Esparia's A/N: Nothing motivates me more than awesome reviews and the priorities of life that I should take care of but really don't want to face. Cheers to you readers who are still sticking with this. I'll get this sucker done one day, and we'll all be in nursing homes when I do. So uh, part of why it's been taking so long is my body absolutely hates living and is sabotaging itself in everyday possible. Work has been all consuming...but I'm starting an art business so hopefully that'll make things easier on said self destroying body. If I could Orochimaru style body shed... speaaaakking of...

If the name didn't give it away, we're gonna be dealing with Danzo and Root so... uh, yay, Happy New Years everyone. Your commemorative gift for making it this far is Danzo. Ok but I should list actual warnings cause this one is going to be a doozy.

Chapter Warnings: So in no particular order...Danzo, OC usage 'cause I'm not given much to work with in Root, child soldiers, brainwashing, the red light district (for those who don't know what this is, uh, it's an area in a city where debauchery is the theme), alluding to child prostitution, fake diseases, implied Orochimaru/Root unethical medical science, implied mass amounts of death, implied child abuse because...again, Root... uhhhhh it's all basically sin and I don't mean this in a fun way at all because Danzo is a Grade A piece of crap and I look forward getting rid of him. Also, this hasn't been proofed so, spelling errors and junk.

If you want to skip this chapter, go ahead, and for future reference if you ever need to skip because of triggers you can message me about an overview. Give me fic title, chapter, and rank 1-10 for the amount of details. 1 being vague as heck and 10 being top tier spark notes.

You're also gonna get hit by some head canons of the Naruto world 'cause I apparently have no control. (Along that vein it should be noted that this chapter might be replaced in the near future pending the completion of a certain list.)

Ch 23: 01/01/20

Omake: 01/02/20

…

Chapter Twenty Three

(Root Rot)

Taku breathed out slowly, steadying his grip on his kunai and checked his balance on the beam he was perched on. His lungs burned from suppressing a cough, but it was vital for him to scout the situation before acting. Though this would all be worth it, should the situation be what he hoped for.

He's been in root for what felt like a very long time. Now though, he was going to bring an end to it.

Root was one of those places that was so morally depraved it wouldn't even be welcomed in the worst of places. Honestly though, it wouldn't be a far reach for it to be considered Yomi. Underground, dark, and full of dead souls.

It was a terrible place and in some ways he could understand the necessity of it. There were lines, though, that should not be crossed.

When Naruto, before Taku's timeline, heard about root he was fully and completely against it. He didn't understand what root meant or what it was to be a nenin. In Taku's time, however, he experienced it. Everything that was Root he knew better than the back of his own hand.

Oh he hated Root and it needed to be brought down, hands down no questions asked. He simply was given... perspective.

A person can't really experience what they haven't experienced already. They can make guess and accurate assumptions based on past experiences but they won't know the thing fully unless they have experienced it themselves.

Take an apple for instance. Maybe all your life you've eaten good apples. A few bad ones have been added to the mix, smushy, bruised, underripe, etcetera. But you're suddenly presented with a very old, very rotten apple. You don't need to bite into it to know that you're not going to like it and you can hazard a guess as to what it would be like to bite into it. Mushy against the tongue, falling apart and only gives under your teeth, tastes vile. You can expect all of that, and rightly so. All past experiences indicate that this is how it will be. If you bite into it anyway, it's not only worse than what you expect, there's more surprises to it. For instance, the smell that wafts from the back of your nose is more akin to dirt than you expected. It's taste is truly repulsive and any bits that might have gone down your throat are soon gaged up violently and you can't seem to get what's left in your mouth out. Maybe there were even maggots in your apple. For which you were not prepared to deal with. Now every time you see an apple you gag a little because that experience haunts you. If you hadn't bitten into that apple you wouldn't gag because you never experienced eating an apple that made you want to do otherwise.

Root was kinda that. Rotten to core, full worms, and all together generally off putting. Maybe it was once a good idea, a good apple, but it certainly wasn't any good now and needed to be gotten rid of. Promptly. Quickly. Like it needed to be gone at least a week ago but it's still in the fruit bowl for some absurd reason like sentimental value over actual trash.

Root had it's purpose. Missions to complete that needed completing. ANBU were in existence for a reason and Root sadly took up the necessity of that job and morphed it into something corrupt and cancerous.

