Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter 1

A had promised! He had promised to send her reinforcements! Before that he had promised to have a team of BOLT watching over her in case Akatsuki or another player tried anything against her! When it was his adoptive brother B, he would keep him locked up home with teams of BOLT watching him twenty four seven, but when it was Yugito Nii, the spare, she was still sent on dangerous missions too far to ensure her security from those maniacs and the reinforcements she had been promised were on their way had never come!

Yugito had nothing against B, she liked him, he was an inspirational figure to her. But the favored treatment he had been receiving while everyone still gave her the cold shoulder for her entire life had been infuriating. Yugito had given everything to Kumo, following the teachings of her instructor who she hadn’t killed despite his heavy blows and harsh methods, his insulting words and his absolute lack of any supportive word or gesture towards her in the eight years he’d been assigned to teach her after she’d been forcefully made into a jinchûriki to protect a village where no one gave her the time of day… It was hard for her to see B shine in the bright light while she was relegated to the shadows, assassinating, deceiving…

Yugito had dedicated her body and mind to Kumo and that’s how A had thanked her. He had abandoned her to her fate in the hands of two Akatsuki zombies. She had done everything the Raikage had ever asked from her, including pink ribbon missions. And how many of those she had completed…more than any woman from Kumo…she had become well acquainted with every red district in Lighting Country and even beyond its’ borders, with every noble’s palace, she had brought back to Kumo the blueprints of every building where anyone of value could ever sleep. She had murdered people in the middle of coitus to fulfill very specific mission parameters.

She had even been pregnant once following her longest series of pink ribbon missions back when she was fifteen, she had been through abortion for the village, sacrificed her child for Kumo, a child she had never asked for, but after going through ninety pink ribbon missions over six months with nobles and rich merchants who never tolerated using condoms, her own contraception methods had eventually failed. The worst part was that since some of them had pregnant kinks, she had been forced to keep the baby for five months despite abortions being prohibited after the third month due to the risks to the woman’s health. She had been aborted in a countryside hospital because the Raikage didn’t want to reveal to the entire village that he had put a jinchûriki at such a risk to begin with and if the seal broke, it would have caused no damage to the village.

How had she been able to keep working for Kumo after that again? Oh! Yes. A had promised he would never ask her to do something like that ever again. One month after the abortion, she was thrown back into the field because Kumo, after the Third Shinobi War, had been in shortage of quality shinobi to replace her. Without Matatabi’s regeneration, she would have died shortly after. No, she would have died in the abortion.

Not three months after being thrown back to the field, she had been assigned pink ribbon missions again, but A had been generous, her first three missions’ targets were nice enough to wear fuckin’ condoms! The fourth though? No, why would a man waste thirty seconds putting on a condom to spare her all the trouble she had barely recovered from? It had taken her an entire year to get her body back to the way it was before her pregnancy, without counting the permanent scar at the bottom of her belly…

And thirteen years later, after a total of nearly five hundred seduction missions that required her to have sex with the target or with someone else to get access to her target, sometimes even forcing her into orgies; after her two hundred A ranked missions outside of pink ribbon ones, after six hundred B ranks, who knows how many unrecorded and unranked missions for Kumo, A had thanked her by not even sending her reinforcements in time to help her fight Akatsuki.

She had diced the gray haired guy into appetizers and killed the black thread guy twice, yet no one had come when he got up again. She had used up all of her time in full transformation, burned her chakra pathways past the point of no return, literally burning herself alive to try and get rid of them. No one had come.

There was one positive aspect to the zombie pair of Akatsuki. They hadn’t been willing to rape her once they had captured her. Sure, the fanatic had used his ritual to stab himself and reflect the damage on her a few times, but he had quickly stopped seeing that Yugito had been unresponsive due to already being in much greater pain from her transformation than whatever he could inflict her. She had also been through torture training and had been handled roughly from the age of four on top of everything else. The guy had been bored of her lack of reaction and called it a day before letting her lose consciousness to carry her to the place where they would extract Matatabi from her.

The extraction itself had been like going through abortion again but with her entire body feeling like it was being torn rather than only a small part of it. If that’s what Kushina Uzumaki had been through right after giving birth to the blond jinchûriki of Konoha, then she wondered how she could have had enough energy afterwards to restrain the Kyûbi like the BOLT agents had reported having witnessed that night. What a woman! And the glory all went to the Hokage who had barely done anything in comparison and hadn’t taken a single injury until the one lethal hit they both took to the abdomen, which Minato Namikaze could have avoided if he had bothered, but he probably didn’t feel like raising his child alone without that wonderful woman to take most of the burden away from him on top of his Hokage duties…so he’d let the kid grow up lonely, blamed for everyone’s losses…just like herself.

She was floating in a void, her thoughts the only things that ensured that her mind was still functioning, when she felt sucked into a tiny hole, compressed into something too small to fit into. She lost consciousness.

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Yugito woke up brusquely, her upper body lifting itself from the mattress it had been on. She looked around her and checked for genjutsu by briefly disrupting her chakra flow. No illusion. She was in a hospital room, from the looks of it. Her body felt weak, but that’s already better than she should have…

She looked down and felt her body with her hands. Why was she so small? Why did she feel like a child? Or at least like a pre-teen? She inspected the room and found a pile of clothes on a chair. She got off the bed and grabbed them, her legs shaking from the effort. These were her genin clothes! What the hell was happening?

The door opened and a medic entered, discussing with a tall black man…A, but he was only thirty!

