Where it begins
Kushina was on fire. Everything hurt, especially below her ribs to her feet.
Why did no one tell her that giving birth was the hardest part?
The worst part was, she held her baby for mere moments before a shockingly familiar chakra signature came in and killed everyone else in the room. The stranger, her mind scrambled with an explanation for why a heartless monster had Obito-kuns signature, kidnapped her to the middle of the Shodaime Forest and ripped the seal off her bleeding belly.
Kushina’s cries harmonized with her sons.
In her mind, she reeled back to safer times back on Uzushio. Her old friends, her family…
“Aneki…” She wept. “Please, save me, Aneki.”
Uzumaki Kushina did not survive the night.
(But a mysterious patient was admitted to the long term care ward, peacefully asleep.)
—————————————-
Shisui did not want to go on another fucking mission.
Tensions were highest they’ve ever been between the village and the Uchiha. Itachi was struggling and there was only so much help Shisui’s doujutsu could do.
But, the Hokage called. Like a good soldier, Shisui answered.
And got bullshit in return.
Now, Shisui knew there was a lot of absurd techniques with chakra, but what the Hokage described seemed to ascend this plane of reality.
The other ANBU shared this sentiment by the way they looked at each other at the gates.
In Rabbits hand was a circular disk that buzzed with blood. The Hokage had said to find out where the blood was leading them.
They shrugged and got to work, following this feather in a chicken coop.
—————————
Anzu Uzumaki, 8th and youngest Hokage of Uzushiogakure, was getting fucking sick of this.
She knew she should have tested her jutsu more before taking revenge on the head honcho of the downfall of Uzushio. Only, she knew that wasn’t quite true.
These years have given her time to think, and all signs point to Konoha also aiding in Uzu’s destruction.
Anzu dodged a swing aimed at her artery.
The third Hokage was in love with Uzu, by way of his old teacher. It couldn’t have been him, she had decided. So that left someone else with as much power as him, but able to hide in the shadows.
Anzu swung her harpoon lazily at her opponent. He dodged, cracking a dry joke about the jutsu needing her concentration more. She let his next move pass through her head, just to scare him.
One-eyed Kenji wasn’t the brains, and he came from Iwagakure anyways. No, it was for sure Danzo, and when Anzu was freed from this prison of her own making, she would make him pay.
The mental battlefield of the jutsu quaked.
Anzu and Kenji froze in their tracks.
“Y-Your jutsus never din that ‘fore…”
“Un. It feels…Dattebbe!” Anzu screamed. “We’re waking up! Oh I’m actually going to kill you for real, after all these years!”
Kenji matched her bloodthirsty grin. “Ey, don’t get ahead o yerself, I gots practice now too!”
The ground fell away beneath their feet.
And feeling returned to Anzu’s limbs for the first time in nearly 30 years.
———————————————-
Shisui thought the Hokage was crazy.
He thinks he might be going crazy.
His team stands at the top of the ruins of Uzushio, a known shinobi No Man’s Land, holding the blood that leads directly to two statues locked in what seems to be an epic battle. A girl versus a heavyset old man with three eyes.
It’s chilling, the viciousness on their faces.
The girl is wearing scraps and an imitation of a Hokage's hat with funeral wreaths sitting on the brim. Her bracelets are swinging wildly as she bares her teeth and harpoon down onto the man’s shield. The man had immortalized sweat stains that Shisui stared at. Along with a short spear that actually pricked Gecko’s finger from the sharpness of the blade.
“…what else did the Hokage say we had to do?”
Shisui motioned obligingly for Rabbit to do his fucking job. Rabbit looked dumbly between the blood and the statue it clearly wanted to get at.
He sighed, and swiped the vial from them to smash it against the side of the girl. The blood ran down the cool stone for only a moment before it seeped in like a sponge.
“Well, that’s it! Time to go home!” Deer cheered, clapping their hands. They turned around, tensing their chakra to take back off into the trees when something odd caught Shisui’s attention.
The statues slowly began to relax from their frozen positions. The clothing folded back down into fleshy arms, skin gained color and then they began to fucking breathe.
The girl opened her eyes and snapped her harpoon towards the man, who didn’t have enough to react than watching with wide eyes as her weapon came to meet with his body.
The spear landed at the ANBU’s feet.
“Go, Kenji. It’s been too long to keep fighting. Go be, I don’t know, a daikon farmer or something. Just don’t be shinobi anymore, you didn’t even want to be one.”
‘Kenji’ the three-eyed man smiled at the girl and bowed a seal of reconciliation. He ambled to grab his spear, gave it to the girl and then in a burst of chakra, he disappeared.
“So, you’re the shinobi with Uzumaki blood.” The girl snapped Shisui out of his bug eyed stare. She leveled a grin that seemed eerily familiar to Shisui, red hair glinting in the dawning sun.
“Take me to your leader.”