#ninja theory what were your plans?!?!?!

[izzabela]

Hello!!! 🤗

I was wondering if you write fem. Reader x Smoke on the reader being very shy and quiet and small amongst the earthrealm champions at Wu Shi academy and Smoke feels very protective of her and would try to open her up to him?

Outside the Box - Tomas x fem!reader (headcanons)

in which a series of headcanons show how Tomas would get you to come out of your shell (and like you back)

a/n: yes, hello! i love a good protector man. btw, if you guys know yachi from haikyuu, then you'll understand why reader will act the way she does

ship[s]: tomas x fem!reader

warning(s): strictly fluffy goodness, post story

To say you were shy was an understatement- you were borderline mute around every man at the Wu Shi Academy. Skittish like a cornered kitten, you kept yourself guarded and ready to move away from the threats (aka your fellow champions).

Everyone would notice, hell Geras would leave the Hourglass just to make sure you weren't some sort of threat. While everyone made their best effort to get to know you, it would be Tomas who got to you.

- Tomas would've been the first to realize your sensitivity to people. You came from a small town, and while you may have known everyone, it was hard to bond with them due to your anxieties and general modesty about yourself

- He would have been approached by Liu Kang, asking him to try and get you to open up so that he could see you flourish into a fully-fledged champion

- Tomas would actually just watch you first before doing anything. He'd silently watch from afar, seeing you react to your new surroundings and people. He'd notice how you walked faster than everyone to get where you needed to go, noticed how dodged any sort of physical touch from everyone (high five or side hug), watched as you sat alone in the courtyard eating lunch or dinner

- When he woke up for breakfast, he passed by you as you walked back from the dining hall. You had woken up even earlier than a ninja assassin!

- After gathering more info, Tomas would definitely join you for meals. I believe Tomas to be someone big on the idea that friendships blossom best over good food

- However, he would be thoroughly disappointed when you scoot decently far from him, nodding to his questions or meekly answering them with your soft voice

- Were you the same woman that tossed Raiden over the railings during your test of courage? The same woman that had Kuai Liang pinned down with his own kunai?

- Still, it did not deter him. He felt more bold to continue this because, while you did scoot far, you did not run away from him. That alone was enough motivation for him

- He'd follow you, Tomas would most certainly be the type to just stick by your side and just talk to you about anything. You would still listen, and Tomas would ask open ended questions to urge you to open up

- While to others, it looked like incessant annoyance, you were very happy someone took such time to notice you. To make an effort to try and get to know you- especially such a handsome guy like Tomas

- Just because you were quiet and shy didn't mean you hated people, it was hard getting to know people like that

- And about the dodging physical affection, how would you feel if a group of four huge men tried to pat your back or high five you with full force? Yeah, I thought so

- I think Tomas would switch directions with his plan and not talk one day. He'd say his voice is sore, and while he wasn't telling the truth, he wasn't completely lying either

- He was trying to test a theory, one where maybe you needed control over the conversation to actually do something

- and he was right

- Tomas would be answering all your questions- whether about him or not was not even part of the equation. He'd be so happy, happy that he was the one who got you to wiggle out of your cocoon

- He'd become very protective of you afterwards for sure. Even though you could handle yourself very well, he would be around you no matter what

- especially in social settings

- Tomas is the type of person to tell others how to help you succeed. In this endeavor, he would be telling everyone to let you begin conversations, tell everyone to be a little softer in volume and to be gentler when speaking to you

- He was so helpful to you, and it made you like him even more than you could say. Although you couldn't tell him, not yet, you and Tomas would grow closer and closer

- And until you were ready, he would be okay with that

=====================

Tomas is just so- *chews cheek* HE'S SO CUTE

should i write someone else other than the lin kuei siblings? i feel like i should try other characters, let me know what you guys wanna see!

i'll see yall in the next fic!

[wildglitch]

Heres 25 fics I really wanna write but havent gotten around to yet

For those that wanna know before reading the list, the fandoms include are

Marvel, Spider-Man, Loki, DCU, Batman, Justice League, Pokemon, Shazam/Captain Marvel, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtels (The Last Ronin), Danny Phantom, Sonic the Hedgehog, Voltron, Gravity Falls, Over The Garden Wall, RWBY, Camp Camp, Rise Of The Guardiens, Star Wars (Rebels), Miraculos Ladybug and Chat Nori, Ninjago, How to Train Your Dragon, Final Space, My Hero Academia.

Thats one long list of fandoms-

I swear its not a big ass crossover fic with all these fandoms.

The rest of the Wiz! Fics. Though one of them is almost done

Winter dad fic. Peter is dealing, Bucky dosent remember him, but the solder definetly does.

Parksborn fic post NWH. Peter and Harry meet at collage and become roommates (this was canon for like a day lol) Harry has issues, Peter has more.

Parent Loki and Son Jack frost. I love the concept and already have some plot planned out

Billy Batson has somehow been the child host of Whiz radio for about 70 years

The Last Ronin Time Travel fic

Dadow time travel fic. A few fics continuing my first dadow fic starting with Silver in the future and present, and later on future shadow goes to the past. Its a lit if feels

Sonic was raised by egg man. No one knows this

5 times Sonic confused people by acting like tails dad, and the the on time tails suprised them by acting like his son

Babysitter James. Basically, the geovani is Ash's dad theory + What if team rocket are juat there to look after Ash theory. He takes him in, James becomes one of the best in team rocket, and as a sign of trust, he makes him be his newborns babysitter.

Back to Jack Frost, A fic following his time alone and time people he meet

Dead On Main fic were Jason despretly tries to keep his ghost boyfriend away from his family

Rosegarden Fic where Ruby and Oscar are childhood summer friends who lost contact.

Ezra time travel fic because Im obssesed with them

Skybridge fic taking place during Twin Suns because Im also obsesed with those fics

Dadvid fic. David Adopts Max and the 2 of them are trying to find a new normal

Pinecone lost in the woods fic.

MLB fix-It. Cat becomes a night time vigilante as a way to deal with the stress, lower class people become more fond of him.

Klance fic. Congratulations, you got through 15 fics before Klance appeared. Ex's au, Lance dose hate Keith foe a reason, they used to date. No one knows about this and think their just being stupid

Httyd fic where toothless wasnt discoverd in the first movie.

Final Space fic were Little Cato deals with the trauma if spending so many years alone.

Ninjago Kai fic for the Time he spent alone. I have talked about this before I think

RodyDeku reunion fic.

Nightguard Denki au. A Fnaf x Mha fic

Rai: The Phantom Theif of hero society. My TodoKami fic I have been trying to write since 2022

Thats the List. If your curiouse about any of these or just wanna bug me into finally writing them, let me know in my ask box.

[tornoleander]

Wow, you're the beta reader for bbnb? I didn't know that. (So you can confirm that Hat is infact not dead because I haven't seen any activity from them in a while and my brain always jumps to worst case scenarios)

Anyway, definitely didn't forget to respond for like a week, but here are some of my theories/scenarios:

-I still think Cole's the one who'll remember bits and pieces because A. He's a ghost B. Hat used he/him when talking about who will remember and C. It would be incredibly emotionaly impactful

-HOWEVER, I think Pixal could also remember some stuff. None of the emotional stuff but she did technically die when Nadakhan erased her. Besides, it could be fun to see her try to let Jay or Nya know she remembers while still stuck to Zane.

-also Zane's falcon died but he was never mentioned in this fic so 😔

-Jay DEFINITELY has c-ptsd. Like, 100%, I'm sure the nurse/psychologist whose name I forgor would agree with me

-I'm pretty sure Wu just died by some falling island or something like that. Or he could've died by the storm, that would be cool.

-I know he said that swearing is a sign of weak verbal skills but I feel like Jay would start swearing more for comfort. Like, Nadakhan hated it but never truly did anything horrible to him because of it :)

most of the scenarios in my head play out with the ninja being captured again

-for example, Jay using his internal electricity to shock someone when they all have vengestone

-or them getting tazed and Jay sending the current back like he did in the electric chair

-or they're all traped and saying shit like "there's no other option" or something and Jay replying with "suicide's still an option" like that's a normal thing to say which obviously worries the others

And then there's the non captured scenarios

-something something Jay falling into autopilot after being told/asked to clean to ship and ends up also cleaning the hull "Why are you cleaning the bottom? We're in the air and you're not even tied to anything???" ".... trauma response?"

-or just straight up Jay having a panic attack out of seemingly sowhere (Cole said he wished he could eat cake again)

Anyway, those are the things I could think of right now, there's more but it's 3:39am and I'm tired :3

Hope it's not too long lol

Yep! As of ch 15. Me and hat have been chatting for a while and I bug them for feedback on Art accuracy so I help them with some writing corrections too!

I have been working on beta reading earlier chapters as well currently half way through 4. It is certainly an experience but now I yell my feelings into comment instead of just the void

*reaches through horrific horror to correct spelling mistake.

Yup Hat is alive! They were just fixated on something else for a while but they are back.

Ok now for scenarios

-Cole remembering bits……. I will refrain from giving my thoughts.

-Pixal and Zane’s falcon died pretty early so I do think they may remember up till then but It probably wouldn’t help understand much.

-I don’t think Wu died? But it’s not impossible.

-CPTSD?

I will ask hat about this one but seeing as bbnb events qualify as at least 4/6 of these causes of it AND ptsd is a tag I’m going to give it a yeah. Cause non complex ptsd is typically less prolonged.

-the swearing I do think he might do more but not necessarily for comfort

-For your head scenarios I am not sure all the ways hat is planned show how the events of the fic messed him up. But I know they’re a big fan of consequences for events…

From what I’m guessing he is going to be trying his best to hide everything and it’ll be somewhat canon compliant? But to be fair He is pretty consistently the most mentally unstable ninja. Take This with a big grain of salt I’m saving the analysis for my skybound video, but his behavior does generally line up well with SA surivers. the first time that Jays a prisoner post Skybound is when he says “You don’t argue with a man who’s navel is that close”

Which

Drives me insane by the way

Side tangent, I’ve been doing a lot of Skybound digging for my eventual video essay. And my current best theory on why this is a line has to do with SA of men being played for laughs.

Like older audiences are supposed to hear that and find it fucking funny. It’s unfortunately not uncommon in kids programming. My quest to best explain why S6 is so uncomfortable has been… enlightening. Terrified of approaching a controversial topic so I have been learning a-lot about approach and how to not be awful. But my fixation is being channeled led into the eventual Skybound video.

Hope I answered what you wanted to know and It wasn’t purely my Adhd rambling

[culttonotfollow]

Why I love “Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice” so much

So as I stated, I'm writing a post about my experience with this game and why I think it's as good as it is, including my favourite aspects of it. To this day it's my favourite game and one of the few I've managed to 100% complete.

This post is going to include spoilers. Do not read if you do not want spoilers.

Disclaimer out of the way, I actually want to start by saying that before this game was recommended to me by a friend (thank you, Markus- shout out to you), I had no idea what it was about other than the fact that it dealt in some way with mental health. I mostly forgot about it until I saw it on sale sometime in October (it might have been the Halloween sale), at which point I made the decision to purchase it.

To begin with, the visuals are stunning—beautiful and terrifying at the same time. And just to get mechanics out of the way so I can ramble about the story and the way it made me feel—some of the puzzles are challenging at first, but they are so rewarding after you figure them out that I almost didn't mind the difficulty. The fighting feels almost perfect, particularly with the autobalancing option.

The premise of the game is that Senua, a Celtic warrior with severe mental illness, sets out on a journey to the homeland of the Northmen after discovering what had happened to her lover, planning to enter Helheilm, the mythological land of the dead, or what would be considered hell, and retrieving his soul through bargaining with Hela (or Hel, as she's more commonly known). Throughout the entire game- with the exception of a segment in the story- she wears his skull on her belt, wrapped in a cloth.

The Game uses sound to mess with you??

