In Triplicate

Prior to Izumi Chie, the only person in Konohagakure's history to be as much of a hardass about paperwork was the Nidaime himself.

It starts when she's in the Academy.

Nakajima-sensei is boring as sin, the children are loud and noisy, and Chie?

Chie knows it all already. She didn't go through sixteen years of formal education for nothing, dammit, and even if she still has trouble with theoretical physics, how the hell is she going to remember to calculate a kunai's trajectory in the heat of the moment? She's smart, but she's not Hatake Kakashi. She doesn't have a mind for numbers, or even for history dates. Who needs to know what year Senju Hashirama first met Uchiha Madara on the field of battle if you know it was the turning point of the Warring Clans Era and you're entirely capable of writing a dissertation on its ramifications leading down to today? Even if you probably shouldn't be able to? No, wait—especially though she probably shouldn't be able to.

"Chie-kun," Nakajima-sensei says, drawing her attention back to the present. The children all stare at her with an indefinable look; the mid-morning light filters in lazily through the great tall windows favored by the Academy, and Chie's hands are tiny and pale and delicate. She hates them. Nakajima-sensei smiles, and the fine lines around his eyes crinkle with it. His eyes are a warm brown she hasn't seen anywhere else in Konoha. A part of her wonders where he's descended from, but the rest of her remembers that open anthropology is frowned-upon in a society that relies upon controlling the information flow and shuts that line of inquiry down. For the moment. "Would you care to answer the question?"

Chie smiles back, equal parts bland and unapologetic, and some of her classmates look disappointed at the lack of embarrassment. Serves them right, the little monsters. "My apologies, sensei. May I hear the question again?"

"Indeed. The question was this: what did the honorable Senju Tobirama say when he founded the Department of Intelligence and Investigation?"

"'Without bureaucracy, the state cannot survive,'" Chie quotes, eyes sliding mutinously in the direction of the window again, far more entranced by the way the leaves of the tree outside create intriguing patterns of shadow and light—gossamer threads of hope protruding from the bright spring green, or so the poet Tanaka would've said. "Though a fairly simple sociopolitical statement, there are no records of this thought process prior to the honorable Senju Tobirama's declaration. The continent was far too devastated during the Warring Clans Era for prior histories to have survived, which weighed heavily on his mind, and led him to record many of his thoughts on the matter for his brother's benefit."

Nakajima-sensei smiles, openly pleased for a fraction of a second, and the rest of her classmates just seem boggled. But then something sharper enters his eyes, a cunning that abruptly reminds her of the truth of the world she now inhabits. There is a challenge in his gaze—a challenge and a warning. "Very good, Chie-kun. I see you've been reading ahead in the textbook. Perhaps you'd like to move on to more advanced learning, hm?"

"I still have much to learn, sensei, though I am honored by your consideration," Chie says carefully, bowing her head deeply. She may be younger than the usual student, with her frame too small to be able to use the Academy-style taijutsu styles with complete comfort and her absentmindedness matched only by her acute attention to detail, but she is no Hatake Kakashi, and she knows that the Academy teachers have been watching her—considering her, evaluating her progress. It isn't often that a clanless orphan displays such potential, no matter what the honorable Jiraiya of the Sannin has most recently espoused in his first published novel.

(He is too idealistic, they say. He will bring the new generation to ruin. They will dream not of kunai and survival but of peace and a plowshare. How can we allow this? We are at war. —And so the book dies a quiet death. She has a copy. She'll never, ever lose it.)

Izumi Chie knows better. She knows better than the Hokage does.

The thought nearly makes her want to laugh, then cry. If anyone, she can appreciate the acute irony of the statement; the Hokage most certainly knows more than she does, being something like a bajillion years old compared to her supposed six, but there is something about her that neither he nor anyone in the entire shinobi governmental structure could ever possibly guess at that makes the idea of progressing before she's gotten some physical training remarkably unpalatable. Ninja just aren't wired for it, trained to think as they are of practicalities and realities and how ideas relate to the physical.

How could they ever believe that reincarnation is more than just a religious idea about what comes after, a vague abstraction with no real bearing on their present reality? How could they even begin to comprehend the possibility that a soul older than the most ancient of their legends, from a world beyond their longest, most faded myths, might've possibly crossed between the intangible and the tangible without noticing until it'd been too late to return?

