He Of The Six Eyes

[Firewillreign]

Note:

This is a little plot bunny my cousin has been begging me to write for nearly two years at this point, so I decided to indulge him because his birthday is in a couple of days and I'm too broke to buy him something expensive XD

Might update it again depending on reactions, or might leave it as is. We'll see.

---

On October 10th of the 65th year since the Founding of Konohagakure, the Kyuubi descends on the village hidden in the leaves and rampages as no Bijuu had since before the era of Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara.

The very next day, when the first horrific casualty tolls start pouring in by the dozens and the news of the Fourth Hokage's death begins to spread, Hyūga Fuyuko quietly slips past the village's decimated borders and deserts.

A third of Konoha has been reduced to ash and bloody ruin, and the rest is barely salvageable as is. Their Shinobi forces are in complete disarray, the structure of command thoroughly gutted and nearly every available and barely capable hand from the lowliest Genin to the most respected of Jounin and even the formerly retired Third Hokage have been conscripted into active duty, manning relief efforts and organizing survivors and managing a hundred other responsibilities in between, all in a desperate race against the clock to establish some form of working order before the other shinobi nations smell blood in the water and come a-calling.

It's chaos and misery hand in hand, and too damn good an opportunity to pass up regardless - not even the clans had been sparred the call of duty, and the Hyūga and their all-seeing eyes were currently stretched so thin that a proper census of all their active shinobi was nigh-impossible. A single insignificant Branch House member like her could slip straight through the cracks for hours, perhaps even days with none the wiser.

By the time anyone would know to raise the alarm, she could be halfway across the Land of Fire at least.

Fuyuko knows she'll never get another chance like this, so she doesn't hesitate.

The fear of discovery is not a hindrance. She knows that her desertion coming to light is inevitable, only a matter of time, and very little of it at that.

Even with all her alterations, the stop-gap measures she'd set up and the bastardized fūinjutsu script she'd painstakingly inked into her flesh, the caged-bird seal emblazoned across her forehead with all the subtlety of a cattle brand means that avoiding discovery past a certain point is literally impossible.

Far be it for the Hyūga Elders to limit themselves to subjugating their own kin, binding them with a tool of torture and abuse under the guise of 'protecting the bloodline' and leaving it at that.

No, the geriatric fuckers had to wire in a status-surveying component into the fūinjutsu, the better to guarantee that none of their slaves freed themselves from the leash they'd so gleefully wound around their necks by playing dead.

There would be no such easy escape from the clan. Not when exposing the trick was as simple as any one of the main house members noting their absence from a single missed mandatory muster call, tapping into the tracing array built into the seal and learning that they were still alive.

After that, there would be no mercy to be had. A single pulse of chakra is all it would take to activate the kill switch built into the seal, irregardless of distance, and that would be the end of whichever desperate, stupid fool tried to slip the noose.

Such was the fate of all traitors.

Fuyuko knows that barring divine intervention or some heretofore unknown circumstances in the league of, say, a fourth shinobi war or a tenth bijuu, that will be her fate as well.

She knows, and she doesn't care.

She hasn't cared in over half a year, not since the medical-nin at the hospital had confirmed her pregnancy and she sure as shit wasn't about to start caring now when she was nine months pregnant and due any other day.

('Twins, Hyuga-san!' the kunoichi had gushed all those months ago, oblivious to her growing misery. 'Congratulations!')

Everything that had come after that had been nothing short of a nightmare, but she was done with it. With all of it, now and forever.

Damn Hiashi and his cowardice and to hell with Hizashi and his spineless complacency.

She won't subject her children to that accursed seal, bound to wait on a legacy of entitled relics hand and foot solely on account of their birth and centuries of malignant tradition.

Fuck. That.

She'd die first and give them a chance at living their own lives before meekly surrendering them to that living hell.

...​

Two and half days of running later, her water breaks.

The sun is dawning, the wilderness is still, and Fuyuko doesn't stop moving despite sanity demanding it.

If she were sane, she would have thought her plan through and probably would have never left Konoha to begin with.

Therefore, sanity as a whole could go right ahead and take a hike out with the rest of her demons. She didn't have time for it.

Instead of stopping, she continues forging ahead for the next four hours, and it's not until she's only a few miles off the border to the Land of Grass and making good time that the contractions finally grow unbearable and she's forced to stop or tempt disaster.

She lays down in the middle of a grove of trees, exhausted and spent and still ready to face the biggest fight of her life.

Eight minutes later, the caged bird seal activates.

If the pain of her chakra system collapsing was any less overwhelming or the distress of her crippling failure any less unyielding, Fuyuko would have probably been laughing her ass off out of sheer hysteria.

(Holy fuck, did the kami have it out for her or what?)

Her meticulous seal work is the only reason she doesn't die immediately.

Hyūga branch house members are forbidden from specializing in sealing, and it wasn't until Fuyuko had begun fumbling blindly through her independent studies in secret that she finally understood why.

The less fūinjutsu the branch house members knew, the lower their odds of successfully tampering with the seal that kept them beneath the collective heel of the main house.

The realization and the possibility it opened up lit a fire under her ass, and Fuyuko had gone from pursuing the art with relative interest to desperately learning everything she could with a zeal that was borderline religious.

