Naruto: Dreaming of Sunshine

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance. ~ Alan Watts

.

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"At least say if I'm getting closer," Aoba said across the table. "Hotter or colder."

"Classified," I singsonged to him, the same way I'd been answering his questions for the better part of an hour. I didn't really dare say anything else – I wasn't really good at coming up with things. I didn't think he really expected me to tell him anything, he was just poking out of boredom and habit. But if he did shake anything loose then he would be all over it. That's just the way it was. So I was saying nothing.

"So Sasuke was carrying something. Something heavy. A statue. A Buddha statue. That was possessed and tried to kill you."

How did he come up with these things? I gave him a strange look. "What would it have been possessed by?"

He shrugged. "A spirit? A demon? Oh. A demon possessed Buddha statue tried to kill you!"

"Classified," I reminded him.

He slumped. "Not a statue, then. Okay. So you were soaking wet. There was an underwater secret tunnel. Mist ninja were camping in it. No, not Mist ninja? It went somewhere, though."

"Class-i-fied."

He made a sound of pure frustration.

I escaped that conversation by the grace of being called up to the Hokage's office. Actually not to the Hokage's office itself, but to a small briefing room not that far away, by the Hokage so it was basically the same thing in the end.

Shizune met me there and Tsunade arrived before too long. Once the door was shut and the security system engaged, Kisuke materialized from… somewhere which at least told me what this meeting was about.

Tsunade took a seat at the table and put a paper tag face up on the surface. The seal was identical to the one that had been printed on the rock yesterday. "Tell me what you know about the Soul-Body Separation Seal," she said, going straight into the topic.

I blinked at her, and after a moment of silence managed to rattle off most of the conclusions that I'd given to Sasuke yesterday.

"Similar to the curse seal, you say?" She said thoughtfully, pressing her fingers to her lips. But her gaze was canted sideways, looking out the window over the village.

"Yes," I said. "I mean… it's not enough to say Orochimaru created it. But he wouldn't be my last pick either."

"You wouldn't be wrong," she said. "He did. But it was many, many years ago." She was silent for a long moment.

It was… strange to remember that Tsunade and Orochimaru had been teammates, once. That they'd been young. That they'd been Konoha shinobi, not so different to us, to how we were now.

"This technique," she said, "was meant to be a scouting jutsu. Similar to the Yamanaka jutsu or… the Kato clan jutsu. It would allow a shinobi to separate their spirit from their body, then deploy as an undetectable scout into enemy territory. With the original seal they were only visible to a single handler rather than completely, as Kisuke is now."

I blinked, and shuffled the information I knew about the seal into that new pattern. "Wow," I said.

Because… wow. Yeah. I could see why Konoha would have wanted that. Holy hell, could I see why Konoha wanted that.

"So, what was the catch?" I asked. Because with those benefits there had to be a downside big enough to explain why it wasn't in use. "The spirit couldn't reattach to the body?"

The Hokage nodded. "It was unreliable," she admitted, fingers tapping on the table. "And each successive use of the seal dramatically reduced the possibility of reconciliation. Sarutobi-sensei eventually forbade the usage of it and listed it as a forbidden technique."

I nodded. Then my eyes drifted across the table to Kisuke. Because I could also see where this was going. If the problem had been returning to their bodies afterwards…

Well. He was already dead. There was no body to return to.

"You aren't going to…" I halted, fumbling for words. Die? Move on? "Cancel the seal, are you?"

Kisuke hesitated, eyes flicking towards the Hokage but she waited and let him answer. "It has been a shock," he said carefully, "to wake up and find myself dead. It does not feel quite real. And though I would like to find my wife it… it is a strange thing to have the choice between life and death. There are other ties binding me to life – other people I would like to see again, to help. I still feel as though I have a duty to this village, a job to do. If you will forgive the saying… I am not dead yet."

And there was the steel of a shinobi, the will to go just that little bit further. I am not dead yet. He was, but he wasn't. Alive enough to think, to feel, to want to live just a little bit longer.

