#but its an important skill to just say yeah im 80 percent satisfied with this and publish it anyway

[celticfeather]

Chapter 1: https://celticfeather.tumblr.com/post/188433697686/akatsuki-fic-campfires

Cannibals Chapter 3: The Lineage of Izanagi

-Uchiha Itachi-

Something particularly loveless prodded Itachi awake.

"You're the last watch till dawn," Kakuzu said. Itachi activated his sharingan as he woke, his dark eyes shifting to red. He could see Kakuzu's green ones were dilated near-sightlessly in the blackness.

Itachi rose and leapt up their chosen watchman's tree. The sharingan allowed him to see a wider spectrum of visible light than a normal human, and what should have been the black jungle night gained a strange ultraviolet tinge, a whitish-purple color somewhere between neon and dark that his language could not well describe. The stars and chakras shined different, coldly-bright, minty colors too. But he saw no glows of enemy shinobi in the night, just the gentle silver chakra silhouettes of sleeping birds and insects, and the three ninja below him. He let his sharingan fade. In an hour it had become bright enough for ordinary humans to see.

He alighted between the three ninja sleeping on the ground to no response. So much for Kisame's 'I only half sleep' claim.

Unsure of the best way to wake them, Itachi announced at normal volume, "It's dawn."

They rose quickly and quietly, professional in every mercenary sense of the word. For a troupe of cantankerous rogues, Itachi was surprised no one complained. He supposed that would resume once they decided they were no longer being hunted.

"No sign of the enemy since I've been awake," Itachi reported.

"Time to get the hell out of the land of Lightning. Anyone gotta take a piss, now's the time," Kakuzu said. After a short moment, the four ninja oriented themselves against the eastern dawn, and began leaping through the trees.

"Where's Zetsu when you need him?" Deidara muttered as they ran. "He'd say what Pain wants us to do about this."

"You don't need Pain or his pet mushroom. You have me," Kakuzu said.

"Yeah? And who made you second in command?"

"I'm the one who actually talks with our contractors. So naturally, I have our mission intel, and there's no reason to stop work."

"Hmpf," Deidara said.

"Since you fucked up the least, Kisame, I'll let you pick what you do." Kakuzu said. "You want to fix this Raikage incident, or make some money?"

Kisame looked at Itachi for his opinion. Itachi merely raised his eyebrows in reply.

"Make money," Kisame answered. Good. Itachi wanted to be away from this disaster.

"Great. You two go to this shithole village and kill their patriarch. When you're done with that, some pirates could use a lesson in not leaving witnesses." Kakuzu tossed a scroll to Kisame and one to Itachi, who each caught them deftly. Kakuzu then looked at Deidara.

"Deidara, you and Sasori will fix your fuck up. We don't want the Cloud or Mist investigating the Akatsuki. Blame it on different terrorists."

"How do we do that?"

"Doesn't matter," Kakuzu said.

Deidara frowned. But his calmness suggested he thought Sasori would know how to fix it.

They were soon over the border of the Land of Frost, where they said the brief goodbyes of stiff men. Itachi and Kisame continued west. Deidara went north. Kakuzu south. They stopped at a collection point on the way to get Kisame a new robe and gear, and began their ascent to the next mission's village in the afternoon.

They stopped along a river to prepare. The mint-colored alpine meltwater cooled the air in a low dense pocket from the beating sun. Itachi opened the scroll of mission intel and familiarized himself with the details. "Small town. Better we don't make a stir."

Kisame grunted in acknowledgement and stepped towards the river, swinging Samehada off his shoulder. He summoned a large deep-blue shark along the bank. It opened its mouth, and Kisame pressed the wrapped Samehada inside its white-fleshed throat. The two ninja being armed to the teeth was useful for intimidation, but a hindrance to infiltration. As if it was a loyal horse, Kisame patted the magical shark once on the muzzle once it closed its jaws around Samehada.

"You ever touch a shark before, Itachi? Try it."

Like he had been invited to partake in the most dangerous petting zoo, Itachi wet his feet at the bank where the shark, high as his hips, swayed half submerged. He thought the shark would look at him, or at least acknowledge him, but its circular black eyes didn't waver. With a slowness Itachi hoped the fish would interpret as respect, he brushed his palm against its exposed gray flank.

"It feels like sandpaper."

Kisame smiled. "Shark skin is actually made of dentin, the same material as teeth."

Because they need more of that, Itachi thought. He removed his hand, and deeming its duty done, the huge probably-sentient carnivore disappeared with a puff of mist to the realm Kisame had summoned it from.