And now, years later when push finally came to shove unto the end, it took her exactly fifteen seconds to realize that her best efforts were going to fail.

She could feel the caged bird seal expanding over and beneath her skin, reaching for the internal architecture of her chakra system and savagely shredding it from the inside out.

Her own sealing array, the one she'd been so proud of and hitched all her plans on couldn't hope to compete. It tries to disrupt the attack and stitch her chakra pathways back together, but it was no different from sticking a band-aid over a stab wound. A hundred stab wounds even.

Utterly futile in every way.

The caged bird seal had dug its roots too deep and was actively shearing her everything from the ground up, and the strain of childbirth was crushing what little resistance she had left to offer.

Darkness begins to encroach across the corners of her vision.

'No!'

She'd been so close. Her children-

Her children.

She'd planned to give birth and pass the twins off to any halfway decent surrogate family she could find on short notice before the seal activated.

Humble farmers, traveling merchants, a kami-damned Daimyo, she'd have settled for anyone so long as she could ascertain that they had even a passingly decent character and were headed anywhere but Konoha.

She'd even planned to seal off their eyes at birth (and oh, the fucking irony was not lost on her there), severing the tenketsu behind their optic nerves with a seal that would prevent either of them from ever activating the Byakugan no matter what kind of life they led.

Pale eyes could be excused as a genetic aberration, and who would even think to look for inactive clan heritage in the middle of nowhere at all?

It would have kept them hidden, kept them safe, even if only barely. The life of a civilian outside the protection of a shinobi village was plagued with all kinds of danger, but even the ghost of a chance at freedom was better than a guarantee of life-long slavery.

Her counter-seal, her planning, everything she'd done had only ever been meant to forcibly extend her life long enough to see them settled, and then she would have greeted the shinigami with a smile on her face and a song in her heart.

And now all of that had gone to ruin.

After that, Fuyuko remembers screaming.

She'd screamed and screamed until her throat began to tear from the savage pressure. The part of her mind that wasn't breaking under the ungodly agony wailed in anguish. And all the while, the pain of the clashing seals and the impending birth continued to rip her apart.

Eventually, something had to give, and she felt herself finally losing, consciousness and slipping away for what would have been the final, most bitterly tragic time, and the despair of her failure could have stopped an army dead in its tracks.

(I'm so sorry.)

And then something - no, someone was grabbing for her jaw and forcing opening her mouth, and an arm was suddenly forced between her teeth.

"Bite."

(Later, she'll find out about the caravan of civilians moving only a few miles away, and how one in particular had managed to sense her chakra with a near-priceless bloodline limit and somehow mustered the guts to seek out the flailing, sputtering chakra signature that could only belong to a shinobi on the brink of death, on a whim.

Kami.

Even on the verge of extinction, Uzumaki truly were something else.)

Right now, she looks up at the woman who'd appeared out of fucking nowhere, meeting red eyes and a pinched face framed by equally crimson hair, and even the ocean of pain her mind is drowning in can't fully stamp out the sheer stupid bafflement that comes over her at the sight of the stranger.

The woman's eyes narrow in distress as she leans over Fuyuko, one hand keeping her head in place and the other still partially in her mouth.

"Please," The stranger's voice was two parts panic and one part desperation. "You have to bite now."

And Fuyuko does, teeth grinding down hard enough to draw blood.

The woman stifles a scream, but Fuyuko wouldn't have cared if she hadn't, because her mouth is suddenly full of metal and chakra and pure salvation, and she promptly loses herself in it.

After that, things get...blurry.

Her awareness comes and goes over the passing hours - the constant infusion of miraculous healing chakra helps, but at this point, the damage is already so severe that it's only a makeshift solution. She falls in and out of consciousness, the pain fading and coming back twice as strong with all the inevitability of the tides, and it's so very hard to think.

To even breathe.

The turning point arrives when, eventually, her daughter is born.

She cradles the wailing babe in her arms only for an instant, heart awash with love and devotion before she's gently pulled from her arms and placed aside, cleaned up and swaddled in a torn-off traveling cloak

"Miyabi," Fuyuko gasps before she unwillingly parts with her. "Name- her- Her name is Miyabi."

Tell her, she tried to beg breathlessly, tell her.

"I will." The Uzumaki woman vows - Kanna, she's whispered her name at some point as she reassured Fuyuko and tried to distract her from her suffering - and her chakra rings with truth and promise. "But you can't stop now - your's so close-"

And she is, and the ordeal continues.

When her second child is only minutes away from being born, something changes for the worse.

Kanna pales.

"No!"

(It's the seal. It's always been that fucking seal.)

Her chakra winks out at last, the birth sapping the last of it, and the caged-bird seal finally runs through her veins unopposed.

Even with all the damage her own work had done to halt it, it still makes disgustingly quick work of her.

Her chakra system is destroyed in seconds, her nerves pulverized completely, and her eyes boil in their sockets she is blinded beyond any hope of recovery.

Distantly, she hears Kanna screaming, forcibly manipulating her jaw and trying to get her to bite again, but it's futile.

No amount of healing can fix her now.

She feels death finally reach for her, darkness that had nothing to do with her ruined eyes washing over her, and she's too weary and close to death to do anything more than regret that she would never live to see her second child

'No matter what, she thinks of little Miyabi, and the unborn treasure struggling for life within her womb, I will love you always.

