Chapter 15: Chapter 15: Visits
"Hari," said Itachi. His son continued to read a book he'd brought home. It would do no good to order him to look at him; his son would only point out that he was looking at him. "We're taking a trip." That didn't get much of a reaction and Itachi wondered if this was what having a teenager was going to be like. "To Leaf." There was a burst of wind as his son was suddenly no longer in the chair. The clattering from the next room suggested that he was grabbing weapons.
"I'm glad I have your attention." Itachi walked over to see that Hari was testing various kunai for sharpness. "Because I want to give you some instructions."
"Yeah?" Hari was sealing shuriken into his forearms.
"There is a man in Leaf. He's exceptionally dangerous."
"Hatake Kakashi?"
"No."
"Maito Gai?"
"No."
"The Hokage?"
"He's dead, and no."
"What?"
"He's dead. Now would you stop interrupting?" Hari's head bobbed. "Thank you. His name is Shimura Danzō." Another nod. "He has a force of false ANBU he calls ROOT." Nod. "He's very dangerous." Nod. "So I want you to be careful to avoid him and his ANBU." Nod. "I'm fond of you." Nod. "So I like you not-dead." Nod. "You're clear: you're not to go near Shimura Danzō, right?" Nod. "Good. I'm glad we had this talk."
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"Dad! Dad!" Itachi sighed as he ducked under Gai's fist. "Look what I found!"
"One moment," Itachi jumped back from one of Gai's strikes. "What did you—dear gods, what is that?"
"No idea. I got it from Danzō's shoulder."
"You got it from . . ." Itachi's eyes spun wildly and shot a wall of fire in front of Gai, stymieing his movements for a moment. "I told you to stay away from Danzō."
"Yeah. Well. I thought I'd see what was so interesting."
"You are most unyouthful to not pay attention to—dear gods, what is that?" Gai's movements stalled as he caught sight of Hari.
"Danzō's arm, apparently."
Kisame looked up from where he was avoiding Kakashi's attempts to kill him. "What is my idiot nephew holding?"
"The traitor thinks it's Danzō's arm," replied the copy-ninja as he charged a One Thousand Birds, only to dispel it when the Shark Skin got in the way.
"Are those Sharingan in it?" Itachi's voice was a bit higher pitched than normal as he swung a kunai down, blocking the attempt to ram a Lightning Cutter into his spine. Apparently Kakashi had decided to swap with Gai.
"Yep." Hari kicked Kurenai in the back of the knee and bashed her head with the blunt side of a kunai. He figured that if his father wasn't killing people, then maybe this was one of those 'nonlethal' missions; he hated those. He drove the blade into her thigh, just scratching a major artery on the grounds that it would keep her from returning to combat if she woke. "Ten of them."
"Well, it's been fun, Copy Ninja." Itachi's eyes spun and Kakashi dropped. "But I have places to be." Black fire lashed at Gai, sending him jumping back as Itachi and Kisame turned and left the village.
Gai looked around before deciding to get Kurenai to medical attention first. He nearly dropped the shapely jonin as he stood stock-still. "Did he say 'dad'? Youth!"
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"Hari," said Itachi.
"Yes, dad?"
"What did I say about Danzō?"
"That he was really, really dangerous?"
"Indeed. Anything else?"
"That I shouldn't go near him?"
"Very good. What did you do?"
"Got near him?"
"Right again. Why?"
"I wanted to see what made him so dangerous. The last time someone told me that something was certain death, all it had was a three-headed puppy, some weird vines, a bunch of flying keys, a chess set, a Troll, and a corridor too trapped for me to bother testing."
"Of course." Hari watched as his father closed his eyes, wiping at the dribbles of blood running down the sides of his face.
"I got something else while I was there."
"I should have known."
"Can I have it, dad?"
"Sure you ca—" Itachi opened his eyes. Staring at him in Hari's palm was Shisui's eye with a tangle of gray threads hanging from it.
"Cool!"
"Hari."
"Yes, dad?"
"You may have my best friend's eye on one condition."
"What's that?"
"Tell me how you got it."
"Alright . . ."
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Hari wondered why his father had described the ROOT as shadow ANBU. It wasn't like they were hard to find, or anything. Right on the other side of six false walls and there they were. It was nice being home—his eyes worked normally here. He'd gotten tired of being as blind as normal people.
For the first time, Hari was thankful to Tracy for her gift. He slipped up behind a ROOT ninja and stabbed her in the back of the neck. Well, it was actually the back of her skull, because she moved at the last moment. He needed to work on his stealth.
He whistled a cheerful tune as he stripped her and donned the ROOT gear. He placed the No Mask on his face and it morphed into the features of the dead ninja. She had been about his age, so his height wasn't going to throw people. He placed her mask on his face and walked to the entrance to the base he'd spotted earlier.
"The Red Hand Hangs From The Tree." The sentry's voice was dull.
"But the roots are where shadow thrives." Hari's skill at reading lips meant he'd seen this exchange twice this morning and knew the passcodes.
"Report to Lord Danzō, Seven Three One."
