ten.
Kaho was definitely worried now. Okaa-san said that it wouldn’t be worth her time to wait at the gates for Ei-kun to return, which was reasonable. Ei-kun has said she would be back in a week but it would make perfect sense for Ei-kun and her parents to be late, especially if they weren’t traveling at night and the Aoki parents were civilians. Her nervousness showed in her long stretches of silence and extreme focus on any of the tasks she undertook.
Noticing that Kaho was starting to get a little antsy they calmly suggested in their ‘naze-nara’ Aburame way for Kaho to leave a kaichu near the gatehouse. That way she would be notified easily when Ei-kun came back. Kaho agreed readily to this, and she was pacified for about three days before she really started getting nervous again.
Then another week passed with no sign of the Aoki family’s return.
Senshi and Shiki became worried as well, their daughter had found a close friend in Ei-kun and with the amount of time that had passed, Ei had become part of their family group. Senshi quietly put feelers out at his workplace for missing persons. Kaho started training her kikaichu hive for long-distance reports.
Three more days pass, and Shiki leads Kaho from the clan training grounds into the privacy of their home. It would hurt her to have to teach her daughter this lesson so early, that Kaho would have to learn how to grieve so young, but that was the life of a shinobi. Shiki would not be cruel and say that it was better for Kaho to learn what grief was early, because shinobi clan or not, children should never have to bear the weight of the world on their shoulders. There was nothing to be done, no investigation or noble revenge to take. It happened and the only thing her girl could do was accept and move on.
Kaho did not stay home from the academy. She went and sat with silent tears as Renji-sensei told the class there had been an accident, their classmate had died on the road. The row she shared was just her now, and even when the replacement student came the seat stayed empty. Her family was told to stay away from the Jinchuuriki, from Naruto, and the clan head told them not to make a fuss about it. Kaho accepted that her friend was gone, but she didn't forget the dancing sunlight.
“You woke up! Hi there!”
Ei blinked the sleep from her eyes, the blur in front of her focused into the form of a girl leaning right over her.
She jolts, the girl leans back quickly before their foreheads collide. Ei slowly rises into a seated position from the thin and unfamiliar futon she was laying on and looks about the room. The girl sits in a not so patient seiza beside Ei’s futon. Ei isn’t in her normal pajamas.
The room is actually a house, she cautiously opens up her senses and sees nothing but herself and the girl beside her. The house is small and humble, smaller than her apartment but not too cramped. There are some shelves and cabinets against the wood paneled wall on one end, on the other end a sliding door leads to what Ei thinks could be a kitchen. Her’s is the only futon layed out, and an arm’s distance away is a low table. The floor is paneled wood like her apartment, no tatami mats, but the floor is much more scratched and scuffed up than her apartment?
Patience worn out, the girl interrupts Ei’s silent observations, “What's your name?” she blurts out.
“Ei.” She says after a second. The wait becomes longer as the girl stares at Ei with unnervingly bright green eyes. The moment passes, the girl slumps down in defeat, which makes her look funny since she still stays in sieza.
“So you do remember then.” The girl sighs miserably.
Ei goes to question this, but the girl pushes onward. “It’s weird right? It’s like on the tip of my tongue but I just can’t remember my name. Anyway you gotta get outta bed now, because he’s gonna come by later today. Ei’s a kinda weird name, but at least you remember a name at all. I’ve been waiting here for hours for you to wake up but you just kept on sleepin. The guy came and dropped you off this morning, and you really don’t talk much do you?”
The Girl stops finally and looks imploringly at her, clearly expecting an answer. The two stare at each other for a socially unacceptable amount of time. She goes to pat her hand on her covers but the Girl bowls over and continues speaking, “You don’t talk much do ya? That’s rude ya know! I’ve been here a whole day with no one to talk to at all!” The Girl has now slouched so low it's not even seiza anymore and giving her a goblin-like appearance.
“Say something then!” The Girl glares at her. “You take too long to say anything, I’ll just talk for you slow poke. He’ll be here soon so you better get outta bed!” The Girl pushes her hands towards her in a ‘shoo’ motion.