“She needs three days of rest before going back on the field, Lord Raikage. If she goes now, she will need soldier pills just to function, let alone perform decently as a kunoichi. You should not send her back so soon or her immediate and long term performance will be negatively affected. It will destroy her long term potential and she risks getting addicted to soldier pills despite being only twelve and a genin…”

“No one tells me what I should or should not do. I appreciate your medical advice, but Kumo has lost too many shinobi on Kannabi Bridge to that damn Namikaze and we need every able shinobi and kunoichi who can stand on their two feet out on the field.”

“Very well, I will communicate your orders to the nurse. Miss Yugito, sorry, but you have just been discharged. Take your belongings and leave as soon as you can,” said the medic, apologetic and exhausted by the constant overflow of patients.

“I have a mission for you, Two, and you’ll be with two chûnin for this one. Here, read the contract and sign it while I’m here,” ordered the Raikage who had been appointed very recently and was showing off his alpha male leadership to avoid anyone questioning his lack of experience leading a hidden village.

Yugito remembered that mission. She had barely had time to recover from a broken leg she had received a week ago, Matatabi’s healing factor accelerating her regeneration, but her body had been tired by the healing process. She had under-performed on this mission and received a negative review on her effectiveness by the teammate who had come back alive, accusing her of dragging them down and causing the death of the other guy. Jerks, both of them. Asshole, A. Actually, A could stand for Asshole, it was really fitting. He would order to kidnap the Hyûga heiress in the middle of peace negotiations, after all…

The kunoichi grabbed the mission file with her too small hands and speed read it, signing it. At that point, she had no hope of getting away. All she could do was wait to be back to her prime and send a middle finger to A while kneeing him in the balls. She’d love for Mabui to assist her in beating up the Raikage, but that woman was too attached to her position of glorified paper pusher and coffee maker to turn on the man who would treat her like a sex doll from her fifteen’s birthday to the moment Yugito had died in her first life, fourteen years later.

Oh! But A had been generous! He had only started his sexual harassment of the poor girl when she had reached fifteen and been promoted to chûnin! He had promised her to make her a special jônin if she let him have his way with her. She had been promoted three years later, and then to jônin another three years later. She had aborted twice, each as a reward for her promotion, because the guy was as horny as a bonobo and never deigned wear a condom. She was glad he had other favorites or Mabui would have died servicing him at some point. She liked Mabui. The woman had never been rude to her. Not friendly either, but it was already better than most of Kumo. Only B had ever been friendly towards her.

Yugito went back into bed to change into her mission clothes and left the hospital without wasting time. She needed the wall to support her weight, but she would just take a soldier pill after meeting the guys and it would be fine. She’d had far worse.

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Yugito came back alone from that mission. She was the only one to fill a report and thus the only one whose opinion mattered. No one was left to slander her. A simple poisoned senbon trap she had set during her guard turn on the last night had taken care of the surviving chûnin. If she didn’t stand for herself, no one would ever do it for her.

There were suspicions of foul play, but no one could prove her involvement and she was the only girl in the team, so it opened the possibility of attenuating circumstances. At the end of the day, no one asked or cared to uncover the truth and she walked it off like nothing had happened. It was war, shit happened.

She had gotten a full night’s sleep in a camp tent for kunoichi without a team for a change, which had helped her recover a bit of her chakra and stamina, but the aftereffects of the soldier pills still held her back.

She had a headache and cramps, but was still assigned a new mission to sabotage an Iwa supply caravan posing as a Konoha kunoichi, leaving a survivor in good enough shape to report to their hierarchy but killing everyone else. Kumo wouldn’t let Iwa refuel their forces and change their target to them.

This mission took her new improvised team a week. The different outcome of her previous mission had already changed her fate, as this mission had never been assigned to her in her first life. As expected, everything went fine until they had to come back, where Konoha shinobi had caught them and identified them as a false flag team and attacked. Yugito had needed a second soldier pill for this mission to survive the confrontation, leaving the Konoha shinobi diced on the ground. She came back with an injured comrade and one dead burned where they had died to follow procedure.

She had been slandered by her surviving comrade in his report for not using her Bijû to kill the enemies – in a false flag infiltration and sabotage mission behind enemy lines… Of course, she had placed an explosive tag in the bastard’s flack jacket before he left for his next mission and had blown him up from far enough to avoid suspicion since she had been sent on a different mission herself.

From that point onward, people started noticing a pattern and, in order to avoid being the next on her list, passed it as anyone slandering her getting cursed. She was the jinchûriki of a cursed cat, after all. Curses were supposed to be her thing…

She received a field promotion after two months and was sent away from the field when she caused herself self-harm after noticing she had become addicted to soldier pills. She hoped that being allowed some rest would let her be in a better environment to stop taking them.

At that point, she was sent on low risk missions like courier between Kumo, the Lightning capital and the various points of interest on the front. Protecting supply caravans, ensuring commercial contracts to keep the war effort going. She excelled at all of these, especially now that she was not constantly on the edge of exhaustion anymore and could lower her soldier pill intake, mutilating herself each time she tried to take an unnecessary shot. It worked well enough, despite seriously increasing her outfit costs at first, until she’d regained enough control to do it on bare skin rather than anywhere she could reach.

She didn’t even notice her thirteenth birthday pass, but she was glad when news of Iwa’s and Konoha’s ceasefire reached the Kumo forces. Things would start easing up from that point. Soon, Kumo and Konoha followed, ending the Third Shinobi War.

Yugito had completed thirty B rank missions and two A rank missions since she had been thrown back in time and she would be re-evaluated to determine which rank she should be attributed now that the war had come to an end. She aced it in everything but combat skills, where she was still in need of rest to complete her detoxification and get back to full health. She had been allowed to keep her chûnin rank, but was well on the way to special jônin since the landscape of high ranks had been dented by the war.

