Mysterious Masked Shinobi I

Taifū spent the entire walk to the basement levels of the Tower reminding herself that Orochimaru was not evil, just seriously deranged and sad with very little humanity left in him. Nobody understood him, nobody knew him, and certainly nobody outside of his genin team had ever tried to get close enough to do so.

But, thinking about it, Taifū realized that Orochimaru probably cultivated his reputation for that very purpose. To keep people at a distance. If she was remembering correctly he lost his parents and that had taken an enormous toll on him. Then later he seemed to grieve as he lamented the fragility of humanity when Tsunade lost Dan and Nawaki.

So he sought a means to subvert death. Maybe simply because he was afraid of death, which was incredibly human of him for someone who prided himself on being a cut above humanity. Or maybe it was because, in his arrogance, he thought himself too good for death. That was something only mere mortals did, after all, and he was Orochimaru and even death would bend to his will.

She suspected it was a bit of both.

Either way she wondered how much of Orochimaru's persona had been crafted as a protective barrier against the pain of loss.

After all, you can't get hurt when people die if you don't let anyone into your life.

The downside of living that way is that life is a cold, lonely, colorless thing when you don't share it with others.

But, eventually, the snake would shed his skin and take on a new life. Never bound by the constraints of time.

'The ouroboros will swallow his tail until the end of time.' Taifū mused to herself as they walked down the wide steel and concrete hallways.

(After she thought it, part of her wished Itachi were around, because he was the only one she would have explained that reference to the ouroboros too who would've understood it without demanding she explain where she learned about it. She didn't relish the idea of having to explain what 'Ancient Greece' was and how she'd heard of it… so she just kept silent.)

For her first appointment she'd asked Pain to come with her and he'd acquiesced with the Deva path—Yahiko's body; she was starting to learn the difference between the Paths now. She was grateful for the familiar face. She suspected he was only there because Tobi-nii had ordered him to be, but nonetheless she was glad to have him.

Having the one person in the world (at this point) who could have Orochimaru waving the white flag in a few seconds flat by her side set her at ease. Still, in a small fit of childish need for reassurance that Taifū was embarrassed about, she'd reached for his hand and wound hers through it.

She had been getting bolder with the Akatsuki members lately. Testing limits so to speak. So far they hadn't stopped her. In Tobi's case he encouraged her to act more like a sibling than a prisoner. It had taken her a while to warm up to the idea but she was beginning to develop a level of trust.

So it wasn't all that surprising when Pain didn't say anything. He just tightened his fingers and didn't let go until he rasped his knuckles on the door to the basement room Orochimaru had been granted access to. It wasn't where he was staying, he had a suite somewhere on one of the upper levels. This was just a small workshop to accommodate his… projects.

Orochimaru barely looked up from his mountain of books that were sprawled over the small desk in the windowless room as they entered. He was busy scribbling away on a long sheet of paper with only his desk lamp to illuminate his workspace. The fluorescent lights hurt her eyes when Pain flicked all the switches to the right of the door. The light seemed to bother Orochimaru, too, because when his head snapped up there was a slight grimace and a glare leveled at the orange haired avatar.

"Good afternoon," he greeted politely. "You are welcome to have a seat on the gurney while I finish this."

Orochimaru directed them towards the opposite wall with a swift nod and returned to his scribbling. Taifū said nothing so that she wouldn't interrupt him and turned to head that way.

Now that the lights were on she could see the whole mini-hospital set up that had been erected. Pain trailed behind her, a silent shadow. After she'd hopped up on the bed and adjusted to be comfortable, ignoring the gross hospital smell, she watched as Pain set himself up in the corner nearby. Eyes closed and still as a statue.

Fū wondered what Nagato was actually doing right now, all alone in his room. Konan was busy watching Naruto while they were occupied with Orochimaru.

Perhaps he was focused on directing one of his other Paths, judging this meeting with Orochimaru to go smoothly. That thought turned her stomach a little. The snake was wild and unpredictable, he could do literally anything at any given moment and was not someone who should ever be taken lightly.

She hoped that Nagato was paying attention, despite Pain's distant demeanor.

Taifū watched and waited for Orochimaru to put his pen down. When he finally did a few minutes (that felt like hours) later, she said in a soft tone; "I like your magatama earrings, Orochimaru-sama."

Orochimaru paused to glance at her, then looked back down at his papers and shuffled them around. After a few tense seconds where she wondered if she'd somehow made a social faux pas, he looked up at her again and spoke.

