Shikako knew better than to investigate an Orochimaru hideout buzzing with the energy of a seal when a Kage Bunshin would do the trick.
Sometimes it was a little ridiculous what she and Sasuke run into whenever they’re suckered into patrolling together-but Orochimaru and highly questionable seals are something of a theme at this point.
A recent training accident had left some clues as to the labs existence and maybe not many other sensors would be able to recognize the soft weak pulse of chakra-or identify its owner, but Shikako was far too familiar with both.
So Shikako made a kage-bunshin and dragged her teammate back from what she estimated was the possible blast zone. Sasuke had already sent one of his own clones to inform the Hokage of their discovery.
It was clearly the right move, Shikako thinks to herself, as she watches the entire thing break apart and collapse. Shikako doesn’t even get any memories from her kage-bunshin and would need to regenerate half of her chakra the old fashioned way. Later, after the report when she gets home she finds a beaming amused Ino.
Shikako smiled almost reflexively-just happy to see her friend so happy. Then-bubbly as always, Ino delightfully filled her in on it being Orochimaru’s ‘jealousy’ bunker. One of his greatest failures.
“He made it when the Yondaime started getting his nickname as the Yellow Flash,” Ino shared, “He wanted to figure out a more impressive seal-but he was way too prideful to ask for help. And as good as he was with medical seals-space time was not his forte. He didn’t get anywhere with it and abandoned the whole thing in such a bad mood. He hated the thought of anyone being so much better than him at anything, he actually tried to forget all about it. I'm so happy I remember!“
Shikako laughed with her friend about it and didn’t bother to think about it again except for a quick laugh at the thought of such a thoroughly stumped Sanin.
X
Shikako-bushin was not having a good day.
Which was impressive, because Shikako-bushin had barely existed for an hour.
She had accidentally activated several seals through no fault of her own. She had no way of knowing the ones she had picked up to examine would react to each other's proximity and nearly tear the chakra matrix keeping her whole to shreds with an unexplainable distortion.
She’d done her best to keep herself together-which ended up being pointless, because the purpose of her existence; scouting out the bunker and informing her original of its contents, had become null and void.
Her first clue was emerging from the bunker to find it being day instead of night. The second was that she couldn’t feel her original or their teammate anywhere nearby.
The third and most damning was when she’d gone to track them down she’d found seven year old versions of them starting their first day at the academy.
Now she couldn’t even dismiss herself to accomplish the task. She was in the literal past and she didn’t know if dismissing herself would have the same impact it had the first time her original tried to make a shadow clone. Worse yet-she had currently had three times the chakra her seven year old version did.
If she were the original, then she could just hide and figure out a way back home-but eventually the chakra matrix that held her together would use up more energy than she had to keep it going. Similar thoughts about chakra cycling seals were dismissed with the knowledge that attempting any seals on herself and thus her currently fragile chakra matrix was not a good idea.
So instead she buckled down to come up with a seal to anchor her replicated Galel stone to her current timeline. It was the best thing she could do for her seven year old self-well that and copy her sealing notes to be left in the crevice of a tree in the Nara forest.
She dismissed the thought of introducing herself to her past self-seven year old Shikako had no idea what she was in for when she dismissed herself. Current Shikako didn’t even have the pain of junken strikes to compare it to. It would be kinder with no warning-when her youngerself could pass out and dismiss any memories that transferred over as a strange dream.
She’d leave a note under her little selfs pillow. Seven year old Shikako was more than curious enough to check out some mysterious nins instructions about finding her a test to take her as a sealing apprentice and unlock the notebook and textbook she’d carefully copied over.
It had taken her a lot of research before she realized that the Fourth and Jiraya weren’t just Konohas best seal masters-but the only actual ones in the hidden village. Kushina may have been another, but the original had never had the pleasure of seeing any of the woman's sealwork, she figured everything dealing with the previous Kyuubi holder was classified to hell.
Course of action decided, Shikako-bushin got to work. Then it was just a matter of waiting for her little self to go to bed and dismiss herself.
She wouldn’t last more than a couple more hours anyway.
X
Shikako woke up in pain.
She felt painfully bloated-a full body feeling worse than any period discomfort she’d ever felt.
She barely registered her mothers sob of relief.