ANBU had its flaws and could easily turn into the next Root but there were laws and a system in charge to prevent such a corrosion of morals.

What set the two apart, aside from some dubious "recruitment" and training systems, was that ANBU had a ranking system that required more than one person to have absolute control. The Hokage, naturally, had a lot of control over ANBU and missions in general. They could assign missions precarious in nature but weren't usually the only ones to know about them. The head of the ANBU oversaw a lot of the missions and were usually the ones that brought such precarious missions to the Hokage in the first place. They could recommend ninja for such missions and their input was valued, they also assigned the missions to the ANBU squads. Then there were the ANBU captains, in charge of their squad and to see to that the mission's parameters were met.

Root on the other hand had Shimura Danzo. All there was were divisions and ranks. Danzo called the shots and everyone fell in line. The ones left "in charge" were trusted puppets to do what Danzo asked for. They had no say and no thought to their orders unless asked for such from Danzo. It was all Danzo.

While this on the surface that was all well and good, take off the head the body will follow, it wasn't as easy as that. Well it was, but it wasn't. Yes, Root would crumble because there was no one to issue orders but the people inside Root would be lost in some shape or form.

While a few would commit seppuku, unable to function without Danzo, a lot would be confused and just continue what they were last told to do.

The sleeper agents were one of his main concerns. Division 14 was the largest division in Root, and the most scattered. Division 14's goal was to gather information and send it back to Root. There were three subdivisions; 01:Moles; 02:Seduction; and 03:T&I. You could figure out a nenin's purpose by their numbers. Take 007436 for example. 007436's full number designation was 14-02-007436, indicating they were a nin that specialized in information gathering through seduction.

14-02-007436, despite being set up in one of the highest casualty divisions was rather good at what he did. He would survive long enough to become the "head" of that subdivision and teach the new "recruits". Taku learned under him before being placed in Division 13. The man single handedly brought the mortality rate of the division down by 35% within the first half year he started teaching. The man was known for efficiency and being the youngest seducer to survive past a year. Which... wasn't necessarily a good thing but it let the man out of Root's grasp younger than most. It also allowed him a longer period of growing up without Root's meathooks digging into his mind than most.

He would be pivotal to absolutely destroying Root while keeping the casualties low, because while he was high ranked, he also had what most of the senior nenin lacked.

"You've been hiding there for a while, little bird, why are you out of your nest let alone perched among vultures? Come to ask for something good?" asked 14-02-007436, lounging below him with a pipe trailing lazy curls of smoke.

Taku hopped down from the rafters, earning him a tilt of the head. "Seiichi-san, care to help me with deracinating some rotten foliage?"

With a mild smile Seiichi, uncurled like a cat and strode forward with the grace of a geisha. "Now that's an interesting request, what would I get out of this?"

Taku's lips twitched, "retribution and your freedom."

Seiichi breathed in a long draw on his pipe, holding it and seeming to judge everything that made up Taku. Calculating eyes reading his very existence and the value of his words.

He blew out a steady cloud of smoke and his mild smile turned positively manic, "then it would be an honor, little bird."

Yes, he had something that the other didn't. He had a burning hatred for the Root.

…

Hajime held the blasted four dimensional Nara puzzle aloft with a loud ear shattering shout of crazed triumph. "I did it! Bask before my amazingness and feast your eyes, losers, on this loathsome little puzzle. Opened!"

Gaara hummed, not looking up from his book, "did you look inside?"

"Oh, uhm, a list of numbers and... names?"

Gaara turned a page.

"It's a scoreboard?"

Gaara hummed again.

"Gaara, why's your name on the list?"

"I opened it," the redhead said.

"Your name's at the top...with... .0502... seconds? How..."

"And where are you?" Gaara asked, looking up from his book.

"...bottom."

"How long?"

"10,369,402.9002 seconds, I'm at the bottom."

Gaara padded over to the golden haired young man and patted his head. "There there."

…

Taku sighed and coughed wetly into his coat. The had forgotten how... excitable Seiichi could be.

Seiichi was, while still Root through and through, a bit of an eccentric by even the more normal standards. By Root standards he was unstable and a loose canon that would have been taken care of if not for the results he brought in.

Root would take him out of the field in a year and a half from now because he would be labeled as a liability. Which, wow, was an accomplishment in itself. While the main training course was enough to thoroughly remove any humanity a person had, there was a system in place in case one retained any.