"I am not religious," he informed her as he pushed his chair back and stood fluidly, "but my parents were. These belonged to my mother."

Why he decided to share that personal tidbit, she was unsure. Perhaps to get her to relax and see him in a different light and come to trust him. She didn't remember him revealing anything personal to Sasuke… so it had to be a calculated admission. He was a cunning and manipulative person, he wanted something from her and he'd do anything to get it. Unfortunately for him the use of force wasn't an option here so he had to play the game differently.

She was onto him, though.

'Being an over thinker in this universe is like… a double dose of cruel and unusual punishment.' Taifū complained to herself as Orochimaru approached. (Or maybe it was one of the only things that would keep her alive.)

"I'm glad you have something of hers to remember her by," Taifū said, her nervousness making her spew neurodivergent word-vomit and latch onto the conversation and attempt to bond with the mad scientist. What could he do if she offended him, kill her? Well, yeah. He could do that, actually. "I wish I had something of my mother's to give to Naruto, since he didn't get a chance to know her. I assume it was all locked in storage somewhere by the Third after the Kyuubi attack."

#

Orochimaru looked down at her with thin lips and a narrowed gaze, extending his hand expectantly. She looked at him, he looked at her, then he damn near rolled his eyes but covered it by closing them with a languid blink.

"I need your hand to take your vitals, Uzumaki-sama."

"Oh!" Taifū jumped a little, cheeks red. She placed her small cold hand palm up in his much larger and very warm one. "Sorry."

It was silent for a few awkward seconds, and Taifū figured she had indeed made a mistake in trying to have a conversation with the man. Then, just as she was begging a shinigami to come swallow her whole, Orocimaru glanced at her face again and spoke.

"As far as I know your parents' belongings were stored in a sealed room somewhere inside the Uzumaki Mask Storage Temple, perhaps one day you will be able to retrieve them."

'Holy shit,' Fū thought, stunned. 'That's the place where he and Sasuke went to resurrect the Hokage!'

"Your heart rate is increasing," Orocimaru warned with a scowl.

Shit. Fū smiled sheepishly at him. "Sorry, again. Just got excited knowing their things are safe."

"I wouldn't consider their belongings safe," Orochimaru's answering grin was borderline sadistic and Taifū felt her mood darken considerably. "I was able to break in and take what I wanted with remarkable ease."

Fū bit down hard on the insides of her cheeks to keep from lashing out when her temper flared. It wasn't often she got angry but when she did… Well, the Uzumaki clan was remembered as being rather savage, weren't they? She wasn't an exception to this.

But now was not the time to get angry and let emotion change the tune of this conversation, and this was not the audience for it.

He'd need a firmer 'fuck off' than a few seals, in any case.

"Well, you're Orochimaru-sama. I would expect you to be more than capable of breaking into anywhere you wanted to."

That got a faint smile and Orochimaru withdrew his hand, letting hers drop back down to her lap and plucking a clipboard off the table that was set up near the gurney. He produced a pen out of nowhere and started scribbling whatever observations he'd made while he was assessing her vitals.

"I did manage to obtain the materials you requested," Orochimaru droned like it was an afterthought, "you will receive one for each visit. I have a total of six items in my possession."

Her eyes lit up and back straighted. She beamed up at the Snake Sannin, anger evaporated in an instant.

"Can I pick the item at the end of each visit?!"

He raised a brow and blinked, as if startled. Slowly he nodded and Fū, used to doing whatever she wanted with Tobi-nii and totally at ease with all previous thoughts of self-preservation out of the window at the chance to finally study fūinjutsu again, jumped off the gurney, latched her arms around Orochimaru's middle and squeezed.

"Thank you!" Fū expressed her gratitude with an extra squeeze, Orochimaru stilled.

It took an additional second before she remembered exactly who she was hugging and backed off immediately. "Sorry! Personal space. I'm bad at it." She threw a thumb over her shoulder to remind Orochimaru that killing her right now for invading his bubble wasn't a good idea because she had a bodyguard. "Ask Pain."

Pain, for his part, nodded in silence from the corner.

She had grabbed his hand earlier, after all.

The rest of the examination was far more clinical and professional than it had started, and there was a stilted air to it that was suffocating Taifū. When Orochimaru showed her the items she had to pick from, she grabbed the book she thought would be of most help to her right away and raced out of there.

