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.

 

[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

 

[Firewillreign]

Have a chapter to celebrate the return of the GOAT!

You know what I'm talking about!

---

Four and a half years later:

The day that kicks off the sequence of events that would quickly send Fuyuko's newly peaceful and much-appreciated second chance right to hell in a hand-basket starts off perfectly.

Because of course it does.

The sun is rising, the birds are chirping on the sakura tree planted out front in the garden, and the early morning light streaming through the windows paints the kitchen with warm, golden-blue hues.

It's all downright scenic.

"Kids! Breakfast!"

Well, almost.

Morning call successfully delivered, Fuyuko turns her attention back to the stove and gets back to stirring the ungodly amount of whisked eggs she has cooking on the pan, humming a jaunty tune under her breath as she works her magic.

Though magic is relative. She's never had much of a taste for the things herself, but they were good for growing children (or so she'd been convinced) and there were only so many ways to overcook eggs before the lesson stuck.

The fact that the three she and Kanna have between the two of them aren't actually all that picky and tend to mow down just about anything so long as it was this side north of edible probably helps too.

And speaking of cute little brats...

"Oi" She cranes her neck and hollers down the hallway again when no little feet come running down their way. "Last one to the table is getting tossed into the koi pond!"

A snort tugs her attention to Kanna, who's sitting at the dinner table and leafing through another one of her cheesy novels, a cup of tea at her side.

"Let them sleep. You know how they'll get if they wake up cranky."

"They're already up. They're trying to make a pillow fort but Karin and Satoru keep fighting over the blankets, and Miya's hogging the pillows and refusing to fork'em over unless they do it her way."

Kanna takes a second to digest that and blinks "How?- ah."

She sighs in understanding when Fuyuko taps the side of her temple.

"Those eyes are a shameless cheat."

Fuyuko smiles smugly and her friend laughs.

"Showoff. It won't be long before they're too old for you to check in on them like that. You're going to end up traumatizing them if you do."

"Possibly." Probably. "It'll keep them on their toes."

"Fuyuko."

"What?

"Fuyuko, no."

"A little trauma is good for character." She protests, but her lips are already twitching.

"It's really not."

"Worked wonders for me."

"Shinobi."

"What's wrong with shinobi?"

The look she gets for that one is drier than Suna's deserts at the height of summer and she just about pops a blood vessel trying not to cackle.

She's kidding, of course - Fuyuko could write entire books on all the way shinobi were twisted - but trying to exasperate Kanna's civilian-born sensibilities is one of the greater joys in her life and she's not giving it up without a fight.

She's just about to suggest gifting the twins and Karin a set of shuriken for New Year's - she'd had her first at six, it wasn't even that far of a stretch - when there's a loud screech and all three come tumbling out the hallway in all their glory.

"First!" Karin crows gleefully, and Kanna forgets all about her and just about melts at the sight of her daughter's smile. "I win!"

Fuyuko would rib her for it, only that she's no better. Satoru and Miya's little faces scrunch in identical displeasure at the other girl's win and she suddenly finds herself having to bite the inside of her cheek not to smile or, kami forbid, coo at them like an undignified sap.

"Were not!" "Cheater!"

Karin sticks her tongue out and Miya scowls and turns to Fuyuko in a way that has her itching to pick her up and cuddle her shamelessly.

"Mama, Karin's a cheater!"

"Am not! You're just slow! Yu-Yu-oba-san, tell her!"

"Miya, Karin won fair and square." Her daughter shoots her a look of betrayal "Don't give me that, she did. You'll win next time. Preferably after we've all had some - Satoru, don't even think about it!"

She turns around right in time to catch her son freeze in place, stilling where he'd hopped up onto the kitchen counter and managed to pry the lid off the pot of sweets she'd made the mistake of leaving out in the open. Sage only knew how he managed to make it that far without tipping her or Kanna off.

"What?" The sly little thief has the gall to grin innocently, cool as a cucumber, never mind that she'd caught him with his hand quite literally stuck in the cookie jar "It's time breakfast."