"We will discuss this further," says Nakajima-sensei without any discernible positive or negative reaction, bringing her back to reality. "For now, class, let's finish up with a discussion. Okonogi-kun, Wakisa-kun—you two start."

Chie fingers her wispy, short brown hair absently, already staring at the window.

Izumi Chie is a quiet child.

They snoop, as all ninja do, and they call it collecting information. Izumi Chie's mother died on mission a week before her daughter's sixth birthday, saving Hatake Sakumo from having his spinal cord severed. Her father was never in the picture. She has no friends and she spent the first three months of her sixth year with her nose buried in history books, chakra theory, and almost all the poetry contained in the Konoha General Library.

A Yamanaka, when informed about this, hemmed and hawed for a little while, then finally said that while the subject matter wasn't exactly typical for a six-year-old, he had known her highly literate mother and Chie's instinctive reaction to isolate herself from all outside influences would only be a concern if she remained lost in her own mind. It made sense that she went to books; likely, it was her way of feeling connected to her deceased mother.

The Yamanaka joined the nosy ninja—observation team, and somehow keeping track of clanless orphans begins to become the local past-time for the T&I department (because nobody calls it The Department of Intelligence and Investigation any more). By the time Izumi Chie is seven years old, she and the dozen other clanless orphans in the Academy system have a whole cadre of silent caretakers psychoanalyzing their development. (And Hatake Kakashi's—but their interest in him is at least half because they know it's going to be hell and a half to get the kid into the Psych department when he inevitably needs an evaluation, and T&I collectively lives for the pain of the psych-nins. Hey, they're at war—they've got to let the stress out somehow.)

Chie is by far the most intriguing to their minds; she is a cagey one, even by shinobi standards, and after a week spent in the library she comes out with an alarmingly self-satisfied look and a self-constructed cipher seemingly drawn from the multiple books on animal husbandry back in the dustiest, most mind-numbing part of the library—it looks like chicken scratch, anyways, one Yamanaka Inoichi tells the head of T&I, shaking his head at his coworkers' fascination with all Konoha's orphans.

After that, Chie writes. And writes and writes and writes and writes, all with a pensive look on her face, keeping all her indecipherable papers in the toy safe her mother gave her on her fifth birthday. Oh, she does what other, more normal children do as well—she trains a little and plays nice with any workmates she's required to have in the Academy, though she seems to regard her peers with a world-weary disdain learned only through an intolerance for loud children; she goes out to dango stalls and takoyaki stands and a particular ramen stand in the market district she seems to hold a distinct fondness for and chats with the strangers she meets while she's there, politely inquiring about the weather and their crops and their families until they become acquaintances and then strange half-friends, all as the fascinated Yamanaka watches.

Look, her actions seem to say to her watchers. I exist, even if it's not in your paradigms. This is my way to live. It is strange and different, but I am just fine.

And of course that's no way to make a ninja leave you alone, because habits mean predictability and predictability makes you an easy target.

This is why, when the Sandaime chooses to de-stress himself by meeting earlier in the year with those among his future shinobi who have no family to look after them, a seven-and-a-half-year-old Izumi Chie sits calmly on the visitor's chair in the Hokage's office and smiles when Sarutobi inquires after her continued patronage of dusty little Ichiraku's on the corner of Hashirama Street.

"I made a friend of sorts, Hokage-sama," Chie says after a moment of thoughtful contemplation. "Her name is Kushina. She told me that she was a clone, and then she disappeared in a cloud of smoke. I looked clone up in the library and found that it's technically called a bunshin. She said it's a special kind of bunshin—kage bunshin. If it's a kage bunshin, Hokage-sama, couldn't it stand in for a 'kage if needed? It would certainly help with the paperwork."

Hiruzen freezes for a fraction of a second and ignores the way his ANBU are caught between a horrible desire to laugh and the utter brilliance of the idea. "…My," he says, recovering admirably. "That is certainly an interesting train of thought, Chie-chan."

Chie inclines her head. A hint of a smile plays about her lips. "You are too kind, Hokage-sama."