Just as she made it to the door frame, she shot a hand out to stop herself and threw a look over her shoulder at the Snake. With a bright smile she said;

"I'm not really religious either, you know. But I do believe in one thing."

"And what might that be, Uzumaki Taifū?" Orochimaru asked with a raised brow and a half scowl, crossing his hands over his chest as if he'd already determined the answer was insipid before she spoke it.

"Reincarnation," she told him, smiling still in place as she waved and trotted off in excitement about her new book. She had a lot of plans, the first at the top of her list being to try and get a message back to one of the people she cared about in Konoha.

She did not see Orochimaru's contemplative look watching her as she left, nor did she hear his quiet mumble of; "...curious."

#

The Akatsuki did not trust Shimura Danzō before Obito had gotten involved and Nagato agreed to join causes, and nothing had changed in the past few years since Hanzō's fall.

Obito didn't trust the man, and with good reason. He was shrewd, manipulative, and ambitious to a fault with the cunning and ruthlessness to make his mark whether sanctioned by his Hokage or not.

It hadn't taken much digging for Obito to uncover the depths of the shadow organization Danzō led within the Hidden Leaf Village. The things he'd learned about them was enough to solidify his already burning hatred for the village.

Root was, simply put, a disgrace. That the Hokage turned a blind eye to everything Root got up to was exactly what was wrong with the whole festering, disease ridden, and corrupt system of governance the shinobi world held in high esteem.

Obito loathed it.

But that didn't mean he wouldn't find a way to utilize it for his own purposes. The ends would justify the means.

He hadn't returned to Konoha since the night he'd taken Taifū and Naruto. Much had changed in the past year and not necessarily for the better. As he shifted silently through the underground caverns that held Root Headquarters he could not help but notice all the small beds that spoke to toddler aged kids and cribs that clearly held infants…

Not that it was surprising that Danzō might utilize the opportunity of the village-wide panic and distraction to seize promising children from prominent clans to suit his needs.

'This is why I took Taifū when I had the chance,' Obito thought. The irony was not lost on him, but he pushed it aside.

"It is impolite to wander around someone else's home without an invitation," the voice of an elder snapped from Obito's left, just as he entered into a large center chamber at the end of the hall he'd been sweeping through. "Akatsuki of Amegakure."

Danzō was standing there, in the middle, leaning heavily against a walking cane and looking every bit the part of a disabled old man.

And Obito stilled, smirking under his mask when several dozen root operatives landed all around from the shadows that shrouded the underground halls.

If Danzō thought Obito was easily intimidated, he was wrong.

"Shimura Danzō, Root operatives," Obito answered, allowing himself to appear as relaxed and unbothered by having been caught exploring their little hideout as he truly was.

He'd wanted to be caught, after all.

"What do they call you?" Danzō asked, and Obito was glad to know that Danzō may know that he was Akatsuki, but he didn't know who he was.

There was no way he could know, unless Obito had made a gross miscalculation at some point, and he knew that he hadn't.

"That is not your concern." Obito allowed his mangekyō sharingan to flare to life, a threat if there ever was one. The Root operatives, just like their master, did not flinch. Interesting.

"Fine," Danzō growled. The annoyance was written all over his face, but curiously the elder shinobi decided not to order an attack and continued speaking. "I suspect your purpose is to uncover why Konoha has stopped searching for their jinchuriki, who has been in the Akatsuki's care for over a year."

Orochimaru had found out somehow, hadn't he?

The implication that Orochimaru and Danzō were working together was not lost on Obito, and he had the sudden feeling that he needed to return to Amegakure immediately, because this could have been a set up from the start.

But he couldn't justify leaving just yet. He still needed information. That was why he had come.

How to play this to his advantage…

Could he play this to his advantage? He'd come with very little information and it seemed, this time, Danzō had the upper hand.

But Danzō also knew that the Akatsuki did not recruit useless, ineffectual shinobi into their ranks. He knew that the leader (the surface leader, in anycase) possessed the rinnegan and a mastery over the dōjutsu that had destroyed Danzō's previous ally and his entire military force in the span of a few minutes.

Danzō was walking a fine line, too, and he knew it just as well as Obito did.

So perhaps Obito's best move was to remind the elder of Nagato. If only to take some of Danzō's scrutiny off of him. He was already going to comb through everything he knew about the Uchiha to try and decipher who he was, that would keep the man busy for a while.

