Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“It is good that we do not have to try to kill the sun or the moon or the stars. It is enough to live on the sea and kill our true brothers.”

― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

Nagisa sees him every time she looks at her reflection. At every stage of her life, he is there, a translucent after-image hovering over her shoulder. She knows him better than she knows herself.

As a stern matron rubs her face with a cloth until she bleeds in a fruitless attempt to get rid of the whisker marks on her cheeks, the blond man in the bathroom mirror presses a hand to his own face like he's remembering a phantom pain he’d never allowed himself to think about. Nagisa’s sight blurs with tears. The man disappears behind her wet lashes. She is two years old.

A year later, the same woman files down her pointy teeth. Nagisa lets it happen without a twitch. It hurts, but it is not a surprising pain: she has never known physical touches to be kind. And besides, once the pain is gone, her canines will grow back to their original length. None of the matron's efforts to turn her into something she is not have ever succeeded. She eyes her reflection. The blond man has a hand on her mirror self's shoulder, and he is petting her cherry red hair to comfort her. She doesn't feel it, but seeing him do so soothes something in her that she can't quite name. She wants to smile, but the matron’s firm grip on her jaw stops her. Her eyes still crinkle, and he beams back at her. Their eyes are identical, blue like the sea and the sky it reflects.

Months later, she is at the playground building a sandcastle. She is all by herself, as usual. Nagisa does not look at the playing children surrounding her, or the way they give her a wide berth. Instead she grins at the blond man reflected in the rounded metal of the swing's support as he gives her two thumbs-up, encouraging her. Their impish smiles are shadows of each other.

When she is four, she sees him just before a boy pushes her into the pond and holds her head underwater, crowing that he’s doing a service to the village. The blond man shouts in worry, though he knows she won’t hear it. She doesn’t dwell on it; she is too busy retreating into herself. This much won’t kill her, she knows, but the pain is terrible. When things like this happen, she prefers going away inside. The blond man was crying, she thinks before her mind goes blank and her lungs start burning.

Five months and a birthday later, he is on the distorted surface of a crystal ball as the matron of the orphanage holds her shoulder in a tight grip, pleading the Hokage to take her elsewhere. It is the first time she meets Sarutobi Hiruzen, but she is focused on the warped image of her ghost making reassuring gestures at her. He is trying to say that the Sandaime is trust-worthy, she thinks. This is the first time they disagree.

The Sandaime is a cruel man, though a remorseful one. The pain he inflicts on her is born of neglect and of bad decisions. He does not intend to harm her. It happens anyway.

Nagisa knows this because she recognises the face of the man in the mirror. She knows his name. Uzumaki Naruto is her, or what she could have been. An alternate self years out of step, observed through her reflection and known to her through the resonance of their soul. Nagisa thanks the mirror world and the intrinsic, if incomplete knowledge she has of it for the insight it gives her on her own life. So many things make sense, and the older consciousness she instinctively absorbs every time she looks at him has allowed her to cope with the harsh world she lives in. It has not made her older, but it has made her wise beyond her years.

She knows Naruto and his story, and in return she knows herself.

Like him, she is the human sacrifice chosen to jail the Kyuubi no Kitsune. She is the hidden daughter of the Yondaime Hokage and of the last Uzumaki in Konoha. But she is no hero. Naruto had a big heart and even bigger dreams. Nagisa has none of that. Because she knows what it took for him to forgive, she can't bring herself to do so.

The only legacy of love she will accept from him is one the village would rather see her deny.

(She wants to press her hand to her stomach, where she knows the seal is concealed, but she cannot. Not yet.)

So she finds herself turning away from the crystal ball and gazing into the eyes of the jailer who claims to care for her, and she does not let him see that she resents him.

The matron is saying that keeping Nagisa at the orphanage while she attends the Academy is unthinkable.

"We cannot watch her and care for the other children, Sandaime-sama. She requires more attention than we can provide. Please consider entrusting her to someone who can handle her. Danzo-sama said—"

"That's enough," the old man cuts her off. The room seems to suddenly darken, the presence of the village leader makes itself more obvious, his disapproval heavy in the air. She flinches and grips Nagisa's shoulder harder for it. The Hokage's kindly gaze sharpens, and the matron lets go of her like she's been burnt.

Nagisa presses her lips together and quietly rubs the side of the clavicle into which the woman had dug her nails into. The Sandaime's eyes are full of pity as he notices her movement. She ignores it.

"You're dismissed, Kazue-san. I will arrange alternate arrangements for Nagisa-chan."

The woman bows low and murmurs a quiet goodbye. Nagisa looks down at her shoes, unwilling to make eye contact with her personal tormentor. The matron wasn't a villain, but she was... sharp. Unlike the Sandaime, her cruelty was intentional. Always intent on keeping Nagisa away from the other children, of reminding her of her place and of all the ways she stood out. She sought to make her less noticeable under the guise of caring for her safety, but it was always blatantly obvious that her main motivation was to remove what she found unpleasant. Nagisa's fox traits were her main target at first, and now that she has come to terms with the fact that she cannot make them go away, she wants her gone altogether.

Aside from her dislike for the fox rearing its head from time to time, she didn't go out of her way to mistreat Nagisa. The girl was fed regularly, cleaned, clothed and taught the same way as the other children. But always apart from them. Out of mind.

"Do you know who I am?" asks the Sandaime.

"You're the Hokage," she replies quietly.

"And do you know what this means?"

"That you're the leader of the village."

The man nods, looking pleased. "And do you know what it means for you to have been brought here?"

"Kazue-sama doesn't want me at the orphanage anymore, so she's asking you to choose another guardian for me because you're in charge of all the orphans of Konoha."

"That's exactly it," he says, surprised. "You're a bright girl, Nagisa-chan. Now, what do you think about having to leave your friends at the orphanage?"

Nagisa shrugs. "I don't have friends."

The admission has Sarutobi's eyes slipping closed for a split second before he forces himself to open them again. He looks weary. Tired.

"I see." After saying so, he adds some cheer to his voice and tells her, "you will be able to make some at the Academy, Nagisa-chan. That sounds nice, doesn't it?"

Nagisa contemplates telling him she doesn't want to be a kunoichi, just to see what he would say. It would be a lie, of course, but a potentially interesting one to tell. She decides against it. It's futile, after all, and she doesn't want to know how he'll try to break it to her that orphans with a functional chakra network are required to attend unless they have found an apprenticeship. Nagisa knows exactly how high her chances of getting one of those is, she doesn't need to be told to her face that no one outside the Shinobi Corps will want her. In the eyes of the civilians, she is a demon and a wild thing.

She has Sarutobi Hiruzen to thank for that, she knows.

Naruto had been so happy to learn he could be a ninja. Nagisa feels the same thrill to hone herself into a blade, but the Will of Fire has escaped her.

"It does," she says.

The Sandaime smiles kindly and stands up. He asks her to wait for him while he sorts out her living situation.

"Can I look around, ya know?" she asks him innocently, gesturing at the office. "Or else I'll be bored."

"Of course." He makes a hand sign, and Nagisa laments her lack of knowledge of the shinobi arts.

She knows Naruto's story up to his adulthood. She has seen how far he's come from the downtrodden orphan they both are. She can see the techniques he's learnt and performed in her mind's eye. Nagisa feels his journey in her soul, but the emotions, the blood, sweat and tears, the memories are not hers. She cannot review them at her leisure, stop time and linger on hand signs long enough to know how to perform them. She cannot learn to manipulate chakra just by watching him fight and struggle against enemies twice his age and skill. She has a better grasp of Naruto's precious people than his skills and techniques.

She learned that the hard way when she tried to use the mirror world to learn how to read.

She has to start from zero, just like he did. It is both a blessing and a curse. She at least knows where to look, and the blank slate will allow her to develop her own skills without the too-long shadow cast by her already adult counterpart hindering her. It also sharply emphasises the ways in which Naruto and Nagisa are different.

Where he is their mother's son, loud and bright and kind, she is their father's daughter. Quiet, cautious, pragmatic. Calculated despite a friendly facade.

(But still an idealist, no matter what Nagisa likes to tell herself.)

Where Naruto fought for Konoha's love and the acknowledgement of its people, Nagisa yearns for whirlpools and a sun-dappled seashore, for a family she does not have to earn. Her counterpart did not know he could dream of a lost village until it was too late. But Nagisa has his knowledge, and his indomitable ambition. She will roam free on the island of her ancestors, or she will die trying. And the soul she holds captive in a prison of her father's making will be set free.

That is her nindō.

She might be her father's daughter in many ways, but this ambition is hers only, and she does not delude herself into thinking that her parents would approve of it. She will do it anyway.

(In a gilded jail, red eyes open slowly. A fox flicks an ear. He is listening.)

Nagisa is left alone in the Hokage's office, though she is under no illusion that she is not being watched.

She putters around, pretending to be more interested in the trinkets decorating the various shelves than in any of the paperwork or drawers. She plays around with the crystal ball and waves at Naruto who is watching her worriedly. Nagisa sometimes wishes they could communicate, but the link between their twin souls only extends to mirror images, and unlike Naruto, she cannot decipher inverted hiragana.

She will learn shinobi hand signs, she promises herself. It will come.

Nagisa puts down the crystal ball and crawls under the desk, where she pretends to be playing hide and seek. After a minute she sighs, as if bored, and starts opening all the drawers.

Her ears prickle, and she seems to hear a choking sound as she promptly unravels all the scrolls she can find, pretending to be innocently playing. It doesn't take long until she finds the one she is looking for.

Senju Tobirama's Kage Bunshin no Jutsu.

Naruto's ace, and the technique of his she has dreamed of learning above all others. She stares at it for a long time, memorising the sequence of hand signs. She doesn't attempt it; she only needs to be able to remember it.

After she feels confident that she will be able to rewrite the instructions for her own use later, she grabs a brush from the Hokage's desk and dips it into the inkpot she finds next to it. Nagisa holds it in front of the scroll and hums, "what am I gonna draw?" before moving her arm forward.

A flurry of movement disturb the peaceful quiet of the room, and a masked man is suddenly holding her up, his other hand grabbing at the dripping brush before she can deface the scroll with it.

"Heh?" she exclaims.

When the Hokage comes back, he is greeted by a sheepish grey-haired ANBU holding Nagisa in his arms as she tries to wriggle out. His office looks like it's been swept into a tornado.

Nagisa considers it a mission accomplished.

(She memorises the scent of her future sensei. Naruto never met him before his graduation. He never knew he should miss Hatake Kakashi. She knows better and it wounds her, but she still yearns for his presence, and the joy he brought her counterpart. She doesn't know if she will have that. Team Seven is a four-man cell composed of one jounin-sensei, one genin kunoichi and two genin shinobi. The discrepancy might cause her to be assigned elsewhere, since Sharingan no Kakashi is better served teaching Uchiha Sasuke how to use his doujutsu. She doesn't dare hope for what is not guaranteed.)

The apartment they stuff her into is small, but good enough for an Academy-age girl. If one ignores the fact that an —almost— six year-old should not be living alone.

Nagisa doesn't mind. It is better to be alone than surrounded by cruelty and indifference.

She does not pay rent. The Hokage does not bother explaining it, likely figuring that a five-year-old wouldn't ask. A small stipend is placed on her doorstep every two weeks, and she is told she can come as often as she wishes to the Tower, provided she leaves the drawers alone. She makes no promises.

Her flat is close to the Academy and the Hokage building, but it is closer to the Ume District, where lower class people live.

The people around her are poor, and they rarely bother her as long as she keeps her hair hidden. She buys a head scarf with her first stipend and hides her whiskers with bandages when she shops. The grocer she goes to is located at the far end of the Ume District, next to a pleasure house. She knows to go there because Naruto has tried about every shop in Konoha, and few will give a jinchuuriki fair prices, but this one does, and that's precious.

The onee-san from the brothel she sometimes sees on the streets are the nicest people she's ever met. Sometimes she peeks at the windows and watches them dance, imitating their movements with wobbly steps, her tongue stuck out of her mouth as she concentrates.

She wants to be graceful like they are. She wants to move like she is flying, walk like she is stepping on clouds. She admires their fan dances and wishes she was this beautiful. But she is only Nagisa, the feral wild thing left behind by two parents who loved their village more than they loved her.

Her favourite is Manami-oiran. She has red hair, like Nagisa. Her eyes are brown though, not blue like hers or Naruto's, or purple like their mother and the other Uzumaki her counterpart has met.

Nagisa wants to believe they are from the same clan, but she cannot bring herself to ask. So she just watches her and mimicks her gestures in the shadows. The grocer, Takeo-san, once catches her at it. He has been politely pretending he doesn't know who Nagisa is for weeks now, but she smelled the sharp fear on him when he finally realised. She likes that he still treats her the same despite it. He is gruff, but not unkind.

"Manami-oiran is the most popular flower in Tobiume House," he tells her with shadowed eyes. "She's been proposed to a dozen times, but she always refuses. Says she'll only accept a man who'll take her home."

Nagisa yearns so much it hurts. She manages to unstick her tongue from the roof of her mouth long enough to ask woodenly.

"Where is Manami-oiran's home?"

"Not Konoha, though she was born there. I don't know, girl," he adds harshly with a shake of his head, "ask her yourself."

He leaves with a hurried pace after that.

Nagisa's eyes stay glued to the window, where Manami-oiran is still dancing. The woman turns and seems to pause as she sees the small child staring at her. A strand of hair tumbles from Nagisa's scarf, and the woman's eyes widen. The girl gasps and ducks down to hide herself before she dashes back to her apartment.

A week later, Takeo-san hands her a letter when she goes to shop. His mouth is set in a frown, his expression unreadable.

She thanks him and leaves with her paid groceries. Nagisa does not open the letter on the way. She waits until she's home, unloads her bag and makes for the bathroom. The closed space is where she practises the signs for the Bunshin. It is the only room in the house no ANBU dares to walk into. They listen in, of course, but she knows to be quiet.

Despite this, the contents of the letter almost make her gasp.

There are two sheets of paper inside, both signed by Manami-oiran. She already knows she will have to keep the first one to herself; the contents of it would put the lady in trouble, she is sure of it. But the second one is only a drawing of a crane flying over the sea, with beautiful calligraphy inviting Nagisa to visit and learn the dances she is so fascinated by. A kindness from a young woman to a little girl.

When she is done reading the second letter, she feels like she's been wrung dry. She turns to Naruto who is watching her curiously from the mirror and mouths, "did you know?"

She brandishes the first letter and waits until the man has finished reading it, his bizarre skill at reading in reverse coming in handy. His expression turns serious, then he shakes his head. He says something, but Nagisa isn't good at lip reading. She can guess, though. Naruto is a boy. Peeping on oiran and shinzo would have ended badly for him if he'd been caught.

Manami-oiran knows her name, and she tells Nagisa to call her nee-san. She tells them they are kin, though distantly. She does not say anything about Nagisa's mother, that wouldn't be allowed, but she says her hair is a sign that she is descended from the lost island of Uzushio, which can be found in Nami no Kuni, the Land of Waves. She says they used to protect the land, but that they cannot anymore. She tells her it's a secret.

Nagisa thinks of Naruto's trip to Nami. She can read between the lines. Manami is telling her Uzushiogakure used to be Nami's ninja village, like Konohagakure is Hi no Kuni's. That she told her as much is already priceless, she will not press Manami-nee for more. Tears spill from her eyes. Nagisa has found her first precious person, like Naruto did years ago.

She turns on the sink and runs the water over the first letter before throwing it away. Then she leaves the bathroom, the second one in hand, and makes a production of framing it in front of her bed. Her eyes are red, but her smile bright.

When she next sees Manami, she gives her a hug and thanks her for the pretty drawing. As she does so, she discreetly draws a spiral on her arm. Manami takes her to her quarters in Tobiume House and teaches her dances she knows must be from their homeland. Not a word of their secret passes between them, but they both know what they have gained in each other.

Later, once she is old enough to hear it, Manami-nee will tell her that many of the civilian survivors of their clan ended up destitute, and that her mother had to sell herself to the Tobiume House to make ends meet. Manami was raised with stories of Uzushio, and a desperate longing in her heart. She dreams of seeing her mother's home, and that is what still sustains her to this day.

In this they are alike.

(She will also give Nagisa a warning; all the shinobi of Uzushio who sought refuge in Konoha and donned the village's hitai-ate are now dead or disappeared. Manami does not think it is a coincidence.)

Nagisa enters the Academy two months later. It is April. The day before, she went to a cherry blossom viewing with Manami. When they are together, people do not look at her strangely. She passes for her little sister and, though they attract attention with their colouring, people do not harass them for it. She sometimes hears scornful whispers commenting on their resemblance with the demon but Nagisa makes sure to paint her face with oshiroi to pass as a particularly young kamuro and avoid scrutiny.

Nagisa has so far been shielded from the scorn of civilians. Unlike the orphans who all knew what she looked like and took the matrons' disdain as their own, most civilians do not recognise her if she takes precautions. Red hair might be rare, but it is the whiskers they look out for. There are after all a handful of Uzumaki-blooded civilians in the poorer districts, and though few of them have hair as bright as hers and Manami-nee, it is not unheard of.

The young girl only wears her face bare when she goes and visit the Sandaime. She does not go often; once a month is enough, and if she doesn't go he comes to her. Nagisa still doesn't like him. Despite his grandfatherly mien, she always feels used in his presence. Reminded that she is a weapon before she is a child. He might treat her warmly, but she feels the cold calculation under it. He wants to be liked because Nagisa liking him means that she will stay loyal.

As she starts the Academy, she will not cover her face either. She wants her classmates and teachers to know who she is, and decide how they want to treat her. If they reject her, that's fine. She has Manami-nee.

On the first day of class, they are subjected to a series of tests. They evaluate every student on their reading and writing skills, their physical fitness and the state of their chakra network. A medic-nin is invited specifically to perform the latter, and the man flinches when he sees Nagisa.

She looks down at herself, clad in an orange and blue haori, her hair arranged in freshly cut bangs and her pigtails carefully tied with blue ribbons. She doesn't see anything worthy of fear. Nagisa raises her head up and tilts it, looking at the man with a puzzled frown.

"Are you alright, mister? You should go home if you're sick, ya know."

The medic-nin gulps. "I'm fine, Uzumaki-chan. Let's proceed, shall we?"

Nagisa lets herself be examined, then goes to join the children who are already done with their evaluations. She eyes them warily. She recognises some of them from the orphanage. She saw others come in with their civilian parents. And there is Uchiha Sasuke, looking bright and nervous.

He is nothing like Naruto remembers him. Nagisa doesn't know enough about it to even take a guess as to why that is, but time changes people, and what would drive the boy to betray Konoha and leave with Orochimaru is none of her business. She plans to run too, after all.

Knowing what happened in Naruto's life doesn't mean she understands the series of events that led to the future he now lives in. There are things she wants to prevent from happening, others she doesn't care to. This village is her cage, after all. There is no sense in polishing the bars that hold her prisoner. She might sometimes wonder if it is reckless and selfish to do this when she knows about the upheaval that will come, but she can only promise herself to stay long enough to avoid a tragedy. She doesn't owe Konoha anything else.

"You're so flexible," says a girl at her side.

She turns curiously, and is met with a pair of dark eyes and long purple hair. The girl towers over her and knows it. She leans her way with a friendly smile.

"I dance," she tells her, craning up her neck a bit to look at her in the eye. Nagisa is short. She hadn't realised it before that.

The girl lights up. "Me too. I'm Ami."

"Uzumaki Nagisa."

Ami starts chatting at her. Nagisa does her best to listen and ask some questions of her own. It's been a while since she talked to anyone but Manami or the Sandaime. It's nice. She's not sure it will last, but she'll see. She can give the girl the benefit of the doubt at the very least.

Soon enough, a teacher comes and gathers all the students. They are divided into three different classes, and Ami murmurs under her breath that at least half of them will drop out before the third year.

"Ne, ne. Are your parents shinobi, Nagisa-chan?" asks Ami, poking her on the side.

She nods. "And yours?"

"Kaa-san is a chuunin," she brags.

She doesn't get to say more. Ami and Nagisa are in different groups, so they'll be taught by different teachers. When Nagisa sees the girl at the end of the day, she is introducing her parents to the friends she seemingly made in her class. When Ami notices her standing by the Academy's doors, she frowns and turns away. The others smirk at her.

Nagisa goes home alone.

Ami never speaks to her again.

The first four years at the Academy are spent learning the basics of taijutsu, bukijutsu and the core knowledge of history, geography, language, mathematics and sciences that every aspiring shinobi should know at this age. They are also taught survival skills and chakra manipulation.

Nagisa spends those years shunned by her peers and ignored or scorned by her teachers. Where it made Naruto more determined to slack off and instead chase attention, positive or negative, in a desperate bid to make them look at him, it only makes Nagisa want to excel. She throws herself into her studies and makes sure to be the best at everything they throw at her.

She studies every scroll within reach at the library. At first, the librarians kept turning her away, but it didn't stop her from turning up at the door. She caused a scene every time until the Hokage was forced to get involved. He looked sad and regretful when he observed her, pouting on the library steps as if she didn't plan for him to be called here. She gets a free library card out of it, and stops being harassed in one of the few buildings she must identify herself to enter.

When the Hokage escorts her to his office for their monthly chat, she uses his still lingering pity to ask him.

"Ne, ne, Sandaime-sama?"

"Yes, Nagisa-chan?"

"What happens if I do this?"

She twists her hands in the necessary hand seals to perform the Kage Bunshin. His eyes widen, and he raises a hand to stop her. Nagisa lets herself look sheepish, and rubs the back of her neck.

(She learned the best tricks from Naruto.)

"I'm not gonna add chakra to it, ya know. I wanna know what it does first."

"Where did you learn how to do this?"

"I had a dream about that time I set off a tornado in your office and it made me remember," she lies with a cheerful grin.

"You didn't set off a tornado," sighs the old man. "You were the tornado, Nagisa-chan."

She laughs. "Lies and slander!" she exclaims before looking at him with expectant eyes.

He sighs and explains what the jutsu does. She wheedles at his patience until he lets her try.

Nagisa still doesn't want to like Sarutobi Hiruzen. She knows he could have done more for her, and didn't. She knows he seeks to use her more than he cares about her. He has to; he is the Hokage. She knows all this, but after visiting him every month, she has grown somewhat fond of him. The fact that he's started inviting her out for ramen plays into that too, probably. It's the food of the gods, she's sure of it, and Ayame and Teuchi-san are almost as great as Manami-nee. All in all, the Sandaime could be worse. She doesn't hate him anymore.

She still won't be his weapon though, and he doesn't have her loyalty. Only Manami-nee and the fox in her stomach do.

(The fox still sleeps, most of the time. But sometimes he watches, and he thinks he likes what he sees. The girl has yet to access his chakra, so he will not contact her. Instead he bides his time. She will come to him.)

Because the Hokage knows about the clones, she is able to summon one to study and train at the same time without drawing suspicion. It is a time-saver, and her grades are all the better for it.

It comes at a good time, because the teachers pick up the pace when they turn nine. Like Ami had said, more than half of the students of their year group have dropped out since their first year. There is only one class left out of three.

She has never been in the same class as the clan heirs. They were kept separate, and as such, it is the first time she catches more than a glimpse of Uchiha Sasuke since the Massacre.

It happened two years ago, but Nagisa is still reeling. Naruto knew Sasuke was an orphan, but she only gets an overview of the man's lived experience. She didn't understand the scope of what Sasuke lost until she heard people talking about it.

A whole clan, decimated. Unlike Nagisa who has Manami-nee and Naruto, and who knows other Uzumaki are still out there, Sasuke has no one.

She wonders if he hates the village. She doesn't know what happened in details, but she knows his own brother was involved, and the village did nothing. They were too late.

Just like they were for Uzushio.

She does not attempt to talk to him, or to Haruno Sakura. The latter has been in her class before, but Nagisa has never interacted with her beyond team exercises. Like all of her classmates, she is either listened to her parents when she was told to avoid her, or followed their peers in doing so for fear of being ostracised.

Nagisa does not want to antagonise her possible future teammates before they are even pushed together. She will need them for what's to come, and her reputation in the village is already working against her. So instead of talking to them she stays at the front of the class and learns what she can without flinching at the occasional digs made at her. She doesn't have Naruto's prankster's reputation; the only thing the children know of her is that she only cares about training and that some adults call her a demon. It does not inspire trust or camaraderie, but at least she is left alone.

Sometimes she wishes she had her mirror self's personality. But although their souls are one and the same, their hearts beat out of sync.

It does mean that she is better at school than he was. She and Sakura have always been fighting for the top kunoichi spot, and the introduction to kunoichi classes they are given in their fifth year gives her the edge she's needed to beat the pink-haired kunoichi.

She hadn't thought she would be good at it. Nagisa is usually worse than Sakura at anything that requires finesse, whether it is chakra exercises or genjutsu. Since she had no baseline for that class —as Naruto obviously was not a kunoichi— and had a history of struggling in detail work, she had dreaded the first lesson. It turned out she needn't have been worried. Her time spent with Manami-nee served her well, and she is actually much better at it than even Ino, who bragged about her own skills in flower language, disguise, infiltration and seduction theory. Suzume-sensei is begrudgingly impressed.

Nagisa tells all this to Manami-nee, who looks unusually preoccupied as she powders her face.

"What's wrong, nee-san?" she asks her.

"Nagisa-chan." The woman bites her lip, as if she doesn't know how to broach the subject. "You know I've been working here for a long time."

The young girl's eyes are half-closed as she lays on the tatami mats. The inside of Tobiume House is very traditional despite them having glass windows. It is part of the experience. The services they offer are very traditional in nature, even if the workers are much better treated than their caste was historically. It helps that shinobi villages do not relegate the workers of pleasure houses to their own quarters like they do in Irori-kyo, the Capital of Hi no Kuni.

"Uh-huh. You were a kamuro for your okaa-san, then a shinzo, and now you're the oiran of Tobiume House," she sums up, counting on her hands.

"And you know that there are few options for someone like me once I get too old."