Kanna lets out a strangled, high-pitched sound and presses her face into her palms, shoulders heaving slightly.

"Nice try. Cookies come after breakfast." Her eyes narrow "And you get one."

"Two."

"One."

"Three."

"Satoru, one."

"Let's meet in the middle and say four."

Kanna turns away entirely while Fuyuko just blinks.

In what world is that meeting in the middle?

"That's not how negotiating works, kiddo."

Her son seems to stop and consider that logic, a serious furrow to his brows.

Then it clears and he shrugs. "I'm being ambitious."

And evidently that's about all Kanna can take, because the ridiculous red-head finally bursts and nearly laughs herself off her stool.

Real helpful, that one.

"You get one. One. There's only a few left and I am not baking another batch this week."

He perks up. "I can help make more!"

Fuyuko snorts "Not a chance in hell."

"Why-"

Quick as a whip, she body-flickers the short distance across the kitchen - no hand seals needed, because she wasn't an amateur and hard work paid off when you put your damn back into it - yanks the jar out of his grip and heaves it onto the highest shelf across the from the counter before the second word makes it past his lips.

"-not-huh?" Satoru blinks at his empty hands, blue eyes flickering (Fuyuko pointedly ignores the glint of something that lights in them before flashing out of existence) and glares indignantly. "Hey! That's not fair!"

"Tough. Welcome to life, oh precious spawn of mine "

Karin and Miya start laughing, grudge forgotten in the face of someone else getting screwed. Bless their vicious little hearts, they'd take them far in life.

Fuyuko winks at the pair and bends down to and snag Satoru off the counter, slinging him over one shoulder (Dyed soft black as it always was, because even as relatively far out in the middle of nowhere as they were, snow white hair was still the very opposite of inconspicuous) and ignores his protests with practiced ease. "And you don't get to make cookies, Satoru, because if we let you get anywhere near the batter you'd load it with enough sugar to kill a horse."

"Would not!"

He would too, and everyone in the house knew it.

Sometimes she had to wonder where Satoru's obsession with all things sweet came from. Her little girl preferred savory foods and the occasional sour treat, and Karin didn't care just so long as she had enough to keep up with her voracious appetite - the perks of an Uzumaki metabolism - but Satoru went after sugar like a fish after water. If he had his way, he'd probably collapse his liver from excessive intake within a year.

It might be a real problem if Fuyuko didn't keep a razor-sharp eye on everything stocked in the pantry at all times.

"Right then. Table. Eggs. Eat." She nods gravely. "Or start holding your breath now, because I wasn't kidding about the koi pond."

And the kids take the hint and shuffle to the table.

Finally.

...​

"Mama?" It's as if they're just about to that Satoru goes to speak again. He'd just cleared his plate before turning to her, an oddly pensive look on his face.

"Hmm?"

She's expecting another round of bargaining for cookie rights or something equally familiar.

The usual stuff.

"Can we learn how to do...that?"

Her breath catches. Across the table Kanna stills where she'd been wiping the corner of Miya's mouth with a napkin, and the little girl frowns up at her.

"What do you mean?"

It's a stupid question - a weak delaying tactic.

She knows exactly what he means - the body flicker technique, the shinobi arts.

It's not the first time it's come up - every once and again Fuyuko would slip into old habits. Unseal a storage scroll to pull out some supplies in Miya's line of sight, flicker across the room to catch Karin before she took a nasty fall... she'd even let Satoru catch sight of her walking up the ceiling to patch up a layer of plaster.

The kids would be suitably amazed, they'd ask pointed questions with stars in their eyes, and Kanna and Fuyuko would deflect and deflect until they forgot all about it, which she should do right now... and yet.

She hesitates, and Satoru pounces.

"You know. The thing. things." He waves his arms in frustration, looking for the right word. "The... techniques."

Fuyuko's brows rise all on their own "Where'd you get that word from?"

"I dunno. Sounds right, though." There's a surprising amount of confidence there as if he was teaching her some new and irrefutable fact. There's also plenty of excited anticipation when he opens his mouth and says "So can we? Learn, I mean?"

