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Miho has taken to people watching.
It’s not a bad hobby. Helps her learn more about imitating emotions she might need as a sneaky sneak. And she learns a whole bunch of gossip about everyone.
She could probably blackmail a few people.
Currently she is at the outside dining area of a dango shop.
Dango, she has come to realize, is very good. She of course still prefers mochi. But the Dango isn’t bad.
It is here she overheard a conversation. She definitely shouldn’t have.
Miho is currently pulling a dango apart using two already eaten and now cleaned dango skewers she commits to her operation. Maybe she can at least learn the autonomy of a Dango.
“He’s going to be devastated.” She hears hissed, and subtly redirects some chakra to her ears.
The voice is very nice, and she hums to herself as she continues her operation on the very kind Dango that of course volunteered.
“You’ll be out of the village more often, and even when you are in the village, half of that time spent will be under the mask.”
Normally Miho can pick up on things quicker. But the voice is nice, and her Dango patient is misbehaving. So she excuses herself for taking a while to understand the word mask.
Well, at least she didn’t tense. But her dango is ruined.
She gives a wail of despair that has the pretty voice and their companion looking towards her.
The Dango Proprietor gives her a dead stare. “Kid, if you’re going to be this devastated every time you fail to dissect a dessert, please stop dissecting my desserts.”
She gives a desolate nod and asks for another plate of dango. Dramatic tears in her eyes, and a glint of promised youth.
“I will continue my youthful endeavor to learn the anatomy of a Dango outside of your fine establishment. I am sorry for the damage to your restaurant.”
Tears stream down her face and it allows her to get a good look at the horrified faces of the two Uchiha. The one with the nice voice seems to be 14 year old Shisui, which is odd. Maybe it is a pretty person thing to lack voice cracks? Or do Uchiha go through puberty earlier?
Yudai never seemed to go through voice cracks at all. So it must be a pretty person thing.
The other person seems to be Itachi. Meaning he is about 11 and will probably not have to kill his clan in 3 years time. Unless he really is an insane psychopath who isn’t a peace loving naïve fool and will kill them because he is insane?
Well, at least she’s gotten her dango. She ponders as tears still leak down her face, even as an unnervingly bright smile flashes across her face and she races off.
So people watching is something she does now.
Of course, if they hadn’t wanted to be overheard, they shouldn’t have talked about confidential information in public, in a dango shop.
In other news, she can now make Dango. Her experiments of learning the anatomy of a Dango was unsuccessful, but Suzaku handed her over to his friend Chiharu.
Akimichi Chiharu is a savant in the kitchen. Some might assume it is like that for their entire clan. But while all Akimichi eat a plentiful amount of calories to be able to use their Jutsu, not all of them can cook their calories like Chiharu can.
Miho isn’t the best at cooking but he declared her decent enough to learn. Every week she is in the village, she now spends at least a day at Chiharu’s side, faithfully taking notes so she can youthfully expand her knowledge of food through his wisdom!
Other than people watching and cooking, the days have gone by monotonously.
Pimp mommy died and was mourned. No one even suspects the pimp daddy except her team, who then find evidence of the pimp parents dealing in illegally trading their children like divorced parents but not following the rules of child ownership? custody? She confused herself, either way they found evidence, and of pimp daddies involvement in pimp mommies death.
She started calling them Pimp Mommy and Pimp Daddy out loud and the horrified expression on her teammates' face was definitely worth it.
The months keep passing by and Miho slowly starts hearing rumors of the sound village. Small insignificant ones that will easily be pushed off as meaningless by superiors.
Along with those rumors come whispers of the peach rebellion in Kiri. Which isn’t that odd. Peach trees grow best with lots of sun and fertile but not too wet land. Kiri must not have many peaches.
Which is sad, she may not personally like peaches, but Fire country has plenty and they make fragrances of peaches. Plenty of peach perfumes.
She decides to bring some peaches around to some rural Kiri villages as a merchant in disguise.
She ends up accidentally building a peach farmer identity. Her team was very amused with her for a while. Wait until she brings them with her as her cousins next time. That’ll show them.
She is on a mission when she comes back and notes it is February 1st of year 73. She turned 13 on the 29th of January.
This realization leads her to the conclusions that if she is 13 then Itachi would be 14, and the Uchiha clan doesn’t seem to have all suddenly disappeared?
She wonders about the lack of rumors about the snake leaving the boy band, but realizes there wouldn't be rumors about the super secret boy band, and that the snake only left because he couldn’t get Itachi’s eyes.
It lets her understand that her butterfly dance is still working and makes her wish she had a new butterfly costume. She has pictures of one of Takumi's cousins in the costume. It was well adored and a few of the Aburame Elderly started making all sorts of bug themed costumes for the younger members of the clan.
Maybe she should buy a butterfly barrette?
Not long after coming back to the village she learns she doesn’t need a butterfly barrette. It would just point a slight bit too much to her new mask.
Apparently she and her team had just taken an Anbu mission. Which is rude, at least tell them. But cool, it's not really a big initiation thing like she thought. You’ve just gotta know how to loom.
The masks are interesting things. They keep all noise you make silent unless you focus chakra on a seal in the mask using your tongue.
That is something they teach you rather quickly but are warned not to use, because the Anbu hand signs are much more discreet.