Nagisa feels very awake suddenly. She straightens up and stares at Manami. The woman is worrying her lip between her teeth now, hard enough she is close to drawing blood. Dread pools in the kunoichi's gut.

"Are you getting married, Manami-nee?" she says.

Her silence is enough of an answer.

Nagisa feels her hands tremble. For a while, she says nothing. Manami watches her anxiously.

"Is he bringing you home at least?" she whispers.

She will not insult her most precious person by asking if the man she will marry is a good man, or if he will treat her well. It wouldn't matter either way. Manami is right; she is getting older, and soon the proposals will dwindle. The brothel cannot force her to marry, not even to buy back her contract. But when she can no longer bring money for Tobiume House, she will be thrown out and it will leave her without options.

Nagisa almost wants to ask her to leave the brothel and go live with her, but she knows the Sandaime will not allow it. Manami would refuse as well. Nagisa has three years of schooling left, and her stipend is barely enough to feed herself. Her friend would not wish to be a burden on her.

Manami chooses her words carefully. "He is bringing me as close as I can get. Gato-san is the owner of a shipping company, and he is currently based in Nami no Kuni." She pauses and takes a shuddering breath. "I do not want to die without seeing the sea, Nagisa-chan."

A tear falls down the kunoichi's cheek. And another. She only allows herself this for a brief handful of seconds before Nagisa draws herself up and musters up the biggest smile she can manage.

"You'll have to tell me your address, Manami-nee. I'll write you lots of letters, believe it!"

Manami's smile is wobbly as she holds her arms out. Nagisa jumps into her embrace and lets herself be soothed by gentle hands. They stay like this for a long time. Before they separate, Nagisa leans forward and whispers in her ear, "I'll come get you one day, nee-san. We'll go home together, and I'll be Uzukage. I promise."

Her friend looks disbelieving, but she murmurs back, "I look forward to it."

Chapter Text

In the years following Manami's departure for Nami no Kuni, Nagisa feels unmoored.

She focuses on her studies, trying to ignore the crippling loneliness that is now part of her day-to-day life. The villagers' disdain feels sharper than before, and the walls of Konoha itself more oppressive.

Once, she is desperate enough to attempt seeking out other Uzumaki-blooded civilians. After two doors slammed on her face and a woman hissing that she wants to live peacefully without dealing with any more ostracisation, she gives up.

She feels empty, and it makes her reckless. Reckless enough to lift a book on shinobi handsigns from the library and use it to painstakingly communicate with Naruto. Through fits and starts, they create a language that works for them. It wields better results than Nagisa's attempt at reading in reverse. She often wrote Naruto letters then puzzled over his for hours, incapable of deciphering his handwriting. His drawings were not much better.

She learns that for a year spent in her world, three days pass in his, but time dilates when they look at each other. Naruto is eighteen and has lived through a war, he did not expect to suddenly find himself linked to another version of himself, but he doesn't think it's too bad. She asks how he sees her, and he says her image is reflected the same way his is. He keeps a well-polished kunai on him at all times: that is where he sees her most often, and he can interact with her mirror image the same way he talks to the Kyuubi. The connection is both visual and spiritual. He says he can tell when she is watching.

Naruto tells her she was a cute baby. It's terribly embarrassing.

When she asks if he has told anyone, he shakes his head. The war has taken a toll on everyone, and he didn't want his people to worry. Nagisa is relieved. She likes that it's a secret between the two of them. He does warn her that if he ever thinks this soul bond of theirs is a danger to her, he will try to sever it. He also says that he will find a way to cross over if she ever needs him.

It's nice, to have someone who cares.

She tells him she plans to leave Konoha.

"I know," he signs. "I support you, Uzukage-sama," he adds with a cheeky grin and a flourish of the hand.

She beams at him.

She asks him if he thinks it's reckless to follow her dream when she knows what is to come. He shakes his head. "It will be fine. Have faith in yourself."

Aside from her talks with Naruto, the closest she ever comes to being content is during her personal training.

Nagisa improves, day after day.

She consistently beats her classmates in spars now, Sasuke and Shino being the only ones who can go toe to toe with her. Her mastery of the standard ninja weaponry has greatly improved. She refines her ninjutsu as much as she can, and harasses the Sandaime until he gives her a wind jutsu to practice elemental manipulation. She tries for a water jutsu as well, having previously determined that she is dual-natured, but Sarutobi puts his foot down. One potentially destructive technique in the hands of his little tornado is enough. Nagisa doesn't protest. She'll learn more later. For now, she is content with her Great Breakthrough. She practises using it while moving, increasing its output and directing it down to propel herself to the air.

Her genjutsu is still awful, but she is better at recognising and dispelling it. It takes a tremendous amount of effort, but she can do it.

Aside from the core classes, she excels at sealing. The teaching unit is optional, but she applies for the elective in her sixth year at the Academy. Her application form gets lost multiple times, so she shows up at the teacher's office and requests to be added to the class. To her surprise, the teacher in charge of the elective is Naruto's Iruka-nii. She's never met him before.

The man smells angry when he looks at her, but he stays professional. He frowns when she tells him that she submitted three application forms and none made it to him. He does not call her a liar, and adds her to the class. Under his guidance, she learns how to power and write a variety of tags. She can now create small barriers, fill an area with light, explosives or smoke, store objects and bodies in scrolls, and silence enemies. Besides her, Hyuuga Hinata and two civilian boys are the only students who applied. Nagisa thinks it's a shame, sealing is awesome.

She makes fun of Naruto when he tells her that he didn't even know Iruka-sensei could do all that. Nagisa admits to him that she has him to thank for many of the things she feels brave enough to do. She couldn't have survived without knowing why she is treated this way. It would have killed her, she thinks.

Naruto disagrees. Vehemently. To the point he stops and signs, "You're an idiot. You would have survived. You're strong. You stand up for yourself, you know your own worth, and you're more resourceful than I was."

"That's all thanks to you," she signs before pausing and shyly adding in the hand sign for "older brother.".

He grins and mouths a word that suspiciously looks like, "imouto."

She can tell he is sad that she wants to abandon Konoha. But he understands that everyone must make their own choices. He only asks her to give his precious people a chance. Nagisa promises to do so, if only he tells her how to talk to the Kyuubi.

That day, she stays after class and spends the evening with Iruka-sensei. He shows her ways to improve her sealing skills, and gives her a few nudges to understand how to create personalised tags. After that, she wheedles him until he accepts to let her treat him to ramen. He still smells like grief and a little like anger when he looks at her pointy teeth and whisker marks, but by the end of the night, it has vastly diminished. Nagisa still doesn't want to have to earn the family she claims for herself, but she thinks Naruto's way might be less lonely.

And when she comes back home, she lays on her bed and presses a hand to her stomach.

"Soon," she murmurs. "When I'm a genin, they'll stop watching me as much. We'll talk then, if you allow it."

As Nagisa falls asleep, she swears she can hear the slow rumble of the Kyuubi echo in her mind.

Nagisa does not fail her three mid-term exams, and no one expects her to fail the final one either.

Mizuki-sensei, the man who tricked Naruto in the mirror world, is arrested as a traitor the day she receives her hitai-ate. This also means no one tells her about the fox. She pays it no mind, and goes shopping instead. The next day, her team designation will be announced, and she wants to be properly outfitted. She heads to a shinobi gear shop, and buys herself a reinforced sleeveless and backless dark blue top with a high neck and two hanging lapels reaching her mid-thigh, an orange obi to tie around her waist and mesh arm warmers reaching below her shoulders. She stocks up on bandages and treats herself to a brand new kunai pouch. She has saved for this occasion for a long time, and has been daydreaming about this outfit for even longer. She wishes she could have worn Manami-nee's orange haori everyday, but she doesn't want to damage it.

When she comes to the Academy the next day, Sakura and Ino are in the middle of a dispute over who will sit with Sasuke, whose shoulders are drawn up to his ears. Nagisa watches. She hesitates. Then goes to sit on the other side.

"You looked like you were going to try to stop them for a second," comments Shikamaru at the back of the class.

Nagisa glances at him curiously. Kiba is lounging on the table on his left side, and Chouji is eating on his right. She has never meaningfully interacted with the slackers. She only knows that Kiba's mom wants him to avoid her and that he can smell the kitsune on her, though he doesn't know what it is. He's only said her scent is weird. Chouji is always polite to her but she hates being paired with him in anything since he refuses to hit a girl. Nagisa always feels like as a kunoichi, she has so much more to prove than Naruto ever did.

Shikamaru on the other hand has talked to her a few times, but only when they did assignments together. He always looked at the civilians who insulted her like they were out of their minds, though. She appreciates that, even if he never did anything to stop them.

"I thought about it," she admits. "But it would only make them yell harder."

The Nara heir nods approvingly. "And the whole class thanks you for it. You are kunoichi of the year, aren't you?"

"I am," she says. "It was close, though. My genjutsu..."

She grimaces. Shikamaru makes a conceding nod. She doesn't need to say more. He knows how her clones usually end up. Since Iruka-sensei was proctoring the exam however, she got to show him the Kage Bunshin and glean a few extra points for it. It made all the difference.

Iruka-sensei enters the room, his clipboard in hand. Nagisa straightens. She listens as he greets everyone and starts listing the team assignments. It starts as she expected.

"Aburame Shino, Inuzuka Kiba and Hyuuga Hinata will be Team Eight under Yuuhi Kurenai." Iruka-sensei pauses before continuing. "Yamanaka Ino, Nara Shikamaru and Akimichi Chouji will be Team Ten under Sarutobi Asuma. Uzumaki Nagisa, Uchiha Sasuke and Sai will be Team Seven under Hatake Kakashi."

She takes a sharp intake of breath. Iruka-sensei sends her a curious look before continuing. Nagisa tunes out the outraged sounds as Haruno Sakura, Uzuki Ami and Akimichi Kasumi are placed on Team Six under jounin Uzuki Yugao.

"Where is this Sai guy," wonders Kiba while he's picking his nose. "Never seen him before."

Someone materialises right up to his ear and whispers, "Right here."

Kiba shrieks then sputters. "What is wrong with you, man?" he exclaims, clutching Akamaru.

"Are you a ninja or not?" asks Sai with a flat tone.

It makes the boys wary. Shikamaru in particular straightens, sensing that this is not an ordinary genin.

Nagisa observes the new arrival. The first thing she notes is that his eyes are completely empty. Sai's skin tone is also pale enough to give her pause. The short glimpses she had of him in Naruto's memories do not tell her how to handle him. He was older then. Looking at him, she sees a slight resemblance with Sasuke, but his ink-black hair is much darker than Uchiha's almost midnight blue locks. The dark eyes are the same though. His brush, scrolls, and ink peek from his backpack and pockets. She is much more interested in those.

Nagisa stands and steps forward. She bows, though not low enough to expose her neck.

"I'm Uzumaki Nagisa. I'll be in your care."

Sai looks puzzled, but he mimics the gesture gamely enough. His expression is still entirely flat, but there is something... He seems uncertain, like he's taking his cues from her.

She also bows towards Sasuke and repeats the same phrase. He frowns and only inclines his head. Unlike Naruto, Nagisa did not develop an intense rivalry with the boy. She has been civil and only interacted with him during spars. As a result, he does not know her enough to snub her.

Iruka watches them with interest before calling out to all the students. He invites their sensei in, and lets the students file in after their designated teachers. Soon enough, Team Seven is the only one left.

"I didn't know private teaching was still being done," comments Iruka when they are alone.

"It is rare, but I was geared for an apprenticeship. My shishou had a specific skillset and needed more involved teaching to share it with me. Unfortunately, he died before I could graduate as genin under his tutelage, so I passed the Academy Exam instead," explains Sai, his voice as toneless as before. Nagisa will have to get used to it, even if it grates on her sensitive ears. Which reminds her...

She takes a cautious intake of breath and grimaces. Sai smells like ink and nothing else. She and Kiba exchange a look. As the only two students with enhanced hearing and sense of smell, they are equally bothered by the boy's lack of presence. Akamaru is also inching away from her new teammate. The Inuzuka boy mouths, "Better you than me!" before leaning back on his chair. Nagisa glares at him.

At their teacher's questioning look, Sai rattles off an identification number. Iruka relaxes. Nagisa does not. Naruto's memories are hard to sparse, but she knows enough to tell this boy is a spy, and his early appearance does not bode well. She is the only thing that is different in this world.

Does someone suspect her, or is it just because she is a girl and no one else made the cut so they had to look elsewhere? Maybe Sai is not yet a spy. Nagisa does not know who he is loyal to or when he started spying on their behalf, only that it's someone from the village. She thinks whoever it is might suspect her loyalty to not be as unshakeable as the Hokage believes it is. She might just be paranoid.

So she will have to fool them, and ask Naruto for advice once she gets a moment alone. For now, she had other things to worry about.

"Ne, Iruka-sensei? What do you know about Hatake Kakashi? Is he on a Bingo Book?"

Sasuke, who had only been boredly evaluating Sai until then, straightens in interest.

Iruka's eye twitches. Nagisa suspects he doesn't like their jounin sensei. "He is on every nation's Bingo Book. Kakashi-san is an S-rank shinobi."

Nagisa hums.

She's not sure why Naruto's Team Seven hadn't even tried to ask. She thinks they were all a little silly in a way this team will not necessarily allow themselves to be. Nagisa mourns this. In a way, her soulbond with Naruto had robbed her of her innocence, and she has to grieve the carefree girl she could have been. But she wouldn't trade it for the world. Thanks to Naruto, she'll never be alone; the universe has given her a priceless gift.

She won't squander it.

"Does he know fuuinjutsu?" she asks, leaning forward.

"I don't know, Nagisa-chan. But if he doesn't, I'm sure he'll assign supplementary teaching for you. You just need to ask." Iruka turns to the two boys. "This goes for you too. Never hesitate to ask your sensei for what you need. He's there to help you become an accomplished team, but he can only do that if you meet him halfway."

Nagisa grins and nods at her teacher before turning to Sasuke and Sai. "What're your specialisations? I can see why Team Eight and Ten were put together, it's pretty obvious, but the all-girl team and ours are a bit weirder, don't you think?"

Sasuke eyes her warily. "Hn."

Nagisa thinks he keeps expecting her to fawn over him like a fangirl. She doesn't understand it. Nagisa and Hinata had never exhibited that type of behaviour towards him.

(Nagisa didn't know what to think of Hyuuga Hinata. The girl always gave her a nod and a stuttered hello, but if Nagisa tried to talk to her, she shied away. Hinata smelled like anxiety and a little like envy and something else entirely that she couldn't identify. Nagisa tried to ignore it, like she ignored the way Aburame Shino always made sure not to touch her if he could help it, discomfort obvious on his face, the way Nara Shikamaru stared at her like she was a puzzle to figure out, how Inuzuka Kiba bared his teeth unconsciously when he smelled the fox and alternated between pestering her to annoy his mom or forgetting about her entirely. How Yamanaka Ino pretended she didn't exist, how Akimichi Chouji looked sympathetic when civilians treated her like a monster but never reached out. Like she ignored the way Haruno Sakura found her annoying and Uchiha Sasuke did not care to see they were kindred spirits in this village made of lies.

Nagisa does not care.

She doesn't.)

"I'm primarily a long distance fighter," says Sai tonelessly, though his eyes seem to brighten in interest. "I specialise in ninjutsu and fuuinjutsu. My chakra affinity is earth. I am interested in refining my taijutsu and kenjutsu."

Nagisa brightens. "You studied fuuinjutsu? We'll have to compare notes. Ne, can you make your own seals? The Academy only teaches us how to copy and recognise pre-existing seals, so my knowledge is pretty elementary. Ah, my specialties are the same, but I'd add taijutsu to the list, which makes me short to mid-range. I'm dual-natured, so it's wind and water for me. I want to focus on my pre-existing skills more than becoming well-rounded. I'm also interested in learning tracking and sabotage, I suppose."

She also wants to see if she can manifest the Adamantine chains like her mother did, but she's not about to tell them that.

They both turn to their last teammate, who looks like he's contemplating ignoring them before he thinks better of it. Weirdly enough, Nagisa thinks that as opposed to Naruto's Team Seven, where Sasuke's focus and his horrible experiences comparatively made him the most mature member of his team, this version of Sasuke is probably the one who acts his age the most.

Sai is a soldier already, and it shows. She wonders how it came to be, but no one gained an assignment to spy on age-mates if they don't have the childhood to show for it. She wonders what shadows lurk in Konoha.

Meanwhile, Nagisa has the imprint of Naruto's soul all over her. This, her childhood in the Ume District, her ostracisation and her intimate awareness of what she is in the eyes of the village leadership — a weapon, never a child — has given her wisdom beyond her years.

"Mostly mid to long range. I specialise in bukijutsu, ninjutsu and taijutsu," says Sasuke shortly. "My affinity is fire. Interested in adding kenjutsu and genjutsu to my skillset."

Nagisa tilts her head. "I thought you were a lightning type."

She taps her nose to indicate how she could tell. Sasuke frowns.

"I didn't test it. But Uchiha are always fire."

He says this with a certainty Nagisa envies him.

Sai hums. "Uchiha Shisui was recorded to have a lightning affinity."

"How do you know that?" asks the last Uchiha aggressively.

The answer is nonchalant. "It's in his Bingo Book entry for Kumo. My master collects them," he adds when they give him confused frowns. "They are a useful resource."

Nagisa nods in understanding. That's true, but she wouldn't have had access to them. They're not accessible to civilians, so Academy students can't consult them. Now that she's a genin, she'll have access to the higher levels of the library.

She guesses Sasuke's parents must have had some in their house, but she doesn't think it would be tactful to point that out.

"Maybe you're dual-natured like I am." She inhales more carefully. "You probably are and I didn't notice because everyone smells like fire in the village."

Sasuke looks like he doesn't know what to say to that. His shoulders are wound tight, and he seems to notice they are eyeing him carefully because he forcibly relaxes and makes a non-committal sound.

An awkward silence settles over them. Nagisa suppresses a sigh. She at least needs to attempt to bond with her teammates. She promised Naruto to give his precious people a chance after all, and it is also necessary to make an attempt at fitting in if she doesn't want to be flagged as a potential flight risk.

She makes eye contact with Iruka who gives her a sympathetic smile. She straightens and leans towards Sai before interrogating him about fuuinjutsu again. It turns out that his ninjutsu techniques incorporates sealing knowledge to some extent and he can read Konoha seal script, but that's it. She asks if he would be willing to teach her, to which he says that they can revisit the question later.

That is not a yes, she notes carefully, but doesn't comment on it. She's already playing with fire by asking him about his sealing skills when she knows leadership would prefer to keep her as far from fuuinjutsu as they can get away with. Nagisa suspects that the only reason why she hadn't been forced out of Iruka's elective is because the Sandaime had vouched for her, which is a strange feeling to say the least.

She's so used to blaming the old man for everything, but he does look out for her sometimes.

After some time, Sai pulls out a notebook and starts drawing. Sasuke sharpens his kunai at his desk and Iruka taps his fingers impatiently, cursing their sensei under his breath.

Nagisa occupies her time by doing chakra exercises, trying to wrestle her unbearably unwieldy reserves into something interesting. Then she summons a shadow clone and tries turning it into other things. She got the idea from Naruto's stupid genderbending jutsu — she hates it so much, why is her counterpart like this — and she thinks this might be a good alternative to henge. But she can't do more than change her hair colour to yellow before the clone dispels itself. It's frustrating, but she's not giving up.

She can feel Sasuke's curious gaze on her, but he's not saying anything so she ignores it. Instead she tries to get her clone to look as much like Naruto as she possibly can before it dispels. She does not even notice Iruka leaving.

This is how Kakashi-sensei finds her.

"How can I put this?" he starts, "My first impression of you guys... well, you're boring."

After being directed to the roof for their team introduction, their sensei asks them to introduce themselves. Since no one seems to want to volunteer, Nagisa challenges him to do it first.

“I'm Hatake Kakashi. Things I like and things I hate… I don't feel like telling you that. My dreams for the future… never really thought about it. As for my hobbies… I have lots of hobbies.”

Lame, thinks Nagisa. Her thoughts must show on her face because Kakashi gives her an eye-smile and says, "your turn, kiddo."

She grimaces.

"My name is Uzumaki Nagisa, I like..." Manami-nee, fuuinjutsu, my clan and everything that ties me to it, the fox in my stomach, "cup ramen. What I like even more is the restaurant ramen Iruka-sensei gets with me sometimes. What I dislike is waiting three minutes for the cup ramen to cook. My dream..." is to be Uzukage, restore my village and free the tailed beast jailed inside of me, "is to surpass Hokage! And then... have all the people of this village acknowledge me!"

Nagisa finds that she does mean the last part. She wants the people of Konoha to look at the leader of a rebuilt Uzushio and lament not just the loss of a jinchuuriki but also of someone who is competent and valuable as just herself.

She turns expectantly to the two boys.

"My name is Sai. I like drawing and..." he hesitates, his eyes shuttering, "my brother." Sasuke twitches as he says so. Nagisa tilts her head. Sai smells like grief all of a sudden. His brother is dead, she understands, dismayed. After a beat, his scent disappears, which startles her. "My dream... is to serve my village."

"Eh? Is that really a dream if that's already what you're doing? What's your goal for the future?" asks Nagisa.

Sai falters. This is the second break in his composure she sees since he mentioned his brother. Nagisa wishes she knew more about his past. It would help her understand what is going on in his head. As it is, she doesn't know and it rattles her.

"I..." he starts before trailing off, unsure.

"Maa, Sai-chan doesn't have to share if he doesn't want to," says Kakashi, raising his hands in a placating manner. "Why don't you go next, Sasuke-chan?"

The Rookie of the Year eyes their sensei balefully before turning his gaze to the horizon.

“Uchiha Sasuke. There are tons of things I dislike but I don’t really like anything. And… I don’t want to use the word “dream” but… I have an ambition. The resurrection of my clan and… to kill a certain man.”

"Are you talking about—" starts Sai.

Kakashi once more cuts him off with a pointed look, then gives them direction to a training ground for their genin test. Once that is done, he shunshins away, leaving behind only a handful of leaves.

Nagisa stares at her two teammates. By all rights, she should try and socialise with them, get to know them better. But she finds herself abruptly exhausted. The idea of carrying a conversation for the three of them for another two hours sounds deeply unappealing. Besides, she has better things to do.

"Well. I'm gonna go, ya know. See ya tomorrow," she says as she vaults off the building, channeling chakra to her limbs to cushion her fall. "Let's get ramen sometime," she adds as an afterthought as she is falling.

She dashes back to her apartment with giddy steps. She ignores the stares from passersby with an ease borne from habit and pulls out her key once she gets into the Ume District. It only takes her a few additional minutes to be home, where she sticks her tongue out at her mirror. Naruto is eyeing her hitai-ate with pride, but makes a silly face in response to her cheeky greeting.

There, she does her usual stretching routine and attempts a few chakra control exercises before cooking herself ramen. She adds a handful of sliced shiitake mushrooms, spring onions and a narutomaki to garnish it. She usually doesn't bother, but it makes her feel more adult. Then she settles into bed and pretends to sleep.

She meditates.

As Naruto told her, she presses a hand to the seal on her stomach. She tries to feel for the difference between the red corrosive chakra of the Kyuubi and her own coral-coloured chakra. It is difficult. Despite being aware of the truth, she has never conceptualised her chakra as two separate entities, and they are intertwined in a way that is almost seamless.

But her exercises in control help in that. It takes half an hour of focused meditation before she finds herself in the prison Naruto told her about. It looks different than she imagined it, though.

The gloomy and humid building of Naruto's memories is there, but sanded down by a superimposed landscape. A bright open beach swallows the stone and concrete prison, the water lapping gently at the eroded surface. The Kyuubi is still behind bars, but his cell is wide and bright and facing the ocean.

A voice rumbles like a storm, breaking Nagisa from her contemplation.

"Come closer, child," she hears and shivers.

She takes small, wary steps towards the cage, mindful of the fact that she might love the fox like she loves herself, but she does not know him.

Nagisa stands in front of the creature her father sealed inside of her. He is beautiful. His fur shines a russet colour bordering on copper and his eyes are a carmine red, the same colour as his chakra. The kitsune towers over her and for the first time in her life, she understands exactly what made the civilians fear her.

"Your thoughts are very loud, you know," says the Kyuubi. "They woke me from my slumber years before I had fully recovered from what your village put me through."

"What did they do?" Nagisa asks before she can help herself.

She winces. She hadn't meant to say that.

"Beyond robbing me of my freedom and using me for their own gain, you mean?" he asks in a low voice, amused. "My chakra is being misappropriated and that cursed clan of doujutsu users you have keep using the power they inherited to make me do their bidding. How's that?"

Nagisa blinks. "The Uchiha?"

The Kyuubi growls. Nagisa tenses. When the kitsune notices, he subsides.

"Nevermind them. I want to talk about you. Why are you here?"

The girl looks down at her hands, suddenly hesitant, before straightening her back and her resolve. She bows low.

"I'm Uzumaki Nagisa and I'm sorry for what my parents did to you. I'm gonna set you free, believe it!"

When she raises herself up, the fox is staring at her, dumbfounded. A moment of silence passes between them.

Then the Kyuubi bursts out laughing.

Nagisa blinks. "Eh?"

The kitsune is still laughing so hard he's tearing up. Nagisa bounces on her feet, unsure what to do.

"Ne, what's so funny?"

"You, kid. You're a riot. I heard your thoughts and my counterpart in the mirror confirmed some things for me, but I didn't expect you to just come out and say it."

She stills before vaulting forward. "You see your mirror self too?!" she says, gripping the bars of the cage.

He nods, folding his paws in front of him. His nine tails swish behind him in a way that reads as contentment to Nagisa.

"Not as often as you do. I'm conserving my strength, which is hard to do when a half-sized human keeps drawing on my chakra reserves." Nagisa winces. "You got better," allows the kitsune when he sees her genuine guilt.

"Sorry, Kyuubi-san," she says, rubbing the back of her neck before bowing. Her twin pigtails swish in a way that is very reminiscent of the fox's tail movement.

"Call me Kurama. I can tell you're dying to do so. I'm not sure why you didn't."

