Karin found having a staring contest with a disembodied eye. Orphaned eye? No, that didn’t sound right. I wasn’t dead. Thankfully, instead of asking questions, she just gave a quick one-ard hug, then left in my turbulent mood.
The foremost thought in my mind was a silly one. Do I just pluck out one eyeball and plug the other in?
That didn’t sound healthy or advisable.
Thinking about the logistics distracted for a few monts until other, more relevant thoughts intruded. Should I keep it? I had limited options. Giving it back was out of the question. Because I didn’t want to, nor was I going to throw away Mom’s act of goodwill by returning the thing. The eye was mine, dammit. Gross as it was to think about plugging it into my head after the eye spent how many years rooming inside Oro’s skull.
I couldn’t fathom what went into Mom’s head to do this. Maybe Hiashi wasn’t the only one broken when Hina—I got kidnapped. But if she was, how do I fix it? Worse yet, if I accepted Mom wasn’t of sound judgnt, what about Hiashi? I tried to kill him. I don’t think the kunai would have killed the clan head. Injury, yes. Cripple, maybe. Kill? No, he was too strong a jonin to fall for a single explosion, no matter if it was one of my best, aid at his weak spot.
The container went inside a pocket. I needed to prepare for the fallout. I probably needed advice, too.
My hands flashed, and out popped a clone. From across the room, I heard Karin’s gasp and whimper, but I didn’t have ti for that. I nodded at my clone, who sped out of the house.
“What’s it?” Karin asked when it beca clear the clone wasn’t here to teas—teach her seals.
“Preparations,” I said and ran toward the bedroom.
Karin followed . “For?”
“Trouble.” Going looking for advice was the better option, but I didn’t want to be caught unprepared. There was no trouble that enough explosives couldn’t solve.
I plopped my behind on the chair near the desk, my workshop, and got to work. Maybe because people treating nicely lulled into a false sense of security, or perhaps it was because the council didn’t seem a physical threat, but just an annoyance I had to deal with. I let things fall to the wayside.
Couldn’t let that continue. I drew the inscription for the Kuro Raikou no Jutsu.
Karin dragged a chair and sat by my side, watching work. I paid her no mind.
Two things I needed to fix to make this jutsu combat-ready. First, it couldn’t be temporary. It wouldn’t be a problem if my chakra conversion when using mokuton was like Yamato’s, but it wasn’t. It took too much chakra. This ant I had to disconnect it from mokuton sohow.
Weeks of traveling underground with nothing to do gave more than enough ti to revise my approach and think of new solutions. My theory was mostly complete.
The other issue was porting and leaving my stuff behind. That one just rose in the scale of importance, almost more than disassociating the jutsu from mokuton. With the damn eye now burning a hole in my pocket, I couldn’t teleport and leave it behind. That was a disaster waiting to happen.
About an hour later, my clone returned.
I looked over my shoulder, gave her a nod. Worker-chan placed a seal near , one with special kunais I had requested so ti ago, but never used, since the jutsu wasn’t ready yet. Then my clone plopped on the bed, took out one of those big scroll rolls, like those Jiraiya carried on his back, and started inscribing.
Hours flowed. Karin left at so point but soon returned with food and drinks. I picked so, nibbled while thinking.
I held a wood-inscribed kunai.
“Did you finish it?” Karin leaned closer, trying to read the many diagrams.
“One of the problems.”
“Which one?” Karin asked.
I grinned. Threw the kunai to the other side of the room and made a confrontation sign.
Karin eep’ed, face as red as her hair. My clone burst out laughing.
“This never happened!” I growled, flickered back toward the desk, and picked up the clothes that had stayed behind. Dammit. I was sure I had fixed that problem.
Two more attempts, so more flashing episodes later, I held the kunai. Wood, inscribed and fixed.
“This ti it will work.” I declared.
Karin nodded. She was numb. She covered her eyes. I rolled mine, then threw the kunai, teleported.
I appeared on the other side of the room, still gear clad.
“Got it on the first try!”
A cheer escaped while I victory danced.
The past few hours never happened. I didn’t flash people. Nope, that was impossible.
Worker-chan got up and delivered the day’s work to . I looked over, nodded, hugged her. In a puff of smoke, she was gone.
“Karin, co here, please.”
The red-faced redhead approached. “What is it?”
I gave her several sets of kunais. Each set, four inscribed kunais. “When you want to disable soone,” I tapped the ones with the white tags. “When you need soone gone,” I said, tapping the ones with the red tags. “Weight barrier.” I tapped again on the white. “Explosion barrier.” I tapped the second.
Karin took those, looking wide-eyed at .
“Why?”
I took the eye from my pocket. “Trouble will co calling.”
With that, I ran outside and, using so of the newly prepared seals, placed a barrier around the apartnt walls. It wouldn’t make the place impenetrable, but it probably would give enough ti to react if soone ca looking for trouble.
Back inside the apartnt, I looked at my bedroom. It was a ss.
Near the bed went most of the seals Worker-chan created, as well as the big scroll. Inside that one were most of my remaining supplies. The tools on my desk went into the drawers, and finally, I cleaned the bed.
“Sorry for keeping you awake until so late,” I said to Karin, fully aware she wouldn’t have been able to sleep with ssing around in the bedroom. “Let’s sleep.”
Karin looked at , at the table, at the bed. “I think,” she said, face going even redder. “I’ll sleep in the living room.”
I flickered forward, grabbed her retreating form. “Get into bed,” I ordered.
I t my team the following day. Before we started training, we discussed strategy, which was to keep training what you’ve been training and the ‘don’t slack, let’s get strong’ speech. As usual, I helped Ino train. In the afternoon, while my team had lunch and rested after training, I went to the mission center to get our mission. Shisui was there waiting for .
“This isn’t your first mission,” he said, handing a slip of paper. “But it is your first mission as team leader. I thought it was enough to keep the tradition.”
I bowed. “Thank you, Hokage-sama.”
The slip of paper in my hand wasn’t the most impressive. Painting walls. Ugh, D-ranks, I forgot how boring they were.
The Hokage hadn’t finished. “That wasn’t the only reason I’m here. Shizune agreed to teach you and your friends.”
I nodded, gave him a salute. My fingers flicked a ssage: Complication, clan.
It surprised that an army of Hyuga hadn’t stord my apartnt demanding the eye back. Had Mom dealt with things like she said she would? It was prudent to keep Shisui inford, since he seed to be in my corner.
He nodded. “Co visit in the tower after you finish your mission.”
I saluted again. Popped two of my Good Impression kits. One went to the Hokage, the other to the Kunoichi responsible for the mission desk today.
Her eyes were wide. “Are those…?” She muttered, then she got up, bowed. “Thank you!”
Huh, weird. I shrugged. Left. Pretend I didn’t see the other people looking at the Kunoichi like they wanted to steal her pastries away.
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