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He Of The Six Eyes
- Thread starter Firewillreign
- Start date
Fable of the Unspoken Word
Possibly Insane
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The Honoured One takes no shit
Shaedy Hoe
Thicc Shaedy
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*to run while screaming for the hills
*anti-shinobi
"Hn."
Thanks for the chapter. I'm absolutely loving Fuyo and Kanna's retardedly wholesome friendship and their comedic interactions.
ArcanaVitae
Versed in the lewd.
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Satoru using Reversed Cursed Technique straight out of the womb is a flex.
Kanna is pretty cool and her not being shinobi like at all is a huge comfort to Fuyuko. Fuyuko is also a huge help to Kanna making sure that she now has better options.
Also that bits shows that even if everything goes right it'll go wrong eventually since they're in a deathworld.
Kanna is pretty cool and her not being shinobi like at all is a huge comfort to Fuyuko. Fuyuko is also a huge help to Kanna making sure that she now has better options.
Also that bits shows that even if everything goes right it'll go wrong eventually since they're in a deathworld.
Firewillreign
Know what you're doing yet?
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Okay, some people dislike that I've heavily foreshadowed some coming conflict and that no one will die just yet.
let me adress this:
I wanted to show that things weren't going too slow because childhood phases in Naruto fics are real story killers, but I can see why that wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea
The next chapter is just another part of the prologue, and it'll start fairly slow. We'll see a good chunk of how Satoru's new childhood came to be from an outside perspective before we get to the turning point.
However, make no mistake. The foreshadowing is quite light and won't be giving everything away, and the only truly big thing coming is that we'll finally get Satoru's POV.
The rushed years aren't meant to kill the story and get into Naruto Canon, that's still years away. Satoru will still have a childhood, this is just going to pave the way to get into his perspective of it and that of the kids
Hope I haven't put you off it, and thanks for the criticism.
let me adress this:
I wanted to show that things weren't going too slow because childhood phases in Naruto fics are real story killers, but I can see why that wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea
The next chapter is just another part of the prologue, and it'll start fairly slow. We'll see a good chunk of how Satoru's new childhood came to be from an outside perspective before we get to the turning point.
However, make no mistake. The foreshadowing is quite light and won't be giving everything away, and the only truly big thing coming is that we'll finally get Satoru's POV.
The rushed years aren't meant to kill the story and get into Naruto Canon, that's still years away. Satoru will still have a childhood, this is just going to pave the way to get into his perspective of it and that of the kids
Hope I haven't put you off it, and thanks for the criticism.
Yeetboi
Guy makes worst spaghetti ever. Exiled to Gleba.
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"That little attack you made is great and all, it's just so bad that I'm the fucking HONORED ONE and you're about to experience what Sun gravity feels like!"
-4 year old Satoru after getting woken up from his nap.
-4 year old Satoru after getting woken up from his nap.
AsuraJZero
Making the rounds.
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Another hellava chapter.
I got a wild crackpot theory, but what if Ryomen Sukuna was reborn like Gojo Satoru. In JJK, balance is a big part of jujutsu. When Gojo was born, cursed spirits began getting stronger but Naruto doesn't have cursed cursed spirits. So, what if instead, Ryomen Sukuna gets reborn to 'balance' things out.
I got a wild crackpot theory, but what if Ryomen Sukuna was reborn like Gojo Satoru. In JJK, balance is a big part of jujutsu. When Gojo was born, cursed spirits began getting stronger but Naruto doesn't have cursed cursed spirits. So, what if instead, Ryomen Sukuna gets reborn to 'balance' things out.
OmegaYgg
Getting sticky.
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Idk about Sukuna, but I wonder if there is anything intresting going on with Satoru's twin sister?
Crescent Moon
Getting out there.
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A twin for Satoru? I'm curious if this will be a good thing or a bad thing in narutoverse. *thinks of Maki and Mai in jjk*
Firewillreign
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I can confirm that Satoru hasn't been negatively impacted by the cirmstances of his rebirth.
As for his sister...
Who knows?
Maybe she's a normal Hyūga. Maybe there's something else going on.
Guess we'll find out
grime
I trust you know where the happy button is?
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You might consider cursed energy as pure yin energy/manipulation. That would fit Naruto quite nicely, especially given that Chakra is generally far more potent than CE, but often cannot warp reality to the same degree without some really advanced techniques.
It also fits because the Sharingan relies on negative emotion to evolve, the "curse of the Uchiha", and also results in a powerful yin chakra, where Naruto has a stronger yang chakra.
Regardless I hope Gojo has chakra, just with a specialized yin, or CE manipulation/slant. The chakra will let him physically keep up with most shinobi in terms of speed, since while he can teleport, his actual combat speed is like, maybe Jonin level at his absolute peak.
It also fits because the Sharingan relies on negative emotion to evolve, the "curse of the Uchiha", and also results in a powerful yin chakra, where Naruto has a stronger yang chakra.
Regardless I hope Gojo has chakra, just with a specialized yin, or CE manipulation/slant. The chakra will let him physically keep up with most shinobi in terms of speed, since while he can teleport, his actual combat speed is like, maybe Jonin level at his absolute peak.
Firewillreign
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What is this... Boruto you speak off?
That sounds like a fanfiction parody of Naruto in the making?
Prologue - Part 3
Firewillreign
Know what you're doing yet?
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Have a chapter to celebrate the return of the GOAT!