(She doesn't know it then, and she won't know it for a long, long time, but that moment was the one that changed everything)

Fuyuko feels it the moment it happens.

The shift, the change, the shatter-point.

Power explodes out of her, tangible and mighty and absolutely not chakra of any kind she's ever known, and suddenly she had the energy to howl.

The Not-Chakra rages through her veins, flesh and bones, restoring nerves and ruined pathways and banishing death with relentless, limitless fury.

Her mind blanks out when the foreign power surges into her brain and burns at the fūinjutsu that had dictated her life for over two decades.

The process runs its course in seconds.

(It lasts an eternity.)

When at last the light and power finally fade, Fuyuko opens her restored eyes in wonder and desperate yearning and sees.

Exhaustion still lingers, and her chakra is basically non-existent, but the caged-bird seal is gone, every last trace of it burned to non-existence.

Victory snatched from the very jaws of defeat

Somehow, against all the odds, Fuyuko is alive.

Alive, and cradling her newborn son.

A few feet away, Kanna watches her with wide, wide eyes., little Miyabi nestled in her arms.

For a moment, nothing exists beyond the four of them.

"It was you," Fuyuko whispers, and the sound carries with it awe and disbelief and certainty. "You saved me."

Her son (soft and serene and beyond all reproach even at birth) blinks, opening his eyes and effortlessly ensnaring her in their Infinity.

(One day, she will ask.

She will look to her blessed child, place a hand on his snow-white hair, meet his unflinching gaze, and she will ask him how he managed to save her.

"Reverse Cursed Technique."

Fuyuko will nod as if she understands, even though she'll have long since given up hope of ever making sense of the impossibilities that chase after her son like moths to the flame.

"But how did you know to use it?"

"I just knew. I always know stuff like that." He'll shrug in answer, utterly nonchalant and forever at ease. "Throughout Heaven and Earth, I alone am the Honored One."

"But what does that mean?" She'll ask after taking a moment to process that proclamation, and her child, her limitless boy will return her look with cerulean eyes brimming with more power and potential than any Byakugan could ever hope to match, and he'll smile.

"Mama, I have no idea. Isn't that awesome?")

But that will all come later.

For now, Fuyuko looks into those impossible eyes and knows.

"Your name." She whispers tenderly, and it's as if the whole world suddenly goes still and oh-so silent in anticipation. "Is Satoru."

And then she retrieves her daughter from Kanna, presses both of her children to her chest and weeps in heart-rending relief as the sun dawns over a new day.

...​

Just like that, with the birth of a single child, the balance of the Shinobi world is forever altered.

...​

As always leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

 

[KingNecron101]

Very interesting beginning!

 

[SenpaiSamaChan]

Ayo?? This shits fire ma boi

 

[liquid_oni]

This was fucking awesome, definitely watched

 

[Archer0519]

Beautiful!

The hyuuga's and their slavery is right fucked now, innit?

 

[GabeC1997]

Yes!

 

[Lasha]

awesome start hope to see more.

 

[ArcanaVitae]

Huh saw this on Ao3 didn't expect to see it here. It's a pretty neat story idea.

 

[ArcaneReader]

Pein when he goes to flatten Konoha
Pein: Shinra tensei * Konoha turns into pancake*
Satoru: Bitch you call that "Shinra tensei"? *Pancake turns into Mariana trench*
Pein: Nani?!

 

[NutakuFan]

One of the best origin stories/prologue I've read. It has everything, reasons for further plot points, drama, explanations(if you squint), and even side characters making an appearance and being more relevant than Neji.

 

[ArbC2]

I love that the first act of the honored one is to defy fate. Very on point.

 

[trollord3000]

Amazing start! Totally hooked! Looking forward to the next chapter! Would be great if the twin would get the Tenseigan or smthn to keep up with the SI

 

[crissthethief]

Are you an actual writer? The imagery was good enough to have me actually read all of it lol

 

[Yeetboi]

* sips word juice *
Mhm! DAMN! That shit's good!
May we have some more OP?

 

[Orchamus]

What an excellent start. Also fuck the Hyuga, at least the Uchiha don't mark their kin like chattel.

 

[Firewillreign]

* sips word juice *
Mhm! DAMN! That shit's good!
May we have some more OP?

Click to shrink...

So the overwhelmingly positive response this has gotten has convinced me to write a bit more. I'm not certain I'll make this a story and dedicate that kind of time on it, but I plan to write a Prologue parts 2 and 3 focusing on Fuyuko's POV in the immediate aftermath of the kiddos birth and maybe three or four years after that as the children (especially Satrou) start functioning before the plot comes back with vengeance.

I will confirm that Satoru himself is the SI, the knowledge of Naruto would come from his own pop culture knowledge as someone already suggested.

One of the best origin stories/prologue I've read. It has everything, reasons for further plot points, drama, explanations(if you squint), and even side characters making an appearance and being more relevant than Neji.

Click to shrink...

Thanks, I'm glad you're enjoying it.

Are you an actual writer? The imagery was good enough to have me actually read all of it lol

Click to shrink...

I've had some practice, and it's a long term goal. Thanks for the support!