If for some unfortunate reason your autonomy was revived, or retained and later discovered, you'd be reported by your peers to Danzo. If you were young, you'd go back into programing with the rest of the trainees who would be encouraged to "help" break you. You'd end up with a target on your back, everyone would know of your failure to be a proper weapon. If you were older you'd be retrained in even harsher ways, which was more along the lines of torture til mental breaking and memory wipes.

Kids that were old enough to remember life before Root were often wiped but it was preferred that they weren't due to them being less malleable into functional moles. Mind wiping caused some strange side effects if used too often, the inability to create memories was the most cause for concern and why not used unless needed. The young ones that had no memory of the outside world were mostly perfect for anything they were trained for. The problem with them was their fatality rate, especially in infants, and their shoddy social skills.

If everything still failed to put you in line, Danzo would get involved. Which was never fun for anyone. In the years following the massacre, he would use sharingan on the unfortunate ninja. He wasn't very good with them and what better guinea pig than a disposable human?

If the sharingan didn't work, and let's be honest, they rarely did, you'd be placed Division 6.

Division 6 was where failures went. If a child didn't come out quite right or a moving comatose was made through a bad mindwipe, they would be placed in Division 6. The cannon fodder. They were the meat shields, fake hostages, test subjects, human bombs, those that were framed, and sent on suicide missions.

This division was set up for the death of those that entered it.

Entry into Division 6 was only done by Danzo's orders. He'd weigh your value and if you were found lacking, that's where you'd end up.

Seiichi's luck would hold enough that he'd become "18-02-007436" and not "06-007436". Division 18, the "home bound", was divided into two. Honorable, Dishonorable. Trusted, Distrusted. If you were trusted you'd be a guard in the Root base, if you weren't then you would be useful in other ways. Seiichi was sentenced to pass teachings onto trainees and monitored day and night by the others.

All this, and the man still had the security seals tattooed to his tongue. Which kinda said a lot about Danzo's fear of the man leaking his dirty secrets. The seals were supposed to be unbreakable (nothing was unbreakable for an Uzumaki).

Seiichi was a cunning man, though, so Danzo's fears were valid.

It was just...

Pinching the bridge of his nose Taku shook his head. "Just what are you wearing? We're on a stealth mission."

"There are three ways to get people to ignore you. Way one is to be plain and unassuming, average. To fall under their radar. Way two is to make them uncomfortable, make them not want to draw your attention," Seiichi said.

Taku nodded with a grimace, "yes but..." he paused to cough and clear his throat, "you're sticking out too much this way... People will..." a slightly wheezy inhale, "remember you."

"Hm~ That's the point, little bird. There are plenty of shinobi in this district, especially spies, your face is a new one, you'll be noted. Too average and you're like a bleeding seal amidst a pod of orcas. If I were to dress like you, well, it'd be even more notable. Way three, is to be exactly what they expect," Seiichi smiled behind his fan, waving it slightly, "and, so, what do we look like to this district's inhabitants?"

Taku shook his head, "fine, I get it... You know this place better then me... even so... let's hurry this up. You're sure she will help us with this?"

"Of course! She's called spider for a reason, her connections are vast and there's little she can't help with." With that Seiichi moved toward a rather tall building with a skip in his step, silk robes trailing behind.

"Let's just get this over with."

The things he did for Naruto.

…

Spider, who didn't give any other name, wasn't quite what Taku was expecting. She was short and held a powerful sort of grace even though she was merely sitting at a tea table. If he didn't know better, he'd have said she was an academy student's age. A small innocent looking thing. Be it as it were, she apparently couldn't age due to z disease that effected both genes and chakra, something that Yagura also had. Physically appearing as a child and she used that to her full advantage.

Turtle Disease, also known as "Fountain of Youth syndrome", was what they had if he was remembering a person with a decedent-ish sized chakra pool reached adolescence the hormone influx would trigger something in the person's chakra to prevent their DNA's telomeres from shortening along with essentially freezing puberty. Effectively making them ageless children. He was pretty sure there was also something to do with the person's genetics being hyper restorative, so like, damage to it was a minimum. Though at that point he really wasn't listening to what was being said.

Orochimaru went through an obsessive study state around it to keep his "youth", though whenever the mad scientist said anything about "Fountain of Youth Syndrome" all that he could picture was Orochimaru in Gai's bodysuits speeding around the village proclaiming the springtime of youth. He tried not to think about it.