Awareness came slowly. People were talking to her but Shikako didn’t have the bandwidth to deal with that. Not with the flood of memories of seven years she hadn’t even lived yet calling for her attention.
It was a pain all its own-on top of the acute discomfort of what she suspected was too much of her own future chakra in her unprepared child sized chakra coils.
Shikako-bunshin had tried to drain herself before dismissal but it had still been far too much for her to take.
Later-when her dad came by to hug her and Shikamaru was all huffy concern-Shikako tried to do better. As much as she would prefer otherwise-the memories weren’t going anywhere.
And she’d apparently been in a very mysterious coma for an entire week which had understandably freaked her family out. It didn’t help that she kept getting lost in her new, overwhelming memories and was clearly struggling to pay attention to the present.
She spent two weeks in the hospital-trying desperately to get her brain in order and sort out all the new information she had to work with. Shikako-bunshin had assumed she wouldn’t remember much past her own experience of creation and dismissal, just a vague knowledge of it happening-if that. Memories weren’t always a guarantee when using shadow clones-mostly if the clone knew it was there for information it would focus on transferring that with its dismissal, but how it learned said information would often remain a mystery.
Shikako wasn’t even supposed to be able to end up with so many memories, but she now theorized that how much one retained from a shadow clone's existence was dependent on the amount of chakra that transferred back to mix in with the larger chakra pool it had come from. Clones already had a high activation chakra cost-never mind how much they expended during the task they were created for-usually not much made it back to the creator because of things like distance or the amount used in the first place.
Or maybe she was completely wrong and maybe every bushin also transferred memories about the entirety of the creators life that both the bushin and creator already knew so they never noticed the difference.
All Shikako really knew was that Shikako-bushin had far more chakra than current Shikako did and somehow her knowledge and experience largely transferred over.
She knew what future Shikako remembered about the Academy. How her being on team seven worked out for everyone involved. How to save her future sensei and avoid the clusterfuck of both Galel and the Jashin temple.
It took a while to sort out. She wasn’t even really done when she decided to approach her father about everything. But as much as she found future-Shikako’s memories mostly reassuring, it did not prevent her from shooting the potential future execution style in the back of the head. A bid to fix many of future-Shikako’s mistakes.
The largest of which was an entire massacre she should really prevent while Danzo hadn’t killed Shisui and gotten his hands on an even more useful Mangekyo. She would never let the Land of Moon mission happen to Shikamaru again-or let Sasuke's retrieval violate Ino’s mind the way it had-but the more she learned about the Uchiha clan, the more she realized how many real people had paid the price for her silence-the more poison that seeped into her soul.
So Shikako made her way to her dad's office while Shikamaru was at school and she was supposed to be recovering in bed.
Her dad, Jounin Commander and Nara Head that he was, knew something was up immediately when he saw her hovering at his office door.
“What’s wrong dearheart?” Her dad asked, chakra going damningly still. She’d forgotten how overprotective he and her mom had been when she was a child.
There had been a lack of guards and interrogations that had clued Shikako on everyone just blaming her ‘condition’ for her coma-and while Shikako now knew that chakra hyper-sensitivity was usually a death sentence for a ninja career-it hadn’t stopped future-Shikako the first time around and it wouldn’t stop her now. So she gracefully ignored her mothers hints about civilian school and waited for her dad to be home while Shikamaru was out. Her mom was cleaning out the bathroom-which meant she was near enough to notice her father activating the privacy seals Shikako would be requesting-but much like her father, her mom had the right to know.
Shikako had the perfect excuse for future knowledge now and she was going to seize it like the opportunist she had been trained to be.
“Dad-I need you to activate your privacy seals-it has to do with why I passed out.” Shikako said firmly.
Her dad didn’t question the request-activating the seals and looking at her with concern.
“Don’t worry,” Shikako assured, taking a deep breath to steel herself, “It wasn’t an attack, or it wasn’t meant to be one-anyway. Seven years from now I go on patrol with my teammate Sasuke Uchiha and we find a bunker where Orochimaru was studying space time seals. I sent a kage-bunshin inside because I could sense an active seal, and I wanted to investigate what he’d left behind without too much risk to Sasuke and myself. My Kage bunshin then accidentally activated a seal that left her in the past. Knowing that I have chakra sensitivity and assuming I would pass out if it dispelled itself-it chose to wait until I was already supposed to be unconscious to dismiss itself. While it was waiting it also copied down my personal notes on sealing and left it in the Nara forest for me to find in the future and a note with directions under my pillow."
