Another Boring Uchiha Power Fantasy.

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[Obtained: Perfect Chakra Control!]

Name: Mikoto Uchiha

Age: 13

Rank: Genin

Affinity: Lightning Affinity, Fire Affinity, Yin Affinity, Water Affinity

Unique: Strong Chakra, Sharingan (Dormant), Advanced Growth Rate

Skills: Fire Style Mastery, Water Style Mastery, Skilled Shurikenjutsu, Basic Taijutsu, Basic Genjutsu, Skilled Ninjutsu (Body Flicker, Clone Jutsu, Substitution Jutsu, Transformation Jutsu), Perfect Chakra Control, Uchiha Style: Kenjutsu, Stealth, Survival Knowledge, Cooking 

Equipment: Kunai, Shuriken, Smoke Bomb, Explosive Tags, Poison Gas Bomb, Flash Bomb, Gas/Sleep Bomb, Food Pills, Wire Strings, Shark Skin, Giant Folding Fan

”...and that’s when she just goes after the puppeteer. The puppeteer. By herself, Nara-san. I tried to tell her no, I swear, I did, but she just looks at me and says she’s taking him and that’s that, and off she goes up the slope, and I’m thinking, well, that’s it, that’s our Uchiha-chan, that’s the last we’ll see of her, and a minute later the puppet drops, just drops out of the air, and the next thing I know she’s coming back down with the puppeteer’s blood still steaming off her hands.”

The Nara on the porch did not look up.

He was sitting on the rim of the boards with his elbows on his knees and his hands hanging loose between them, watching the rain run off the eaves. He had the deep grey eyes most Nara had and the long-tied hair most Nara had and a face that was older than it should have been at thirty-six. He had introduced himself as Shikato Nara, and after that he said almost nothing for nine minutes.

”How annoying…”

”Right? Right? Nara-san, I’m telling you, this girl, this is not just a normal genin. This is a Uchiha-born Uchiha-raised monster. A mass-slaughtering sword prodigy. A one-man army. I watched her body flicker through a puppeteer’s chest. The man’s hands came off before he finished closing them. I’m not making this up, am I, Hisana?”

”You’re making most of it up,” Hisana said. Her voice was very soft. The medic had given her something for the leg and that something had taken most of the edges off her. ”She killed a lot of them.”

Mikoto, sitting on the porch beside the bandaged length of Shark Skin, would have liked very much for the boards beneath her to open and swallow her.

She was very tired. She was very wet. She had not slept since the night before the attack, which meant she had not slept in something close to thirty hours, and the rain had stopped half an hour before the reinforcements arrived but the village was still soaked. Her clothes were stuck to her. Her hair was stuck to her face. Someone had given her a blanket and she had wrapped it around her shoulders.

”Tatsuma-kun,” she said. ”Please.”

”I’m not exaggerating.”

”You are exaggerating and I would still like you to stop.”

”He needs to hear it. They need to hear it. If they don’t know what you did, who’s going to tell them? Hisana can’t talk for long; she’s on the medicine. I can talk.”

”He doesn’t shut up,” Hisana murmured.

Tatsuma took it as a compliment. He turned back to Shikato, hands moving.

”And the fan user, Nara-san, the fan user. She swings her fan and the wind hits her and the wind just, I don’t know what it does, but it doesn’t hit her, you understand? Then Mikoto-chan goes through the fan user’s wrist and through her ribs and the fan is hers now.”

The Nara’s eyes moved to Mikoto.

”Uchiha-san,” he said.

”Yes,” Mikoto said.

”How much of this is the boy embellishing?”

She wanted to be polite. She wanted to find a way to deflect without making Tatsuma sound like a liar. She found that she did not have the energy to be clever about it.

”I did take out a lot of enemy shinobi,” she said. ”The specifics aren’t important...”

The Nara scoffed.

”How many of them,” he said. ”In the end.”

”I think nine.”

”You think.”

”I wasn’t counting...” Mikoto lied with a slight turn of her gaze.

He stood up off the porch and went to talk to one of the chunin he had brought. 

Tatsuma still had more to say.

”You see,” he said, settling back against the porch post with a grimace as the cut in his thigh pulled. ”Three of the most prestigious clans. The three of us. The whole rest of the squad gone and the three of us are still here. Tell me that’s not a sign, Mikoto-chan.”

”A sign of what.”

”I don’t know. Something. The world working the way it should?”

She did not have it in her to argue. She tucked her chin lower into the blanket and watched the rain start up again.

…

The reinforcement party was a Nara jonin, three chunin, and a medic. The medic was a small thin woman with grey already at her temples and hands that did not stop working from the moment she had stepped onto the porch. She had Hisana’s tourniquet replaced with a proper field clamp within thirty seconds of looking at the leg. She had needle and silk in Tatsuma’s thigh inside a minute after that.