You know what I'm talking about!
Four and a half years later:
The day that kicks off the sequence of events that would quickly send Fuyuko's newly peaceful and much-appreciated second chance right to hell in a hand-basket starts off perfectly.
Because of course it does.
The sun is rising, the birds are chirping on the sakura tree planted out front in the garden, and the early morning light streaming through the windows paints the kitchen with warm, golden-blue hues.
It's all downright scenic.
"Kids! Breakfast!"
Well, almost.
Morning call successfully delivered, Fuyuko turns her attention back to the stove and gets back to stirring the ungodly amount of whisked eggs she has cooking on the pan, humming a jaunty tune under her breath as she works her magic.
Though magic is relative. She's never had much of a taste for the things herself, but they were good for growing children (or so she'd been convinced) and there were only so many ways to overcook eggs before the lesson stuck.
The fact that the three she and Kanna have between the two of them aren't actually all that picky and tend to mow down just about anything so long as it was this side north of edible probably helps too.
And speaking of cute little brats...
"Oi" She cranes her neck and hollers down the hallway again when no little feet come running down their way. "Last one to the table is getting tossed into the koi pond!"
A snort tugs her attention to Kanna, who's sitting at the dinner table and leafing through another one of her cheesy novels, a cup of tea at her side.
"Let them sleep. You know how they'll get if they wake up cranky."
"They're already up. They're trying to make a pillow fort but Karin and Satoru keep fighting over the blankets, and Miya's hogging the pillows and refusing to fork'em over unless they do it her way."
Kanna takes a second to digest that and blinks "How?- ah."
She sighs in understanding when Fuyuko taps the side of her temple.
"Those eyes are a shameless cheat."
Fuyuko smiles smugly and her friend laughs.
"Showoff. It won't be long before they're too old for you to check in on them like that. You're going to end up traumatizing them if you do."
"Possibly." Probably. "It'll keep them on their toes."
"Fuyuko."
"What?
"Fuyuko, no."
"A little trauma is good for character." She protests, but her lips are already twitching.
"It's really not."
"Worked wonders for me."
"Shinobi."
"What's wrong with shinobi?"
The look she gets for that one is drier than Suna's deserts at the height of summer and she just about pops a blood vessel trying not to cackle.
She's kidding, of course - Fuyuko could write entire books on all the way shinobi were twisted - but trying to exasperate Kanna's civilian-born sensibilities is one of the greater joys in her life and she's not giving it up without a fight.
She's just about to suggest gifting the twins and Karin a set of shuriken for New Year's - she'd had her first at six, it wasn't even that far of a stretch - when there's a loud screech and all three come tumbling out the hallway in all their glory.
"First!" Karin crows gleefully, and Kanna forgets all about her and just about melts at the sight of her daughter's smile. "I win!"
Fuyuko would rib her for it, only that she's no better. Satoru and Miya's little faces scrunch in identical displeasure at the other girl's win and she suddenly finds herself having to bite the inside of her cheek not to smile or, kami forbid, coo at them like an undignified sap.
"Were not!" "Cheater!"
Karin sticks her tongue out and Miya scowls and turns to Fuyuko in a way that has her itching to pick her up and cuddle her shamelessly.
"Mama, Karin's a cheater!"
"Am not! You're just slow! Yu-Yu-oba-san, tell her!"
"Miya, Karin won fair and square." Her daughter shoots her a look of betrayal "Don't give me that, she did. You'll win next time. Preferably after we've all had some - Satoru, don't even think about it!"
She turns around right in time to catch her son freeze in place, stilling where he'd hopped up onto the kitchen counter and managed to pry the lid off the pot of sweets she'd made the mistake of leaving out in the open. Sage only knew how he managed to make it that far without tipping her or Kanna off.
"What?" The sly little thief has the gall to grin innocently, cool as a cucumber, never mind that she'd caught him with his hand quite literally stuck in the cookie jar "It's time breakfast."
Kanna lets out a strangled, high-pitched sound and presses her face into her palms, shoulders heaving slightly.
"Nice try. Cookies come after breakfast." Her eyes narrow "And you get one."
"Two."
"One."
"Three."
"Satoru, one."
"Let's meet in the middle and say four."
Kanna turns away entirely while Fuyuko just blinks.
In what world is that meeting in the middle?
"That's not how negotiating works, kiddo."
Her son seems to stop and consider that logic, a serious furrow to his brows.
Then it clears and he shrugs. "I'm being ambitious."
And evidently that's about all Kanna can take, because the ridiculous red-head finally bursts and nearly laughs herself off her stool.
Real helpful, that one.
"You get one. One. There's only a few left and I am not baking another batch this week."
He perks up. "I can help make more!"
Fuyuko snorts "Not a chance in hell."
"Why-"
Quick as a whip, she body-flickers the short distance across the kitchen - no hand seals needed, because she wasn't an amateur and hard work paid off when you put your damn back into it - yanks the jar out of his grip and heaves it onto the highest shelf across the from the counter before the second word makes it past his lips.
"-not-huh?" Satoru blinks at his empty hands, blue eyes flickering (Fuyuko pointedly ignores the glint of something that lights in them before flashing out of existence) and glares indignantly. "Hey! That's not fair!"
"Tough. Welcome to life, oh precious spawn of mine "
Karin and Miya start laughing, grudge forgotten in the face of someone else getting screwed. Bless their vicious little hearts, they'd take them far in life.