 

[Hyperionthetitan]

Six eyes is pretty op in the setting that rely on techniques instead of rolling a soul power gacha ,even without limitless the control grant by six eyes is already enough to put him on veteran shinobi level . This doesnt even mention the possiblity of mixing CE with chakra to form somewhat superior version of dark chakra to use

 

[Omega.]

Yeah, this is really promising

 

[Shadi2001]

This doesnt even mention the possiblity of mixing CE with chakra to form somewhat superior version of dark chakra to use

Click to shrink...

You just made me remember the dark zero tail, which can be considered a hybrid between tail beast and curse spirit.
link:Zero-Tails | Narutopedia | Fandom

 

[Hyperionthetitan]

You just made me remember the dark zero tail, which can be considered a hybrid between tail beast and curse spirit.
link:Zero-Tails | Narutopedia | Fandom

Click to shrink...

Yup ,thats what i meant when i say dark chakra lol.
Now imagine what would happen if one add nature energy into the mix .


Edit ,now that i think of it .Zero tails with curse energy could potentially be something like rika mix with mahito . And now you can just play power manipulator on top of having a growing bijuu inside you .

 

[AsuraJZero]

Hell of a start, and hilariously in character for Gojo Satoru. Despite never having been able to use reverse cursed technique on another person in life, the moment he's reborn he does the impossible.

 

[Fable of the Unspoken Word]

fucking awesome

 

[misterpink]

Amazing beginning, hope you continue the story, either way top nitch writing!

 

[Firewillreign]

Fuyuko spends the first three weeks post-childbirth in a state that could tentatively be described as being high on life or, less diplomatically, being bug-fuck crazy, but in a good way.

(Kanna, the red-haired angel that she is, assures her that this is entirely natural and to be expected.)

It starts like this:

Recovery from birthing the twins isn't a concern, because, somehow, there's practically nothing to recover from.

In the immediate aftermath of the birth, her muscles aren't sore, her bones and joints don't ache, and all the signs of wear and tear her body had collected from the two-day blitz across the Land of Fire and hours-long labor that followed vanish as if they never were.

Aside from a severe case of chakra exhaustion that needs no explanation, she's healthy.

Impossibly so.

Because it wasn't just the trauma and damage from childbirth and the devastated chakra system from the caged bird seal wreaking havoc on her insides that was miraculously repaired without a trace, but everything else as well.

Even silver-faded scars from training accidents and wounds from the war she'd picked up years before her pregnancy have disappeared without a trace.

Ravages of over two decades of shinobi training and active service simply gone, just like that.

It's utterly beyond belief. Not even the best medical ninjutsu barring maybe Senju Tsunade's herself could simulate recovery this rapid, this extensive, and even a bewildered Kanna had admitted that her ridiculous kekkai genkai's boosted regeneration doesn't work this fast or anywhere near this potently.

Not unless there's some other factor at play.

Stumped, they choose to bite the kunai and leave it at that. It's not a particularly hard decision to make - between the two of them they have some ten thousand other problems to deal and neither is willing to look an apparent gift horse in the mouth in a world where lucky strokes are mythically rare as it is for fear of the other shoe dropping and ruining everything.

(Fuyuko looks at her newborn son, so innocently snuggled beside his sister and wonders.)

Regardless of how, her post-natal physical health is the highest it's ever been- and likely the highest it ever will be, come to think of it.

Her mental health, on the other hand, is a tad more complicated - and by complicated, Fuyuko means that a single glimpse of her psyche would have all but the most battle-hardened of Yamanaka run screaming for the hills were she even a little less passably functional.

Her new lease on life doesn't exactly erase twenty-plus years of standard-package frontline shinobi strife and suffering, and that was on top of the absolute hell that was growing up as an illegitimate bastard of the Hyūga clan with all that misery that entailed - not even close. She knows she's not exactly the poster child for stability and optimistic thinking. Likely never will be.

What it does do is give her purpose- because her children are alive, free, and by some stroke of divine providence she'd been given a chance to see that for herself. To live and fight and make damn sure that they would always be safe, and that's far better than anything else she could have ever dared to hope for.

(In hindsight, that state of mind is probably how she ends up permanently attached at the hip to Kanna.)

As it turns out, the Uzumaki(and she gets confirmation of that dangerous secret less than a week into knowing her because the woman is too trusting by half and it makes the now firmly retired shinobi inside of her despair, just a little) is eager to prove that she's a moronic bleeding heart because the very first thing she does after sticking by her through her nightmare of a labor is to drag both her and the twins back to the merchant caravan she'd branched off from when she'd first detected Fuyuko's flickering chakra signature.

(Why a woman who was hiding in the ass-end of nowhere chose to follow a chakra signature undoubtedly belonging to a shinobi is something Fuyuko would only understand later.)

Fuyuko goes along with this not by choice, exactly, but because there's nothing else she can do. Between hefting the dozing Miyabi and Satoru in hand - she refused to have them out of her reach for even an instant. She'd burn the world down before she let them out of sight - and fighting off an imminent chakra-exhaustion-forced collapse through nothing but sheer force of will, it was another miracle in of itself that she managed to trudge behind her new ally (friend, eventually) to the civilian campsite in the first place.