"However, it had no way of knowing that once it dismissed itself I would retain its-or rather my memory of the next seven years. I believe all the extra knowledge and chakra was what led to my coma.”
There was a moment of silence as her father mulled over her words, ”Do you have any proof?”
Shikako wasn’t hurt that her father asked, it was an unbelievable tale after all-only knowledge of her own future missions made her see the incident as par for the course-which reminded her, there was a ghost in a river that would be coming in handy soon.
But for now-well, Shikako grinned up at her father with mischief-digging out the blank piece of paper she had prepared, turning it forward and back to show that she hadn’t written anything on it previously-then she used a finger to place her seal. Grinning at her fathers shock, notable in his chakra if not his face, Shikako balled the piece of paper up and tossed it in the air.
“Explode,” Shikako commanded, watching in satisfaction as it became crispy confetti.”There’s no way a kid that’s spent exactly one day at the academy could do that right?”
“Where did you learn sealing?” Her father asked, eyes going soft with affection and pride.
Shikako found herself standing taller, she was nowhere near immune to her fathers pride. “Jiraya taught me how to get started with making my own-but I'm mostly self taught and I even put together a textbook on sealing for the clan library. I think the clone left a copy of that in the tree too-do you want to go get it? That should work as more proof right? Because that took me a couple years the first time around and the library records can show I’ve never requested any of the books I cite for reference in the textbook. I’m pretty sure I can also find the bunker-but I’d advise against sending anyone in there-some of the seals activate just because of proximity to others, and I don’t think an actual person would be happy to be temporally displaced.”
Shikako would carefully not be mentioning the seal courses she’d taught the clan. Hopefully she could avoid that all together this time around. The seal study group had been nice-but instructing so many people had been a giant pain in the ass she wasn’t risking without Tenten around to share both her pain and the work itself.
Her dad chuckled, “You'd be surprised. I suppose we can grab your textbook and go report to the Hokage.”
Suddenly the warmth of her fathers pride and belief in herself snuffed itself out like a candle. “Actually dad-I have reason to believe the Hokage has been compromised.”
Instantly Shikakos dad was gone, in its place was Konoha's Jonin Commander.
“Explain.”
Shikako did.
They never got around to getting her notes and the textbook.
X
Shikaku rubbed his tired eyes.
His daughter-his darling, too smart for her own good, stubborn enough to become a ninja after all, even with her condition, daughter-had given him both a great gift and a burden.
Knowledge of the next seven years sounded ridiculous-but there was no way his daughter became a seal master overnight and faking placing a seal with a touch wasn’t something you could do around someone who’d seen it done.
Kushina had been very good at placing her barriers during the war. The pang of loss at the memory reminded him of the bunker his daughter had warned him against venturing into-he hadn’t been kidding about some people wanting to go back in time.
He wasn’t one of them-he was a Nara, his family surviving was reason enough for him not to want to risk the Kyuubi attack going worse than it had-even if he were given the opportunity to prevent it. Cold hearted as it sounded, he’d rather lose two friends than a child. Shikako almost hadn’t made it as it was.
He’d spent the last three weeks feeling guilty about letting his daughter attend the ninja academy. Yoshino hadn’t blamed him-but that had almost made it worse, he could see her shouldering the burden as she held their daughter's small hand in her hospital bed. Having to explain to Shikamaru why his sister wouldn’t wake up had also been a miserable task, especially with his son's insistence that he had seen his sister use chakra and be ‘just fine’ before.
At least now he knew his son wasn’t mindlessly insisting in the hopes his denial would somehow wake his twin. Trying to force Shikamaru back to class while Shikako was on bed rest had been a trial on its own-although it was nice to see some of the kids in her class follow him home to wish Shikako well.
He was glad the twins were making friends.
Making friends was evidently a skill more ninja needed-especially ninja of the Uchiha variety. Every time he looked at his Dearheart's clear written explanation for how Danzo Shimura cornered the Clan and went on to convince the Clan Heir to kill his entire family, save his younger brother, gave him chills.