She starts to say something in the two seconds of silence as The Girl rises from her slump to sit by the door that opens into a clearing of sorts. “Who-”
“So you do talk! Guess I won’t be in complete silence!” The Girl’s head whips around to ogle at her. Her chakra is a dizzying mix of surprise and nerves. The light-haired girl starts to open her mouth again, so Ei holds up her hand in an attempt to stop the flow of words that will surely come spilling out again.
She smacks her other hand down on the covers with a soft pumf twice and glares at The Girl. “Don’t interrupt me, it's rude.” The girl seems surprised that Ei responded at all. “Who’s coming?”
“Danzo-sama is you idiot!” The girl replies quickly, “Now get outta bed!”
“After that mission, I’m looking forward to a nice, slow month of babysitting.”
Anbu Crane stretched wide, arching her back and making many concerning cracks and pops.
“Ugh, I don’t even know how you can be so active and still crack that many bones, is your spine like, good?”
Crane rotated her wrist, making a truly awful popping sound in response. “Tendons.” She said simply, but her maskless face looked a little too smug to her disgusted partner.
“Gross. You think anything interesting happened? We were off rotation for so long that the kid should be with the new family now.”
“Hm.”
“I gotta admit, it's nice to be on guard for someone who knows where you are every once in a while. It’s boring to follow politicians who don’t know or care about the people risking their asses protecting them. Kid’s a nice change of pace.”
Otter was the only mask who would admit to actually being fond of the duo formally referred to as ‘Jinchuuriki Rotation.’ He definitely wasn’t the only one who “talked” back to the child caretaker known as ‘Ei’ but he probably talked the most out of them all. Ei liked to test her control and practice her rudimentary sensor skills often, usually by sending short tap messages to whoever was watching the Container at the time. Otter was one of those rare senior ANBU who was still mostly normal, they were there because they found a niche job that they worked well in, and they didn’t mind their coworker’s jumpy and occasionally lethal quirks.
Everyone was mostly fine with the kids, they were easy to watch and chill, only real downside being Ei had a habit of pointing out the guards to the Container who happily waved at wherever his nee-chan was pointing, which wasn’t really the best thing to do to your invisible not public knowledge guard detail but they mostly ignored that. A couple of shinobi had issues with this guard rotation, like Inu-taicho who was only there cause they couldn’t make him stay in psych, and a couple of people who just requested different assignments if they had any problems.
Crane herself had no problems with the rotation, other than how boring it could be, so she agreed with her partner.
“Annnnd! After two months in the capital, we got a lot to catch up on!” He wiggled his eyebrows at her and drew a huff of laughter from her as she nodded in agreement.
And there was the real reason. Otter and Crane were scheduled to be off duty after their rotation on the Jinchuuriki Guard was over, but the Daimyo had requested them by name to watch over some noble family while they were presenting their new children to the Daimyo court. They had done the job and similar ones many times before, so they weren’t surprised to be requested again. Guard Detail was definitely the most disorganized part of Anbu to the outsider, but it made perfect sense to the shinobi in that department. They worked on a loose schedule of changing shifts on a rotating schedule of regular people who were always being watched, then special requests and small escort missions were taken up by whoever was free, tired of their current assignment, or newbies. Otter was pretty stationary, he kept to mostly in-village important people, and a few nobles in the capitol and Crane usually filled in for missing slots.
Otter, since he mostly watched in-village and capital clients only, was a huge gossip.
Being nosy or gossipy was practically a prerequisite of ANBU, and if you weren’t before you quickly became one. Otter was especially newsy. Being in the capitol meant he lost out on “hot and juicy deets” of the various councils and committees that made up the Hidden Leaf’s government, but he had lots of “hot and juicy deets” about various capital going-ons. They made an odd duo, the strong and silent type with the gossipy social butterfly, only the young woman was the silent one, and the middle aged man with beginnings of silver cropping up in his short hair was the gossip.
