Naruto: Tango with Death

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Changing myself into more comfy clothes, I headed to the Jonin Standby Station dressed in a long black dress. I also had my hair tied with two thick golden needles, the only thing I had brought back from the Land of Forests.

I could have jumped from one roof to another to join the station, but I decided to walk the way there, as a normal person would.

Konoha was quite beautiful in the evening, the streets were well lit with lanterns, and the shopkeepers were calling out to the passer-by to try out their products or come visit.

By the time I arrived at the Jonin Standby Station, I had dangos in my hands. But as I was about to open the door, someone from inside opened it.

Chewing on a dango, I was surprised to see a hair full of white hair, as well as a masked face. Who other than Kakashi Hatake could this be.

"Sho! (Yo)." I spoke, my mouth still full of dangos.

Kakashi looked down at me with some surprise, before nodding slightly, and walking past me. Well, that was anticlimatic. Whatever.

I stepped inside, and spotted a table where four people sat, one of whom was Itachi, and the other Yugao. Obviously, this was my team.

Itachi saw me first, and smiled slightly, nodding, so I nodded back and approached. The others quickly turned around, and Yugao squealed as she got up and crushed me into a hug.

"You look so cute!!"

I awkwardly hugged and back and replied, "Thank you, Yugao."

The purple haired girl let go of me, but showed me with her hands, as if I was an expensive piece of art, and introduced, "Yoji, Goto, this little pixie is Sukaina Sumichi, the cutest little thing in the world."

She then turned to me and said, "Sukaina, those are Yoji Aburame and Goto Akimichi."

I nodded and waved at them with a small smile. Goto grinned and said, "It's good to see you!"

As for Yoji, he looked dead faced, but he still nodded my way, although he said nothing. Now, however, I could see the scars on his neck, since he didn't have his equipment on. It looked like his vocal cords had been destroyed.

But it was impolite to stare, so I sat down in the only empty chair, which was at one of the table's ends, between Itachi and Yugao, who faced each other.

I grabbed a glass, and the bottle of sake, but both Itachi and Yugao hurriedly snatched the bottle out of my hands.

"You are too young to drink that!"

I sent a pointed look at Itachi's cup, which was filled with sake, and asked, "You are only 14 yourself."

Itachi replied shamelessly, "I have a stronger constitution."

I rolled my eyes and asked, "What am I supposed to drink then?"

"YOUTH!"

I closed my eyes for a second, before turning around, and saw Guy standing behind me, a bottle of apple juice in his hands. Handing it to me, he said, "A drink full of calories for a day full of training! YOUTH!"

I barely grabbed the bottle when he disappeared just as fast as he arrived, flying kicking through the open window.

As I gloomily poured the juice in my cup, Goto laughed, "It's hard to believe you completed an S Rank Mission, seeing you now. But say, we have a question."

I looked at him, and Yugao added, "More of a bet really."

I looked at her, and she asked, "Are you Princess Takayama?"

I tilted my head to the side in confusion, before remembering they weren't given the details of my mission.

So I nodded, and saw the silent Yoji look down in disappointment, while Goto cried out, "No way!"

Yugao scoffed, "Told you she was."

Goto opened his eyes wide as he asked, "How did you do it? How did you turn half the population into fanatics?"

I chuckled and replied, "I wouldn't call them fanatics, I just brought a few reforms…"

Yugao put her hand on my arm and cut me off, "Sorry love, but they are fanatics. You haven't heard of the riots going on over there did you?"

I shook my head, and Itachi explained in a dry voice, "Since people think it was Kisame Hoshigaki who turned crazy and killed your cover, some people have been burning anything that came from Kiri."

My eyebrows shot up in surprise, and Goto scoffed, "Grossly underestimating those people. All of Kiri's force shave been forced out of the country, and the remaining half of Tanzaku is currently in flames."

I smiled ever so slightly and explained, "Well, all I did was push the right buttons with the right people. The situation also helped me, their Daimyo was incompetent, his wife a possessive maniac, and the unrest had pushed quite a few mercenaries to come in the city. Then, all I had to do was manipulate the Mistress so she would start a coup, while cooing up to the Daimyo for protection. That part was easy actually, I made him believe I was his daughter without much of a problem…"

I stopped halfway through though as I saw them all looking at me with surprise and some shock. Seeing I had stopped, Goto asked excitedly, "What about the Monster of the Mist? Kisame Hoshigaki, how did you make him betray his village? Why would he kill everyone and destroy the palace?"

I shook my head and replied, "Kisame had nothing to do with the death of everyone, and by the time he betrayed his village, we were already far from Tanzaku."

Seeing them hooked on my words, I smiled and said, "I first let the Mistress believe I wanted to start a coup myself, and let one of her servants, who was spying on me poorly, to a bunch of mercenaries.

"Then, I used another of her servants, one who loved money a little too much, to give her the idea of poisoning the food before the last supper. So when the time came, she was the one to kill the Daimyo, through poisoning. I also faked my death, to stir up the feelings of Kisame, and another pawn from Kiri.

"I had been getting closer to them in the week I was there, and I had managed to make one of Kiri's ninjas, the one from the Yuki Clan, fall in love with me. As for Kisame, I turned into a sort of confidant.

"Also, since every plate had been poisoned, although the Kiri ninjas weren't really affected, they failed to discover I was diffusing another poison, a paralysing one, in the room. So the mercenaries the Mistress had hired came in, fought against Kiri, and the effort the two sides made only accelerated the rate at which the poison affected them.

"Many of them killed each other, but there were a few survivors by the end. I then sacrificed the Mistress soul to an evil god, and only Kisame, Juzo Biwa and the Yuki clan member were left. However, because of the poison, the Yuki guy couldn't move anymore, and both Kisame and Juzo had their perception messed up.

"This allowed me to sneak on Juzo. I didn't have any weapon, and I wanted to shock Kisame, so I grabbed Juzo's heart out of his chest, and crushed it in front of him. It was nasty. Anyway, since I had pretty much everything set up, I killed the spare, that is Yuki, and grabbed what I needed before making explode the hundreds of explosives I had my men bring inside the palace."

I could see that with each explanation, Goto's and Yugao's faces turned paler, and even Itachi and Yoji were looking at me with wide eyes.

Silence reigned for a while, before Goto coughed awkwardly and asked, "So, are you okay?"

I chuckled and said, "Yeah, I've long come to terms that it's either me or them."

Goto frowned, and asked, "How long? Aren't you like 12?"

I rose an eyebrow, sending a look at Itachi, who revealed, "She's 9."

Yugao nodded, as she already knew, but both Goto and Yoji looked surprised. Itachi shrugged at their glare and said, "I only said she was young, you made your own assumptions."