"Well," she muses, "Naruto is Naruto but I'm Nagisa and a girl even if we share the same soul. I wasn't sure your name would actually be Kurama and I didn't want to assume, ya know."

"I have some theories about that, actually. If I'm reading this correctly, your soul reached out to your counterpart while you were still in the womb for some unknown reason. Many features are determined during this critical moment, it is possible that you unconsciously sought to distance your self from Uzumaki Naruto to avoid annihilation. This includes sex, hair colour, neural pathways. Even your chakra network potentially had to be reworked because of it. Everything except your soul."

Nagisa gulps. "If my body hadn't changed, my consciousness wouldn't have handled the bond?"

This makes her wonder if Suzume-sensei's terrible romance novels full of platitudes were right about the eyes being the windows of the soul. It might explain why this and the whisker marks are the only things she physically shares with Naruto.

"You were a foetus. Your sense of self wasn't even developed yet. He would have swallowed you whole and Kushina would have given birth to a brain-dead baby." He pauses. "I do wonder what caused the link to form, however. It is not something that happened on our end, but your counterpart has been fighting against beings that could realistically have done something like this. I don't see why they would want to, but I suppose..."

Nagisa listens to Kurama ramble about different possibilities with fascination. This is easier than she expected. She thought she would have to spend months convincing the fox that she meant her word and that she would free them both. The idea that he's heard her thoughts for years is both mortifying and incredibly helpful.

Kurama seems to once more know what she is thinking because he gives her an amused look and stops theorising about the intricacies of space-time jutsu and the Edo Tensei.

"You said you planned to free me, kid, but how do you plan on doing so?"

"That depends on what you want," she says carefully. "My first idea was to study Uzumaki clan fuuinjutsu and figure out how to open the seal without killing myself. It's the best plan and would grant you complete freedom."

"But...?" he asks leadingly.

"But later down the line, the missing-nin of the red clouds organisation Naruto fought in his timeline will come for you, and they have Uchiha. Doing this will make you free, but vulnerable. I could wait to free you until we're rid of them," she suggests, "but you would have to trust me to keep my word until then and you would still risk capture by others. Shinobi will never stop coveting bijuu's powers."

Kurama snarls. Nagisa stands strong in the face of his wrath. She empathises with the fox. As it is, the Kyuubi and herself are conflated in the eyes of the village, seen as weapons before they are people. She hates it, and promises herself that even once she has rebuilt Uzushio, she will never be that kind of Kage.

She remembers Naruto's memories of Nami. She knows she is needed there. A ninja village should exist to protect its civilians. The people like Manami-nee and the other survivors who ended up destitute after the end of Uzushio and the poor folks of Nami who ended up preyed upon by other nations and greedy businessmen like the one who hired the Kiri missing-nin Naruto once fought.

(Nagisa wishes her grasp on Naruto's memories was stronger. Then she would remember more names and more locations. She would be able to do more.)

It is a tragedy that this protection must be offered with steel and she hopes she can work towards world peace, but it cannot come at the expense of her people.

"And your other ideas?" asks Kurama once he is calmed.

"Send you to the summoning realm so no human can touch you without your say-so again. I'm not sure that would work," she admits. "But summons were normal animals who were sent to the spirit realm and evolved there, right? If we figure out how it was done, I can use the same technique and set you free."

The kitsune shakes his head. "You cannot. My siblings and I were the ones who created the spirit world in which the animals you call summons live. It is proximity to our chakra that granted those animals their cognizance and ability to manipulate chakra. It also resulted in them being hunted by humans, hence why we created this realm to shield them. We anchored the summoning realm to this plane in various locations which were later considered weak points in their protection. The more adventurous animal clans made contracts with shinobi clans to exchange their service in return for their assistance in protecting those weak points. My presence in the spirit realm would potentially destabilise the whole structure."

"I didn't know," says Nagisa weakly, disappointed that her most viable plan is impractical.

Humans are really terrible, she thinks.

"Anything else?" prompts Kurama gently.

She discusses several other ideas with him, which he shoots down with patience. She has to resort to her very last thought, and the most distasteful one to boot.

"Or I could bind you to Uzushio," she says hesitantly. "Bijuu can be sealed into objects, right?" Kurama had said that was what happened to his brother Shukaku. "Sealing you to the land would give you your freedom and be more difficult for enemies to undo. You would have the freedom to roam and protect yourself and... the village I'm planning to build is one that would be willing to protect you instead of use you. I'd kill anyone who tries to control you, and I'd let you eat anyone who tries to go against that, ya know."

Kurama stays silent for a long time.

Nagisa stares, anxious. This is probably her worst idea. She's only proposing a bigger prison, not an escape. But she doesn't know what else can be done. She waves her hands at the Kyuubi, taking a step forward.

"We can also keep searching— I'm planning on learning all the Uzumaki sealing techniques, we can find something for sure, and if we don't, I'll invent it—"

"Don't fret, kit. This is your most viable idea. Let me think on it."

At those words, Nagisa opens her eyes.

The prison seal is gone. Only her too familiar apartment remains, full of edible plants and orange potted flowers carefully arranged on the windowsill, a bed with a ratty cover painstakingly embroidered with the Uzumaki clan symbol and a painting of a crane framed on the wall.

It's the middle of the night.

"Thank you. For giving me options," murmurs the voice of her companion in a faint echo inside her mind.

"Always, Kurama-san. It should have been done years ago."

She doesn't blame her parents for what they did. She understands them and the decisions they made. She too was raised in the Leaf, and she would not have thought anything of their choices if she didn't know there was another path. That awareness is only available to her because of Naruto, and she's thankful for that.

He found another way and broke the chains before they started circling his own neck. Nagisa admires that. She will do things differently, but their goal is the same.

To right the wrongs of their forebears.

Chapter Text

Nagisa doesn't have time to think about her conversation with Kurama because she is late to the agreed-upon meeting the next day. Her conversation with the Nine-Tails was long enough that she's just slept through her alarm. It's terribly embarrassing.

Thankfully, she knows her new sensei is the chronically-late type. She's not entirely convinced that he's not lurking somewhere observing them, but she is pretty confident in the fact that, if things go as it went for Naruto, he'll have no leg to stand on if he tries to tell her off for being late.

She still rushes to the training ground, a piece of toast in her mouth.

Then belatedly remembers as she faces Sai and Sasuke that their sensei had instructed them not to eat. Judging by the boys' unimpressed faces, they followed the instructions.

Nagisa is embarrassed, but she hides it behind a sheepish grin. She finishes her toast in two quick bites before settling down to stretch.

"You're late," comments Sai, curious.

"I was so excited I stayed awake too long," she lies as she carefully arranges her limbs into a split like Manami-nee taught her before bending down to touch her toes, "so I overslept."

"I wager this is also the reason why you disobeyed our sensei's orders not to eat."

His tone is very disapproving this time.

Nagisa wracks her mind for her memories of what Kakashi-sensei said exactly. She tilts her head, slowly rising from her split. "Ne, I'm pretty sure he said he didn't recommend eating, not that we're not allowed to do so, ya know."

Sai's eyes widen.

His expression is so baffled Nagisa has to stifle a laugh. It's a bit sad, but it seems like the boy has never heard of the idea that a statement from an authority figure could be taken as anything other than an order.

"He also said we'd throw up if we did," scoffs Sasuke.

She concedes the point. "True. But what does that have to do with you?" She pauses. That's actually the perfect opportunity to mention what the test will be about. "Hm. Unless we're evaluated on teamwork. Then it will suck for all of us."

"Teamwork," repeats Sasuke with a sneer. "That's ridiculous."

Nagisa stares. "Is it? We're being put in four-man cells to complement each other's skills and you don't think our ability to work together is a valuable thing to evaluate?"

This time, it's Sai who sounds disbelieving. "Why does it matter? If the individual is competent and acts with professionalism, mission parametres can be completed without a need for deep connections or whatever you're suggesting, Cherry."

"Cherry?" she exclaims incredulously.

He shrugs.

"I read that nicknames are a good way to build rapport. I'm trying things out. Your hair is the most distinctive thing about you and it looks like cherries," he explains tonelessly, gesturing at her twin pigtails.

"You say that and you think team-building is irrelevant?"

This guy is really strange, thinks Nagisa. She hears a snort and a general feeling of agreement coming from Kurama. She smiles helplessly. She thinks she could get used to that.

Sai seems to consider her rebuttal carefully.

"I'm saying that individual shinobi should be competent enough to be able to achieve mission objectives without needing any type of team cohesion. Professionalism should be enough. Teams of chuunin and above are rarely fixed and no one should rely on good team relationships to carry them." He pauses. "Of course, seeing as we'll be spending months if not years on the same team, our situation is different."

If they actually pass the test, is unsaid.

Nagisa considers his words.

"I think it's not just that shinobi need to be individually strong enough not to be dependent on others. That part's obvious, ya know," she says. "But you still need to be able to rely on your teammates. When we're chuunin, we'll be experienced enough to be more adaptable so we can fit into any team without issue, but that's only if we've worked on our teamwork skills to get there. I think it's not just about trust, you need to learn how to move with other people, not get in their way, all that, ya know. You have to know what you're best at and cover others' weaknesses as well."

"Says the girl who intends to defect," murmurs Kurama in her mind amused at her impassioned speech.

"Hush", she thinks. "They don't need to know that. And I do believe what I said."

She sees nothing wrong in Konoha's philosophy on the importance of teamwork. What Nagisa has a problem with is the fact that they don't actually mean it when it counts. If they did, she wouldn't have spent her entire childhood ostracised and alone save for a clan member who was arguably in a worse situation than she was.

(She hopes Manami-nee is okay. Nagisa hasn't received a single letter in months.)

It was so incredibly short-sighted of them too. She could have grown to do worse than wish to defect. She could have decided to raze the village to the ground instead. If they'd brought her into the fold properly and she hadn't seen how far Naruto had needed to go to win their approval, she'd have been the most loyal shinobi of Konoha.

And instead, here she was.

"Besides, I count you as a teammate," she adds mentally.

The fox feels pleased in her mindscape, and she pictures him swishing his tails with a fanged grin.

Sasuke is not convinced.

"What is the point of taking an entire squad on a mission that might be better accomplished by a single more competent shinobi?" he scoffs.

Nagisa looks at him like he's dumb.

"Really? You can't see a single reason why a squad might be better than one person?" He stares at her disdainfully. "Not even to heal you if you're injured? Or to cover your blindspots? To guard you while you sleep?"

Sasuke has nothing to say to that. He simply turns away and starts doing stretches. Nagisa rolls her eyes. She makes eye contact with Sai, who is staring at her with an expression she cannot decipher. A discrete sniff only gives her the smell of ink and nothing else. It's as odd as it was the day before, but she doesn't forget the grief and bewilderment she briefly smelled yesterday.

She decides to change the subject.

"So. Cherry, is it? What's Sasuke's nickname then?"

"I was thinking Ducky," says Sai carelessly. "His hair looks like a duck butt, doesn't it?"

Nagisa doesn't even have time to start laughing before Sasuke launches himself at Sai. The boy dodges nimbly and raises a challenging eyebrow at the Uchiha heir. The kunoichi watches them attack each other for a petty nickname and can't contain her mirth. She still tracks their movements, evaluating their fighting styles. Sasuke is sloppy when he is angry, she notes, but the Uchiha style serves him better than what they were taught at the Academy. The Little Leaf taijutsu style is designed to be adaptable. It is meant to teach you the fundamentals of martial arts while making space for students to implement their own style. What Sasuke is using now looks like a dance and a war cry all at once. Every move is a finishing move, but with every dodge she sees the way Sasuke follows where Sai leads then turns the rhythm back to his advantage.

Sai fights like he's playing around. Like smoke curling through the trees, he dodges, obscures and redirects nimbly. He lets Sasuke agitate himself into a frenzy, the boy disrupting his own flow to instead try and blast Sai apart. And when Sasuke is sufficiently riled up, Sai takes the high ground and strikes only once, hard enough to send him careening into a tree.

Nagisa whistles.

That was impressive, and it shows that the unknown element of their team really has the Uchiha heir pegged. He knew he could not match Sasuke's technical skill, so he instead turned his anger against him to finish the fight as soon as possible without taking damage. If the Uchiha's mind hadn't been clouded by his anger, he would have already won. He is faster, stronger and more consistent. But he's also ruled by his emotions in a way that does him a disservice.

Sasuke is snarling as he raises himself up. He throws himself at the other boy and does not give him time to breathe. Sai is not exactly caught off-guard, but his reaction time is too slow to properly dodge this time. The Uchiha heir gains back control of the fight and delivers multiple punishing blows before Sai can even react.

Nagisa pushes chakra onto her feet and jumps in between them, "Stop," she orders.

She nudges at Kurama, who releases a little bit of his chakra alongside hers for added effect. The two boys instinctually freeze.

"Why are you fighting to kill just for a dumb nickname?" she asks Sasuke, unimpressed. "You're a crazy guy, ya know."

Sasuke is breathing heavily, but he's calming down. "Tch," he spits before rolling his shoulders and turning away from Sai and Nagisa.

She rolls her eyes.

They spend the next hour ignoring each other. Nagisa finishes her stretches then lays down on the grass, looking at the clouds. It seems like they'll be waiting a long time. At some point, Sai sits down next to her.

He gives her a searching look and says, "your chakra feels strange."

Nagisa shrugs.

"Yeah. Dunno what's up with it," she lies, "but it's probably why people avoid me a lot. It's a real pain to control because I've so much of it, ya know, so I had to work twice as hard to do the most simple jutsu. You can't even imagine how long it took me to manage a proper Kawarimi. And Henge and Bunshin are completely beyond my ability. It's awful."

"How did you make kunoichi of the year then?" asks Sai, leaning forward in interest.

She's being interrogated, she thinks with some amusement. She figures it would be more suspicious to refuse to reply so she decides to be as frank as possible. Besides, being upfront about her skills with her team is a good thing. She really does believe that teamwork is necessary, especially with what's to come.

Nagisa twists her hands in a series of hand signs, and three Kage Bunshin form at her side. "Iruka-sensei gave me extra points for this. It's not the Academy Bunshin but it's still a clone, so he said it counted. Then I compensated with my other skills. I'm leagues above the second-ranker in taijutsu and bukijutsu and I aced my fuuinjutsu elective. Plus, I don't look it but I'm top of the class in kunoichi arts," she brags before dispelling her clones.

"Huh. What do they teach in kunoichi classes?"

She blinks.

"Eh, that's right, you didn't attend the Academy. We learn about different cultures and about the skills necessary to infiltrate female spaces and pass as civilian women. So, like, etiquette, hanakotoba, dancing, tea ceremonies, musical lessons, calligraphy, make-up, costuming, sewing, embroidery, the art of conversation... things like that." It was basically the same kind of training Manami went through as a kamuro. Being familiar with it helped Nagisa greatly. "There was also an elective on poison cooking, but I didn't take that."

Unlike Iruka-sensei, the kunoichi who held the classes hadn't believed her when she said her application form hadn't made it to her. She doesn't mind it too much, she isn't planning on becoming a poison-specialist.

They also learned how to stop their monthly bleeding during missions, avoid getting pregnant and what to do if an enemy-nin attempts to assault you, but she's not about to mention that to these guys.

"And this is not taught to boys?" asks Sai dubiously.

Sasuke, who is pretending not to listen, also looks outraged at the idea of having missed out. It's not because he finds the subjects particularly interesting, but because his ego can't take the idea of someone else having something he doesn't. The kunoichi does think the boy would have benefited from the more social skills-oriented lessons, but half of everything else is something all Noble clan kids learned by default. He probably had similar lessons before the Massacre.

Nagisa shrugs. "They get extra taijutsu lessons instead."

The boys look like they're about to say something else, but their sensei suddenly appears out of thin air and cuts them off.

"Good morning!" he exclaims before looking up, "or is it afternoon?"

"It's lunchtime," says Nagisa flatly. "And you're late."

"Ah, sorry, sorry, I was helping an old lady cross the road and the next thing I knew, several hours had passed."

He waves his hand in a dismissive gesture then pulls out the infamous bells. He explains the parametres of the test and Nagisa can already see the boys' mindset shift. They are eyeing each other in a predatory way. Nagisa wonders what Sai plans to do. If he's here to spy on her, he'll probably want to ensure she passes alongside him. If he's here for Sasuke and using the fact that there was an empty spot for a boy on the team, he'll be focusing on him. But if he's not a spy at all...

Kakashi gives the starting signal right after psyching them out.

Nagisa wastes no time and summons a dozen clones, who all make the hand signs for the Fuuton: Great Breakthrough. Her sensei dispels them all effortlessly, but it gives her enough space to attempt to sneak behind his back and grab a bell. It obviously doesn't work, and Kakashi engages her in taijutsu instead, cheerfully claiming it to be their first lesson.

She's hopelessly outmatched, but she tries to adapt as much as she can. When she's starting to get overwhelmed, she pulls out three explosive tags and sticks them to the ground, taking painful blows in the process.

Thank the Sage for Kurama, she thinks, and the kitsune snorts.

The explosion propels her into the forested area and she uses another Great Breakthrough to break her fall. Nagisa clicks her tongue. She at least wanted to try getting the bell by herself, but she's clearly not strong enough to even touch it. It's grating, but she knew what the test was for.

Now that she's had her little selfish attempt, she needs to find the others. She thinks she saw Sai go hide in the trees, and she wouldn't be surprised if he already knows how to tree walk. Nagisa's control being shot to hell, she failed the few times she attempted it and resolved to shelve it for a later time, so she has to run on the ground while keeping an eye above instead. This is how she finds Sai in the throes of a genjutsu.

She falters. She knows how to dispel one, but only on herself. What can she do?

"A blow to the head works," suggests Kurama in her mindscape.

"You sure?"

Nagisa moves forward, observing the way Sai's expression is twisted in pain.

"If you leave him, he'll probably break out on his own. But a little hit will make it go faster."

She takes a deep breath and nods. Nagisa pulls out a kunai then turns it around and hits Sai's temple with its hilt. The boy stills, then dispels the genjutsu with a ragged, "kai."

"You with me?" she says.

Sai wipes the sweat from his brow and nods weakly. He smells like grief again, notes Nagisa.

"We can't beat the guy by ourselves, so I'm pretty sure we're gonna need to try as a team. We can figure out the bells later, what do you say?"

The boy straightens. "Understood," he says in a monotone voice, his eyes empty.

So that's his mission-ready mode, she notes, discomforted. She shakes it off. They need to find Sasuke.

They go back to the clearing, where the Uchiha heir is stuck in the Double Suicide Decapitation Jutsu.

"Any ideas on how to get him off?" murmurs Nagisa.

Sai pulls out his scroll and starts drawing. A giant bird materialises from the ink and flies up to Sasuke before digging its claws in his shoulders and pulling him out.

Nagisa takes that as her cue to distract Kakashi. She vaults forward, summoning multiple clones in a blatant mirroring of the tactic she used before. She uses her jutsu to propel herself into the air then her and her clones throw themselves on Kakashi, armed with explosive tags. It doesn't take long before she's thrown to the ground once more. She braces for impact, but it doesn't come; she finds herself picked up by an ink tiger. A second later, Sasuke is using the head of the chakra construct as a vaulting point and throws a Great Fireball jutsu on Kakashi followed by a complex ninja wire trap.

Nagisa launches herself back into the fray, and makes space for Sai who henges himself into one of her clones and uses the confusion to get behind Kakashi and—

"Time's up!" declares their sensei cheerfully before grabbing at the three of them with well-timed shunshins and throwing them down.

The three of them sit up, a mix of disgruntled and exhilarated as the adrenaline quietens. Kakashi gives them the time to catch their breath before he speaks again. They eye his cheerful expression warily as he dangles the bells in front of them.

"You're not at the level to beat a jounin at their own game but you've done well. Nice teamwork around the end there. Still, you failed to get the bells, which means you... didn't fail!"

"Yes!" crows Nagisa before adding, "huh?", playing at confusion.

She can't contain her giddiness at the thought that they've managed it. Naruto will be so proud, she thinks.

Sasuke looks hopelessly lost and furious about it. Sai on the other hand is tilting his head, thinking it over.

"The test had a hidden parametre," he deduces.

"That's right, Sai-chan. I tested your teamwork. At the beginning, I wasn't impressed. You all charged forward without consulting each other, it was a terrible mess. But then Nagisa-chan found you in the forest and you all got together to free Sasuke and make a plan. So you've not failed."

"We didn't fail, but we didn't pass," grumbles Sasuke.

Kakashi eye-smiles.

"That's right! After all, if you do remember, there are only two bells! Since you didn't do horribly, I'll grant you the privilege to choose amongst yourselves who will go back to the Academy. Aren't I nice? So, who will it be?"

A second teamwork test. Nagisa pouts. She thinks it's really unfair. She moves forward and opens her mouth to volunteer, but Sasuke beats her to it.

"I'll go back to the Academy. I was the last to join the team formation, it's only fair. Besides, it's only one year, and there's apparently additional lessons I can do. And maybe next year I'll get a sensei who's not four hours late to every meeting," he snarks, his hands in his pocket.

Kakashi places a hand on his chest in mock offence, "you break my heart, Sasuke-chan," he declares dramatically before turning to the other two genin. "What do you guys think?"

"Sasuke's Rookie of the Year, it would be kind of embarrassing if he had to go back," says Sai. "I can go."

"I don't mind going either. You're kind of a lame sensei," says Nagisa, sticking her tongue out at Kakashi.

"So cruel, my cute little genin!" whines the man. "I suppose I'll have to keep the three of you and really make you regret it, then!" he adds with an ominous grin before grabbing Nagisa by the jaw and placing a kunai at her throat.

He releases his killing intent, which makes the kunoichi freeze and the boys tense, caught off-guard.

"Sai, kill Sasuke or Nagisa dies," he orders.

Nagisa makes a strangled sound as Sai shunshins at Sasuke's side and picks up the ninja wire dropped at the boy's feet. She makes an aborted movement, only stopping when Kakashi's blade digs into her skin and draws blood. She freezes. 

Kakashi stills and lowers his blade at the moment Sai starts holding the wire in front of the Uchiha heir, his expression entirely blank.

"Stand down, Sai," he barks.

Sai blinks, then lowers the wire. "Hai," he says monotonously, moving away from Sasuke.

Sasuke eyes him warily and takes a step to the left, rolling his shoulders. His back is tense, notes Nagisa, whose heart feels like it's beating in her throat. She raises her arm and wipes the blood that is dripping on her high-neck collar with a mechanical swipe of the hand.

Kakashi rubs his hand over his face.

"This demonstration was meant to emphasise that teamwork is necessary to get out of situations where an enemy-nin has backed you into a corner, not to show how easy it is to kill a comrade. Complying with this type of order should be your absolute last resort, not your first," he instructs.

Nagisa raises a hand. "What if a higher-up is the one who gives the order?"

She's a bit sore about being chosen as the sacrifice, sue her.

Kakashi eyes her knowingly. "If the Hokage asks you to kill a comrade, you obey. But no one else has the power to make that call."

Sai looks unconvinced, but he says nothing. Nagisa wonders.

After this harrowing experience, Kakashi leads them to the Memorial Stone. They stand in front of the kunai-shaped edifice, staring at the thousands of names engraved on the stone. Nagisa looks on, unsure what to think about it. There, Kakashi introduces them to his nindo.

"Those who break the rules are trash, but those who abandon their comrades are worse than trash," he says with such conviction they have no choice to believe him.

Nagisa nods distractedly, her attention caught by a tell-tale spiral.

"Uzumaki Mito," she murmurs, tracing the name on the stone. Then she looks further down. "Uzumaki Ryuuji. Akie. Hinata. Aoi. Kushina."

Manami-nee was right, thinks Nagisa. All the Uzumaki shinobi who came here after the destruction of Uzushio are dead, except Nagisa. It would not be notable if there weren't so few of them and if their names — save for her mother and Uzumaki Mito's — weren't engraved so close to each other. Barely a dozen shinobi made it to Konoha after the devastation their village suffered, and they all died in the same war. She cannot blame her nee-san for thinking there was foul play.

"Careful, kit, you're attracting attention to yourself," warns Kurama.

Nagisa tenses and switches to another name, "there are hundreds of Uchiha names too. Your clan spilled so much blood for the village," she says to Sasuke, bowing in respect. "I'm sorry for your loss."

Kakashi-sensei twitches, but says nothing.

Sasuke on the other hand bristles, but after taking a look at her, he visibly schools himself and mutters, "thank you."

It's begrudging but she'll take it. Manami-nee taught her manners, she'll be using them. Naruto could have done with a few of those.

Their teacher, who probably feels like he's losing control of the situation, rallies them again and tells them to meet him at the same time and same place the next day.

"Will you be there on time, then?" Nagisa asks.

"Maa, who knows," he says vaguely, before he herds them to the Hokage Tower to take a team picture and receive their identification numbers.

The next day, Kakashi is late again, but Nagisa is on time.

She spoke to Naruto in her bathroom mirror before leaving. He advised her to wait and see what Sai would do instead of keeping her guard up all the time. He's confident she's capable of getting through to him and break the conditioning. Nagisa, who didn't even know conditioning was a thing she had to worry about, is not so sure about that, but she's willing to let it go for now. Naruto did say the man Sai is spying for is a village elder whose name escaped him, and that she should report to the Hokage if she has any proof of wrongdoing from the guy.

He also suggested she propose team spars to pass the time while they waited on their sensei. Looking back on it, he signed, he thinks they wasted that time instead of turning it into something productive. So Nagisa follows his advice and makes a beeline for the library where she withdraws a scroll on sealscript, a theory on elemental manipulation and a scroll about the Hiding in Water technique.

Sai is already there when she arrives, but Sasuke gets to the training ground right after she does. She greets her teammates with a salute before pulling out her reading material.

"What are you doing?" asks Sasuke, looking like he'd rather do anything but talk to her.