"It sets a terrible precedent," Tsunade acknowledged, "binding our shinobi to the village beyond the limit of life itself. I don't like it very much. But I'd be a fool to pass up the opportunity, especially now. That's why you're here." Her gaze snapped back to me.

I sat up straighter.

"You've already proven that you can alter the seal," she said. "I'm assigning you a classified mission to do so again – to alter it in such a way that Kisuke can control. Ideally, a way in which he can be visible, a way in which he can be invisible, and a way to release himself at any time he desires."

I bit my lip and thought it over. "It might be hard to find a way for Kisuke to interface with it, but the first and second tasks shouldn't be that difficult," I said cautiously. "The first is what my alternations have already done. The second is what you said the seal was meant to do without those alterations. The third…"

How did you cancel a jutsu from inside the jutsu?

Actually, how did a ghost control a seal at all?

Maybe that was going to be more difficult than I thought. I frowned.

"There are," Tsunade said slowly, "some notes that were left behind."

"Orochimaru's notes," I clarified after a long, long silence.

"Yes," she affirmed. "As you might guess, I'm not exactly eager to hand them over to you. There were a lot of facets to his research, sealing was only part of it. There was human experimentation. Bloodlimits. Cloning."

It felt like a test.

Scratch that. There was no way it wasn't a test. The trick was finding out what it was a test for.

I shrugged a shoulder. "I'm not really interested in any of that," I said. "Cloning is easy. All you'd need is a tissue sample and someone with a functioning uterus."

That might have been too flippant. Probably, definitely too flippant. And irrelevant besides, because Orochimaru's cloning experiments had been much more about grafting bloodlimits onto existing people than actually creating clones from scratch.

I barreled onwards. "If he left any notes on the use of Edo Tensei then I might be interested in those. I mean, I know he used it and, uh, it's pretty much exactly related to what's happening here. The two techniques might be related? That or anything on the curse seal, because I know the two have similarities."

I … doubted I would be allowed and I might have been tipping my hand by asking. But I couldn't pass up the chance, either. Yes, it would probably be useful for altering this seal, but both sets of information would be incredibly useful.

"We'll see," she temporized, rising from the table. Which wasn't a yes, but wasn't a no either. I could work with that. "Shizune will oversee your work – schedule your time with her."

That made sense. Shizune undoubtedly had the access to get whatever classified material required for this, and no one would raise an eyebrow about it. She was a medical ninja, so she at least understood that part of sealing and – if I wasn't mistaken – she was the last of the Kato clan.

"Yes, Hokage-sama," I agreed. "Shizune-senpai?"

We got down to the business of working out when we could, actually, get down to business.

So between all the things demanding my time, I was almost surprised when New Year's snuck up on me. Konoha had a massive New Year's Eve Festival every year and it pretty much lasted from the afternoon games to the ringing of the bells at midnight to the taiko drums at dawn. Given that I was working the evening shift, I figured I would miss most of it. It was disappointing, but not overtly heartbreaking.

"Nah, our shift ends at eleven," Aoba said casually when I mentioned it. "I mean, they don't kick you out or anything, so you can stay if you want to. But who wants to?"

I blinked. "Really?"

"Of course! Even bureaucracy knows we want to go to the festival."

I gave him a doubtful look.

"Yeah, yeah, I know, right?" He laughed. "Now, I'm not naming any names or anything like that, you understand, but a few years ago…"

I listened, my eyebrows creeping up higher and higher.

"-and it took them twelve hours to get all the pieces out of the ceiling."

"Wow," I said, nonplussed. "I assume that's why the fireworks times are posted on the noticeboard?"

There was a saying that if you had a rule for something, it was because that thing had happened. And while it might have seemed like common sense to let a whole bunch of jumpy ninja know in advance when you were going to be making sudden loud noises, it seemed like the saying was in full force here.

"I can neither confirm nor deny," he said, amused.

The mood was pretty jovial in the office, as though the feeling of the festival was drifting inside. Anyone who went out to deliver things generally came back with a tray full of treats for the rest, or other silly miscellany.

I wasn't the only one eating the traditional end of year soba for dinner, either, and we toasted each other good luck and best wishes over noodles.