"..."

Fuyuko doesn't know what to tell him, and that could be a problem

She's never made an effort to hide chakra and what she can do with it from them, but that wasn't because she trusted their ability to keep a secret - it was and is because she doesn't make a habit of using her skills beyond the necessary and what little of them they'd already seen could and had been explained away easily.

But they were bright kids, getting brighter every day, and if Satoru starts asking pointed questions that would need lies for answers then their lives would get painfully inconvenient and flush with headaches real quick.

"Maybe." Kanna saves her just as Miyabi and Karin turn to her and start putting the pieces together. "You should ask again after we get back from the park."

The girls leap up in delight. "We're going to the park?"

The strain behind the answering smile is so well hidden, even Fuyuko would have missed it if she hadn't known to look for it "As soon as you wash up and get changed-

But Satoru still looks determined, and he goes to speak again, so Kanna swoops in with the killing blow.

"-and we'll get dango on the way back."

Predictably, the promise of sugary goodness derails Satoru's interest instantly. She can almost see the way his eyes lose their eerie focus as he completely switches tracks.

"Dango!" Her little hooligan roars, and then he's leaping off his chair and charging to his room to clean up, the other two hot on his heels.

"It's a good question," Kanna says in the quiet they leave behind.

"It is."

That's why it's so galling to realize that she doesn't have a good answer.

"When are you going to start training them?"

"I don't know." She says aloud, and both of them fall into another contemplative silence.

It wasn't because they lacked the power or the aptitude for it

She'd looked them over with her byakugan when they'd been born and made regular checks since then for years. The twins had the kind of chakra reserves most other clan-grown brats could only ever dream of and Karin had taken it three steps further on account of her Uzumaki legacy and made out like a bandit - she had almost as much as the twins combined.

It wasn't because they couldn't be taught so young - she'd started basic katas and chakra control exercises when she was even younger, and it certainly wasn't because they didn't have the brains for it.

So what was it?

(The answer is obvious, but she avoids it like the plague.

She could train them, but all their oddities wouldn't change the facts. Karin's dual kekkai genkai, Miya's Byakugan and unnatural sturdiness, whatever the hell was going with Satoru's decidedly not byakugan eyes -none of that mattered.

The only way Fuyuko could teach them was to train them as she had, and to do that... she'd have to teach them how to kill)

"Will you join us?" Kanna asks when the quiet lasts too long for comfort and the mood has silently but thoroughly plummeted, but it's more a silent offer than a question.

"Not right now."

Her smile is about as genuine as the platitudes Kagen Uchiha offered her un-dearly departed bastard of a father at that one clan council meeting she'd ever had the shitty misfortune of attending, and Kanna can read it too because she frowns heavily.

"I'll catch up. I always do."

And that was that

(For now)

...​

Golden Rye Town.

For a settlement named for its being right smack dab in the heart of Grasscountry's wildlands, the name was a little on the nose.

Still, Fuyuko and Kanna had chosen it because it was perfect for their purposes. Sparse enough that no threats could move about unseen, populated enough that they could fit in with the masses, and far enough out of the way of anything of importance that the chance of anyone who Fuyuko couldn't handle chancing upon them by luck was slim.

The math did itself

As far as the locals were concerned, Fuyuko and Kanna had merchant relatives who worked across the country and occasionally visited throughout the year (The wonders of basic genjutsu in a town where everyone was susceptible to it) and their kids were no more special than anyone else's was.

Their cover was as good as it could have gotten.

It should have held.

(It didn't)

Miya was taking a break after romping about a game of tag with a few of the local kids (Not because she was tired of playing - but because everyone else was. She'd hardly broken a sweat). Satoru was off wandering wherever it was he tended to wander when he grew bored of others his age (and that was often), and Kanna was stretching herself thin trying to keep an eye on all three of them.

That's why she misses it when it happens.

Karin had been stomping about in a short grass field only a little distance away, trying to look for earthworms to slip into Miya's pillow that night - It would serve her right for calling her a cheater.