Fuyuko winks at the pair and bends down to and snag Satoru off the counter, slinging him over one shoulder (Dyed soft black as it always was, because even as relatively far out in the middle of nowhere as they were, snow white hair was still the very opposite of inconspicuous) and ignores his protests with practiced ease. "And you don't get to make cookies, Satoru, because if we let you get anywhere near the batter you'd load it with enough sugar to kill a horse."
"Would not!"
He would too, and everyone in the house knew it.
Sometimes she had to wonder where Satoru's obsession with all things sweet came from. Her little girl preferred savory foods and the occasional sour treat, and Karin didn't care just so long as she had enough to keep up with her voracious appetite - the perks of an Uzumaki metabolism - but Satoru went after sugar like a fish after water. If he had his way, he'd probably collapse his liver from excessive intake within a year.
It might be a real problem if Fuyuko didn't keep a razor-sharp eye on everything stocked in the pantry at all times.
"Right then. Table. Eggs. Eat." She nods gravely. "Or start holding your breath now, because I wasn't kidding about the koi pond."
And the kids take the hint and shuffle to the table.
Finally.
"Mama?" It's as if they're just about to that Satoru goes to speak again. He'd just cleared his plate before turning to her, an oddly pensive look on his face.
"Hmm?"
She's expecting another round of bargaining for cookie rights or something equally familiar.
The usual stuff.
"Can we learn how to do...that?"
Her breath catches. Across the table Kanna stills where she'd been wiping the corner of Miya's mouth with a napkin, and the little girl frowns up at her.
"What do you mean?"
It's a stupid question - a weak delaying tactic.
She knows exactly what he means - the body flicker technique, the shinobi arts.
It's not the first time it's come up - every once and again Fuyuko would slip into old habits. Unseal a storage scroll to pull out some supplies in Miya's line of sight, flicker across the room to catch Karin before she took a nasty fall... she'd even let Satoru catch sight of her walking up the ceiling to patch up a layer of plaster.
The kids would be suitably amazed, they'd ask pointed questions with stars in their eyes, and Kanna and Fuyuko would deflect and deflect until they forgot all about it, which she should do right now... and yet.
She hesitates, and Satoru pounces.
"You know. The thing. things." He waves his arms in frustration, looking for the right word. "The... techniques."
Fuyuko's brows rise all on their own "Where'd you get that word from?"
"I dunno. Sounds right, though." There's a surprising amount of confidence there as if he was teaching her some new and irrefutable fact. There's also plenty of excited anticipation when he opens his mouth and says "So can we? Learn, I mean?"
"..."
Fuyuko doesn't know what to tell him, and that could be a problem
She's never made an effort to hide chakra and what she can do with it from them, but that wasn't because she trusted their ability to keep a secret - it was and is because she doesn't make a habit of using her skills beyond the necessary and what little of them they'd already seen could and had been explained away easily.
But they were bright kids, getting brighter every day, and if Satoru starts asking pointed questions that would need lies for answers then their lives would get painfully inconvenient and flush with headaches real quick.
"Maybe." Kanna saves her just as Miyabi and Karin turn to her and start putting the pieces together. "You should ask again after we get back from the park."
The girls leap up in delight. "We're going to the park?"
The strain behind the answering smile is so well hidden, even Fuyuko would have missed it if she hadn't known to look for it "As soon as you wash up and get changed-
But Satoru still looks determined, and he goes to speak again, so Kanna swoops in with the killing blow.
"-and we'll get dango on the way back."
Predictably, the promise of sugary goodness derails Satoru's interest instantly. She can almost see the way his eyes lose their eerie focus as he completely switches tracks.
"Dango!" Her little hooligan roars, and then he's leaping off his chair and charging to his room to clean up, the other two hot on his heels.
"It's a good question," Kanna says in the quiet they leave behind.
"It is."
That's why it's so galling to realize that she doesn't have a good answer.
"When are you going to start training them?"
"I don't know." She says aloud, and both of them fall into another contemplative silence.
It wasn't because they lacked the power or the aptitude for it
She'd looked them over with her byakugan when they'd been born and made regular checks since then for years. The twins had the kind of chakra reserves most other clan-grown brats could only ever dream of and Karin had taken it three steps further on account of her Uzumaki legacy and made out like a bandit - she had almost as much as the twins combined.
It wasn't because they couldn't be taught so young - she'd started basic katas and chakra control exercises when she was even younger, and it certainly wasn't because they didn't have the brains for it.
So what was it?
(The answer is obvious, but she avoids it like the plague.
She could train them, but all their oddities wouldn't change the facts. Karin's dual kekkai genkai, Miya's Byakugan and unnatural sturdiness, whatever the hell was going with Satoru's decidedly not byakugan eyes -none of that mattered.
The only way Fuyuko could teach them was to train them as she had, and to do that... she'd have to teach them how to kill)
"Will you join us?" Kanna asks when the quiet lasts too long for comfort and the mood has silently but thoroughly plummeted, but it's more a silent offer than a question.
"Not right now."
Her smile is about as genuine as the platitudes Kagen Uchiha offered her un-dearly departed bastard of a father at that one clan council meeting she'd ever had the shitty misfortune of attending, and Kanna can read it too because she frowns heavily.
"I'll catch up. I always do."
And that was that
(For now)
Golden Rye Town.
