certainly wasn't going to be re-worn tonight.

Aiko let her head rest against the tile and tried to massage shampoo as deeply into her hair as possible to force out any hint of blood from clinging to her scalp. She ended up doing that three times before she was satisfied.

It was relatively easy to tag an opponent and move away before she destroyed the seal as well as the flesh it had been stuck to. She had done something similar while fighting Mukade's puppets, but she now knew that fighting a large group of people with that technique was a bit different. For starters, it got a lot messier.

'It didn't help that I was impulsive enough to move backwards,' Aiko noted with a little bit of humor at her own expense as she dressed. She had fallen into a routine, and then stupidly failed to adjust how long she was waiting to destroy the last seal she had set to compensate for the fact that she hadn't moved far enough away to clear the blood splatter.

She glanced down at her own hands, as if expecting to see that they were still covered in blood. They were immaculate, of course.

They shouldn't be. They were always bloody. All she ever did was kill people. How was it that Tsunade had described her variation on Hiraishin- a touch of death? Wasn't that the exact same phrase Kakashi had used months ago after he'd first seen it?

Apt.

A strange emptiness ripped through her chest, leaving her bereft and mildly shaken. What kind of person was she becoming? She didn't regret killing Shou or any number of other people. If she was in the same situation, she would make the same choices. But that didn't mean she was comfortable. God help her, she loved fighting, and thought of killing as something that was just attached. A side-effect that meant she'd done well on her mission. The fact that she wasn't wracked by self-hatred for that probably said something terrible about what kind of human being she was.

Her first eleven or so years in this world hadn't been like that. Mostly, they had been dull and repetitive. But there had been some sort of comfort in the daily maintenance required to keep house and raise Naruto. This world hadn't changed, but she had.

'I'm being stupid. I'd never be happy if I just quit to become a housewife or whatever.'

Aiko flopped down face-first on the couch, letting her right arm flop off the side and curling the left into her ribs. Still. It would be nice to remind herself that she was capable of doing something that wasn't destructive.

"Auurrgghhh!" She bared her teeth and made an incredibly hideous, aggressive groan into the couch cushion.

What was she trying to prove to herself? She'd had non-destructive hobbies before, and they hadn't solved anything. Re-writing children's stories and movies hadn't made her feel any better when she had started her actual work, except as a distraction.

Was she even capable of another doing anything else at this point? Tsunade had to be completely fucking mad to have entrusted her with Fukiko.

She paused, mulling over that line of thought.

Now she was mildly curious as to whether she was capable of doing something that was purely helpful. Like… medical ninjutsu, maybe. That wouldn't be a total waste of her time, would it? She wouldn't want to get good enough that she got pulled back to the support… as if that would happen at this point, she realized sheepishly. Still. She didn't want to be a medic nin, but wouldn't it be nice to be capable of at least patching herself up?

Aiko deliberately didn't think too deeply into what she was doing when she went straight to the archives that Tsunade had finally allowed her unilateral access to and dug around in a completely different section than usual. It absolutely was not allowed for her to take the material out of the building, but she didn't care. She unrolled a scroll on low level, incredibly basic medical ninjutsu—the kind of thing that Itachi had done to encourage her cuts to heal—and read it from top to bottom.

Then she went and scrubbed the blood off the bathroom tiles, because that scroll was god-awfully dull and she needed to do something a little more mentally stimulating to wake her up to the point where she was willing to try a new jutsu on herself.

With the bleach thoroughly washed off of her flesh, she settled down on her bed with the half-rolled scroll on her lap. Aiko stared blankly at it for a while, as if it would suddenly make some sort of intuitive sense. The first step was 'convert your chakra to medical chakra'. How the hell was she supposed to do that? She knew it came naturally to some people, and if there was an easier way of accomplishing such a thing, it would have been detailed. That just meant that either she had the aptitude or she didn't. Uncertainly, she read the thing again, as if inspiration would come. When it didn't, she rested her head in her hands and tried to think.

Okay. Her first approach wasn't working. Maybe it would make more sense to try converting her chakra once she had something in mind to heal? She did work a lot better with a goal. With that in mind, she unholstered a gleaming orange kunai and brought the tip down the inside curve of her left calf to make a thin scratch. With her constitution, it would heal overnight, if she couldn't fix it. Easily, she flicked the resulting blood off and put the blade away before channeling chakra to her right hand.