And that's when someone grabs a handful of the girl's hair and yanks back.

"Ow!"

When she looks back, Karin sees a boy who couldn't have been any older than her grinning meanly - one of the few who'd tried to roughhouse with Miya and gotten soundly thrashed for it, probably there to try and pick on her for payback.

"Hi, Tomato hair."

And then the idiot gives her hair another tug.

Her hair.

And Karin, who'd grown up with a role model who'd made it clear that she shouldn't take shit from anyone promptly chooses violence and retaliates to this heinous offense by decking the little bastard in the face hard enough for his nose to break nastily.

He lets go, clutching his nose and glaring murderously before flinging himself at her full tilt. They collapse into a pile of heaving, clawing, and biting, each giving as good as they get before the bastard is yanked off of her so quickly he squawks like a stupid little bird.

Satoru smiles, hands in his pockets, and where exactly did he come from?

"Hi, Karin. How's the fight?"

And then something strange happens.

"Hey!" The bastard glares at them both, stumbling to his feet and looking ready to jump at them again-

And then Satoru turns around, and something strange happens.

"Oi." Her annoying baby brother's voice is mild as milk, but Karin suddenly feels very, very small. Across from them, the other boy goes white, and he feels scared.

(Karin doesn't know how she can tell, but she does. Everything feels scared, even the air.)

"Go away, and don't come back."

The bastard doesn't need to be told twice. He takes one step back, and then another, still looking terrified, and then he bolts.

And then Satoru looks back and smiles at her again, and the strange feeling vanishes like it was never there at all.

"So, where ya winning? I didn't see."

Hot indignation flushes through her and she forgets about the oddness that had just occurred.

"Of course I was!"

Still, though. She rubbed her hand and grimaced, pulling her sleeve down before Kaa-san saw the mark there and got all huffy.

"He bit me. Jerk"

Her brother hums in agreement "Nasty. But at least you got his nose good, right?"

"Duh!"

(Neither of them realizes that, as he flees, the boy's nose is no longer broken. They also don't notice the figure who'd been slumped against the bench across the clearing from them, and who'd seen everything. )

...​

His name is Hanako Tamaki.

Right now, he's a nobody - old and half-broken, and missing half a leg to boot.

He also happens to be a discharged shinobi of Kusagakure, discarded by the current administration and thrown to the wayside once he grew too old and broken for the top brass to use.

He usually kept himself nice and drunk in pubs across Grass Country, and only recently come into town to visit his disappointment of a civilian daughter's family - and maybe pocket a few of their valuables.

Somehow along the way, he'd been roped into watching his squalling brat of a grandson while his daughter busied herself being a housewife, because according to her, it was 'the least he could do'

Ungrateful wretch.

But just this once, he'll let it slide without consequence.

This was supposed to be a babysitting nightmare.

Instead, as he inspects his grandson's formerly broken nose with one hand and keeps both eyes on the two children walking away, he realizes that he's struck fucking gold.

...​

It happened two days later.

The kids go out, and Fuyuko lingers to order the mess around the house, grab a drink and just think.

It's all routine.

Then she hears it.

A loud crash, and something trips through the undetectable Fuinjutsu wards on the front doors as they barge into the house.

She flickers from her room to the entry hall in less than a second, and there she sees-

Two figures. Grey flack jackets and metal bands around their foreheads, emblazoned with a row of long, interconnected reeds.

Kusa.

Fuyuko registers that, and then she stops thinking entirely and just moves.

The first one dies before his eyes even have time to widen. She flickers behind him, wraps her hands around his head in an inescapable hold and twists. Her grip is so brutal her fingers break through his skull and dig into the soft brain tissue below even as his neck shatters from the vicious wrench.

The second leaps back before his comrade's body hits the ground - there's real terror in his eyes. They'd been expecting a cowering civilian at best - But Fuyuko doesn't let him live long enough to regret the choices that led him here.

She blitzes him before he can get so much as a proper stance in, and her hands lance out for his tenketsu. Chakra sings through her veins as it answers her call, coating her fingertips and burning off the blood coating off them in a wave of red mist that accompanies her Byakugan's activation.