"Huh? Well, if sensei's gonna be late everyday I thought I might as well be productive. It's kind of a waste of time to wait around like that, ya know. So I brought reading material! Did ya know, with our shinobi identification we have access to the first floor of the library? Only the genin section, but that means we can look through the general repository, with all the recorded taijutsu and kenjutsu styles, D and C rank ninjutsu and genjutsu, and even the Bingo Books. We get what's not classified basically."

She bounces on her feet as she says so before summoning three clones. She gives one scroll to each then starts stretching. The clones step away and sit down to pour over the scrolls.

"You retain the memories of your clones, Cherry?" asks Sai.

"Uh-huh. Neat, right? Makes training and studying much easier, believe it!" She pauses. "Self-study's not gonna be enough to improve, so I do hope sensei is not gonna be the flighty type. We pick up bad habits when we train by ourselves for too long."

Sai hums. Sasuke looks disgruntled that he hasn't thought about it. Nagisa gives them a cheeky grin before settling down to stretch properly, then going through a series of kata. When she's done, she does some target practise, summoning clones and ordering them to evade her kunai and shuriken.

After an hour of this, she's properly worked up a sweat. Her clone working on the theory of elemental manipulation has dispelled, but the others are still hard at it. She rubs her temples to chase the brief headache caused by the influx of memories given to her by her Bunshin, then looks at her two teammates.

Sai is drawing and Sasuke is going through his own series of kata.

"Anyone up for a spar?" she says, clapping her hands.

Both of the boys straighten, then look at each other, undecided.

"How about we do a free-for-all?" suggests Nagisa with a bloodthirsty grin.

She mentally orders her studying clones to get the fuck away, and they scramble to their feet, scrolls in hand.

The boys pull out a kunai each, their eyes intent on her.

Chaos ensues.

Kakashi finds them dishevelled, bruised and poring over scrolls. Nagisa is reading the Hiding in Water technique, Sai is getting a refresher on sealscript and Sasuke has monopolised the elemental manipulation scroll she finished before their spar.

"Well, well, what do I see here? My cute little genin are hard at work, I see. I think you've warmed up enough for a D-rank mission!"

They both stand to attention eagerly. Nagisa puts away their reading material into the storage seal she embroidered on her kunai pouch.

"Ne, ne, what kind of missions are D-ranks, sensei?" she asks, already anticipating the face Sasuke will make when he finds out D-ranks are glorified chores.

"Maa, you'll see."

She pouts, disappointed, but gamely walks beside Kakashi as he leads them to the missions office. She muses that them meeting at the training ground when this is what their teacher planned for the day might actually be an indication that Naruto's advice was in fact what Kakashi expected of them in the first place.

Their first mission is to clear a field.

The look of disgust on Sasuke's face when he learns this is priceless. Nagisa snickers under her breath then pulls out her bandages and scarf from her storage seal to hide her whiskers and hair. She adjusts her hitai-ate on top of her head scarf so it's still visible with expert hands.

"What are you doing, Nagisa-chan?" asks their sensei curiously as they're walking.

"Civilians don't like me much, sensei, so I'm taking precautions," she explains brightly when she's done.

The two boys stiffen and Kakashi-sensei suddenly smells so intensely like pain that Nagisa has to cover her nose. The scent is gone as soon as she picks up on it, and she lowers her hand slowly, looking at it like she's not sure if she hallucinated it.

"It's okay, I'm used to it," she tells him with a reassuring grin and a shrug.

Kakashi-sensei looks like he wants to argue, but he says nothing.

Nagisa does not resent his silence. Not at all.

"Don't lie to yourself, kit," sighs Kurama.

They arrive to the client's house, and though she gets funny looks for the way her hair is wrapped — the twin pigtails bound by cloth make it look like she has horns, it's kind of funny — it seems like the farmer who greets them attributes it to the general weirdness of ninja so he doesn't comment.

They're shown to the field that needs clearing, and realise with dismay that the entire ground is covered in sharp rocks and fallen trees. It's a huge mess.

"How long do we have again?" asks Sai faintly, experimentally bending down to pick up and crush a decently-sized stone with a chakra-enhanced squeeze.

"Four hours," says Kakashi cheerfully before pulling out a book with an orange cover.

Nagisa sighs and starts scoping out the place, dragging the boys with her. They trade suggestions back and forth until they have something resembling a plan of attack. Sai has to break a small argument between her and Sasuke at some point, but they still get things done.

"So... fire jutsu to burn down the logs that are in the way, wind to push the stones down the ravine and Sai's beasts to do the heavy lifting," she sums up, then they get started.

When they're done, it's been five hours and they come back to the farm with lowered heads, disappointed to have failed to finish on time. Their sensei is still reading when they get back, and he takes the news with nonchalance.

"Maa, did I say four hours?" says Kakashi. "I meant six hours. My bad."

Nagisa yells at him until her voice is hoarse and Sai has to restrain Sasuke from launching himself at Kakashi. Her sensei is unphased.

"So that means we have an extra hour," comments their teacher once the yelling is done. He has put his book away and is looking at them intently. "What do you want to do?"

"Teach us an A-rank jutsu," commands Sasuke.

"Maa, let's do more D-ranks before we get to that. You're not quite at that level yet."

Nagisa raises her hand, "can we learn how to do the roof hopping thing? All the shinobi I see in the village travel by roof, but I can only jump off them. I'd move around faster if I didn't have to dodge civilians all the time, ya know."

"Do you mean tree-walking?" asks Sai, raising an eyebrow. "Is that not taught at the Academy."

Sai is so unimpressed he forgot to ask an inflection to his voice, she thinks, amused. She's pretty sure his last sentence was supposed to be a question.

"I'm afraid not," says Kakashi.

The rest of the session is spent demonstrating tree-walking. Sai already knows how to do it, and acts as an assistant sensei to Kakashi for the hour. Sasuke and Nagisa both fail at tree-walking before the end of the day, so they resolve to take some time to get it done the day after in-between studying.

Nagisa thinks this was a good day.

The next two weeks are spent doing the same things. Team Seven spar and study together in the mornings, Sasuke and Nagisa try to master tree-walking while Sai does his own things — currently, he tries to mix contact-activation poison with his ink so the beasts he summon can paralyse enemies with just a touch. Then Kakashi-sensei arrives and they do one to three D-ranks, depending on the level of difficulty. If they finish some time in advance, they request to learn something and almost always get shut down.

Once they get the tree-walking thing down, they switch to water-walking. To congratulate them, Kakashi agrees to teach Sasuke an electric palm jutsu, Sai gets a demonstration of a kenjutsu style he was interested in and Nagisa receives a bound journal shock-full of sealing theory. Judging by the Uzumaki spiral she finds doodled in the pages, she suspects this is her clan's sealing style. She doesn't say a word about it, though.

The contents of the journal are fascinating.

It starts with some kind of philosophical discussion of what sealing is that is honestly beyond Nagisa's capabilities. She understands the gist of it, though. Fuuinjutsu conducts chakra with its own language, in the same way that the combination of hand signs and their associated jutsu names shapes a shinobi's chakra to its desired manipulation. The practise has its roots in quite literally sealing things, but a close second application was the use of barriers. From what Nagisa understands, the first general uses of sealing had to do with spatial manipulation and still do.

Protecting or limiting access to a space. Creating more space, folding and hiding the things inside of it. Forcibly displacing something outside a space within it, or something inside outside of it.

This explains how barriers and storage seals work, the theory behind the jinchuuriki seals, even Namikaze Minato's technique. Things like silencing and stasis seals also work the same way: they limit how sound travel within a space or the movement of its components. Explosive and flashbang tags disrupt space while controlling how light and heat travel within it.

Once Nagisa understands the language of spatial fuuinjutsu and how to adapt it, she will be able to do anything.

She's so giddy at the very thought of it and absorbed in her reading she doesn't notice Sai before he plucks the journal from her hands and examines it. She yells at him and tries to get at her study material, but the boy is simply too tall and she doesn't want to use a jutsu that could potentially damage it.

"I'm gonna eat you, believe it!" she yells, jumping on top of him.

Sai finally releases the journal with a smirk. He's been more expressive lately. Not much, but it's nice to see. Except when he's teasing her, and then it's absolutely terrible and she hates him.

"I just wanted a look," he says innocently before his expression smooths into something more neutral. "And that thing is incomprehensible. Are you actually getting anything out of it?"

"What do you mean?" she exclaims. "It's fascinating! Here, this is talking about the trigram principle and how it allows to layer intent and stabilise sealing structures. The idea is that..."

She rambles about it for a good few minutes when she realises she's lost Sai at the third sentence. He's staring at her with a bemused expression. Sasuke, who's wandered closer somewhere around the five-minute mark is staring at her like he's never seen her before. She flushes.

"Anyway, it's not hard, ya know!"

Kakashi-sensei materialises behind her and pats her head.

"It is, Nagisa-chan. But it seems like you're some sort of fuuinjutsu genius. I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with that."

Huh.

After two months, Nagisa takes Naruto's example and wheedles the Hokage for a C-rank.

By this point, her team has mastered tree-walking, water-walking and they have achieved some level of team cohesion. They break formations all the time when they disagree with each other or just to show off, but a small cough from Kakashi is usually enough to settle them. Sasuke has three more jutsu in his arsenal, two of them being lightning techniques and another fire jutsu, and has started learning how to wield a katana. Nagisa has reached the level of an intermediate student in fuuinjutsu, she can perform Hiding in Water and the Gale Palm consistently in concealment exercises and spars and Kakashi is trying to find her a close-combat style she actually likes. Sai has perfected the Headhunter jutsu and the Double Suicide Decapitation technique, which he's wanted to use since the bell test, and learned Foxfire, the same fire jutsu as Sasuke.

It has crossed Nagisa's mind that Kakashi has started training them more like ANBU than genin. She's not going to complain, though. Naruto is very jealous of the way she's managed to kick their sensei into gear and get him to properly teach, but she's pointed out that this is entirely on him since he gave her the advice to be pro-active and her team has only followed suit.

They've also done up to fourty D-rank missions, seven of which were orders to find Tora the cat. Looking for that demon might have improved her tracking skills, but she is sick of it. Besides, she and Naruto calculated the best time to ask so she would be assigned the mission to Nami. She's hoping to find a way to contact Manami-nee on her way there.

When old man Tazuna shows up to tell them they'd be leaving the day after and complains that they're little kids who couldn't guard a barrel if their life depended on it, Nagisa feels so victorious she decides to ask her teammates if they want to have ramen to celebrate.

Sasuke is about to refuse when their sensei railroads them all into accepting. Nagisa doesn't like the heavy-handedness, but since it works in her favour, she decides to ignore it. She is a shinobi after all.

She leads the way, eager to get to her favourite shop in Konoha.

"Miso Chashu, please, Teuchi-oji-san," she exclaims as she bursts inside of it, her teammates filing in after her.

The boys order in a more sedate manner as she goes to chat with Ayame-chan.

When the food is there, she bickers with the boys and makes a game out of trying to see under their sensei's mask. It's a very fun evening, and by the end of it, Sasuke lets Sai call him Ducky without trying to tear his head off. The boy-spy paints a portrait of all of them, and Nagisa notices him stilling when he stumbles upon a drawing of himself and a grey-haired boy on the back of his notebook. She looks at him curiously, but since he smells like grief again, she does not ask. Instead she challenges Sasuke to a dumb game and ends up spilling the Uchiha's bowl on their sensei's lap. Kakashi-sensei uses that as an excuse to disappear without paying, and the three of them swear their vengeance will be sweet.

They go their separate ways after Nagisa has finished her fourth bowl of ramen, and the girl takes to the rooftops, feeling full and warm.

On her way home, Kurama talks to her.

"You're getting comfortable with your teammates," he observes.

Nagisa falters.

"Is that bad?"

Her voice is small in their mental link. There is a beat of silence, then a sigh.

"You tell me, kit. You're the one who's planning on defecting."

There is an implied question in there. Kurama is wondering if her resolve has faltered.

"Befriending them doesn't change anything. They can't make up for everything else, Kurama-san. Not for my suffering, and especially not for yours. This village has taken too much from us," she says quietly. "I'll not let it take more in the name of friendship. If they do care for me, they'll understand. And if they don't... it will all have been a lie. And I'll forgive that, since I'm a liar too, and we'll forget about this. It's fine."

"It's not fine if it hurts you," murmurs the fox.

Nagisa has no idea what to say to that, so she stays silent.

Chapter Text

Tazuna reeks of sweat and sake.

The day before, when the Hokage had been there, the man had cleaned up after himself a bit. But he apparently went on a drinking bender because of how much pressure he was under.

That's what she's guessing from the information her nose is picking up on. It's gross.

So the first impression of Tazuna she had was that he was very unimpressed with the idea of being guarded by children and the second is that he's so terrified at the thought of this mission ending in his death he needs to drink to forget. Nagisa would be outraged about this if her soul wasn't linked to a proper adult, but as it is she kind of understands where he's coming from. Still rude, though.

Nagisa had tried to speak to Naruto the night before going on the mission to get some intel on the parts of his memories that were blurry and the names she didn't know — which was all of them — but he wasn't in the mirror. That was inconvenient. She couldn't expect him to be available for a chat at any point in time, though. Her counterpart has a life too and he can't always give her helpful advice. She needs to remember that. It's hard, though.

Besides, Naruto is very much an advocate of letting people make their own mistakes. He wants her to experience life without the burden of his own choices weighing on her, and advises against planning for every little future event. Nagisa doesn't know what to think of it. Ideally, she would like to know about everything that could go wrong so she can plan for it. But even if she did have that information, it might not be enough to make meaningful changes. Naruto didn't know why things happened the way they did until too late, and even then he was working with incomplete information and an unwavering trust in his comrades. A loyalty that Nagisa does not share and an insight into his opponents that she cannot gain just by knowing his team was attacked thrice by missing-nin during their mission to Nami.

She does not know why the enemy attacked or if it can be prevented. She does not know why Naruto mourned one of them or how Sasuke survived what he thought was a killing blow. She does not know where Sakura was or what she was doing while Naruto was fighting. She cannot act based on faulty intel. She can only stay alert and do things according to her own judgement, comforted by the fact that her team is more prepared than her counterpart's was.

She's the last to arrive at the meeting point. She spent too long being indecisive, unsure what to bring to a mission she knew would last longer than expected. She settled for making a trip to the shinobi supplies store and bought a month of ration bars, a first-aid kit, and chakra pills to add to her already prepared bedroll, toiletries, water jug, her sealing supplies, kunai pouch and whetstone. Aka-tan, her red wallet shaped like the head of a fox, is disappointingly empty at the end of it. Her storage seal on the other hand is full to bursting, and she's five minutes late.

"You're late. Again," says Sasuke, his hands in his pocket and a disapproving look on his face.

She sticks her tongue out at him and Sai, who is nodding behind the boy. Nagisa salutes her sensei, lightly bows to their client, and takes a deep whiff of alcohol and stress-induced sweat as she does so. She makes a face and turns to her teacher. She thinks Kakashi-sensei can also smell Tazuna's fear and anxiety, but he doesn't say anything about it. When he notices her searching look, he just pats her head and cheerfully says, "let's get going, shall we?"

"Hai," say the three genin obediently.

They get moving, the boys taking the rear and bickering over some snarky comment Sai said. Nagisa didn't pay attention. Instead she trots forward to walk beside Tazuna who looks at her balefully.

"What do you want, kid?" he asks.

"Can you tell me about Nami no Kuni?"

That surprises the man.

"What do you want to know?" he asks warily.

Nagisa tilts her head. She wants to know so many things, but some are not safe to ask while her team is watching her. But she can improvise. She just has to play the sheltered girl who's never left Konoha. It's even true, give or take a soul bond with a well-travelled shinobi.

She tilts her head and starts listing things off with her fingers.

"Hi no Kuni is known for its fire festivals and its fan dancers. Ta has incredible flutists, Kaze does puppet shows and has renowned throat singers, Mizu has incredible ceramics and those sea dragon boat races," she sees Tazuna's expression turn ugly as she mentions the nation that destroyed Uzushio and pretends not to have noticed, though she privately understands his reaction, "Ishi has master sculptors and those archery competitions with the clay birds, Kaminari has renowned weavers and sparrow dancers, and Cha organises the best flower festivals in all of Nakatsukuni. What makes Nami special?" she asks, leaning forward with bright eyes.

Sasuke once again looks like he wants to strangle their Academy teachers for the gap in his education. Nagisa still thinks that Suzume-sensei only got away with adding so much to the kunoichi curriculum because the men in power in Konoha think women are only good for soft power roles.

Clan kunoichi like Tsunade-hime or Nagisa's mother are considered the exception, not the rule. Kunoichi are recommended in teams to fill the roles of support, healers and seductresses, and even the clan women are encouraged to retire early to take care of babies. Poisons and courtesies are women's weapons, and while the former was worth teaching the general shinobi corps, the latter was not. Why should an assassin or bodyguard need to know about the beauty of other nations when they can instead focus that energy into making themselves a better weapon?

She thinks it's infuriating, even more so because according to Manami-nee, this was not the case in Uzushio and especially not in the Uzumaki clan, where chakra reserves were not dictated by sexual characteristics. Uzushio crowned only two Kage, and the first was a woman. The Shodaime Uzukage was Lady Kiyo, Uzumaki Mito-sama's older sister and a terrifying kenjutsu master who earned the title of Heaven Splitter.

Nagisa wants to be just like her.

Tazuna chuckles and says, "all right, all right, I see what you mean. Well, we used to be known for our noh performances and our tsuzumi drummers. Our saltwater purification rituals and spiral dancers are still popular, though they've not seen much traffic these days," he mumbles before adding brightly. Nagisa wants to tell him Manami-nee taught her the spiral dance so badly, but she keeps it in. "Of course, what Nami is most known for is the food, ojou-chan. You'll not find better ramen than here!"

She bounces on the balls of her feet with a large grin, "Ne, ne, Kakashi-sensei, can we try ramen when the mission's over?"

She blinks as she hears her teammates groan.

"I'm surprised you weren't named after a ramen topping," mutters her sensei. "It's the only thing you talk about."

Nagisa laughs.

"Do I?"

"Yes!" exclaims Sai. "All the time. It is exhausting, Cherry."

Tazuna jumps a little at seeing the otherwise silent boy so animated. Unless Sai is arguing with Sasuke, he does not make a sound. He takes the mission more seriously than even the bridge-builder does.

"Ramen is the food of the gods," she defends. "Be glad I didn't pack cup noodles instead of rations!"

Their client looks her up and down. "You don't even have a bag," he says dubiously.

Nagisa grins before patting down the embroidered seal on her kunai pouch.

"I don't need one. It's all in there."

She channels some chakra to her fingers and watches the seal glow to activate. Nagisa pulls out a ration bar and dramatically pulls it back in, watching the old man whistle in appreciation, his eyes wide.

"That would be so useful on construction sites. But what happens if it's damaged?" he asks, pointing at the thread.

The kunoichi shrugs.

"Then I lose my supplies. It would suck, but there's nothing truly irreplaceable in there."

"If someone's close enough to her to slice open her storage seal, the things she put in there will be the least of her worries," remarks Kakashi darkly.

Being reminded of the potential danger of this escort mission seems to sober Tazuna, so Nagisa changes the subject. She continues to quiz the man on his nation's culture and history, and though he doesn't touch on recent events, the land he describes was once peaceful and prosperous, full of beauty and joy. He tries to make it seem like it still is, but he cannot convince even himself, let alone the kunoichi at his side.

After a few days of walking, she asks him a few innocuous, but still political questions, desirous to know how bad the situation is for the land of her ancestors. He tells her they have never had a daimyou. The land is split between a coastal mainland and an archipelago of islands, all with their own traditions and modes of governance. He hints at a now defunct governing body, and Nagisa guesses from the way he glosses over it that he is talking about the Uzukage.

In the gaps within the narrative, Nagisa sees the impact the clans of Uzu had on Nami. The Uzumaki most of all as the historical rulers of Uzushio, but also the Ayazora, the famed civilian clan who counted among their numbers the most famous blacksmiths on the continent of Nakatsukuni, the Souma, the largest clan of Uzushio who were bodyguards and vassals of the Uzumaki and whose loyalty to their leaders and shrewdness in political matters was known to all, the Oozeki clan, responsible for maintaining the barriers around Nami villages, the Shirakumo, walking on clouds and passing from island to island to collect mission requests, the Kamewari, summoning turtles to fix coral reefs to bring back fish to the coast in times of need.

There are others, Nagisa is sure, but Manami-nee could not remember them all and only had stories about the clans that interacted with civilians.

What she doesn't understand is why Tazuna is dancing around the subject. In Konoha, the gag order around Nagisa herself and the Devastation of Uzushio has a purpose, if an unsavoury one. But she doesn't think a civilian bridge-builder would be aware of its existence, unless the Sandaime has somehow told him to keep quiet. She doubts it. If that was something Sarutobi Hiruzen was worried about, he would have assigned them another mission.

Something else must be going on. Something she doesn't understand, and which Naruto had no context for when he made the same trip to Nami, unaware as he was of the link he had to the place. Naruto did not have a Manami-nee who patiently told him stories about the home they both yearned for, tracing clan symbols on the back of his hand so he would recognise an Uzushio-nin who doesn't hide on sight.

She is about to ask if Tazuna knows a man named Gato when she notices a puddle on an otherwise dry road.

Nagisa twists slightly to make eye-contact with her team. Sai's gaze is on the same thing, and he is signing, "no rain," to Sasuke with familiar hand signs to discreetly call his attention. Nagisa wishes she had told him that the Academy does not teach them and unlike her, Sasuke had no reason to learn.

Kakashi-sensei on the other hand is smiling, his body relaxed and leaning back. His hand innocuously rests on his thigh, a few centimetres away from his kunai pouch. Nagisa straightens and asks Tazuna a loud question about the name of the capital of Nami while discreetly pulling out a stasis seal. The man looks at her, confused. She has already asked him this the day before, and she herself had mentioned the fact that the capital is gone earlier this morning. He lets out an aborted cry when they step closer to the puddle and two shinobi emerge out of their Hiding in Water technique, their sharp weapons closing in on the group.

Nagisa summons three clones and leaves them to guard Tazuna. Her heart is in her throat as she sees Kakashi-sensei move forward and seemingly be skewered by the two men who cannot be more skilled than chuunin-level.

"He's fine, kit, focus," rumbles Kurama.

Sai is already jumping into the fray, summoning a leaping tiger who targets shuriken chains wielded by the farthest enemy to force him into either disarming himself or being pinned to the ground. Nagisa summons a gale and another clone and pushes her bunshin forward, the stasis seal she pulled out in her hand. Sasuke engages the missing-nin closest to Tazuna and a beat after, the man stills, stasis tag stuck to his neck. His frozen eyes helplessly gaze at his brother, pinned down by an ink tiger.

"Regroup," barks Kakashi, appearing right behind the two missing-nin.

The three genin watch as their sensei knocks them out. Nagisa relaxes and dispels her clones, but does not drop out of her fighting stance, her nose and ears trained on their surroundings.

"What are we doing with them?" she asks, eyeing the two downed men.

"We'll tie them to a tree with a beaconing tag. We're still in Hi no Kuni territory, so a patrol will come pick them up sooner or later."

Sai raises an eyebrow. "Shouldn't they be terminated?" They all look at him curiously. The phrasing is... odd, notes Nagisa. Their teammate does not seem to notice. He continues. "They might escape and interfere with the mission again."

Kakashi shakes his head and moves forward. He bends down, picks up the two shinobi and carries them to the tree as he talks.

"It's not worth killing them. Those two were Gozu and Meizu, the Demon Brothers. They're B-Rank Missing-Nin from Kiri, and they're wanted alive by the village for interrogation." Kakashi eye-smiles, pulling out a rope and tying up the Kiri nin with practised moves. "You can look forward to a nice bonus on this mission."

Nagisa wants to ask about the beaconing tag, but her sensei's attention is now on Tazuna. She turns, and sees the man is sweating profusely and his breathing is erratic. The attack must have surprised him, she thinks sympathetically.

"Tazuna-san," says her sensei cheerfully. "I believe you've omitted a few things about our mission parametres. Am I wrong?"

The man gulps.

"I might not... I might not have been as forecoming as I should have." He bites his lip, then deflates. "You see, it's like this..."

Nagisa listens to the man's tale with a feeling of mounting horror. When the name of the businessman who is imposing his reign of terror on Nami comes up, she freezes before stepping forward and grabbing the man by the shirt.

"Did you just say Gato?" she exclaims.

She thinks her ears must have failed her. It can't be.

Tazuna's eyes widen and he nods frantically, looking at her with wary concern. Her team does not seem to know what to do about her outburst. Sasuke looks at her warily, and Sai and Kakashi's expressions are unreadable.

"How do you know? Have you met him?" she demands urgently. "Did he come to your village?"

She only met Gato-san once, and it was very brief. He was leaving the oiran's room as Nagisa was entering it, and he'd looked at her and commented that she would grow up to be pretty like her nee-san. He hadn't smiled when she said it, and Nagisa hadn't liked it. She hated that he also didn't come pick up Manami-nee for the wedding. He sent his men instead, and a gilded palanquin. She remembers thinking it was very grand, and nothing like her nee-san's tastes. Manami-nee admired seashells and osmanthus, not gold and jewels.

She feels the red chakra of the Kyuubi spilling out of her, and she's powerless to stop it. Her horror is too great. She does not doubt Tazuna's words, she saw his village in Naruto's memories. And if she cannot doubt him, this means that she let her older sister in the clutches of someone who seeks to starve their people and destroy their home. It's unforgivable.

"He was there when they tied my son to a post and beat him to death for standing up to him," spits Tazuna, confusion and grief warring on his face.

Her control slips again.

"I'm sorry for using your chakra, Kurama-san," she thinks miserably.

Kurama growls. "You're not using it, kit. This is my doing. I'm as angry as you are."

Her heart warms at the thought that the fox is angry on her behalf, but it does not distract her. Not when this is so important.

"Nee-san," murmurs Nagisa, releasing Tazuna and raking her fingers on her arms anxiously. "She would have never agreed to marry him if she knew... and she's not answered my letters. Did she find out? Did he do something to her?"