The game throws you right in with whispers bouncing all around your head (even during the menu when you first open the game)- I will never not applaud Ninja Theory for their choice of using binaural sound (here is an article by Splice on what it is), otherwise it wouldn't be what it is. This is one of the few experiences where the classic "Best experienced with headphones" recommendation should be taken seriously.

As you paddle past, well, burnt, staked and hung corpses that don't make it less tense either, the voices get progressively louder and more erratic until you don't know how many there are anymore or where they're coming from, urging Senua to turn back or calling her a coward in many different ways- with the exception of a few, who actually argue with the others and encourage Senua to push on.

There have been moments when the voices stopped for a little while, but by the time I realized there was nothing in the background anymore except for my own racing thoughts, I was already somewhat uneasy.

To add on to that, one of the trials Senua goes through relies solely on intuition an hearing to get throught the darkness safely, with an extremely limited field of view. I can safely say that was when I was most terrified and hyperfocused in my 12 hours of gameplay. I have to admit after my first run I went to bed and the whispers were still there because of how much I was hearing them the past several hours.

Mindfuckery taken to the next level

I spent the majority of the game in awe, watching the story unfold in front of my eyes. A lot of games or franchises, in my opinion, struggle to make their characters feel human, but Hellblade managed to do it. Even equipped with a sword, I felt vurnelable at all times, the game does a great job at causing anxiety even during the most mundane moments.

There isn't a combat tutorial of any kind; you have to either figure out the "guide" is in the menu, or keep failing the first battle until you figure it out. The game actually only gives you a single prompt in regards to combat: Each time you fail (die), the rot on Senua's arm spreads, and when it reaches her head all progress is lost. This alone made me so much more conscious of every move I was making for over half the game, until I learned the truth.

It's not an actual mechanic, it's only put in place as a warning to add another thick layer of tension to every other already existing, anxiety inducing element of the game, and further enforce the game's primary goal of distorting your perception: what's real and what's not, what/who can you actually trust, what is the truth? It brought me anxiety to the point where it was borderline uncomfortable, and that's exactly why I loved it so much.

I spent the majority of this game in awe, just watching the story unfold. Every twist or reveal felt like a gut punch (in the best way I could mean this), and it made Senua (the girl you play as) feel human, something not a lot of games can do properly in my opinion. This game uses everything in its arsenal to create a truly dreadful experience: visuals, audio, light, combat, etc. without abusing jumpscares or scary monsters (although fighting Fenrir scared the ever loving hell out of me, but so did dealing with him in general). Rather, it capitalizes on its strongest suit: the childlike fear of what lies in the dark- what might occur if the dark really does take control.

The ending made me question my entire purpose (sort of)

It's going to sound weird, or insane, but the ending changed me as a person I think. It made me seriously reconsider some major things in my life, and take a moment to appreciate some others. It's both some sort of psychological torture or terror and an enlightening experience. It brought me to tears and left me completely speechless for what felt- and actually was- hours.

In its own very special and well done way, it's not strictly a game about a girl that's gone mad, or a quest about retrieving a soul, but it sucessfully and sensibly touches upon themes of grief, loss, and folklore. I can safely say I've never been more immersed or touched by a game on every single level. There are tens of memorable moments that I think back on, and I can't believe I got through every single one of these.

The ending took a twist for me. It was far from what I expected, but I think that's what made me as satisfied as it did- and yet it left me wanting even more. Which is why I'm so incredibly pumped for when the sequel comes out. Despite warning about spoilers, I won't actually say how it ended. I'll let whoever reads this discover for themselves one way or another.

Conclusion?

I recommend this game with my whole heart to whoever can handle these kinds of topics. It's beautiful, the story is heartbreaking, the gameplay is fun, and the visuals are beyond gorgerous.

[howlingday]

Dr. Watts Master Plan

Ruby: Dr. Watts?! I thought you were dead!

Watts: Quite the contrary, Miss Rose~. I merely went into hiding... AND I'VE BEEN PULLING ALL THE STRINGS FROM THE SHADOWS.

Ruby: What do you mean by that?!

Watts: You still don't get it, do you? Your father falling ill, your best friend being a clone...

Ruby: No... You don't mean...

Watts: Yes, it was all part of my master plan~!

Ruby: No, how could you?!

Watts: Oh, but that's just the tip of the iceberg!

Ruby: What else did you do?!

Watts: Aren't you curious why you were kicked out of your own team?

Ruby: I should have known!

Watts: Or why your rent has progressively become more expensive?

Ruby: You... What?

Watts: I even stole your bike!

Ruby: I don't have a bike.

Watts: I even stole somebody's bike!

Ruby: Okay?

Watts: Do you recall, last week, when that car almost clipped you on the sidewalk?

Ruby: What, were you driving the car?

Watts: No, you fool! I raised the price of dust by 15 cents!

Ruby: H-How does that make sense?

Watts: Because I also stuck Ruby Rose (tm) stickers on the dust-cases! SO THEY'D FUCKING HATE YOU~!

Ruby: Ah...

Watts: Do you remember the time you ordered a large, pepperoni pizza with extra cheese and a side of garlic knots and a basket of chocolate chip cookies from Old Man Shopkeep, but you suddenly changed your mind so you called about fixing the order but the delivery guy was already sent out and now you had to wait for a pie you didn't even really want and when the delivery guy arrived, you didn't have enough change to tip, so you couldn't give him anything and felt like a dick for the next two hours?!

Ruby: Sorta...

Watts: Well, I didn't do that... But I thought about it.

Ruby: Alright, I'm really confused here. What exactly is your "master plan"? Just screw with me?

Watts: Oh, but I saved the best for last, Miss Rose~. Do you remember Kung-Fu Ninja Slayer Ultimate Death Battle II?

Ruby: ...What?

Watts: I searched all over the DustNet for months until I found a forum debunking the Shadows Theory!

Ruby: O-Okay?

Watts: So I built a time machine and went back in time and put Shadows into the game's source code, completely destroying your credibility! (Evil Watson laughter)

Ruby: NO! No, I am putting my foot down! You did not build a fucking time machine just to prove a fucking internet post wrong!

Watts: Yes, I did~!

Ruby: NO, YOU DIDN'T!

Watts: You're right, I didn't.

Ruby: W... Why would you lie about that?

Watts: I don't know. I... I think I just wish... I wish I could go back.

Ruby: What?

Watts: I miss my wife, Miss Rose. I miss her a lot.

Ruby: ...What?

Watts: You should have seen her, Ruby. She was beautiful! She kept our family together. She just had... She just could. I... I didn't realize it until she was gone, but... I ran away from that commitment. I ran away from my son, my daughter-

Ruby: Where is this coming from?

Watts: You're right, Miss Rose. Being a father is more important than being a scientist. It is a title that must be maintained.

Ruby: I never said anything like that.

Watts: I need to go. I need to see my children.

Ruby: You're just going to leave?

Watts: It's what I need to do.

Ruby: HOLD ON! You can't just leave! What was your master plan?! Like, the dust cases, and the bike, and- What does it all lead to?! What was the plan?!

Watts: I gave your dog AIDS.

Ruby: WHAT?

Watts: I just- I just gave your dog AIDS. I was gonna... run around, cause havoc, y'know? It- It all would've made sense when you gound him eventually.

Ruby: OH MY GOD!

Watts: Yeah, he's still out there. Doing his- Doing his AIDS dog thing. I dunno. You can figure it out.

Ruby: WHAT KIND OF SENSE WAS IT GOING TO MAKE?!

Watts: Hm... You'll understand when you have children of your own, Miss Rose.

Ruby: WHAT?!

Watts: GOOD-BYE~! (Leaves)

[taddymason]

I have an idea for what you could do next with your lightning pin AU. Now I’m not trying to tell you what to do. I love all the work. You’ve done on it so far and have complete trust at what you make next will be amazing but my idea about what you could do.

My idea is that you have Jay and Kaida enter the tournament of the source dragons and essentially have Kaida take Frak’s place. Not as having Kaida work for lord ras again unless (that’s your plan which in that case it’s still works) But have Kaida somehow slowly lean towards the ninja team slowly go towards the ninja team.

Also, we another thing have Jay fight cole because tournament elements call back for one. But in the end, this is your AU and you should do what you think is right. But if you wanna include my ideas, that would be nice.

Aaaaa thanks so much for the ask! I love it when people theorize about what's going to happen in the next chapters, and I have to resist the temptation to spoil the plot and give away all the important story moments, I'm terrible at that

I can't say much about how the next arc and the tournament plot will go bc spoilers, but I can say with confidence that Jay and Kaida will not be working for Ras anymore. After all the mess they made in the last two chapters he doesn't want them back either.

Anyway, I love your idea of ​​Kaida and Frak's arcs being parallel. I also don't want to go too deep into how the character arcs will be in the next arc, but I can say that these two are already kind of leaning more into the ninja team. Not consciously anyway, but since chapter 18 they've decided to stop working for people like Ras and stop acting impulsively as if their actions have no consequences.

I swear I didn't expect Jay's redemption to start on LP before the show but yeah, while he and Kaida were obviously never evil, they're definitely past that point

Also, sorry I don't know how but I missed the other asks you sent me about what the tournament arc will be like, so here would be a few hints of LP part 3:

Arin and Jay will get along badly in this arc, a lot of tension between them because of the whole thing about Arin wanting information about where his parents are. Jay isn't the most cooperative person.

There will be an answer to how shattered soul can be healed.

There is a surprise in the final battle that I can't go into detail about but it's a moment I've been wanting to write for a long time.

More Jiro moments in this part because I love him so much ^^

Kaida gets a new friend in the next chapters and there will be more exploration of how her powers work.

By the way, I love it when people theorize about this story so if you want to leave your theories you're welcome!I'll try to get chapter 21 out soon

[comikadraws]

I wonder why minato sealed kyuubi in Naruto when there could've and should've been other measures/solutions, esp because that caused Naruto to suffer for most of his life. poor kid was also in danger most of the time because certain people saw him a s a weapon.

Sorry for the very, very late reply.

In all honesty, I get both sides of this argument. Yes, the decision to make Naruto a human weapon (essentially) ruined his life. But it's not exactly like the alternatives were too promising...

The Situation Overview

Minato is dealing with two disasters at once.

The present disaster: Konoha is in shambles. The casualties are high, the Kyubi is without a host and keeps shooting Tailed Beast Bombs. It is safe to assume that Minato is one of the few (if not only) people who have the ability to seal the beast. And if he doesn't, the odds are that the entire village might be destroyed.

Village =/= government but village = ninja and civilian population and supply of necessities.

The future disaster: Obito. He escaped and Minato and the latter is fully aware that the masked man will turn into a problem in the future. From Minato's point of view, even if Konoha is saved today, the village (or the world even) will need a countermeasure against the masked man in the future.

The first problem necessitates that the Kyubi is sealed. The second one determines the vessel.

The Sealing Problem

The Kyubi needs to be sealed for obvious reasons. The question is: Who is going to be the Jinchuriki?

In the case of Kushina, she is dying. It is, of course, possible to save a Jinchuriki by re-sealing the Biju, but we can guess from context (as well as the fact that Minato had to be told of the possibility by Kyubi/Gaara) that this was unknown to Minato and Kushina at the time.

The problem with a dying Jinchuriki is that after they die, the Biju disappears temporarily until reborn a couple of years later. It's a temporary fix, only solving one of two problems (and also Bijuu balance bullshit).

That's why it cannot be Kushina.

To seal away the entirety of the Kyubi, an exceptionally strong chakra is required that is usually only found within Uzumakis (and rare even among them). But aside from Naruto and Kushina, there were no known Uzumakis present - Especially none with the right chakra to suppress the Kyubi.

This is why Minato is required to split the chakra of the Kyubi in order to seal it. This now creates the need for two Jinchuriki.

Why Naruto?

