Naruto SI 14

AN: Shorter chapter than I'd like, explanation is at the bottom, now to preface the chapter itself.

Some of Noriko's behavior I'll state is flat out inspired by and borrowed from the amazing story "Wrath of a Woman Scorned". Just because Noriko knows the line is coming doesn't make it any easier. She's sitting on more than a decade of repressed hatred and anger, even if she knows the state is born of ignorance, that doesn't make it any easier on her.

NOTE: This Has Not Been Beta'd

After nearly three days of civilian paced walking, my temper was starting to run out. I hadn't snapped at anyone, but I was close and constantly getting closer, no thanks to Tazuna's 'Super' verbal tic and Kakashi routinely trying to spy on me when he thought I wasn't paying attention. On Tazuna's verbal tic, I couldn't really complain given that I had my own issue with 'dattebane' but I did at least make an effort to curb how often I said it, if only to avoid catching shit from Kurama-tou-san. Kakashi, though, had no excuse beyond his own curiosity, and if he manages to avoid losing a hand before we finish this mission I might be willing to indulge him. That is if I don't just beat his ass for pissing me off

It seemed we were getting close to our destination though, as Tazuna had just negotiated our crossing with a smuggler who was going to take us across once we were all loaded up. I cast a few doubtful looks at the dingy but took a seat at the front, settling down into silence as the smuggler pushed us away from the dock and out into the channel. It took several minutes of travel through the fog, but as I had been expecting, Tazuna's brige eventually became visible, drawing a series of 'oohs' and 'ahs' from my teammates.

I made a token effort to seem impressed, but really, it wasn't too amazing. For the standards of this world, it certainly was pretty damn impressive, but compared to the likes of the Golden Gate, the Millau Viaduct, or the numerous bridges of Route 101, Tazuna's construction was simply lacking in my opinion. I instead spent the time focusing my senses outwards to pick up Zabuza's and Haku's chakra signatures, fortunately finding them without going into Sage mode -as that was a skill I certainly didn't want to have exposed anytime soon.

So once we landed in Wave, I kept a sharp focus on their locations as we started towards Tazuna's home through the mist until I leaned back just a touch while Kakashi yanked Sakura to the ground and Sasuke did the same for our client an instant before the form of Kubikiribocho whirled just over their heads and a few scant centimeters from my nose.

The blade had flown straight past us and had imbedded itself into a tree at which point Zabuza revealed himself, so from there I let things play out as they had in canon. There were more than a few moments when I wanted to leap in and settle things myself, but for now I held back. It was only when Kakashi got himself captured that I decided to change things, still letting Sasuke send me flying as a fuma shuriken. Only instead of throwing a second fuma from behind after passing Zabuza by, I made a palm strike to the back of his head. It was no where near my full strength and honestly not even enough to really daze the missing-nin, but the blow was enough to make him take a step away and release the water prison jutsu.

More importantly though, it was ample opportunity for me to plant a Hiraishin seal on his head, hidden from sight by his surprisingly soft hair.

That...actually baffled me for a moment before I beat feet for the shore as Kakashi and Zabuza got back into it. A missing ninja that spends weeks, if not months on the road should not have hair that soft. It should require regular treatment with shampoo and conditioner to achieve hair that soft. I should know after all, it's a task and a half to keep my own fiery mane soft when I'm within Konoha's walls with daily access to a shower.

Fucking ridiculous really.

The rest of the fight proceeded the way it had in canon and so there was Haku, disabling Zabuza with a few senbon before carrying him away. And then there goes Kakashi, collapsing from chakra exhaustion. Really, it was rather annoying and more than a bit embarrassing just how much Kakashi had let his skills deteriorate after he had left ANBU.

Rubbing the back of my neck with a sigh, I made my way over to Kakashi and picked him up, slinging him over my shoulderinto the best fireman carry I could give thanks to my limited height before looking sharply to my teammates.

"Sasuke, Sakura, protect Tazuna. We still need to get to his house and we haven't finished the mission yet so who knows what's still ahead of us."

I barked out my statement, making my orders clear to the pair. Sakura was thankfully too cowed by the previous fight to argue and Sasuke was smart enough to listen and so settled for a single nod of agreement as he took up the rear of the formation so we could get moving. Thank Kami that the last leg of this wretched trip would only take us an hour or so.

One blissful, quiet hour in which no one wanted to talk.

Of course, the lovely quiet ended all too soon as Tazuna flung open the door to his home in order to announce his return and our arrival. His daughter, Tsunami was waiting of course and she was as kind as could be about the our presence in her home. She immediately noted Kakashi's condition and directed me to take him to an upstairs room where I laid him out on a futon and left a shadow clone to care for him before I followed Taunami downstairs so she could begin preparing dinner.

