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Five ninja sat uncomfortably close in a stall. Jiraiya had managed to sit across from Tsunade, leaving the two boys to pile in next to him and Shizune to linger at the end of the table for a long moment, before she cuddled Tonton closer and sat down next to her mentor. Naruto made a reach for a sake saucer, but the taller blonde slapped his hand away with nearly enough force to break the delicate bones in his hand. He resentfully glared at her, holding his hand to his chest.
"Serves you right, loser," Sasuke said in a low undertone, managing to become the new target of Naruto's ire. The boys squirmed, engaging in under-the-table warfare with kicks and elbow jabs.
Tsunade gave her old teammate a distinctly unimpressed expression. "I didn't know you were dragging around brats now. Going to get those ones killed too?" Shizune winced at that particular bit of bluntness, but Jiraiya knew better than to react. She was trying to drive him away. Calmly, he poured drinks for the three adults, noticing Shizune's raised hand a moment late. Tsunade solved the problem by slamming down her drink and then pushing the saucer away.
"Have you heard about what happened yet?"
The older blonde's eyes narrowed. "What are you talking about, pervert?"
Sasuke spared a moment from his covert war against Naruto to smirk at that insult. He hadn't been pleased by their guide's habit of 'stopping to observe the sights'. It was one of the few times when he deigned to outwardly agree with Naruto—the man's behavior was an embarrassment and completely degraded the often-civilian women he took advantage of to leer at. Plus, he was still trying to process the strange way the white-haired man had looked at him before off-handedly mentioning that he looked just like his mother. Sasuke shuddered in his seat.
When it came, the reply was measured, calm, and almost emotionless. "Orochimaru went and founded his own village, which he used as leverage to kill the Kazekage, take his place and have the two groups attack Konoha from the inside during the Chuunin exam."
Tsunade visibly expressed surprise- a minor victory for Jiraiya. He had her off balance. Shizune didn't have her mentor's reticence and leaned forward, face twisted into dismay. Tonton began to wiggle when her grip tightened. "What happened?"
Jiraiya very noticeably did not look down her kimono when she leaned forward, Naruto noted with some surprise while he tried to pull his aching shins out of Sasuke's reach. His face was the most serious the boys had ever seen. "I killed Oro- the bastard, but Sandaime-sama… Sensei is dying. He's in a coma. Tsunade, the village is in dire need. That vulture Danzo and his cronies are doing everything they can to steal as much power as possible before Sensei is even cold. We need a strong candidate for Hokage. Someone who no one can claim isn't qualified for the job."
Naruto's eyes were wide at the dramatic way the information was laid out, but everyone else had regained their feet. "No." Tsunade shook her head, ponytails swishing over her shoulders. "Absolutely not. That job…" She unconsciously splayed her fingers across her collarbones, brushing against a pendant. "Only a moron would take that job!"
Sasuke sent a genuinely considering look at Naruto, his thoughts written plainly over his features for once. 'Good news, if that's true we have a great candidate.' Tsunade caught the look and gave a mean, mildly hysterical sound of amusement, but no one else acknowledged it. He'd expected Naruto to react to the other blonde's declaration, but the other boy was staring at the older woman across the table with disgust frozen on his features. 'Maybe he gave up on that dream,' Sasuke idly thought. 'He hasn't mentioned it since before… He hasn't mentioned it since before the exam.'
"Fuck you, old lady!" Naruto banged a fist on the table, standing up so violently that the bench was pushed back.
'Ah, there's the reaction,' Sasuke thought blandly.
"The Hokage have been some of the greatest people born to our village. You can't possibly say that the Sandaime was a moron. He was brilliant, like the Yondaime! I'm going to be the Hokage one day and you won't say crap like that then!" He leaned across the table aggressively, shouting into her face with his hands planted on the table surface.
Shizune covered her dark eyes with the hand that wasn't strangling Tonton. Eyes the color of honey, ringed by ridiculously long blonde lashes narrowed dangerously. Her left hand shot out and tangled into the front of Naruto's shirt, pointed nails digging into the fabric. "Listen, kid," she snarled. "I have known people with ten times more talent than you with that same dream, and they all ended up dead chasing it. You don't have a chance. You should give up now, while you still can. There's some good advice for you."