Now here's the big question. Why choose your own baby as the Jinchuriki?

Minato's reasoning is mostly built on two things. One is the before-mentioned masked man aka. Obito who plans to take over the world. The other is Gamamaru's prophecy. According to him and Jiraiya, there's a great catastrophe lurking just around the corner that will be stopped by one of Jiraiya's students.

Personal feelings aside, Minato makes the correct conclusion that there's a good chance said student will be Naruto. By making Naruto a Jinchuriki, Minato is essentially providing him with a power-up against whatever threat he will be forced to deal with as the child of prophecy.

Why Did Minato Use The Reaper Death Seal?

Another question fans might ask is why Minato decided to use the Reaper Death Seal (instead of any other seal that doesn't kill the user). After all, Minato didn't have to die and Naruto could have had a father in his life at the very least. Here's what I found:

The Reaper Death Seal is the only way to bypass the "dead Jinchuriki" problem I mentioned earlier. It allows the user to take a Biju down with them permanently. Minato wants to avoid at all costs that Obito can acquire both halves.

The Reaper Death Seal is the only sealing jutsu that is ever shown to have the ability to split (not just the chakra of but) a being into two. But take this last one with a barrel of salt as it is only a theory.

Kushina also couldn't use the Reaper Death Seal. The exact reasons are unclear, but Minato states that as a non-Jinchuriki, the seal he can use is the Reaper Death Seal. This sentence has multiple interpretations:

No Jinchuriki (or former Jinchuriki) can use the Reaper Death Seal.

Kushina, having been in the role of Jinchuriki, is in no physical condition to use the seal.

Non-Jinchuriki can only use the Reaper Death Seal.

Minato believes that the seal won't turn him into a Jinchuriki (even though it does).

All three of these reasonings seem weird but in this context, number 1 and 2 make the most sense. Otherwise, Kushina would be offering to use the jutsu instead.

Reaper Death Seal is known only to a select few, to the point that Orochimaru has never heard of it. That leaves only Minato and Hiruzen as potential candidates to perform the jutsu. Though it is unclear whether Hiruzen knew the Reaper Death Seal at this current point in time or would have been quick enough to follow Minato into his teleportation jutsu before Kyubi's Bijuu Dama hit.

Conclusion

In case you haven't noticed yet, Kishimoto, when writing that chapter, was desperately trying to somehow justify Minato's decision to make Naruto a Jinchuriki and die in the process. Hence there are multiple ass-pulls, retcons, and forgotten lore here and there.

Ignoring the obvious lore struggles that Kishimoto had, most of Minato's decisions were very reasonable except his decision to make Naruto a Jinchuriki. This weird overconfidence in children and infants, unfortunately, is normal in Narutoland and condoned by their society, though, in case the 6-year-olds at the military training academy are anything to go by.

Was sealing Kyubi into Naruto the right decision in the end? Yes. But was it a reasonable conclusion to come to? No.

The only reason it worked out at all (or why Minato got the idea in the first place), in the end, was plot armor.

[tomorrowusa]

In 2016 we had But Her Emails. In 2024 we have Biden Is Too Old. The sources of these two lines haven't changed: the flailing GOP with an assist by bothsiderist news media.

Yes, it's the same old distraction technique to draw attention away from the leader of the Republican Party who is an adjudicated sex offender who just lost a gigantic lawsuit based on his past use of fraud.

It's time to push back and aggressively. And successful messaging is repetitious messaging – get used to repeating things if you wish to cut through the noise.

But the main thing is not to freak out and to play offense instead of being defensive. For example: Why are so few people on our side bringing up Trump's unhealthy lifestyle? Drinking 12 Diet Cokes® a day and copious chomping of double cheeseburgers wouldn't be recommended for somebody half his age. And what kind of drugs is he being prescribed?

[A]ll of the #BidenTooOld coverage is about as new and revelatory as #ButHerEmails. If nothing else, it proves that a scandal holding that the president forgets things is always going to go down smoother than a scandal in which a special counsel flagrantly violated a long-standing Justice Department practice and protocol not to “criticize uncharged conduct.” As Sullivan was quick to point out, CNN and the New York Times and every U.S. corporate media entity and its cousin jumped onto the bandwagon. [ ... ] Perhaps one way to navigate yourself through this seemingly insoluble morass would be to ask yourself why Biden, who is stipulated #Old, has managed to helm the most successful presidency in modern history. Booming economy, eye-popping jobs reports, first gun violence reduction bill in decades, $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan plus COVID relief, Inflation Reduction Act, infrastructure prioritized, judges seated. Pick your metric—there have been a lot of wins. And the reason this old man who sometimes forgets things like dates has gotten all this done? He has, for the most part, surrounded himself with experts, genuine scientists, respected economists, and effective governmental actors and advisers. Governance is not an action film. There is no minute-to-minute psychodrama involving someone in a tight black T-shirt mincing along the outdoor ledge of a skyscraper, ninja-kicking his lonely way down to the stairwell, where he karate-chops the well-armed baddies and then commando crawls his way into an empty vault with the glass chest where the nuclear reactor sits. No. Despite our fascination with the Great Man theory of American lawmaking, the presidency is an office that largely turns on superb staffing, visionary planning, deft political negotiation, and artful execution. Joe Biden doesn’t actually have to remember every single detail himself—he has to use his judgment to employ and empower a large contingent of skilled experts to execute upon their agreed-upon vision. If you are unconvinced, the best evidence that we keep falling for Great Man fantasy propaganda is the unmitigated failure of the first Donald Trump presidency. Here we had a self-described loner literally trumpeting his I-alone-can-fix-it worldview, all embodied in Great Man megalomania. He managed to accomplish virtually nothing: Almost none of his promises for single-handed economic revitalization, world domination, or intrepid urban crime-solving panned out. His great dreams were either strangled in infancy by staffers or halted by courts. And whether you believe that this happened because Donald Trump surrounded himself with incompetent yes men or steely adults in the room, both versions serve to offer proof of concept: Donald Trump accomplished close to nothing because the people around him were either too inept to put his vision into practice or too skillful at blocking him to allow him to put his vision into practice. Put another way, if you or anyone you know finds themselves reacting to the Biden Is Old revelations with the thought that, sure, Donald Trump is a 91-indictments-richer, adjudicated sexual abuser, defamer, liar, violator of national security, self-enriching, fascist-boosting insurrectionist, but it’s OK because he will surround himself with people who might check those impulses—well, doesn’t it rather intuitively make more sense to instead vote for the highly effective, internationally respected, but yes, sometimes forgetty guy who is surrounded by people with day planners?

A president is a lot closer to being a CEO than a superhero. And when it does come to being businesslike, Trump has declared bankruptcy six times – approximately six more times than Biden. Trump's business "skills" lean heavily towards fraud, deceit, and bullying.

The real reason we all keep falling for Great Man horse race stories is because they are good for fueling fantasies of all-powerful big daddy presidents who control every tiny aspect of governance in their tiny wee hands. If that is your jam, well, it would make sense to vote for the only candidate who believes in the same dream. If it’s not, the question is reducible to rather simple stakes: Do you want the Big Daddy who surrounds himself with sycophants and nutters and people with shared last names, or the one who surrounds himself with competence and expertise? This doesn’t seem, on balance, like a really tricky call. Do we prefer presidents who can backflip and ninja-kick their way to total world dominion? Perhaps. To my knowledge, nobody ever made a Tom Cruise movie about listening and learning and compromising. But if you still believe governance to be a sober and serious enterprise, vote like the alternative is chilling, because it is.

Trump flatters himself as a "stable genius". But it is Biden who brought stable governance back to the US. Being a constantly ranting gasbag is not an indicator of competence.

Very little attention is being paid to psychological age. Trump is just 42 months chronologically younger than Biden, but Trump acts like a toddler who is not yet 42 months old.

Parents with kids who were constantly having temper tantrums and being frequently disruptive would consider taking those kids to a child psychologist. Being a disruptive narcissist in his late 70s does not make Trump seem youthful but instead more like a case study for arrested development as a toddler.

[chattegeorgiana]

Just finished read chapter 3, I can see why you loved writing this chapter and I can’t imagine how delighted you were seeing it illustrated. The amount of easter eggs that came appeared was great the intention to detail was top notch.

I’m sure you’re thrilled getting this chapter out, I wanted to pick your brain about a few ideas/themes I noticed. In chapter 3 itself the flashbacks were all great really showing casing Tsunda character and her rise and fall until the beginning of the Naruto series. Her and Naruto relationship is pretty underrated and if you remove Sakura, Sasuke and Hinata. She would definitely be in a top 5 of important relationships to Naruto. The flashback to Madura was nice as well, he still can’t to stop about Hash can he lol? I can’t wait to see what you have in store for us next.

last thing, outside of pumih and Rav. Do you have a top 5 favorite NaruSaku artist/content creators? And out of the 3 narusaku kids who are you personally excited to write and or see illustrated?

Hope all is well and thanks again!

Hey dear!

Welcome back to my inbox. <3

Aah, it's so good that finally someone understands my excitement with this chapter. Not only from a writing pov, but also from a visual one.

@xravenniax just went god level with it! I kid you not that I started squeaking like a child when I saw the library page and the scrolls one. And yes, this chapter has a loooot of easter eggs, I was curious to see if someone would pick up on those, but apparently some of you do, hehe.

That makes me happy to be honest, not going to lie.

Now, to go back to what you wanted us to chat about...

As I said multiple times, this is going to be a story centered around Sakura, of course, however, she's not the only one I'll be exploring in the story.

I consider Tsunade to be an extremely important character to the Naruto universe, from all the reasons you listed above, plus her interconnectedness with the other characters as well, besides her being Sakura's master. Which is why in Kaika (in the written form) we see her involvement in various other core plots of the Naruto world. I wanted to show that importance of hers and have her in the story past being just Sakura's master.

She is integral to the whole Hashirama cells subplot, Konoha politics, the medical system, the ninja world, the Sannins, so on and so forth. It's quite easy actually to work with her character, honestly.

So yeah, agreed she'd be easily top 5 Naruto's most important bonds.

As for Madara, well, yeah, you can't have Madara without Hashirama the same way you can't have Naruto without Sasuke, so I had to stay true to that core element of the story haha. Plus, it serves as a great point of origin for the development I have in plan with Sakura's medical prowess, that nicely ties in to all those aspects I used to write in my old theories regarding the Hashirama/Sakura parallels. It's actually one of the reasons I had the idea to make a parallel between Sakura's struggle with Kaguya/Madara to Tsunade's own struggles, since both of them did fight Madara, so, as I said, he is the common element between the two and the connection to their medical prowess that always calls back to Hashirama's one.

As for NaruSaku content creators well, we have such a low number of them nowadays that for me, they're all precious in their own way and I do my best to support them.

I like NaruSakuArt from Insta/Twitter (x), there was also Bloom (but kinda disappeared) on Twitter, we also had my sweet @dattebae who came back for a while but disappeared again, we have a few from the Chinese community which I appreciate (but idk how to read/write their name, please forgive my uneducated self), we also have Nathaniel who is doing his own projects, but kinda keeps them in closed groups due to a lot of reposting that people do without crediting the original source, we also had Rannya but she also kind of went missing, oh and last but not least Shrimp Chips haha.

So yeah, this is kinda it. Back in the day we had lots, but a lot of them left honestly.

As for the NaruSaku kids, I really can't pick and choose. They are all so integral to the NaruSaku healing journey and symbolic to the struggles we overcame and love for this pairing that it's hard for me to really pick just one.

I'm excited to showcase all of them, but the most I'm excited about is to explore their individuality while also their interconnectedness, because as I said, I kinda have something in mind related to their powerups that shows that interconnectedness. I just hope to be able to do it proper justice.