For a settlement named for its being right smack dab in the heart of Grasscountry's wildlands, the name was a little on the nose.
Still, Fuyuko and Kanna had chosen it because it was perfect for their purposes. Sparse enough that no threats could move about unseen, populated enough that they could fit in with the masses, and far enough out of the way of anything of importance that the chance of anyone who Fuyuko couldn't handle chancing upon them by luck was slim.
The math did itself
As far as the locals were concerned, Fuyuko and Kanna had merchant relatives who worked across the country and occasionally visited throughout the year (The wonders of basic genjutsu in a town where everyone was susceptible to it) and their kids were no more special than anyone else's was.
Their cover was as good as it could have gotten.
It should have held.
(It didn't)
Miya was taking a break after romping about a game of tag with a few of the local kids (Not because she was tired of playing - but because everyone else was. She'd hardly broken a sweat). Satoru was off wandering wherever it was he tended to wander when he grew bored of others his age (and that was often), and Kanna was stretching herself thin trying to keep an eye on all three of them.
That's why she misses it when it happens.
Karin had been stomping about in a short grass field only a little distance away, trying to look for earthworms to slip into Miya's pillow that night - It would serve her right for calling her a cheater.
And that's when someone grabs a handful of the girl's hair and yanks back.
"Ow!"
When she looks back, Karin sees a boy who couldn't have been any older than her grinning meanly - one of the few who'd tried to roughhouse with Miya and gotten soundly thrashed for it, probably there to try and pick on her for payback.
"Hi, Tomato hair."
And then the idiot gives her hair another tug.
Her hair.
And Karin, who'd grown up with a role model who'd made it clear that she shouldn't take shit from anyone promptly chooses violence and retaliates to this heinous offense by decking the little bastard in the face hard enough for his nose to break nastily.
He lets go, clutching his nose and glaring murderously before flinging himself at her full tilt. They collapse into a pile of heaving, clawing, and biting, each giving as good as they get before the bastard is yanked off of her so quickly he squawks like a stupid little bird.
Satoru smiles, hands in his pockets, and where exactly did he come from?
"Hi, Karin. How's the fight?"
And then something strange happens.
"Hey!" The bastard glares at them both, stumbling to his feet and looking ready to jump at them again-
And then Satoru turns around, and something strange happens.
"Oi." Her annoying baby brother's voice is mild as milk, but Karin suddenly feels very, very small. Across from them, the other boy goes white, and he feels scared.
(Karin doesn't know how she can tell, but she does. Everything feels scared, even the air.)
"Go away, and don't come back."
The bastard doesn't need to be told twice. He takes one step back, and then another, still looking terrified, and then he bolts.
And then Satoru looks back and smiles at her again, and the strange feeling vanishes like it was never there at all.
"So, where ya winning? I didn't see."
Hot indignation flushes through her and she forgets about the oddness that had just occurred.
"Of course I was!"
Still, though. She rubbed her hand and grimaced, pulling her sleeve down before Kaa-san saw the mark there and got all huffy.
"He bit me. Jerk"
Her brother hums in agreement "Nasty. But at least you got his nose good, right?"
"Duh!"
(Neither of them realizes that, as he flees, the boy's nose is no longer broken. They also don't notice the figure who'd been slumped against the bench across the clearing from them, and who'd seen everything. )
His name is Hanako Tamaki.
Right now, he's a nobody - old and half-broken, and missing half a leg to boot.
He also happens to be a discharged shinobi of Kusagakure, discarded by the current administration and thrown to the wayside once he grew too old and broken for the top brass to use.
He usually kept himself nice and drunk in pubs across Grass Country, and only recently come into town to visit his disappointment of a civilian daughter's family - and maybe pocket a few of their valuables.
Somehow along the way, he'd been roped into watching his squalling brat of a grandson while his daughter busied herself being a housewife, because according to her, it was 'the least he could do'
Ungrateful wretch.
But just this once, he'll let it slide without consequence.
This was supposed to be a babysitting nightmare.
Instead, as he inspects his grandson's formerly broken nose with one hand and keeps both eyes on the two children walking away, he realizes that he's struck fucking gold.
It happened two days later.
The kids go out, and Fuyuko lingers to order the mess around the house, grab a drink and just think.
It's all routine.
Then she hears it.
A loud crash, and something trips through the undetectable Fuinjutsu wards on the front doors as they barge into the house.
She flickers from her room to the entry hall in less than a second, and there she sees-
Two figures. Grey flack jackets and metal bands around their foreheads, emblazoned with a row of long, interconnected reeds.
Kusa.
Fuyuko registers that, and then she stops thinking entirely and just moves.
The first one dies before his eyes even have time to widen. She flickers behind him, wraps her hands around his head in an inescapable hold and twists. Her grip is so brutal her fingers break through his skull and dig into the soft brain tissue below even as his neck shatters from the vicious wrench.
The second leaps back before his comrade's body hits the ground - there's real terror in his eyes. They'd been expecting a cowering civilian at best - But Fuyuko doesn't let him live long enough to regret the choices that led him here.
She blitzes him before he can get so much as a proper stance in, and her hands lance out for his tenketsu. Chakra sings through her veins as it answers her call, coating her fingertips and burning off the blood coating off them in a wave of red mist that accompanies her Byakugan's activation.