"You are quite considerate. Now, I do think you will have to get home before it turns dark—may the Will of Fire go with you, Chie-chan, and do not forget: all of Konoha is with you. If you find yourself in need of aid, do not hesitate to ask your teachers or a responsible adult."

"Thank you for your time, Hokage-sama." Chie hops off the chair and bows respectfully to the old man, amusement evident at his last sentence, though she voices nothing about it. Sarutobi double-checks that she is comfortable with the chuunin teenager that escorted her to the Tower; when there is nothing distrustful in Chie's face as she nods at Suki Mebuki, he files the reaction away for later examination.

Much, much later. He has a war to coordinate, and the stacks of paperwork aren't getting any thinner.

…Though the idea of using kage bunshin really is brilliant.

Izumi Chie graduates the Academy at age eight, squarely in the middle of the class rankings despite Nakajima-sensei's thinly-veiled attempts to get her to consider a jump-start to her shinobi career.

The career I didn't really want? The one that I was forced into when the woman who birthed this body died? she half-thinks of saying with a dry stare, but in Konohagakure, your voice is only important insofar as it exists to contribute to the advancement of the village and the Hokage. Personal opinions—personal feelings—do no matter. The world is at war, and feelings died with the first man who was impaled by a katana to save Hatake Sakumo from certain death by Iwa-nin.

Quite a man, that Hatake Sakumo. Out there on the front lines, fighting even though he could've taken leave before Chie was old enough to retain information and still be left with plenty to spare, in memory of the comrades who died for him.

Idly, Chie wonders how Hatake Kakashi feels about that. He'd graduated the same year she'd been entered into the Academy, been placed with an individual jonin-sensei, and has since been sighted around the village by various gossipy housewives and stallkeepers and chuunin (all equally nosy and unsubtle in their methods) doing things like training puppies, repairing fences, and learning jutsu under one Namikaze Minato. He's certainly been busy. Busy enough to have very little time to think about a father absent in his desperation for atonement.

"Oi, Izumi." It's a child's voice, and the words are squeaked out in an imitation of the growl the boy will one day grow up to have. Chie blinks and looks Morino Ibiki in the eye unflinchingly. Behind him lingers a quiet boy with dark hair and thick eyebrows, looking at her with a thoughtful expression that makes her wary. Ibiki, young and unscarred (for God's sake, he still has hair—completely nondescript hair that is perfectly cut and partitioned at the side) jabs a thumb in Gai's direction. "You're with us. C'mon."

"Oh, they announced the teams already?" Chie asks, not moving. She has bowed to enough whims in her memories; she is not particularly inclined to do so further if the person requiring it is not the Hokage. Leaders are different. Little boys whose skulls are soft and unmarked by the lingering shadows of monster-men are not.

Ibiki examines her with renewed interest. Unexpected. He's silent for a moment as Gai comes to stand beside him. Then—"Did you ever really need to listen?"

"Did you?" she returns, smiling. This is a game she knows well.

"Maybe. Maybe not."

"Chie-san, Ibiki-san," Gai says, drawing their attention. He holds up his lunchbox. It is the essence of manliness: lovingly-forged tin with bold, sharp grooves and rifts where the metal has been carved into shapes like the Konoha symbol and a Hashirama tree and… a pair of goggles? "Please, let us partake of the joy of sustenance together, that we might be filled and prepared to meet our jounin-sensei when it is time."

Chie stares at him for a long, long moment; Gai stares back, patient. Slowly, she smiles. Lesser men would be intimidated by the way the tiny, pale, green-eyed eight-year-old pins the two of them with a look that could be comparable to a cat recognizing a new source of entertainment. "Don't be so formal," she tells him, standing. "If we're a team now, we will need to be familiar with each other."

"That's right." Ibiki folds his arms over his thin chest. "Did you have a place in mind, Gai?"

"…Yes. Yes, I did," Gai says, a smile of his own finding its way to his face.

"Sorry, what?" Chie says more than she asks, staring at her jounin-sensei.

"Hello," says Hatake Sakumo, looking more tired than anything else, but he tries to smile regardless. Nobody in the clearing is fooled. "It's a pleasure to meet you three. I'll be your jounin-sensei, starting today."