Hari nodded silently and entered the base. As he walked, he noted points of interest. There were so many curious places. The fun part of any infiltration mission was knowing that once you were inside a secure area, people assumed you belonged. He had expected more from the scary man, but he was beginning to believe that people grossly overestimated danger.
They even had an armory down here. With crate upon crate of explosive tags. He was willing to bet that these people weren't supposed to have those. The mess hall had a dozen ninja in it, eating in unison. It was as far from he was used to as possible. His family ate on their own or as a collective argument. It had been an easy transition in some ways to his school. This was creepy. There were so many places to stop in at that it took him almost an hour to find his way to the office of the man who sat in the center of the web of corridors.
He considered trying to impersonate his dead cover-ninja, but his eyes revealed that Danzō had an implanted eye in his head. It was active like his father's sometimes was. That wouldn't do. The Copy Ninja of Leaf got to have one because it was given to him. This man told no one. Hari seethed quietly. Stolen from his family. Hari unsealed the Invisibility Cloak from his wrist and wrapped himself in it.
He waited for someone to enter the office and slipped in, crouching in the corner and amusing himself by reading the scrolls. They were in code, but it was fun to try and guess what they said. More interesting, was unraveling the mystery of Danzō's arm. He'd had a lot of practice over the past ten months at reading seals and so on. He was still pants at it.
Hari lay in wait until the ninja left the room and Danzō was focused on reading some scroll. Hari slipped around in front of the man and his fingers jabbed out, punching into the old man's skull and snapping back, yanking the stolen eye from his face with a tangle of . . . were those gray? The man screamed and reached for his bandaged arm, unravelling the wrappings and revealing a gray arm with a red Sharingan slowly opening.
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"And so I ripped his arm off, but he was screaming a lot, so I made him quiet."
"By 'made him quiet' . . ."
"I cut his belly open, rammed a pair of senbon into his lungs and another into his heart. I sliced every artery I could get to, and stuck a kunai though his remaining eye and into his brain." Hari paused. "And I cut his head off, to be sure."
Itachi's eyes closed again. "You just horribly mutilated and murdered one of the elders of Leaf."
"Yep."
Kisame was laughing so hard he fell off the log he'd been sitting on. "You just killed the former head of Leaf's ANBU. Head of ROOT!" He clutched at his stomach. "Dear gods, you've probably caused more chaos in the village than anyone . . . since two weeks ago, when Orochimaru attacked it."
"I didn't just kill Danzō."
"Oh gods." Itachi grimaced. "What else?"
"Well, they had all these explosive tags in their armory . . ."
"I have a horrible feeling—"
"So I planted a crate's worth throughout the base while they began a recall of agents to search for the attacker." There was a glow on the horizon despite it being early afternoon.
"And you blew up ROOT."
"And I blew up ROOT."
Kisame had tears pouring down his face as he laughed. "Ow!" Itachi had just kicked him in the shins.
"So . . . about the eye?"
"I really shouldn't let you have it. It's dangerous."
"You promised!"
"I did not."
"You were going to."
"This is true."
"Itachi." Kisame was sitting up now.
"What?"
"You gave the kid a pair of Byakugan. When he was younger than two. I think we can manage an upgrade."
"I'm going to regret this."
"Yay!"
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The attack on Leaf had been the last straw. Uchiha Sasuke had always been a loner, although it was getting harder and harder to manage with a certain blond annoyance on his team. Still, he enjoyed solitude, even if he was slowly learning to cultivate solitude inside since outside was a constant stream of thought.
On the other hand, he'd never really been alone in his life. He was followed by the ghosts of the dead all the time. No one in Leaf saw Uchiha Sasuke, they just saw The Last Uchiha. It was pretty much expected of him that he would be the one to kill his brother and redeem his clan. He wasn't clear why they needed redeeming; as far as he knew, being murdered wasn't usually a criminal offense. Sasuke was pretty knowledgeable about the laws of Leaf, given that his family had been the police force—he'd made it his business to study them as part of their legacy.
Excepting one orange idiot, everyone saw the Avenger of the Slain or something. And he did hate his elder brother. It was easy to hate him. The murder of his family was actually the least of the crimes he'd committed. Since Sasuke had never met them, he had no real sense of loss when it came to his family. On the other hand, leaving him without parents in a village that saw him as a thing instead of a person? That was something he could hate the man for.
His only hope for peace had been that he would make chūnin and get to dally there. It had always been a distant dream, since he was always under pressure to be the best and show that Uchiha were at the top. He didn't understand why so many civilians felt that it was important that he be great, but he felt a drive to manage it, if only to get them to leave him alone.
His hopes had been dashed during his doomed mission to Wave. He'd seen the closest thing he had to a friend (and wasn't it a sad thought that Uzumaki Naruto was the only thing that resembled a friend for him?) go down with needles in his flesh and his eyes had bled and then the world has skewed and gone out of synch with his body.