She was forced to take a team of freshly graduated genin, little eleven year old children without any notion of the reality they would have to face as shinobi. She didn’t coddle them, rather breaking them from their civilian upbringing to remake them into shinobi. After six months, she sent them to the chûnin exams where they fought on par with clan kids and earned their promotion.

Right after that, since the first batch had worked out so well, A had decided to throw her a bunch of genin again, from the genin core this time. She was glad for the time to recover after the war, but damn if these children were annoying to deal with… Once more, her methods were harsh but effective and two of them were promoted to chûnin, the third one dying in a fight against a clan kid who didn’t like being caught up to by some civilian born. Of course the clan kid got off scott-free and was promoted despite his lack of self control. He died on his third mission as a chûnin, he had been poisoned. If Yugito had kept placing small doses of pulverized poison on his possessions, it was only for her to know.

The curse tales of the jinchûriki of the Two Tails kept spreading. People stopped crossing her and she had it easier simply by facing less opposition than she had in her first life.

She had practiced her genjutsu to get it back to a decent level for her first pink ribbon mission. It happened to be a good idea. The target never suspected they had been filling a bolster with his ball juice and the maid who cleaned after them was glad for the bribe she received to keep it a secret.

Yugito was still lonely, but she didn’t need to receive praise anymore. She had learned the hard way that only the right people received praise without taking a knife in the back at the same time. She wouldn’t repeat the same mistakes and be demanding like she had her first time around. She was content with being left alone and didn’t seek B’s attention anymore. She didn’t want A to try and keep her away from his brother once more, it had been annoying and painful enough in her first life, she didn’t want it to sting again.

Some of her pink ribbon missions she completed the normal way, when her targets were to her taste, but she had made leaps and bounds in genjutsu, becoming more and more subtle in order to avoid suspicion. It wouldn’t be right for her to have to go back to satisfy a client who had been pissed upon discovering her deception. She was fine not getting pregnant a second time, thank you very much. The first one had been traumatic enough for her to think about getting knocked up ever again…

Yugito had started building an intelligence network for own benefit among pleasure establishments, merchants, foreigners and other people with no loyalty to Kumo or to the Daimyô. It would be useful to learn about black cloaks with red clouds among other things.

From her full recovery onward, she had been training whenever A let her an opportunity in order to get back to her prime, with the addition of decent genjutsu this time around. She had pushed her fire element training to the point that she didn’t need techniques or hand signs anymore at fifteen, being able to use simple nature transformation and shape manipulation to control her fire element. It made her fighting style all the more effective, since not needing hand signs and not interrupting her rhythm allowed her to keep her aggression level at an all time high and not let her opponents any breathing room. She could also heat her claws without feeling the normal pain that would go with it and cut through anything like butter. It made trying to block her attacks an exercise in futility and it would probably be able to deal with Thread Guy’s earth armor until she got good enough at lightning transformation to pierce his defenses.

When she reached sixteen, she decided to treat herself and cooked a chocolate cake, but she completely burned it, so she had to buy one from the best pastry in Kumo to get some comfort. It lifted her mood enough that she put a bit of chocolate on her nose to make it look like a cat’s and laughed at her own chocolate tracks in the mirror. Laughing felt good, she did it too rarely…

Her physical condition was getting close to that of her twenty-nine year old body. She had built a strong upper body in order to be able to fight male weapon users in close quarter combat and her teammates had started calling her Ironback Yugito like in her previous life, two years early. Her arms were far from B’s or A’s that were the same size as her own thighs, but they had enough power to contend with most of Kiri’s swordsmen.

Talking about Kiri, she got a mission to hunt down Jûzô, the wielder of Kubikiribôchô, the cleaver, who had come to the Land of Lightning, supposedly after a missing nin. She had been sent with Samui and C, both chûnin. If they succeeded in killing or capturing Jûzô and retrieving his sword, they would be promoted to special jônin.

Samui was a BOLT kunoichi. She had a generic skillset and little personality, since it had been beaten out of her to make her an obedient weapon who doesn’t think by themselves. She was competent, definitely not cannon fodder, but she was mostly in the team to make sure there would be no straying away from the guidelines and to follow A’s idea of Kumo’s methods.

C was the opposite. He had a strong personality, hated Konoha and had an opinion about everything. He was the dedicated medic of the team as well as a sensor, which would facilitate this manhunt. He was annoying, but at least he had conversation, unlike Samui who kept her focus on the mission and only spoke up to say something related to the mission.

Yugito was stuck between a rock and a hard place, Samui and C. This mission would be a pain in the ass.

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They left at dawn on the day after receiving the A rank mission scroll – that would probably be raised to S rank after the fight if there was one. They ran all day long to reach the South coast and slept outside of a small port town where shady deals tended to be made. A good start to find missing nin.

C picked up something in the morning, a faint signature that he didn’t know. It could be any foreign shinobi, but they wouldn’t know for sure until they found its’ owner. So they ran, following C’s lead. Yugito wanted to go faster and speedrun this mission, but she’d have to carry both of her teammates and her chakra emission would alert everyone in a ten kilometer radius of her presence, so she followed him quietly.

C tried to make conversation, but his topics of interest didn’t really match with Yugito’s and she blew a raspberry when he started annoying her.

“Talk less, run faster, C,” she ended up saying to his face.

“Tcheh… Jinchûriki and their crazy stamina and physical condition… There’s no way I can follow you if you sprint and you can’t find the target without my sensing ability,” he retaliated.

“Whatever, shut up and do your best.”