The Hyûga gentle fist is all elegant brutality, but there's nothing elegant about what Fuyuko does next - her blows break down and carve through muscle, and the last remaining shinobi falls dead with a mangled corpse after only one mangled half-scream that rips its way out of his shredded throat.

She doesn't register it.

She doesn't allow herself to register it.

Instead, her head snaps to the side as her Byakugan's range expands, flaring across town in search of - there.

The next infinitesimal moments are the longest of her life

She doesn't go out the door, she explodes through it - and through three more walls after that between whistling air and the light of the setting sun, uncaring of the way she carves her way through the center of the town, unheeding of the screams and chaos she leaves behind her as she runs like she never has before.

And then she reaches them.

Stops dead-still across from the smirking shinobi who's got a kneeling, distraught Kanna by the hair, Karin and Miyabi crying at his feet with faces blooming with bruises, and Satoru nowhere in sight.

Her friend was in danger. Her babies were hurt.

Fuyuko sees bloody, dripping red and lunges.

(She never makes it.)

An almighty presence slaps down between them, and everyone, shinobi and child alike, gets blown off their feet and flung back like ragdolls, bodies crashing into hard rock and dirt.

Fuyuko leaps back to her feet almost the very second her head hits the ground, heart seizing in terror for the kids and Kanna,

Just in time too.

Satoru stands there, right smack dab in the middle of this unyielding nightmare, face inhumanely blank and eyes glowing like brilliant stars in a swirling cosmos.

Then he stretches a hand. Just the one.

"Blue."

The world lights up in brilliant hues of sapphire and space itself implodes.

...​

Have a chapter to commemorate the return of the Goat!

You know what I'm talking about!

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

 

[Firewillreign]

Me sliding in after a Three months plus Hiatus:

https://imgur.com/YQritq3

---

Fuyuko had started moving the second her son appeared, pushing past the freezing, graceless pressure that Satoru's very presence had heralded with his impossible reappearance, but she might as well not have bothered.

It's all over so quickly that, were it not for her own dojutsu, she might have missed it entirely.

One second, her son is extending a single palm out, eyes-burning, unearthly chakra strangling the very air with otherworldy malice so unnatural it couldn't possibly be human, and the next-

"Blue."

-The world tints in hues of sapphire, and their surroundings flicker a heartbeat before the nin implodes.

There's no other word for it - His form folds and twists violently, like a macabre origami display, and with her Byakugan blazing Fuyuko can see the very instant that his body is crushed inwards by inexorable force and reduced to an uneven and rapidly shrinking sphere of pulverized flesh and compressed gore.

Kami

Fuyuko only manages to latch onto Kanna and yank her clear of the carnage and just about loses her footing for it - which should have been an impossibility because her chakra is anchoring the soles of her feet to the earth beneath them like dead weight, Kanna's weight cradled in her arms virtually nothing to her strength, but in the split second that follows it feels as though her traction goes to shit and she's suddenly being drawn headfirst into a void she can't see but knows with instinctual certainty is deadly.

It makes her blood scream in her veins and her skin crawl in raiton-quick alarm even as she readies to flicker back -

Satoru finally seems to catch sight of them, radiant gaze unblinking.

- and then it's abruptly over.

The pull vanishes and the surging, heady power lacing the air surges and swells only for an instant before it sparks out of existence if it was never there at all. The ruined slop that had once been the enemy nin slips out of the air with it and hits the ravaged dirt with a wet, almost underwhelming thud.

Fuyuko stares at it blankly, long and hard, before she steadily lowers the equally silent Kanna to her feet.

Across from them, her son angles his gaze down to the utter mockery of a corpse he's left in his wake, tilts his head consideringly... and scoffs.

"Weak."

...

The next few seconds crawl by like centuries - still and silent and deceptively void of anything. A fool could even mistake the lull for serenity.

But there's nothing serene about any of this.