She's not entirely sure what happens after that, because by the time they get there everything in her line of sight is grey and she herself is flickering over the edge of consciousness like a candle moments away from winking out, but by the time she focuses enough to lift her head and look to Kanna, all four of them have already been bustled into a cramped little traveling tent and all but manhandled into a bed-roll.

The other woman manages to exchange torn, half-way bloody rags that are swaddling the children for actual linen wraps and blankets ( which is a feat and a half because Fuyuko knows she hasn't once let go of them since the second they'd been put in her arms. Where did they even come from?) before she turns to her and very gently but firmly starts pushing her head down against the quilt.

It's not particularly hard. Fuyuko's almost completely slumped over all on her own.

"Sleep." Kanna urges, tucking her into the bed-roll, and is smart enough not to even attempt to pry either of the children out of her grip. "All of you. Sage, I don't even understand how you're alive right now, but you need to rest."

Fuyuko has plenty of arguments for that - Ranging from how a kunoichi thoroughly lowering her guard in foreign territory surrounded by unknown parties was just asking for someone to slit her throat in her sleep and ending with the children, because what were her babies going to eat?

When she tries to say this aloud, however, she quickly realizes that moving her jaw to speak is suddenly about as easy as bench pressing an elephant boss-summons.

"Babies. Feed."

She manages to croak out in the end, and the amount of effort it takes to get those two words out is completely mortifying. If she had any shits left to give - or any chakra at all, for that matter - she'd try and bury herself alive with an earth-jutsu to avoid the humiliation.

Branch member or no, if any of her former clan elders had ever seen her acting so pathetic, in a manner so unbecoming of a Hyūga, they'd have probably killed her on the spot. Assuming that none of them suffered a well-deserved coronary out of sheer rage.

That vindictively pleasing thought would have made her laugh if she had even an iota more energy than the bare minimum it took to breathe.

"I'll take care of them," Kanna says soothingly and finally moves to pull the infants out of her grip. Fuyuko instinctively tenses as her grip turns to iron, the idea of parting with them driving her to irrational rage, and Kanna wavers.

"I won't harm them, I swear on my-" She hesitates again, the words stalling on her lips before her eyes flicker past Fuyuko to something she can neither see nor angle her head to track and firm herself. "I swear on my daughter's life, I won't harm them. Not ever."

It's naive as all hell, but it's the conviction in her voice that has Fuyuko finally surrendering her grip and letting her arms fall away with a soft sigh, the darkness encroaching on her vision for the last time.

"...Thank you."

"Sleep, you crazy ninja. They'll be here when you wake up."

That's the last thing Fuyuko hears for a long while.

Strangely, it fills with her with relief.

A second later, her eyes roll back into her skull and she finally falls into blissful oblivion.

...​

She wakes to a baby's cries, which has her heart seizing for two seconds before she realizes that it isn't one of hers because both are nestled into her side and dead asleep.

That wasn't going to last with the unholy racket ringing out around them.

"Sorry!" Kanna gushes, scurrying around the tiny tent and trying in vain to hush the wailing little bundle in her arms as best she can while failing miserably. "Karin-chan just woke up feeling a bit grumpy, didn't she?"

There's a long-winded, hastily thrown-out explanation that follows, but Fuyuko doesn't pay much attention. She'd made the mistake of looking down at little Miyabi, caught the way her nose scrunched up at the irritating volume and promptly had all conscious thoughts obliterated.

Her little girl is a Hyūga through and through (in looks, and only ever in looks), she thinks as she ever so gently reaches for her, fingertips brushing over her skin. Dark tufts of hair and a flash of pale Byakugan irises and not much else that wasn't scrunched up and hidden by her age.

She shifts her gaze to her dozing son, and it's his features (like everything else about him, as she'll come to learn) that are the real surprise.

Satoru's snow-white hair wasn't what she was expecting. He sure as hell didn't get it from her.

Something on his father's side, maybe?

(The less said about the eyes, the distinctively not Byakguan eyes, the better. Fuyuko doesn't even try to think about those, and won't for a long while yet.)

They're both gorgeous. Lumpy, more potato-looking than human, but utterly beautiful.

"-There we go." Kanna's voice finally filters back into her ears, and Fuyuko reluctantly turns her attention back on her just in time to catch her cooing at the little girl in her arms. "Isn't that better, baby?"

Little Karin finally quietens down and falls into serene quiet, and Kanna's relieved beam is the most heartfelt expression she's ever seen.

"Sorry." She apologizes again, cradling the girl closer as she begins to dose off. "Karin's got a good pair of lungs on her and she's not afraid to use them. Especially not when she's hungry."

"That right?" Her voice is desert-dry and clear of inflection, and now that she's not fighting off unconsciousness with every breath, she starts to really acknowledge how vulnerable she is.

How little she knows and understands of anything going on right now.

"Yes." Kanna seems to notice the shift in her posture because she straightens and goes for a tentative smile. "You probably have questions."

She does.

Kanna doesn't hesitate to offer answers.

And it's more or less the best that Fuyuko could have expected.

The woman was traveling along with her eight-months-old infant, joined a civilian merchant caravan for the relative safety from small bandit forces it would offer and just happened to sense Fuyuko's chakra a little ways off when they'd stopped and set up camp for the night.