The Hyûga gentle fist is all elegant brutality, but there's nothing elegant about what Fuyuko does next - her blows break down and carve through muscle, and the last remaining shinobi falls dead with a mangled corpse after only one mangled half-scream that rips its way out of his shredded throat.
She doesn't register it.
She doesn't allow herself to register it.
Instead, her head snaps to the side as her Byakugan's range expands, flaring across town in search of - there.
The next infinitesimal moments are the longest of her life
She doesn't go out the door, she explodes through it - and through three more walls after that between whistling air and the light of the setting sun, uncaring of the way she carves her way through the center of the town, unheeding of the screams and chaos she leaves behind her as she runs like she never has before.
And then she reaches them.
Stops dead-still across from the smirking shinobi who's got a kneeling, distraught Kanna by the hair, Karin and Miyabi crying at his feet with faces blooming with bruises, and Satoru nowhere in sight.
Her friend was in danger. Her babies were hurt.
Fuyuko sees bloody, dripping red and lunges.
(She never makes it.)
An almighty presence slaps down between them, and everyone, shinobi and child alike, gets blown off their feet and flung back like ragdolls, bodies crashing into hard rock and dirt.
Fuyuko leaps back to her feet almost the very second her head hits the ground, heart seizing in terror for the kids and Kanna,
Just in time too.
Satoru stands there, right smack dab in the middle of this unyielding nightmare, face inhumanely blank and eyes glowing like brilliant stars in a swirling cosmos.
Then he stretches a hand. Just the one.
"Blue."
The world lights up in brilliant hues of sapphire and space itself implodes.
Have a chapter to commemorate the return of the Goat!
You know what I'm talking about!
As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.
If you feel like it, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi: Firewillreign
You know what I'm talking about!
Four and a half years later:
The day that kicks off the sequence of events that would quickly send Fuyuko's newly peaceful and much-appreciated second chance right to hell in a hand-basket starts off perfectly.
Because of course it does.
The sun is rising, the birds are chirping on the sakura tree planted out front in the garden, and the early morning light streaming through the windows paints the kitchen with warm, golden-blue hues.
It's all downright scenic.
"Kids! Breakfast!"
Well, almost.
Morning call successfully delivered, Fuyuko turns her attention back to the stove and gets back to stirring the ungodly amount of whisked eggs she has cooking on the pan, humming a jaunty tune under her breath as she works her magic.
Though magic is relative. She's never had much of a taste for the things herself, but they were good for growing children (or so she'd been convinced) and there were only so many ways to overcook eggs before the lesson stuck.
The fact that the three she and Kanna have between the two of them aren't actually all that picky and tend to mow down just about anything so long as it was this side north of edible probably helps too.
And speaking of cute little brats...
"Oi" She cranes her neck and hollers down the hallway again when no little feet come running down their way. "Last one to the table is getting tossed into the koi pond!"
A snort tugs her attention to Kanna, who's sitting at the dinner table and leafing through another one of her cheesy novels, a cup of tea at her side.
"Let them sleep. You know how they'll get if they wake up cranky."
"They're already up. They're trying to make a pillow fort but Karin and Satoru keep fighting over the blankets, and Miya's hogging the pillows and refusing to fork'em over unless they do it her way."
Kanna takes a second to digest that and blinks "How?- ah."
She sighs in understanding when Fuyuko taps the side of her temple.
"Those eyes are a shameless cheat."
Fuyuko smiles smugly and her friend laughs.
"Showoff. It won't be long before they're too old for you to check in on them like that. You're going to end up traumatizing them if you do."
"Possibly." Probably. "It'll keep them on their toes."
"Fuyuko."
"What?
"Fuyuko, no."
"A little trauma is good for character." She protests, but her lips are already twitching.
"It's really not."
"Worked wonders for me."
"Shinobi."
"What's wrong with shinobi?"
The look she gets for that one is drier than Suna's deserts at the height of summer and she just about pops a blood vessel trying not to cackle.
She's kidding, of course - Fuyuko could write entire books on all the way shinobi were twisted - but trying to exasperate Kanna's civilian-born sensibilities is one of the greater joys in her life and she's not giving it up without a fight.
She's just about to suggest gifting the twins and Karin a set of shuriken for New Year's - she'd had her first at six, it wasn't even that far of a stretch - when there's a loud screech and all three come tumbling out the hallway in all their glory.
"First!" Karin crows gleefully, and Kanna forgets all about her and just about melts at the sight of her daughter's smile. "I win!"
Fuyuko would rib her for it, only that she's no better. Satoru and Miya's little faces scrunch in identical displeasure at the other girl's win and she suddenly finds herself having to bite the inside of her cheek not to smile or, kami forbid, coo at them like an undignified sap.
"Were not!" "Cheater!"
Karin sticks her tongue out and Miya scowls and turns to Fuyuko in a way that has her itching to pick her up and cuddle her shamelessly.
"Mama, Karin's a cheater!"
"Am not! You're just slow! Yu-Yu-oba-san, tell her!"
"Miya, Karin won fair and square." Her daughter shoots her a look of betrayal "Don't give me that, she did. You'll win next time. Preferably after we've all had some - Satoru, don't even think about it!"
She turns around right in time to catch her son freeze in place, stilling where he'd hopped up onto the kitchen counter and managed to pry the lid off the pot of sweets she'd made the mistake of leaving out in the open. Sage only knew how he managed to make it that far without tipping her or Kanna off.
