twenty.
Warmth flooded down her face, dripping off her chin and splattering on her shoes. Ei didn’t take any notice, her eyes were wide and not seeing the floor in front on her. Her dorm was empty as ever, same stone floors and walls, a spartan bed, and the desk that looked older than the village but was probably a recent addition. The only spots of color in the room are the sky blue bracelets on her desk and the red drops of blood at her feet.
It was unlike anything she’d ever seen before. A sound not unlike radio static echoed in her ears as she watched an entire city Breathe. Like one giant beast, the village hidden in the leaves inhaled and exhaled, and cried and laughed and Lived.
She could have watched it forever.
But distantly, she was aware that she had something to do. Ei’s fingers lightly drummed on her crossed legs and she swayed forward slightly as she pulled her mind back. The next pulse she sent was smaller, only reaching 50 miles past the gates. She blinked, still not seeing the wall 4 feet away from her. The next pulse is even slower. She watched Naruto’s young chakra reach out and twirl with the other signatures at the academy—a smaller pulse. The Anbu division had new recruits. Smaller. Someone had patched the smeared lighting seal in the south tunnel. With smaller and slower pulses of chakra she pulled her focus away from the village and to the little room. The lights were not so bright, and the distinct Konoha-ness faded into chakra types, clans, and ages, and finally shrank back into her.
Ei blinked again, scrunching up her nose at the feeling of the half-dried blood flaking off her face. She sniffed and swiped her nose on her sleeve. The sniff was loud in the empty room, bouncing off the walls of the dim room back to her.
She forgot to close her eyes again. Ei estimated maybe 10 minutes had passed when she looked to check the stopwatch lying on the ground by her leg, the flashing screen displayed 00:09:56. The watch was a new addition to her bags, something she was able to purchase now that she didn’t spend her meager money supplies on lunchdates.
Ei stood up and stretched, using the pencil she’d been chewing on to mark the time. This time she’d kept the pencil in her mouth, attempting to keep herself from biting her tongue again. At some point she must have opened her eyes again while immersed in the waving of the tree branches. Weird, but she wasn’t sure how to fix it.
Rubbing her eyelids, she hummed at the numbers she had jotted down. The Uchiha Taskforce only had two sensors on it, herself included, and the captain wanted an estimate of her range. Once a day she was testing how far she could sense, how detailed she could get, and then how far her range would be if she actually expelled some chakra. Ei had chosen to use Inuzuka dogs as her target since they could be found all over fire country. It had been a fruitful exercise so far, but had given her a low-level headache the entire week.
The results she had so far were sufficient for her squad leader, but she wanted to have record for herself. Ei knew she would never have a large chakra pool, but she didn’t think that she’d hit her limit yet. When she really pushed her sight, it made her nose bleed, her fingers numb, and her heart feel off. The drawbacks that came from pushing herself were horrible. Chakra exhaustion was one thing, but to her, it felt like going blind. The lack of chakra signatures that she’d lived with her entire life, now gone and replaced with dim visions and heavy exhaustion laden limbs from pushing all her energy outward was terrible.
But, the mission didn’t care about her chakra-vertigo and if she could train herself to work past the symptoms then she could still work. The only goal Ei was certain she’d never reach was getting her senses into barrier wards.
Ei only tried to go past wards once. It had felt like tripping and skinning her knee but on her brain. An experience she was not eager to try again. Ei winced as she flipped past that page in her notebook, already knowing without looking that the handwriting was wobbly and incomprehensible. It gave her comfort that she couldn’t force her mind past clan wards. It would make gathering information within the foundation tricky, but Ei was relieved that she wouldn’t be forced to spy on the Uchiha through the old wards from the founding.
She was getting better at pulling away now though, a year ago it felt like ripping weeds out when she tried to bring her mind back to her body. Now, she could move and respond to basic questions while still focusing on her sensing. Eventually, she hoped she would be able to engage in combat as well.
Mentally reviewing her skill level once more, she readied herself to write her report. She wasn’t going to turn it in. She was starting to understand now why so many of her seniors trained so much. Without her slight rule-breaking village excursions, her life was now very boring and very very stressful. The journaling was a little fun though. She liked organizing her skills and seeing her improvements on paper. Ei sniffed again, leaving her seat to get the rest of the nosebleed crusted onto her face washed off.
The proctor took the sheet from the table, and replaced it with a new file.
Shisui unsealed it and started parsing through it. The last file had been related to the first one, so it was safe to assume that this one was too. Without using his Sharingan, he scanned through them quickly, finding the cipher phrase, checking back at the old Konoha standard cipher chart, and matching it with the new one. Group A used the old Senju cipher based on the buddhist sutras, and so had Group B, but they had enough discrepancies to make Shisui figure what the point of this test was.
Who was the traitor?