"Who are you talking about, Cherry?" asks Sai, his eyes intent on her.

"I—"

She hesitates, looking up at her sensei and Sai alternately. Kakashi was among the ANBU assigned to watch her, though his presence was only infrequent. As far as she understood it, the jinchuuriki mission was assigned to nin between more challenging missions so they could recover from injuries sustained on the field. The ANBU guarding her always smelled like blood, medicine and misery, and few of them thought to hide it from her. She should not know that, but it would have been hard not to notice. Ninja assigned to the library, the hospital and the administrative buildings also had the same smell, though she could tell they weren't ANBU because they were much easier to spot.

Kakashi steps forward and pats her on the head. Nagisa relaxes without even meaning to. She eyes Sai apprehensively. In the little time they have spent together, she has grown to consider him like one of her precious people in the same way that Sasuke and Kakashi-sensei have grown on her. But although she gets along with him better on the surface, he is the last person on her team she would trust with her most precious person.

And as she looks at him, she witnesses the moment realisation dawns on him. Sai smells like hurt for a moment, then like shame and indecision before he ruthlessly pushes it down. His blank facade resurfaces. It is too late though. She knows that he knows, and he understands that she sees him for what he is.

It hurts him to be laid bare like this, she can tell.

"Well?" asks Sasuke impatiently, cutting them off. "If you're not gonna say, we should get moving. We don't have all day. Not if this Gato person has hired more missing-nin."

"You're staying?" exclaims Tazuna, surprised. "I thought..."

He doesn't finish his sentence, instead looking her way with caution.

Nagisa turns back to him. "We will continue," she says firmly.

"Are we, now?" hums Kakashi.

The kunoichi looks up at him. She does not know what her expression does, but it seems her message is clear; not only does she intend on seeing this mission to its completion, but she will also not come back to Konoha until she has confirmation that Manami-nee is safe.

Sasuke nods too, clearly refusing to miss out on field experience because of an increased danger level.

"What do you think, Sai?"

"It's up to you, sensei."

"Maa, if it's up to me, I suppose I'm quite curious to meet this Gato person. Let's move, kids."

Nothing more is said about it, and though Sai looks like he wants to argue, but one look from Kakashi has him snapping his mouth shut. Some things cannot be said on an open road, and he is just as aware as Nagisa is that this is not a conversation they can have while enemies might be listening in.

They walk in silence, their senses trained on their surroundings. The easy-going atmosphere of the rest of the trip is gone, replaced by an almost unbearable tension. Nagisa walks with Sasuke on the rear, and Sai has moved closer to Kakashi-sensei, who keeps eyeing the only kunoichi of the group with unreadable eyes. Both of them are keeping Tazuna away from her and she thinks they want her to calm down before she tries to interrogate him again.

Nagisa feels restless. She removes a kunai from her pouch and glances at it. Naruto is in the reflection, but she can't do more than stare at him without attracting suspicion. He looks concerned, and she understands why. But she can't find the strength in herself to smile and reassure him. She wants Manami-nee, and she's terrified to think about what they're going to find in Nami.

Zabuza does not take them by surprise. Nagisa expected him, and they were all on alert for another attack.

No, they're not blindsided by his appearance. The difference in their skill is a different story.

Nagisa's team is more competent than Naruto's team Seven. They're more grounded and they have had more training. The three of them are easily chuunin level, for all that Sai is visibly the only one who's had field experience before.

And yet the difference between them and a jounin like Zabuza is very obvious. The man runs circles around them, and he takes them much more seriously than he had Naruto's team. As such, the only reason why they are still alive is because of the meagre teamwork skills Kakashi has taught them. Nagisa has used her clones to run interference between Zabuza's blade and one of her teammates three times by now, Sai has pulled her and Sasuke away with ink birds just as many times and their last teammate is putting his speed to good use to take the brunt of the damage.

Kakashi cannot end the fight because the missing-nin is hounding them, trying to bypass who he calls pesky kids to get to Tazuna.

Nagisa refuses to let it happen. This man is a hero to Nami, and she cannot aspire to become Uzukage if she fails to protect him.

"Well, well," comments Zabuza as he dodges Kakashi's tanto after yet another stalemate that has left the genin worse for wear and him completely unruffled. "It seems like the tree-huggers do train their kids to do more than sing around a fire camp after all. It didn't seem like it during the Third War."

Kakashi's eyes narrow at the dig at his comrades. The steel of his blade meets Kubikiribocho with a resounding clang before both him and Zabuza separate, facing each other metres away.

The kunoichi watches as a very familiar scene plays out in front of her. She briefly knew it was a possible outcome from Naruto's memories, but it is different to witness her sensei work in person.

"So this is the Sharingan at hand," she murmurs as Kakashi takes back control of the fight, nullifying Zabuza's technique and turning them on him with the ease of a seasoned ninjutsu specialist.

Sasuke twitches at her side, his eyes fixed on the fight. Sai, who is guarding Tazuna, corrals the civilian to their side, his eyes trained on the same thing as them.

"Kakashi-sensei is the only man known to have survived a doujutsu transplant."

Nagisa knows that is not true because of Naruto, but she has no feasible way to explain why she would know that, so she stays silent.

"The village wouldn't have let him keep it if he'd stolen it. That's against the Clan Charter," she says confidently. "A gift from a fallen comrade, perhaps? He must have been very loved."

"Or he stole it from a corpse," snarls Sasuke.

The kunoichi presses a hand on his forearm. Sasuke slaps it away, though the gesture has no heat.

"Does sensei seem like the type of person who would do that?" refutes Sai.

The Uchiha abruptly looks exhausted.

"You think you know someone until they stab you in the back," he murmurs, then says nothing more. They watch as Zabuza falls first, and run to Kakashi's side to check on him only to see someone shunshin to Zabuza's corpse.

The self-proclaimed hunter-nin thanks their sensei for getting rid of Zabuza. In the meantime, Nagisa discreetly summons a tracking seal she designed while looking for Tora the cat. It was her first successful creation and she was very proud when Kakashi approved its use on the field. She channels chakra to the paper and tears the part meant to stick to her target. The other seal would stay with her and be drawn to its counterpart like a magnet.

She moved forward, acting like she was going to inspect Zabuza's "corpse," and stuck the tag to the hunter-nin's ankle when the shinobi withdrew away from her.

"I will return to Kiri. You have my thanks, Konoha," announces the impostor rapidly before disappearing from their senses.

Sai has noticed what she did, but Sasuke is only focused on their sensei. He looks like he's about to spit the questions he wants to ask there, but he does not get the chance; Kakashi sways on his feet, and drops.

They hurry to his side. Sai checks his pulse while Nagisa rummages in her storage seal for a chakra pill. She puts her fingers inside Kakashi's mask, carefully not to remove it from his face, and presses the pill into his slackened mouth. She massages his throat to help him swallow. And only straightens once it's done.

"Who volunteers to carry him?" she asks, tucking her tracking seal in her kunai pouch.

Sai gives her an unimpressed look before drawing a giant mythical lion. He bends to pick up Kakashi and hops on the lion's back before gesturing at them.

"What are you waiting for?"

Seeing what has become of the land her mother once called home breaks Nagisa's heart. The ruins of a people's once prosperous community are still there, and the veil of misery over it is blatant for all to see. She does not let herself linger, however. Her team has discarded the ink lion to enter the village proper, preferring to exercise some discretion. Nagisa, Sasuke and Sai take turn carrying their sensei.

When they arrive at Tazuna's house and manage to get Kakashi into a proper bed, the three genin stare at each other, unsure what to do. Thankfully, Tsunami, Tazuna's daughter, is there to take charge. She has them eat and bathe themselves before assigning them a room.

She apologises to Nagisa for making her room with boys, but the kunoichi waves her off. Instead she asks to talk to the woman's father.

"I wanted to apologise," she says to Tazuna when they've both sat down at the dining table.

She pretends she does not sense Sai and Sasuke lurking behind the door, and bows to the man, her expression contrite.

"I should not have treated you the way I did. But I want to explain, if you'll let me."

The man nods, gesturing at her to go ahead.

"My older sister married Gato-san three years ago," she starts, "because he promised to bring her home. My family is from Nami, you see, and we have been displaced for a very long time."

"She wrote me at first," she continues, her eyes unseeing. "She said the man had a big house. Not the traditional type she preferred, but grand and obviously opulent. She said he got her a lot of clothes in the style that's popular in Kaminari and that it's not what she's used to but she might grow to like it. She did not say he treated her well, or that he let her go outside. But she said she could see the ocean from her window. She'd always dreamed of it, so I was happy for her. Then she told me she might be pregnant, and then I stopped getting letters."

Her hands are trembling.

"You have to understand, Tazuna-san, my sister would have never married that man if she'd known what he was doing to Nami, and she would not have agreed to stay with a person like that."

"Calm down, kit."

She exhales. Forces herself to relax.

"You hired us to protect your bridge. But I'll do more than that," she vows. "I'll free Nami and my sister from Gato, believe it."

"You can't promise me that while your sensei's unconscious, I know that much," he rebukes her gently. "But thank you, Uzumaki-hime."

Nagisa's eyes widen. She did not tell him her last name.

"I guessed," he replies to her unspoken question with a smile. "That hair tells a story, you know, and your love for our land is obvious when you talk."

Her smile is watery, but bright at those words.

When she finally leaves the room, drained but relieved at having righted a wrong, she comes face to face with her teammates. Nagisa presses her lips together and says, "I think it's time we have a talk, don't you think, Sai?"

Chapter Text

They stare at each other in silence.

Nagisa doesn't know where to start. Or maybe she does. She could start at the beginning. Explain how she met her sister and what she told her about her clan. She could do what she always did, and borrow truths from Naruto to tell lies of her own. Her blond counterpart had toyed with the idea of rebuilding the Uzumaki Clan in Konoha and perhaps doing something about Nami. She could lie and say that was her plan.

But she doesn't want to lie to Sai.

Not now.

She feels too raw.

Her sister is in possible danger, her home under threat. The very foundations of her dream are being shaken by forces outside of her control. She doesn't have the heart to bury them under more lies.

But she cann't tell the truth, no matter how much she wishes it.

So she has to start sideways.

"I have a very good nose, you know." She pauses, and looks down at the futon she is sitting cross-legged on. The cloth is a little frayed, but thick enough that she knows she won't be cold tonight. "It's good enough I've wondered if my da' was an Inuzuka. But it's not good enough for me to recognise your master if I were to cross him in the streets."

She looks up just in time to see how Sai flinches, startled. His hand goes to his kunai pouch. Nagisa continues, undeterred. He is not a threat to her, she knows this.

"But I assume he's from Konoha, right? He must be. You don't have the kind of stilted speech patterns we're told to look out for in infiltrators, and you can't hide your total lack of social graces so I'm guessing you wouldn't be able to hide that either."

Sasuke's head has whipped to stare at Sai, and he looks both outraged and uncertain.

"Oh, it was hard to tell at first. You've slipped only once, when you said he collects Bingo Books. It could have been a slip of the tongue, but you didn't say shishou. You said shujin. Your master, not your teacher. And you suppress your scent very thoroughly. Most of the time you smell like ink and not much else. But I've been around you enough to realise that the nothing you smell like is not something you're expending your chakra to produce. You don't have that much chakra. So someone fixed that for you. And genin who hide their scents are often assumed to be Black Ops, but Kakashi-sensei didn't know you."

She shrugs. She suspects that their teacher actually has an idea where Sai came from and who he's spying for. If he's not saying anything of it, it means that it's either state-sanctioned, or that the person who sent Sai is untouchable.

"What I couldn't figure out is who you were here for," she says. "Sasuke and I are both antisocial. We're assets to the village but we have very few, if no ties to it at all." Naruto has only ever escaped suspicions of defecting because he emphatically told everyone his goal was to be Hokage. He tied himself to Konoha with every breath he took, and they did not have to worry about him. Nagisa on the other hand... "That's the kind of thing a genin team fixes, usually, and if our third teammate can keep an eye on us at the same time, it's great, right? Very convenient."

"So you do know you're an asset to the village," croaks Sai. "I've wondered."

"I'm an Uzumaki," she says with a fake, fake smile. "We were such good assets Kiri murdered us for it. Though it was not just us. There were ten clans in Uzushio. Ten clans who allied with Konoha in every war until they were wiped out. Help didn't come. And now Konoha-jin sew my clan symbol on their flak jackets in remembrance, but they do not teach about the allies they failed in history classes."

"Do you hate Konoha?"

Nagisa's eyes widen at the blunt question. It does not come from Sai, as she expected, but from Sasuke. His eyes are dark, his expression shaded.

"What does it matter? I swore oaths. Besides..." Her tongue feels like lead as she tries to get it to cooperate, but this lie will save her life. Her eyes turn into half-moons, her smile turns more genuine. "My precious people are there."

It's not exactly wrong. This team has become precious to her. They've clawed themselves into her heart just as Naruto had warned they would. But it's not enough to make her forget the people who depend on her. It's not enough to make her forsake her promise to Kurama, her vow to Manami.

Sasuke draws back into himself, his habitual disdain making his way back on his face. But his eyes are considering, and he nods at her. She's not sure what he got from this, but she's never seen him so unguarded towards her. His wariness seems entirely centred around Sai instead.

"Not all of them," points out the spy. "Your sister is here."

She tilts her head. So now they are getting to it.

"She is. And I let her go."

"If I report this, she'll be brought back to Konoha by force to ensure your compliance," says Sai blankly.

Nagisa grits her teeth. She sees Kurama's tails lash violently in her mind's eye, and struggles to contain his chakra. Leashing her is leashing him, he knows this, and he hates the very thought of it.

"Will you?" she asks as evenly as she can.

Sai's eyes widen the same way they did when she'd pointed out that a suggestion was not an order a few months before. His hands slacken. His posture slumps. Nagisa resists the urge to lunge forward and cradle him. Her teeth itch.

After a long silence, Sai murmurs, "no. I will not."

The kunoichi wants to laugh in relief, but she knows it could be taken wrongly, so she refrains. Her eyes glisten and she gives him the brightest smile she can muster. It's entirely genuine this time.

Sasuke is not satisfied with this.

"Who's your master then?" he demands. "Who do you work for?"

"Ah, Sasuke..." starts Nagisa just as Sai sticks out his tongue. For a brief moment, nothing happens, and Sasuke draws himself up at the perceived insult, until it shimmers and a seal appears on its surface. The ink black monstrosity is thick, and full of rigid lines. "A cursed seal. He can't speak of it."

"Can't you undo it?"

She shakes her head.

"Not at my level. Not yet."

"But you will," asks Sai.

He looks... fragile. Lost.

"Of course."

Sai shudders, then starts giggling. Uncontrollable shakes of laughter overtake him, and suddenly he's crying. Nagisa makes a wounded sound and moves forward to catch her teammate. She embraces him fiercely, and the gesture shocks him so much he startles out of laughter. Still, it takes him much longer to compose himself. Nagisa waits patiently while Sasuke adverts his gaze, probably discomforted by this display of emotions. Yet he does not leave, his presence a steady anchor in Sai's field of vision.

When the teammate in her arms has calmed, he rests his head in the crook of Nagisa's elbow. She tentatively brings a hand to his head and cards through his hair with her fingers. Slowly. Like Manami-nee used to do to her when she was younger.

"These boys..." she tells Kurama, "I love them like brothers. I don't know what will become of us, especially after I leave. But I love them, ya know. I don't think I can help it."

"Oh, kit," sighs the kitsune, "you were fooling nobody."

Sai tells them about his brother in hushed tones. He is careful in his words, especially after an oblique mention of his master activates the seal which seizes his body, rendering him paralysed for a minute that felt like an hour. Sasuke tells him to stop talking with the kind of harsh voice that betrays his worry, but Sai stubbornly trudges on. He painstakingly tells them about Shin, and about the one and only time he disobeyed orders.

Nagisa privately thinks Shin did him a disservice by asking him to bury his devotion, but she does not want to be cruel to the boy who died to let Sai live. He too had been indoctrinated, he would likely not have known any better.

They fall asleep in a tangle of limbs, and are awoken the next day by an aching Kakashi-sensei, who eye-smiles at them and calls them sleepyheads before asking them for a report. He looks at Sai when he does, as the boy is usually the most diligent of the three with the finer aspects of shinobi life, but it is Sasuke who answers this time, outlying their trek to Tazuna's house with clipped words.

Kakashi claps his hands.

"Thank you, Sasuke-chan. Now, I'll admit we have a conundrum on our hands. Our initial mission parametres requested of us that we protect the bridge and its builders until its completion. It did not account for missing-nin, and especially not for the Demon of the Mist."

Sasuke makes a questioning sound. "I thought Zabuza was dead."

Their teacher shakes his head, and explains that hunter-nin from Kiri decapitate heads and bring those back, they do not take a whole body with them. The shinobi who picked up Zabuza was likely his accomplice.

"Our mission also didn't account for one of our operatives being emotionally compromised," continues Kakashi-sensei, staring evenly at Nagisa.

She straightens and looks him in the eyes before she takes a deep breath. And bows low.

"I want to save my sister, Kakashi-sensei. Please, help me."

She does not see what his expression does, but she can hear the way his hands flutter and he takes a step back before steadying himself and reaching forward. One hand pats her head, the other straigthens her. "Maa, maa, Nagisa-chan, no need for that," he says, his voice tinged with desperation."

"Please," she whispers again.

"I was about to suggest I do some recon, locate Gato's base and see if I can locate your Manami-nee. I woke up earlier than anyone could have expected thanks to the chakra pill you gave me," he explains while giving her a strange look, though he seems approving of her foresight, "and Zabuza will need a few days to recover. It's the perfect time to get a lay of the land. You three will remain here and watch over Tazuna. I'm counting on you. Sai, you're squad leader."

"Hai."

Nagisa takes hold of his sleeve before their sensei can body-flicker away from them. She knows him by now, and he is totally the type to leave because he doesn't want her to thank him.

"Would this help?" she asks, holding out the tracking seal she stuck on the hunter-nin. "They might be staying in different locations but... Gato," she says with revulsion, "would visit them to at least find out if they've succeeded, wouldn't he?"

"My student is so smart," exclaims Kakashi, taking the seal and disappearing with it.

The three genin go to join Tazuna and his family in the living room. Inari, Tazuna's grandson, yells at them about the fate of heroes. When his grandfather shushes him and tells him that Nagisa's sister is in danger from Gato too, he screams that there's no use saving her since she's probably already dead.

The kunoichi snaps back, "and does that mean I should leave her in his clutches? Dead or alive, my sister will be returned to me. I'm not a hero kid, I'm a kunoichi. If Gato has dared to lay a hand on her, I'll cut it off him."

The kid draws back as if she slapped him. She bites her lip. He's so young, she shouldn't have said that.

"Whatever," yells Inari before he runs out.

"Was that necessary, hime?" sighs Tsunami.

Nagisa shrugs.

"Probably not."

She says no more and busies herself with helping the young woman prepare breakfast. They eat quickly, then escort Tazuna to the bridge. Nagisa goads the boys into sparring with her on the water to pass the time, leaving clones with builders to warn her if something goes awry. The fight with Zabuza and the revelations of the previous day have lit a fire under them. They take this spar much more seriously than they ever have. No one wins; it's not the point of the exercise. At the end of it, Nagisa feels energised.

They return to the bridge and Nagisa brainstorms with Sai and Sasuke on ways to lay traps around the construction site to prevent sabotage. They get Tazuna's consent and wait for him to warn his crew, then get to work. It takes them the better part of that day.

Kakashi comes back the next day with some news. Gato indeed came to visit the hunter-nin and a wounded Zabuza. He reports that they have a work relationship, but no particular loyalty to each other, which is encouraging.

"Zabuza might be made to stand down if we can reach a compromise," he muses.

The jounin followed Gato to his residence, and found out he has hired many more than the Kiri missing-nin. A band of mercenaries goes in and out of his house and guard it to the best of their abilities. He says that with scornful amusement, implying that the security was no trouble at all.

"Your sister is unharmed," he then tells her. "But she's trapped in her own quarters, with guards at every door and window. She can't leave, especially since she has a child with her. A little boy. His name..."

Her sensei tenses then. She does not understand his trepidation until he closes his eye and says with a small voice, "his name is Minato."

Nagisa's breath catches in her throat, but she manages a strangled, "like the Yondaime?"

Kakashi watches her carefully, but he seems to see nothing suspicious on her face. Nagisa has perfected her guileless expression for years now. She's pretty sure it's flawless. At best, he'll suspect Manami-nee to have known who her parents were, but not to have told her. He knows she knows about her Uzumaki heritage, but she's never given any indication that she was aware of the Kyuubi or of the man who sealed it into her. She wonders how long Konoha is planning to keep her in the dark.

"What is the plan, then?" asks Sai.

"We kill Gato," says Sasuke bluntly.

Kakashi shakes his head.

"We cannot leave the bridge builders alone, and the number of enemies means that splitting the team would be unwise. No, we must wait for a confrontation, then get Manami when it's over."

Nagisa wants to protest, but she can't bring herself to. Nami's well-being and liberation depends on Tazuna's success. Manami-nee would hate it if she risked the man's safety to rescue her.

"I'll send a clone to protect her," assures her sensei when she sees her wring her hands, anxious.

"That's not good enough," she murmurs.

"Your sister has been fine for this long. She can hold on a little longer," affirms Kurama with a soothing rumble.

"I'm sorry, Nagisa-chan."

That night, the kunoichi does not sleep. She can't. She tosses and turns, staring at the ceiling and praying for her sister's safety.

When the sun rises, Nagisa cannot handle herself anymore. She leaves the house on her tiptoes. Kakashi-sensei opens his eye when she walks at his side, and she mouths that she wants to get some fresh air. He closes his eye, giving his silent assent. She walks to the edge of the forest, checking on the traps when she sees movement in the trees. She pushes chakra to her feet and jumps up the length of the oak in front of her and silently moves towards the source of the rustle in the branches. She spies a clearing, where a beautiful person is picking herbs.

They're not wearing a hitai-ate, and yet...

"That's your mysterious hunter-nin," murmurs Kurama in her mind.

She nods.

Nagisa jumps down on soundless steps, and makes her way to the clearing.

"Do you need some help, nee-san?" she asks before leaning forward and squinting. "Eh, you're really pretty, ya know?"

"I'm just gathering herbs," says the missing-nin, whose gender she's still not sure of. "And thank you."

"Are you sick? Those are for fever," she points at what the shinobi is picking.

"No, but my precious person is."

Nagisa tilts her head and smiles. "It's kind of you to take care of them. Doctors are hard to come by around these parts."

There's an edge to the way she says it, but she can't help it. Gato's operations and Kiri's destruction of Uzushio are the two main causes of Nami's current state. This missing-nin might be someone Naruto was fond of before they died, but it still rubs her the wrong way.

They seem to sense it, because they raise their eyebrows and keep themselves looking deliberately non-threatening.

"Are you from around here..."

"Nagisa," she says fearlessly.

Kurama tuts in her head and she mentally sticks out her tongue at him.

"Are you from around here, Nagisa-san?" they ask softly.

She tilts her head. "Yes and no. My family comes from Nami, but I'm from elsewhere." She taps at her hitai-ate. "It's obvious, isn't it? Say, are you a boy? I really can't tell."

The missing-nin looks surprised, but nods. "I am, yes. Most of the time."

"I see, I see." She changes the subject, turning her gaze back to the herbs. "I hope your precious person gets better."

"Do you have someone who is precious to you?"

Nagisa hums.

"Some time ago, I would have told you I do, but only one person. Now I've let a few more into my heart. This first person is still the most important of them all, however. I hope she's safe."

Her voice dips at the end. The boy leans forward, as if entranced.

"Why wouldn't she be?" he asks.

"Because a very bad man keeps her prisoner," she says with a shrug and a terrible grin that tries to pass for a reassuring smile. "But I'm going to save her, believe it. And I'll cut down anyone who stands in my way."

There is light in the hunter-nin's eyes when she says this. He smiles gently.

"I see. You must love her very much." He pauses, then stands up, resting his backet at the crook of his elbow. "I need to go. I am expected."

"Ne, what's your name?" Nagisa asks on impulse before he can leave.

After hearing it, she crouches down and pulls out a kunai, where Naruto's reflection greets her. He makes an excited sign when he sees where she is, then pauses at her grave expression. She gives him a brief summary of the events of the last few days, and he frowns before signing, "I'm glad Sai came around. And I'm sorry about Manami."

When he signs it, the sign he makes is for "our sister," and Nagisa's heart is warmed by it. She gives him a bright smile before saying goodbye. She needs to go back to her team.

When she heads back to the house, Kakashi asks her, "Sai's not with you?"

"Huh? No, I left at dawn. Is he not here?"

Her teacher shakes his head. She frowns, briefly worried about her teammate before reminding herself that she had more important news to share. Sai probably went to check the traps on the other side of the bridge.

"I met the hunter-nin. His name is Haku."

Chapter Text

Sai comes back an hour later without explaining where he went. He stays for another four hours, then disappears again. This pattern goes on the next day too, and Kakashi-sensei has to pull him aside. Whatever he tells him must have satisfied him, because the jounin lets him go.

Kakashi-sensei and Sai have a peculiar relationship. They understand each other, she thinks, though she does not understand on what basis. Sometimes she wonders if their teacher reminds Sai of his brother. He has a way of looking at the man that is both wistful and admiring. Pure. He looks up to him in a way Nagisa, with her lies and her insights on the man, and Sasuke, with the doujutsu transplant and the shadow of his brother hanging over them, just cannot relate to.

Nagisa is curious, but she tries not to press. She still has her secrets, she won't blame her teammate for keeping his. She decided to trust him with her sister despite Kurama's grumblings and she did not press when he all but confirmed he was spying on Sasuke and her both, she will give him this too.

Kurama is too kind to tell her that if Manami comes to harm because she's letting a spy potentially send messages to his master unsupervised, it will be on her, but it is implied in his outrage. The Kyuubi seems resigned to it however, and quite confident that Naruto will be there to make sure they don't pay the price of her compassion.