Somehow sensed the twins' chakra signatures as well, unborn as they were - and that was definitely another kekkai genkai, because no untrained civilian had sense chakra that precisely. It was absurd - Put two and two together, and decided to rush in to help.

A one-in-a-million chance.

There's no deception there. She doesn't need the Byakugan to see the earnest honesty all but shining off of her with so much intensity a blind man could see it.

The woman had saved her life and labored away by her side solely out of the goodness of her heart.

What an utterly anti-mercenary, anti-shinobi mindset.

(She's so grateful it physically hurts.)

...
​

She falls asleep again soon, body still too tapped for any real strength and by the time she wakes up (Some fourteen hours later, because chakra exhaustion is a bitch like that) it's blatantly clear that she won't be going anywhere any time soon.

Kanna is thrilled about this because she's odd like that.

The civilians who are traveling with her?

Not so much. Not at first, anyway.

They don't know that she's a Hyūga, or that she's a shinobi at all. She hasn't set one foot out of the encampment and Kanna swears up and down that no one else has been inside the tent (when she was asleep, vulnerable), but they still want her out.

Are apparently worried about the peasant - and that's by far the most polite word they use - and her bastard brats mooching off of them and slowing down the caravan

Fuyuko sticks inside the tent and doesn't see what happens, but it doesn't stop her from hearing it. All the concerned and pointed busybodies quickly change their tune when Kanna lights into them loud enough to wake the dead(and Sage above, Karin clearly inherited her lungs from her mothers) and tells them all where to shove it.

They do so begrudgingly at first, and then far more happily once Fuyuko amasses enough chakra to unseal one of her storage packs (and thank everything that Kanna had grabbed her discarded pack with all her sealing scrolls when she'd dragged her here, or they'd be in a real mess right about now) and hands Kanna a wad of ryo thicker than her wrist when she storms back inside in a huff.

"Here."

The other woman freezes at the sight of the bills, mouth agape.

Which, fair enough, for a civilian it was likely a substantial amount, but from where she was standing it wasn't anything that impressive. She'd lived in the Hyūga compound all her life (hadn't been allowed to get her own place) so she'd never had to worry about rent. With several years of standard A-Rank mission pay and nothing to spend it on, she'd collected a small fortune and had dragged it out here with her out of spite more than anything else.

She sure as hell wasn't about to leave it for the old bastards to claim. Far better to use it here and pay for her place among the civilians. And for the baby supplies for the twins, because the lack of her own had prompted Kanna to offer Karin's to share.

(The generosity has long passed the point of raising Fuyuko's hackles and is just downright scary at this point)


"I-this is-"

There's some idiotic protest coming her way, she can tell, so she shoves the bills into the other woman's hand and calls it a day.

"Just in case you need it," Fuyuko tells her, then rolls back into her corner of the tent and grabs for the nearest twin like a comforter - Satoru, Miyabi's just a little too far away. - before the spinning in her head from the abrupt chakra usage gets truly unbearable.

"Wake me up if there's someone I need to kill" She grunts lowly, and promptly tunes out everything else.

...
​

It's on the third day that things get... momentarily complicated.

The caravan is about ready to start moving again - they've apparently been stopping at every town in Gass to sell wares on their way to the Capital - and Fuyuko's just finished breastfeeding the twins, which means she's already well on her way to getting crankier than the literal infants when Kanna drops the bomb on her.

"You're a Hyūga, aren't you?" Kanna says to her a few nights later, and Fuyuko freezes. "That dojutsu is very famous. And distinctive."

Shit.

She'd taken to wearing a blindfold since the second she'd woken up in the tent - it wasn't as though she couldn't see through it - but Kanna had gotten plenty of good looks at her eyes before, hadn't she?

She breathes heavily.

(She knows by now that it's only an observation, not a threat, but she still has to stop herself from acting on her initial gut reaction, which would have involved a blade and blood and a whole lot of disastrous grief.)

Kanna has had days to betray her and more opportunities to kill her than were stars in the night sky.

And yet... the fear remains

Something of her panic must show on her face (or in her chakra, whatever meager amount she's managed to recover - because Kanna

"I won't tell." She hurries to reassure her, "I'm... I'm from a clan too."

Fuyuko inhales lightly but says nothing at all.

"My name is Uzumaki Kanna." The other woman whispers damningly, and seals away any chance of them going their separate ways. "I know what it means to carry a clan name and yet have no clan protect you. By choice or by circumstance. I get it. Your secret is safe with me, I swear."

And Fuyuko?

"That explains the bullshit healing, I guess." She forces herself to shrug casually, and the dismissive response has Kanna relaxing entirely after a second of utter shock.

The redhead beams at her.

Fuyuko has to resist the urge to grimace out unpleasant guilt

She knows Kanna only tells her because she's already exposed her kekkai genkai. Giving her the full story just balances the scales. One deadly secret for another.

She's still stupidly appreciative of the added bit of leverage, as unnecessary as she's beginning to realize it is.

One can never be too careful. She hopes she'll never have a reason to, but she won't hesitate if she has to.

...
​

It's a couple of weeks after that, and they've fallen into a routine.

Fuyuko's adapted to living among the civilians, adapted to the utterly demanding schedule her infants have on her, adapted to pretty much everything there was to adapt to in the circumstances that she's in.