Samui nodded in agreement, conserving her energy to run rather than wasting it to talk. C was pissed but understood that he wouldn’t get the upper hand in this argument and did as she wanted.

After thirty minutes, they reached a point at which the mountainside descended into the sea in a magnificent picture of the Land of Lightning. Yugito took out her camera and kept this picture in her bag. It would be the first picture she’d like to look at from her travels, a good memory. Especially if they found the Kiri swordsman and his target and could capture both of them at once, increasing their reward and the mission rank.

Twenty minutes of running later, they found their target and his target duking it out with water ninjutsu on the beach, feet in the water. They used the environment to save chakra, at least they weren’t complete morons.

“Stay here, I’m taking them down. Come for clean up when I’m done with them,” she ordered her teammates.

Without leaving them a choice, she threw her bag at C and sprinted towards the Kiri shinobi. They had been fighting for a little while, a few scratches and cuts showing the results of their stalemate. Jûzô, the guy with a barcode tattoo from his chin to his nose, had drawn his cleaver and was swinging it at the missing nin, but Yugito jump kicked the sword, stopping his blow and throwing him off balance.

The missing nin thought it was his time to make a move, which ended up in Yugito’s claws piercing his jugular before decapitating him. She’d claim that bounty for herself.

“You! Kumo whore! You stole my kill!” exclaimed a pissed Jûzô.

“He was on Kumo territory, out of Kiri’s rights. Thus Kumo has all the rights to claim his head. I’ll take him for myself anyway.”

“You’ll have to kill me if you want to claim his bounty! I was already fighting him and you ruined our duel.”

“I don’t give a shit about your duel. Come at me baby, use everything you have. I’ll show you who’s gonna claim that bounty. Your cleaver would look nice on my chimney.”

“Alright bitch! I’m coming!”

“Coming already? I haven’t touched you yet…”

Jûzô was seriously pissed by her sex talk and used his mist technique. He enunciated the killing areas like all of the Seven Swordsmen of Kiri tended to before the mist parted behind her. His sword came down and was deflected by her claws which plunged into his body, turning it into water.

“I see you’re already wet, Kumo bitch…” he taunted from the mist.

“Is that all you can do? You’re killing me of boredom. Maybe that’s your strategy?” she countered.

A water dragon crashed into her face, projecting her backwards and impaling her on the tip of Kubikiribôchô. But the cleaver was not very pointy and thus the sword hadn’t go all the way through. She placed her hands on the blade and channeled fire chakra towards the wielder, heating the metal and forcing him to let go.

She removed the sword from her lower back. It had missed the spine, something she was glad for. She let a bit of Matatabi’s chakra heal her wound enough to keep fighting.

“Fuck! You’re a jinchûriki! I knew a bitch couldn’t be so strong without some stupid external help!”

“What about Ameyuri Ringo? She’s one your little gang of stick wielders and I’ve heard she’s a midget. Yet she’s on the same level as you.”

“Ringo? Nah, that thing’s not a girl. That’s a hunting dog.”

“Well then I’m a hunting cat. My hair is all soft but my claws kill their prey nonetheless.”

“Kitty wanna show me her hair? I’d like to feel it, especially the hair down there, once I’ve killed you. It’s less risky to fuck a corpse, hahaha…”

He disappeared into the mist. Yugito kept his sword grounded so that he couldn’t get it back without fighting her.

“Miss Nii! He’s running away!” announced Samui.

Yugito decided that she was sick of his little game. If it was a water clone faking his escape, the real one would still be around to take his sword back, which was more in character for one of the Seven Swordsmen. She placed her hand into the water at her feet and charged it with lightning to stun everything around. Then, she producing a flame in each hand and shot her arms outwards, making a flamethrower on each side of her body and started to spin in place, evaporating the mist and turning the area into a giant barbecue.

She heard someone scream. The screams of a burning man. They didn’t last long, though. The moment she located him, she stopped her roasting and jumped Jûzô, impaling his heart with her right arm, which went all the way through. Fire infused claws went through like a hot knife into butter.

“I need you to be a bit recognizable to get the full prize for killing you. I don’t want A to bullshit his way into diminishing my accomplishment.”

Yugito retracted her arm and threw him near his cleaver.

“I’m done! Come clean this mess!” she called her teammates.

“Yeah, you make a mess and we have to clean up behind you. Mons…” started C.

“You don’t want to finish that sentence,” warned Samui.

That’s when he noticed that the sand in the area of her barbecue had been turned into glass.

“Oh shit! How’d she produce fire hot enough to do that?” he freaked out.

“That’s why you should shut up before you piss her off,” hammered Samui.

“Yeah, you’re probably right…”

Yugito had removed her clothes and was taking a naked bath in the sea, enjoying this rare feeling of freedom. It felt incredible. It was cut short by Samui, though.

“We’re done, Miss Nii,” she called.

“Can’t I bathe a little longer?”

“That’s not part of the mission.”

“Killjoy…”

Yugito, who was floating face towards the sky, suddenly saw Samui’s face approaching hers in a deadpan expression.

“Alright…bitch,” she swore.

Samui shrugged and moved away.

The mission had come to and end, Yugito swimming back to the shore and putting her clothes back on before departing.

“Give me the cleaver, C. I wanna feel the taste of victory and it’ll be like running with weights on.”

“Alright. Don’t lose it.”

Yugito lifted an eyebrow.

“It was a joke, hahaha…” he added, clearly sweating profusely.

“I won’t eat you. You’re not tasty enough for that anyway,” she shot.

“I wouldn’t hit on you anyway. Not that you’re ugly…you know…”

“I know. I’m a monster. Kumo has done all it could to make me conscious of that fact.”