And Obito was certain there was very little that could point to him being the mysterious masked shinobi.

"Leader-sama has concerns over Konoha's mistreatment of its children," Obito deflected, gaze and stance steady, "from what I have observed within your charming home, Shimura-san, I would say his concerns were not unfounded."

Obito liked when he could speak the truth without saying anything at all, really.

Danzō gave a gruff, unamused snort. "Are you suggesting the Akatsuki killed our Fourth Hokage and stole Konoha's Jinchuriki because Konoha utilizes our skilled young shinobi just as every other village does? Allow me to ask; what is stopping Konoha from destroying Amegakure and retrieving our Kyuubi container?"

Now it was Obito's turn to snort. "Leader-sama."

Danzō's responding hum was patronizing and it grated against Obito's nerves. "You think highly of your leader."

Obito had nothing to say to that, so he did not respond. But he was aware of the dozens of approaching shinobi–and knew that his time here was limited.

He would need to return to Ame and question Orochimaru, because there was too much he didn't know, and he did not appreciate being led to believe something only to discover that he'd been kept in the dark and manipulated.

Obito would be having Pain speak with Orochimaru upon his return. This was unacceptable.

"I propose a trade," Danzō offered lazily. "Keep the girl and return the jinchuriki."

"That is no trade." Obito's teeth ground together while his anger swept through his body. The kids were his. If he had anything to say about it, neither would ever step foot inside Konoha again. "I cannot take that offer to my Leader."

"You did not allow me to finish," Danzō tutted, "keep the girl, return our jinchuriki, and I will give you someone of value that you can use. A prodigious child whose mind and body is still malleable to shaping."

That… was incredibly sick.

But, Obito was curious, so he stayed silent and waited for Danzō to elaborate.

"There is a boy in our village. A promising young Uchiha. He was legally betrothed to the girl by their mothers shortly after her birth and they are close. Attached at the hip when she was here, some have said. Give us the jinchuriki, and I'll ensure that this promising child makes it into the Akatsuki's organization within the next year. From there you can do with him as you please."

So Kushina-san had betrothed her own daughter to Uchiha Itachi? He knew Minato-sensei had joked about it a few times but there had been no indication that Kushina had actually done it.

Regardless, Danzō's main objective was always to strengthen Konoha. Offering to trade the Uchiha heir for Naruto spoke to Konoha's desperation. They were weak. Probably weaker than they had ever been and they needed to display to the world that they were strong and united.

But where would young Uchiha Itachi fit into this goal? If he were to go missing the clan would be in an uproar. Danzō would be making enemies of a clan full of incredibly powerful adversaries. The Uchiha would not just let it go as the Hokage had done with the Namikaze children, oh no. The Police Force would be out of the village looking for the boy. The clan would destroy anything that got between them and that child.

So what was Danzō's goal? Dangle a talented young boy like a lure and hope the Akatsuki would bite so the Uchiha could go to war getting him back?

Or, perhaps, he thought that if the Uchiha went after Itachi he could somehow convince Sarutobi that they were turning against the village. Staging a coup, or something of the like–disrespecting the chain of command, in any case.

It wouldn't take much for Danzō to mobilize Root and devastate an insubordinate clan, of course, but he'd need a scapegoat for it or else the other clans would be… unsettled.

Ah, so the Akatsuki would be the scapegoat.

How… quaint.

Obito would never exchange Naruto for the boy, but the thought was tempting–just to see the clan fall over themselves to get him back. He wondered if the young Uchiha heir was as talented as Danzō was leading him to believe.

Perhaps he should go and see for himself just what the fuss around this young shinobi was all about. Betrothed to his little Fū and all. Had to make sure he was good enough.

If he wasn't, the boy was living on borrowed time. Simple.

As the chakra signatures converged all around him and the electric feeling of an impending battle spread through the blood thirsty gathering of S-rank ninja… Obito smirked behind his mask.

"I shall take your proposal to Leader-sama."

The second the gathered shinobi sprang into action, Obito was gone in the swirl of his Kamui.

#

It was a rare sunny day in Ame and Taifū was out in the courtyard with Naruto, being supervised by Konan while she tried to teach the year and a half year old boy how to fold paper into an origami crane.

Fū was content to watch her struggle. He was providing sufficient distraction, and the frazzled Konan was so busy with Naruto that she failed to pay attention to what the older Uzumaki sibling was doing.