Fuyuko's fists clench, and it's the only tell she allows herself. Besides her, Kanna flitches, no doubt sensing the utter frothing maelstrom that her chakra has become in her veins, but there's jackshit Fuyuko can do to control that, because Satoru still isn't looking away from the carnage he's sown and the few feet between her and the child she loves more than she's done for her very life feel like an incomprehensible chasm.

She can't even bring herself to ask how.

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, what the fucking fuck!?

"Satoru?"

Satoru's expression flickers - disinterested apathy bleeding into something far more attentive, far more human, and he starts as though only just remembering that he wasn't allowed.

Miyabi is still curled into Karin, hunched into the quivering older girl for safety and comfort both, but her skin is still two shades too pale and sallow and her eyes are so very wide with disbelief and terror.

(Later, Miyabi will understand - that the world can be an ugly, ugly place and that it often calls for more of the same. That her brother had only acted to protect her - that he would always act to protect her, and she'll know that she is loved.

But not now.

Now, Fuyuko's little girl stares at her beloved twin and fears.)

"What did you do?"

Satoru's expression crumples in uncertainty and the beginnings of confused hurt, and the sparking light in his eyes finally goes out.

"I-"

His voice breaks as the words die in his throat. Fuyuko feels her heart break with it, but the sensation is still enough to settle something inside of her.

Enough.

Her resolve hardens, the unmoored incredulity pushed aside in favor of cold, shinobi-grade practicality.

She could deal with this later - the way she always did - but right now, they needed to move.

Kusa nin had attacked them, and that wouldn't have come out of the blue. there were eyes on them now, and it wasn't safe to linger where reinforcements could swarm them - and they would.

The Byakugan and the rest of their collective gifts were a genetic lottery worth their weight in gold - and blood, and Kusa would spill rivers of it to get their hands on them.

Fuyuko would shed oceans more to keep her family safe.

Mission objective - get the hell out of dodge.

Her hands blur through familiar hand seals as she summons a pair of shadow clones with a familiar puff of smoke.

Satoru doesn't resist as she scoops him up into her arms, limp and unresisting, and Miya's much the same. She tries not to show how fucking relieved that makes her feel even as her one of her clones seize Karin with her free hand and the other slings Kanna over her back entirely

"The children's things - the supply scrolls." Kanna murmurs, dazed, and Fuyuko purses her lips.

"I'll send a clone."

…​

Her clone doesn't make the trip unaccosted.

There's an intruder in their home - an old man, gaunt and sallow-cheeked and with a posture that screamed former nin training - practiced, but long since rusted.

When he catches sight of her, he doesn't hesitate to draw a kunai and charge.

In response, Fuyuko disables him in five moves and grounds him with a sixth. She doesn't even bother with questions as he collapses, blood welling up in his mouth as he goes down.

"Monster." He gurgles hatefully, pale and on the verge of death.

"The worst of them all." Fuyuko's clone agrees dryly, and then raises her foot and crushes his skull like an egg.

Good fucking riddance.

Then she retrieves everything, sets the house that had been their home for years ablaze with a katon jutsu and joins up with the original and the rest of the family on the outskirts of the village.

From there, they make like bandits into the night.

…​

It's late into the night - really on the verge of dawn - when Satoru finally speaks up again.

By this point, they'd left the town in their dust hours ago, and Fuyuko had set up a low campfire - risky and borderline amateurish, but she had seals to deal with the smoke and her byakugan was flared to its peak as she kept a lookout.

The idyllic years of peace had dulled her senses before, but nothing and no one was getting a drop on them again, and anyone with the balls to try would pay in blood.

Karin and Miya are attached to one another in their sleep, and Kanna is curled around the pair protectively - Not that there was much protecting she'd be able to do if an enemy managed to get past Fuyuko, impressive bloodline limit or no, but she supposed it was the thought that counted.

Her son hadn't slept. Instead, Satoru seems to content himself with staring into the campfire blankly, the crackle of flames reflecting off his cerulean eyes

Then he speaks up.

"Are you scared of me?"

It's as though someone's driven a kunai into her heart.

"No" He's in her arms almost faster than she can process the thought, unresisting face tucked into the crook of her neck "No, darling, no."