"I don't trust him more than I do you," snaps Kurama when he catches her thinking it. "You're my partner, not him, and I wouldn't settle for scraps like the alternate version of me did. You're offering me so much more than he would have. But the truth of the matter is that they are stronger than we are, these mirror selves of ours. And besides, trusting Sai was the fishcake's idea in the first place. He better take responsibility."

Nagisa loves this grumpy fox.

Sai has been gone all night and morning when Zabuza and Haku come for them.

Mist shrouds the bridge, announcing their arrival before the seals Nagisa placed around the terrain even activate. Zabuza must know some fuuinjutsu or has a way of getting around her barriers, because the missing-nin face them before they have managed to evacuate the bridge-builders. She suspects they must have gone underwater. They are from Mizu, after all.

Her fuuinjutsu will improve, she promises herself. Her pride won't let her allow this to happen again.

The mist carries a herbal scent, and the civilians start dropping like flies. Sasuke sways, but the soporific is not strong enough to affect him. Academy students go through a process of mithridatism in later years. Haku must know that; he intends to confront them directly. A crueller opponent would have spread worse over the area, thinks Nagisa. She understands why Naruto liked him. He also has a soft heart.

"I'll take care of the hunter-nin," says Sasuke, leaping forward without waiting for a response. "Get the civilians away."

Nagisa summons as many clones as she has charges and starts hauling them out of the bridge. She runs at full speed until she and her clones reach dry land. She sidesteps the traps her team set up in the area then sets down the civilians, Tazuna in the middle of them. The man is not yet fully asleep, so she whispers, "you'll be safe here, Tazuna-san. I promise."

"Inari, Tsunami," he murmurs before he drifts.

She curses. She didn't think of them. She glances at her clones, who salute her and start running towards the bridge-builder's house. They will be enough, she convinces herself before leaping back to the bridge. They will have to.

Nagisa lets her ears guide her to the combat. She hears Kakashi and Zabuza first, locked in a fierce battle. Then she sees Sasuke, locked in a prison of ice.

She throws explosive tags on the mirrors, focusing as little chakra of Kurama's chakra as possible into them. She aims high. If she can avoid killing Haku, she will. For Naruto. But she will not compromise Sasuke's safety to please her counterpart.

The ice mirrors do not break, but they crack in half. Haku is forced out of them. It does not phase him. He comes at her, senbon in hands and throws them with deadly accuracy.

"Nagisa-san," he says softly as she dodges his senbon. "I am sorry we have to meet again this way."

"Are you really, Kiri-nin?" she says with a sharp grin. She summons a clone and jumps up, trusting the bunshin to propulse her forward so she can shorten the distance between her and her opponent, kunai in one hand and a freeze tag in the other. One second of immobility is all she needs. "Are you sorry for the people of Nami as well? Do you cry for the civilians you are trying to cripple after your village exterminated their sworn protectors?"

Haku flinches, but recovers quickly, summoning an ice shield in front of him Nagisa has to evade. She uses chakra to sharpen her nails and finds purchase on the cold surface before vaulting over it.

"I follow my master's orders. I am a tool. His will must be done, no matter what."

Nagisa coos. "Does that help you sleep at night?"

"This world is cruel," says Haku with a conviction he does not feel, "and you must let go of your scruples to survive it."

To illustrate his point, he shatters the ice shield and commands the crystals like arrows to cut into Nagisa. The kunoichi cannot evade them all. One lodges itself into her back and she screams, hitting the ground.

A few seconds later, Sasuke's prison shatters entirely, and the Uchiha emerges, Sharingan spinning.

"You," he hisses, looking at Haku. "I'm going to kill you."

Nagisa growls, the Kyuubi's chakra emanating from her.

"He's our kill," says Kurama in her thoughts, echoing her own feelings on the matter.

She wrestles with her urge for blood and stands back up. Red chakra seeps out of the wound on her back, curling over her shoulder as it heals.

"Naruto wants him alive. He hasn't asked, but..."

But he'll be sad, she doesn't say. It sounds ridiculous, but she doesn't want to have to tell her counterpart, her soul brother that she had to kill the person who shaped his nindo. She doesn't want to hurt him like this, and if she can avoid it, she will.

The demon fox gnashes his teeth. "Fine. But leaving him alive does not mean you can't beat the idiocy out of him. Who in their right mind calls themselves a tool? Humans, honestly."

She grins, though it comes out more foxy than the Hokage would like if he could see her.

Sasuke is much faster now, his movements smoother. If he was fast before, now he's at Haku's level. No, he's better. The missing-nin struggles under his assaults, but his experience evens the playing field.

The kunoichi pulls out another three freeze tags from her pouch and securely tucks them in her hitai-ate before she bounces on her feet and joins the fight, a gale palm gathering chakra in her hand ready to shatter a spear of ice before it can embed itself in Sasuke's shoulder.

"If the world isn't fair," she tells Haku as she throws a kunai at him, "then I'll make it fair. For my precious people and for those I have a duty to help. It is my responsibility as a ninja. A tool can create, it can defend rather than destroy."

For Kurama, for her sister. For Uzu and for Nami. She will give them her best, and then she will work towards the peace Naruto achieved. She will not be like the Hokage, sacrificing people for a village who will not be worth the blood it has shed and the children it has killed if it keeps insisting on nurturing rot instead of planting seeds.

There is a better way to be a shinobi, she knows it. Naruto has shown it to her, and she will make her own path.

"He feels cornered. He fights more violently than he did in the other world," observes Kurama as Haku frowns, leaping away to get some distance between them.

"He's fighting two of us at the same time and we're much stronger than they were," she agrees.

Sasuke makes the hand signs for the foxfire jutsu and starts bombarding Haku with small fireballs. Nagisa uses the distraction to throw a freeze tag, her aim amplified with wind chakra. It gets pierced by a senbon before it can reach him. She clicks her tongue. They're at a stalemate.

In the back of her mind, she registers that two of her clones who were going to Tazuna's home have popped. She tenses, but the information from the bunshin tells her that there were only two assailants, and the other clones were working at dispatching them while protecting Tsunami and Inari. Another pops, and she finds that the little boy is convincing the bunshin-Nagisa to gather people in the village to go awaken the bridge builders and fight back against Gato together. She's not worried. The kid has guts, and sometimes that's all you need.

Sai is still gone, though, and that worries her.

She focuses back on her fight, where Sasuke is attempting to engage Haku in taijutsu. The missing-nin is evading him. She joins in and tries to herd Haku towards where Kakashi and Zabuza are fighting.

This is when it all comes to a head.

Nagisa hears the chirp of the Chidori and twists her body to check back on the two jounin. At the same time, she hears a thud on the bridge, signalling the arrival of another intruder. She looks and gasps in surprise.

"Nee-san," she cries as she sees her civilian sister in Sai's hold, clutching at a bundle in her arms that can only be Uzumaki Minato.

Kakashi falters, Haku and Zabuza's attention zero in on the newcomer.

"Zabuza-san," says Sai, expressionless. "Are you aware that Gato-san is bringing a small army here to dispatch you?"

"What?"

After Sai's revelation, it's chaos on the bridge. Zabuza is not easily convinced to drop his weapons, Nagisa only thinks about getting close to her sister and Sasuke still itches to slit Haku's throat. Then Inari storms in with the villagers and almost get themselves skewered by the missing-nin, who'd just agreed to wait and see. Gato and his mercenaries arrive just before Zabuza can start a fight again.

"You still haven't killed them, what do I pay you for?" he scoffs before addressing his men. "Get rid of these shinobi. We'll handle the bridge-builders next." He pauses and narrows in on Manami. "And the whore."

"Kurama."

She does not need to say more. The Kyuubi hisses, "go for it, kit."

And gives her free reign on his chakra.

No one has time to move before Nagisa body-flickers to Gato and grabs his throat in her clawed hands. She forces him to the ground and the wooden bridge cracks under the pressure. She spares a passing apologetic thought for Tazuna before she squeezes. The man struggles and tries to scream for his men, but chakra tails manifest in Nagisa's back and burn anyone who tries to get close. The mercenaries scramble back. She does not see what is happening around her, but she suspects by the faint sound of clashing steel she hears beyond the blood rushing to her ears that her teammates and former enemies are dispatching them.

She does not care. Her focus is on Gato.

"Do you remember me, Gato-san?" she asks, her voice rumbling with the power Kurama lends her.

"Ngh," tries to respond the man.

She relaxes her grip on his throat to let him speak.

"You," he coughs, "you're the brat. The one— the one she was writing to."

"And you stopped her," she growls.

"She tried— tried to tell you," he struggles to speak, gurgling instead, "Konoha— reads all letters coming from... foreigners. I couldn't allow it. Did you know?" he adds with a grin, his confidence suddenly returning. Nagisa's hand flexes, but she falters, unsure whether she should let him speak. "They're the ones who recommended her." He coughs again. "That old man said she was the best whore in the damn village, and she was!" He laughs. "He refused to get involved in my business, he said the Hokage declared Nami off-limits, but he wished me luck and recommended the brothel when I asked. And I had to have her, I'd never seen a greater pair of—ghk!"

"Who was it?"

He tries to shake his head, but her grip is too strong. A tail lashes against his head, leaving a corroded mark on the wood. He yelps.

"Who?" she growls.

"M—Mitokado."

It is the last word he ever says.

Nagisa is breathing hard, bent over the corpse of her sister's tormentor.

She killed him. She hasn't met Minato-chan yet, but she killed his father. What will Manami-nee think?

She can't bear to turn and look at her. Nagisa keeps her eyes on Gato's slackened face and does not move. She can hear that the fighting is over. The mercenaries are dead, the villagers are celebrating. The shinobi are silent.

She hears steps moving towards her. She can't bring herself to turn. A hand places herself on her shoulder.

"Thank you, Nagisa-chan. Thank you."

A sob breaks the sudden silence. Nagisa whirls around and faces Manami for the first time in years. She is crying, but her mouth is smiling. She looks so relieved. Her hand is gripping her shoulder hard, and it would hurt if she wasn't a civilian, her strength negligible against Nagisa's.

"Nee-san," she murmurs.

Her sister is as beautiful as ever, her long red hair tied in braids and hanging over her shoulders. She does not wear traditional attire, instead clad in a simple white dress in Kaminari-style, and it does not hide the healing bruises on her arms, fading handprints marring her otherwise unblemished skin. Nagisa's anger grows at it, but she subsides. Manami is safe now. Gato is dead.

"Hi," her sister says softly, still hiccuping. "Meet your nephew?" she suggests, timid, as she puts the bundle she is holding in Nagisa's bloody arms.

The kunoichi wants to protest, but the words she was about to say die when she sees the baby's face, scrunched up and unhappy to be leaving the safety of his mother's arms. Minato has a tuft of red hair, dark eyes and pouty lips."

"How," she swallows, her tongue suddenly dry, "how old is he?"

"Almost a year old. He was born last winter."

"He's beautiful, ya know. Just like you," she murmurs and Manami smiles before embracing her fiercely, tears still flowing down her cheeks.

It takes some time for Nagisa to calm down. When she does, she turns back to the people she ignored until then, and finds Sai in low discussion with their sensei while Sasuke is eyeing the missing-nin distastefully, kunai in hand.

Zabuza and Haku are both leaning against each other. Haku tends to the wounds of his master, who has a frown on his face as he stares out into the dissipating mist.

"You with us, Nagisa-chan?" asks Kakashi when he notices her, holding her sister's hand and bringing her closer to Team Seven.

She nods.

"What do we do now, sensei?"

"Maa, that will depend on them," he says, nodding at the Kiri-nin.

Zabuza glares at him.

"Haku, we're leaving," he says as he stands slowly, ready to cut his losses.

But his partner does not move.

"Haku."

It is not an order, but the intent is the same. Nagisa watches this back and forth with a confused frown.

"I want to stay here, Zabuza-sama."

"What?"

The man looks entirely befuddled. Haku sees that, and at first it seems to scare him, but he glances at the bridge, at Team Seven and at Manami and her child, and seems to find his courage. He raises his hand and makes a wide gesture, encompassing the horizon of Nami. The mist has completely cleared, and the sky is bright now, the sun shining down on them. It only highlights the destruction they have wrought in their battle. The bridge still stands, but it will take an additional week of work to clear all the debris.

"Kiri did this. We did this. I cannot return in good conscience until we have made things right."

Zabuza's grip on Kubikiribocho tightens.

"Shinobi don't have a conscience."

"Because we are tools, is that right?" Haku clenches his jaw. "Tools can do more than spill blood," he says, looking at Nagisa, "if they are placed in the right hand."

Chapter Text

"Are you betraying me, Haku?" says Zabuza dangerously.

Nagisa wants to step forward, place herself between the apprentice and his master, but Manami and her infant son must be her priority. She will not jeopardise their hard-won safety because she wants to recklessly save a near-stranger. She can only watch and hope for the best.

Haku shakes his head and says, "Never. Where you go, I go, Zabuza-sama. If this displeases you, I will never mention it again. But these hands can do more than bring suffering, surely? Chigiri does not have to be our sole legacy. We could right the wrongs of our forebears."

Zabuza stays silent, even when Haku's expression turns pleading. The kunoichi wonders what is going through his mind. The man is hard to read, and the cruel facade he presents to the world is off-putting, never mind that his reputation precedes him. But Haku is soft and he worships him, and Naruto found him admirable. There must be some good in him.

"You are still in the employ of the Gato company," says Manami suddenly, her back straightening, "and my son is its heir. Before you decide on what to do next, what do you think of signing another contract? I have work for you to do, and the funds to compensate you for your time. Your apprentice will like it better, I think, and you will get what you came here for."

Nagisa stares at her sister, who offers her a reassuring smile.

"That's... acceptable," says the missing-nin who is still observing his apprentice with unreadable eyes.

Haku lights up, though he still looks worried.

They all agree to go to Tazuna's house. The villagers remain to take care of the bodies, thanking Team Seven as they say farewell. Nagisa notices someone kicking Gato's corpse. She should not feel pleased about it. And yet.

Manami gives Minato to her and asks Tsunami if she might talk to the Kiri-nin in private. Nagisa wants to cling to her sister, but she can't undermine her in front of near-strangers. Her position is precarious enough as it is.

Instead she stares at little Minato and sidles up to Sai before murmuring, "Thank you."

"You're welcome, Cherry. And thank you." For trusting me, goes unsaid.

Nagisa feels so much fondness for her teammate it's almost overwhelming. In her mind, Kurama is begrudgingly impressed. He expects treachery from humans still, and Sai surprised him.

"Why is your sister cozying up to our enemies?" demands Sasuke, sitting down at the table.

She wants to hit him for his rudeness, but she understands his restlessness. She also wanted to beat up Haku less than an hour ago.

"Because I cannot stay," says Nagisa. She knows her sister as much as she knows herself. She does not need an explanation to know what is going through Manami's mind. "I cannot stay, and if she comes back to Konoha, she will have nothing. Here, she is the widow of a rich man, her son the heir of a company that can be used to support Nami no Kuni in its rebirth."

Manami-nee has power after being helpless for too long. She will not give it up. And besides, if she comes back to Konoha, they will not let her leave. Sai will not need to say anything to his master; the village leadership will marry her to a loyal shinobi and ensure she stays, and they will have the leverage they need against their jinchuuriki.

She will not trade her freedom for a cage.

Nagisa takes a deep breath and continues.

"But that can only happen if she is protected. She needs shinobi guards and trustworthy asssociates. If she's on her own, nee-san and her son will be assassinated by Gato's partners, the company will get a new head who will be just as bad as the last and Nami will suffer."

"And you're sure of this?" asks Tazuna.

He is dubious, and she knows it is because he thinks of Manami-nee as Gato's wife instead of Nagisa's sister. He has not heard Nagisa's early morning discussions with Manami, where they dreamt of coming home and danced the nami-odori, the traditional dance of their homeland passed down to Manami by her mother before she died. He does not know Manami's anger when she spoke of the Uzu-nin who came and donned the Konoha hitai-ate only to be picked off one by one, the dozen of survivors who trusted their sister village dying so far from home with no acknowledgement.

Uzumaki Manami is a stranger to him.

"I am!"

Tazuna studies her, before nodding firmly.

"Well then. She'll have our support."

And when Manami-nee comes back, having hashed out her terms and secured herself a pair of shinobi guards for a duration of a year, pending a permanent contract should Zabuza decide to heed Haku's words, dedicate himself to a path of atonement and pay reparations for the harm Kiri did to Uzushio, Tazuna takes her aside and asks about her plans.

Her sister, well-mannered but with a spine of steel, outlines her goals to cut ties with the shadier branches of the Gato Company and utilise their resources to boost Nami's economy. She asks Tazuna if anyone in the village would be willing to work with her, and he directs her towards people she could help.

"You did good work, Tazuna-san," she says, speaking about the bridge. "It's a relief to know there are people like you who care for Nami."

Nagisa beams at the easy understanding between the two, who love this land as much as she does and are ready to dedicate their lives to making sure its people strive. She cannot wait to join them here, free from the shackle of Konoha, and get to work rebuilding Uzushio in order to support their effort.

She has a year, she thinks, mindful of the deadline of her sister's contract with Zabuza. That is enough to prepare, and then Nagisa will protect her sister herself.

Tsunami prepares dinner while Nagisa talks to her team. They have been pretty quiet, and there are many things they must discuss before moving forward. They have a week until the bridge is completed and the mission is over, and then they will have to come back to Konoha. She wants to clear the air as soon as possible, so they can focus on their training in the time they have remaining.

Her sensei seems to have had the same idea.

"Nagisa-chan," he says with an eye smile. She returns his good cheer with a grin that has Sai snorting and Sasuke eyeing her warily. "How are you feeling?"

"So relieved, sensei. This could have gone so much worse, ya know." She pretends to think, and adds. "And a bit angry too. I don't know who that Mitokado guy is, but I'm gonna beat him up."

"Is that so? You used a lot of chakra earlier."

And killed someone with it, he doesn't say. Nagisa tenses. Her smile becomes a little fixed.

"I have a lot. The red vapours were new but I'm guessing that has to do with the kekkei genkai no one wants to tell me about."

Kakashi makes a pained sound and says, "It's not a kekkei genkai. I'll talk to Hokage-sama, and he'll explain to you. Now, can you promise you won't go killing any Village Elders when we go back?"

Her eyes narrow. "He's an Elder then."

"Mhm, and when we submit our reports, I'll make sure to mention what he's done, and T&I will have a nice time asking him about his thought process," he says ominously, and if Nagisa trusted more in the village leadership, this would have made her chuckle.

"Speaking about that report, how much are we supposed to say?" she asks, tilting her head.

How frank will you be with the Hokage, she is asking with her eyes. Will you protect your team, sensei, or will you lay our secrets out in the open?

"Maa, we'll say what needs to be said. Nothing more," he emphasises, and Nagisa relaxes marginally. That does not give her more clarity, but it does show that her sensei agrees that some things should stay between them.

"Sasuke-chan will have to report that he's awakened his Sharingan," he adds with a look at their surliest teammate. "Though it is in a more advanced stage than I expected," he says, referring to the two tomoe that had swirled in his eyes.

Sasuke tenses, but nods. They do not get to talk more; Tsunami calls them all to the table and starts serving the food with a cheerful grin. The atmosphere is a bit tense because of the missing-nin in the room, but generally cheerful. Tazuna and his family are thrilled to finally be free of Gato, and Manami visibly shares that sentiment. Nagisa sits next to her sister and entertains baby Minato for the night while she teases Sai by swiping food from his plate and engages Haku in a conversation about the places he's visited.

The boy stares forlornly at his brooding master from time to time, but he gamely tries to be active in the conversation. Nagisa thinks he hasn't been around people in his age group before, and it's as daunting as it is refreshing. Sai is a good sport and follows her in her attempt to befriend the missing-nin, while Sasuke sulks and glares as he picks at his food. Nagisa is not surprised. The boy is as surly as ever.

When it is time to go to bed, Tsunami stutters her way through offering a room to Haku and Zabuza, but the both of them decline and say they will sleep outside. Nagisa ends up rooming with Manami and her baby, and she is thrilled about it, especially considering that her civilian sister planned to tour the village for volunteers to work alongside her before going back to Gato's residence, where she would provide the down payment to the missing-nin she hired and get started on her work.

They share a futon, and place Minato-chan between the two of them as they hold hands, looking at each other's eyes. Nagisa has placed silencing seals around the bed, and she is confident enough in her designs to whisper, "I'll come back, nee-san, believe it. I wasn't kidding when I said I was going to be Uzukage."

"I know. And I believe you," Manami says firmly. "I didn't before but I do now," she admits. "I dreamt that you would come, you know. Before Minato-chan was born, I was so lonely. I kept day dreaming about you growing older and coming to get me. I didn't expect your friend, and I almost didn't believe him when he said he was there to take me to you. But I couldn't stay there if there was a chance that he was telling the truth."

A tear rolls down her cheek, and she wipes it before Nagisa even registers it.

"You're so strong now, Nagisa-chan. I'm so proud of you. But I'm scared, too. Konoha is dangerous and they want to keep you."

She bites her lip, as if afraid to say more.

Nagisa smiles sadly. "I know. I know everything. I've always known."

She takes a deep breath and starts telling Manami about Uzumaki Naruto, her guardian and older brother. She tells her a tale so fantastical she's half-afraid she won't be believed, but when she is finished Manami only laughs and tells her that it explains so much.

"You were so small when we met," she reminisces. "But your eyes were so haunted. You were a strange little thing, but I loved you as soon as I met you."

Nagisa embraces her fiercely, blinking to keep her eyes dry of any tears. Minato grumbles at being squished between the two of them and they laugh at his disgruntled face.

"Will you let me make him my heir?" the kunoichi asks once they have calmed down.

Manami smiles fondly. "Of course."

"Even if it means he'll be a shinobi?"

Her sister smiles.

"It is a hard life, but one that is worth living if you believe in the things you fight for. And I would like my son to grow to be as strong as his aunt. Nothing will hurt him then, and he'll wear an Uzushio hitai-ate proudly, I'm sure."

Saying goodbye is hard, even if Nagisa knows it is not forever.

Nagisa spends all morning designing her first ever blood seal, and asks Manami if she can use it to create a link between the two. If her sister is in danger, she will know, and Manami will always be able to ask for help. She also threatens Zabuza, promising bloody revenge upon him if he goes back on his word. It amuses him, though he does see how serious she is once she lets Kurama's chakra seep into her eyes.

She gives Haku a kiss on the cheek, and a silent thank you. Manami would have never asked for a new contract if the boy hadn't spoken up and pleaded his master for a better life. She also tells him good luck in convincing Zabuza. It will be an uphill battle, but the Demon of the Mist cares more than he pretends to. Nagisa thinks there is hope.

Her team gives her space after Manami-nee leaves for good, making the trek back to Gato's mansion with a dozen villagers ready to help her use her husband's company to the betterment of their land. Nagisa has a good cry, then shows up to the bridge with a cheerful grin and a request for more training. The rest of the week passes quickly. Kakashi trains Sasuke in the Sharingan. The two of them do not discuss Kakashi's transplanted doujutsu beyond a few words from their sensei assuring the boy that he did not steal it. Sasuke grunts, but does not doubt him. It eases the tension between them, but it is not enough.

Nagisa is left to train with Sai and she enjoys it. She thinks he does too, until she asks him if she can take a look at his cursed seal. It is time for her to step up her studies in fuuinjutsu, and she hopes to give her friend a key to the seal as a farewell gift.

"Your master is not Mitokado, is he?" she asks him after an hour spent mapping out the matrix of the cursed seal.

Sai gives her a baleful look, offset by the way his tongue still hangs from his mouth. She takes that as a no, and a silent reminder not to trigger his seal by making him give incriminating details.

"But he's an Elder all the same," guesses Nagisa. "You don't have to say anything, ya know. I'm pretty sure I'm right about this."

The Elders' Council were all taught by Senju Tobirama, she remembers hearing in class, and Iruka-sensei told her during a fuuinjutsu lesson that alongside the Yondaime and the Toad Sannin, the Nidaime was one of the best seal masters Konoha had ever known. She can do the math. Since neither her father nor the Hokage's student were noted to have fuuinjutsu students of their own — Kakashi-sensei isn't a sealmaster, unfortunately for her —, this narrows down the list of possible suspects.

"Thanks, Sai!" she says brightly, and he shakes his head, exasperated, before bumping his shoulder with hers in a silent thank you.

They leave bright and early after a week has passed, just in time to see the inauguration of the Great Uzumaki Bridge. Nagisa finds the name very embarrassing.

"They'll make it a tourist attraction when you've become Uzukage," snorts Kurama.

She grimaces. "I hope not."

The Kyuubi laughs.

The trip back to Konoha is much faster than the walk to Nami had been. They do not need to go at a civilian pace, after all.

Nagisa is in a good mood. She does acrobatics in the trees, much to the disapproval of her teammates. She goads Sasuke into racing with her and loses soundly, having forgotten to account for the built-in cheat code that was the Sharingan.

She thinks of the report tucked into her storage scroll. Kakashi talked to her and they decided to be as forthcoming as possible. Konoha after all already knows who Manami-nee is to her, and they have reports of her marriage to Gato. They did not need to say that Sai rescued her, but her presence didn't need to be obscured. She had protection after all. He showed them how to write reports to emphasise incriminating information they did not care about in order to hide the parts they did want obscured.

He assured her that only the Hokage and the Intelligence Division should have access to the file and warned Nagisa that Intel might contact Manami. They were always on the lookout for informants, and people affiliated with shinobi that lived outside of the village were prime candidates. She hopes Manami-nee will say yes. If it was handled carefully, she can use this as additional protection.

"And if she pulls it off, you'll have a pre-trained informant for Uzushio poised to throw Konoha off our tails when you decide to leave this Sage-forsaken village," says Kurama with a crafty grin, and Nagisa cannot help but remember that foxes are tricksters first and foremost, and she is not surprised that the chakra beast took on this form.