[disfrutalakia]

Can I pick yor brain to theorize a bit? So Blue won today which means they're leading. If we do a bit of math we can conclude that purgatory will end on the 18th (otherwise they could tie or it will last until the 20th which would be a bit more than 2 weeks). That would mean that if Blue wins two more times they win no matter what. The same way, if Red wins 3 more times they win no matter what.

The problem here is: no one has any concrete evidence for which is the cursed team yet. Some theorize is one, some want to be the other. But no one knows.

The Eye said guess or find out or something like it. But we don't know in what to base it. Should we base our guess in lore, in strength, in suffering, in meta?

The closest anyone got to the real truth was ElQuackity being offered to know in exchange for killing someone that day or he would die. Well, he didn't die so there's that. And he talked to the Eye again after that and didn't mention anything about it. So, did they just ignore that plot point or does ElQuackity know now which team is cursed but the audience doesn't?

You could argue that he wanted Blue and Green to tie BECAUSE he knew which team is cursed. He could either want Blue to lose so the cursed wins OR because he wanted the cursed to lose (since that would doom the eggs too).

ElQuackity has not logged since going to Blue so we can't test this theory well yet.

Or maybe the Eye is lying about the whole thing, which wouldn't be a surprise, and no one is cursed.

If by any God forsaken chance Green was the cursed team... F in chat to our eggs, you will be missed. The Gay Ninjas tried their best. There's no coming back from this one.

One of the tweets also said "May the best egg die". How does that work? What is "best" here based on?

The more I hear the Eye talk the less I fear him. Can't he threaten people better? He showed a video of the eggs running away like two months ago. Show them now you half-baked villain, we've known they ran away since the end of the happy pills arc. Do you actually even have them? Forever could do a stone Richarlyson at his home, you're not impressing anyone with this. Just cause your is bigger and has Pomme's beret it doesn't mean anything. (I hope. F Pomchas.)

Also, once again it begs the never answered question: What WOULD happen if they tied? What will Eye do if they don't do anything all day? Like, sure, if cursed loses is bad but if it's before the last day they didn't lose yet. Just that day (technically).

If we go meta, I think they didn't choose the cursed team yet and may do so only based on the results from the event. But that's boring so let's talk about lore and real fun things like that.

For me, the cursed team being whoever had ElQuackity on them is something that has some kinda of proofs, but at the same time wouldn't make that much sense. Like did the eye know from the beginning who would be the teams? And why would everything fall on ElQuackity? And would that mean that cursed team changed from green to blue? If the curse truly is on the person I mean.

And can I be real? The eye guy SUCKS as a villain, sure he is ominous and can see everything but guess what? So could the feds, and the eye plans are a lot worse than theirs which mean they are horrible cause like, the feds are the guy who sent a single worker on a boat to purgatory!! The eye is not what strikes fear really, it's the islanders minds that do, the ones that keep thinking of the what if, what if they lose? What if they are cursed? What if they never go back? I get what they were trying to do with the eye but it didn't really work, he isn't around enough to really strike fear on us. And like, not that we know a lot about the reasons of why the feds do their stuff, but why the egg hates sinners and eggs so much? Is he god? What is he?

Okay got a bit distracted sorry, the whole "may the best egg die" thing sounded more like just a play on words really, but what if the best one is the one who survives? What if the statues really were connected to the eggs and the ones who weren't killed will be considered the best? Doesn't make a lot of sense but honestly cannot think about other possibilities for that choice of words.

The tie also makes me confuses, when it was said they would all die, did they mean everyone including red? Or if not, would everyone just be sent to red and they would win by default?

I'm a believer that there isn't a cursed team really, that it's mostly a mind game from the egg part to see how low the islander can go, to see them running around like rats trying to survive while also hunting each other like wolves, because there are no clues for the players really, like we as an audience can have our theories based on millions of povs, but what about the islanders? they can't do that.

I would like there to be clue drops over the next days since we are so close to the end but, I don't think it will be the case really. I think the curse team doesn't exist and this will be revealed at the end.

[waffliesinyoface]

anyways i just read all of naruto in like a week so i am now qualified to have The Most Correct Opinions.

Land of Waves arc is unironically the best one

its also the ONLY standard mission in the entire manga?? literally, at no point does anyone interact with a client after tazuna, its all in response to orochimaru/akatsuki. Naruto your resume is ridiculous. The reason Kakashi is 6th Hokage is not because Naruto wasn't strong enough, but because he needed to learn what the actual job of being a ninja entails. Yes you are very strong but you do need to have a basic grasp of paperwork systems.

Its kind of weird that, out of all the akatsuki, kisame is the one who hangs around the longest. Most of the others show up, do their bit, and then are immediately killed. Kisame is introduced first and dies last.

i've already mentioned this in another post but the Cycle of Hatred thing does not work. It worked as a motivation for Pein, but like. The reason the villages kept declaring war on each other wasn't for revenge, it was because their economic system was inherently tied to being the one with the strongest military and also they were paranoid that if someone else got too strong they would be invaded first.

Related: they should've had warring clans exposition and details about the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd wars BEFORE Pein showed up. If there were more details about wars in the past presented in a tragic-but-still-overall-necessary light, then Pein showing up and going "you miserable bastards trample over everyone weaker than you and deserve to be punished or it." It would have had more weight. Literally you could've slotted this during Naruto's initial training with Jiraiya as a follow-up to Hiruzen's "The chuunin exams are a replacement for war" speech.

Sakura why the fuck didnt you marry Ino

Kishimoto did Sakura so dirty at every turn. Literally every time she gets screentime she goes "THIS TIME... I WILL BE THE ONE WHO PROTECTS YOU...!" and has a cool moment, and then gets immediately overshadowed.

Literally at one point she's like "in the chuunin exams i was so weak... i hid behind you guys at every turn" and i felt like I was going insane because both during wave and the chuunin exams she has moments where she's like "yeah i dont have any special powers but i DO have a knife and you're going through me FIRST, fucker" which is honestly way cooler to me than like 90% of all the jutsu bullshit. Literally she stands in between a berserk gaara and a crippled sasuke armed with nothing but a kunai and pure fucking grit.

its very funny to me that the first time naruto ever does a nature transformation its rasenshuriken. Kakashi woke up in a cold sweat one day and realized he forgot to do the most basic teaching about chakra theory when they were genin. Whoops.

Im sorry but i legitimately do not care about the sage OR his sons OR the reincarnation twist. Its not interesting to me and I WILL be ignoring it. I'm all for the sage being reminded of his kids or the idea of history being cyclical, but explicitly going "no youre a reincarnation, this was Fated" is dumb and kishimoto SHOULD feel bad.

Edo Tensei arc is unironically very funny to me. Kabuto is having a mid-life crisis and has turned into a snake about it, and has decided to raise a bunch of dead badasses for. reasons. honestly i am not sure how his goals required obito or the akatsuki??

Anyways he raises a bunch of badasses and WHOOPS theyre all comedians. Deidara and Sasori are bickering, Itachi is being even more of an unhinged control freak than normal, the Mizukage is curbstomping everyone while berating them for not hitting the weakpoints he's explicitly telling them about, Tobirama is annoyed at everyone but mostly himself for actually coming up with this jutsu, and madara puts his entire plan on hold for a minute because he sensed his ex boyfriend and got incredibly horny.

Orochimaru gets brought back to life and promptly goes "actually i take back my plans about konoha, watching sasuke is INFINITELY more entertaining. Also I'm going to help out against the akatsuki because Kabuto's snake fursona is a tacky knockoff of me and I'm disowning him for being lame." I also liked him being chummy with Tsunade, that was very cute. I kind of wish Jiraiya HAD gotten edo tensei'd so that all three sannin could have been reunited on the same side? It would have been cute??

I feel strongly that Sakura and Karin deserve to go to some hot springs together and mutually complain to each other about being unfortunately attracted to the most misogynistic man on the planet after kishimoto himself. Orochimaru and Ino can tag along because they LOVE gossip and complaining.

Gai being the only person on the planet strong enough to beat the crap out of Madara is great, actually. Yes you can block all ninjutsu and genjutsu, but can you block his fists? No.

The "special chakra" produced in uchiha brains is actually entirely unrelated to the sharingan. It mostly just causes brain damage. This is why Madara, Obito, and Sasuke are all Like That.

Obito's heel face turn and the ensuing team up with Kakashi is, against all odds, actually good. I am willing to overlook Obito temporarily coming back from the dead through sheer willpower both because its cool and because we've already established chakra is bullshit and ghosts exist.

Obito your plans are dumb, your motivation is stupid, your critical thinking skills are nonexistent, and your coping mechanisms are insane. Somehow I still like you, despite this??

Does anybody at all like kaguya. Anybody.

Everything about the epilogue annoys me. Mirai and Sarada can stay, everything else I am actively choosing to ignore.

Frankly I'm confused and appalled that kishimoto wrote sasuke and naruto like that, and then put them in heterosexual marriages with other people.

[thelonesomequeen]

I’m drastically split on PR or Real. Either it’s a badly managed PR relationship or she’s the one (as not engaged or planning a wedding, but that period in a relationship where you are planning a future) and they are doing weird stuff to protect her? Idk

PR support

• their announcement and pap walk on the day her show premiered. Why do that if you want to be private? Clearly done to bolster her in media.

• he’s never gone this hard on socials sharing any another woman in his life. Again why do that if you want to be private?

• he’s never seen with her out and about by either fans or paps (like other GFs). He’s either a ninja or doesn’t spend all that much time with her. If he’s a ninja, this makes sense if you want to be private.

• what they heck do they have in common with her being 25 and growing up in a different culture life style? I can’t imagine a young woman wanting to live in suburbs of Mass where your friend group is 15+ years older than you. Is it possible? sure but doesn’t make sense to me.

Real support

• photo and video dumps that show they are were together many, many times. Tin-foil hat theories aside, why share so many if you want to be private? That wasn’t just a few photos, but a ton of photos to show their relationship over time. It’s still strange behavior. Clearly they spent time together over a long period of time. But why share 20+ photos all at once?

• family and friends involvement in socials, and in person. I never thought Chris was that deep in Hollywood manipulative game mechanics that he would allow a PR relationship to go on a family vacation, even for a few days for pics to leak she was there. Also, having a PR girlfriend attend your close childhood friend’s annual Halloween party isn’t the same as attending an industry event to garner attention. That’s his personal life side.

• if this is PR, it’s badly managed. I would think they would both be posting more often about each other on socials for more drops to garner more attention. Articles announcement/pap walk -quiet for 2 months. Scare video - quiet for 6 weeks. Explosion of photos + 2 videos, quiet for 2 months. I would think we’d see them more frequency in little drops if it’s purely PR.

• it’s very possible that his ‘taxi light’ is on. He’s ready to settle down and she’s the girl in his life at the time he’s ready to do so. This is something men do, even if the lady in their life doesn’t make sense.

There’s contradictory points on both the PR side and Real side. I do think there’s some credible inside sources in the fandom, but tough to say which ones are real and which are trolls claiming to be sources. The truth of the matter is we may never know for sure if this is a real relationship or PR, unless they officially do get married at some point. If they break up at some point, I think people in the fandom will still argue about this.

In the end Chris doesn’t care about what the fans say about her. He’s going about his life anyway. He’s ok with losing fans to be with her -whether it’s real or PR. It’s up to fans to decide to give him their time of day or not in the future.

He’s not being hoodwinked by her, nor is there some hidden con that she’s doing to him. She’s in his life, PR or real. It’s not worth the bloody wars in the fandom that either team absolutely must be right and the other team are the losers.

Is it possible no woman will ever be good enough for Chris fandom? Sure. But also I’d argue he just doesn’t date interesting women that we can get behind and cheer for. Jenny was perhaps the closest but still problematic as hell.

Well said, anon. I’m definitely picking up what you’re putting down here 🦎

[thegayhimbo]

Stranger Things Summer Project

To my mutuals (@pusheen1802 @stillhidden @skellybonesandtrees @spaghettificationandpretzels @harvlekinkey @mimi-dracula, as well as anyone else out there who’s a fan of Stranger Things, I am planning a rewatch of the show in the next few weeks, and have started doing reviews of supplementary material related to the show as one of my summer projects.