As they walked through to the public ANBU office, a smaller room inside T&I that was mostly a joke, to the real ANBU building in an undisclosed position, the locker rooms, the rookie lounge, lounge, the senior lounge, the extra missions board, research offices, their apartments, through the training gyms, and to the Protection and Escort office he kept up a constant stream of a mostly one-sided conversation with Crane. Once they got to the office he cut off the seemingly never-ending stream of talk about nothing.
“Anbu Otter requesting reassignment to Jinchuriki Night Detail, shinobi registration number 207045. Anbu registration number 803.”
“Anbu Crane requesting reassignment to Jinchuriki Night Detail, shinobi registration number 208543. Anbu registration number 872.”
“Did you actually turn in the signed contract and the report this time?” The brave head of Protection and Escort, Anbu Shrew stared through the thin slits in their mask at the two. In their brightly lit but bland office, the pale blue seals accenting their mask stood out clearly against the crisp white ceramic.
“Yes,” Otter replied through gritted teeth. Crane still wasn’t sure why they seemed to have a feud over that. To her knowledge, Otter had never problems turning in paperwork. However, she quickly learned when she first joined that every department head seemed to be engaged in some sort of minor psychological war with their senior members, and it's best to leave it be.
“Your reassignment has been approved then.” He handed the scroll with their current patrol schedule to her over his desk and penned in their designations on the roster with his other hand. “Off you go then. Have fun babysitting.”
“Ah, before you start your shift I should tell you, that sensor kid is dead.”
Ei senses the man before she sees him, and knows that it was on purpose. His chakra is old, and he has a lot of it. It has a tightness to it, like a rubber band that’s been stretched too far. Ei knows from the mature reserve that this is definitely a shinobi and that the amount showing is controlled. It's a rather generic profile of a Fire Natured shinobi, but despite that, it has a cold, slippery quality to it. It reminds her off-
Who?
Shaking the unfinished thought from her head, she finally sees the man himself as he walks into the clearing of packed dirt from the forest. She sinks into a bow from the waist when she realizes who it is, the girl giving her a weird look as she remains standing.
“That’s Councilman Shimura.” Ei hisses from the side of her mouth at the girl who shrugs and bows as well.
Ei keeps her head down and listens to the tap - tap shuffle of the man’s cane and robes until he comes to a stop. She straightens and makes sure to not make direct eye contact with the man like she was taught, because that's polite when meeting authority figures. The girl beside her straightens a little too early and eagerly greets the man. “Hiyah Sir!”
He doesn’t respond, just observing the two girls. Ei feels very scruffy under his gaze, still wearing the clothes she woke up in because she couldn’t find any others.
“I’m sure you have questions. I am Shimura Danzo, you will refer to me as Danzo-sama.”
“Hai.” Ei says quietly, the girl beside her says loudly. Clearly the girl doesn’t feel the tense pressure Ei feels from the very respected high member of Konohagakure and blazes on with her questions.
“So why are we here? Cause I woke up all confused like whoa! Not that it’s not a bad place or anything but I was super confused!”
“You are here because you were chosen for an elite program. Here you will learn to become a great shinobi and join the ranks of the foundation of the Hidden Leaf as it’s protectors.” Danzo-sama has a thin smile on his face, but it feels stale to Ei. His flat black eyes are deep set, and they hold no emotion.
The girl awkwardly raised her hand, “I have another question sir. I have some gaps in my memory and I uh- I forgot my name.” She finished lamely, picking at the balls of lint dotting her leggings.
“Your name is Iyori. How strange that you would forget that.” Ei doesn’t know what the expression he makes means.
“Danzo-sama, why are we here?” Ei asks. She forces herself to look directly at his face, despite the rising apprehension within her. There's a blank spot in her mind and she knows, she knows that it's chakra.
“You were chosen.” He says with finality.
He leaves them with instructions to work on the study material in their house, and someone would come by with clothes and rations.
The two girls try to live in the house. Iyori succeeds in living as she normally would but Ei only just gets by with a degree of normalcy. They both know that there is something not right, a lingering sense of wrongness in the back of their minds.