Unlike previous tests, that he assumed were meant to assess his grasp on cryptology and other things, this one just looked as simple as finding the discrepancy in mission reports. As a jonin, Shisui had picked up a shift or two at the missions desk before and knew what he should be looking for, but that seemed too easy compared to the previous tasks.
His metal chair creaked as he leaned forward to take the previous file and see if the previous cipher matched up. It did. But their conflicting answers on the delivery were strange. Maybe the simple test was supposed to make him overthink. Ugh.
Despite his bafflement at today’s test, he kept a blank expression as he wrote what he thought was the answer. The Jonin sensei from Group B seemed likely.
“Time.”
He rolled the “exam” scroll back up and squinted at the proctor. Two weeks into the pre-anbu admission exams, Shisui knew from experience that there would be no answer if he asked what time it was.
He knew it had been two weeks, because he had kept count and had managed to dispel every attempted genjutsu meant to throw off his sense of time, even when he was currently running on 30 minutes of sleep. He resisted the urge to rub his eyes as the proctor graded his test. One eye twitched with annoyance as he dispelled the illusion meant to worsen his drowsiness.
There were some tricky ones, illusions that had caught examinees 12 and 5, but with his Sharingan he was practically immune. Pretty convenient passive effect, if you asked him. He was trying to avoid using it as much as possible, since that would definitely defeat the whole “anonymous” thing.
“Pass.” The proctor said tonelessly. The intimidation factor of the monkey mask had worn off a week ago, and now it was just a little depressing. No wonder Itachi became even more of a wet blanket after joining.
He suppressed a sigh. Itachi and Ei had unknowingly both given similar warnings that the Anbu test was more about testing intelligence and character. They could have given a heads-up about the spreadsheets though. Shisui hated spreadsheets. There was a reason he didn’t work in T&I and it was spreadsheets. He huffed a tiny breath of a laugh, and immediately regretted it as he cringed at the smell of his breath bouncing off the plain “rookie” mask strapped on his face. Ei seemed like the kind of freak who liked spreadsheets.
The proctor tapped the files together on the table into a neat stack, tucked them under his arm, and flickered away without a word. Shisui waited a second longer to pull the mask up and rub his eyes tiredly.
The little “tests” that had been, so far, peppered throughout his 15 day stay in wherever-the-hell-he-was were not the worst part.
The worst part by far, was the silence. No one here talked. The proctors never said they couldn’t, but all the “rookies” had unanimously decided to keep mute unless they were doing partner work. And Shisui didn’t mind quiet partners! But it was a different kind of silence. Mostly anticipation but also, knowing that some of the proctors could be from Danzo’s little group of cave babies. Might have just been him, though.
He glanced up as the single lightbulb in the room flickered off.
Ei stared at the paper.
Kotoamatsukami; Strongest illusionary technique. Noted in Uchiha Ka--mi. Requires Sharingan. Kagami line of inheritance -unk no–n
The damning ink stared back at her.
The end of the line is ruined, an aborted hand movement had made an unsightly blot on the paper. Her hand still hovered over the paper, dripping ink. A tremor ran down her arm.
She writes it again. There are no ink blots, but the lines were stiff. Sloppy. Ei knew what the inheritance line was. She just didn’t want to write it down.
Last noted in Uchi–jh Ka ga-
Ei licked her lips, trying to chase away the sudden dry mouth. She set the brush down as evenly as she could, her uncoordinated movement made the holder clatter. She wrist cracked loudly as she rotated it to relive the tension. The ruined sheet of newspaper joined the growing pile of ash in the bucket beside her.
It might be unavoidable. Ei would eventually have to divulge more Uchiha secrets, ones more valuable then this one. But despite the seemingly hopeless task, she knew it wasn’t impossible, and that the seal was not resolute. Determined, Ei set a fresh sheet of old newspaper before her. She rewet her brush, made sure the tip was pointed, and set it to the paper.
Kotoamatsukami.
Her careful strokes looked more promising than before. Ei had found that writing in passive voice was the most promising, and poetic speech was even better for attempting to lie on paper. Ei didn’t know how to be poetic, so she focused on creating the most boring and bland reports possible.
This text she had been copying was already known to Root’s intelligence. A variant of the developed Sharingan, it was known to have very powerful genjutsu. While some Uchiha jutsu seemed present randomly, this particular form had shown many times in the more Noble family lines.
Line of inheritance unknown.
She was practicing writing half-lies. Willfully lying was, of course, not allowed by the seal, which previously gave Ei only two options. Obey, and Silence.
Clearly neither of these are working. It wasn’t enough. Until Shisui could gather the information that Ei couldn’t say aloud himself, there would be no movement against Danzo.
This was all she could do right now.