"Why would I give up, when a loser like you already has that market cornered," Naruto jeered. "I don't know why the pervert even bothered to track down someone as old and bitter as you!" Jiraiya twitched in his seat.
Always ready to chime in with an insult, Sasuke added, "We might be better off with the pervert in charge than a coward." He glanced over at his teammate, who looked significantly less idiotic than usual and hadn't kicked him in almost a minute. "The idiot might even do a better job. Come on. We're wasting our time." He turned to slide out of the seat, dismissing the fact that Naruto was still trapped in Tsunade's monster grip.
"Don't you walk away from me," the older woman practically roared. "You brats! You have no idea what I've been through that led me to know that position is bad news!" She dropped her alcohol untouched, letting the liquid splash over the table and grabbing Sasuke by his obnoxiously wide collar. Tsunade then proceeded to bodily lift both boys above the table, letting them kick futilely. Naruto managed to clip Jiraiya on the head pretty well, but she was too furious to laugh at his misfortune and the shoeprint in his hair.
Naruto gave her back just as good as he got with kicks and muffled exclamations, face red from both oxygen deprivation and mindless rage. Jiraiya joined Shizune in escape, slumping down in his seat to crawl out under the table on his hands and knees while the more conventional path was blocked by struggling adolescent feet.
"And don't you dare call me old," she added, as if an afterthought. "I'm almost a full year younger than that white-haired moron you followed here!"
There was a moment of silence, then Naruto's face twisted in mild surprise. "Holy shit, you're that old? I thought you were more like thirty than a gazillion." A small, squeaking sound of inestimable rage escaped through Tsunade's dropped jaw. The muscle below Jiraiya's right eye twitched, and he paused in his stealthy retreat to slowwwwwly turn around.
"You're getting off topic, idiot," Sasuke choked out even though the words were muffled by the collar that was currently covering almost his entire face.
"The bastard has a point," Naruto rallied in much the same easy way as he'd just insulted two of the three adults at the table. "You're still a loser, and you're wrong about being Hokage! The Hokage protects the village and everyone in it." He practically shone with the force of his conviction. The darkness and newly acquired doubt in that particular ambition that someone who knew him would see was completely invisible to Tsunade's eyes.
As someone who did see the crack in the slight pause Naruto gave mid-sentence, Sasuke shifted uncomfortably. Something that was still raw related to their missing teammate tainted the way he thought about what the loser said. He usually felt derisive when the idiot made declarations like that one. But… 'Maybe Naruto isn't such an idiot after all. The idea of wanting to protect your precious people… If I had precious people left, I would want to protect them from Itachi.'
Sakura had definitely not been a precious person. But she had been familiar and increasingly tolerable. Even if she had remained as annoying as she had been at the start, he would still have tried to protect her from enemies.
Maybe Naruto was onto something with the idea of protecting people you loved. That was a lot like getting revenge for people if you had never failed to keep them safe from a monster in the first place. It would be accomplished in much the same way, after all. Killing Itachi and others like him.
Tsunade's grip momentarily loosened while she stared at the blonde, some strange emotion passing over her face. Of course, with Jiraiya and Shizune at a slightly safer distance and Sasuke's face covered by his collar, the only one who saw it was also the only one without the social skills to recognize that he'd just made the busty woman think about something else. Her eyes softened, and she let go of both boys in order to bury her face in her hands, elbows splayed out on the table. Naruto yelped as his tailbone connected with the seat, while Sasuke missed the bench altogether and managed to be the only person in the world to fall to the floor and struggle his way out of his shirt in a semi-dignified manner.
Tsunade's shoulder shook, though whether she was laughing or crying was anyone's guess. Jiraiya swooped back in and extracted both preteens, bundling them off into Shizune's custody and quietly asking if she could please take them to the hotel, he needed a word with his old teammate. She was actually flustered enough to comply.
~~~
"You're pretty good at that," Karin said blandly, not looking at Aiko at all. She licked a fingertip and turned the page of the medical text she was reading, face not displaying any of the frustration Aiko would have felt in her place. 'Anatomy of Chakra Systems: How it Can Go Wrong; Third Edition' sounded like a book used for torture, not education.