I offered to help, if only to pass the time and the smile Tsunami shot me in thanks actually put a small blush of embarrassment on my cheeks as Sasuke smirked at me from the corner of my eye. I held back on sticking my tongue out in return and focused my attention back on Tsunami and the meal as I pulled a scroll from my pocket to offer the use of some of my stored food in the night's dinner.

The fact that the young mother's expression just made my heart melt every time she smiled had absolutely nothing to do with why I kept helping.

It was a day before Kakashi had recovered enough to even wake up. It was another day before he then found himself feeling well enough to hobble around Tazuna's house where we had more or less setup camp.

Once he had ascertained that his little gennin -aka us- were doing our job properly and guarding Tazuna while work continued on the bridge, Kakashi allowed himself to relax a bit as he settled in at the table with everyone else save the builder's grandson, a small boy he had glimpsed on only a few occasions throughout the day.

I was not looking forwards to the inevitable encounter I was going to have. I wasn't the ever forgiving Naruto. I didn't have a streak of cheerful optimism three miles wide and fifty long. And I certainly didn't have the plucky blonde's ability to accept anything and just keep going.

No.

I wasn't anything like that. I was a monster, pure and simple. I was cruel, ruthless, and vindictive. I held a grudge like my adoptive father, and only my love for a few people and my foreknowledge about what was to come kept me from acting on said grudges.

And for all that I knew that Inari was only a small child lashing out in his grief, I feared that everything I had partitioned away -my anger, my hate, and my rage- would escape my desperate control.

But then the moment came, as all of us bar Inari sat around the dinner table to eat and Tsunami told her son to go wash up. Rather than complying though, the boy had started talking -yelling really- at us about how we should just give up because it was hopeless. And then he uttered those words, and even if I knew they were coming, it didn't make it any less painful. They weren't exactly the same as in the manga or anime, but they were close enough, and they hurt no less for the difference.

"You don't know anything about what it's like to suffer!"

Kakashi nearly choked on the stew he'd been about to swallow when the little boy -Inari he reminded himself belatedly- shouted his claim that Team 7 knew nothing about suffering. The kitchen lapsed into absolute silence as Kakashi focused his attention on the reaction of his genin team, a sense of terror briefly gripping at his heart as he felt the brief flare of both Noriko's and Sasuke's chakras in reaction.

It was sort of odd that the latter of the two had the more measurable reaction, and he would have thought Noriko was almost unaffected by the careless remark were it not for the sense of utter anger/hatred/loathing/rage/fury that permeated the tiny flicker of her chakra. A minuscule flare that reminded him all too much of what he had felt twelve years ago on October tenth and then again six years ago on the same. But then the flare was gone, just as quickly as it had appeared, and he felt Noriko's chakra vanish from his senses despite her close proximity as her entire face blanked.

He would have thought that the killing intent that filled the room alongside the spike in Noriko's chakra for an instant was his imagination had it not been for just how utterly suffocating it had been.

"I'm afraid I've lost my appetite, Tsunami-san," the young kunoichi said softly as she set down her spoon.

He watched Noriko carefully as she stood from her seat and walked from the room, seemingly perfectly calm. He would have thought she was calm too had it not been for that brief, terrifyingly familiar flare in Noriko's chakra before she had blanked. Indeed, for all the emotion Noriko had displayed in the last few moments, she might as well have been made of stone. It was only when the sound of the front door opening and closing echoed through the house that Kakashi breathed a sigh of relief before turning his lone eye to face a trembling Inari who seemed to have realized that he had majorly screwed up.

"I suspect-" he began, his voice almost contemplative, "-that you are extraordinarily lucky to be alive, Inari-kun," He finished softly, his eye closing as he reflected on the last time he had felt his sensei's daughter feel anywhere near that furious.

"W-What do you mean?" Tazuna managed to spit out after a second of stunned silence at Kakashi's words. The former ANBU grimaced under his mask as he recalled the vivid memories of the last time he had seen Noriko that angry before he responded.

"...Noriko-san had suffered, Tazuna-san, far more than either of us can imagine. Even if we knew the full extent of everything she has endured -and I am certain no one but she does- I doubt we could understand." He answered, "And for all that she behaves like a normal girl, Noriko is anything but."

The ground suddenly shaking in accompaniment to the dull roar of a large explosion in the distance punctuated his statement and put an end to the conversation.

I didn't return that night.

And when morning came, I settled for merely dispatching a trio of blood clones to take over my duties guarding Tazuna and helping with construction at the bridge rather than returning.

Instead, I chose to use my time to deal with the other issue at hand, or at least a part of it. And that issue was Gato. The little shit wouldn't be leaving Wave alive no matter what, but simply killing him would be a tremendous waste of resources. His shipping company was the largest in the Elemental Nations and were they put under the control of someone I considered an ally, then they could be useful. Who the company would be turned over to was very much up for debate, perhaps Tazuna or my some select part of the Konoha command structure. Kami knows I had no desire to run it myself so that meant I needed to find someone I could count on to not fuck me over to run it.