That finally shut his trap for the rest of the trip. Yugito was running in reckon just to get a taste of freedom and some weight training at once during the trip back and she kept stroking Kubikiribôchô inside Kumo to put everyone on the edge. It felt liberating to see them shit their pants like that. She kept herself from laughing manically.

The mission was upped to S rank and their whole team got promoted. She confronted A to claim the missing nin’s head for herself, but the asshole liked women with thorns. It was probably arousing him to see her resist his will. She couldn’t care less as long as it got her the full bounty for the head. She traded it for Kubikiribôchô, which would start negotiations between Kumo and Kiri to decide on their price to get it back.

When she left A’s office, she heard him call Mabui. She knew why he’d called her. She grabbed the girl’s wrist to stop her.

“You don’t have to do that, Mabui. You know it.”

“Let go. I can choose for myself. I need the money that goes with the job and promotions. Unlike you, I have a mother to take care of.”

This slapped Yugito in the feelings and she let go of the girl’s wrist. The blonde rushed out of the building at a fast walk and ran to the wall of Kumo to practice the primal howl. She was so pissed by Mabui’s comment that her mouth turned into a flamethrower.

“I didn’t ask to be a monster!!!”

Chapter Text

“Let us start with routine identification,” said the medic.

“Yugito Nii, ID number CL5322, jônin of Kumo.”

“How do you feel at work? Do you feel pressured?”

“Pressured? I’m a kunoichi, not a civilian. Pressure is part of the job description.”

“Do you feel overworked?”

“Not currently, no.”

“Are your missions particularly stressful for you?”

“No.”

“Is there something outside of your line of work that is causing you stress?”

“Well, there is the fact that I’m living in a place where everyone either hates me or doesn’t give me the time of day, with a boss who exploits me whenever he needs someone for a job no one else wants to take, and I have no one to complain to, no way to relieve the tension, and if I try to tell him to put his shitty missions where the sun doesn’t shine, I’ll get beaten up and still have to do what he tells me to.

“There’s also the fact that I’m a woman and my boss considers me inferior just for this fact, but only when it suits him. When there’s a job for a jinchûriki that could be deadly, my counterpart is sidelined in favor of me. I’m constantly reminded that I’m of lesser value to the village than him and that my life is only as valuable as I’m useful.”

“So you feel excluded from society and only kept around because you are useful as a weapon.”

“Yes. But that’s to be expected in my situation.”

“If you had more friendly relationships, would you be more stable?”

“What, you’re gonna pay shinobi to act friendly towards me? What a joke… Can I leave? This psychology session is wasting both of our time, Doctor.”

“You still have questions to answer to determine a way to improve your mental condition, Miss Nii…”

She got up and left the room, slamming the door shut once outside. BOLT agents appeared to block her way.

“Jônin Nii, you should finish this session,” said one of them.

“Out of my way, sparklings,” she replied, clenching her jaw.

“Raikage’s orders,” said the other one.

“Tell the Raikage to kiss my butt.”

“Hysterical wo…”

The agent didn’t have time to complete his sentence before being slammed against the wall. Yugito approached his ear to say on a low tone:

“One more misogynist comment and there will be a corpse to remove…”

The guy nodded, so terrified that he’d pissed his pants. When she left, she noticed the other one glancing at her, shaking. She was getting unhinged. She should calm down before being called by the Raikage or she would try to kill him and end up as mush on the floor of his office…

She didn’t even have the time to isolate herself and meditate to cool a bit before the window of the Raikage’s office exploded.

“YUGITO NII! IN MY OFFICE! RIGHT NOW!!!” shouted the village leader so loud that the entire village could hear him.

She reluctantly obeyed, feeling the tea kettle whistle inside her. Instead of cooling down, she was being cooked.

When she entered his office, the Raikage was lifting his weights, using his anger for something productive.

“Yes?” she asked like nothing happened.

“Why did I hear that you’ve molested a BOLT agent? He was doing his job! And you didn’t do yours! You have to complete these psychological sessions! It’s standard procedure and in your case it’s well overdue!”

“You molest your own brother much more than the little pat on the head I gave that guy for saying I was a hysterical woman where I could hear him. If it had been a mission, he would have compromised the mission and antagonized his teammate. He deserved what he got and more.”

“Bee is tough and can take my punishment for his foolishness. BOLT agents are not punching bags for S class shinobi!”

“When will the diplomatic mission with Kiri take place? I’d like to be out of the village for a while and since I was the one to kill the Swordsman, they’ll want me to be part of it one way or the other.”

“Don’t change the topic!”

“Your petulant child act isn’t doing you any favor, Lord Raikage. Control your emotions if you want people to start taking you seriously. So, when is that mission?”

“I’ll get you back for that, Yugito… When you come back, you’ll be on for a month of D-ranks with genin to watch you. Usually, it’s the other way around, but you’ll show them how it’s done before they start their own missions.”

She scratched his desk to make it screech.

“When will I leave for that mission?”

He cringed at the annoying noise.

“In a week. And cut your nails, woman, when you’re not fighting. This noise is getting on my serves…”

He took a mission scroll from his desk drawer and held it out for her.

“Stop butting heads with me or I’ll remind you and everyone who doubts my leadership skills why I was made Fourth Raikage… The Two Tails can be sealed into a new vessel if this one doesn’t behave…”

“The day you die miserably in a gutter, I hope I’ll be there to watch the light disappear in your eyes. Lord Raikage…”

She took the scroll and left the office. As she slammed the door, she heard the desk crash and A’s howl of fury pleased her more than killing that Jûzô asshole. She slashed her hair tie and freed her blond hair in a gesture out of an ad. It felt great to be a badass woman at that moment. A opened the door of his office and shunshined after her, but he stopped against her claw just before impaling himself on it. She lowered her arm and watched as he tried to keep his underwear from falling with the rest of his slashed clothes.

