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They put a new prisoner in the cell next to Shisui. This has happened several times. His new neighbor collapses immediately into their cot and doesn't move for hours. When she does stir, she clatters around her cell for a few moments — maybe stretching and pacing? — before finally saying: "Uchiha Shisui, right?"
"Yes." There's no real point in lying.
"My name is Amago," she says, "good to meet you." She sounds about his age, which is young for a high-security prison like this but clearly not impossible.
Amago. A Mist native, Shisui assumes, and maybe even a member of the rebellion the other prisoners are always whispering about, but she sounds like she's smiling when she talks, maybe. Shisui hasn't had anyone friendly to speak to in a long time.
"It's good to meet you, too," Shisui says. She probably won't stay friendly, but Shisui will take what he can get.
The whole building is covered with chakra suppression seals, ones almost definitely stolen from the Uzumaki, so most of the prisoners are kept like civilians, with meals served in the same large room and shifts in the basement of the building working the factory equipment to make bolts of cloth for standard issue Mist equipment. Amago gets swept into that system quickly, but Shisui is never allowed to leave his cell; Mist has been careful not to damage him or give him an opportunity to kill himself. Likely because they're still debating how exactly to structure the Uchiha breeding program that must be in the works,something Shisui tries not to focus on.
"I made a friend," Amago says in the middle of her first week. "We ate lunch together, and then she showed me how to unjam a loom."
"Ah, have I been replaced?" Shisui asks. He pushes his tone towards teasing, and makes sure the question comes out light and meaningless. There's nothing to gain from showing his hand and revealing that he's attached to having a pleasant conversation now and again. Amago might be a Mist plant, and even if she isn't Shisui's interactions with her have surely been noted.
"No one could replace you," Amago promises him. "You're one of a kind."
Her tone is just the same as his.
Three weeks later, she takes him with her when she breaks out of prison with her new friend.
"Terumi Mei, this is Uchiha Shisui. Shisui, Mei," she says, barely audible over the explosions rocking the prison. More prisoners than just the three of them have gotten free of their cells, but Shisui gets the sense that the other prisoners are just being used as a distraction.
Shisui hasn't had any chance to adapt to the loss of his eyes enough to use shunshin or be at all useful in combat, so he's dead weight on this breakout. He's only made it this far, wherever they are, because Amago had physically taken him with her, one shunshin after the other. It's possible — likely, even — that he's scheduled to be another distraction further down the road. At least he's free, though. For now.
"Uchiha," Terumi Mei greets.
Shisui nods at her.
"Great." Amago claps her hand like something has been accomplished. "Let's go kill the Mizukage and get Shisui's eyes back."
When they reach the private beach Yagura apparently uses for training, Amago hands Shisui a kunai. "Here, you can use this if someone gets close enough to stab," she says. "But hopefully they won't. You just have to hide us trying to kill him until it's too late. You're great at genjutsu, right? That's what the Bingo Book said."
"I can't see the beach," Shisui points out.
Amago huffs at him. "Use your summons," she says. "I know you have that jutsu for them."
She shouldn't know that Shisui has a jutsu that lets him see out of his summons' eyes, but now isn't the time to worry about that. Now, apparently, is the time to help two strangers overthrow the government of a foreign village.
He summons Kansoku. It might be better to just cut his losses and escape, but... Mist has both of his eyes, and although they were deactivated when they were taken out, there's a chance that someone will eventually figure out how to use Kotoamatsukami with them. That's obviously unacceptable. This is the best chance he'll have to get them back.
"Kid, you're in so much trouble," Kansoku says when the chakra cloud has cleared, already twisting to half-heartedly start preening Shisui's hair starting from the nape of his neck and working forward. "So much. The clan is going crazy." Then there's a pause in Kansoku's preening, his beak stuttering to a halt. Probably because he's seen that Shisui's eyes are missing.
"I know," Shisui says, around the sudden lump in his throat. "I know. But I need to borrow your eyes, okay? You can scold me later. To warm me up for all the lectures I'm in for when I get back home."
The sand on the beach is black, a detail Shisui had forgotten about Mist. He'd also expected the sky to be blue and vast, but the squawking waterfowl are winging through a sky of low-hung clouds. It's all different from what he'd expected — and strange to only see it now, following a good deal of time crouching in the wind-swept shrubs just off the beach.
But Shisui can do this. He's good at genjutsu. He uses them for direct combat to fool his opponents more than he uses area-of-effect to conceal his presence, and hiding a fight like the one Amago and Mei are about to pick is a tall order, but he can do it. He has to. They can't fight the whole village at the same time.
When Yagura comes into view, Amago indicates that he has three guards with him. Through Kansoku's eyes, Shisui can easily see the way they bend the grass and ruffle the bushes as they creep along behind Yagura. It'd be considered sloppy in Konoha, but not everyone can be up to ANBU standard. Shisui drops the area of effect genjutsu as soon as Yagura is on the water, at the same time as Amago and Mei attack.
He kills the guards before they can react to Yagura disappearing, and then he focuses on spreading out the area the genjutsu covers.
The fight out on the ocean churns the water and scares the birds away. Amago doesn't look like she'd be the kind of backup you'd want to fight a kage, but she and Mei press Yagura hard and then make quick work of him.
Mei takes his hat and holds back the Three-Tails.
Amago drags the still-cooling corpse over to Shisui.
Yagura has Shisui's eyes in his head, still deactivated. Kansoku, unsettled by the sight, ruffles his feathers but doesn't look away. Shisui reaches up to run a few comforting fingers through Kansoku's feathers.
"Drop the genjutsu, we gotta be quick," Amago says. Her hands already glowing with medical jutsu to perform the transplant.