The Uchiha were almost completely isolated in Konoha-and they were too proud to admit it or ask for assistance. Something that resulted in them paying the ultimate price. His daughter would have never even known or suspected if she hadn’t been subjected to a torture genjutsu forcing her to relive that night over and over in her teammates stead. Then later assigned remaking the KMP as her Jonin project.
He never thought he’d hesitate to help them until Shikako told him that bit, but loathing the Uchiha heir for hurting his daughter when he hadn’t even done it-and was probably brainwashed to some extent, wasn’t helpful to Konoha as a whole. The same way losing the entire clan in charge of policing the shinobi in its walls wouldn’t be. He had no idea how Danzo had justified otherwise to himself but he did look forward to taking the bastard down.
He was already making his case-his daughter even had a location for the suspected bloodline theft-something he and his team would helpfully ‘stumble’ upon and kill Danzo for. He didn’t give a shit if the Hokage didn’t like it after the fact. Proving the so called war hero a traitor would be reason enough to revise all of the decisions the man had pushed or suggested during council sessions for the past decade at least-and Shikaku was sitting on a lot of helpful suggestion he could pass on to strengthen the KMP, and thus Konoha as a whole.
The more he found out about the Hokage decisions-the more clear it became that the man was far too old for the hat and that he should have dragged one of his students to become the Hokage in his stead. If Shikaku had been making a bid for the job he had everything he needed to crucify the Sandime and take his place.
Still-as someone who didn’t want the hat himself, he’d keep that sentiment quiet for now. Hopefully with the Uchiha and Hyuuga up in arms, bloodline theft was no joke-the rest of the clans would follow and Shikaku could fully avoid taking responsibility for his plan.
Being Jonin commander and Clan Head was more than enough responsibility on top of being a parent. He barely had time to spend with his family as it was.
Shikaku was nowhere near power hungry enough to sacrifice something that important for the prestige of a hat.
X
Shisui was still trying to figure out what had happened.
He remembered his desperation as Danzo had his fellow Root soldiers hold him down and ripped out his eye. But that was when things stopped making sense.
Danzo had gone still-and then the famous Ino-Shika-Cho team had taken him and his guards down. Shikaku Nara had cut off the man’s head, cutting away the bandages and showing his grandfather's sharingan eye, while Inochi Yamanaka took Shisui and his rescued eyeball to the hospital and Chouza Akimichi went on to inform the Uchiha clan about Danzo’s attempt on Shisui's life and bloodline theft.
It was-it was everything Shisui didn’t know he’d needed to happen. His clan was safe-Danzo had been outed as a traitor to Konoha and the Nara clan had used the transcripts from the council sessions to prove he’d been targeting the Uchiha for more than ten years. Even before the Kyuubi attack-so even the people muttering about Danzo having good reason had to keep their silence on that front.
Suddenly there was money coming into the clan, reparations from the village and promises of a better system for the KMP and support. Shisui couldn’t wipe the grin from his face-especially with the whispers about Danzo's campaign to isolate their Clan and prey upon their bloodline ran rampant through the village.
Uzume had come to fill him in on the Nara Clan heads daughter-and the week she’d spent in a mysterious coma that had been blamed on some medical chakra condition, but was now suspected to be an attempt at recruitment for Danzo's so called ‘elite training program’ gone wrong. Especially once the Aburame and several other clans had come out about Danzo's forceful recruitment policies.
His clan thought Danzo tipped his hand when he hurt Shikaku's child and the man had gone about exacting revenge in a manner that reminded everyone not to make an enemy out of a Nara. Motivating a Nara to deal with you was a mistake you only made once-and that was assuming you lived to be miserable about it.
Even with the knowledge that his Clan was safe more as a side effect of an angry fathers revenge than any goodwill from another Clan did not dampen the sheer relief Shisui felt. He no longer felt a knife hovering at his throat or that of his family.
There was a task force dedicated to figuring out everyone Danzo had screwed over and undoing the damage.
Not to mention that as reparations and probably the single most brilliant political move of his career, considering it was the only thing keeping him in power-the Sandime had nominated Itachi as his heir for the seat of Hokage, to be instated once he was sixteen years of age and a proven Kage level threat.
Konoha would never turn away from the Uchiha again-Itachi would make sure of it.
Shisui could breathe again.
X
It was weird to be so much older than her friends, Shikako found herself thinking often. Which was incredibly silly to think because she had always been a lot older than her friends.