Chie turns accusing eyes to the Hokage, who most definitely, absolutely, unequivocally got the wrong idea from how much she talked about the Hatakes when he last called her in to discuss her new status as a shinobi and what that meant for her orphan stipend and what her options were now. Normally she'd be more respectful, considering exactly who the man is, but at the present moment—no, no, no. Ibiki and Gai she could handle. But this? Not this.

"The war has to end at some point, Chie-chan," Sarutobi tells her, looking far too self-satisfied for a man who has just ruined her life.

Sakumo flinches. Both of them pretend not to notice.

"…Hokage-sama…"

Sarutobi actually chuckles. Damn him. "Now, now, Chie-chan. I know you're shy, but shouldn't you be a little more excited about meeting your hero?"

Chie splutters, flushing red. Ibiki looks like he's seen the universe tip itself over on its head; Gai blinks once and nods, like this makes sense. Sakumo… Sakumo just looks boggled. "Hokage-sama!"

"Have fun," Sarutobi says genially, like the kind old man he most definitely has no right to pretend he is. "I do believe I have paperwork to attend to."

She wants to die. Disappear, melt into a puddle, use that one go-underground-forever jutsu, whatever—just to be anywhere other than right here, stuck with Hatake Sakumo and her inevitable involvement in a changed world from the one she knows. Dammit, Hokage-sama.

So much for a quiet life. So much for not getting involved beyond her semi-unwilling acquaintanceship with Kushina because the idea of a clanless eight-year-old being able to influence anything was lunacy. Everything changed before she knew enough to have any sort of choice in the matter, and that's just damn unfair, is what it is. What's going to be next—an unwilling adoption by the Uchiha clan?

Something in her shrivels up and dies at the thought. No, no, no, she repeats to herself, feeling in her bones the acute awkwardness of the silence the Hokage has left in his wake. That's ridiculous. I've never even spoken with a Uchiha that—

—that wasn't… Obito…

Uchiha Obito, who had been paired with her on a class assignment for a grand total of five minutes before deciding that he was going to get her to talk to him, no matter what.

Oh, hell. The village is huge. How is it so small?

"…So," Sakumo says, clearing his throat. "Why don't we go around and introduce ourselves? I am Hatake Sakumo, kenjutsu user and your jounin-sensei. You… Maito, yes? Let's start with you."

Gai grins, a megawatt smile Chie has been subconsciously waiting to see for the two years she's known him. "Yes, sensei! I am Maito Gai, interested in genjutsu and taijutsu! I am your genin subordinate!"

"Morino Ibiki. Long-range fighter, or assassination techniques. I'm a genin now."

Chie resists the urge to throw herself on the ground and protest the cruel, unrelenting nature of the universe as all three males present look at her curiously. Instead, she squares her shoulders and looks Sakumo in the eye, daring him to take issue with her. "Izumi Chie. Prospective kenjutsu user. Also a genin. We'll be in your care, sensei."

"Well, then. I guess we should get started," Sakumo says, and though he is a jounin, though he is very, very good, he really can't help the brief look that flashes across his face—the look that says I would rather do anything else in the world at this exact moment than be here and awake and alive.

When Ibiki and Gai exchange looks and give Chie an expectant glance, she realizes that this is not going to be a standard genin team experience. In the least. The part of her that's done with protesting actually perks up in interest—finally, something interesting—and as she thinks about it, the view begins to grow on her. A bit like a weed, really.

This isn't the Academy. This isn't thinly veiled threats and total disinterest in subject matter she'd known before she could walk. Her hands might be small and she might be eight years old and looking to be as depressingly short and tiny as she was in a world before living memory, but perhaps this can be something more than just a path she must be coaxed along by the fettering hands of fate. It might be Hatake Sakumo standing there and not someone as generic as she'd hoped, but people aren't things, pieces on a board, and before them is a man broken enough to be unable to hide it from normal eight-year-olds.

And the Hokage, perceptive as he is, had to know exactly what he was doing when he put three children together that have been individually noted for their propensity for psychoanalyzing everyone they meet.

"So," she says, crossing her arms with a confident smile, deciding to play the role of spokesperson to the hilt—if that's what they want her to do. "What's first?"

She's been handed an opportunity on a silver platter. Like hell is she going to waste another life.