The very question is as ludicrous as it is agonizing.

Because of a power, she couldn't recognise? Because of a dead enemy nin?

She was from Konoha - ridiculous bloodline limits were her bread and butter, and the mangled corpse had made of the attacker was a far kinder fate than the one Fuyuko would have visited on them all.

It's not even an exaggeration. She would have readily, gleefullyslaughtered her way through his bloodline starting from immediate relatives and up to the most distantly related cousin if that's what it had taken to keep her family safe.

He doesn't try to break her hold, and his next words are muffled, but she still hears them loud and clear.

"It's okay if you are." He murmurs lowly. "I know Miya is."

"Your sister is scared, but not of you." It's half a lie, and she has the sickening feeling that they both know it, but it doesn't matter. "She'll understand what happened soon and she'll be all the better for it."

Not training the kids was a mistake, she can see that now. Hindsight is a vindictive, vengeful bitch.

None of the children had been prepared for the night - none of them should have been, a part of her thinks, but it's the sentiment talking.

She coddled them all too long, let them rest in a veneer of safety and peace - And it was all ripped away in an instant.

Never again.

"She'll never fear you," Fuyuko tells her son, discarding the thought for the moment. "You're her brother, and her protector."

".... Okay."

There's a pause, fraught with tremulous emotion.

"Satoru?"

"Mmh?"

She hesitates to ask - she's not even sure if she should.

"Do you know... how you did what you did?"

Do you know how you killed a man?

She doesn't have to elaborate - thank kami for that - because Satoru stirs in her grip and shifts in place.

"I just did."

Helpful, that.

"But do you know how?"

"No. It's my technique. My blue. I just knew. I always know stuff like that." He shrugs answer, utterly nonchalant and seemingly forever at ease. "Throughout Heaven and Earth, I alone am the Honored One."

It's not just words, she knows immediately. There's a certainty there, nestled in that... proclamation, and for the life of her, she doesn't know what to do with that.

"But what does that mean?

She's not expecting an answer, and that's probably for the best, because the one she receives is earnest in its lack of anything worthwhile.

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

"… I suppose it is."

She makes no mention of how hollow the smile she receives is for all that it tears her up inside.

Another moment passes

"Mama?"

"Yes?"

"Who were those people?"

Just like that, she finds herself at a crossroads.

For just a second, she's tempted to lie, or misdirect, or give a half-answer. Whatever it took to stop herself from pulling the last of the wool from his eyes before she was well and ready and willing to.

Blue.

And then the moment of weakness passes when she remembers that it's already far, far too late.

"They were shinobi."

And then she tells him just about everything.

…​

When all is said and done, she's expecting a litany of questions.

About the Hyuga clan. About Konoha.

Even just about her, before her children and the circumstances behind their birth.

All of those would have made sense.

So naturally, her son goes for the one farthest from expectations and the most painful to answer.

"But you're not a shinobi anymore. You've left that behind." He frowns. "So why can't they leave you alone? Why can't they leave us alone?"

And what exactly is she supposed to say in answer to that?

That greed was a staple of the world? That blood and suffering took first place in the race against? That any notion of individuality was wishful thinking at best, suicidal naivete at worst - at the most common?

"Because," she says with some grim finality "That's just the order of things."

It's the only answer she can give him that doesn't reek of despair - no more than the bare minimum.

...

The silence lingers after that.

But it doesn't last. Satoru doesn't let it last.

(It's about time Fuyuko learned the truth. That barring exceptional circumstances her son would never let sleeping dogs lie - and woe to anyone who got in his way)

"I refuse."

"Oh?"

She looks down in contemplative confusion, brows furrowed, and then she blinks in surprise.

Because her son meets her stare and grins wildly, and for the first time since this kami-damned ordeal began, she recognizes something distinctly unhinged to it.

"The order of things? Really?" His eyes light up. "Says freaking who?"

And the die is cast.

...​

Baby Satoru readying himself to square up against the entirety of the elemental nations.

https://imgur.com/zy3vyKm

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