Half-Truths were the shinobi’s best tool. Ei could speak half-truths and non-answers, but she found that writing them on paper was much harder. And if the Foundation had taught her anything, it was that the paper trail was the most important thing. Reports were one of the only kinds of agency Ei had, and if she could loophole her way around sharing every Uchiha secret by simply, not writing it down, she could help. It wasn’t much, but maybe, it was something. Until Shisui found Tenzo, there wasn’t anything else she could do but wait and watch.
Ei usually wrote her reports in pen, It made her handwriting look nicer, and it didn’t show the jitters that usually happened when the seal froze her mid sentence. But her pens wouldn’t cut it anymore. Ei needed to be able to tell those half-truths regardless of any medium. So she was using the most telling medium to practice.
Any slight hesitation would show when using ink and brush. Hesitation, changing posture, jolts, tremors, shakes. Unlike a sturdy and modern pen, which wouldn’t show those things, It would be glaringly obvious to an older traditional man like Danzo-sama. Because of the free-flowing nature of ink, neat writing, and steady brushwork wouldn’t inspire any possible doubts about the writer’s sureness.
There are no current holders.
Ei set the paper aside to dry and wiped her brush on a stained cloth.
It was better. It wasn’t quite there yet, but very soon.
Without a brush to hold, her white fingers trembled, and she wrung her hands together to work the blood back into her right hand. Her temple pulsed in tune with her heartbeat, which seemed too loud paired with her forcibly shallow, even breaths. She studied the mostly dry paper, analyzing its strong and steady brush strokes. This was her defiance.
The still damp paper is swiftly crumpled into a ball and joins the other rejects in a bucket at her side. She cracked her knuckles and summoned a quick flare of chakra on her fingertips, and touched it to the topmost paper to reduce the pile to ashes.
Her tolerance was getting better. It wasn’t easy, and the progress was slow. It was hard to test as well, when the only outcomes to lying outright to the mission coordinator were nothing, or instant death. Unlike with her chakra pools, taijutsu skills, bukijutsu skills, there wasn’t a visual improvement beyond neat handwriting. The seal scattered her thoughts like a brick through a window, and put this pressure on her mind like a sudden tightening of a noose around her neck. Learning to defy the seal’s urge to obey was like learning to walk unflinching through a rain of tags, all set to explode at the slightest hesitation and catch her in her lie. Ei was practicing with a bold lie, but she knows doing this for real in future reports will be harder.
There are no holders of the Kotoamatsukami.
Not too dissimilar from the strong and blunt strokes coating her own tongue, the strokes were readable, steady, lacking any infliction or style. The perfect handwriting of a stone statue.
Now Ei sets a scroll down. It was time for her very first half-truth. She forced herself to loosen her shoulders, and carefully set the brush to paper.
…..having assessed the capabilities of possible agent, Uchiha Itachi, I believe that his ideals are in line with that of his clan, and not the village.
Shisui was currently in the midst of Anbu graduation tests, and wasn’t there to get his comrade in check. From her brief stalking exercise, Ei knew that Shisui had the ear of the Uchiha heir, but Shisui wasn’t in contact with Itachi, and wouldn’t be, until he passed Anbu graduation. So while he was occupied, Ei needed to throw the Uchiha task force off Itachi’s trail.
Frustratingly, Uchiha Itachi was extremely neutral in politics. He was a very good shinobi, on track to becoming the captain of his own Anbu cell, and most importantly, he chose to remain in the Hokage’s service and not the Police force. It was good news for the task force, who were considering asking Danzo’s permission to infiltrate the compound soon. The disparity between the police force and active shinobi forces in the clan was growing wider, with the more vocal faction of Elders and police members trying to fight the slow extermination of the Uchiha. The opportunity to have an inside agent, especially one with a foolproof cover that came with being the Clan Head’s son, was one that the Foundation’s task force couldn’t possibly give up.
… Potential to exploit the bias towards those he considers close family was noted, but the target does not meet the standards of the Foundation…
If convinced, Itachi would make a very good inside source, and the issue of not being able to get into the compound physically would be gone. But that plan could only work if the heir could be trusted enough to report truthfully.
However, Ei happened to know from a month of stalking Shisui that Itachi had a very cute younger brother, a kind mother, and a stressed but loving father. Itachi’s attachments would choke him if he joined the Foundation, no matter what his devotion demanded he do for the Hokage and his councilmen. Ei knew from experience that cute little brothers were far more important than the mission. She just had to convince the task force of this before they attempted to turn him against his clan.
Itachi was an unknown variable in her plan. Hopefully, when Shisui joined Anbu’s ranks, likely as an assassin, he would make contact with the heir and make sure Itachi knew to lay low.
He still hadn’t found “Tenzo.”
Shisui was starting to doubt the very helpful advice Ei’s had given him.
“You’ll know him when you see him,” She had said.