Konoha is much the same when they arrive. The people are carefree, though that changes when they catch sight of her whiskers and scowl at her for daring to remind them of her existence. The trees are as eerie as ever, rising tall and perfectly symmetrical and evenly-spaced in a way only something man-made can be. And the Hokage is old and weary, but brightens when he sees her and obfuscates his calculating eyes with a grandfatherly smile.

He listens to their verbal report with a thoughtful frown, and tells them that a Konoha patrol did apprehend the Demon Brothers and the information T&I extracted from them corroborates their report. Nagisa wonders what else they got from Gozu and Meizu, and whether they would be sold back to Kiri after the interrogation. Zabuza's reasons for attempting a coup are unclear so she cannot tell what convinced these men to follow him on this path.

The Sandaime commends them for managing to deescalate the situation and it makes him sound like a pacifist, which is laughable for a man who lived through three Shinobi Wars and fought in two of them. Manami-nee even said that Konoha instigated the Second War, which makes it even worse as far as she is concerned considering the fact that this war led to the destruction of Uzushio.

"Nagisa-chan had her first kill, then," he remarks carefully when the report is over.

"Eh? Ah, that's right," she says, blinking.

She didn't really think about it this way but it's true. She took a life in this mission. Did Naruto ever kill someone? She cannot remember. She thinks he might have wanted to, but he was always somehow prevented from taking that step. Like the universe was conspiring to keep his heart pure, people stole his kills or got in the way, fights fizzled out and enemies turned allies. It didn't work like that for Nagisa. She wonders if that means there is something wrong with her.

"How do you feel about it?"

Her teammates look at her curiously as she thinks. She really doesn't know what to say. She's fine. Maybe she's been washing her hands a little more often than usual, convinced that there's blood under her nails, but that's just cleanliness, right? Nothing to worry about. And if she can still smell the terror on him at odd moments, well, it will pass.

"I'm fine, Sandaime-sama," she says brightly before turning to the window. "He deserved what he got, ya know?" That part is said quietly, absently. "And shinobi are those who endure. I can handle it, believe it!"

"I'm glad to hear that, Nagisa-chan," he says warmly. "Now, why don't you all take some rest? You've been away from home for some time now."

That's just it, Sandaime-sama, she doesn't say. Nami is closer to home than Konoha ever was.

Instead she bows and follows her team out of his office. Kakashi gives them a two-fingered salute before he body-flickers, disappearing from the building. She eyes her teammates then asks, hopeful.

"Ramen?"

Which reminds her of a terrible thing.

"Shoot, I didn't get to try the ramen from Nami!" she cries in dismay, and Kurama laughs.

Sai calls her a glutton, though he is clearly smiling, and Sasuke elbows her and smirks as he leads the way to Ichiraku without complaining.

This isn't home, but she could have it worse, she thinks.

Chapter Text

Since the mission to Nami, Sai adds ōkami and okuri-inu to his rotation of beast drawings. He experiments with the wolf and dog yokai, attempting to find different uses for them than for his big cats.

Nagisa doesn't think their sensei has noticed, but it is obvious to her. Sai has imprinted on Kakashi, and sees the jounin as the point of reconciliation between the teachings of his master, focused on the values of service and obeisance, and his heart's desires, his yearning to be allowed to live, to feel, to care. To be a weapon, but one that is cared for before it is used.

(His birds look more and more like Yatagarasu, the crow god, and that is a clear homage to the Uchiha's noble summons. And if some of the ōkami look more like kitsune, well, Nagisa hasn't noticed yet.)

She's glad.

Her teammate looks less burdened, these days. His eyes are brighter, his smiles come more easily. He is still stiff and a bit rude, but that's still an improvement.

Sasuke is as dour as ever, though he is more relaxed around them. Now that his Sharingan is active, it is more challenging to keep up with him. His increased speed, his memory retention and his almost prescient reflexes make him so much stronger. Nagisa finds herself improving in leaps and bounds just by measuring herself against him and Sai. They strive in adversity.

The Uchiha heir keeps pestering Kakashi to demonstrate more jutsu, to show him more skills he can copy and practise. Their sensei indulges him, but makes sure Sai and Nagisa are not idle either. The boys face off against each other in kenjutsu bouts, Nagisa tries to learn the Takehaya — Brave and Swift — and Fūten — Heavenly Wind — taijutsu styles, which Kakashi-sensei determined were the most suited to the way she moves. Takehaya is a decisive style, focused on hard kicks that leave her hands free to wield her seals. Fūten is full of flowing movements and focuses on evasion. It's like a dance and she likes it best.

After a training session, Sai suggests she learn how to fight with tessen.

"You learnt fan dancing with your sister, didn't you?" he asks as he rubs his sore shoulder, having taken a hard blow from Sasuke's bokken during training.

Nagisa hums. She's not sure she wants to turn the peaceful art she learnt from her sister into a weapon for warfare. But Sai has a point. It would be easier for her to learn how to wield war fans than any other weapon, and beyond their offensive capabilities, tessen are useful to block swords and kunai. The footwork in spiral dancing can be repurposed for her to transition between the Takehaya and Fūten styles too.

"It doesn't hurt to try," she finally says.

Sai nods, satisfied, before he starts pestering Sasuke about his reluctance to use the genjutsu he's been learning in spars.

"You're limiting yourself," observes Sai.

"I know," grunts Sasuke.

It's not the first time they've been having this discussion. It probably won't be the last. Nagisa suspects that the reason why Sasuke has difficulty using genjutsu is related to the Uchiha Massacre, but she cannot say for sure. Sasuke never talks about it. She thinks Sai has more details than she does about what happened to the Uchiha Clan, and that he's needling their teammate to make him snap and tell them what the problem is. She's not sure it's the best way to get the boy to open up, but Nagisa is willing to let Sai finds that out by himself. Besides, if it does work, then Sasuke will be less burdened.

She still doesn't want them to start brawling in town. She's about to try and change the subject when a yell distracts her. Her eyes snap towards the direction of the noise, and she sees the Hokage's grandson being lifted by his shirt by an unknown. Nagisa pushes chakra to her feet and crosses the distance between her and Konohamaru in a flash.

Unlike Naruto, she has only ever met the boy in passing. They've spoken before when they both happened to be in the Hokage's Office at the same, but it was never more than small talk. Konohamaru never approached her for training like he did her counterpart, and they didn't have a shared dream to bring them closer. But he's a kid and Nagisa doesn't like bullies. She doesn't need to have a relationship with the boy to act when she sees him being tormented.

"If only someone had done the same for you," grumbles Kurama.

The kunoichi mentally shrugs as her hand darts forward and snatches Konohamaru from who she now recognises to be a Suna-nin. This happened in Naruto's memories as well, she remembers, although the situation started a bit differently.

The Suna-nin — "puppeteer," murmurs the Kyuubi, "the brother of Shukaku's vessel" —'s grip slackens in surprise, which makes shielding Konohamaru easier.

"Nagisa-senpai?" the young boy exclaims.

She presses her hand to his shoulder while she shields him with her body. Sai and Sasuke flank her, a beat out of step. She left without explanation but her boys still followed. She loves them.

"Hiya, kouhai," she says brightly, speaking to him more familiarly with than she would normally allow herself to. But she wants to make it clear to the puppeteer and the sister flanking him that the boy is not unprotected without actually revealing who he is. Considering Suna and Oto are planning an invasion, pointing them at a target doesn't sound wise. "Did you make a new friend?"

She wonders where his ANBU guard is. He's the honourable grandson and a foreign-nin is harassing him, shouldn't they have intervened by now? Judging by Sai's glances at the shadows nearby, she's not the only one wondering. She supposes they would have acted if it escalated, but since she's doing their job for them they decided not to bother. But she can't smell them, which makes her wonder if they've been waylaid by another threat.

"I bumped into that guy and he got really angry," explains Konohamaru tensely.

His voice sounds a little disgruntled, like he's upset that someone had to intervene. Nagisa shakes her head, exasperated. She won't apologise for stepping in between an angry foreign genin and a first-year Academy student.

The kunoichi tilts her head, focusing on the Suna-nin.

"I don't think he's angry anymore. Are you, Suna-san?" asks Sai, his voice monotone in a way it hasn't been in months.

The genin looks them up and down and spits on the ground. "Tch. Watch where you're going next time, brat," he says threateningly to Konohamaru, side-stepping the question. His sister backs him up but starts steering him away from them.

"You're a disgrace, Kankuro."

Nagisa zeroes in on the newcomer. The boy looks the same age as them, and he has Uzumaki red hair. This is what she focuses on, that and the bubbling giddiness inside of her at the thought of meeting someone who is like her.

"Ai," she murmurs, reading the character on his forehead.

The boy's gaze, who before that was taking in Sasuke with unerring focus, killing intent coating his skin, snaps to her.

"Gaara," says his sister hesitantly. "We should go."

He ignores her, staring at Nagisa for a longer time. Her teammates shift, uneasy. Sasuke's hand drifts to his chokuto. Sai twirls his paintbrush in his right hand, the left one resting on the scroll on his hip. Nagisa barely notices their wariness. She takes a step forward, her hand releasing Konohamaru's shoulder. The Hokage's grandson runs back to his friends, who were watching him anxiously.

"You are kin," confirms Kurama before he warns, "but that does not mean Shukaku will allow you to approach him. My little brother is insane. He's spent too long in a jar, and he's probably warp this boy's mind in his madness. Do not get closer."

Nagisa heeds his warning, though it pains her to do so.

"Could I fix it, you think? His seal. Would that help Gaa— the boy and your brother?"

She curses herself internally. She doesn't know this boy. She has no reason to be so familiar to him in thought, let alone in real life.

"You're not there yet, kit, but you will be. You've already gone beyond my expectations, I have no doubt you'll succeed."

Her heart warms. She looks away from the Suna-nin and makes eye contact with Sai, who is staring at her with a furrowed brow. The moment is broken.

"Do not presume to order me around, Temari," Gaara finally says, before he turns away from her, heeding her despite his words.

The trio of Suna genin leave the area.

"Why are Suna shinobi in Konoha?" asks Sasuke, his hackles raised like a cat's.

"The Chuunin Exams are happening soon," comments Sai, always proving the most aware of the goings-on in the village.

Nagisa hums when Sasuke states his desire to enter and his intention to ask Kakashi-sensei about it. Her mind is elsewhere. They all walk up to the intersection where they usually separate, and she waves distractedly at the boys as Sasuke makes his way to the Uchiha Compound and Sai disappears who knows where, presumably to wherever his master commands him to report to him.

She goes home and starts studying ways to unravel seals with more fervour. There must be a way for her to nullify pre-existing sealwork or modify it to her specifications. If she can find out, she can free Sai. She has not forgotten the Elders of Konoha and the ways they threaten what she holds dear. But if her foresight has taught her anything, it's the importance of biding her time. She'll deal with the Chuunin Exams first, and gather the tools she needs to make the most impact on their plans.

Plotting can wait.

The next day, Kakashi-sensei announces they'll take part in the Chuunin Exams.

Then he takes Nagisa aside and tells her the Hokage has summoned her. Kakashi tells the boys to spar until they come back, and that it shouldn't take long.

"How's your fuuinjutsu training going, Nagisa-chan?" asks Kakashi as they walk.

"I've finally cracked the B-rank barrier seal!" she says with a grin before she starts rambling about her research method. She first attempted to construct the barrier, then focused on its weak points to find different ways to dismantle it. She repeated the process, reinforcing the barrier progressively until she made an almost foolproof barrier construct. "Barriers need to have a built-in weakness though, otherwise they're too chakra-intensive," she finally pouts as they pass by the Mission Assignment area.

"Maa, that's impressive, Nagisa-chan. Do you have a specific focus in your studies?"

"Well it's a little broad but spatial manipulation is what fascinates me the most, it has so many applications. And I'd love to reproduce the Hiraishin the Nidaime and Yondaime used, but that's a goal for the future. I'm less interested in cursed seals," she admits, "but they're probably worth learning too. And I don't think I'll ever do anything with medical seals, the squishy sciences are not my thing and I'd need too much biology knowledge, ya know?"

Kakashi hums before opening the door to the Hokage's office.

"Ah, Kakashi. You're only three hours late," comments Sarutobi Hiruzen. "And hello, Nagisa-chan."

Nagisa bows before bouncing on her feet. "Good morning, Sandaime-sama!" she says cheerfully.

Her specific blend of formality and irreverence is something she didn't borrow from Naruto. Her counterpart had no manners whatsoever, he wouldn't have thought of it. The Hokage finds it endearing, though he has occasionally tried to get her to call him Oji-san. She has always refused, pointedly enforcing a distance between them. She is the orphan he occasionally takes out for dinner, this does not make them family.

The Hokage smiles and puffs on his pipe.

Kakashi leads Nagisa to the chair in front of the village leader's desk. She sits down gamely, and smiles as she sees her teacher take position behind her chair, as if guarding her. She can guess where this is going.

"I should have talked to you after your mission to Nami. I was unfortunately kept busy by the Chuunin Exams preparations, but that is no excuse." He pauses, and looks at her sensei shrewdly. "I do hope Kakashi has told you he has nominated you for the Exams?"

Nagisa laughs. "I know Sensei is lame, Sandaime-sama, but not that lame! He told us just this morning."

Sarutobi relaxes.

"Very good." He exhales some smoke, taking care not to blow it on Nagisa's face. "Now, you must be wondering why I called you here."

The kunoichi looks at him evenly.

"I think I have a guess, ya know. It's about my kekkei genkai."

"Not a kekkei genkai," stresses Kakashi, perhaps for the tenth time since she first mentioned it.

Nagisa rolls her eyes, trying to stifle a giggle. Playing dumb is as fun as ever. Judging by Kurama's snorts, he agrees with her.

"I have a special innate power no one else has. If it's not a bloodline limit, what is it?"

The Hokage looks at her sorrowfully.

"A sacrifice," he says, his face lined with regret. "You see, on the day of your birth..."

Nagisa takes some time to digest the conversation she had with the Sandaime. As she expected, the man didn't give her more than the bare minimum. He told her about the Kyuubi and the "burden" placed on her at birth. When she asked if this was why the civilians hated her, he sighed sorrowfully and nodded. When she asked why the people who hated her knew what she was but she had been kept oblivious for twelve years, he said they were not supposed to know, but the information leaked anyway. When she asked again why she was kept oblivious, he tried to tell her he wanted her to have a normal childhood.

Her expression was so disbelieving the man flinched.

She tried to ask about her parents and give him the chance to come clean, but he sidestepped all of her questions, looking guilty as he did so. It was so unbearable even Kakashi-sensei made his disapproval clear.

"It is for your own safety," the old man kept repeating, and Nagisa felt the words slither around her throat and squeeze.

She was sent away with warnings not to reach for the Kyuubi's chakra too often, not to poke at the seal and with a vague comment about a senior fuuinjutsu master coming soon to check on it. Kurama laughed himself sick when she smiled at the Sandaime, looking like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, and promised she wouldn't, believe it.

The first thing she does the next day is tell her teammates while they wait for Kakashi. She's late for training; she was waylaid by a meddling Iruka-sensei who apparently first tried to sneak in from her window and was hit with the full force of her barrier seal. She had to lecture her Academy teacher about breaking and entering and sneaking into a girl's bedroom, if only to see his face. Iruka did tell her he thought she was ready, so that was nice.

"But you already knew, Sai," she says when she finished, amused by the complete lack of surprise in his expression.

Sasuke turns to look at the boy and sneers.

"Your master told you."

"Shujin is knowledgeable in all things," says Sai with a thousand-yard stare.

Nagisa grins.

She eyes Sasuke carefully, but outside from a thoughtful nod, he hasn't reacted much to her Kyuubi reveal. It seems like he doesn't care beyond being vaguely curious about what using the Kyuubi's chakra in a spar would look like. He no doubts remembers what she did to Gato.

"Have you tried looking at the seal?" asks Sai, despite her just telling them she was advised not to do so.

She grins. He knows her so well.

"Of course, what do you take me for?"

Sai and Sasuke snort.

"Anyway. Stretch then spar?" she suggests, seeing as no one particularly cares to interrogate her about her thoughts on the fox in her stomach. "I need to work on my taijutsu."

The boys shift into a fighting stance.

The morning of the Chuunin Exams comes, and Nagisa is brainstorming with Naruto.

She's nervous, she doesn't think she will be better at evading Orochimaru than he was and she doesn't see how she can tip off the higher-ups without ending up in T&I. As far as the Exams go, her only objective is to survive and make sure the boys do too.

Her counterpart has pulled notes and sketched a copy of the full cursed seal Orochimaru placed on Sasuke for her, and she's been surprised to see how similar it looked to the curse on Sai's tongue. The outer design itself and their functions are different.

Sai's is a hexagram (䷠) which in seal script means concealment, which delineates the core purpose of the seal. It relies on the cursed subject's knowledge of the "forbidden" and inflicts punishment when the subject crosses the boundaries he himself established. If Sai was not aware that an information was incriminating, he would be able to share it without triggering the seal, but his master had been very careful in making clear what was not to be shared.

The three tomoe of the cursed mark look nothing like Sai's seal and its purpose is focused on a trade-off: power traded for one's soundness of mind.

But at their core, the two seals are about control. More specifically, control over one's body and mind.

The inner design of the seal, which Nagisa has taught herself to read by borrowing Kurama's eyes and examining the flow of chakra, reflects this similarity. The foundations of Heaven and Earth representing mind and body in the seals are inverted — Sai's seal monitoring his mind to control his body by forcing his mind to self-identify its transgressions and seizing his autonomy over his own bodily functions in consequence while Sasuke's would essentially monitor his body to control his mind by forcing nature chakra into his pathways and eroding the foundations of his sanity — but they operate under the same principle.

Naruto having confirmed to her that Sai is not a spy for Orochimaru, but that the Elder who calls himself his master had dealings with the Snake Sannin, she understands that she still has to worry about two different enemies, but vultures having fed from the same carcass share the same smell of rot. It can make it easier to see them coming.

(And she suspects that the Nidaime is the unfortunate carcass his students pillaged from. History books depicted him as a hard but very intelligent man who had many students. Senju Tobirama loved to teach, Iruka-sensei told her. She wonders what he would have thought of his students and their students, and what it says about him that two of the inheritors of his sealing legacy made curses out of his blessings.

But considering this was the same man who attempted to create the Edo Tensei, she supposes he might have been proud, if not for their blatant disloyalty )

Naruto is thrilled to know she might be able to unravel both seals by finding the key to one. He says he wishes he studied fuuinjutsu.

She tilts her head and asks him, "what's stopping you?"

Her counterpart's eyes shutter.

"I'm not smart like you," he signs. "We have the same soul, but we're different people. I couldn't do what you do." But you can do what I did, is implied.

Nagisa wants to hit him over the head. She wants it hard enough she falls in a space similar to Kurama's seal, and finds herself face to face with Naruto. She's so shocked by it she doesn't even think to raise her hand. Between one blink and the next, she's back in her room, the light of dawn shining through her window.

"You did it!" he mouths, his eyes crinkling in joy.

"What just happened?" she signs.

"I told you I interacted with you like I do the Kyuubi," he replies with animated hand movements. He's so thrilled about this. "It's rare and requires a lot of intent. I've only managed a handful of times, it's harder than with Kurama since we're a whole dimension apart."

The kunoichi remembers Naruto patting her head in her mirror's reflection as a child. She can't believe she didn't think about the implications of that.

"I wanted to hit you over the head," she says, "because you said something dumb. You're smart. Your taijutsu was better than mine at twelve and now you've reached mastery. You can modify shadow clones instinctively when I struggle to do more than change the hair colour of my bunshin. You can do anything you put your mind to, by sheer tenacity if nothing else. If you want to learn sealing, do it."

She wants to say he doesn't need to be a genius at it as long as he enjoys learning it, but she thinks he'll take that the wrong way, so she lowers her hands.

Naruto doesn't say anything. She can tell he's thinking, so she leaves him to it. Her mind goes back to the weird out-of-body experience she just had. Naruto is right, it's harder than falling into the seal.

"Practise makes it easier," says Kurama, who has talked to the Elder Kyuubi before. "But you'll never manage more than a few seconds. You're anchored into your dimension and leaving your body for too long is dangerous when I am sealed into you. I might take up the space you would normally inhabit in your own body without even meaning to."

Nagisa grimaces. No thank you. She doesn't want to be stranded in the astral plane.

Kurama snorts wryly. "Yeah, imagine being trapped in a spiritual space. I wonder how that would feel."

She gives him a silent apology while this only strengthens her resolve to free her friend.

"I think you're right," finally signs Naruto with a slowly growing grin. "I can do it, believe it!" He pauses before adding. "Now start packing, Nagisa-chan, you don't wanna be late, ya know."

Nagisa blinks, and Naruto's presence is gone from the mirror. She turns her attention to her room, where she's displayed everything she might need to put inside her storage seal.

"Right. What am I bringing?"

Chapter Text

Because Nagisa told her Manami-nee, Naruto tells his world's Sasuke.

He takes a solo mission close to his friend's last known location. He dodges Sakura's questions, ignores Kakashi's raised eyebrow and Hinata's put-upon expression. They've been dating for a few years now and he still doesn't know what to do with her. The Hyuuga clan head expects him to propose soon, especially now that Shikamaru has married Temari. Naruto isn't sure what to do with that. He's tempted to tell the man to wait until he's Hokage.

He's not sure why he hasn't yet gotten the hat yet, but he doesn't doubt it has to do with the Elders Kakashi is wrangling on his behalf.The old farts insist Naruto is too young like Gaara hasn't been his own village's leader since he was eleven. Kakashi's weeding them out one by one, using every bit of diplomacy he can muster. His sensei is old guard, but he's also terribly loyal to his students and he believes in Naruto's dream. He wants to make it easy for him.

Naruto trusts in his intentions even if he's impatient. He also realises that the peace they have built is fragile, and being seen as the head of Konoha's government instead of as the symbol of shinobi unity so soon after they signed all these cooperation treaties might not go over well. Kumo and Kiri might be firm allies of theirs, but Iwa is still getting there.

"Dobe," greets the most important person in his life when he stumbles upon him, meditating on top of a cliff on the border between Yuki and Kaminari.

Sasuke must have known he was coming. He chose a completely isolated landscape for their first meeting since everything happened. The war, their triumph, the return to earth that came after. Sasuke's pardon, his renewed oaths to Kakashi as well as his self-imposed exile, his mission to rebuild Jiraiya's spy network and serve Konoha in a way that didn't feel like a betrayal.

Naruto understands. It still hurts.

"Teme," he sighs before launching himself at him.

Their spar is exhilarating as always. The world could end and he wouldn't notice, absorbed as he is in this fight that is a dance and a conversation all at once. He and Sasuke are entirely in sync, meeting each other blow for blow, their eyes betraying their delight.

When they disengage, the sun has set in the sky and they've shaved off a chunk of the cliffside. Naruto's stomach is growling. Sasuke smirks at him and slides down the rock formation and into the ocean. He makes some kind of complicated wire trap and drops it into the water. In no time he's caught enough fish to feed a village. It will be barely enough for two grown shinobi.

Naruto pulls out his own supplies from two storage seals. He feels a pang of embarrassment as he remembers Nagisa's scolding. It only serves to reinforce his determination to learn sealing. His little sister is right, he's never relied on genius. His hard work has always paid off and his determination is what has taken him this far.

Well, that, the Uzumaki bloodline and Pervy Sage's fondness for his father and Kurama's help, he supposes. Still, he would have gotten nowhere if he hadn't made something of it.

They roast fish as Naruto updates Sasuke on village gossip. He doesn't think the boy much cares about Ino and Sai's dating drama or Chouji's attempts to win over Karui's parents, but he listens attentively anyway. His focus sharpens a little when Naruto speaks about his work as Kakashi's aide and his frequent visits to the other ninja villages. Konoha is still rebuilding and this time of peace is critical for them to re-establish and even improve the defences that have protected the Hidden Leaf since its foundation.

"How's the fur-ball?" asks Sasuke after a quiet lull.

He pointedly does not ask after Sakura.

"He's good," says Naruto brightly. "His chibi self naps on top of my dad's head on the Hokage-iwa. He's enjoying his ability to move around, ya know?"

They'd soon found out that leaving the tailed beasts entirely free was not a possibility. People would always covet their powers, and the knowledge that they could be sealed couldn't be made to disappear. There would always be an asshole who tried. They had needed to hold a Hokage summit to figure out what could be done. Naruto had initially proposed to tie them all to himself, but that would have required him to break his oaths to Konoha. He couldn't be a Hokage and the guardian of the Tailed Beasts at the same time. A compromise was reached: the tailed beasts would be sealed, but some of their chakra would be allowed to leak, their consciousness held in chakra constructs who could roam the Elemental Nations at their leisure. If they were attacked, they returned to the seal.

The jinchuuriki were no more. Guardians were elected, and a failsafe was built into the seal for the bijuu to be freed if their guardian attempted to use their chakra for their own ends. If such a thing happened, a summit would be immediately called and the situation would be settled by all villages. It wasn't a perfect solution, but until one could be found it was what they had.

No one had protested when Kurama requested Naruto as his guardian. He is thankful for it.

"He's a bit busy talking to himself right now, so he didn't come with me."

Kurama tries to avoid Sasuke as much as he can. He'll never be fond of Uchiha, even the one who is cosmically bonded to his guardian and is coincidentally the last of his clan.

Sasuke makes a sound of interest, inviting him to elaborate. Naruto stretches and says, "remember what I told you about Tobi sending me to an alternate world?" he says casually.

"With the evil version of yourself," confirms Sasuke.

"Well I've somehow made a soulbond with another version of me!" he exclaims cheerfully, eyes crinkling under the weight of the mirth and affection he feels. The situation is kind of ridiculous when you think about it. Why does this always happen to him? "She's not evil though, her name's Nagisa and her world's some years behind ours. She's such a cute girl, teme, I swear! Only twelve-years-old and so much smarter than me."

"That's not a hardship," mumbles Sasuke, who's stopped eating to stare at him incredulously. "Back up. You've done what?"

"I think it happened while Kakashi was experimenting with Kamui, but we're not really sure. It might have been an echo of something Tobi did, and I've not been really good at avoiding kinjutsu, whacky soul stuff happening because of it doesn't really surprise me, ya know? The Kuramas are investigating the bond and they say it's harmless."