Ei learns that Iyori came from a small village. It used to be much bigger but it was pretty much decimated when a three way conflict between Iwa, Kumo, and Konoha during the war trampled most of the village, and it never got back on its feet. As such they had a large orphanage. Iyori’s matron taught her about chakra so she could help with watching the children. Iyori didn’t say anything else about it, and Ei didn’t ask.
Iyori eventually settled into life at their little cabin. She took to chakra exercises well, learning the language of small pulses and flares and used it to annoy Ei often. Ei excelled in Taijutsu instructions, and the fiddly ninja wires intrigued her.
There were eight other children in the woods. Ei and Iyori sometimes met them, during group training or just coming across one another doing something or other. The teams where encouraged to keep to themselves so they mostly did.
Danzo-sama did come by once in a while, he brought them new study material and observed progress checks. He became a marker for Ei, as he usually showed up every month or so. The fifth time he appeared, he brought sealing scrolls with him.
Iyori knew about them but never used one before, so she eagerly took the offered scroll from Danzo-sama and dumped the supplies on their low table. The scroll had thick rolls of different paper weights, ink sticks and grindstone, brushes of many sizes, which Danzo-sama explained to them.
It was one of the rarer occasions where Danzo-sama actually came inside their hovel, and Ei watched him demonstrate the construction of a simple sealing scroll.
The flare from unsealing the supplies had sparked with Ei. It cracked something in the back of her mind, something that had slowly begun to heal and scab over. She knew that chakra pattern. She had seen it before.
The girls had an oil lantern, it hung from a hook on the ceiling and it had a yellow-tinted light to it. They didn’t use it much since the oil didn't get delivered to them often, but it was turned on tonight to light up their dark livingspace.
As Iyori slit her thumb on a kunai and squeezed the drops of blood onto the ink stone, Ei’s eyes remained glued to the puddle of chakra-infused ink. Yellow light reflected off the dark pool and suddenly Ei was back.
She knew logically that she was still seated at the table. But what she saw before was broken bodies and scattered kunai. There was no chakra drifting around her temples but her ears rang anyway. Through the fog, she barely heard herself ask something.
“When can we go home.” It was said more like a statement. She blinked and the image was gone, but the pervading sense of wrongness grew stronger. Iyori held her brush hovering over the paper and had a blank look, her chakra shifted uncomfortably. Ei figured she probably interrupted something Iyori said and figured she’d apologize later.
“Why do you ask?” Danzo answered with a question of his own. “You haven’t shown any inclination to leave before, are you unsatisfied with your education here?” Ei heard the underlying are you ungrateful? in the question. She shook her head and ignored how it made the ringing pitch higher.
“No sir. I remembered something.” Naruto had an odd habit after he finished eating a big meal. He wouldn’t fall asleep afterwards if he wasn’t held. Ei had been worried about when she - when she left. It was 6 months ago. She worried that Hisako-san wouldn’t hold him the way he wanted to be held. Ei had spoiled him by holding him so much she knew, but how could she begrudge him any love when so few offered it to him? Had he been held while she was gone? Would Kaho-kun and her parents check on him?
In her haze in the time before, she had introduced Naruto and Susuki-san. Maybe she knew, knew somewhere in the back of her mind that she wouldn’t come back. Would Susuki-san check on him? Would the Hokage-sama still care for him?
Ei no longer paused when speaking to Danzo-sama. She was scolded by him before for her way of speaking, just as Iyori has been scolded for her informal manner of address. One of the revolving cast of white-masked teachers told her to memorize the microexpressions of those around her so she could decide when speaking was appropriate.
She continued. “I was caring for a brother before. I was curious about his well-being and when I would see him again, Danzo-sama.”
“You do not have a brother. You are an orphan.” He said.
Ei feels something burning within her. It was something fragile and horrible, burning in her stomach. She continues not to hear him. “His name is Uzumaki Naruto. I would like to see him again.” Her voice remains strong, despite her fluttering insides. At nine years old, Ei could usually name most of the feelings she had, but this was something she didn’t know. It wasn’t fear, it wasn’t sadness
“Ei.” Iyori lowly mutters in half warning, half surprise.