“You may be the strongest in Kumo with Bee, but you’re far from being the smartest, Raikage. As I said, control your emotions before they lead you to make a fool of yourself… Too late for that, though…”

She was delighted by his pressure cooker expression. She could practically see the steam coming out of his ears and whistling a tune that was sweet to her ears.

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After a week of avoiding anyone sent by the Raikage who was too humiliated to come out of his office, she appeared at the village gates as her team arrived at the meeting point. C was present as the best field medic and sensor, he would be useful to detect foul play and heal injuries if there was fighting, but he had a mouth gag that he couldn’t remove, probably because his mouth could worsen the relations with Kiri if he was allowed to speak. Darui, the Third Raikage’s apprentice, was the other team member. He could be useful as a direct representative of the Raikage and as a compliment to Yugito’s diplomatic skills, as well as make sure she didn’t purposefully ruin the negotiations just to piss off A even more. Kubikiribôchô was strapped to Darui’s back.

“Allow me to lighten your burden,” said Yugito, removing the cleaver from around him to place it on her own back. “You wouldn’t like to be slowed down by this chunk of metal, after all…and Kiri would feel insulted at the idea that someone who didn’t kill their swordsman got to carry one of the seven swords…”

“Of course, Miss Nii,” diplomatically accepted the Black man with a blonde mane.

“You should try an Afro cut, I bet it would suit you better than this wild thing on your head. Hairdressing matters a lot in negotiations. If you appear like you don’t want to put in the effort to present properly, you already start accumulating negative points before you’ve even opened your mouth. Just like in seduction, you have to charm the other party.”

“I’m a Kumo shinobi, Miss Nii, not a politician,” he replied.

“On this mission, you’re a diplomat. Either you play the part or I’ll do it for you. The Raikage has already ruined our reputation enough as it is, Kumo doesn’t need to appear more barbaric than it’s already seen as.”

He winced and nodded.

“Why an Afro though?” he wondered.

“You’ve got messy hair, no straight hairstyle would stay in place more than thirty minutes. Just play to your strengths. Afro is a hairstyle that suits the natural movement of your hair, thus you won’t have it go wild midway through negotiations.”

“I see…”

C tried to speak but was quickly reminded of his mouth gag and gave up, pissed by the way he was being treated. Yugito patted his head like a good dog, making his temper flare even more. She smiled viciously.

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In the port town of Muramasa, the Kumo team disembarked and spent the night enjoying the local hospitality. Yugito went to a pleasure house to collect information and found C in that very place at the arm of a prostitute, but with his gag, he could hardly collect any intel she couldn’t collect herself. Darui didn’t seem to indulge in this kind of pleasure, or he might have been somewhere else, like in a tavern for sailors or pirates. In the Land of Water, there wasn’t much of a difference between sailors and pirates anyway…

Yugito observed, listened and paid attention to every little detail. When she was content with what she’d gathered, she finally indulged in the vices provided by this house.

A slightly plump woman with a dragon tattoo circling around her torso, underlining her curves, took her to her room, where Yugito ate bush and got hers eaten, was given pleasure and returned it for the rest of the evening.

Upon leaving, she met a Kiri woman with auburn hair and pointy teeth revealed by a shark smile guided by a man and a woman. They exchanged a glance and a nod of salutations in passing. This must have been Ameyuri Ringo, the only woman among the Seven Swordsmen. She was indeed a small one, an entire head smaller than Yugito. Just at the right height to choke her between her breasts…

Yugito grabbed C by the collar as she passed him by and brought him back with her to the boat they had come aboard. They would sleep there, safer than in the town where they’d be hard pressed to sleep surrounded by potential enemies. Darui met them there. Kiri shinobi would probably benefit from the water, but the Kumo trio could use that as a conductor for their elemental techniques and neutralize the environmental advantage of their enemies.

They took turns guarding the boat, but nothing happened to them that night.

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In the morning, they went to town for breakfast, verifying everything for poison. After sating their hunger and thirst with seafood, they prepared themselves for the meeting with the Kiri team. Yugito and C went with Darui to the hairdresser, checking that he wouldn’t be assassinated by a shinobi in disguise while getting his Afro hairstyle. Then, they went to the onsen and dressed properly.

At noon, C tensed and a runner came to deliver a message.

“Good morning, Kumo shinobi. The meeting will be delayed due to an emergency. The Kiri team that came here to negotiate has just been sent away to deal with it, but the meeting will happen in three days. Please enjoy the commodities and pleasures of Muramasa in the meantime. Have a good stay in our town.”

He nodded and left them.

“For real?” whined Darui. “I wanted to be done with it as soon as possible and go back home…”

“Do you have a girlfriend or what?” wondered Yugito.

C’s gaze went to inspect the Black shinobi and he nodded like someone who’s noticed something that wasn’t there.

“Not your business. Well, let’s…”

C tensed again, more distinctly this time. His gaze darted in a direction where there was nothing to stare at.

“Somethin’ fishy?” asked Darui.

C pointed Yugito and then where he’d been looking at and pointed in that direction.

“What? Want me to go scout?”

C shook his head negatively. He pointed in that direction, then at Yugito and made horns on his forehead with his fingers.

“There’s another one nearby?” she asked very low so that only the three of them could hear it.

He nodded.

“The emergency…” guessed Darui.

“Let’s go take a look. We won’t intervene, but it’s good to know what’s happening here to report back home,” Yugito retorted.