Last year, I purchased the Stranger Things comics, graphic novels, and tie-in books because I was curious about how their relation to the show and wanted to know what aspects of the show’s mythology, characters, and story arcs they would cover. I was originally going to look through them prior to the start of season 4, but because of my schedule at the time (as well as starting a new job) I didn’t get the chance to, and ended up postponing it until after season 4 aired. Over the past few months, I’ve managed to read all of them, and wanted to share my thoughts about each one while the show is on hiatus.

Due to my love for Stranger Things, I’m undertaking this for fun, as well as to improve my craft as a writer and reviewer. I also plan to review individual episodes and post about them in the future. Unlike last year when I did a rewatch of the first 3 seasons, which were spur-of-the-moment posts, I want to do a deeper analysis of the show’s story, themes, characters, and relationships. I also plan to share some theories about the direction I believe season 5 will go, and would love to hear feedback about your guys theories, ideas, or wishes for the show! :)

Right now, I have six reviews out:

Stranger Things Six

Stranger Things Halloween Special

Stranger Things The Other Side

Stranger Things Zombie Boys

Stranger Things The Bully

Stranger Things Winter Special

This is something that will be updated and reposted as I continue to add more reviews in the upcoming weeks.

My next one, which will be posted after July 1st, is Stranger Things Tomb of Ybwen. I will also be doing reviews for newer material, including Tales from Hawkins, The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles crossover, and the Eddie Munson prequel Flight of Icarus.

Like I said, this is mostly for fun, as well as to speculate about season 5. Please check out my reviews. Like, reblog, leave comments if you want to (provided you’re polite about them), and let me know what your thoughts are on the show, the books, the comics, or anything Stranger Things related! :)

[npcemi]

I’m back from the hospital so lets start with an update for my KP fic

So this the link for the latest chapter: https://archiveofourown.org/works/38375071/chapters/120852103

Link to the beginning of the fic as a just in case since I haven’t posted this fic in a while:  https://archiveofourown.org/works/38375071/chapters/95894818

“Betty, I got an Idea,” Shego said as the leader of Global Justice motioned for her to continue.

“We’re in Middleton, right in Cupcake’s backyard. They’re expecting her to show up and nine times out of ten she comes through the vents.” Kim picked up right where Shego left off.

“So if we flush the vents beforehand, make them think I’m coming through the vents then when GJ breaks the front door we can pull their attention in multiple spots!” Dr. Director sighed saying it was a good plan in theory, but what about the fact that they’d be sending Joker gas into the open air.

“Betty, we were able to get a sample off of Dr. Possible's clothing. It’s variant 14. Made primarily for driving animals rabid, it affects humans the way traditional gas does but only in ultra-high concentrations. Meaning it’s safe in the open air. We just can’t use the dogos.” Harley said more seriously before relaxing back into her persona.

“Then we’ll make it happen, Oracle will link all of your coms. Let's get this done people!” Dr. Director said as everyone got into position, ready to strike, Oracle gave the signal and Nightwing, Red Hood, and Global Justice blew through the main entrance to the Space Center. The lobby was smoke covered and in the rubble of destroyed sculptures, desks, and similar fixtures.

“Duck!” One of the agents screams as a hail of throwing stars are sent the group’s way.

“What the hell Damian!? Why are your guys attacking us with fucking ninja stars!?”

“Todd, you know my assassins use Kunai and would never use something as low-skill as a shuriken. Besides we haven’t made an entry, we’re running into…difficulties.”

Back down on the ground floor of where the building where the main attack happened Kim and Shego get ready to break in.

“Okay, how are we doing this?” Kim asks.

“Grapple to the roof, I have a special charge that will give us a good hole for entry.” As the green villain completed her sentence she used her jacket's inner grapple to pull herself to the roof and left Kim to roll her eyes and follow suit. When she gets to the roof Shego has already placed the charge. It looks like a five-by-five rug with a round silver object the size of a one-gallon paint can in the middle. Shego directs kim over to where the green woman is standing, which is a good thirty feet away.

Shego clicks the detonator and there is a soft thump. “Wait for it, princess.” She says holding Kim back. A few moments later a large explosion rings their ears as the ceiling gives way leaving a perfect five-by-five crater. The two women jumped down and were immediately attacked by a horde of monkey ninjas.

“Why the hell are monkeys dressed like ninjas attacking us?” a rough male voice came over the coms.

“It’s Monkey Fist, What is he doing here?” Kim said through her coms fighting off three monkey ninjas.

“Don’t know who this monkey Fist is, but we’re coming in, it should help even the odds,” Damian says over coms as the League of Assassins finally breaches and makes contact with the monkey ninjas.

“You know I’m actually glad outside right now,” Ron said not realizing he is on coms.

“Seriously you haven’t gotten over your fear of monkeys yet?” Kim said in an exasperated voice kicking a Monkey ninja.

“Are you telling me that the supposed Mystical Monkey Master, the future leader of the Yamanouchi clan of Ninjas specializing in Monkey Kung Fu, is afraid of monkeys?” Damian said with disbelief as he and the League were cutting their way through hordes of monkey ninjas. The only response heard was Ron’s nervous laughter. “And to think my opinion couldn’t fall any lower.” Before anyone could respond to Damian's jab at Ron, Dr. Director gave them a reminder to focus.

Kim was having trouble fighting off the monkey ninjas, her shurikens weren’t stopping them, and her combat knives only got so far. “What the hell, these guys aren’t normally this tough!” After stabbing another monkey and flipping backward to gain some distance before drawing her pistol and opening fire.

“Welcome to Jokerized enemies princess!” Shego said as she was fighting the ninjas her plasma was lit hot enough to melt steel on contact. The primates didn’t stand a chance.

Their fight continued until both girls were breathing heavily surrounded by the remains of the Monkey ninja army. Any celebration would have to wait as they heard the howling mad laughter of Monkey Fist. his eyes wide and mouth large with an unnatural grin as he stood about to make some kind of grand speech. Shego didn’t wait, attacking him with the full power at her disposal only for her plasma not to work. Her eyes went wide, and she jumped back and screamed. “Kim attack”

Kim fired a few shots before holstering her pistol and launching a series of taekwondo fast kicks and tornado kicks before being thrown off by the mad hybrid. Shego decided she wasn’t going to take any more chances and told Kim to stay back. Kim looked on as she saw Shego’s eyes begin to glow. The villainess ignored the taunts being thrown at her by Monkey Fist. Shego took in a breath as Kim swore a ring of plasma traveled up the woman's body from her waist. There was a bright flash and a massive beam of concentrated plasma hit Monkey Fist in the gut leaving a gaping hole that nearly cut the man in half. Behind him, there was a hole in the building going through until daylight.

Kim saw another bright flash of green surround Shego before her new partner collapsed. Kim barely managed to catch the woman. Both women, tired and exhausted, shared a weak smile before hearing something come from Monkey Fist’s direction. Both girls looked up to see the man advancing, stumbling slowly, but somehow he was advancing on them despite the massive hole in his gut. There was a sound from the vents that caused the man to stop. Harley comes crashing out and lands on the Monkey hybrid and pins him to the ground under her feet. Harley swings her bat up over her head and swings it down like she was playing Suikawari.

“Remember Carms, when it comes to jokerized enemies. Especially the human-animal hybrids, it’s zombie rules.” Harley wiped the blood off her face and then announced they were all clear on their end over coms. It was only a few more spare minutes before the other teams reciprocated. Kim helped Shego back out to the medical tents.

Days after the battle at the Middleton space station, Kim sat alone in her room. She knew Shego was coming over soon to discuss their partnership more. Kim was trying to clear her head of her conversation a few days ago after her short-lived coma. Apparently, she was in hell living through some of the worst memories of her life. It was parts of those memories that were nagging in the back of her mind. Parts of the conversation between her, Shego, and Tom, no Lucifer. Kim let out a tired laugh, right Lucifer, the actual devil. It was parts of that conversation and her time in hell that had led her to this moment. Kim didn’t go to church often, a handful of times when her mom gave in to the wishes of Grandma Smart. What she was about to do spat in the face of everything she learned those few times at church.

She knelt at the foot of her bed and put her hands together and prayed.

“Well, well, well It’s not often someone prays to me, with good intentions at least.” There he was, her former therapist sitting on the edge of her bed. “Although, I am still deciding on whether or not I’m surprised that it’s you doing the praying miss Possible.” Kim was still speechless. She expected her little prayer to go off into the void like all the other times she’d seen people pray. She didn’t think he would show up in her bedroom.

“Well, consider your prayer heard, how may I help Ms. Possible?” The devil looked at her with a wide, yet comforting smile. The one she was used to seeing in her therapy sessions.

She cautiously asks, "So, if I were to have these... potential feelings, is that why I went to hell?"

Lucifer’s face knits together with a soft sympathetic expression, with a calm and reassuring tone, he responds, "My dear Kim, it is not the mere existence of these feelings that determines one's fate. It is guilt that often drives people towards their own personal hells."

He continues, his voice carrying a genuine sense of compassion, "As long as you do not allow guilt to consume you, as long as you embrace and accept yourself without shame or self-loathing, your feelings, whatever they may be, should not be a reason for you to go to hell."

Kim was frustrated that Lucifer didn’t give her a straight answer. He had to be vague and not just tell her what she wanted to know. She was about to speak up when she heard a voice from behind her.

"Well, well, Kimmie," Shego begins, her voice dripping with a little too much mirth. "It seems there's more to you than meets the eye. Cupcake, have you been hiding something from me? Perhaps some secrets simmering beneath your goody-two-shoes exterior?" Kim goes red, wondering how much Shego heard and how much she understood.

Shego’s voice dances with amusement as she continues, "Oh, Pumpkin, don't you worry. Your secret's safe with me. But Princess, I can't help but wonder what other surprises you're hiding. But more on that later, come downstairs we have much to discuss." Kim watches Shego saunter her way back downstairs.

Kim turns to look back where Lucifer was only to find him gone. She starts to wonder if the whole interaction with Lucifer was just a hallucination. She decided to go downstairs and as she went to close her door she saw a red sticky note.

‘Be honest with yourself, be kind to yourself, be brave, and remember you can do anything!’~ LM

Kim shoved the note in her pocket and made her way downstairs. When she got downstairs Shego informed her a man named Jason was coming over to discuss what will happen and the process Kim will go through as she makes her transition away from a hero. Honestly, this was all a lot more bureaucratic than she was expecting. They all decided to relax as Anne turned on the TV.

“This just in we have a couple of special reports.” Summer Gale turned to her co-anchor Lance Thunder.

“That’s right, first during the attack on the Middleton space center. Global justice moved quickly to mitigate any damage, however, a local citizen managed to film part of the attack. It shows what appears to be Kim Possible and an individual that resembles international super thief Carmen Sandiego who seems to have changed from her signature red color to a green color scheme. This begs the question why was one of the world's best thieves at the attack, was the attack just a distraction and why did it seem that Kim Possible was helping her and not stopping her?” As Lance finished his statement Shego muttered something about never letting global justice do the coverup ever again.

Summer Gale continued the report, “And in related news, Carmen Sandiego’s signature red outfit was found at the Gotham Natural History Museum replacing the now missing Joker exhibit. Investigators found a cryptic note left on the glass of the exhibit. It reads: ‘Now that the real Carmen Sandiego has come back into the public eye. I have no use to imitate the world’s greatest thief. I leave this gift here as a sign of honor and respect. I will still be doing my best to counter the villain’s international league of evil. It was my honor to hold the mantle for as long as I have, I leave it now to you Carmen as it always should have been, signed Black Sheep’ Does this mean there’s been more than one Carmen Sandiego? Does that mean this new green Carmen is the real one and the one that popped up in the last few years was a fake?” Shego angrily turns the tv off almost destroying the remote

“That little shit, she planned this” Shego screams, making everyone in the room except Kim jump.