The taller redhead grimaced. "Very funny, Karin." She gave up on the attempt at chakra chains for the moment, viciously kicking a rock that she could displace her anger on to. It bounced across the training ground on the outskirts of town, ending up in a patch of mud.
Her companion raised one eyebrow silently. Aiko flushed. 'What is it about this girl that gets me so flustered?' she griped. Karin had some sort of sixth sense for making Aiko feel immature and silly.
With a sigh, Aiko ran through a mental list of what she should get done for the day. With the reconstruction occupying a good portion of her time, she had been neglecting her regular training.
'I can't go another day without trying to get the senbon trick to work,' she decided. She'd been putting it off for a while. Anko had demonstrated a wrist-flick that sent a brace of senbon hidden under fingerless gloves flying. It looked really cool, and was a low energy, low chakra way of turning around a fight… especially if she poisoned them. They weren't poisoned yet, of course. Until she had gotten to a point where she aimed them reliably, that would be a phenomenally stupid idea.
"That's my cue to leave," Karin said dryly, marking a spot in her book.
Aiko blinked at the other girl, confused. "What are you talking about?"
A theatrical sigh filled the air, and the older girl held up two fingers. "One. You're staring at the target circle and rotating your wrists, indicating that you're thinking about possibly skewering my person with badly aimed senbon again."
"I said I was sorry," Aiko grumbled a bit bitterly. Karin gave her a withering look and plowed over the mild objection.
"Two. Sasuke-san and one more person are coming in this direction, and fast. I don't know the other, but it's like monstrously big. It must be that Sannin he left with. Sasuke doesn't seem to like me at the best of times, and right now his chakra signature feels really weird. It's really.." she scrunched up her nose. "It's really still, kind of, and he feels very sad. If I had ever felt another chakra signature like Sasuke's, I would say it was a different person. But his is so unique." Karin's eyes glazed and she dreamily floated off on a tangent, as she often did when she tried to describe the unique way she understood the world. A bit bewildered, Aiko let her. "I think it must be connected to the Sharingan. But he also just has the most beautiful aura, Aiko."
It would probably be best to pretend not to hear the sigh, Aiko decided. "Okay then." She glanced at her target, wondering how long she'd have to practice until Sasuke showed up. She didn't want to skewer him either. "How long til he's here?"
Karin closed her eyes for a moment, entering that clear, practical state of mind she slipped into when there was intellectual work to be done. She bit her lower lip just once before she opened her eyes and mouth. "About two minutes, if he keeps a steady pace. He'll be cutting right through there, about forty feet north of us." She frowned, noticing something. "Which is rather bad of him, he'd only come this way if he were avoiding using the gates. He and that Jiraiya person are slipping in through an unpatrolled section. I don't sense Naruto or anyone else either. Something important must have happened."
'That's really weird. Maybe Naruto is with Tsunade?' Aiko thanked her housemate and waved her off, finally getting to start working on hitting that damn target. Anko had made this move look so easy, slipping out ten senbon one right after another with highspeed and impeccable aim. When Aiko did it, they all tended to flop out at once and fall to the ground about a foot away from her outstretched hand.
'Maybe I need to try one at a time.' Instead of packing them all back under her glove, she slipped just one senbon in and tucked the rest into her thigh pouch. After her rough count indicated that a minute and fifty seconds had passed but she still didn't sense Sasuke's chakra signature, she frowned. Granted, she wasn't a sensor like Karin, but it was still embarrassing that a genin could hide from her. 'Jiraiya must have either taught him how to block or be blocking for him,' she decided.
Then she decided to take a chance. At worst, she was talking to herself and no one would know. If Karin had been right, she'd fool him into thinking that she still had one over him. Aiko repressed a smirk. 'Maybe the impulse to prank poor Sasuke is contagious.'
"Sasuke-kun, you're ten years early to successfully sneak past me," she idly called out. For a moment, a chakra signature fluttered in and out of her ability to feel out of what had to be surprise. She'd managed to shake him much more than she would have guessed. She smiled to herself. 'Oh yeah, paydirt.' Funny, that. He really shouldn't be too surprised to be caught out by someone of a higher rank.