"What?" The sly little thief has the gall to grin innocently, cool as a cucumber, never mind that she'd caught him with his hand quite literally stuck in the cookie jar "It's time breakfast."
Kanna lets out a strangled, high-pitched sound and presses her face into her palms, shoulders heaving slightly.
"Nice try. Cookies come after breakfast." Her eyes narrow "And you get one."
"Two."
"One."
"Three."
"Satoru, one."
"Let's meet in the middle and say four."
Kanna turns away entirely while Fuyuko just blinks.
In what world is that meeting in the middle?
"That's not how negotiating works, kiddo."
Her son seems to stop and consider that logic, a serious furrow to his brows.
Then it clears and he shrugs. "I'm being ambitious."
And evidently that's about all Kanna can take, because the ridiculous red-head finally bursts and nearly laughs herself off her stool.
Real helpful, that one.
"You get one. One. There's only a few left and I am not baking another batch this week."
He perks up. "I can help make more!"
Fuyuko snorts "Not a chance in hell."
"Why-"
Quick as a whip, she body-flickers the short distance across the kitchen - no hand seals needed, because she wasn't an amateur and hard work paid off when you put your damn back into it - yanks the jar out of his grip and heaves it onto the highest shelf across the from the counter before the second word makes it past his lips.
"-not-huh?" Satoru blinks at his empty hands, blue eyes flickering (Fuyuko pointedly ignores the glint of something that lights in them before flashing out of existence) and glares indignantly. "Hey! That's not fair!"
"Tough. Welcome to life, oh precious spawn of mine "
Karin and Miya start laughing, grudge forgotten in the face of someone else getting screwed. Bless their vicious little hearts, they'd take them far in life.
Fuyuko winks at the pair and bends down to and snag Satoru off the counter, slinging him over one shoulder (Dyed soft black as it always was, because even as relatively far out in the middle of nowhere as they were, snow white hair was still the very opposite of inconspicuous) and ignores his protests with practiced ease. "And you don't get to make cookies, Satoru, because if we let you get anywhere near the batter you'd load it with enough sugar to kill a horse."
"Would not!"
He would too, and everyone in the house knew it.
Sometimes she had to wonder where Satoru's obsession with all things sweet came from. Her little girl preferred savory foods and the occasional sour treat, and Karin didn't care just so long as she had enough to keep up with her voracious appetite - the perks of an Uzumaki metabolism - but Satoru went after sugar like a fish after water. If he had his way, he'd probably collapse his liver from excessive intake within a year.
It might be a real problem if Fuyuko didn't keep a razor-sharp eye on everything stocked in the pantry at all times.
"Right then. Table. Eggs. Eat." She nods gravely. "Or start holding your breath now, because I wasn't kidding about the koi pond."
And the kids take the hint and shuffle to the table.
Finally.
...
"Mama?" It's as if they're just about to that Satoru goes to speak again. He'd just cleared his plate before turning to her, an oddly pensive look on his face.
"Hmm?"
She's expecting another round of bargaining for cookie rights or something equally familiar.
The usual stuff.
"Can we learn how to do...that?"
Her breath catches. Across the table Kanna stills where she'd been wiping the corner of Miya's mouth with a napkin, and the little girl frowns up at her.
"What do you mean?"
It's a stupid question - a weak delaying tactic.
She knows exactly what he means - the body flicker technique, the shinobi arts.
It's not the first time it's come up - every once and again Fuyuko would slip into old habits. Unseal a storage scroll to pull out some supplies in Miya's line of sight, flicker across the room to catch Karin before she took a nasty fall... she'd even let Satoru catch sight of her walking up the ceiling to patch up a layer of plaster.
The kids would be suitably amazed, they'd ask pointed questions with stars in their eyes, and Kanna and Fuyuko would deflect and deflect until they forgot all about it, which she should do right now... and yet.
She hesitates, and Satoru pounces.
"You know. The thing. things." He waves his arms in frustration, looking for the right word. "The... techniques."
Fuyuko's brows rise all on their own "Where'd you get that word from?"
"I dunno. Sounds right, though." There's a surprising amount of confidence there as if he was teaching her some new and irrefutable fact. There's also plenty of excited anticipation when he opens his mouth and says "So can we? Learn, I mean?"
"..."
Fuyuko doesn't know what to tell him, and that could be a problem
She's never made an effort to hide chakra and what she can do with it from them, but that wasn't because she trusted their ability to keep a secret - it was and is because she doesn't make a habit of using her skills beyond the necessary and what little of them they'd already seen could and had been explained away easily.
But they were bright kids, getting brighter every day, and if Satoru starts asking pointed questions that would need lies for answers then their lives would get painfully inconvenient and flush with headaches real quick.
"Maybe." Kanna saves her just as Miyabi and Karin turn to her and start putting the pieces together. "You should ask again after we get back from the park."
The girls leap up in delight. "We're going to the park?"
The strain behind the answering smile is so well hidden, even Fuyuko would have missed it if she hadn't known to look for it "As soon as you wash up and get changed-
But Satoru still looks determined, and he goes to speak again, so Kanna swoops in with the killing blow.
"-and we'll get dango on the way back."
Predictably, the promise of sugary goodness derails Satoru's interest instantly. She can almost see the way his eyes lose their eerie focus as he completely switches tracks.
"Dango!" Her little hooligan roars, and then he's leaping off his chair and charging to his room to clean up, the other two hot on his heels.