It was an exceedingly rare disease and often left dormant due to the lack of charged chakra available to activate it. It was more common to see it in shinobi since they were more often put under volatile and chakra related stress at young ages. Civilians on the other hand, it was nigh unheard of.

"Will you be able to do this, Spider-sama?" Seiichi asked, tilting his head towards her.

She huffed and waved a dainty hand. "Of course, but this type of information will take time to drum up. As is the way of such widespread things. It's transcontinental and has been going on for a while, finding out which reports are strictly related to your guy is honestly going to be more tedious than getting the information. Difficult, not impossible, since this most assuredly falls in my niche. You've also got me thoroughly invested."

Seiichi shot a smirk toward Taku. As if to say "I told you she'd be of use."

"Any suggestions for us?" Taku asked, ignoring the proud man.

Spider looked over him critically. "Hon, you leave these to me, child traffic rings are my forte, just as your shinobi arts are yours. You take down that head of your shady organization and I'll take care of the support system he's built his kingdom of thralls. My girls will enjoy this project, many of them will have a vendetta against your man. Should some of yours not have a home to return to, we would be more than willing to work out an arrangement."

She then looked at Seiichi and reached out a hand to his cheek, "if only I could have helped you, young one."

Seiichi smiled, it was a small and slightly broken thing, but it was the first genuine one Taku had seen in both his timeline and this. He rested a hand over her childlike one and replied, "you did, and you are. You helping them means more to me then you'll ever know."

"Well, take your time here. The meal is on us." She patted his cheek a few times before bowing slightly to the both of them and leaving the room through the staff only door.

Taku took a sip of his tea, "so does she own this place or..."

"She owns several ochaya in the major capitols along with who knows how many okiya, I'm not even really sure she knows how far her reach is. If she wanted to take over the world, she could. If , you know, you didn't consider her the ruler of the world already."

"A spoon in all the bowls?"

"More like she is the bowl."

"I'm both impressed and terrified."

"Aren't we all?"

…

Spider made good of her promise and Taku scrambled to make equal progress in Root as a whole. The woman worked fast and her geisha faster. She took down slave rings as a Saturday night hobby, which... who takes down slave rings as a hobby? But add children to the equivalent and it was like sicking a starving dog on a lame, deaf, blind fat rabbit.

Her "girls" were ruthless in taking out corrupt orphanage matrons, even if not all of them were specifically selling the kids to Danzo (or just flat out giving them to him).

It was like watching a force of nature.

Danzo, on the other hand, was starting to lose it. Not like he had much to begin with but it was satisfying to see things not go his way.

So he had a bit of pent up anger, sue him, he suffered under Danzo's hands.

"It doesn't make sense. It just doesn't make sense!" Yelled said creep of a man, chucking a report at the opposite wall.

The man seemed to just sit there, doing absolutely nothing for a while before abruptly standing. "18-01-009124."

A flicker and a shinobi appeared.

"Bring me 18-01-008289, 009256, and 009159."

Another flicker and the shinobi was gone.

Danzo slowly sat back down, folding his hands together. "A ghost, huh..."

Taku's copy shuddered at the dark look and melted into the shadows and into a crawl space within the stone walls. If the man brought out his sharingan for this, it'd best he wasn't around. For now, listening though the mouse hole behind the filing cabinets would have to do.

…

"Ah, crap," muttered Taku. A bit louder he called over to Seiichi, "we're going to need to step it up! Danzo's looking for me."

"Can your clones get the kids out when we get there?" Seichii yelled back, quickening his pace to match Taku's.

"Already on it," he cleared his throat, "the ones old enough to understand are being told to get ready. The smallest ones have location seals attached to them... but we'll need to sweep afterwards to make sure they're out. I wouldn't be surprised if- if, egh," he coughed, a bit harder then usual, making his lungs burn, "...if there were some new infants."

"Tch, the old codger has lowered the bar even further," Seichii pursed his lips, "we'll get to the boarder of Tsuchi no Kuni by nightfall... we'll run through Kusa and, hm, 200 clicks off the border into Hi no Kuni. Regroup and then get to Root."

"Sounds like... a plan, you're sure you can control the senior nin?" Taku asked, he wanted to make sure things went smoothly, but if there were any doubts.