“Did you like my gifts?” Isabella comes waltzing her way into Kim’s living room, she got by GJ’s best security system that Wade also had a hand in making, and yet. Kim instantly tensed going on red alert, Anne took a cue from her daughter and sent the twins upstairs.

Isabella wore an all-form-fitting black blazer, a red vest with dark crimson buttons, a black dress shirt, and a red tie. Her slacks are skintight, and hold her utility belt which also holds a Drop Leg Bag on her left calf. her combat boots are all black with a steel-toe cap. She wears two black gloves. She has a black fedora with a red band.

“Black Sheep,” Shego says curtly.

“Well, did you enjoy them?”

“What gifts?”Kim asked.

“Well, first I have given Carmen back her birthright,” Isabella said.

“One I never wanted in the first place!” Shego nearly shouted.

“Well too late now or are you really going to let the carmen sandiego fade away into the history books.” Isabella gave a smirk and Shego’s only reply was an aggressive “Fuck you!”

“And the second?” Kim asked desperately, trying to defuse the tension.

“And take away from your learning opportunity? Seems like the waste of a good gift.” Isabella chuckled.

“Or you just tell us and not be a bitch.” Shego chided as Isabella sighed.

“Funny thing is that the Gotham History Museum, first built in the early 1900s with funds from the Wayne Foundation, didn’t actually create its Joker exhibit until after the battle of Metropolis City.” Shego looked at Isabella, her eyes narrowed before going as wide as dinner plates. The green woman took a breath and her expression hardened.

“You’re helping when this all comes to a head.”

“Naturally,” Isabella said cooly, Shego turned to Kim and told her to get her Kimunicator and to contact Betty. When Shego turned around, Isabella was missing.

“I really hate that trick.”

________________________________________________________________

1. That wasn't Ron bashing I swear, it was just Damian being Damian. 2. I had Isabella/Carmen Sandiego (2019) give a little paragraph-long history of the Gotham Natural History Museum because that totally tracks for her character, but it ended up ruining the flow a bit so I compromised with her giving an extra factoid. 3. I am going to be getting a bit more upfront with Kim's feelings and struggles about her queerness. My original plan was to make that plot line happen slower over more chapters, however with me slightly increasing the pacing speed I've needed to cut down on a chunk of "downtime" where those plot points would have more focus.

[electrasev5nwrites]

Ninja Daily: Vapors 93

'Those are boobs that I never wanted to see,' Jiraiya thought a bit glumly, feeling simultaneously like the worst kind of dirty old man and disappointed in himself for failing to be the great super pervert all the time. No one was perfect, of course, but he had high standards. Speaking of which.

"Why the hell did the fact that Danzo had this on his chest mean that you put it on yours?" He groused good-naturedly, using an ink brush to trace along a line to try to discern where it ended and where the overlapping strokes began. "The stomach gate would have worked just as well." And that way, he wouldn't have to stare at his goddaughter in a skimpy bra. Aiko shrugged, causing his brush to slip ever so slightly.

"It wasn't like I put a lot of planning into it," she defended mildly. "I didn't have an abundance of time." Helpfully, she tugged the fabric on her left breast a few centimeters over to expose the end of the tattoo.

Jiraiya flickered his eyes skyward and prayed for strength, and then did his level best to pretend he wasn't staring at boobs. It was just a canvas for an insidious seal; that was all. Just a seal condensed about the size of his goddaughters hand, which she had apparently pressed over her chest in a slightly off-center way, slipping barely over and under the base of her right breast and almost to the peak of-

'Think professional thoughts,' Jiraiya commanded himself. 'No matter how uncomfortable this is, it has to be done.'

But, boobs! He choked down a sob. He'd never forgive Tsunade for making him do this. She could have found another seal mas… okay, so that was untrue. He glared a little resentfully at the matrix in front of his face and tried not to breathe the scent of what appeared to be an alluring mixture of rosewater and dog in too deeply. Apparently, Aiko hadn't really figured out that as an attractive young woman, she was supposed to not smell like dogs. It was charming, in a way that helped him remember that he was not intending to view her as a sexual entity. Nope, just his goddaughter, who was still silly enough to roll around in the dirt with horribly hairy dogs instead of getting a nice, dignified summons. For her height, though, she'd grown enormous- gah!

"It's strange," Aiko commented, sounding genuine. "Usually when I move a seal, it acts like one of my own and it loses visibility until chakra is channeled into it. Is this one ever going to behave like that?"

"No," he snorted, taking a moment to regret teaching her how to make her own seals before she'd really been taught the mid-level theory. Talent, creativity, and insight were just a recipe for trouble without the rote knowledge of all the things that could and had gone terribly wrong in the past. In his short experience, Uzumaki were curious as cats, and nearly twice as likely to get their fool selves blown up. Mostly on account of how cats didn't have thumbs and explosives.

To be fair, he'd never trained an Uzumaki before. Could he really be blamed for misunderstanding what it meant to have a student with an Uzumaki's touch and instinct for fuinjutsu as opposed to being a fuinjutsu genius like Minato? Because they were very different creatures.

Jiraiya resigned himself to teaching. "You were right that this was meant to fail when Danzo died. That means that it's only dangerous when it becomes inactive. Your seals become visible when they're active or forcibly jolted with chakra, right? Well, this one is always active, and thus always visible. Worry when you can't see it," he joked darkly.

Aiko was the last person who'd have to worry about this seal when it faltered, on account of the fact that she'd have to have recently come down with a bad case of 'deceased' for that to happen.

At the moment, he really didn't see a solution. He really didn't want to experiment with a volatile explosive on someone he didn't want blown up.

He settled back with a sigh, and rubbed at his chin contemplatively. "Are you sure Danzo said that this would kill the ROOT agents when he died?"

Aiko blinked at his skeptical tone, and her eyes took on that distant quality that generally meant she was lost in thought. "I asked what would happen to 'us' when he died, and he said that he had no successor. He said that we would pass with him," she recited easily.

Jiraiya groaned, and slapped his forehead.

"What?" His goddaughter blinked up at him, honestly perplexed by his reaction.

"I think that you two were experiencing a fundamental misunderstanding," Jiraiya managed, trying not to giggle at just how hopelessly bad at communication Danzo and Aiko must have been as a conversational pair. "Think on what he said: you were referring to ROOT as individuals, right? I think he was referring to ROOT as a group. His statement that he had no successor makes more sense in a context that assumes he was talking about what would happen to the organization after his death, not the individuals who make it up. He probably meant that ROOT would fall apart, since he didn't trust anyone else with a small army."

Danzo hadn't been completely divorced from reality. If several hundred of Konoha's shinobi just dropped over at once, it would negatively impact their ability to do their jobs. He'd been pro-Konoha, one hundred and crazy percent, not an idiot.

"What," Aiko said flatly.

If the situation had been different, he might have laughed at her put out expression. Instead, he nodded solemnly. "Yes, if you'd taken him to detonate outside of Konoha, there probably would have been no repercussions except that Tsunade would have to come up with a really good story for his wake when someone inevitably asks why it looked like he was squeezed through a fine mesh strainer on the way over."

His goddaughter was slowly turning red. Standing by the sink, Tsunade slapped a palm to her forehead.

Amused despite himself, he forced his expression to remain merely curious. "Shame that you tried to do the noble thing, and ended up just making a hassle for yourself and got a tattoo for your trouble," he sighed theatrically. "I don't think I can remove it, by the way. It's severely unstable after what you did to it." He heaved a careless shrug. "Here's hoping you learn to love the way it looks."

It was kind of cool-looking, if the observer wasn't much of a seal-smith. If they were… Well, it would take a brave man to squeeze those boobies after having seen twirls of explosive notes on them.

'As her godfather, should I be in support of scary seals that decrease the likelihood of boobie squeezing?' he wondered philosophically. He didn't really care if she got laid or not, but it seemed like a godfatherly concern to have.

"When it was on him, it was expressed in utilitarian black bars," Aiko said stiffly, as if that would help her situation.

Jiraiya nodded indulgently. "Like I said, you destabilized it. Bet it hurt going on, huh? You peeled off the polishing layer that was holding everything all neat." He mindlessly poked the seal, and then drew his thumb back as if burnt when the flesh under it gave in a way that reminded him exactly what he was touching. In an attempt to retain nonchalance, he quickly finished, "That's why you have this here. It's the underlying structure. Do me a favor, and don't try to move anything explosive again, okay kid?"

Maybe, given time to play with the sketch he'd made, he could figure out a way to gradually filter out the chakra locks that weaponized the damn thing, but he hardly wanted her playing around with it. Just wasn't smart.

She closed her eyes, leaned her face forward into her palms, and gave a quiet whimper. Through her hands, she glumly mumbled out, "I'm going to end up the most scarred-up, disfigured kunoichi there has ever been, aren't I?"

"It's not that bad," he tried to reassure her, even while a smile tugged at his lips. Who knew she had a spot of vanity?

"Well, out you go," Tsunade said briskly, tossing Aiko's shirt back to the girl. The teen blinked, but pulled it on over her head and hustled out of the examination room as best as she could. She lingered uncertainly at the doorway for a moment.

"Ah, do I need to come back?"

"I'll call you if I need you." The mask of polite detachment stuttered on Tsunade's face, and Aiko's eyes widened. Wisely, she beat a quick retreat out into the ANBU facility. Tsunade instantly looked pissed and rounded on him. "Why did you tell her that, you numbskull?"

Jiraiya blinked at her, honestly not understanding what he had done wrong. "I'm not sure I deserve that," he grumbled, furrowing his brow.

Tsunade rolled her eyes and slapped the back of his head. "That girl had one humanitarian impulse, and then you went and told her it was a waste of her time!" she snapped. Slapping him didn't seem to have satisfied her need to punish him, so she grabbed his shoulders with her scary claw-fingers and shook him in time with her next words. "That's not how you reward shinobi when they show improvement," she practically hissed. "Positive reinforcement is the first lesson in management!"

'Which clearly, you have mastered,' thought the man who had just done Tsunade a favor despite the severe discomfort the situation put him through.

A little frightened that this was about to devolve further, he dropped to his knees to escape her grip and held his hands out placatingly. "Calm down, hime! Think about what you're saying. Was I supposed to lie to her? She'd figure it out eventually," he wheedled. "Aiko isn't that thick, and she has a personal interest. Wouldn't it be even worse if she found out we misled her?"

"Yeah, yeah," she grumbled, before heaving a sigh. "So how is this going to affect how we deal with ROOT?

"What are you doing?" Yukimasa's voice called out curiously.

Guiltily, Aiko jerked away from the closed examination door and blinked up at her captain innocently. He looked incongruously windswept, as though he'd been fluffing up his dark hair absentmindedly. "Being damned with faint praise," she informed him sweetly, and then started walking before he could figure out she'd been eavesdropping on the Hokage and scold her. "Fancy seeing you here."

"We have a training session in an hour," he cautiously informed her, as if he thought she really didn't know that.

'Yes, thank you, captain obvious. Is the sky still blue? How about water, is it wet?'

"I know," she simply replied. "Is there anything edible in the cafeteria today? I'm peckish."

Yukimasa snorted, eyes looking even wearier than usual. "Has there ever been anything edible there?" he asked rhetorically. When she didn't change direction, he winced. "You're seriously going to eat there?" When she didn't respond to the incredulous tone or change her path, he hastily added, "I'm pretty sure we only have the cafeteria as a way to punish recruits."

Aiko shrugged. "S'not that bad."

The look he gave her would have been more fitting if he'd walked in on her stabbing herself with needles.

'Drama queen. Everything served there is perfectly nutritious. If unidentifiable.'