"It's a good question," Kanna says in the quiet they leave behind.
"It is."
That's why it's so galling to realize that she doesn't have a good answer.
"When are you going to start training them?"
"I don't know." She says aloud, and both of them fall into another contemplative silence.
It wasn't because they lacked the power or the aptitude for it
She'd looked them over with her byakugan when they'd been born and made regular checks since then for years. The twins had the kind of chakra reserves most other clan-grown brats could only ever dream of and Karin had taken it three steps further on account of her Uzumaki legacy and made out like a bandit - she had almost as much as the twins combined.
It wasn't because they couldn't be taught so young - she'd started basic katas and chakra control exercises when she was even younger, and it certainly wasn't because they didn't have the brains for it.
So what was it?
(The answer is obvious, but she avoids it like the plague.
She could train them, but all their oddities wouldn't change the facts. Karin's dual kekkai genkai, Miya's Byakugan and unnatural sturdiness, whatever the hell was going with Satoru's decidedly not byakugan eyes -none of that mattered.
The only way Fuyuko could teach them was to train them as she had, and to do that... she'd have to teach them how to kill)
"Will you join us?" Kanna asks when the quiet lasts too long for comfort and the mood has silently but thoroughly plummeted, but it's more a silent offer than a question.
"Not right now."
Her smile is about as genuine as the platitudes Kagen Uchiha offered her un-dearly departed bastard of a father at that one clan council meeting she'd ever had the shitty misfortune of attending, and Kanna can read it too because she frowns heavily.
"I'll catch up. I always do."
And that was that
(For now)
...
Golden Rye Town.
For a settlement named for its being right smack dab in the heart of Grasscountry's wildlands, the name was a little on the nose.
Still, Fuyuko and Kanna had chosen it because it was perfect for their purposes. Sparse enough that no threats could move about unseen, populated enough that they could fit in with the masses, and far enough out of the way of anything of importance that the chance of anyone who Fuyuko couldn't handle chancing upon them by luck was slim.
The math did itself
As far as the locals were concerned, Fuyuko and Kanna had merchant relatives who worked across the country and occasionally visited throughout the year (The wonders of basic genjutsu in a town where everyone was susceptible to it) and their kids were no more special than anyone else's was.
Their cover was as good as it could have gotten.
It should have held.
(It didn't)
Miya was taking a break after romping about a game of tag with a few of the local kids (Not because she was tired of playing - but because everyone else was. She'd hardly broken a sweat). Satoru was off wandering wherever it was he tended to wander when he grew bored of others his age (and that was often), and Kanna was stretching herself thin trying to keep an eye on all three of them.
That's why she misses it when it happens.
Karin had been stomping about in a short grass field only a little distance away, trying to look for earthworms to slip into Miya's pillow that night - It would serve her right for calling her a cheater.
And that's when someone grabs a handful of the girl's hair and yanks back.
"Ow!"
When she looks back, Karin sees a boy who couldn't have been any older than her grinning meanly - one of the few who'd tried to roughhouse with Miya and gotten soundly thrashed for it, probably there to try and pick on her for payback.
"Hi, Tomato hair."
And then the idiot gives her hair another tug.
Her hair.
And Karin, who'd grown up with a role model who'd made it clear that she shouldn't take shit from anyone promptly chooses violence and retaliates to this heinous offense by decking the little bastard in the face hard enough for his nose to break nastily.
He lets go, clutching his nose and glaring murderously before flinging himself at her full tilt. They collapse into a pile of heaving, clawing, and biting, each giving as good as they get before the bastard is yanked off of her so quickly he squawks like a stupid little bird.
Satoru smiles, hands in his pockets, and where exactly did he come from?
"Hi, Karin. How's the fight?"
And then something strange happens.
"Hey!" The bastard glares at them both, stumbling to his feet and looking ready to jump at them again-
And then Satoru turns around, and something strange happens.
"Oi." Her annoying baby brother's voice is mild as milk, but Karin suddenly feels very, very small. Across from them, the other boy goes white, and he feels scared.
(Karin doesn't know how she can tell, but she does. Everything feels scared, even the air.)
"Go away, and don't come back."
The bastard doesn't need to be told twice. He takes one step back, and then another, still looking terrified, and then he bolts.
And then Satoru looks back and smiles at her again, and the strange feeling vanishes like it was never there at all.
"So, where ya winning? I didn't see."
Hot indignation flushes through her and she forgets about the oddness that had just occurred.
"Of course I was!"
Still, though. She rubbed her hand and grimaced, pulling her sleeve down before Kaa-san saw the mark there and got all huffy.
"He bit me. Jerk"
Her brother hums in agreement "Nasty. But at least you got his nose good, right?"
"Duh!"
(Neither of them realizes that, as he flees, the boy's nose is no longer broken. They also don't notice the figure who'd been slumped against the bench across the clearing from them, and who'd seen everything. )
...
His name is Hanako Tamaki.
Right now, he's a nobody - old and half-broken, and missing half a leg to boot.
He also happens to be a discharged shinobi of Kusagakure, discarded by the current administration and thrown to the wayside once he grew too old and broken for the top brass to use.
He usually kept himself nice and drunk in pubs across Grass Country, and only recently come into town to visit his disappointment of a civilian daughter's family - and maybe pocket a few of their valuables.