Seeing the future had been a rush, but without time to practice it, it had nearly gotten him killed. It had been enough to stun him and while he was out cold after getting turned into a pincushion, apparently Naruto had gotten annoyed about things and nearly killed someone. Or something. It was nice that someone was upset that he was dead, not just the Uchiha.
The chūnin exams had been a total disaster, too. Getting caught by Orochimaru in the Forest of Death had only been the beginning of that mess. He'd been under orders to maintain the Sharingan as much as possible to build up his endurance, so he was having to learn to constantly see the world at a different speed than reality operated. That had meant he hit a lot of trees in that godsforesaken hellhole.
The contradictory orders of not using chakra and using his Sharingan hadn't been cleared up, so he'd continued to use his bloodline, even as he avoided all other techniques. It meant he was constantly exhausted and strained from learning to handle the precognition of his immature Sharingan.
And hadn't that been a kick in the teeth, too? He had the misfortune of unlocking his clan's coveted bloodline and apparently people weren't satisfied because it wasn't the full form or something like that. Since no one had bothered to tell him these things, it had been a bit of a shock when he found out that they wanted more.
His teacher had been singularly unhelpful in that regard, too. Since the man's eye was borrowed and he'd not been on good terms with Sasuke's family, the man knew nothing about the Sharingan. He had no doubt that Hatake had been assigned to him with the plan that it would somehow help with his own bloodline. Joke was on someone else, then, since the man's only answer was "no idea".
The invasion had been horrible. He'd had to face that monster and felt the same sort of bone-melting terror that Zabuza and then Orochimaru had forced into him. His teammate, on the other hand, always took that chilling fear as an insult—treated it as a challenge. Sasuke was resolved to never again freeze when his ally was running headlong at something that dangerous. He was hoping his teacher would manage to help with that at least.
But now, he had heard that Itachi was involved in this attack on Leaf. He had little love for his home village, but Naruto did. Since his . . . friend (he was still working out if Naruto was his friend or just someone he tolerated) . . . was out of town, he nursed the anger so that it would be fresh for Naruto to pick up when he got back. Itachi's presence meant that people were looking at him again, muttering and wondering when he would be ready to face his brother. The cursed mark on his neck was constantly flaring in pain despite the seal on it.
The last straw had been finding out that his brother was looking for Naruto. Kakashi let it slip when he was sitting vigil over the injured jonin. Again, he felt no real connection to the man, despite the silver-haired ninja's attempts to build bonds. But Naruto cared and Sasuke knew that Naruto would give him grief if he didn't sit by his commander until Naruto got back to actually care about him.
He couldn't let his brother get Naruto. There were precious few people who liked Uchiha Sasuke for himself. At the moment, Sasuke was sure of exactly one. If his brother was hunting the only person who actually cared about him then he had to do something and he had to do it now.
Casual questions about the status of Naruto got him enough to go on and he took advantage of the fact that his team was stood down while its teacher was recovering.
All that led to this, a One Thousand Birds crackling on his hand as he ran down a hallway, feeling the desperate rage clawing at him as he screamed.
"ITACHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!"
And suddenly, someone was holding him from behind. "Hi, Uncle Sasuke!"
(A/N John)
So about this chapter. This one was pretty much my fault. Except for the actual introduction of Danzō's arm. That was Spoon's idea. Oh, and the very last couple lines. Those were her, too. The rest of it was me. And I have to say it's been one of the ones I enjoyed writing the most. Not only did I get the comedy of Hari in Leaf, but I got to write Sasuke. I wasn't actually planning that, nor looking forwards to it, but once I started, I found it was a lot of fun. He's a lot darker than Hari, but I'm not bothering with arrogant. Instead, he's someone who's had a destiny forced on him. He sees the dead everywhere because no one will let them rest and his only friend is Naruto because he's the only one who doesn't give a damn about Uchiha.
(A/N 2 John)
A note about how this story is written. I keep several chapters ahead. This means that if I finish a chapter, I publish the one in the hopper. So most of the time, anyone who comments with an idea, you're talking about stuff already written. And please don't take that as me asking for long-term requests.
(A/N 3 John)
So . . . the statues from last chapter.
Everyone got the Kage and Jinchuriki. Shocking. Pretty much everyone got Orochimaru and Jiraiya and Kakashi. Also Tsunade, Shizune, Chiyo, and Pakura.
Iron Fist: Maito Gai – Strong-Fist style. Seriously
Monkey: Sarutobi Asuma. Sarutobi.
Obsidian Bed: Nara Shikaku – the lazy shadow user. Sorry, but Kurenai is simply not a credible threat next to any of these people. The markers are for people who are important to keep track of, not based on some set-theory.
Upside-down Tree: Danzō with his ROOTs. Badum-tish. Honestly, that sounds like the name of a band.
Decrepit figure: Terumi Mei. She's always worried about getting ugly and old. Plus Lava and Steam from her mouth.
White Sphere: Aō. It's a Byakugan
And now *drum roll* the pumice figurine: Kurotsuchi. Pumice=volcanic=lava. And yes, I am aware that she's from Iwakagure. The funny thing about ninja is that they don't always stay where they're supposed to be.
John Out