"I brought my yukata with me," Shiho told me. "I'm just going to go straight there when I finish."

"That's clever," I said. "I have to go home first." For family, more than to get changed, really.

"Maybe next year," she said and patted me on the arm. "We could go together."

There was a rush for the doors when the clock ticked over. Ours wasn't the only department that was eager to leave, and the lobby of the tower was packed full of people wishing each other a happy new year. I tried to see if I could pick Shikamaru out of the crowd, but mostly just went with the flow until I could spill out onto the streets.

"I'll save you a drink," Aoba said, hand on my shoulder, referring to the Special Jounin social gathering he'd invited me to. "Show up at some point."

I made vague not-promises and waved.

Then I bounded across the street to where a tall dark form was waiting patiently. "Hi, dad." He generally worked daytime hours, but it wasn't exactly unusual for us to all leave the tower at the same time, nowadays, either.

"How was work?" He asked, arm looping around me.

I yawned and leant against him. "Work." Shikamaru was probably taking his time and leaving later to avoid the crush of people since he didn't appear to have snuck out early. It was smart, sure, but now we had to wait for him.

The flow of people slowed to a trickle. Shikamaru slouched out, talking idly with someone I didn't recognize. He looked up and saw us.

"Didn't think you'd wait," he said by way of apology.

Dad waved it off. "New Years is a family holiday. We should be making the most of it." We don't have that much time normally went acknowledged but unsaid.

We left the sounds of the festival behind, the music and the echoes of laughter in the night air. Home was a quiet oasis compared to that, right up until we walked inside and mum was immediately onto us.

"You sure took your time getting home," she scolded. "Hurry up and get dressed. We'll miss it!"

She was already dressed up, kimono bright with colours and patterns and hair done up for once in an elaborate twist.

"You look nice!" I called as I darted up the stairs to get changed. It didn't take long to put on a kimono, and I only curled my braid into a bun and stuck a decorative comb into it. Such effort.

There was a knock on the front door while I was getting ready, but I wasn't surprised to feel Sasuke's chakra. It was out of his way to be here, which meant that it was a deliberate move. I hoped it was because nothing was going wrong.

That would be typical.

But when I went downstairs he was dressed up too, in dark blue, looking uncomfortable while mum fluffed over him and tried to give food. "You're right on time," she claimed. "The rest of these lazy sods aren't ready yet."

"I am," I said, managing to keep my yukata unrumpled while I sat down. "So that's another victory to the women of the family."

I could hear Shikamaru's grumbling from the living room. "We're not all in such a hurry," he claimed. And he actually looked like he'd put half an effort into getting ready compared to his usual none.

Outside, all the temples across Konoha started ringing the one hundred and eight bells to welcome in the new year. The sound travelled and echoed like a symphony.

Dad came down stairs and mum bustled away, bringing a tray laden with a teapot and sake cups. Toso was a kind of spiced sake, traditional to drink on New Year's celebrations, for luck and health. Like, literally to chase away the evil spirits, but I mostly went with the 'luck and health' explanation.

The sake was poured and we passed the saucers around. Mum toasted but didn't drink any, which was unusual for her. I didn't exactly like the taste much myself, but it wasn't like we were drinking very much of it and it was tradition.

Sasuke looked awkward, as I passed the cup to him. It was a family thing, but he had been very deliberately invited and included. And not even by me. I couldn't claim that one. It was… nice.

We finished the sake and started to head back to town to join the festival.

"Here," Dad said, taking out three decorated envelopes, absolutely casually and handing them to us. "Try not to spend it all at once."

Otoshidama - also a tradition. Kind of like pocket money to celebrate the start of the year.

"I absolutely will," I promised him, and grabbed Sasuke by the elbow to drag him along because he looked kind of frozen.

"They didn't need to do that," Sasuke muttered quietly to me, after a few false starts.

"It's not about need," I said, glancing back at mum and dad walking arm in arm. They were taking their time. "Come on. I'll race you!"

.

.

"Shikako!" Ino called merrily, waving across the street. Sakura was with her, looking apologetic. "There you are!"