The redhead gave a deep sigh, flicking her wrist again to send just the one senbon flying. Remarkably, it hit the target. She tried to exercise similarly good aim with her teasing. "Isn't my cute little kohai going to say hello, after you've been gone so long? It hurt my feelings, you know, to wake up in the hospital alone." There may have been a little bit of genuine bitterness in that sentence. She slipped another senbon out of her pouch to ascertain if the hit was a fluke or indication that she'd figured the basic move out before she added a second.
Then the two men behind her actually dropped their chakra cloaking technique and she almost literally choked in surprise, dropping the senbon into the dirt and whirling around to see that the fucking scary signature that had only the barest of similarities to Sasuke's (and what the hell was Karin smoking? Did she even feel the same things Aiko did when she used Kagura of the Mind's Eye?) and that the other belonged to about eight feet of big, blue man.
She swallowed, hard, and wished the next words out of her mouth were a little more intelligent than "You're not Sasuke." Aiko did her level best to sink into the ground.
In her short career as a ninja in this batshit world, she had managed to push back fear many times. Aiko knew that she did not have the plot armor that the manga characters had, but she could have also have been relatively certain that the no-name opponents she fought had weaknesses. Most of them could be outsmarted. She took out most of her opponents in something other than direct combat—she sensed them, poisoned them, or herded them where she needed them or something like that. Occasionally she had to revert to taijutsu, but that was her best skill.
She could not push back this fear, because she recognized these two people by their coloring and clothing. There was absolutely zero chance she could outsmart or outfight these two.
Uchiha Itachi lowered his head slightly and took off the hideous, bell-ringed hat, letting it fall to the side. "No." Calm red eyes cut into her face as if looking for something underneath her skin. "I am not." The man beside her grinned with utterly terrifying pointed teeth. 'Is that just a Kririgakure thing?' some portion of her brain that still operating managed to question.
The part of her brain that wasn't functioning helped her blurt out, "Is now a bad time to scream like a little girl and run for my mommy?" She fought the urge to back up and put as much distance as possible between her and these guys. That wasn't the ninja thing to do. At the moment, it seemed like a fabulous idea.
Kisame (that was fucking Hoshigaki Kisame ten feet from her, looking dangerous as all hell) gave a short, barking laugh. "That would be a very bad idea." He bared his teeth at her. "You wouldn't get very far, kid."
Indeed. Her physical conditioning was nowhere near theirs, eliminating both flight and taijutsu as life-saving possibilities. 'Suddenly, being a shinobi who specializes in taijutsu seems like a terrible idea. When there are monsters like this around, anyway.' Her right hand drifted down to her thigh pouch, where she had poison, kunai and explosive tags. "No, but I think fighting wouldn't end much better," she pointed out in a calm tone utterly at odds with the hysteria bubbling up.
'Itachi is supposed to secretly be a good guy, right? He probably won't kill me. I think.' The thought wasn't that comforting. 'I can't beat them, I can't really stall them for long, and I definitely can't just let two S-class criminals pass me into town.'
"How about we have a nice civil conversation and then you two leave as reformed men, happy to abandon whatever nefarious things you had planned?"
'That plan might work for Naruto. Maybe I also inherited therapy-no-jutsu, despite the total lack of charisma I've shown so far?' Ugh, long shot. She slipped a finger through the loop of a kunai, pretending not to know that the older two definitely saw the move and could have killed her at least five times while she made it. Each.
"A decent plan," the taller man leered. "But not as good as the original plan, sorry." He hefted his gigantic sword.
"Kisame."
Everyone stopped to look at the Uchiha, who was still staring at her with unnerving focus. She felt her legs begin to shake.
"Leave us. Continue with the plan."
His hand fell from the handle of his sword, and Kisame shook his head fondly. "I suppose I'll find a better fight, then." In a flash he was gone, chakra signature still unbound and almost certain to attract a lot of attention, very fast. Aiko swallowed, hard, and hoped against hope Karin wouldn't wander right to him to find out why 'Sasuke' had been feeling so strange. No, she wouldn't. She might have mistaken Itachi for Sasuke when he was repressing his chakra, but not when he was practically shouting his presence.