Somehow along the way, he'd been roped into watching his squalling brat of a grandson while his daughter busied herself being a housewife, because according to her, it was 'the least he could do'
Ungrateful wretch.
But just this once, he'll let it slide without consequence.
This was supposed to be a babysitting nightmare.
Instead, as he inspects his grandson's formerly broken nose with one hand and keeps both eyes on the two children walking away, he realizes that he's struck fucking gold.
...
It happened two days later.
The kids go out, and Fuyuko lingers to order the mess around the house, grab a drink and just think.
It's all routine.
Then she hears it.
A loud crash, and something trips through the undetectable Fuinjutsu wards on the front doors as they barge into the house.
She flickers from her room to the entry hall in less than a second, and there she sees-
Two figures. Grey flack jackets and metal bands around their foreheads, emblazoned with a row of long, interconnected reeds.
Kusa.
Fuyuko registers that, and then she stops thinking entirely and just moves.
The first one dies before his eyes even have time to widen. She flickers behind him, wraps her hands around his head in an inescapable hold and twists. Her grip is so brutal her fingers break through his skull and dig into the soft brain tissue below even as his neck shatters from the vicious wrench.
The second leaps back before his comrade's body hits the ground - there's real terror in his eyes. They'd been expecting a cowering civilian at best - But Fuyuko doesn't let him live long enough to regret the choices that led him here.
She blitzes him before he can get so much as a proper stance in, and her hands lance out for his tenketsu. Chakra sings through her veins as it answers her call, coating her fingertips and burning off the blood coating off them in a wave of red mist that accompanies her Byakugan's activation.
The Hyûga gentle fist is all elegant brutality, but there's nothing elegant about what Fuyuko does next - her blows break down and carve through muscle, and the last remaining shinobi falls dead with a mangled corpse after only one mangled half-scream that rips its way out of his shredded throat.
She doesn't register it.
She doesn't allow herself to register it.
Instead, her head snaps to the side as her Byakugan's range expands, flaring across town in search of - there.
The next infinitesimal moments are the longest of her life
She doesn't go out the door, she explodes through it - and through three more walls after that between whistling air and the light of the setting sun, uncaring of the way she carves her way through the center of the town, unheeding of the screams and chaos she leaves behind her as she runs like she never has before.
And then she reaches them.
Stops dead-still across from the smirking shinobi who's got a kneeling, distraught Kanna by the hair, Karin and Miyabi crying at his feet with faces blooming with bruises, and Satoru nowhere in sight.
Her friend was in danger. Her babies were hurt.
Fuyuko sees bloody, dripping red and lunges.
(She never makes it.)
An almighty presence slaps down between them, and everyone, shinobi and child alike, gets blown off their feet and flung back like ragdolls, bodies crashing into hard rock and dirt.
Fuyuko leaps back to her feet almost the very second her head hits the ground, heart seizing in terror for the kids and Kanna,
Just in time too.
Satoru stands there, right smack dab in the middle of this unyielding nightmare, face inhumanely blank and eyes glowing like brilliant stars in a swirling cosmos.
Then he stretches a hand. Just the one.
"Blue."
The world lights up in brilliant hues of sapphire and space itself implodes.
...
Have a chapter to commemorate the return of the Goat!
You know what I'm talking about!
As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.
If you feel like it, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi: Firewillreign
Last edited:
KingNecron101
Binding Vow Merchant
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Love to see this update. It is probably my favorite of your stories (this or Arcane for sure).
Firewillreign
Know what you're doing yet?
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Thanks!
Gojo's hair is hidden by dye, and both his and Miyabi's eyes are disguised by Genjutsu - we'll explore the concept more next chapter when we see how Fuyuko and Kanna have kept them hidden.
ArcanaVitae
Versed in the lewd.
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Satoru is out here doing his own thing and reality is going to run into him doing his own thing by sheer weight of him being himself.
Haruchai
Not too sore, are you?
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Nize. Didn't expect this one to be updated anytime soon.
Alchto
I want money so I can get some pussy ~ peep
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me too, nice it wasnt abandoned so quick
Nicohals J Westerberg
(Local Lurker)
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Chills. So that's cool I guess
Error29
The Wandering Reader
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What an idiot, even after all this and she still doesn't teach them? What kind of moronic shinobi is she? Doesn't she know that it is a recipe for disaster? It's like every parent in every anime always want their child to get killed, always hated this trope.
Still loved the chapter, just that part is always stupid, and I never understood it
Xenokrates
Know what you're doing yet?
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What mother want her child to kill.she is just thinking it is too early.
Firewillreign
Know what you're doing yet?
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The kids are four and a half, and Fuyuko finally got a taste of what peaceful life looks like. She doesn't want her kids to have to kill like she did, but that attitude isn't going to last real long after this one.
grime
I trust you know where the happy button is?
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Ngl, cool chapter, but it also severely busts my balls that after so long we get another cliffhanger. Last chapter also ended the exact same way and had Gojo seemingly save the day but never actually show it or anyone's reactions to his power. Now it's almost like they forgot what happened last chapter and Gojo has saved the day again (but without us getting to see, again.)
Firewillreign
Know what you're doing yet?
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Sorry, I promise the payoff for next chapter will be worth it - we only have one more prologue to get to before we start having Satoru's POV, and then the story proper.
crissthethief
Not too sore, are you?
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Bro Gojo isn't coming back he's dead as hell Sukuna cooked him (coping)