With Kansoku's crow eyes, Shisui can't tell if it's the right shade for medical jutsu, the Konoha blue-green that their medics are famed for achieving using the Mystic Palm technique. But there's no time to argue; the Three-Tails is roaring in the background. Ocean water hisses and rises in huge plumes of steam as Mei flings lava around. Soon, the eyes will have been in a dead body for so long they won't be safe to transplant.
It's excruciating and nerve wracking, but Shisui holds still and lets Amago put his eyes back in his sockets and guide the muscles and optic nerves and chakra pathways into their correct places. Shisui watches this happen from Kansoku's eyes, until he sees his own eyes in his own head blink and focus on Amago.
Then he cuts the observation jutsu he's been using to see through Kansoku's eyes. It's time to fight a bijū, before it kills Mei and before Mist can rally any kind of response to it.
Amago holds out a hand forming half a seal and Shisui — Shisui, who's been trained to predict and react to his teammate's actions as much as to his enemies' — automatically reaches out and completes the seal.
What follows is a strange and unpleasant experience. His body disappears. Amago's intent floods through every part of him when she orders the Three Tails to Calm. Down. He only gets something approximating his body back when they land in some unreal space, the kind of tricky time/space mindscape you can create with a good genjutsu.
Shisui finds that he's wearing his standard gear, jōnin vest included, and Amago looks almost the same — she's dressed like a Konoha special jōnin. There's a Nara crest embroidered on her shoulder.
She shrugs at him when she sees him looking at it. "It's a long story. Look, we have to break the chains."
"Okay," Shisui says. "But — were you sent after me? Did the clan pay for the mission?" He doesn't know where they would have gotten that kind of money. He doesn't think the Sandaime would really have agreed to it.
"It's a long story," Amago repeats. "I'll tell you sometime. But no. There's no mission. I just... heard you needed help."
Shisui wants to press for answers, because what kind of person breaks into a foreign village's high security prison for a stranger without even being paid, but now isn't the time.
Besides, she doesn't say anything about the Sharingan-eyed shadow holding the other end of the chains holding the Three Tails down, and Shisui is grateful that he won't have to try and explain that. He doesn't even know where he'd start... although if she really is a Konoha ninja, Shisui expects that detail will make it into her report. This is only a brief reprieve.
There are Mist ninja gathering on the black sand shore when they leave the bijū's mindscape., but they won't approach just yet — picking secondary fights when there's a bijū on the rampage is obviously a bad idea, and picking a secondary fight when the bijū has only just stopped rampaging is equally dicey. Also, Mei does have the Mizukage hat on still. She might genuinely be in charge now.
"You killed my friend," the Three-Tail complains after Amago has gone around and offered introductions.
"He had it coming," Terumi Mei says. No doubt she came here prepared to kill the bijū, too, but she'll have to work on her diplomacy if she wants to keep the hat she's wearing.
"I'm sorry things had to happen the way they did, Isobu," Amago says, much more diplomatically. She glances at Shisui out of the corner of her eye and then says, "But you don't have to stay here. You could make new friends."
"Oh. Will you be my friend?" asks the Three-Tail. Isobu, Amago had called it. Him.
"Yeah, but..." Amago gestures at Shisui. "He'd be a much better friend. He could protect you."
Letting some strange girl who only might be a Konoha ninja seal the Three Tails into him is surely the most reckless thing Shisui has ever done, and so many people are going to be pissed at him about it. But he does allow it. He holds still while Amago wets her brush with link and paints on him and the flat, raw rock below him. Isobu hovers nearby, on the opposite site of the seal array from Terumi Mei, and pours himself into the seal as soon as Amago says it's time.
It feels like a chakra transfusion. It feels like having molten metal poured directed down his throat and pumped into his veins. It's horrible, and Shisui is convinced he's dying right until he passes out and wakes up in what must be seal space.
Isobu is there, in a vast, shallow lake of chakra. "Oh," he says, and gives a few splashes that send ripples across the chakra lake. "Oh, this is very nice."
"It is," Shisui agrees, because although it's also thoroughly unnerved him... it's probably important that the bijū living inside of him enjoys its accommodations.
Shisui leaves Mist on the wing, sticking to the back of the biggest crow he can summon with a supply of chakra that feels endless. He leaves Mist with a seal over his heart, winding around his torso, skittering against his clavicles, and trailing down his arms. He leaves without Amago, although he nearly begged her to go with him.
"I can't," she'd said. "I have things to do, still. People to see, places to go. But I'm sure you'll be fine. Just tell them Mist put the seal on you, they'll believe it."
When he gets to Konoha he doesn't mention Amago in any of his reports — she's either deep undercover or a missing nin and either way her assistance in Shisui's escape and Yagura's defeat isn't the sort of thing that should be recorded or discussed lightly, though to Shisui's surprise the Sandaime doesn't bring Amago up when they're finally alone together. Instead, he inspects Shisui's seal personally, and finds some kind of time-delayed release that would have set Isobu free in the middle of the village.
"Just like last time, I suppose," the Hokage mutters into his pipe while he neutralizes the trap.
Rather than feeling betrayed by this revelation, Shisui is... confused. The Sandaime assumes it's a failed attack against Konoha, but Amago would have known it would fail. Releasing Isobu would definitely kill Shisui, sure, but Isobu wouldn't attack the village like the Kyūbi had. He'd just end up resealed in someone else, still under the control of Konoha.
There must be a reason (maybe she copied the seal without knowing about the suicide clause?) and some day Shisui will have to find Amago so he can ask her. Until then, Shisui won't say anything to the village about it, because having left Amago out of his story entirely, Shisui can't just add her back in. He'll tell Fugaku-sama, and that will have to be enough until he sees her again.