"Why did you think I was someone else." His face was as blank as his tone, but she knew that if he hadn't cared he would have left.
She instantly felt like ten kinds an idiot. 'Of course it would be worrisome to an S-class criminal who happens to be a spy that some random Chuunin apparently sensed him when he was meant to be stealthy. I can't tell him that it wasn't me who sensed him without selling out Karin, and she doesn't deserve to get involved in this.' She was trapped.
"I'm not telling you shit," she spat, feeling quite a bit less brave than she sounded. Irritation or something quite like it flashed through his red eyes in the instant before she broke eye contact and flung three kunai at the bulk of his body and shot to her left, fingers shooting together to start a handsign sequence and not succeeding. That failure was in large part due to the rather large, warm hand that had captured both hands and forced them together with the palms facing outwards so that she couldn't form handsigns. The other hand pushed against her shoulder with uncomfortable force, pinning her against a tree. Reflexively, she kicked out at his shins and received a tightened grip in response.
"I do not play games, kunoichi."
Up close, he seemed much taller. Perhaps it had just been the fact that he'd been standing next to Hoshigaki that had made her think he wasn't so big. Not that height mattered, but she was used to her unusual height putting her only about six inches below most adults. She really did feel like a child now, subdued almost instantly like she'd been naughty and merely needed correction. She swallowed, knowing that he could probably feel the rabbit-like flutter of her heartbeat through his palm.
He probably sensed the angry presence barreling straight for him before Aiko did, but it might have been close. It was a presence she was very familiar with, after all. She started to smile, feeling inestimably relieved that her sensei had pulled through, followed by what felt like Gai. That was when her eyes met those of the man pinning her for the third time. This time, she didn't marvel at their color or coldness. Instead, she found herself mildly surprised to perceive that she was in a world of black-and-white, and that the redness was still pure and intense. It was possibly more intense than usual because it was the only color visible.
"Tsukyomi," he intoned, sounding almost bored. "I have almost literally all the time in the world for you to explain how you sensed my presence." Aiko hyperventilated, tugging at the ropes that bound her to a cross and trying not to look frightened when he pulled out a short blade. 'If he isn't evil, he is doing an excellent imitation,' she noted weakly. 'That in mind, I can't tell him Karin was the one who sensed him. He might go find her. She's an important village asset now.'
She said nothing, averting her eyes and allowing herself to go limp, doing her very best to ignore his presence and recede into her own mind. That lack of struggle made his next words seem a bit futile and redundant. "This is a dimension of my own making where time passes as I wish and I control all. You cannot hope to fight me here."
'This is the part where he disembowels me, right?' She braced for the pain. 'Is it Tartarus who was disemboweled every day by an eagle? I haven't brushed up on my mythology lately.' The thought almost made her giggle out of some bizarre form of nerves and sheer terror.
'Go inside, where he can't hurt you,' she reminded herself, thinking of the lessons on torture resistance and wearing them like a cloak.
Of course, a cloak didn't keep her safe from the blade that started by tracing a line up her arm, slicing off chunks of flesh.
"How did you sense me, little one?"
~~~
Dog felt the silent scream of adrenaline that had begun the instant he sensed those two monstrous presences emerge in training ground seven, eyes glued to the figure of his long-term student in the exact instant that the relief at his presence fell off her face and the man holding her let go, allowing her to collapse in a pile at his feet.
He barely registered that his team was behind him—they had been waiting to check in at the Hokage tower. The three following him were comparatively rookies, but even they must have sensed those signatures emerge. Gai, on the other hand, who must have been working out in Training ground 10 had nearly beat him there. He had stopped to fight the Mist traitor—with blue skin and a sword like that, he couldn't be from anywhere else.
The Mist traitor was the least of his concerns at the moment, however. That was Uchiha Itachi there, looking at him with a blank expression and a twelve year old slumped at his feet.
"Get away from my student."
He didn't think the Uchiha would harm her further—she was obviously unconscious under some sort of genjutsu and there would be no point to it. But then again, he'd worked with Uchiha Itachi seven years ago and it had never occurred to him that the solemn preteen would kill his entire family, so his predictive powers were in question.