Ei knew she was being bold, that she was challenging Danzo-sama. But that gap in her memory was gone, it's been filled in. Her vision snaps to the left as she is struck. It makes her teeth ache and her cheek smart but she stays sitting upright, even if she has to balance herself with a hand on the floor. She isn’t angry.
“Were you so content in your delusion of a family that you convinced yourself you had a brother? Your position as the Jinchurriki’s caretaker was given to you out of convenience and pity from a soft-hearted Hokage.” His words fall harshly upon Ei’s ringing ears. His actions are angry, but his chakra remains unmoving and cold. His hand has returned to its tucked position in the gray shroud he often wraps around himself, as if he never moved against her at all.
“Use your head child. Don’t try to delude yourself into thinking that it was anything but training for you.”
Ei knows. She knows now that she was never going to be adopted. She knows that Susuki-san was paid to teach her and didn’t actually want to help Ei. She knows that Hisako never loved her. She knows that Kaho only talked to her because no one else would. She knows the only reason Hisako let her take care of Naruto is because no one else would.
But she can’t help but feel betrayed. She can’t stop her traitor heart from loving them still. She knew it was fake, but she loved Naruto. Loves him. She loves Kaho. She misses so much the friendship they had, devoid of the competition and wariness that her relationship with Iyori has. She misses Susuki-san and their lessons and their talks.
“Yes, Danzo-sama.”
Iyori bites her lip in worry, eyes darting between her and Danzo-sama but fixes her face into a blank one once Danzo resumes instruction. Ei has been in this place six months already and she knows now that his expression is called contempt.
Ei and Iyori were partners. It was a fitting term for what they were. They lived together, trained together, studied together, and fought together. They were not friends, but they braided ninja wire into each other’s hair and beat each other into the dust every time a progress test came along. Iyori said nothing about her accent and why she didn’t know about any of the clan heads. Ei said nothing about the brother she still held close to her heart or the taste of peaches on her tongue. They stayed away from topics like family, friends, home, and stayed on much safer topics like basic evasion, test scores, poisons native to Fire and how to get blood out of cloth.
They were smart girls, so they trained hard and wore the clothes delivered to them in their size.
They saw the rewards another team had got for training hard, and so they trained hard too.
They were smart girls so they didn’t say anything when the boy from the team upriver didn’t get back up during training.
They were smart girls so they watched and promised it would never happen to them.
Ei asked only once if Iyori would ever go back. “Why would I? It wasn’t anything special. We have a reason to be here, Danzo-sama believes in us, and he's training us for a reason.”
They were smart girls so they trained and acted like the chosen protectors of Konoha’s will of fire like Danzo-sama said they were. Ei has been here a year since the day she woke up here.
“Why are you even crying anyway? Aren’t you like - ten?”
“Nine.” Ei manages to sob past the gaps in her fingers. Iyori tries to pry Ei’s hands off her face but Ei just curls into herself tighter, Iyori hovering over the hunched girl in a harried manner.
“You’re nine? I thought you were older.” She couldn’t see her face but Iyori’s chakra frowned at her.
“Ya know, 'cause you’re so boring.” Iyori is trying to goad her into responding, poking at her hands covering her face.
She’s crying because her hair is gone. Her lovely, smooth hair is gone and it’s all Iyori’s fault. Ei has no ribbons, no hair, no one to brush her hair and no reason to tie her hair. She had someone to tie her hair once and it pains her to think about what used to be. She maintained her hair on her own, trimming it and keeping it neat just like she did when she lived alone. It meant something, that her last normal habit was gone.
“It’s just hair Ei! It’s like you’re some kind of bratty little sister. If Danzo-sama was here he’d yell at you for cryin all the time.” Iyori guiltily brushes the now-loose strands of hair off Ei’s shoulders, her frustration showing in her rural, normally hidden, accent peaking through. Easy for her, Ei thinks. Iyori’s waist-length auburn hair is kept braided back at all times and never in danger of being slashed.
Ei hiccups for a bit and replies in an accusing sniff, “You aren’t that much older than me.”
It’s just hair. No reason to cry.