Good thing, too, otherwise she would've realized Taifū was carefully weaving seals into each fold of the paper crane she was working on using nothing but her imagination and tiny bursts of chakra through her fingertips.

As far as the Akatsuki were concerned, Taifū was absolute shit at ninjutsu and had no chakra control to speak of.

Between Konan and Obito, she was being trained several times a day in Taijutsu and Ninjutsu but she was only doing well with her Taijutsu. (She felt like she wasn't, though, because she kept failing to get a hit in on either sensei but they assured her that she'd been improving and it was just because they were such high-level targets.)

Truth was, her chakra control was good enough that she could make it appear like she had little to no control at all.

A side effect of having lived an entire lifetime without having a chakra system and then all the sudden having one was that she could feel the chakra moving beneath her skin.

It was like… smooth water drizzling through a barely open tap. The pressure was low, but all it took was turning the nozzle for it to grow stronger, harder, faster. The feeling was so foreign to her at first that she developed 'rashes' from clawing at her skin when she was small. Kushina and Minato had been so worried that she'd felt bad and decided she shouldn't be such a child about it and worked very hard to stop herself from scratching.

With time, she'd accepted that she'd always be aware of her chakra… and now she was glad for it, because it was keeping up the pretense of her being a relatively underwhelming kunoichi.

That is, until they realize just how good she is at fūinjustu.

She intended to keep them from discovering that for as long as possible.

This natural talent, she suspected, stemmed from not only her being an Uzumaki in this life but from her first childhood. She'd loved to draw, and she drew everything she could. Anything remotely art related and she was on it from the time she was little until she was a teenager.

This was due, mostly, to how cheap drawing was as a hobby. She'd grown up poor. In rural Appalachia, living up a holler deep in the hills. They killed their dinner on a daily basis just to survive and everybody had an Uncle in the moonshine trade–it was a whole different league of poverty than what the city folks experienced.

So drawing became a hobby because paper was free at school when her momma made sure she made it and pencils were a quarter. That was hard to get unless it was during the first of the month trip to the grocery store to spend the food stamps—then it was easy to scrounge up change in the parking lot and exchange it all for quarters at the mean looking, exasperated cashier.

Art became an escape, fiddling away in her own little world helped soften the sound of her daddy's backhand and momma's sharp gasp– the subsequent loud thump of her momma's body slamming against the wall. Or the table, the kitchen counters, the bathroom door. Anywhere, really.

In her first foster home, she learned the library was free too. And it was within walking distance. From then on, art escapism was second to the euphoria she got when immersed in a world of fiction.

When she got older, the non fiction section had also appealed and she devoured that library. God did she read just about everything there.

So yeah, art was something she liked to do before and that was paying off now because that's basically what fūinjustu boiled down too; an art form.

At least to her and Kushina. Minato had huffed and sputtered when Kushina described it so easily to Taifū. But that was because Minato wasn't an Uzumaki. Sealing didn't come naturally to him, he'd had to study it to be able to understand.

He'd gotten a decent grasp on it, but he wasn't perfect. Neither was Kushina, really, but she was better than Minato. She just didn't use it much after becoming a mother.

"No no no, Naruto-kun, you have to fold it like so-–where are you going?" Konan's typical calm drawl was just a decibel higher, and Fū's lips twitched watching the older kunoichi spazz out as Naruto stuffed a full square of paper into his mouth. "Naruto no!"

Taifū had just finished the last fold of her paper crane and smiled as Konan shot out of her seat and tried to get the paper out of her brother's mouth.

#

With Konan so distracted, Taifū released her hold on the little paper crane and smiled big when it shot into the sky to fulfill its purpose.

Later that night, she reread the three dog eared chapters of the book she'd gotten from Orochimaru, just to ensure she'd gotten things right. She'd only had the opportunity to make one and it would be a long time before she managed to make another one. Who knew when Ame would have another sunny day and Konan would feel like teaching them origami? After this time, Taifū wouldn't be surprised if Konan just washed her hands of trying to get Naruto to be still ever again.

She flipped through the pages, just to confirm. Glancing at her parents notes in the columns. Minato's perfect, loopy scrawl and Kushina's rushed chicken scratch had a lot of insights to what worked and what didn't that had really helped.

Chapter Three: Communications Seals.

Chapter Five: Animating Seals.

Chapter Nine: Seal Transference.