How hard could this be? Benign chakra. All she needed was chakra that didn't hurt anyone. Surely she was capable of that. Sasuke had managed that, for crap's sake, and he was hardly nice nurse material. Tons of people did this. Karin had managed to teach it to classes full of pre-genin. She didn't have to be the next Tsunade. She just had to be capable of making something that didn't hurt people.

She tried touching the cut with her water-natured chakra to get an understanding of what had to change. That didn't help. She tried to channel chakra from each of her gates in succession. She tried everything that seemed half-plausible and a dozen things that didn't. The little bit of blood seeping out of the scrape almost seemed to be taunting her. It took hours for her to admit defeat.

"Fine."

Feeling tired, Aiko let the energy she had been directing to her hand fade and straightened her back, lifting her head to stare unblinkingly up at the ceiling. Fine, she couldn't do it. Experiment conducted and failure. Her limbs had never felt so heavy, but she responsibly pulled her boots back on and went to return the scroll before anyone noted it missing. Then she went to her safehouse and slept.

That had been stupid. She should stick to what she was good at.

Still, the first thing she did when she woke up was hold her palm in front of her face and try to make it glow with minty chakra.

Konan took a deep breath, and carefully extracted a bit of water out of the paper flower in her hair to ensure that it was as crisp as possible. The dampness in Ame did her ninjutsu no favors, even if it was hardly crippling. Still, she had been feeling much better. The lingering sluggishness in her hip had just suddenly been gone last week.

She ceased fidgeting when she was joined by the more punctual among Akatsuki. Hidan trailed in almost last, sullen and reticent. He had been complaining about being confined to headquarters, but wasn't bold enough to disobey Pein. Still, his whining about the need to sacrifice to his god was becoming a nuisance.

It was as if all the air went out of the room when Pein graced them with his presence. Konan examined him fondly, eyes tracing the way that his regal posture made him seem intimidating and shying away from the reminder that he was using dead flesh to walk among them. It wasn't for a mortal to question her god. He was going to bring peace, even though he had to resort to military might to do it. His methods were his own, when the prize was so incontestably wonderful.

The only shame was that his servants had not been doing an adequate job enforcing his will. They still only had one bijuu.

"Zetsu and Tobi will retrieve the jinchuuriki of the four-tails."

Konan repressed a quirk of the lips at Pein's timely words. Others seemed less pleased, but held their tongues. They were learning, then. She had half-feared that Hidan would argue that he should be sent out. But Zetsu and Tobi could travel and accomplish this task with more expediency than another team.

"Kisame, you will be maintaining the rain in Ame in my absence."

Her amusement froze. That was the first she had heard of this. She waited patiently for the order to accompany him—she usually did. But that did not happen. He administered several warnings and reminders about what had to be done in his absence, the potential danger posed by the shinobi circling Ame (most of the men present seemed to roll their eyes) and then he said that she would be in charge in his absence.

Her heartbeat quickened. Had she displeased him?

As soon as they were alone, she dared to ask. "Pein-sama?"

He gave her an indulgent look, so she felt free to press forward.

"Where is it that you go?"

"Do not fear." He turned away dismissively, his cloak floating behind him. "I will be back soon for the extraction."

"Erp!"

Karin's mouth fell open and she sat straight up, inadvertently knocking over the med kit she had been painstakingly restocking.

"It's gone!" She looked at Sasuke with wide eyes, and put a hand to her chest.

He had no idea what she was talking about.

"That chakra signature," she snapped out, exasperated. "In the rain, it's just gone."

Kakashi had been twenty feet away, having just returned from a patrol route, but suddenly he was right by Karin's side. After a few moments, Yamato and Genma exchanged tired looks and followed him over.

"But the rain is still going," Naruto offered uneasily. "I thought that as long as it was being produced, you would sense that chakra. Does it just happen to be raining?"

"No," Karin said tersely. "Well, maybe. It could be natural rain, although I doubt it. I was sensing chakra in it before because it was actively being used to track. But it would take an extraordinarily skilled user to infuse water with her chakra, turn it into rain, and then maintain the connection even as the rain fell for hundreds of miles in each direction. That's why it was so shocking that the rain has been tinted with the same chakra for days. This… has no chakra in it. A skilled user could be infusing water with their chakra and saturating the atmosphere until it rained by taking advantage of natural processes to compensate for not being… you know," Karin shrugged as if struggling for words.