But that wasn't what I was current out to take care of, no I was going to see to it that Zabuza and Haku knew the truth about their current boss and thusly made the correct choice about their futures.

All of that said, I only waited long enough for Gato to arrive, demand his explanation, and leave before I moved in. A simple shunshin brought me to the door where, like the proper young lady that I was, I knocked. I instantly noted the way that both chakra signatures inside stilled and tensed before the one that felt like ice and mint moved towards the door. I took a step back to get out of the range of immediate retaliation as I fixed a polite smile on my face when the signature that was undoubtedly Haku finally opened the door.

I immediately noted the tense readiness that filled the lines of his face the instant he spotted me, so rather than beating around the bush, I got right to the heart of the matter.

"If I may come in Haku-san, I have a business proposition for your master."

The door snapped shut for a moment as Haku's signature shunshined back to Zabuza's side for a moment before returning and opening the door wider as he stepped aside.

"You may enter Kunoichi-san, but do not try anything please."

The unspoken threat of what would happen in retaliation nearly made me scoff, Zabuza might pose a challenge if I chose to fight him with my own sword by dint of his skill, but in a straight up ninjutsu or speed based fight, I was far out of Haku's league.

It took only a handful of seconds to be lead through the small cabin Zabuza and Haku were holed up in before I was face-to-face with the 'Demon of the Mist'. The baleful glare he fixed me with from his position on the bed told me exactly what he thought of me well before he spoke.

"You're one of Kakashi's little gennin brats aren't you?" He stated coarsely, I recognized it for the rhetorical question it was though and stayed silent as he continued. "What the hell are you here for?"

I felt my mask flicker slightly in annoyance before I regained control of my emotions as replied.

"I'm here to discuss a business proposition with you Zabuza-san, as well as to potentially save both yours and Haku-san's lives."

"I'm listening, brat."

OMAKE

~October 10th, Twelve years post-Kyuubi~

In the twelve years since I had been reborn into the world of Naruto, the vast majority of Konoha's villagers had made their opinion of me abundantly clear.

They hated me.

And I hated them right back.

So there was obviously no love lost between us, especially on the days leading up to, and in particularly on, my birthday. And every time October 10th rolled around, their reactions and my treatment at their hands became decidedly worse. So after having been pelted with rotten fruit the day before I decided a little revenge was in order.

As such, at precisely 4:59 AM, three hundred previously camouflaged clones, protected by a relatively low quality barrier, left their disguised positions and assembled across the roofs of several buildings. Each of the three hundred clones then created one copy of themselves and said copy than transformed themselves into an instrument.

Divided into equal groups, the transformed clones provided the necessary equipment to outfit my original compliment of three hundred clones into four groups of seventy-five, each group equipped with either base drums, tenor drums, or bagpipes.

And so in the last few seconds before five o'clock, my clones took their final positions and as soon as the clock struck 5:00 AM...

...they began to play.

It started with a lone snare drummer atop a spike of the Yondaime statue's hair before a second clone joined in, stationed on another spike of the Yondaime's hair. In an instant, as the skirl of the Scottish instrument echoed across the entirety of Konohagakure no Sato the entire village was awoken as sound enhancement seals -which helped the sound to carry without making it louder- ensured that not only did all of Konoha hear my chosen wake-up call, so did every living creature for about five or six miles.

Hard of hearing or not.

ANBU were already rushing towards my lone pair of clones atop the Hokage Monument within twenty seconds, which of course was when the two and ninety-eight clones began to play.

The resounding notes of Scotland the Brave rang out across the village, and with a group of three hundred pipers and drummers it was nearly deafening; doubly so with my enhanced hearing, but even then I couldn't wipe the shit-ratting grin off my face as I watched ANBU, jounin, and chunin struggle to force their way past my barriers while I watched from the very top of the Hokage's Tower.

My band of clones managed to successfully play without interruption for nearly five straight minutes before finally stopping as Konoha's defenders breached the last defensive barrier. At which point, all of my clones stopped playing, identical foxy grins on all their faces before they gave a bow to the rather irritated ninja that had come to take them out.

And then they vanished in a cloud of smoke.

And when the smoke finally disappeared, everyone in Konoha was treated to a very large banner having been strung across the front of the Hokage's Tower.

It simply read "No-one provokes me with impunity".

AN: So yeah, I'm not dead, just horribly distracted. I maintain a thrice weekly update speed for a Planetary Annihilation/Multicross story over on SpaceBattles and SufficientVelocity, so a lot of my muse gets taken up by that. Beyond distractions though, my health has been crap which has slowed me down even more which just plain sucks.

Anyways, no idea when the next chapter will come out, but just know I'm alive and still writing.