"It's not easy to make a summoning contract with a shark, you know. Ninja tend to not come back," Kisame said.

"I thought you said sharks don't like how people taste."

"Oh, the sage sharks of Koraru Depths make exceptions for arrogant Mist chunin. You don't taste that bad."

He sent Kisame a reproachful look at his choice of pronouns, but Itachi's face was something of a resting scowl, so Kisame seemed not to notice.

To appear like a traveler of the civilian sort, Itachi untied his shuriken packs and the ninja headband. They kept their robes, no one yet recognized the red clouds as unique. He thought living in the forest on the run gave him enough of a convincingly rough appearance. Lifting his gaze from the water's reflection, he regarded his partner.

"Do I pass for a trader?"

"You look fine. It's your voice that's the problem."

"My voice?"

"I don't know how much you know about the Hidden Mist, but there we have a caste system, and the Hoshigaki belong to a certain caste. And people like me can tell by your dialect, Itachi, that you come from a noble family, and there's not a chance in hell you're a traveling merchant."

Itachi never thought of himself as in an upper class, and caste had been abolished in his land seventy years ago. Kisame's background in the Mist allowed him to perceive things that Itachi never intended to exude. "I see."

"Try gotcha, instead of I see."

"Gotcha."

Itachi pulled a piece of paper from the scroll and unfolded its careful nine-faceted square. A sketch of the man they were paid to kill stared back at them. Taika Hiroki. About sixty years old, leader of the local clan, someone had it out for him. Kisame nodded, having committed his face a last time to memory. Itachi burned the incriminating documents between his fingers.

The pair climbed ancient stairs carved from wood, stone, and roots, along a humid forested mountain crest. Traditional torii winged gates arched over their heads, and the small village soon appeared along a glacial lake between the mountains. A chunin posted at the doorless entrance looked the two travelers up and down. He pulled a root of wild licorice from his teeth before he spoke.

"What brings you to Honomura?"

"We're merchants," Kisame said.

"Here for the festival?"

"Of course."

The guard escorted them in. A minor official who clearly did not get enough visitors gave them each wooden travelers' passes. What a bothersome village.

Itachi felt more endangered in these hamlets. He paradoxically would be less noticed in a large ninja village. It was in these tribal redoubts, where most of the settlement consisted of a single clan, that he knew he was immediately recognized as an outsider. By the introductions they made with petty officials, the pair gleaned that three quarters of the settlement's two-hundred-odd population had the surname Taika, and it would not be easy to find theirs.

But the presence of the foreigners attracted mercifully little attention at the festival. Like moths drawn to the warm haze of paper lanterns, the outlaw pair wandered dazed to the center of the fairgrounds. After weeks in the forest they were transfixed by the live music, the vendors, and best, the greasy scent of real food -not whole animals- which glistened with salt and sauce. They looked at each other with testing eyes that betrayed the same poorly concealed thought.

"How much money do we have," Itachi said.

Kisame checked himself. "I've got eight hundred."

"I have one thousand."

Crap.

"I'll find some more money," Kisame said. Good. They were on the same line of the same page. In less than two minutes, Kisame had stolen a two centimeter wad of cash from a food stand.

Itachi's eyes darted from stand to stand. "What do you want to eat?"

"Do I look picky to you?"

Bristling with treasures —foods on sticks and cups of tea and sake between their knuckles— Itachi and Kisame seated themselves at one of many low tables near the town's stage and began to eat. Soon enough an announcer entered stage center, and introduced an act on the origin of deities.

"How's your knowledge of religion, Itachi?"

"Average."

The play began as they ate, and rusted to art forms, Itachi found himself paying rapt attention. Two actors dressed in white robes, a woman and a spear-wielding man, stepped onto the stage, where white lanterns cast the empty scene in an ethereal fog. Dipping his spear into the water, or rather tapping the stage floor, the man created land, and the white-clouded lanterns slid on the string to be replaced with ones tinted a jungle green.

"Izanami and Izanagi," Itachi whispered to Kisame. "Siblings, but also..." he waved his hand in esoteric explanation.

The creation gods Izanami and Izanagi had several deformed and normative children. First born was Hiruko, stricken with a hunched back, and cast into a river. They had many others, at last birthing Kagutsuchi the fire god. Izanami died giving birth to the flaming infant.

"And with Izanami's end, the world's first death occurred, and with it the age of creation. Intent to amend his wife's unjust fate, Izanagi plunged into the underworld, which then, was not separated from the realm of men," the narrator read.

Izanami wandered through a darkened stage, and stopped short. Behind a veil shined the unmistakable silhouette of his beloved wife.