Butterfly gets her mark done quickly, and waits patiently for Cassowary and Spider.
She observed her team's masks while waiting.
Yudai-Cassowary whose mask was in the shape of a bird and had horizontal curved stripes under each eye that reached to the cheeks; they were an azure shade of blue.
Takumi-Spider’s mask was flat with 6 eye holes and two circles in dark red above them, all the eyes were lined in the same color.
Butterflies own mask is a flat mask with a slight curve above the brows, it has a green-banded Swallowtail pattern in a shade of teal.
She hums an unheard tune to all but herself as she waits patiently.
Once both her teammates are marked they are led to different rooms by different members. They will most likely be separate for the beginning of their Anbu careers. They work together well, but they do that outside of the masks anyways, getting to know more people in team situations will only strengthen their bonds.
Her Anbu personality is drastically different from her Youthful one, even the one she has around team Suzaku is more kind than Butterfly.
Butterfly is vicious, her words short, cold and curt. She doesn’t say nice words, or beat around the bush. She suspects the bush is a traitor and beats the bush, its leaves and branches into dust.
She had been correct about her and her teammates being separated. They still did all of their non Anbu missions together and she is sometimes glad they haven’t really met Butterfly.
Even if they never met in Anbu headquarters she knew they had heard about Butterfly. Just like she heard about Cassowary and Spider
Cassowary was silent and bloodthirsty, there were rumors around Anbu that he had drank an enemy's blood during missions before. She was pretty sure that was untrue because Yudai is a medic and he knows blood is unsanitary. She is pretty sure if he did drink blood he found a chakra technique to make sure he is safe when doing it.
Spider was silent and bloodthirsty in the not drinking blood way, whereas Takumi had made his Konoha persona doll like to the extreme, Spider was choppy in his movements, like a doll whose strings had been cut free and only had one goal, kill all humans that were free while he had been captive.
The narrative was pretty, but Spider also bred a few very vicious bugs that burrowed into targets and only ate brains. He was creating a very disturbing legacy for the spider mask.
She at least knew her boys were doing fine.
She had been moved from team to team due to the procedure of finding a cell that works well with a new member. She knew Spider and Cassowary had already found cells they worked well with, because while she kept being moved around she landed in each of their cells once and while she liked working with them and their cells, their superiors were very keen on making sure they all had their own cells.
Her current team was team Ro. When she was first put there she didn’t quite understand why she was there. But with adding Butterfly, Team Ro is even more cold and silent.
Team Ro is an elite Anbu unit directly under the Hokage, she very quickly learned why she was placed on the elite team. Even with her just taking a few missions they all very quickly worked seamlessly together. All of them genii who adjust and learn very fast.
Hound–Taicho, the rather famed Hatake Kakashi. Still in Anbu and will probably be retiring soon? For re-acclimatization so as to be Naruto’s sensei? But wasn’t he also pulled to be the sharingan mentor to the last Uchiha, who now doesn’t exist because there are plenty of Uchiha? Will he still leave?
Hounds mask was in the shape of a dog with two streaks of red curving around the cheeks, red surrounding the eyes and a black mouth carved into the mask. The pointed ears atop the mask were plain.
Tiger-Senpai, who seems to be the wood one. She couldn’t remember which name was his real name so she will call him Noki. Short for Pinocchio. Even though there are no similarities. It makes sense in her brain, and its not like she will ever call him anything but Tiger or Tiger-Senpai to his face.
Tigers mask was similarly shaped as Hounds, with a black cat nose connected to the mask, and a different pattern. Two large red crescent moons at the sides -near where the ears of a human would be- on the mask, green tiger stripes, 8 total, four near the top and 4 near the bottom. The pointed ears had a black outline on the inside.
Weasel-Senpai, the also rather famed Uchiha Itachi, who in canon would’ve been made Anbu captain by Pimp Daddy by now, but hadn’t yet? Will he be made one soon?
Weasel's mask had a longer snout than others on Team Ro, the carved mouth was more elongated as well. The insides of the pointed ears were painted red and a large red triangle came down from the forehead pointed down.
Deer-Senpai, who is Yugao of the Purple hair. That one chick who dated the dying swordsman. She seemed to be the only one not on the same level as the others, but was good enough to at least keep up.
Deer's mask was similar in shape to Tigers, but without pointed ears, much less ears at all. There was a red curve under each cheek and a curve that came down from the forehead in between the eyes.
Butterfly may have liked her current team, but it wasn’t like she was a main character. She was either doomed to die protecting someone on this team or another.
She didn’t mind.
Keeping those she loves safe is her highest priority.
Of course, she could never let anyone know that keeping her precious people alive was more important than keeping Konoha safe.
Villages can be rebuilt. And as horrible as it sounded, new civilians would be easily found, flocking to those more powerful in the hope it would keep them safe in this cruel world.
Her precious people, on the other hand, were irreplaceable. And team Ro was slowly but surely making their way up there. All of them are just as cold as Butterfly. They all strove for perfection on every mission and everything was done with precision.
Every mistake was quickly patched up by another member and they all made sure everything went perfectly. Even when missions went off the rails, someone in Team Ro was always quick to jump in and fix something with a patch job.
So while Miho missed always being with Team Suzaku, she still spent plenty of time with them. She was also growing quickly attached to Team Ro which sucked. Most of them were doomed to die after all.