He gave a suspicious stare to the plate she filled, but grudgingly deigned to sit at the same table with her. Before she took a bite, Aiko took a moment to examine him. She thought she knew what was going on, but couldn't really let on. May as well give him an opening. "Is there any particular reason you're hovering, captain? I think I'll survive the mystery meat without an A-class assist."

"I think that's supposed to be tofu," he deflected, running his hand through his hair in a way that didn't do much to hide that he was stressed. At her unimpressed expression, he gave a sigh and admitted, "I have some bad news. But I'd like to wait for Aoto to show up."

'Yepp, he's found out about Shou,' her mind filled in glumly. 'I'm going to have to do some acting. It would be inhuman to be completely unaffected, but sincerity would be a bad approach. As far as they know, I have no reason to feel guilty.'

That decided, she let her brow crease a little in worry and gave him a searching look, as if thinking over the implications of the fact that he hadn't mentioned waiting for Boar as well, but let the topic drop. She ate lightly, knowing that it would be a bad idea to have a heavy stomach before a workout, but also not eager to work out on an empty stomach.

When she heard the words, "Boar died in action," a few minutes later, Aiko allowed her body to become very still. Her eyes she purposefully widened just an iota, and her jaw clenched. This would have been easier if they hadn't ditched masks for training after they'd traded names, but she could still trick two people who were caught up in their own thoughts.

It did feel awful and strange to try to practice team drills with just three people. Yukimasa called a halt early, rubbing at the back of his neck. "I think we'll call it for the day," he decided softly, green eyes troubled.

'We'll probably have a replacement soon,' Aiko thought a little regretfully as she changed back into street clothes and left the room she maintained in the ANBU dorms. The idea of working with someone else on patrols left an unpleasant taste in her mouth.

Not that the team was always exactly the same—when one of them was on another mission that conflicted with patrol duty, a replacement was slotted in to keep the roster full, but that was different from an actual change to the team.

'What did you expect?' She scolded herself irritably, yanking her hair out of a ponytail with a bit too much force and all but stomping down the hall and out of the building. It was an almost obnoxiously beautiful day, but Aiko didn't spare so much as a thought for her change of surroundings. 'You killed your teammate, obviously things can't go back to normal. Grow the hell up, dummy.'

"Oh, hey! Aiko."

She blinked away from her thoughts and turned to visually search through the crowds for the source of that familiar voice.

"I didn't know you were back," she greeted neutrally. Her tone didn't match the way she dutifully opened her arms up for a hug, which Naruto bounded into. Karin and Sasuke trudged behind, looking just as filthy as the blond, but less cheerful about it.

"We just came in," Karin sighed, adjusting her glasses and rubbing futilely at caked-in dirt that looked like the world's worst tan line under her right eye. "The whole Akatsuki hunting thing isn't going as planned."

Naruto scoffed at her and waved a mocking finger in his cousin's face. "Tsk tsk, we're not supposed to talk about our mission before we debrief," he playfully scolded.

Once the irony inherent in that statement had sunk in, Sasuke reached out robotically to punch Naruto in the gut. "First of all, it's Aiko, not an enemy nin," he sighed. "And secondly, protocol isn't funny. I hate to say it, but the moron is inadvertently right. We need to go report."

"Have fun with that," Aiko waved them off, feeling amused despite herself. They really did look good as a team: long suffering Sasuke herding the much more energetic and naughty Uzumaki around like brightly colored cats winding around his ankles for attention. Their skill sets were complementary as well, despite the fact that there were two medics on the team, a situation that was normally tactically untenable. Karin and Sasuke were both sufficiently sturdy that they would be assets, not dead weight in need of protection. All three of them had both close range and long range skills, and contracts with scarily heavy-duty summons. They were pretty well prepared to complete any non-specialized mission that didn't involve subtlety or diplomacy.

'Maybe Tsunade-sama will keep them as a team, for nostalgia's sake if nothing else. Snake, slug, and toad makes a good combat combination.'

She stopped in her tracks when she reached her apartment. Not because anything was necessarily wrong, but because someone seemed to have made the mistake of thinking that her apartment belonged to someone else.

"Ah, hello?" Aiko asked uncertainly. The burly man leaning against the wall unfolded to look at her—and she blinked in recognition. "Ah, Akimichi-san," she greeted uncertainly.

He gave her a good-natured grin. "Come now, didn't I tell you to call me Choza?"

'Oh. I guess he remembers.'

"Did you?" she asked noncommittally, juggling her keys. "That was a while ago." 'And I didn't expect you to seek me out,' she finished silently. He seemed to pick up on that, and raised an eyebrow at her.

"It seems like yesterday to me." He straightened and stepped away from the wall. "I don't mean to be rude, but may I come in? I'd like to speak with you."

'About what happened in Rouran? What really needs to be discussed?'

She was confused, but obligingly enough held the door out. "I'm afraid I don't think I have any house shoes in your size," she admitted apologetically as she switched out her own shoes. Choza was built far bigger than Kakashi or Yamato. He didn't seem to mind skidding around in his socks as she prepared tea, so Aiko shrugged the breach in decorum off.

"So…" she began uncertainly, not sure how to ask 'why are you in my house' without seeming rude. It wasn't as if she was particularly put-out by his presence. From her little experience with him, he seemed like a nice man.

Luckily, he took pity on her. "Nasty business with Danzo, eh?"

It wasn't an opening she was expecting. "Excuse me?" Aiko asked cautiously, hiding her mouth behind her cup.

Choza seemed amused. "Come now, no need to try to keep things from me. I was the one who poisoned him. You can hardly incriminate yourself to me."

Oh. That made more sense. "I wondered how Tsunade-sama had taken care of things," Aiko admitted frankly. "She moved much more quickly than I had anticipated."

"An understatement, I'm sure," Choza snorted. "Danzo's being painted pretty for the sake of village security, but the small council knows the gist of what happened. Indirectly, that's why I'm here, by the way." He took a small sip and politely put down his tea. "Were you aware that the small clan head council was voting on whether or not the Uzumaki should be on the large council?"

Bemused, Aiko shook her head. "No, but I wouldn't mind losing that," she admitted honestly. "It would be a relief. I only accepted the nomination because I had to."

He stared at her for a moment, and then tossed his head back in a genuine laugh. "Aiko-chan, you're killing me." Choza patted the table in a strange gesture she didn't recognize, before helpfully elaborating. "I mean that they think it's demeaning to put a clan that Konoha has recognized as allies since the time of the first on the large council. You're officially invited to the small council."

His expression was open and friendly. She almost felt bad for groaning audibly and cradling her head in her hands. It was a concerted effort not to whine, 'seriously?' like a bratty preteen. Of course he was serious. He wouldn't come over here just to mess with her head. A hand the size of a dinner plate reached out to comfortingly pat her shoulder.

"You know," he began cautiously; "you don't have to accept."

Optimistically, she lifted her head just a bit to peek at him through her fingers.

"Really?"

He seemed to be stifling a smile at the hopefulness in her voice. His eyes were crinkling up slightly. "Really," Choza confirmed solemnly. "It'll still be there for you, but it can be deferred for quite some time. No one can make you accept the seat, not even the Hokage."

"That is the person I was worried about pressuring me," Aiko half-grumbled, too cheered to really be properly resentful of how bossy Tsunade could be. "That wouldn't have any negative repercussions?"

Choza seemed to waver slightly. "Well, yes and no," he admitted. "It depends on what you want. How familiar are you with the laws governing clan conventions?"

Aiko gave him a blank stare as an answer. He seemed a little outraged by that.

"No one taught yo- Of course they wouldn't have," he interrupted himself with a sigh, smoothing a hand over his chest armor in thought. "Kushina would have been the one who'd do that for you." The clan head fixed her with a sympathetic look. "She was a remarkable woman," he confided solemnly. "I can't replace her, but if you'd like, I could try to remedy that gap in your education."

It seemed like a suggestion that would only help her.

'But I can hardly ask what his angle is,' she scolded her paranoid mind, even as she struggled for a response. 'That'd be rude, especially since he's offering to do me a favor.'

Choza seemed to have some hint as to her dilemma, because his face softened into a soothing smile. "I regretted not doing right by you kids," he admitted softly. "I told myself that it wasn't my business, and that you seemed to be growing up perfectly well. Besides, I could never have explained why I cared, since we were forbidden to so much as hint about your parentage until Tsunade made the information public. But Minato was my teammate and my friend. He would be proud to see the young woman you've become. I think you should know that."

She was struck completely dumb, and more than a bit uncomfortable. Would he really have been proud of her? And why was Choza reaching out to her and not Naruto?

"Your brother seems to have found confidants," he continued.

'That was positively uncanny,' Aiko thought, bewildered. Was she really so obvious, or was he just that insightful?

Minato'd had odd moments like that too, now that she thought about it. Maybe it was some secret jutsu that fathers had. Like how mothers and Hyuuga had 'eyes in the back of the head no jutsu', supposedly.

Or perhaps that had been a joke and she'd just misunderstood? The woman who'd said that at market had laughed afterwards. It sort of sounded like a useful jutsu. She hoped it was real.

"He's good at finding parental figures, actually," Choza continued with a mild smile that took the potential sting out of the words and their corollary implication that Aiko wasn't good at endearing herself to possible parental figures. "Don't think the village didn't talk about him calling the Sandaime 'grandfather'," he chortled fondly. His eyes went a little misty when he continued, "and Ichiraku-san nearly went out of business when he first started encouraging Naruto to hang around the stall. It took intentional intervention from cooler heads who understood more than most what it means to have a bijuu sealed to keep him enough patronage to stay afloat. But he couldn't have known that anyone would advocate for him. A businessman doesn't endanger his livelihood lightly. No, Naruto seems to be doing fine."

"But I don't play well with others," Aiko completely dryly when he seemed to be struggling for words. "No, it's fine. I know I'm not half as charismatic as Naruto is." She shrugged to show she really didn't mind. "But I get along fine, and I don't really need to be taken care of."

Choza regarded her sadly for a moment before painting on a little smile. "Doesn't hurt to have a friendly ear, though, does it?" he asked rhetorically, politely removing his gaze. "Hatake-san is a good man, but I doubt that he routinely sat you down to talk about your feelings when you were a genin."

Involuntarily, she snorted. He most certainly had not.

"Alright," Aiko gave in on an impulse. "I would love to learn from you, Choza-san."

"Wonderful!" He clapped his hands. "How does tonight sound? You should know your options, before a reply is required."

That first time she met his family for dinner (because conversations with friends are best had over food, Aiko-chan) it rapidly became apparent that there was a lot that she didn't know. For example, that he could help her access sealed records of her clan's history, and that Minato had once eaten so much mochi that he threw up gelatinous pink vomit on the Fire Lady's shoes at a cherry tree viewing festival. Luckily, she didn't recognize him ten years later when he was sworn in as Hokage, or it might have been awkward.

It was weird to sit at a table with someone else's family and learn about her own, but she could get used to it.

"Can't I bring my only adorable godchild a gift when I see them for the first time in a very long time?" Jiraiya wheedled, holding out the eldritch abomination dangerously close to invading her personal bubble. Aiko took an unsubtle step backwards.

"I'm your godchild too," Naruto pointed out distractedly, even as he flipped through the book of pre-made sealing notes he'd been gifted.

"Yeah, but you're not cute," Sasuke helpfully filled in, none too subtly peering over the blond's shoulder. At least, until Naruto dropped the notes to the ground and leapt at him.

Aiko ignored the ensuring fight where Naruto tried to tackle Sasuke to the ground to get him to admit that he was adorable, believe it, and gave Jiraiya a weary expression. She was perfectly fine with him pretending that they hadn't already exchanged their greetings. This was less fine.

"How old do you think I am?" she asked skeptically. His eyes watered in surprisingly convincing grief, so she reluctantly reached out and accepted the oversized plush frog. "Thanks," she lied unconvincingly. "I'll treasure it always."

