Nana
During one of their origami sessions, all of them sitting in silence, she hears a cough.
It’s a wet, hacking thing, even as quiet as he kept it.
And she pales, she’s almost 16, Itachi is 16, 6 months after she turns 16 he’ll be 17 and all she can think is he was sick, he was dying by the time his brother killed him, he’d been dying for a long time before that.
Her friend is dying.
One of her precious 8 alive. She doesn’t want to go back to 7.
It's a sobering thought, and yet at the same time… it leaves her reeling.
Well. Miho may not care about the fact that this village will one day burn and be crushed into rubble by men who believe themselves gods… but she does care about her friends.
Time to go hunt a drunk down.
Le sigh.
Goodness, the things she does to keep the world a beautiful place.
And because her people are hers and because she will fight Shinigami-Sama for them.
But fighting Gods is pretty low on the to-do list when it's easier to blackmail/extort a drunk with a pig.
When pigs fly? She can do that, throw the pig out a window and it flies for a second or two before gravity happens.
Or a seal. That could work too.
But they won’t know that, will they?
Miho slowly breathes, in and out. And then she narrows her eyes onto Shisui, places the unfinished Origami down, watches both boys pale and vanishes.
Game plan, before her boys get her other boys involved.
She has a seal that allows her to track people, as long as she has something of theirs.
Which means breaking into the Senju Clan Compound.
That was once lived in by the Uzumaki Sealing Mistress who held back a tailed beast for almost five decades and through several births?
No-way. But Tsunade was His Granddaughter, and assumed to be the only descendant of the man who left his signature everywhere. Including that necklace she carries around.
Perfect.
She takes a sample of the man's chakra from the chakra dense trees in training ground 44.
It’s time to hunt.
Miho wasn’t perfect. She knew this. She also knew everyone's terms and conditions to be a perfect person varied. For all she knows, her flaws may make her seem perfect to someone. And her strengths may seem weak to others.
But Miho knew, that no matter how many people seemed to believe..(sacrificing one person for a greater cause, letting someone who harmed someone she cared for go because they could be better one day, sacrificing those she cares for for the betterment of the world, staying quiet so as to not offend others…) She couldn’t care less.
Her people are most important to her.
Who cares that the world is on fire, her people are safe. Who cares about the innocents dead, her people are safe. Who cares, plenty of people. Miho doesn’t.
She simply doesn’t care, and she knows this is a flaw. Maybe she had been born this way, caring only for those that were hers. Maybe she never grew up from that selfish child that loved her parents, but died early and it hurt her. Maybe the memories of dying once influenced her to only care for a few because everyone dies in the end anyways.
She doesn’t care about why she feels so dedicated to so few people. She just knows that it's how she works.
And Itachi is hers.
(Suzaku, Yudai, Takumi, Hound, Tiger, Deer, Itachi, and Shisui.)
The only reason she does not burn the village to the ground and the world with it is because the people she care for love the village, love the world.
But doing anything for so few people, she pays close attention to what makes them happy.
Sometimes she catches herself grieving for them before they die.
Because they will die for the village—they did in another story———this isn’t that story—and they wouldn’t want her to burn what they loved to the ground in her grief.
So she does what she can to love them while they’re here.
And promises herself to kill whoever kills them. Not the person sent on a mission like her person. But those people that are in charge…
The people who seem to think that their power lies in paperwork. Plenty of power there, but there is also power in being able to kill someone with no-one knowing it was you. Miho knows enough to do so that no-one will trace it back to Miho and Butterfly.
Anything for her people. Except hurting them by not caring for what they care for.
But even if she can’t burn it down..
She can still tear it all down and build anew.
Beating up an old drunk lady with a gambling problem is something much easier.
So much more simple than rewriting an entire corrupt world to her whims.
So she starts there.
In Ryokucha-mura, the village of green tea, and what is informally known as the gambling city of the Land of Tea.
The woman is drunk, no pig or kidnapped child-grown-woman to be seen.
Miho sits before the woman, and stares.
How pitiful, this is what kunoichi aspires to be.
Strongest Kunochi in history.
No. Tsunade only grew that famous due to who she had connections to.
The woman was only famous because of her family and teammates.
Even the two perverts are simply better than her.
The womans seal, she’s so well known for, is the only thing impressive about her, and Miho is suspicious that the work is even hers.
Mito was a seal master and Tsunades teammates knew seals. But Tsunade… No Miho is being bitter.
The woman may be useless, who decided her feelings mattered more than anything else. And the only reason she gets away with it is because her Sensei is in charge.
But Miho was similar enough.
Her precious people were the only thing keeping her in the village.
No, her anger isn’t because the woman was useless, or weak, or riding on the coattails of famous dead relatives.
It was because she abandoned the dreams of her precious people in their death.
She hadn’t cared enough about any of them to carry their dreams for them.
She had cared more about her feelings than honoring those few who had cared for her.
Miho is angry because she doesn’t understand.
She would break if her precious people died.
But she would make sure their siblings, cousins, significant others, friends and family were all taken care of.
That the place they loved and dedicated their lives to was taken care of.
She stops suppressing her chakra and waits for the woman to notice her.
At least Tsunade lives up to her reputation slightly. The woman quickly forms a fist to hit Miho hard when she notices her.
Miho herself brings a palm up and catches the woman's fist, rapidly healing her bruised arm, broken wrist and mutilated fingers.
She flexes her fingers and smiles a youthful smile.
“Tsunade-Sama, you’re going to come home and heal my friend.”
She allows a sunset to appear behind her. (She’s still not quite sure how they appear, why they are Kai proof, and why there is no chakra to be sensed from them. Let others worry about how she and Gai break reality, she doesn't want to.)
The woman sputters back at her like she’s making an unreasonable request.
“You just healed yourself!” The woman exclaims, “Why can’t you heal your friend.
Her tone of voice is very indignant and Miho finds that rude.
“I have no ability to heal others, and my friend is not injured-dying he is sick-dying.”
The woman makes a small noise of contemplation, reigns herself in and visibly becomes the competent person she was once known as.
Maybe this is another thing Kishimoto is at fault about?
Tsunade is strong and smart and capable, but it was Kishimoto that made it so she was only strong when linked to others?
As she explains the situation better to Tsunade, Miho feels a small spark of hope ignite inside her.
She could grow to like the Sannin in front of her.