“I smell problems incoming…” sighed Afro guy.

C whined but followed them and gave them directions.

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They moved away from the port town and followed C’s sensing ability. He was leading them West, in the direction of the Land of Fire. When they reached the coast, they understood that their track had left the Land of Water by sea and that they would need a boat to keep going.

Yugito had a feeling that she shouldn’t give up and keep going after them. It wasn’t part of the mission, but this information could be of great value to Kumo…and to her. Allying herself with another jinchûriki fleeing Kiri could be a good opportunity.

She grabbed C and put him on her back, running on the sea. He loudly complained and wondered what she was doing, from what she could guess of his humming, but she kept going.

“We’re gonna check that, no sea will prevent me from getting something out of it,” she affirmed.

Darui couldn’t follow them. Without C, he couldn’t hope to find them, so he’d have to go back to Muramasa.

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Yugito had crossed the sea and was close to her target. She approached silently to spy on the big fuss. A team of Konoha ANBU was fighting a team of Mist TIDE agents over a girl her age with purple marks on her cheeks.

“C, is that girl the jinchûriki you tracked from Muramasa?” she asked discreetly.

He confirmed.

“Stay here. I have to do something. There’s an opportunity here.”

She let him fall from her back and jumped into the fray. She joined the girl in the middle and kept danger at bay, trying to get some intel out of her.

“Hey, girl! What’s this mess about? Your headband is from Konoha, why were you in Kiri?”

“You’re from Kumo! I won’t tell you anything!”

“There’s one of the Seven Swordsmen of Kiri coming anytime soon, she’s been tracking you all day with a fresh team. You should tell me what the situation is if you don’t want to end up all killed.”

“…Kiri kidnapped me and sealed the Six Tailed Slug in me… They want to free it in Konoha and destroy my village… I’ve tried to escape, but they kept me prisoner and sealed my chakra… Konoha’s ANBU found us on the way and have been trying to free me or kill me before I can reach the village…”

“Weapons…that’s all these bastards see us as…”

“What?”

Yugito stopped limiting herself to defending the girl and started assaulting the ANBU and TIDE indiscriminately.

“We…” she kicked an ANBU, “…are…” she diced a TIDE agent, “…not…” she hammered through an ANBU’s head, “…your weapons…” she grabbed and ANBU and a TIDE agent, “…or…” she crushed them against each other, reducing them into mush “…your tools!”

An ANBU with a half broken mask charged a TIDE agent with a lightning technique coating his hand. The jinchûriki from Konoha placed herself in between, probably to sacrifice herself and save her village, not trusting her about that. Yugito shunshined, breaking the boy’s forearm and canceling his technique before it could impale the girl. He seemed to be in shock over nearly killing the girl. The Kumo jinchûriki knocked the girl out and drew in some of Matatabi’s chakra. She had been using a lot of her own chakra that day, she needed some help to keep going.

A chakra cloak appeared over her skin and Yugito used her mouse hairball technique to home in the remaining ANBU and TIDE agents duking it out, slaughtering all of them. She went back to the silver haired boy – probably the Fourth Hokage’s former student – and saw him try to get back up. He seemed to try and focus on the mission for now, leaving sorting this mess for later.

“Did you come to kill her?” Yugito asked the boy.

“What? No! She’s a Konoha kunoichi, she has to be brought back…”

“Her seal has been purposefully botched, she told me. If you bring her back to Konoha, she’s going to be the second coming of the Kyûbi attack.”

He hesitated, floored by the announcement. After a while to process this information, he looked her in the eyes.

“And what’s Kumo’s position in this? We’re not exactly allies…”

“And I’m not here on Kumo business. I’m here as a fellow jinchûriki, and as such I don’t want her to be sacrificed to destroy your pitiful village, nor to sacrifice herself to save it. There’s been enough drama in the Third War, we don’t need more of that now.”

“But there’s no one who can fix the seal…you’re not a seal master, I suppose…?”

“Kumo wouldn’t allow a jinchûriki to study the art that keeps them safe. We’re already dangerous enough as it is, they won’t give us a chance to have control over our seal.”

“Then how can I bring her back home without killing her…?” he asked, depressed.

“Isn’t Jiraiya in Konoha?” she wondered.

He didn’t answer, but his silence was as loud as a scream.

“Do you know the basics of sealing arts?” she asked him.

“Huh?”

“C! Come here! You’ve got your calligraphy brush and ink on you at all times, right?”

The blonde came closer, frowning.

“I know you hate Konoha, but these brats have nothing to do with the people who captured your mother. They’re the same age as we are. Don’t fault them for someone else’s crimes.”

The guys exchanged annoyed looks at each other. C was fulminating and the Konoha ANBU was furious to have to rely on a Kumo shinobi, let alone one who hated his guts just for being from Konoha.

C finally pulled out a scroll from a pocket of his tactical belt and unsealed a brush and ink. His gaze was asking her what she intended to do with them. To answer his question, she placed the Konoha girl on her back and laid beside her after removing her top, only keeping her bra on. She lowered her trousers and undies, revealing her entire seal as she channeled chakra.

“Now, Konoha boy, you’ll have to copy my seal on her body, release her current one and reseal the tailed beast into the new one. The iron armor seal has kept the Eight Tailed Beast in Bee for fifteen years, it should be fine to keep Six in this girl.”

“How am I supposed to release the current seal?” he asked.

“…C, keep the girl alive. I’ll release her tailed beast once the new seal is ready. If you fuck up, we’re all dead, understood?”

C clenched his fists, but he nodded.

“What’s your name, boy?”