'and burn it immediately.'

"Isn't it adorable?" he giggled, reaching out to tweak her nose.

She closed her eyes and grimaced, tolerantly enduring his attempts to embarrass her. Okay, enough was enough. "If you're going to buy my affections, you're going to have to step it up," Aiko warned him. The glint of amusement on his eyes let on that he wasn't really insulted, so she continued even as he mimed heartbreak. "I'm thinking something that sparkles."

"How shallow, Aiko-chan," he cooed, wiping away a fake tear. "Maybe you're just being bitter that I never shared my contract with you. How would you feel about-"

"No, that's fine," Aiko interrupted. The slightly high pitch and sudden interjection betrayed enough obvious weakness that all three of the males in the clearing turned to give her an evaluative stare. She took a moment to curse Jiraiya for ambushing them as they waited on Kakashi for training. Shinobi were drawn to weakness, unfortunately. Hazard of the trade. Even as she cursed herself for the tactical error, Sasuke slowly drew one eyebrow up with an unpleasant smirk.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say that someone was afraid of Jiraiya's summons," he commented archly.

'You traitorous bastard,' Aiko thought furiously, pinning him with a glare that said one more word would be the reason she snapped and stabbed him with the straw from her juice box. He was silenced.

Unfortunately, it was impossible to cow the other two. They were sharing a crooked smile that rather unpleasantly reminded Aiko that they were both tricksters.

"Don't be dumb," she bluffed, turning her face away as if bored. Her hand clenched around her juice box just a little too tightly to truly be casual. "Who on earth would be bothered by toads?"

'Toads the size of cats, that smell strange and moldy and they're slimy and eughhh'.

"So this doesn't bother you at all?" those two rotten bastards asked in unison, each suddenly holding a toad out at arm's length into her general vicinity. Aiko gave an unwilling jolt and an 'eep' sound, and sucked in a steadying breath.

"Of course not."

The lie might have been more convincing if she wasn't carefully leaning away from actual contact with the confused looking amphibian in Naruto's hands. Jiraiya chuckled unpleasantly.

Kakashi closed his eye experimentally and tried again to see if the scene would change. Nope. Aiko was still shrieking and running away from her brother, who appeared to be doing his level best to stuff a toad down her shirt. He couldn't catch her, but that wasn't stopping him from trying.

"Isn't he a little old to be doing this?" he asked Jiraiya, uncertainty plain in his voice.

The toad sannin just shrugged. He was holding two obnoxiously oversized stuffed toads, which Kakashi decided not to ask about. "Never too old for that," Jiraiya deflected. Then he dumped one of the stuffed toads in Kakashi's arms and shared an amused look with Sasuke. Strange, that they were getting alon-

Too late, he realized the toad was not, in fact, stuffed at all. Manfully, he dropped the indignant amphibian and jumped backwards, giving both of them a glare.

"Naruto, that's enough," he barked out, taking what little control of the situation he could. It was impossible to scold Jiraiya, so he didn't even try. "Leave your sister alone." To the sniffling redhead who was murmuring something incoherent about ickiness in between shudders, he added with a sigh, "Aiko, use your words." After a moment's contemplation, he added, "or your kunai."

He wasn't completely unsympathetic to her plight, after all. Toads were rather unpleasant.

After a moment of staring glumly down at his hands which were now far too filthy to touch his precious book, the sole female seemed to take his words to heart, irritation taking over now that the immediate danger of toad slime on her skin had fled. "You," Aiko growled, whirling on her brother with an unusually flushed cheeks and wide eyes. Naruto recoiled. A moment later, so did Sasuke when she turned her glare on him.

Kakashi purposefully shuffled to the side, out of her direct line of sight.

"You..." she struggled for words, before bursting out, "I just want you to know every time you laugh at the pervert sannin for peeking at half-naked women, that's going to be you forty years from now." Jiraiya was beginning to whine about not being that old, but Aiko cut him off mercilessly. "Because you do immature gross things like that around girls, you're going to have to resort to spying because no woman is ever going to touch you down there." With one last bit of drama, she gave a Vanna White-esque sweeping motion at Jiraiya, who seemed unpleasantly surprised to be the center of her demonstration. "Behold, the future," she all but hissed. Then she flipped her hair over her shoulder and stomped out.

Kakashi watched it all happen, and wondered if she'd forgotten they'd agreed to a group workout. Jiraiya-sama was an artist, and a connoisseur of romance, but she had something of a point.

The boys looked stricken.

'Time to get some payback,' Kakashi thought, remembering that there was mucus on his sleeve and not feeling particularly charitable.

He heaved a sigh and put his hands in his pockets, slumping casually. "You know," he mused, "As your sister, Aiko is ideally placed to ruin any relationship you ever have, Naruto." As the blond flinched, Kakashi turned to Sasuke. "And how is re-building your clan going, Sasuke? Do you actually know any women under thirty other than Aiko? Maybe you should be nicer too."

It wasn't entirely a stretch. Sasuke spent time with Tsunade, Shizune, Keiko the secretary, annnd no other females as far as he'd ever seen. If he wasn't planning on splitting in thirds to form generation 2.0 of the Uchiha clan, he'd have to either sweet-talk Aiko or make at least one female friend. With his lovely social demeanor… Well, he was lucky one woman his approximate age tolerated him, Kakashi thought rather hypocritically.

Sasuke blanched at the jab. One eye began twitching uncontrollably.

'Perhaps he just short-circuited,' he thought with amusement. 'Quick, someone teach the robot to love.'

Kakashi turned to Jiraiya, who seemed to be warily waiting for his scolding as well. He merely shook his head pityingly and turned away as if there was just no hope there. Jiraiya looked torn between outrage and insecurity.

The boys were unavoidable casualties. It was tragic all around, but they were necessary sacrifices in order to really strike a killing blow at the heart of the man who had dumped a toad on his hands.

"Kakashi has no room to talk. It's not like he gets any gets any dates," he heard Sasuke mutter sullenly as he took off.

'And that one is going to be running laps with Gai tomorrow,' Kakashi decided, irritated. 'At four in the morning. No, three.'

[hopeless-nostalgiac]

Find the Word Tag

Rules:  It's simple, see if the words exist somewhere in your writing and  share a snippet. WIPs, published works, heck I even count author's notes  sometimes. IMHO, variations on the words are allowed (shook instead of  shake, cloudy instead of clouds and the like), and even synonyms (storm  instead of thunder) if you really can't find something. Just share your  snippets with your friends, tag some people and give them some new words  to look for if they want to take up the challenge!

I decided to take part after seeing @loudlooks’s post. The words are: mirror, ball, blood, movie, hot

If anyone else wants to play: river, morning, tear, chair, warm

mirror - “Tender Curiosity” wip (I lie to myself about this one and say I’ll someday continue beyond the chapter and change I’ve had for it since like 2013)

Hands braced on the edge of the counter, Tony fought off his own wave of nausea, sucking in breaths, shallow and short. Each exhale scrambled his mind of unwanted images, each inhale swelled his exasperation. Heat seethed through his veins. It was misplaced, yet it took more effort to stave off than it would have to embrace, explode from the room, and leave the ex-Mossad assassin to her secrets, just the way she wanted it.  If this was what came with their relat--friendship these days, maybe he didn’t want it after all. 

A chance look in the mirror brought into view the tremble of her chin. Her eyes darted to the ceiling, fending off another round of waterworks. “Though I cannot say that this was…” She paused to swallow the sob in her voice. “Planned.”

The tears she refused to shed in his company extinguished the burn of his anger to smoldering coals. He never could stay mad at her. Irritated?  Sure, they drove each other crazy.  Real anger?  No.  It was a weakness, Tony knew. Getting close clouded judgment. Probably why Gibbs had a rule about it. Getting close was a risk. 

It just didn’t feel like those things as he eliminated the distance between them, resting a gentle hand on her shoulder. This felt right.

ball - “The Buttercup Theory” idea/wip 

You really hadn’t lived until you experienced Ziva David meeting a puppy. It was like watching a hulking WWE wrestler cuddle up with a teacup kitten.

Okay. Maybe not that drastic. It was pretty freaky, though.

Freaky enough that Tony’s insistence that they leave, that Gibbs would be expecting them back far sooner than later, lost momentum. He couldn’t look away as she crouched to her knees in front of the small crate, an incongruous fixture in the sterile kitchen of his bachelor pad. 

“Oh my goodness, look at you,” Ziva cooed at the ball of fluff huddled inside the metal contraption. Literally cooed. His partner for a pigeon. 

“Who did you just become?”

The brunette glanced up, her gaze shining from beneath the visor of her NCIS cap. “You did not tell me you were thinking of getting a puppy.”

“Because I wasn’t.”

“It is not exactly the best timing, Tony.”

“Agreed.”

“Yet now you have a puppy.”

“I don’t have a puppy.” 

The sparkle dimmed in Ziva’s eyes.

blood - “New Year Normal” wip (trying desperately to get this done rn)

“You are cranky, Tony.”

“You are blunt as ever, Ziva.” His crossed arms mirrored the knot of his grimace. “And I’m not cranky because I’m not a 3-year-old who missed his nap.”

“Then you are jet lagged.”

“After 15 hours at 30,000 feet? No, you think?”

She ignored his sarcasm while inspecting the underside of an end-table drawer. Clear. “You should eat something. Your blood sugar is low.”

“What do you know about my blood sugar?” 

“I know when it is low, you are cranky.” Ziva tossed him an apple from the complimentary bowl of fruit. “Eat, or one of us will not leave this room alive.” 

Tony caught it on a fumble. “Well argued, my ninja, but I’ll take my chances.”

He set the apple aside and scrubbed his hand from forehead to nape, ironing his sandy locks this unkempt way and that, not seeming to notice or care that his hair looked a mess in the end. It matched the shadowy scruff ringing his jaw, the puffy half-moons of fatigue beneath hazel eyes. 

The breakdown of his normally fastidious appearance—his armor—left no doubt. Anthony DiNozzo, Jr. was out of sorts.

movie - “Land I Grew” wip

Leaning back against the counter, Tony dragged so hard on the bottle that the plastic crinkled and caved in on itself. 

“Where’s your TV?” he asked after swallowing hard. 

“I do not have one.”

“That’s cold.”  

“I am not you. My life does not revolve around movies—”

“Ziva.” He lifted the half-empty bottle to eye level. “I meant refreshing.”

“Oh.” She crossed her arms.

Tony guzzled, stray droplets splashing onto the day’s growth of stubble around his mouth. His pink tongue flashed out from between parched lips, like a cat unwilling to waste a drop of precious milk. Or: a man never satisfied. 

She would be thirsty as well, if she had run from his apartment to hers. They were clear across the city from each other now.

“When did you start running?”

“Like, 20 minutes ago. It’s not my best time, but--”

“Tony.”

“I had a lot of stress to burn off this summer.” His answer hovered between nonchalance and restraint. “No couch?”

hot - “Contaminate My Heart” (aka my tiva shower fic that I drafted during covid lockdown but then had a crisis of confidence and so it’s sat ever since)

Any rebuttal she might have formed evaporated in the blast of heated rain, striking her just right, dabbling neck and shoulders and arms, coursing rivers in the thin gaps separating their chests. A chill born of the time spent between showers rocketed outward from her belly button, spreading and vibrating off her skin. Her eyelids drooped. 

“Good?” He knew it was. She did not care, draping her arms around him. 

“Yes, my shower went out before I had a chance to finish.”

“Huh, usually you’re the first one done.”

Only then did Ziva break the trance of sensation. Tony’s grin greeted her, smug and goading. 

“I did not realize we could lie, mon petit pois.” 

His grin widened, or it seemed that way as he leaned forward, blurring at the edges of her vision. Hot breath exhaled across her forehead, a masquerade of delayed laughter. Or desire. 

“You can do whatever you want…to me, sweetcheeks.”