Rumors about Danzo targeting her and pissing off her dad enough to kill him meant she and Shika were receiving suspicious amounts of respect. Being Nara's, both of them shrugged it off-the only difference was that Shika shrugged it off and napped, and Shikako shrugged it off and read. Sealing books-because she always had so many ideas and she planned to be able to justify making her own seals in the academy. She could wait a year-show the rest of her clan her heavily revised textbook and just claim to have had an epiphany on how sealing worked from her studies.
Who would call her out when anyone important in the village was completely terrified of being the next Danzo?
Her dad was the best.
He’d already taken care of the Jashin monks and the Uchiha massacre. He was still taking care of Root because figuring out what to do with so many traumatized orphans was going to take a very long time-but in the meantime Shikako worked on her seal expander glasses and her dad didn’t question the newest additions to Konoha's forces about their past. Not until Shikako came up with a way to remove the tongue seal that had sadly not disappeared with Danzo's death.
Supposedly Jiraya was supposed to be working on it-but she didn’t think Jiraya would be setting foot in Konoha while so many people were still muttering about making him interim Hokage until Itachi was old enough to take over.
About the only thing her dad couldn’t make some headway on was Akatsuki-they needed the organization to move in order to convince the rest of the world they were gonna be a problem-but in the meantime her dad kept careful track of the members Shikako had informed him about.
Life was going to be very different from canon-but for once Shikako felt confident it would be a good thing. Especially because she was regularly beating Sasuke at spars now and she would never let him forget it once they were back together on team seven.
Shikako planned to keep her favorite parts of the future-and team seven was definitely one of them-her dad had promised to call in his favor with Itachi to make it happen when the teams were being made her graduation year. There was very little the Uchiha clan would deny her dad for killing Danzo and helping them reintegrate into the village.
Shikako had vague plans about an eye protection seal for the Uchiha Clan so that more of them felt comfortable taking on missions outside of Konoha. After she dealt with Root anyway-she probably needed a couple more years and more impressive seals under her belt before anyone trusted her with something like that.
She could probably convince Itachi to make it a mandatory thing for all active ninjas with doujutsu actually. A completely reasonable precaution, one Shikako planned to claim would react terribly with the caged bird seal.
There was so much good she could do now. There was still the fourth Shinobi war to be dealt with, Marada, Obito, and especially Zetsu. But Shikako wasn’t helpless anymore.
She had five years until graduation and to come up with some seals impressive enough to claim a mastery. Even without the research trips that would make the process so much faster-Shikako had time for once.
Time she would make sure to make fantastic use of. She could probably con Naruto into studying seals if she started offering them for his pranks-he’d be instrumental for removing Shinku from his post as Genin commander-even if he didn’t know it yet. Naruto was always down for revenge pranking jerks-justice oriented soul that he was. It wasn’t like it was going to be difficult for her to arrange him catching Shinku being an asshole-Shinku was always an asshole. The Genin Corps would be a lot stronger than they’d been in the first future as long as they were under someone reasonable who would make use of Ebisu-sensei.
Sasuke was already making progress in regards to taijutsu just because of his competitive nature. She’d gotten Sakura and Ino to start looking into medicine just by gushing over Tsunade and claiming the woman to be her goal as a kunoichi. A conversation she made sure Tenten overheard. Once Tenten realized she didn’t have the chakra control to be a medic herself-Shikako would console her with her sealing textbook.
The Naraten seal would live again.
She needed an excuse to justify dragging her friend into helping her with the class she just knew her father would soon be suggesting she give to the clan.
About the only thing she still needed to figure out was how to find an Uchiha who would help Kakashi-sensei with his sharingan and then Shikako could rest assured that Konoha would be taking the world by storm once they got to the fourth war.
She could probably even manage to avoid the terrible nickname of Shikabane-Hime.
Shikako never wanted to see that in one of her bingo book entries again. Surely they’d come up with a better name for her…
She could get something reasonable like ’Sharingan Kakashi.’ Right?
Shikako ignored the dread in her stomach. She wasn’t actually psychic-just aware of two potential futures. Surely that would make it easier to avoid the stupid nickname.
She was going to be a kickass Kunochi with a lot less near death experiences to her name. Failing that-she’d make sure to avoid taking her Chunin exam with Ino.
Corpse Princess was a terrible nick-name.