“ANBU don’t give their name…”

“Your ask is half broken. I know your face and your hair. I just don’t remember your name. You’re the Fourth Hokage’s former genin, right?”

He nodded.

“Kakashi Hatake,” he finally said after a while.

“Right, Kakashi of the sharingan. Your eye will be very useful here. Don’t mess up the seal. I’m Yugito Nii, the vessel of the Two Tails. C here is a racist asshole who was gagged for our entire mission because he could ruin it by running his mouth when he should shut it. He’s the best field medic in Kumo, not that the bare is particularly high for now. He’ll keep your kunoichi alive. Now paint.”

The boy nodded again and started to copy the seal. It was a stressful work since he wasn’t allowed any mistake, but he slowly did it and completed it right as C signaled the approach of the Kiri reinforcements.

“Crap! Bad timing! Well, no time to waste, C, prepare to keep the girl alive. Kakashi, you’re gonna activate the seal when I release the beast from her.”

“Wait, you’re not…”

She cut the girl’s throat cleanly with a claw and the beast’s chakra surged out of her, forcing C and Kakashi to react instantly. C placed his hands on the clean wound and closed it as Kakashi pumped his chakra into her seal to activate it and trap the tailed beast chakra inside. They got hurt by the corrosive chakra, but they persisted until it was sealed.

“Impressive, a field sealing of a tailed beast! What an interesting rag tag party!” teased the Swordswoman of the Mist.

“I hope you don’t expect to get your tailed beast back,” retorted Yugito. “After what your village has done, it would be crazy to expect that.”

“We’re all weapons here, beautiful. You’re the most sharpened one I’ve ever had the opportunity to fight. Let’s decide this with our blades, okay? Tracking the girl was funny, but now it’s time for action!”

The short woman readied her swords and as Yugito charged into battle, she cast a technique calling thunder from the sky, hitting the ground all around her. Yugito had seen it coming and avoided the area entirely, which she was glad for, since it got roasted by the lightning bolt.

From that point, the fight became all instinct, two predators dueling for dominance over each other. Ameyuri used S rank ninjutsu like it was nothing, performed wild rotation attacks with her blades extended like one of Bee’s moves but less dangerous, and was overall quite similar to Bee in his cloaked form but weaker and with less limbs.

For someone so young, barely twenty from her appearance, she was really good, but Yugito had trained against Bee I her past life and she was currently stringer than when she’d died the first time. Considering Yugito’s own wasted chakra upon coming here by waterwalking over the sea, she wasn’t in top shape, but it made the fight more fair in her cloaked form.

The fight was exciting, a complete fighting and acrobatic performance between trees and ground. They jumped out of the path of their opponent’s attacks and counterattacked with their own moves, lightning meeting fire or being redirected. The area quickly lost a lot of trees that burst from lightning strikes or fireballs.

Ameyuri rushed Yugito and tried to use one last lightning technique, but fell to her knees, spitting blood.

“It seems…you’ve won this time…” said Ameyuri, voice hoarse. “I can’t keep up with your chakra reserves…but this fight was amazing…”

“I’ve never fought anyone at your level in this life. It was a pleasure. I hope we meet again to trade blades. But I guess it will happen sooner than you’d wish, unless your team is not appointed to the initial mission anymore?”

“Oh, right… See you in three days then…” she said before another cough of blood shook her chest.

Ameyuri Ringo blew a raspberry at her own handicap and got ready to leave.

“C! how’s your chakra?” called Yugito.

C approached her, contemplating the total annihilation of five hundred square meters of forest. He seemed eager to please her, more than he’d ever been until then. He indicated that he was at mid tank.

“Ameyuri Ringo!” she exclaimed.

The woman turned back to face her on shaky legs.

“C, heal her. It seems she has some lung illness on top of her chakra being dangerously low.”

He looked at her with eyes that told her there was little he could do, but she insisted. He walked up to the Kiri kunoichi and did his best, but he couldn’t cure that, just heal the symptoms.

“Don’t worry, I’ve always known I wouldn’t live for long…” commented the woman. “I’ve got weak lungs and was raised in a village with a high humidity…I was doomed from birth… I’m glad I could fight like this at least once in my life… If we meet again, Yugito Nii from Kumo, I hope we can have another round…”

“We will, and each time after that,” Yugito affirmed, shaking the woman’s hand.

They exchanged a smile and the Swordswoman called back her shinobi. She fell before leaving Yugito’s field of vision, supported by her subordinates.

“Let’s go back to our initial mission, C. Kakashi, can you get back home with the girl?”

“I’ve taken a soldier pill, it’s gonna be enough for the trip back… Thank you for your help… When Rin jumped in front of my chidori…I thought I was going to kill her…”

“I hope this broken left arm will be enough of a reminder of your failure and encourage you to get better so that it doesn’t come to that point ever again. If you want to thank me, do it personally. Same for C if he agrees to heal your arm enough not to be bothered on your way home.”

“What will be your price?”

“You’re gonna owe me one.”

C mumbled something that probably meant “me too” and healed his arm quickly but just enough that it wouldn’t be bothersome. The blonde wouldn’t waste his chakra healing the Konoha shinobi to top shape. He’d already been nice enough to keep the girl alive, even though his other option was to die in a complete tailed beast release.

Konoha’s last remaining ANBU and Kumo’s shinobi left, C taking another ride on Yugito’s back as she used a tiny bit of Matatabi’s chakra in her legs for the entire trips back, including running on the sea.

When they arrived, Yugito let C slide from her back and collapsed in place in front of Darui.

“What the fuck did you do?” he wondered, but he wouldn’t get his answer until the next day.