Frustratingly vague, like every other part of all this Shimura business. Ei hadn’t given him any other clues, and the word Tenzo didn’t have any hidden meaning that he could think off. Lots of little things had seemed, off so far, like the series of logic puzzles that made Shisui decide which hypothetical team member should be left behind, and other little tests where the answer had just been, “Die.” But still, despite all the connections he could make between Ei’s oddities, the increasingly hostile Councilman Danzo, and the worried conspiracy theories that the Uchiha Elders spouted every meeting, nothing had really jumped out at him yet as something worth reporting to Fugaku-ji. Now he was certain that Danzo was doing far more than petty bureaucracy, but he didn’t have any proof.
Shisui sighed. Joining Anbu probably inevitable, given how much the clan elders were pushing for more clansmens to get into better positions for politicking, but he had hoped that giving up his free time would have garnered some more concrete evidence of tampering. He pressed his fingertips into his eyes for a moment and dragged them down his face as he psyched himself up to move his sore body to the provided bed in the corner of his room.
The concrete block of a room was a definite improvement over the paperwork gauntlet or the communal bunker from the “team training” exercises. That two-week period of paperwork, record skimming, and code-breaking, broken by short spells of sleep and breaks for food and precious little bathroom time, was by far the worst time he’d had so far. Shisui was going stir-crazy by the time the hand-to-hand sparring sessions started.
Today’s training was one hell of a workout, but Shisui couldn’t deny that it certainly had results. The trainers-from-hell were whipping the remaining 12 shinobi into Anbu standard. Shisui wasn’t arrogant enough to think that he couldn’t improve more than his current status, but he didn’t think he’d see such an improvement in himself so quickly.
She had right about Root shinobi being the ones to train Anbu, not that he had any doubt about that before he came. Already one of the proctors had, multiple times, recited a very familiar, “No past, No future, No name, etc, etc,” phrase that Itachi had memorized. Shisui still wasn’t entirely sure if Itachi memorized shinobi mottos sincerely or specifically to annoy him, but now he was starting to think it was a little bit of both.
Fugaku was gonna flip. Itachi had probably told him that Shisui joined to get better insider information, but most likely didn’t tell Fugaku that Shisui was looking into the Foundation.
Ugh. Shisui told him he was going to join Anbu and left before they could really discuss it, but he was definitely tackling him the next time he saw his beloved, favorite cousin.
Spreadsheets.
Itachi really could have warned about the spreadsheets.
He yawned once and fell onto the provided bed. Jonin and war-time experience meant that he fell asleep within seconds.
The light flickered on again.
Shisui had slept for 30 minutes.
Great blaring alarms rang in his head. He took it from the scrawny woman carefully, as if it were a glowing seal tag, and stared into the black eye holes. The accompanying scroll is tucked under his arm until he can get storage packs again.
An almost-white gray bird stared out at him. Green lines accented the corners of a beak and curled around bleak eye slits carved into the mask.
A crow.
He turned the smooth ceramic over in his hands to look at the seals on the back. Voice warping, notice-me-not, something to strengthen the clay, a weight lifter, something to keep it from slipping off his face. Scratching the glazed surface with a nail didn’t reveal any secrets, but it brought near-imperceptible cracks in the glaze to his attention. Despite the freshly-inked seals and smooth surface, it was not a new mask. It had been used before, and would likely be used again after him. It screamed, Warning!
It could mean nothing. It's just a random “luck-of-the-draw,” type of coincidence, that he got a crow mask. Crows are auspicious creatures after-all, it’s not out of the realm of possibility for a crow to be in the Anbu rotation.
“You can wear them now.” A cool voice said. The woman who handed Shisui his mask stood beside another shinobi, apparently waiting for them to don their new faces. Neither of them was recognizable from the rotation of trainers from hell.
The five remaining recruits, now official Anbu shinobi, didn’t move. They glanced around at each other silently, trying to gauge if this was another strange loyalty test. At the far of the room- Shisui assumed it was a training room not currently in use- shinobi lingered by the door and a pair were leaning on the railings of the observation deck behind him. Shisui made eye contact with another, the one holding a rodent-like mask with a leering smile accented with red, and mentally shrugged. He slipped the blank one off his head and replaced it with the new mask. It didn’t feel different from the training mask. The others followed suit.
Shisui didn’t think it was a coincidence.
The Uchiha were known to use crows, so it is possible that it was a reference to his clan, but it was far more likely that it was something personal to him. Itachi-kun had a weasel mask. The mask was his damn name, it couldn’t be any less anonymous.
Only one Uchiha branch family was still on the Crow’s summon contract, and it was almost entirely gone.
The only remaining members were himself, Mikoto-obassan, and her sons.
Ei’s first warning came back to him.
“You are being watched.”