She didn’t come to Mikoto because Mikoto was not hurt. Shark Skin helped her heal with its stolen chakra.

It took the chunin three hours to handle the dead.

They worked in silence, two of them carrying and one of them digging where the ground was soft enough behind the smokehouse. The Konoha bodies went into a line under tarps that were not long enough to cover them properly. The Suna bodies went into a pile that the third chunin would burn once the rain let up enough to keep a pyre going. Konoha did not bring its enemy’s bodies home. These nin did not leave them for animals either.

Mikoto wanted to help. She tried, twice. The Nara stopped her both times, the first time with a flat hand and the second time with a flatter look.

”You sit,” he said.

She sat.

He gave her a canteen. She drank because he had told her to. She had not realised, until the water was in her mouth, how much she had wanted water. She drank the canteen empty in three swallows.

”Slower this time,” he said.

She nodded and slowed.

The Nara sat down on the porch beside her, not so close as to crowd her, not so far as to make a point of it. He pulled a slim wooden pipe out of an inner pocket and looked at it with what might have been longing, and put it back.

”How long since you slept,” he said.

She thought. The thinking took longer than it should have.

”The night before last.”

”How long since you ate.”

”This morning. Before the attack. Rice.”

”Anything since.”

”No.”

He nodded. He produced a small wrapped packet of pickled plum and rice ball from somewhere inside his coat and handed it to her without ceremony. It was clearly his own meal. She bowed before she took it, and he chuckled.

”Eat,” he said. ”Don’t bow just eat, kid.”

She ate. The rice ball was cold and slightly stale and one of the better things she had ever put in her mouth. She did not finish it. She got about half through and her stomach told her that the rest would come back up if she continued, and she stopped.

The Nara watched all of this. He took the rest of the rice ball back without comment and ate it himself in three bites.

”You did well today,” he said.

She did not know what to say to that.

”I know you don’t think so,” he said. ”That’s not the point. That’s a feeling and feelings are not always correct. The point is you held a position against a force you should not have been able to hold against, you survived, and you did not run. That is a long list of correct things to do.”

She kept her eyes on the boards.

”I am not asking you to feel better about it. I am telling you that the Konoha record of this engagement will state what I just said. Do you understand me?”

”I understand, Nara-san.”

”Good.”

He let it sit. He did not try to make her say more. After a minute he produced the pipe again and this time he lit it, and the smell of it was the first thing she had smelled in hours that was not blood or wet wood or the particular cold rot of bodies starting to cool, and she took a slow breath of it and held it.

”You have orders,” he said.

She straightened.

”They are not going to be the orders you want. I will tell you them anyway.”

She waited.

He told her.

Hisana was headed back to Konoha. The closest field medic chain ran south and east and could have her in the hospital by tomorrow night. The leg below the knee could be saved. She would survive. She might even be able to return to the battlefield once she recovers. The Nara had already sent a courier.

Tatsuma to a field camp two days east, the same camp the medic had come from. He would heal there over the next week or so and be reassigned to active duty when he was cleared.

Mikoto north.

”North,” she said.

”Two days. There is a small element operating in the southern Rain hill country. They are hitting Suna probes like the one that came through here today. They lost two members in their last engagement; they are running with three and they want a fourth. You will be the fourth.”

”Yes, sir.”

”The captain is a chunin called Kazuhiko. They will not be impressed by your name. They will be impressed by you doing your job or they will not be impressed at all. Do you understand me?”

”I’ll do my best.”

”Their tactics are different from what you were doing here. You were holding. They hunt. The pace is different. The expectations are different. Are you all right with this?”

”I’ll learn, Nara-san.”

He looked at her sideways. He saw whatever there was to see in her face. He looked away.

”You will be all right with it,” he said, ”because Konoha needs you to be all right with it. That is also not me asking. That is me explaining the situation.”

She nodded once.

”You’ll go alone. The pace I am setting you would slow the convoy. Two days at a fast genin’s pace, north along the river to the bend at the dead pine, then west into the hills. The element will meet you at the second crossing of the lower stream. I have written it down for you.”

He gave her a folded piece of wax paper with a hand-drawn map and a string of small notes in Nara shorthand that she could mostly read.

”Don’t lose it,” he said.

”I won’t.”

”If you do, the contingency is the relay station at the dead pine. Speak the phrase ’the rain has eased’ to the man you find there. He is one of mine. He will redirect you. Don’t speak the phrase to anyone else for the rest of your life. Do you understand.”

”Understood.”

He watched her for one more long moment. He did not say anything else.

She bowed. She tucked the wax paper into her chest pocket. She turned to say her goodbyes.