"Idiotically powerful and wasteful?" Naruto offered.

His cousin nodded. "I was looking for a more technical description, but that'll work, I guess."

"Have you sensed anyone moving around?" Kakashi prodded.

Karin shook her head. "No, but I can't sense to the center of the country, where they'd be," she offered sheepishly, pushing her fingers together.

"Neither can I; so let's call it even," Kakashi muttered, ruffling his hair. He heaved a sigh and looked up. "Two hypotheses occur. One, the person who was maintaining the jutsu before is too weary to carry on, and is having a subordinate attempt to mimic the effect to keep us at bay. Or two, that person left," he finished darkly.

There was an uneasy silence while the two teams chewed that over.

After a moment, Genma was the one to react. "I suppose we should contact the other teams, captain," he pointed out, shoving his hands in his pockets. "This is the first time that the situation has changed since we've been here."

"Other than the Mist teams going home?" Naruto muttered, biting on his lower lip. No one had explained that yet, but something must have happened.

"Well, there are still plenty of Konoha, Kumo, and Suna teams," Kakashi sighed. "Sasuke, would you please summon Katsuya-sama and ask her to pass a message to Tsunade-sama? Genma, run a message to the eastern camp. I'll go to the western camp. Tenzo, you're in charge of the kids until I get back."

"Yes, sir!" Yamato acknowledged, straightening a bit.

He had been trusted with many lives, but those were usually ANBU level shinobi. Karin and Sasuke were Chuunin, and technically Naruto was still a genin. Still, the mission to make sure nothing happened in the hour or so that he was the only ANBU level shinobi around shouldn't be too difficult.

Yamato nearly reevaluated that assessment when Sasuke dismissed Katsuya and all three of the teenagers present exchanged completely innocuous, innocent looks.

He shuffled backwards, somehow uncomfortable with the situation but not able to verbalize what was wrong. There was a distinct sense of danger in the air. Yamato cast his senses out in all directions, desperately trying to pinpoint what was wrong. Was that- did light just glint ominously off of Karin's eyes? Warily, he examined the teenagers.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Cataloguing your weaknesses," Sasuke replied honestly. "I think that the three of us together could take you."

Naruto heaved a dramatic sigh, even as Yamato blanched. The blond scratched his head. "And that would leave the three of us wandering alone into enemy territory to confront Akatsuki," he mused.

From their swift coordination, it was clear that this wasn't the first time the teens had thought about this topic. Oddly, he felt a little insulted that they obviously thought he was the weak link. He was probably stronger than Genma. Just because he didn't push his weight around… well, it didn't mean anything, that was all.

"Don't worry," Karin said lightly, digging her toe into the mud. "We won't be alone, per se. We have the advantage of numbers. My summons found the other teams days ago. As soon as I get a few miles into Ame and can sense Akatsuki, I can start telling people where to go."

Naruto snickered, though Yamato was too stiff to get what was funny about that.

"It almost seems like it would be wiser for you to just give in and escort us," Karin added, blinking red eyes up at him. Her voice was almost saccharine sweet.

Yamato swallowed. His mouth was dry. Had it been dry a moment ago?

'They might be right. I don't know that I can defeat all three of them without hurting them. And if they fight me, all of us will be weakened. And if they are so determined to go into Ame, they can't afford to be vulnerable.'

"Of course, would it be more embarrassing to lose control of your charges or to defer to them?" Sasuke pretended to wonder aloud. "Either way, Kakashi is going to be very disappointed in you, Yamato." He tsked and shook his head pityingly. The unkind little smile on his face conveyed a different message.

A shiver went up Yamato's spine, and he swallowed uneasily. "You wouldn't," he tried to sound confident.

He didn't care about being embarrassed. But he would be failing in his assigned duty either way. It was more important to try to keep the ungrateful brats safe than it was to insist on keeping them in place. If he tried and failed to keep them from leaving, they would be nearly defenseless.

Identical catlike smiles crawled across all three faces in front of him. Inanely, he wondered if the Uchiha were related to the Uzumaki in some way, because there was a definite similarity there.

They would.

He took a deep breath and steeled himself. "I can't let you three go into Ame. We were posted here for a reason."