"Yeah," Seiichi replied, watching passively as Taku broke out into a coughing fit, "I'm more worried about your lungs, kiddo. You sound like your lungs are making an escape through your mouth."

Taku went to respond but delved back into another coughing fit.

"Are you even going to make it to the border?"

"...I'll be fine... let's just keep going."

Seiichi made a noncommittal noise but kept an eye on the younger nin.

…

Shisui groaned and dramatically slammed his face against his desk, and lay there with his arms askew. The hand holding a letter drooped and dropped it to the floor. "Whyyyy... Why me? What did I do to deserve this?"

Yagura, who was polishing a shuriken, looked up in askance. "Bad news?"

"Bad news?" He sat up abruptly, tangling a hand in his hair. "Terrible news! 'Mukage-sama' is sending a, er, a representative, well two actually, but one in particular is just... ahhhhhhhh..."

Yagura just watched and waited, calmly smoothing a rag over his weapons.

"It couldn't have been one of the others? Nope, it had to be the little creep that seems bent on taking my head." Raising his chin enough to rest on the desk he was sprawled over, Shisui pouted. Watching Yagura's steady movements. "Hey, you're going back to Kiri soon right?"

"That's my plan," Yagura nodded, "I've done all I could here. It's time I've helped my country after what I've put it though."

"Wanna swap places? I think I've figured out a seal that lets you swap souls."

Yagura shot the Uchiha a bewildered look. "Wha...what? Why? What on earth?"

"Of course it's a bit iffy," Shisui said, making a so-so motion, "haven't actually tested it out since it's kinda a risky sort of deal but those Uzumaki knew there stuff, so it's bound to work."

"You have... an Uzumaki made seal that can switch souls?" Yagura asked, voice rising slightly in incredulous horror.

"Maybe? Probably?" Shisui shrugged, "I mean I think that's what it is, and I've cross referenced several Uzu scrolls so it's probably that."

Yagura pinched the bridge of his and slowly shook his head. This kid, he swore... Setting his instruments down he said, looking at Shisui wearily, "Shisui-san... there are several problems with what you've just said."

Shisui slumped, folding his arms around his head as if to hide. "I knew it was a long shot... no one wants to deal with that twerp." The last part more muttered to himself then actually spoken to the youthful looking kage.

Yagura took a steading breath before looking directly at the moron that, who knows how, managed to kidnap him. Shaking his head he said, "That's honestly at the bottom of the list of things I'm thinking about. Shisui-san... Shisui, listen closely. Uzushio seals, let along Uzumaki seals, are exceedingly rare. Even incomplete ones. They are powerful. They are worth several carats of jadeite and have been known to be used as trade items between countries. Why? Because they were said to be completely lost to the world at whole."

Shisui looked up and blinked in confusion, "well, yeah, but what's jadeite?"

"Imperial jade, Shisui, often shipped straight from the gem cutters to the palaces because of some country's laws forbidding others than royalty to have it. Usually only the royals can get their hands on it, let alone afford it."

Seeing his blank face, Yagura sighed. "A carat is worth around 300 thousand ryo." (1 Ryo is worth 10 yen. (Jadeite is 30k USD, so about 3,200,000 JPY, for reference, diamonds by carat go from 1.5k to 16k USD))

Shisui spluttered.

"Yeah. Then you're going on about cross referencing this extremely rare and potentially, mindbogglingly, powerful seal with Uzushiogakure made scrolls on sealing. Uzushio. SCROLLS!" Yagura threw his hands up, "Like it's nothing! Like, of course I'll just make sure this advanced, possibly master level seal works by checking lost scrolls of equally advanced level if they hold information you need to complete if not 'double check' the viability of said seal."

"...so this jadeite-"

"Forget about the jadite!" Yagura yelled, slashing a hand through the air, "Shisui, you cannot, and I mean this as a friend and a foreign kage, ex-kage. You can not tell anyone that you have access to Uzushiogakure seals, scrolls, or anything related. Because it's pretty obvious that you're so desensitized by endless access to them that you're way to open with it."

"Oh..." He trailed off, drawing circles on the desk's surface.

It was silent in the little office for a while, both thinking over the existence of the Uzushio scrolls.

"Part of me wants to ask to see the scrolls you have. The other part, the one that values my life, wants you to erase this entire convention from my mind." Yagura slumped in his seat, as if drained of all energy; hand covering his eyes he asked, "How do you even have access to Uzu seals?"