The curtain lifted, but the woman it revealed was not fair Izanami. The actress's serene white face-paint had become putrefied in death. Children's gasps accented the moment. Fingers curled in shock at his rancid beloved, Izanagi turned away. His wife was enraged at his superficial rejection, and spurred demons after her former lover. Izanagi raced from the underworld, off the stage, where demons in fur-rimmed masks chased him through the audience until Izanagi circled, panting but safe, back onto the stage of the surface world. He pushed a prop-boulder over the cave, forever sealing life from death.

The narrator stepped onto the stage, and a spotlight centered on him, with Izanagi bathing himself in background.

"Izanagi cleansed himself from the underworld in a rushing river. The water that streamed off his face became three new gods:"

The spotlight jumped to greet the new characters in regal dress:

"From one eye sprung the proud moon god, Tsukuyomi."

"From the nose, the mischievous god of sea and storm, Susanoo."

"And from the other eye, artful and enlightened, patron of our village: Amaterasu the sun."

"Amaterasu was by far the most righteous and beautiful of the three new gods," the narrator crooned, and stooped low to leer at her backside. Amaterasu raised her fan to her face, whumphing the announcer without a lapse in grace, and the audience laughed.

The three new gods greeted the world of men -the audience- each with kabuki flourishes that reflected their personalities. He thought Amaterasu made eye contact with him from behind her fan.

"Hm." Kisame smiled slightly and his pupils slid to Itachi.

Itachi sipped his tea. "We might be the most interesting thing that blew into this town in a week."

"You should talk with her."

"I'm not good at flirting."

Kisame snorted. "Just like your knowledge of religion."

"I'm not being modest. I haven't spoken with a girl my age in years. In this town, I'm just a merchant."

"A kind, handsome one."

Itachi was struck that Kisame had called him 'kind.' He did not think Kisame would evaluate someone with that category. Not knowing how to take the compliment, Itachi stared back at the stage. Amaterasu and Susanoo competed over who was a stronger god. Amaterasu had just turned Susanoo's sword into five human beings, versus Susanoo's ability to spring only three from her necklace.

Their low table quaked. Kisame had plunged his cup down so hard and fast that his drink sloshed over the rim. His wide nose wrinkled and the stare Itachi met was battle-urgent.

"There's blood, buckets of it, enough to drain ten men."

Itachi forced his shoulders to relax. They must not act or show awareness of this yet. His eyes scanned the crowd as a cheering arose and the taiko drums beat an excited sinister trot into the space between his ribs. A column of fifteen men and boys carved a path like a wild river through the parade grounds, a coarse wooden platform undulating on the men's shoulders. Atop it glistened a bleeding heap of fresh red muscles and white fascia. It was a dead, skinned, horse.

Kisame squinted. "What the hell?"

"The crimes of Susanoo. Upset with his sister, he flayed the skin off Amaterasu's horse," Itachi explained. He also noted that in these conditions, Kisame could not differentiate human from animal blood.

Susanoo charmingly presented Amaterasu the horse carcass from the audience. Amaterasu strode off the stage in grief and anger, her silken white-red sleeves snapping, and the stage darkened with the egress of the dawn goddess, plunging the realm of men into darkness. Susanoo smirked and laughed, and the loping demons in fur-rimed masks began to howl. String instruments climaxed crescendo and fell, marking the end of the play's chapter. The audience gasped and clapped. The festival night was now without the Sun's guidance, and any kind of crookedness could occur before dawn returned.

The men heaped the horse onto a pyre, and a chunin lit it with a fire jutsu, enflaming a birchwood pile which was small enough that the meat might be cooked rather than carbonized. The village had a dark interpretation of their worship: Itachi thought that the goddess Amaterasu would not appreciate the flaying of another horse in her name. But the villagers seemed to like it.

"The Leaders of the Mist would consider this barbaric," Kisame said, his sly eyes smiling behind his cup.

Itachi matched Kisame's sentiment. No, the great ninja villages did not sacrifice simple horses to gods of sun, but sacrificed men and souls to gods of war. Gods they hailed each time they smithed a kunai, and who licked their lips at each newborn baby.

The next performance started, some students playing taiko drums. It was a banal sight compared to the play. Itachi ate his dango and drank his tea, listened to the music, and watched thick smoke rise from the pyre.

A gang of the village's teens stood by the pyre, the actress for Amaterasu among them. She had removed the headdress and white facepaint, but she still wore Amaterasu's red and white wake-sleeved furisode. One of the group looked at him and Kisame and giggled, as if discussing a dare. Then Amaterasu looked at the two travelers and grabbed a tray. He realized with a start that she was coming towards them. Kisame, who smelled caste like he smelled blood, tugged Itachi's robe, telling him that this is when merchants stood.