The teenagers could have at least pretended to feel a little trepidation. Sasuke gave a deep sigh and cocked a hip. "That's not the smart reaction," he said levelly, "But it's the one I can respect you for."

"We're still going to beat you up!" Naruto chirped, sliding his feet apart and taking an athletic stance.

Yamato clapped his hands together with enough force to jar the muscles in his elbows, already flooding his fingers with chakra. The green spark lit up instantly. He transformed it into raw material for his ninjutsu and sent an enormous shoot of barkless wood spiraling rapidly at Karin, who stood in between her taller peers. Sasuke leapt in front of her and back-handed the wood course.

Perfect. Yamato repressed a smile at that instant. If he had tried to send such an obviously curved branch with dozens of sprouted limbs ready to be grown around them, they would have dodged. But they didn't, and none of them were looking at the wood. They really didn't expect much out of him, did they?

The long branch hit the ground, scraping a long line in the dirt. Twenty-four branches were already swelling and bursting out in an arc that curved over the three teens. He broke his connection to it and dashed forward.

Kids were so arrogant. They were powerful, but they weren't fast enough to play with S class opponents. He had been right to stop them. Sasuke's eyes were red and wide in a way that proved he saw what was going on, although he couldn't react to it in time. Naruto at the back had no chance to push his way forward to escape the cage that was closing around his back. Sasuke's muscles tensed—he saw the trap, and he was the only one with a chance to push his way out, since he'd blocked off Karin.

Which was why Yamato met him as he leapt forward, Karin jerking into motion behind Sasuke. The older man felt a bit of grim amusement when he kicked Sasuke in the ribs, abruptly halting his forward motion and sending him tumbling back into Karin as the cage closed.

Yamato kicked off of the outside of the wooden cage and flipped backwards, landing catlike. He grinned at the cranky and trapped teens. "That cage can hold a bijuu," he pointed out. "So don't bother-"

Crack.

The grin slid off his face. "Seriously, stop." He scowled at Sasuke, whose fist was still knuckle deep in wood. "You can't-"

Crack crack.

"Or just ignore me," Yamato mumbled, locking his fingers behind his head and turning around to hide the put-out look on his face. He whirled around again at the sound of a sickening crunch. "Oh for kami's sake," he snapped, before he registered the dumb-founded look on Sasuke's face.

"Cool," Naruto breathed.

'It is pretty cool,' Yamato thought hysterically, in the instant before the coils of glowing chains leaking out of Karin's back shattered his prison like it had been constructed from paste and toothpicks. They were a minty green he had thought only belonged to medical chakra. More importantly, they were –

"Enormous," Sasuke noted, sounding genuinely impressed. Splinters fell for a good twenty feet in every direction. They'd barely settled when Karin blinked.

"Huh." She put a hand to her hip and twisted to see the point where the chains emerged from the base of her spine. "That's interesting. I just wanted to be able to break the prison." Her lips pursed contemplatively, but the expression failed to disguise the glee at just how much destruction she'd caused.

"Those are a lot better than Aiko's," Naruto pointed out, reaching to catch a bit of debris and roll it thoughtfully between his fingers.

"Not better, different," Sasuke disagreed. "Congratulations on activating your bloodline, Karin, but I wouldn't try to use them the way Aiko does. Unless you want to pulp whoever you're trying to restrain, in any case."

Yamato silently disagreed. They were a good four times thicker than Aiko's chains, and considerably longer. They were also originating from a much lower point on the user's back. Karin didn't seem to be able to maneuver them by wrapping them around her arms like Aiko did- did that make them less precise, or just different?

Either way… That meant he couldn't keep them locked up, and the only way he could keep them in place would be to physically beat them all into unconsciousness. Yamato slumped. He couldn't do that, not if they had any teamwork at all. And he already knew that Naruto and Sasuke had acceptable teamwork.

Naruto snickered. "Ne, that makes me the only one without a bloodline limit," he playfully whined while Karin played around with her new toy. Sasuke elbowed him absentmindedly before picking his way out of the debris field.

"Well, captain," Sasuke breathed sarcastically. Yamato momentarily wished for a chance to slap the smirk off his face. "What are you going to do now?"

What indeed.

Meekly, he followed the teenagers into Ame, intentionally leaving an obvious trail for Kakashi and Genma to follow. He hated his life sometimes.

#vapors #uzumaki aiko #electrasev5n #ninja daily #fanfiction #naruto fanfiction

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