”Mikoto-chan.”

”Tatsuma-kun.”

”Don’t die.”

”You either.”

”Promise me.”

”I can’t promise.”

”Promise me anyway. Lie to me. I don’t care.”

She knelt in front of him. She was thirteen and he was fifteen and they had killed shared enemies side by side six hours ago, and she put her hand on his uninjured shoulder and squeezed once.

”I will try very hard not to die.” she smiled at him, looking into his eyes.

”Hell yeah. Me too.”

”All right.”

She turned to Hisana.

Hisana was awake. She was paler than she had been an hour ago and her eyes were a little glassy from the medicine but they were tracking, and they tracked Mikoto’s face.

”Uchiha-san,” she said.

”Hisana-chan.”

”Come closer.”

Mikoto leaned down. Hisana put one hand, very carefully, on Mikoto’s wrist. Her fingers were cold.

”I did not see anything,” Hisana said quietly. Her voice was for Mikoto’s ear and no one else’s. ”I want you to understand that. The Byakugan sees everything. It does not always remember what it sees. If you should ever wonder what I told the Nara, or what I will tell the higher ups if they ask me, the answer is that I did not see any sword that was not an ordinary sword in an ordinary wrapping. Do you understand me, Uchiha-san.”

Mikoto was a Uchiha. She had been raised to keep her face still when it mattered. She kept her face still.

”I understand, Hisana-chan,” she said.

”Good.”

”Thank you.”

”Don’t thank me. I owe you my life.”

Mikoto closed her hand around Hisana’s for a moment, careful of how cold her fingers were.

”Now go. I am about to blackout again.”

Mikoto bowed. She put her hand briefly over Hisana’s. Hisana’s eyes closed.

She bowed to Shikato Nara. He nodded back at her.

She did not look back as she walked out of the village.

She ran for two days.

She covered the first afternoon’s distance in three hours. She stopped at dusk only because the Nara’s note had said to stop at dusk on the first day, and she did not feel like disobeying the Nara on her first solo movement order.

She made camp under the lee of a fallen log on the bank of the river. She light a fire. She caught a fish and ate it. She drank from the river after boiling the water. She slept with Shark Skin within reach of her right hand, and she slept deeply for the next eight hours.

She woke up at dawn.

She washed in the river. She washed her face and her arms.

She ran after washing up.

The second day she did not stop except to drink. The river bent east where the Nara had said it would. She found the dead pine two hours after noon, a great twisted thing that had been split by lightning generations ago and had stood since. She turned west into the hills.

It was somewhere around the middle of the afternoon that the sign came.

She was crossing a small unnamed stream. She stepped onto the surface of the stream and started across.

She came down out of the hills on the third day’s morning and found the second crossing of the lower stream a little before noon.

There were three people waiting for her.

The one in the middle was a chunin in standard Konoha greens with a sleeveless flak vest and his hair cropped close to his skull. He was perhaps twenty-six, with a long shallow scar across the back of his right hand. He watched her come down the slope without standing up.

The two beside him stayed seated as well.

One was a woman a little younger than the chunin, with her hair tied back tight and a length of wire spool clipped at her belt. She did not look at Mikoto so much as past her. The other was a man of about the woman’s age with the soft round face of an Akimichi who had been on rations for too long. He had a bo staff leaning against the rock next to him that was as tall as he was.

Mikoto stopped three metres short and bowed.

”Genin Uchiha Mikoto reporting as assigned, sirs,” she said. ”Shikato Nara sent me.”

The chunin in the middle looked at her. He looked at her for a long moment without speaking. He looked at the bandaged sword on her back. He looked at her face. He looked at her another second. He glanced at the woman beside him. The woman glanced back.

”Kazuhiko,” the chunin said. ”Her name is Yuki. The staff-wielder is Genmai. You’re going to be the fourth.”

”Understood, sir.”

”Don’t sir me. Kazuhiko-san is fine.”

She bowed slightly.

”Have you eaten today.”

”Fish at dawn, Kazuhiko-san.”

”Sit down. Eat with us. We hit a Suna courier line tonight.”

She bowed again. She came down the slope the last few metres. She sat where Yuki gestured for her to sit, which was on a flat stone near the edge of the small fire they had going under a rock overhang where the rain could not reach it. She set Shark Skin down next to her.

The rain started up again sometime while she was drinking.

It did not bother any of them. The overhang was good. The fire was small but warm. Kazuhiko picked up a flat piece of slate from the dirt at his feet and began sketching something on it with a piece of charcoal, and Yuki leaned over to look, and Genmai cracked his knuckles one by one and stared into the fire.

Mikoto sat very still on her stone and listened to the rain and to the small scrape of the charcoal on the slate.