Then she makes the mistake of asking Kanna where it is she intends to go after the caravan reaches the Capitol of Grass and finally disperses, and promptly nearly dies of a heart attack.

"I'm sorry, what!?"

Discounting the seal, It's the closest anyone had gotten to killing her since that one Iwa nin in the war and she doesn't appreciate it!

Kanna winces, but it's more out of morose confusion at the volume and intensity than it is out of apology.

"I was planning to find passage to Kusagakure."

Fuyuko gives her dumbass of an ally a look that would have curdled milk.

"You are a civilian-born woman of a former great clan, with not one but two incredible bloodline limits, with an equally helpless infant daughter." She enunciates the words slowly, carefully, because otherwise she'd start screaming at the suicidal stupidity at play here "Are you out of your mind!? Do you have any idea what they'd do to you!?"

For fuck's sake, even Konoha wouldn't be above pressuring the woman to settle down and breed a new generation of Uzumaki to call their own now that the Red-Hot Habanero was undoubtedly dead, and the Uzumaki had once held status almost as legendary as the Senju or the Uchiha.

To get access to a bloodline like that, to the genetic potential that would entail, a minor village like Kusa would commit atrocities that would make seasoned veterans go weak in the stomach.

"What the hell are you thinking!?"

"I don't have a choice." Kanna looks miserable, a far cry from her usual common spirit. It's more than a little horrifying to see. "Civilians don't live easy lives, Fuyuko-san. Or safe ones."

Her red eyes flicker to her daughter, who's sleeping off a nightmare of a tantrum between Satoru and Miyabi. The presence of her twins somehow more calming than anything and anyone else, which Fuyuko understands completely.

(Her children are perfect)

"I want Karin to be a kunoichi, Fuyuko-san. I want her to grow up and be strong. As strong as she can get. Strong enough that she'll be safe no matter where she is." Kanna shakes her head merely "I'm just a civilian, and so were my Kaa-san and Tou-chan. I can't train her, I wouldn't even know where to start, but if I take her to a shinobi village and offer my healing in exchange for a place for her..."

She trails off and pauses when she catches the look on Fuyuko's face.

For her part, Fuyuko gets where she's coming from.

Oh, her plan has more holes in it than Fuyuko's had (and she had literally planned to die), but the desperation is still the same.

Civilians didn't lead good lives. Especially not poor civilians who were little more than peasants. The path to becoming a shinobi was hard and paved in blood and suffering, but if you could make even genin, then you were guaranteed a level of autonomy and power most civilians could only ever dream of.

So yes, she gets where Kanna is coming from.

That doesn't mean she doesn't hate her stupid, doomed-to-inevitable-horrific-failure plan to the point she wishes it had a face so she could set it ablaze with a good katon jutsu and watch it burn.

"You don't. I'll train her."

It takes about five seconds into the ringing silence that follows for her to realize what she's just blurted out.

"What?" Kanna manages to sputter, looking about as stunned as she feels.

Damnit. Now she can't back out.

"I'll train her." Fuyuko glances at Karin, then at Miyabi and Satoru. "I'm a kunoichi myself, and she's only a few months older than my children. They can train together."

All three are nearly of an age. She's deserted the village and the clan, but she had no intention of not passing down everything she knows to the twins and arming them with all the skills they need to protect themselves.

If she takes Karin on as well, she could train all three, Konaha style. Fashion them into a proper squad, a functioning three-man team.

(They could have each other's back even when she wasn't there to look out for them.)

It's spontaneous to the point of ridiculousness, but the more she thinks about it, the more she finds herself taking to the idea.

This could work.

"You-" She looks back at Kanna, who looks at her with something achingly hopeful growing in her eyes. "I thought you planned to leave once we reached the capitol."

"I didn't have a destination in mind or much of a plan to begin with. And I owe you enough that I refuse to see you ruin your and your daughter's life out of a lack of good options." She says bluntly and is feeling nice enough not to press the point when Kanna flinches. "Besides, the potatoes like each other. It'd be a shame to break them up."

"... Potatoes?"

"...The kids."

(They're beautiful, of course, but Fuyuko isn't blind. Babies don't get cute for months after their birth and Miyabi still looks a little... squished.)

"Oh." Kanna's voice wavers. "You're sure about this?

"I wouldn't have offered if I wasn't."

Which is a blatant lie. She'd offered on a whim, but now that the thought was in her head, she couldn't see enough downsides to discard it.

(If Karin inherited either of her mother's kekkai genkai then even basic kunoichi training would turn her into an absolute unit. The idea of having someone with that kind of potential capability watching her kids' backs (out of genuine dedication, too) was far too tempting to pass up.

"Hn." She tilts her head and channels her inner Uchiha. "So, how about it?"

In the end, it's a brilliant plant.

That doesn't mean she doesn't instantly regret it when Kanna lunges and wraps her arm around her in a hug tight enough to leave bruises.

"Thank you."

Ugh. Physical contact and feelings.

So damn awkward.

"Please." She steps back and makes no move to hide the embarrassed flush to her cheeks. If she ignores it hard enough, it's bound to go away. "Don't ever hug me again."

Kanna just laughs.

(And if it sounds a little choked, a little wet, well, Fuyuko's certainly got no one she intends to tell)

...
​

A few more weeks pass them by (and kami, civilian travel speeds were pure torture), and one night they settle into a small town inn.