I clinked glasses with Sasuke and ducked out of the food stall. He nodded to me, but kept on talking to Hayate and his purple haired girlfriend about swords. There were opinions being had. Mine apparently didn't count. Well, the joke was on them because my sword went 'zshoom'.

"Shikamaru isn't with you?" Ino asked, eyes darting up and down the street.

I shrugged. "We lost him somewhere. He must have gone to find Chouji."

She looked briefly surprised. "We didn't see him. He's probably hiding in a corner somewhere. We were going to go and find somewhere nice to watch the last fireworks."

"Down by the river?" I suggested. "They were doing a fire dancing display on the lake the last I saw."

"Ooh," Sakura said happily. "That always looks so amazing. I hope it's still going."

I didn't disagree. Fire dancing was always something. Ninja doing fire dancing was spectacular.

It wasn't so crowded anymore, because it was nearly five am now. We were going to greet the dawn celebrations from the wrong side, this year.

"Is that…" Sakura asked slowly, hesitantly. "Shikamaru? And Tenten?"

Ino and I both swiveled around to look.

"They must have run into each other," I said with a shrug. It wasn't like they didn't know each other – she had been working with us on seals for ages now.

Ino looked at me. She looked back at them. "That," she pronounced, "is a date."

I blinked. "Huh," I said thoughtfully. "I didn't see that coming."

"No," Ino agreed. "Neither did I."

And she sounded… she sounded…

I looked at her more closely, and then gave Sakura a vaguely alarmed look hoping that she would help. She was better at emotions than me. "Oh," I said. "Oh. I didn't see that coming either. You-"

Ino swatted me on the arm and made a face. "Oh, no. No. Absolutely not. I would kill him within a week. You Nara aren't that irresistible."

"But who could resist our good looks and inability to give a fuck," I deadpanned, feeling so, so glad. Not that, you know, it was bad. But. I was feeling hugely off kilter.

Sakura scolded me for swearing. We barely even noticed the fireworks going off over our heads.

"It's just – how did Shikamaru become the first of us to get a date?" Ino complained. "How did that happen? It's not right."

I opened my mouth. I closed it again. I pleaded desperately with my eyes for Sakura to say something.

"It's not right," Sakura agreed, shoulders sinking and arms wrapping around herself. "He's so lazy. It's not fair."

Oh, great. Now they were both sad about being single.

Shikamaru, you are in trouble, I tried to transmit to him with my brain. Since I wasn't Ino, it didn't really work.

"It's not a big deal," I said lightly. "Come on, who would you even date if you had the chance?"

"Sasuke," Sakura sighed dreamily.

Ino groaned. "I don't even know," she moaned. "But there should be someone that's interested in me. I'm me."

"Yes, you are," I agreed and patted her lightly on the back. "And that's an amazing thing to be."

"You're not even the littlest bit bothered by this, are you?" she asked. "Shikako." My name sounded like a whine.

No, I wasn't. About Tenten and Shikamaru? I hadn't seen it coming at all, and I actually thought he had a bit of a thing for Temari. But that didn't make it bad. And Tenten was a friend and I had no problems with her, and if that was what Shikamaru wanted to do then that was that. As for feeling left behind…

"Nah," I decided.

"If you were a normal person who cared about romance, though, would you?" She persisted.

I huffed in exasperation. "That's like asking 'if you were a bird, would you fly?'" I said. "I doubt it, anyway. I barely have enough time to catch up with you guys as it is. I don't need to try and add more people into my life."

That didn't seem to cheer her up any.

I gave up and went to my last resort, and pulled a bottle of sake out of hammerspace. It was supposed to be a gift, but I would use whatever distraction I could, right now. "Come on, don't mope. That's no way to start the year off. We're supposed to be celebrating!"

"Oh, this is a bad idea," Ino said, as she plucked off the lid and took a sip. "You are a terrible friend."

She passed it to Sakura because she was also a terrible friend.

I grinned. "The o-shogatsu celebrations at the temple start in two hours. Other than that, the night is yours."