"Um, what would you say if, maybe, that Mukage I was talking about? The he was... sorta, kinda, is an... is related to people from... Uzushiogakure?"

The fiery glare that Yagura shot at Shisui could have set water on fire.

Shisui sunk down under his desk.

"Shisui?"

"...yes?"

"You're going to contact your mukage and you're going to get me an audience with him."

"Yessir," Shisui squeaked.

"You'll not say a word to anyone about any of this."

"Yessir."

"Now, is there any more bombshells you want to tell me?"

"...I might know of a certain place where there's a rather... large piece of jadite?"

"...how large?"

"Twice the width of the couch you're sitting on, my height and a half... Carved in the shape of a sleeping tanuki... specifically the Ichibi..."

Silence. Shisui peeked over the edge of his desk with a plaintive, "Yagura-sama?

"I'm going to kill you."

"Wait.. Wait! Ahhh! Hold on it's not- AHH!"

"Hold still so I can strangle you!"

"No I want to live!"

"You're a danger to the continent's power balance!"

…

Sai, though in this timeline he wasn't yet Sai neither did he have his own number. He wasn't a shinobi. Not yet at least. His designation was 03-029. A trainee in division three along with his pseudo brother, trainee 03-014.

03-014 was one of the first things 03-029 remembered. They shared the same bunk room.

The thing that puzzled 03-029 was that 03-014 was a very contradictory type of person. He had just learned that word, "contradictory", and 03-014 fit the definition perfectly.

On one hand 03-014 would tell 03-029 to kill his emotions, just like the older ninja and Danzo-sama would tell them to. Some trainees accomplished this quickly, others, like himself, struggled to do so. It was rather shameful but he sometimes still cried when he got hurt.

In any case, 03-014 would tell him to kill his emotions while smiling, or frowning, at him. Sometimes even when patting 03-029's head!

Of course if that were all he would have made an educated guess that his observations were incorrect and that he misunderstood such things. He didn't know everything there was to being a ninja yet, he was only in division 03 after all.

However, 03-029 did other things that felt a lot like caring. Sneaking him bits of his own food, swapping 03-029's blanket for 03-014's warmer one when 03-014 thought he wouldn't notice, and other things along those lines. It's why 03-029 thought of 03-014 as a brother other than just sharing time and space with him.

It wasn't hard, then, to notice when something happened to 03-014.

"Have you been rationed?" 03-029 asked, wondering if perhaps 03-014 was having a fasting related training, though it seemed odd to have one so soon after the last one. 03-014 never handled food related training well, so it wouldn't be a surprise if he needed a bit more help in that area.

03-014 shook his head.

03-029 would have left it there but he wanted to know why 03-014 was acting differently. It had been going on for a while and he still couldn't pin down what was happening. "Did you get sick in solitary?"

Again, a shake of the head.

"Then what is wrong?"

"Nothing is wrong."

"You're acting different. Something changed. What?"

03-014 seemed to be scouting their room. Though why he would bother was beyond him, it was an open secret that the guard ninja could watch in on them through a few monitoring holes and select seals.

It was for show then. "You ate something off again, didn't you. You know not to eat things 18-01-01090 makes. She's really bad at cooking."

She wasn't. She didn't make good food but it was nothing bad enough to make you sick. It did serve as a good hidden question. 'Can you talk about it?'

"Ah, no, it's not her food but..." 03-029 paused to think over his answer. 'I can talk about it, but I need to be careful.'

There were a few things it could be then. Something related to Danzo-sama that wasn't outright favorable, something related to the Hokage that wasn't outright dis-favorable, politically charged and of unknown standing with Danzo-sama, or the workings of Root.

"I think I saw the ghost."

Or it could be none of the above and the local cryptid itself. This was another thing that confused him, 03-014 firmly believed that the Root's Ghost was a real thing. Yet... he didn't think such things were real. "You said the other trainees were making it up because they thought the toilet was haunted."

03-014 nodded, looked away from 03-029 before going over to sit beside him. "I did but, I saw it and it talked to me. There's something not quite right about it. It's not a person but it's not a tool either."

03-029 cocked his head. "Is it alive?"

"I don't know."

While that answer might not have been so strange from a younger trainee. Ones in division two and up had enough skill to tell illusions of shinobi from real ones. Gollems, puppets, what have you. If 03-014 couldn't tell then 03-029 couldn't.