The fight that followed made him wish he had been insane enough to pull a Gai and learn to fight by only watching his opponent's feet. The younger nin was obviously holding back, though Kakashi had no idea why. Sadism or mercy?
If he had been watching his opponent's face, he might have seen the moment when Itachi realized that he had succeeded in getting Danzo's attention. A group of ANBU that were almost certainly Root affiliated were approaching quickly.
'It is time to end this fight and go. I am sorry to do this, Hatake-san.'
His regret was definitely not on his face when the Sharingan whirred and he flickered out of sight, reappearing directly in front of the silver-haired man. It might have been a dangerous move to get within arm's reach if he hadn't ensnared the Copy Nin in the exact instant he forced eye contact.
~~~
Karin fluffed her cousin's pillow (it was simpler to judge their relationship that way than with the honest but vague 'distant relation of unknown connection'). She fought the urge to take another pain pill- she had a hell of a headache that just wouldn't go away.
'When I found family, I didn't think they would be this much trouble. She'd only just got out of the hospital a week before she went back in.' The redhead settled into the chair at Aiko's bedside and dug around in her canvas knapsack for the book she was working on.
Truthfully, she wasn't entirely sure why Aiko and her teacher were nonresponsive in the hospital. Whatever had happened was above her clearance- both in the regular military and as a hospital trainee. The notes on Aiko's clipboard were coded- she had peeked. At this point, she was less worried and more resigned. Aiko would undoubtedly wake up soon. In the meantime, she had homework to do if she wanted to show up that whiny little civilian-born brat who thought she was oh-so-superior to the outsider. Lousy brat, with her tiny reserves that made it easy for her to use scalpels and her big dumb face…
"Is there any particular reason for you to scowl at that book?"
Karin nearly fell out of her chair in surprise at hearing her teacher's voice. "Ah, Mito-sensei!" She sat up, nervously smoothing down her shirt. "No, I'm just a little frustrated," she admitted honestly.
The kind brown eyes of the woman who led her small group through lessons and let them shadow her at the hospital seemed to understand what she didn't say. The older woman crossed over to check the clipboard at the foot of the bed, scanning dispassionately. "I don't suppose you can read this, hmm?"
Karin shook her head, feeling a little foolish. "I can't." She admitted honestly. "No one would tell me why she's unconscious or for how long she will be. It's annoying."
"I see." Mito-sensei's eyes flickered to the open door, and then she seemed to shrug. "Your cousin is under a genjutsu. See here," the woman gently pushed up the eyelid. "She seems unconscious, but she's experiencing rapid eye movement, even though a scan here…" Her hand let the eyelid drop and passed mint green light over Aiko's forehead. "shows that the patient is not experiencing the REM cycle in any stage. Her mind is working as if she were awake. The patient's movement is constricted, but it is still possible to tell that she's experiencing significant stress. Tell me how, Karin-chan."
"Um…" Karin stood and leaned over her cousin, red eyes trying to look for clues she'd missed before. "She's sweating. Is that it?" She moved a little closer and lightly touched the tips of her fingers to the pulse point on her cousin's pale, naked throat. "Her heartrate is elevated, too."
"Very good. Possible repercussions of this state being sustained for a prolonged period of time?" The question was bland and impersonal, as if this was just another textbook hypothetical. Karin found that it helped her relax and truly consider the problem.
"Extreme mental strain and maybe even brain trauma," she said promptly. "She is essentially going without sleep for however long the genjutsu persists, meaning that her condition will deteriorate. The patient is likely to be irrational at time of waking."
"Astute as always, Karin-chan. That being said, it is impossible to know when she will wake up. In fact, it is a little worrisome that she hasn't already. If she does not regain consciousness naturally within ten hours, we will be forced to try to awaken her by disrupting the genjutsu manually." Mito made a mark on the clipboard, changed the iv, and then took down vital statistics. She touched Karin's shoulder lightly, pausing on her way out. "You should go home and get some rest, Karin-chan. You still have class in the morning. Someone will come for you when she wakes, as her only relative in the village at the moment."
"Hai," Karin agreed reluctantly, packing up her bag. "I suppose visiting hours are over, huh."