Naruto gives a condensed run-down of the specifics of the bond, his choice to conceal it and his interactions with Nagisa.

"And no one's noticed you've been staring at your reflection?"

He shrugs with a foxy grin. "Nah. I can be sneaky when I want to, ya know?"

It looks like Sasuke's going to object, but he only gives him a once-over and nods in agreement. Naruto rubs the back of his neck, pleased and embarrassed by this easy acknowledgement of his skills. He's not sure he'll ever get used to it.

Sasuke always surprises him.

"Can I see her?" he asks softly, his Sharingan blooming in a silent request to let him use his doujutsu.

Memory sharing was a thing all Uchiha used to do with each other, apparently. Naruto loves that his friend has no qualms sharing that with him. He nods eagerly and shares his memories. The first that slips out is from the beginning, when Nagisa hadn't been born yet. The bond clicked into place while she was still in the womb, and for a few hours Naruto only saw really unsettling darkness hovering over him in his reflection. He'd thought he was being followed. It made him really paranoid. He'd missed the birth while trying to figure out what was happening, and when he'd looked again there was a baby crying in an empty room, the beams of metal of her crib contorting the vision he had of her.

Kurama was the one who had made the soul-bond connection, but they hadn't yet realised Nagisa was supposed to be an alternate version of himself. They'd seen the whiskers of course, but they'd assumed someone had stolen Kurama's chakra and put it into a baby.

His companion didn't even meet the other Kurama until Nagisa was brought into the Hokage's office as a child. They talked rarely, the Kyuubi of Nagisa's world too busy resting and gathering his strength for the incoming war.

Naruto shares his memories of Nagisa's childhood. Her isolation, the bullying she endured and her tense relationship with the Sandaime. Manami's help, her training and focus, her goal to become Uzukage. He refuses to be embarrassed by her comparative studiousness in comparison to him, his conviction that she would surpass him, his yearning for all the things he didn't have but which she can find in her grasp thanks to her foreknowledge. His pity for the childhood she didn't really get to have, her innocence stripped away by happenstance.

"You see her like a sister but it rather looks like you've adopted a kid," comments Sasuke when they're done. "She's who she is because of you."

"I didn't raise her," protests Naruto, but oh he would have wanted to. Kurama had suggested they find a way to take her from this funhouse mirror version of Konoha, identical in everything except in her presence yet so foreign to him after so many years removed from the struggles Nagisa faces now. He'd been tempted, but they couldn't remove the second version of Kurama from that world. Naruto's universe would crack at the seams holding two Nine-Tailed Beasts in the same plane.

Sasuke gives him a deadpan look but doesn't argue, instead enjoining him to keep going. He makes interested noises when he sees the make-up of Team Seven altered due to Nagisa being a kunoichi, and his expression turns unreadable when he is confronted with his mirror self, grieving and furious at the world.

Nagisa doesn't love her Sasuke the way Naruto does. They don't even resonate with each other in the same way, and he thinks they might have never been meant to. Their soul bond might have disrupted the cosmic connection between them, and he wonders what the Sage of Six Paths thinks of it. What he is sure of is that Nagisa is free to forge her own path, and he thinks this other Sasuke might be less burdened by the Curse of Hatred. He can only speculate though.

Sai, Nagisa and Sasuke's team is healthier than the mess they made of their own. He isn't sure that will be enough to keep them together.

Sasuke watches the events of Nami unfold and whistles when Nagisa kills Gato. Soon, Naruto runs out of memories, but he wants to show Sasuke more. He pulls out a kunai, and shares with him what he sees.

They watch as Nagisa joins her team and walks into the exam venue. Seeing tiny Sasuke pick a fight with the chuunin and be stopped by Lee is nostalgic, like many of Nagisa's experiences. Seeing Neji again is painful, though it is interesting to see that the genin is more interested in his counterpart than in Sasuke. He wonders why that is.

"How will they deal with Orochimaru?" he asks as Sai draws an ink puppy who latches onto Lee's leg when he starts provoking Sasuke. Team Seven leaves the corridor and joins the other contestants.

"I told her they'd have to run. They're better prepared but they can't avoid a confrontation. Orochimaru will put the cursed seal on other-you no matter what, ya know. Nagisa can at the very least disrupt it the way Sensei did for you, or she'll figure out how to unravel it. If she does, she'll be able to help Sai as well."

Sasuke doesn't seem to disapprove of Naruto's hands-off approach. He only hums and settles down. Naruto watches Nagisa interact with her former classmates interestedly. He's failed to encourage her to reach out, his little sister more withdrawn than he's ever been. But she has no interest in doing so. The village wants her to form attachments and as far as she's concerned, that's more reason for her to stay away.

Besides, she had no Shikamaru, Chouji or Kiba. Distant as they were, the slackers had made sure Naruto didn't go insane some days. They hadn't been enough, but they'd been something.

(Nagisa doesn't realise how they look at her though. Her classmates might have given her a wide berth and rumours might have run rampant about her, but there had been awe as well. Respect, admiration. Nagisa cultivated just as much of an untouchable reputation as her Sasuke did.)

"You didn't tell her to stay," observes Sasuke, "or encourage her to forgive."

Naruto smiles wryly. It must seem strange to the boy he's chased after for years.

"That place might be called Konoha," he says, gesturing at the reflection, "but it's not my home. I have no loyalty to it. If no one's gonna hold onto her, I'm not gonna shackle her to this place."

I held on, goes unsaid. I held on and chased you to the end of the world, and you let me. If they can't do the same for her, she has no reason to stay.

"I wish she'd want to stay, but her dream's a good one too, ya know. She's not simply leaving to spite them. She has a village to build. Precious people to protect, and a responsibility to Nami."

"What about you?"

Naruto laughs. "Caught that, didn't you? I'm not Hokage yet, and I've no plans to abandon Konoha. But Nami's my birthright. That'll be on the agenda, believe it. I just need to take care of Nagisa first. I want to be there if she needs help."

Sasuke nods, satisfied. He doesn't ask how Naruto plans to deal with the other nations. They'll undoubtedly be wary about him claiming territory outside of Hi no Kuni, and they'll be right to feel that way. But Uzushio has always been Konoha's sister-village, they have no ground to deny him. Naruto will hold on to his dream of peace, but not at anyone's expense. Not even himself.

"I can help you with that," says Sasuke.

Chapter Text

"You're the nine rookies, right? Fresh out of the Academy. I'm Yakushi Kabuto."

Nagisa stares at the man. They've only just entered inside the exam venue, where her former classmates have made a nuisance of themselves upon their arrival. Ino hugged Sasuke while throwing interested glances at Sai, Kiba started yapping and Ami's been needling Sakura the entire time. She notes that the girls' enmities has turned into a reluctantly fond camaraderie, and the three members of Team Six look almost professional. Sakura has braided her hair and her palms show proper calluses, Ami's blade looks well-maintained and there are knuckle-dusters on Kasumi's hands. Uzuki Yugao, who she guesses is Ami's cousin from context clues seems to be a serious jounin-sensei.

Kabuto being a traitor is not something she cares about, but he's also the man who perfected the Edo Tensei and made the Fourth Shinobi War intensely more difficult for the Allied Forces.

And right now, he is a threat to Sasuke. She cannot abide by that.

"This isn't the first time you've taken the exam, you must really be an expert by now," says Sakura, pulling her out of her examination.

Nagisa glances at Sai, who is observing Kabuto with just as much scrutiny as she did.

Naruto would have asked the man for insight, unaware of his traitorous nature, but here it's Akimichi Kasumi who has to bite the bullet. When he does his trick with the cards, Nagisa and her teammates exchange a look. When she turns back, her gaze lands on Shikamaru, who is also observing the situation with unreadable eyes.

She almost protests when Sasuke requests information on Lee and Gaara, but when Kabuto complies, she sees him inhale carefully, gathering chakra in his mouth. A second later, the cards catch fire.

"Sharing information about Konoha-nin in a room full of foreigners, tsk tsk," comments Sai. "I see why you haven't made chuunin yet."

And he sticks out his tongue.

Kabuto stiffens. Nagisa leans forward without meaning to. The guy is ROOT, or he has been, she realises. Either Naruto didn't know that or it's information she has missed.

"I just wanted to help," he says quietly. "As rookies you're at a disadvantage. I'm levelling the playing field."

"Yeah, right," snorts Kiba. "Pull the other one."

"Technically," adds Hinata timidly though there is a hint of steel in her voice, "my cousin's team are rookies too. They've never taken the exam before."

Kabuto raises his hand in a non-threatening gesture. Nagisa snorts. That's the kind of thing that might placate a civilian. Shinobi know better.

"I'm sorry. I'll be more mindful next time. But my point still stands. This exam is difficult and you need all the help you can get."

"Worry about yourself," sings Nagisa with a grin, tapping a foot against the stone floor. It cracks under her sandal. She eyes the other contestants with a foxy grin, the challenge obvious on her face. She and Naruto might be different in many ways, but not in this.

She's looking forward to this challenge.

The Oto-nin attack Kabuto, putting themselves forward. Their eyes are on the rookies though. There's no time to focus on that; Morino Ibiki steps forward and calls them all to their seats, outlining the first phase of the exam. Nagisa grins. She's thought long and hard about what she wanted to do for this part.

Out of curiosity, she tries to see how many questions she can solve by herself. She grimaces when she finds she only has three definitive answers and two possible ones. Under the table, she takes the chakra paper in her kunai pouch and slides it slowly up until it is at her elbow, then casually drags it on top of her exam sheet. She draws the seal matrix she needs, focusing on concepts of light and displacement, then focuses before murmuring, "fuuin."

She leans forward, letting her forehead rest against the seal. Suddenly, she sees out of all the reflections in the room. Shino's glasses, exposed blades, Neji's mirrors, dozens and dozens of hitai-ate. She looks for Kamizuki Izumo, the chuunin she remembers from Naruto's memories, and copies the answers he's already pre-written. When she glances at Sasuke, she sees his eyes red from the Sharingan and restrains from laughing. It's so unsubtle. Sai is doing better. He's drawn very small ink animals and sent them out. Upon their return, they throw themselves at his paper and disappear, forming the exact answers he needs.

Nagisa puts down her pen and uses her seal to try and locate Orochimaru. She finds the creepy-looking Kusa woman he uses as a disguise. For a second, she is tempted to plant evidence of cheating next to the Sannin in an effort to disqualify him, but she has no illusion about her chances. She discretely folds the seal and slides it into her hitai-ate instead, yawning like she's bored.

Ibiki tries to get them to give up, psyching everyone out. Nagisa decides to take a page out of Naruto's book and stands up.

"We're shinobi, not cowards," she exclaims. "I won't run, believe it."

She hears Sai snort and doesn't even need to turn around to tell Sasuke is glaring at her.

"You pass," announces Ibiki with a sinistre smile.

He goes on to explain the thought process behind the first test, but Nagisa is barely listening. She pulls out a kunai and grins at Naruto's reflection. She frowns when she sees he's not alone. His Sasuke is looking at her. It unsettles her to see someone from his world aware of her presence, but she hesitantly nods at the man before twirling the kunai in her hand so the movement doesn't appear strange to the people around her.

"He told his Uchiha,"grouses Kurama. "We should have expected it."

"Does that mean they'll be watching my Exams together? Weird."

Kurama chuckles. He does not disagree.

Mitarashi Anko appears and introduces herself as the proctor for the second test. Nagisa shifts, uncomfortable. She doesn't like being so close to so many T&I operatives, it's starting to make her nervous. She's very aware of the danger her traitorous thoughts put her in.

They're led to the Forest of Death. Some lament that they haven't packed anything and are treated to sneers and scornful looks. Easy pickings, thinks Nagisa. Passing the first task does not mean they're ready for what's coming.

She's not sure she is ready herself.

Nagisa grips her kunai and takes a deep breath. On her right, Sai shifts closer to her. Sasuke takes a half-step forward, shielding her partially with his body. She sees the other rookies eye them curiously. With the unknown in their rank and the last Uchiha, her team is probably the one that attracts the most of their attention. Sai had made an impression and they all knew Nagisa and Sasuke had deserved their rankings at the Academy.

It will mean nothing against someone like Orochimaru.

"Treat it like a learning opportunity," counsels her companion. "He's not looking to kill you."

Kurama might tell her that, but his voice is wracked with worry. They've designed a seal that will hopefully counteract the one Orochimaru likely plans to use on her but they had no means of testing it. They're only operating on blind faith and desperation.

It doesn't matter. She'll make it. She has to.

There are no other options.

"Twenty-six teams," murmurs Sai once they've entered the forest. "That makes seventy-eight competitors overall, half of whom are Konoha-nin. I'd say we should target foreign villagers, but we can't really afford to be picky."

Sasuke nods in agreement. "This is too important."

"What's the plan?" asks Sai.

"Wandering around hoping to find a scroll isn't gonna work. We have two options. One, I put my tracking lessons to the test," muses Nagisa. "We take to the trees, find a team and aim to incapacitate. If they have the scroll we want, we take it, otherwise we knock them out and tie them up. Two, we fly. We'll cover more ground, but the forest's thick enough we might not see any movement. We'll have to get closer to the rendez-vous point and ambush a team who already has both scrolls."

The boys hum. Both plans are good, though the second one has her hesitating. She thinks they might avoid Orochimaru altogether like this but the Sannin can locate them above ground, she's pretty sure, and they'll be at a disadvantage if they have to fight airborne.

"There won't be any teams now that we've just begun," says Sai. "We should try your first idea first and regroup if we don't find anyone."

Nagisa nods and starts gathering chakra in her nose. She takes a deep breath.

"Northwest," she says, and starts running.

Chapter Text

They find two shinobi from Kusagakure. Nagisa tenses at the sight of their hitai-ate, only relaxing when she realises it's not the team Orochimaru infiltrated.

They're idiots. Judging by the conversation they overhear, they abandoned their teammate and told her they'd meet her at the tower once they get the scroll they need. They call her a burden, say she's only good for her kekkei genkai. Nagisa can feel Sasuke tensing at the insults. She isn't much better. Sai only frowns, before signing, "hold."

He henges into an approximation of a girl with muddy brown hair and red eyes covered by oval glasses, whose shoulders are hunched and her expression cowering. He silently slides down the tree. Nagisa grins brightly, seeing where this is going.

The two teammates don't seem to see anything suspicious. She grimaces. She can't imagine being unable to recognise her teammates by their chakra.

"Why did you come back, dead weight? We told you not to bother," exclaims Shigeru, the self-appointed leader of the team.

"Nah, let her stay. I could use a boost," says the other, rubbing his flank, where a nasty gash oozes blood.

Sai barely hesitates when the Kusa-nin extends a demanding hand. Nagisa and Sasuke exchange a look and drop down from the tree, kunai in hand.

Nagisa, a clawed hand wrapped around Shigeru's neck and a kunai angled to slice it at the slightest provocation, sing-songs, "drop your scroll on the ground, idiot."

Sasuke smirks, pressing his own blade a little more tightly on the other shinobi's skin, hard enough for a pearl of blood to stain his kunai. The two Kusa-nin send pleading looks at the one they called dead weight. Nagisa tsks at their audacity. Sai drops his henge with a flourish.

"That was an Academy jutsu," he tuts. "I learnt it when I was six. What do they teach you in Kusa?" He smiles, his eyes blank. "Well? My teammate asked you to do something, I believe."

A handful of minutes later, Team Seven is running again, the two scrolls they need in her storage seal. Their opponents are left in the dust, tied to a tree with a dick drawn with paralytic ink on their forehead. Nagisa is cackling when an oppressive feeling makes her pause. She hears a rustle in the trees. It would normally not be loud enough for her to pay attention, but she's learned enough tracking from Kakashi to know the sound feels out of place. Purposeful.

It's a test.

"Kurama?" she asks.

"Run, kit."

She signs, "We're being pursued," and takes off faster, making sure she's within reach of Sasuke. Her blood rushes to her ears and she feels her chakra tremble, hyper-alert. She is very aware of the fact that she cannot feel their opponent. There isn't even a blank spot to signal presence by absence; Orochimaru — because it can only be him — is mimicking the nature chakra around him to mask his presence. The control required to do that is terrifying.

They cannot run fast enough, but it gives Nagisa time to prepare. She throws seals at Sai and Sasuke, and slaps one on herself. It will let them feel each other's positions. If they have to separate, this will give them the chance to find each other again. More importantly, this will tell her if her teammates are alive, dead or unconscious.

She uses a seal of her own design next. She worked hard on it, and she really hopes it will work. It is designed to transfer cursed seals to seal paper she concealed on herself for that purpose. It should keep Orochimaru from disrupting the Kyuubi and placing a cursed seal on Sasuke.

She doesn't have the time to apply it to Sasuke before a woman barrels onto him, pressing two fingers on his heart and activating what seems to be a genjutsu. Sasuke freezes, and Nagisa leaps forward. She spots two shinobi trailing behind the intruder, and sees Sai has noticed them too; he summons two ink wolves who run after them.

Sasuke plants a kunai in his thigh at the same time Nagisa leaps on top of him, a wind blade forming in her hand. She releases it as the disguised Orochimaru throws two kunai, blowing away the weapon and forcing the Sannin to step on the branch behind the one Sasuke stands.

"Interesting," says the missing-nin, licking his lips. He bites his thumb. A bead of blood summons a giant snake that leaps at Nagisa.

"Shit," she curses as she is forced to back away from Sasuke, who faces his own summon.

Despite how desperate Nagisa is to keep their enemy in her sight, she is not fast enough. Orochimaru disappears out of sight as the kunoichi summons clones all armed with wind jutsu and slices into the snake. He reappears on a branch, twisting in a grotesque way around the tree as he leaps at Sasuke with a wide grin, murmuring, "A prey must always stay tense and try to flee desperately... before a predator."

An ink crow stops him in his tracks, wings flared to block his path.

"If it's the scroll you want, I'll give it to you," says Sasuke after assessing the situation.

"It's not the scroll he's after," warns Nagisa. "Is it, Orochimaru-sama?"

Sai pales, frightened. Sasuke's jaw clenches, and his Sharingan red eyes dart every which way, looking for exits that aren't there. The man narrows his eyes, displeased.

"Don't interfere, little mouse," he hisses, summoning another snake.

Nagisa is not fast enough to block the strike of fang.

"This is poisoned, kit, and this summons is stronger than you can handle," growls Kurama. "You're going to need my help."

She nods imperceptibly, and lets the Kyuubi's corrosive chakra spreads through her limbs. Her eyes feel hot as she raises a clawed hand and swipes at the snake, tearing into it. Her wound smokes as Kurama burns the poison out of it. She and Sai tag-team each other, trying to keep Orochimaru from reaching Sasuke. It's obvious to them all that this is who he is after.

The missing-nin throws ninjutsu at them, but his goal is obviously not to kill, instead seeking to separate them from his quarry, whom he taunts relentlessly.

"Show me what you can do, Sasuke," purrs the missing-nin, directing his snakes towards him while his killing intent bears down on the last Uchiha.

Nagisa shouts, "Sai, shield! Sasuke, you need to run!"

He nods and summons a dragon that coils in front of Sasuke and roars before digging long fangs into the snake. Nagisa runs up the length of the creature and launches herself in the air. She gathers wind chakra in her palm and throws an exploding seal at the enemy before checking that Sasuke is running. She wants to curse at him when she sees he is throwing a fireball in their direction before taking Sai and running. She substitutes herself with a clone and follows a few steps behind them.

"That won't be enough. He'll be in pursuit."

"I know, but we can't beat him. We need to— shit."

"Nagisa!" howls Kurama.

He appears out of nowhere and digs five fingers into her abdomen, hissing, "I am getting tired of your interference, ojou-chan."

The pain is brief, but intense. Nagisa misses her step and barrels to the ground, catching herself at the last minute. She raises the lapel of her tunic until it exposes her belly and sighs when she realises her seal worked. Orochimaru's nullification seal was applied to the blank paper rather than the Eight Trigrams seal.

"I'm fine. I have to catch up to Sasuke and apply the seal," she tells Kurama. "It's his only chance."

"You'll be the death of me, kit."

She grins and starts running. She almost falters once she realises she can't sense her teammates' chakra at all. She would be going in blind if it wasn't for the seals she gave Sai and Sasuke.

"He's keeping them from me," she growls. "How dare he."

She speeds up, and gets close enough that she can see the outline of Sai and Sasuke in the trees, pursued by a shadow that is almost too fast for her to see. Orochimaru is still toying witht them, she thinks, scowling. Her path is intercepted by the one of the two shinobi Sai was taking care of before. Juding by the dripping ink on his fist, he's made short work of the constructs His companion lies dead at his feet, but he hasn't taken any significant damage. He looks strong.

He probably is strong and yet he's let his comrade die when it seems like he could have saved him.

"You're a tenacious one, aintcha," he grins.

Nagisa eyes him. She doesn't think she can fight him and find Sasuke on time, but he won't let her go and leaving this guy at their back along with Orochimaru sounds like a terrible idea. Her heart aches, but she resigns herself to finding her teammate already cursed. She can still mitigate the effects, she reassures herself, and settles into her fighting stance.

"Why don't you show me your real face, ne? I want to know who I'm killing, ya know."

He does not like that. She smirks. She can hear Kurama laughing in her head. The henge falls and she raises an eyebrow. That's a big guy. Bigger than Chouji. She thinks she recognises him. He must be one of the people Orochimaru sent to retrieve Sasuke in Naruto's world.

She doesn't waste time and launches herself at him, and is barely surprised when he pushes her back effortlessly. She was right, he's stupid strong, and his touch drains her chakra. Unluckily for him, that doesn't make much difference to her reserves.

"I'm Uzumaki Nagisa. What's your name?" she asks, dancing from his grip.

"I'm Jirobo of the Sound Four. I'll enjoy seeing you broken, doll."

"I'd like to see you try," she sings and throws a gravity seal on top of him, activating it from a distance.

The boy grunts as the ground splinters underneath him and he bends under the force of her seal. She can see his teeth grind from the pressure. The effect doesn't last long. The chakra in the seal burns out and he stands with a howl, throwing a punch.

Nagisa hums. "A little more strength to this one," she muses, evading him, "and I'll have enemies kneeling at my feet."

She throws an explosive tag, and winces when it takes out the copse of trees behind Jirobo while leaving him mostly singed. "Wrong output. Good to know."

"Are you field testing your seals on me?" he asks, incredulous, before he traps her under an earth dome.

"Yeah," she says before slicing her way out with a Kyuubi chakra-coated hand and leaping at him. She stops speaking while they trade blows; she might have great regenerative capabilities, but his hits still hurt like a bitch. She has to stay focused. She gathers wind into her two hands and throws him back with it before she pants, "I'm trying to kill you on purpose, I don't see anything wrong with my experiments killing you on accident."

His chakra fluctuates weirdly, and she sees the cursed seal on him move in tandem with it. Soon enough, he transforms into a beast of a man, the red hair on his head forming a mane and his skin turning tough as leather. She whistles, impressed despite herself. It's disgusting, but she can feel his increased strength, so she finds it a little praise-worthy too.

She figures out quickly that she can't let him touch her. He'll definitely break her leg with a well-placed punch and that will take long enough to heal for her to be put in a difficult position. She leaps back and discretely stabs one seal-wrapped kunai in the ground. She throws herself back into the fray and summons dozens of clones. He makes short work of them, but she can summon more and more without breaking a sweat. As she goes, she places more sealed blades around them until she forms a perfect circle.

"If one seal doesn't work, how about ten? Fuuin: Gravity Field!" she shouts, and steps away from the circle.

Jirobo grunts, hunching like he's preparing himself to leap, but the air inside the circle weighs on him like lead. The pressure lowers him to his knees and cracks the ground under him. She keeps it there until she hears the bone of his neck crack, and his body hit the ground.

"Not bad," she whistles. "A little hard to set up though."

"Impressive. But I wouldn't call it a gravity field if what you're actually moving is air, kit," rumbles Kurama.

She pouts. "But it sounds cooler than Pressurised Air Field!"

Nagisa wipes the sweat from her forehead, then tenses when she feels a presence behind her.

"Whoever you are, show yourself or I'll make you," she warns.

"Your chakra. It's like the sun."

Nagisa turns around, panting. A girl with wet red hair and glasses stares at her from behind a tree. It takes a moment for her to recognise the Kusa-nin Sai henged into. She must have used wax dye to cover the red, she thinks and her heart breaks.

"You're Uzumaki," Nagisa murmurs without meaning to, her hackles lowering.

"And you are too," replies the girl with awe.

Nagisa reaches out, before her hand closes in regret. "I'm sorry. My teammates need me. I have to go."

"Wait! I can heal you."

The girl offers her hand. Nagisa looks at it uncomprehending, until she notices the bite marks on it. Her expression twists.

"I won't bite you. I'm a jinchuuriki, I heal naturally," she tells her. "What's your name?"

"I'm Karin."

"Do you like it in Kusa, Karin?"

Nagisa can see her hesitate.

"Do you like it in Konoha?" she returns, her chin raised in challenge.

"I'm planning to leave," she says bluntly. The girl rears back in shock. "I love my teammates, but Uzushio calls me home. I'm gonna rebuild our village, believe it! Do you want to help?"

Karin stares at her, hope and despair battling in her gaze. Nagisa gives her an encouraging grin.

"When you feel strong enough to leave, seek out Uzumaki Manami in Nami no Kuni. She's my sister," she says before bouncing on her feet. She puts chakra in her soles and vaults on top of the tree. "Ja ne, Karin-nee!"

She sets off, and finds her team a few minutes later.

Sasuke is sweating, barely conscious, and Sai has a broken arm and a blank smile on his face. The corpses of Oto-nin surrround him.

"Orochimaru?" she asks.

"Gone." Sai pinches the bridge of his nose, as if to stave off a migraine. "Take a look at his seal?" he murmurs pleadingly.

"Of course," she says. She kneels down, ignoring her own exhaustion, the dents in her chakra reserves and the soul-deep ache at the core of herself.

She gets to work.