"It looks solid, it has a shadow and it's feet move dirt... but..."

03-029 waited patiently for him to continue.

"But it's like there's nothing there. No heat, no sound, no chakra..."

"Sounds like a powerful ninja," offered 03-029, kicking foot a bit before stilling again.

"Yeah, but, there's no life force. I don't know how long it was in the room with me."

03-029 didn't know what to tell his brother, it seemed like a simple thing to him. It had to be a ninja, just a super strong one. Though he wondered if he would feel the same confusion if he met the ghost.

And quietly, so quietly that not even a Inuzuka sitting on the bed over could have heard, 03-014 murmured, "it's going to get us out."

03-029 gave no indication he heard anything, likewise 03-014 gave no indication that he said anything.

Out, they were going to get out. Such a treacherous thought... but so...

03-029 felt something warm in his chest. Like a little ball of light rested beside his heart.

Happiness?

No, gentler...

Hope.

…

Omake

(Sunflowers and Tulips)

He had not idea how that little puppet of a child could be so calm. Obibi, Tobino, whatever his name was, it didn't matter, didn't seem concerned in the least by these fluctuation popping up all over the place.

Honestly, it wasn't something Zetsu would be concerned about either but it was becoming an issue.

With each disruption it got harder for him to travel underground.

The chakra that was doing this didn't feel right, and at the same time it felt familiar.

The little Uchiha was off taking care of the littlest Uchiha now, he'd investigate things himself if need be but could he do it now? Noooo, instead he had to be stuck in Amegakure. With the decrepit Uzumaki and the paper doll.

It was always kinda chilly in Ame and he was hungry.

Why couldn't Mother have made things easy for him and made him run off of wild chakra or something? If he ever made a creation he relied on to revive him he'd make them without these bodily needs.

Really though, working with these humans was so... beneath him. He was practically a god himself, his mother was, at least to these pathetic beings. But to stoop so low? Though he could make excuses for the Uchiha and the Uzumaki, being distantly related to his maker, he couldn't stand the other... even lesser beings.

They were all aweful. Little brats that thought that they knew everything, maybe he should just EaT tHem aLl-

"Sunflower-san! Tulip-san!" called out a high pitched little voice. Before a familiar weight slammed into his legs.

"You little twerp, I should just gobble you up."

The little leech grinned up at him, a top tooth missing. "Ne, ne, Sunflower-san, Tulip-san. Look, I'm missing a tooth!"

"So we can see, that can't be normal, and how many times do I have to tell you that we aren't a flower?"

"It got knocked out by that boy next door, kaa-san says if I though it on the roof I'll get a wish!"

"Well we know who to eat next, you get a wish?" Zetsu asked. "What did you wish for? Doesn't getting rid of the tooth make it hard to heal?"

"Teeth grow back, Sunflower-san, I'll grow my adult teeth to replace all my baby teeth... and I haven't wished for anything yet, I figure, since you're a ninja, you can bring me up to the roof so my tooth is guaranteed to land on it! So then my wish will have to come true."

"Clever child, the roof is pretty high. I guess we're doing this. Of course we are!"

"Yay!"

Zetsu picked up the wriggling thing by it's scruff and jumped up to the nearest roof.

"Alright, toss the tooth so we can be done with it. Don't forget to think of a good wish!"

The child nodded seriously and pulled out a little white tooth. Squeezing their eyes shut they said, "I wish... there was always enough food in the cubboards so kaa-san and tou-san could eat at every meal too."

The little tooth was tossed over the scrawny shoulder and hit the roof with a little "plink-plink" before sliding to a stop in the rain gutter.

"Does the gutter equal the roof? It's not a roof... but it's not not the roof. It's a paradox." They looked over to the kid who shrugged back.

"I guess I'll find out later, if the gutter counts. Oh! Look it's Kaa-san, Kaa-san! Kaaaaaa-san!" The kid waved frantically down at it's mother.

The mother looked up, saw her kid and started freaking out by the equally frantic, if not for a different reason, waving.

Zetsu picked the kid back up and jumped down, which seemed to freak the poor woman out even more.

"Bye-bye Sunflower-san, Tulip-san!" the little thing said before running back to it's scolding mother.

Zetsu watched the pair leave. "Grocery run? Grocery run and while we're out maybe a rogue or something. Sounds like a plan!"

Maybe not all humans were terrible. Maybe.