She dipped her head in greeting. "Excuse me sirs, my name is Taika Hato. I'm priestess at our temple and actress at the theater. We noticed you're not from around here. Would you like some horse flesh?"

Itachi blinked: the sun goddess Amaterasu had just offered him to eat her horse. He stumbled out a yes.

"And you, sir?"

"Please give me the shoulder, Miss Hato."

"Sure. May I ask your names?"

'Itachi' meant weasel. Weasels were small, ambitious, mean, and hungry. His parents' birth judgement had been imperfect: Itachi had become a man who was calm, sharp, and observant.

"I am Karasu. And this is my companion, Mekajiki. It's very good to meet you, and thank you for the food." Itachi bowed his head and gave himself a name meaning crow, and swordfish for Kisame.

"You're welcome! How was the show?"

"Your performance was stirring. I only hope your next act is soon: if I remember, demons terrorize everyone on earth until Amaterasu comes back," he said, trying his best to exude friendliness, but he had not spoken to anyone he considered a friend in years. He sat down, and with a gesture to the empty space, he invited Hato to join them if she wanted. He noticed Kisame's chin dip near-imperceptibly in approval of his manners.

"You know your religion," she said, taking a seat. "Stick around tomorrow at seven to see me kick Susanoo's butt. What brings you two here?"

"You mean, you can't tell by our dress?" Itachi asked.

"It is odd," she agreed.

Itachi smiled. "We're charcoal burners."

"So you...?"

"We fell trees, burn the logs in an earthen kiln using fire and water style, and then travel from village to village selling the charcoal. Smiths burn it to keep their forges at the correct temperature. It's also used in cooking, fertilizer, detergent, explosives, traditional medicine- even cosmetics. We've got a wagon full of it down the road."

Her look between the two men deduced Itachi was the fire user. "How good is your fire style?"

"Just the basics," he said modestly.

Hato's eyes changed from simply friendly to that of intrigue, and her expression became appraising and hopeful. "For the last act, the village guards cast fire jutsus as tributes to Amaterasu. You should join them."

"I couldn't possibly intrude on your ceremony as an outsider."

"When it comes to this ceremony, I am the authority. Plus, gifts from strangers mean more than gifts from friends, we say."

Itachi nodded. He would make an offering of flame to Amaterasu. And the girl, her representative, smiled with her eyes. "Thank you, Karasu! They'll love it."

Kisame stretched, looked at the two youths, and stood to leave. His gaze alerted Itachi not to expect his return. "I'm going to… get some more sake."

"You don't want to watch your friend perform?" Hato asked.

Kisame grinned and waved. "He's not so impressive."

Hato led Itachi backstage to meet the village's top military brass: a gaggle of four men spanning years fifteen to thirty who passed a ceramic bottle between them. The root-chewing gatekeeper was youngest among them. Hato was received warmly by the soldiers. She introduced Itachi as a pious charcoal merchant, and he was quickly ignored by the men.

For this dangerous and final act of the night, the stage had been stripped bare of its curtains and paper lanterns, and strapping men spilled buckets of water across the hardwood stage. A grinning bucket-spiller splashed the remaining water dregs onto the squealing children in the front row. From the backstage tent, Itachi watched the first four performers submit their offerings, each casting the biggest sun he could into the night sky in honor of Amaterasu. The crowd shrieked and laughed, fire reflecting on their wide scleras. Stepping forward for his turn, Itachi decided he would create a fireball that was the third largest- no need to upstage the locals.

Itachi mounted the stage as the penultimate performer left. His eye caught on Hato staring at him encouragingly, she flashed a thumbs-up, and he was bolstered with a better idea. Halting just one step onto the stage, Itachi faced profile, and his chest swelled like a bird. He blew, and his fire bloomed a deep ferrous red sparking with trace elements, and the chakra fireball sprinted across the stage in the shape of a stallion. Mane flaring, embers sparking from its light hooves, the fleet, shrieking horse appeared and faded in a vacuum roar. He returned backstage to raucous applause. When the soldiers' mouths gaped wide enough to catch frogs, a quiet grin cut Itachi's lips.

It hadn't been larger than yours, he thought.