“I’m two inches taller, that makes me older.” Iyori’s no-nonsense tone makes her statement seem like it makes sense, but Ei still thinks its stupid. Still hiccuping, Ei allows Iyori to straighten up the uneven strands until her hair stops right at her chin. It’s not the long gentle fingers she remembers or even the small clumsy ones that buzzed and chittered but Ei lets a grumbling Iyori fix it anyway.
“Even if you already talk like an old person. And act like one. Maybe you’re like, secretly really old.” Iyori pokes her shoulder with the looped handle of the kunai they’d been training with before Iyori accidentally cut a four-inch chunk of her hair off.
Successfully goaded, Ei sniffs to clear her nose, “Not old. I’m respectful. You’re just uneducated.”
“Old. Only old people would say stuff like that.”
Ei sits back straight, legs crossed in the clearing. One slow inhale, one slow exhale. For each breath she takes, she moves the borders of her mind further. She knows there are other people in these woods, but that’s not what she’s focused on. She’s not focusing on listening to the woods either, her normal routine of sitting and cataloging every life sign she comes across counts as training but sometimes she does it just to listen to the heartbeats of the trees.
No, today she wants to know where she is. Hashirama trees aren’t like other trees, they are brighter and so much more alive. They are all over the land of Fire, but there's a high concentration of them around the hidden village, old battlegrounds, and old Senju compounds. The trees grown personally by the Shodaime-sama are huge, and they have this chakra that's just different, something that just calls to those born under the great protectors. The Nara deer and the Hashirama trees, there was something special about them Ei knew, they protected their own. Ei can use the giant map they form by looking for the brightest point, and then she can go back.
Their teacher runs off with cloaked chakra after each lesson, so she knows that they aren’t just in the middle of no-where but the teacher keeps their chakra locked down so close Ei doesn’t know where they go after-
“OI! Ei! Quit that chakra crap!”
Ei jolts out of her peaceful reverie and immediately notes that the sky has gone a lot darker.
“If you get all funky from that sensing crap before a test I won’t go easy on you!”
“I wasn’t going to go too far,” Ei says unconvincingly.
“Oh yeah? Well, I bet you’re gonna have a nosebleed.” Iyori pops out the door pointing an accusing spoon at Ei. They glare at each other waiting for one of them to be proved wrong.
Ei doesn’t get a nosebleed.
“Hmph!” Iyori turns on her heel back inside haughtily, Ei gets to her feet and follows her inside. “I’m serious though, don’t go too far anymore. That one time was freaky enough." The accusing spoon is in her face once more,"Besides, remember those kids we get the group training with?”
Ei hmm’d as she sat at the table instead of saying anything, having learned a long time ago that any sign of reply was good enough for her partner.
“Yeah well I saw one of 'em at the river, and he said there was gonna be this big test.”
Ei knows full well that Danzo-sama doesn’t want them to go further north through the woods to the river but she keeps silent rather than bring it up because last time she did Iyori punched her.
“Bigger than the taijutsu progress check?”
“Yep.” Iyori popped the ‘p’ at the end. “Kinda like a graduation.” She says it too casually for her statement to hide any of her excitement. “Do you remember when you felt that one pair’s chakra to the west disappear? That kid at the river said that they got taken away for their final exams.” Her crooked grin is not the perfect one taught by the instructors, but the real one. Her chakra begins to swirl in the familiar competitive pattern it takes when Iyori thinks she will do well in a session.
“Taken?” Ei zeros in on this piece of information and ignores the knowing look she gets from Iyori, “Where will we go after?”
“Who knows? Don’t go making your brain bleed trying to figure it out though.”
They could leave.
Ei hasn’t known this small ache in a long time. It's a gentle, horrible, overflowing, and suffocating sensation she didn’t know the name of before. Ei has been in this place for two years. She has grown older, stronger, and hardened. She’s read books, poetry, and messages filled with secrets and codes. Great novels and two-Ryo romances. Great war speeches and letters between friends. Textbooks and textbooks on the nature of chakra. Ei knows the name of this feeling, though she doesn’t want to acknowledge it for fear it would fade away again. Hope.
Ei had missed two years of her baby brother’s growing up. She wouldn’t miss anymore.