Fuyuko and Kanna splurge and get a room unto themselves, which nets them a few envious looks but no more than that.

Later in the evening, when the children finally tucker out for the night, they bundle all three of them and step out into the dark for some fresh air, because there's a limit to how long they can stay cooped up before they start bouncing off the walls in frustration.

Eventually, they find a nice, quiet patch of grass away from prying eyes and settle down to watch the stars.

Kanna gives her a funny look when she pulls out the bottle of mid-priced Sake she'd unsealed on her way out, along with a couple of cups. "We're both breastfeeding. We really shouldn't drink."

"I take it you don't want any?"

"I didn't say that."

Fuyuko. smirks "That's what I thought."

They're careful to drink in moderation, but that goes without saying.

For a long while, both of them drink in companionable silence and watch the stars, utterly at peace. The cool night breeze is a genuine pleasure and only adds to the experience.

At last, Kanna breaks the silence.

"I had- have an older brother," Kanna tells her one night, firmly, as if trying to convince herself more than Fuyuko. "Gin. We... We had to split up after Kaa-san and Tou-chan died some time ago, but I hope we can find each other again one day."

Fuyuko glances at her. Kanna was only a little over twenty, just like she was. Some time ago meant that she would have been young.

Far younger than she should have been to be left alone.

"He's got a daughter too, you know? Little Honoka-chan. " Kanna smiles, and it's only a little sad. "She was born just before he left. He wanted to search for a few other Uzumaki cousins and couldn't afford to take me with him, but maybe one day Karin will get to meet her cousin. "

"That sounds..." Fuyuko gives her a measured look. "Idyllic."

"Maybe a little." Kanna shrugs and absently twirls her empty cup, her free hand brushing over Karin's bunded form on the blanket beneath her, tucked into her side. "But hope never hurt anybody."

There's a lot of Fuyuko could say to argue that, but she doesn't. Instead, she makes a note of the expression Kanna gives her. Not expectant but still allowing her a chance to share.

She hadn't spoken about her brother to get Fuyuko to talk about her own family, but she gets the impression she wants to know anyway.

She's not sure she particularly wants to indulge her curiosity, really she isn't, and yet she does it anyway

"I have two." This time when she swallows, the bitter taste in her mouth has nothing to do with the alcohol. "Brothers, I mean. Hiashi and Hizashi."

She raises her cup.

"And If I never see them again, it'll be too soon."

She doesn't say a word past that, even though she could.

She could tell Kanna about how she wasn't Hiashi and Hizashi's legitimate sister, but their half-sibling, a distinction the elders never forgot to rub in her face. A bastard sired on a mistress years after the twins' birth and sealed almost as soon as she was physically able to survive the process.

She could tell her about all of it and the misery she was sentenced to for the crime of being born, but she doesn't, because she's done with it.

Done with them.

Forever.

She drains her cup and stays silent as a grave.

Kanna seems to draw her own conclusions from that, eyes glimmering in compassion.

"I'm sorry."

"I'm not."

(She is. But she's never going to regret leaving either way. Miyabi and Satoru will always be worth far more than what could have been and never will be.)

...
​

A few days later, they reach the Capitol. The caravan disbands, and all five of them split and start on their own path.

(They don't look back for a long, long time.)

...
​

They get four years of peace, in the end.

Honestly, it's better than what Fuyuko had expected. Hell, it's better than what Kanna had expected.

But all good things come to an end, and more often than not, the better they are, the worse the ending.

...
​

No one dies when everything comes crashing down (no one important), but the night that the realities of their lives return with a vengeance marks a turning point nonetheless.

Blood is spilled. Terror is sown, and lives are changed.

("Miya! Karin! Satoru!")
("NO!")

And when the dust settles, and the screaming stops, the Honored One finally begins to stir, and the whole world holds its breath and braces for impact.

...
​

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous

If you feel like it, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi: Firewillreign

 

[Orchamus]

The Satoru has been angered!!!

 

[vaulttec01]

loving this, waiting for an interlude w/ the great toad sage going wtf happened to the prophecy

 

[S. Silva]

please no, don't do this to me not a cliffhanger noooooo!

 

[JustDusty]

I don't know if it's just me, but I feel like you're using way too many parentheticals and it's more distracting than useful, imo.
Or maybe Fuyuko has a serious case of ADHD?

But other than that. Thank you for the chapter.
Finally Satoru is here.

loving this, waiting for an interlude w/ the great toad sage going wtf happened to the prophecy

Click to shrink...

My headcanon is that that toad is just a senile old man, and he was just rambling about some random vague observations to sound wise. Jiraiya achieved a self-fulfilling prophecy by going above and beyond to train all of his students. All of which "brought great change" to the ninja world.
The only person confirmed to have future sight is some guy in Boruto, and everyone knows Boruto is not canon.

 

[Enthessi]

This is looking pretty damn great so far! I also like the dichotomy between Kanna and Fuyuki. The whole making Gojo the cousin of Hinata, Hanabi and Neji is interesting as well especially for any plot points that might arise. Looking forward to more!

 

[KingNecron101]

I am hoping we get the next update soon. The suspense is going to be killing me.