Hato linked arms with him and led him through the festival crowds. She would introduce him to people and he would forget their names. Villagers welcomed him like a hero and plied him with sake. A kind old lady handed him a skewer with cubes of horseflesh. Any friend of Amaterasu was a friend of theirs. He was happy. Kisame was gone, the mission was something for tomorrow, Hato was a nice girl, and he could pretend to be normal for a night. Her attention made him feel pleasantly male, that he wasn't strange, isolated, murderous or evil.

She had showed him around the small town and they found themselves walking along the cold, white-graveled shores of the glacier lake. The gentle summer alpine night glowed cobalt blue, lightened by a huge low moon, whose coolness was relieving compared to the warm and dark frenzy of the blood festival.

"Actress and priestess," Itachi said as they strolled. "One's devout, and old people would say the other is sinful. I haven't met a person who's been both."

She smiled. "Each coin has two sides, and the same goes for you. Where'd a merchant learn ninjutsu like that?"

"The road is dangerous… and," he whispered like sharing a secret, "Sometimes really boring."

"Hah! Can't be less interesting than here."

"Did you know, that was a curse you'd tell your enemies in the old days? 'May you live in interesting times'?"

"Sounds menacing when you say it. Can you do other ninja tricks?"

In a heartbeat, he threw three kunai in a perfect line along a slender birch, each resonating a deep thunk that merged into one. A white and gold moth fluttered impaled on the center knife. She gasped.

But when he looked back at her, her face seemed uncomfortable. The throw was well above chunin level, above most jounin. Itachi knew he should not be careless in his desire to impress her by throwing beyond the abilities of a merchant. But somehow, the throw had not pleased her.

"Is something wrong, Hato?"

"What I liked about your fire jutsu wasn't its killing power; it wasn't a weapon, it was art."

"Art..."

"It's like how you and Mekajiki use fire and water style to make charcoal. Your fire style painted Amaterasu's horse, and it was beautiful. Performance is art, and it makes people happy."

Itachi regurgitated what he knew of art. "Do you think art is a single rapturous instant, or eternal?"

"Weird question. Art isn't a period of time, but a place. It transports you somewhere you've never been before, to some feeling you've never felt before"

"Hm," Itachi pondered. He thought that was a better philosophy than that of either Deidara or Sasori. He wondered how mad they would be if he answered like that, and decided he would next time they asked his opinion. Which would probably be never.

She smiled at him. "I've got a stupid dream. Wanna hear it?"

"I'd love to."

"I dream to lead a group someday that practices more peaceful uses to ninjutsu than war. Even if it was just a traveling circus of theater artists, and all we accomplished was making some villagers laugh."

"You've already got a talent for performance. The road is dangerous, but train and surround yourself with others like you, and only a fool would rob you."

She smiled sadly. "Dad wants me to marry a prince in the next village."

"Bring the prince along."

The actress said nothing and skipped a stone over the lake. It failed after two stops, and she made a noise of embarrassment. Itachi picked up a small flat stone and also skipped it badly. Ripples in the lake reflected the moonbeams like bobbing driftwood.

"It's late," Itachi said after a while.

"Do you have somewhere to stay?"

Itachi did not answer right away. She said, "Stay the night at my house."

Itachi bowed. "That's very generous of you. I would be happy to stay overnight in your stable, and my partner as well, if possible."

There was a sly shift of her eyes, lids heavy around her big, black pupils. "I think he'll have found an inn by now. But that shouldn't stop you."

Hato escorted him across flagstones that shone silver in the moonlight. Carrying their shoes, opening a sliding door with the utmost care, the two tiptoeing teens entered her sub-clan's complex and slipped into her bedroom.

Itachi set his shoes along the wall, wondering to what extent he should undress himself. When he turned around, Hato had knelt on her white futon. With her eyes trained at him, she slowly loosened the belt of her furisode to bare her chest. Itachi did the same. He reached to kiss her, she kissed him back. He shed the rest of his clothes, then did the same for her. He leaned into her. This is what people did.

He shuddered at the unfamiliarity when her weak hands touched his neck, they were warm and soft, hot as death-blood. He banished the rising memories, memories from the last time he did this, no, from the last time he thought he did this with Izumi that terrible night. Their bodies fit together like hot white ivory, and like smoke and steam, a very un-normal man tried his best to do this very normal thing.

Author's Note;

Heyo, thanks for supporting this fic. I plan to post Chapter 4 around Friday Nov 23. This will be a long dramatic fic with probably about 10-15 chapters this length, and I have a lot of progress made already.

Let me know your thoughts. And thanks of course to thanks again to beta myochiikurin!

Steadfast,

Kelto

Follow on FF or Ao3

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13409132/1/Campfires

https://archiveofourown.org/works/21019778/chapters/49992863