Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

I've been called a random omnipotent being before, which is rather rude since that would imply I'm interchangeable with any other sufficiently powerful entity. I have a name, you know. It's Gaia. Perfectly easy to remember.

I'm also hardly omnipotent or omniscient for that matter. Yes, there is a plan and I give the world nudges every now and then so that things go according to plan, but if I were either omnipotent or omniscient then those nudges wouldn't be necessary. Strictly speaking, it wasn't even my plan and I was just the one implementing it, but everyone has a job to do, even near supremely powerful entities.

I can feel disruptions to that plan. Kurama going on a rampage was part of the plan. Shikaku dying because of it was not. So I cast my gaze on the situation and found the one most responsible for the disruption under the principle of "You break it, you fix it." That turned out to be a six year old girl, which was odd even for someone with my experience. I worked backwards from Shikaku's death. I may not technically be omniscient, but I do see a lot and have a great memory.

The conclusion was a little sad. Little Kako Kinokawa broke things basically by being born through a feat of incredible luck. Kako was born despite Tsunade's gift to kunoichi, a condom and having sex during a safe period. The odds against that were astronomical. No, seriously, there was a better chance that a large asteroid would drop on the village than the girl having been conceived under those circumstances.

It was against my instincts to put the burden of setting things to right on a six year old girl whose only crime was being born. The plan may be cruel at times, but I didn't consider myself to be that cruel, especially when there were other people who could be used to sort things out more effectively. Then I saw what the girl did to take care of her brother and followed her for a week.

This was a girl that could really use some help. Normally I wouldn't be able to provide it. It went against the plan. But with the plan in jeopardy anyways, I had a lot more leeway and even at six, I could tell that this was a girl that deserved power and could use it responsibly.

I may have given her power, but she more or less ignored it. She muttered something about hallucinations and just got on with life. In retrospect, I'm not sure why I expected the sleep deprived, incredibly goal oriented six year old to react differently.

This was actually rather annoying. I liked giving the Gamer ability because it was the closest thing I had to being able to talk to someone under the Rules I operated under. This girl had been so sleep deprived that she didn't even notice that she wasn't sleep deprived anymore from the Gamer's Body ability.

Fortunately, I didn't have to tweak things too much to get her going. A muttered "What do I have to do today?" I used to trigger the quest menu and she seemed happy to have a visual of what she had planned, even if she thought it was just a surprisingly helpful hallucination. At least that's what she said out loud.

Kako did groan when she saw that I put in a quest for getting some exercise (getting her combat skills up to shape would come later). I don't cackle. It's physically impossible without a body. However, there were some unusually gusty winds around Cloud country at the time. Dutifully she got in some light calisthenics at the start of her day.

That definitely provoked a reaction. I walked my memories backwards through her entire life and I still couldn't figure out how she knew some of those swears, since I didn't think anyone on her entire planet should recognize them.

New Achievement

Impressive. Most Impressive

Use words from a language that you shouldn't know, and use them right, if a bit rudely.

+2 to Intelligence

"I'll show you rude," Kako muttered in English. "And if you're not my subsconscious, how are you quoting Darth Vader?"

As I mentioned, I'm not omniscient. I can't read minds. Well, technically I can. I can read all the electrical impulses and whatnot that make up a person's thoughts and translate them into words and images. However, for me that happens at what a human might term a subconscious level. Because of the Rules, that knowledge stays there and only gets transmitted into higher levels if the thought is directed at me. So the frustrating thing is that part of me did know why she knew about Darth Vader, but all that information was filtered from the part of me that actually did thinking and made decisions.

Still, it didn't take mind reading abilities to know that she really thought I was just a helpful mental breakdown. But, honestly, that wasn't an accomplishment. An academy student could have figured that one out… if they knew who Darth Vader was.

It was, again, annoying, because if she looked at her character sheet, she'd see that the Gamer's Mind ability would keep her from going crazy. Then again, I suppose it's not helpful if your insanity tells you that you're sane.

Still, the point wasn't to make her doubt her sanity or convince her that she was sane. I needed her to fix the gaps in the plan that the death of Shikaku would cause. At a minimum she needed to be combat capable in a decade, which should be easy enough, but if and only if she believed that her baby brother was safe and taken care of.

Thankfully she figured out her quests only updated for things I considered important or that she said out loud. But honestly, for a six year old, her brain was rather frightening. Her scheme for bringing her neighborhood together while getting things like laundry and day care were inspired. She had already started in the week that I had watched her, but I knew the people in the area better than she did and added a few additional optional quest goals to help out.

Quest Complete

A Little Help from my Friends

Bring your neighborhood together to get everyone back on their feet

1000xp, 500 ryo

Kako twitched a little as the money reward showed up, then shrugged and started humming Beatles songs. If I didn't know it wasn't possible, I'd have thought she was one of my own avatars running around. I don't know how she rationalized it, but she didn't say anything.

New Achievement

Roll With It

Be absolutely chill about acquiring Gamer abilities.

+1 to Willpower

That brought a chuckle, but no other reaction. Maybe the Gamer's Mind ability was working a bit too well. Still, with basic needs met, Kako had time to work on skill development. Annoyingly, sending her through the skills tutorial quest chain still didn't convince her that she wasn't hallucinating. Learning seals from the book instantly? Kako thought she had actually read the book, but went into a fugue where she didn't remember actually reading it.

In lieu of banging my head against a wall, there was a rockslide in Iwa. It really wasn't the same. Stupid restrictions on creating avatars.

Unlike how most Gamers would have reacted, Kako didn't start grinding seals. She did the ten storage seals for the quest, but deployed them around her apartment. She seemed to think that her subconscious wanted them to be used and the quest wasn't because I was walking her through how skills worked. I probably should have made the quest specify explosive tags.

One nice thing about completely missing the point is that she tried learning seals, actually studying. Most Gamers just ground their skills without trying to learn. It was a refreshing change, if somewhat inefficient.

It didn't seem like Kako really accepted her Gamer abilities weren't a bizarre psychosis until after doing her first mission to track down a pet. Kako didn't have any tracking skills, but the minimap led her straight to the target. It was nice getting a thanks from the girl.

New Achievement

Call Me Gaia

Accept that you really have gotten Gamer abilities. Finally.

5 skill points for a new skill

Kako didn't even hesitate before dumping the points into medical jutsu. I'm not sure why I bothered giving her a choice here, because that was the next thing on her list.

"Thanks, Gaia."

I was a bit surprised the next day when Kako turned down the quest to become chunin. "Nuh uh. Chunins get missions out of the village and I'm not doing that for six years. At least." Well, that made me feel a bit silly for being surprised. That eliminated the prospect of Kako becoming Jounin commander and replacing Shikaku directly, but if I was dead set on that happening, I wouldn't have used the Gamer ability for Kako, which was much better suited for combat.

Still, she gamely went along with the quest chain for barriers and dungeon creation. That was probably only because I bolded the part about how time passes more quickly in a dungeon. Besides, it was high time she fought a giant rat. It was tradition.

New Achievement

Tradition

Killed a Giant Rat

50xp

"♪Tradition, tradition! Tradition! Dai dai dai dai dai dai.♪"

Okay, there was no way that Kako should have known that song or about Darth Vader or how to speak English… and she segued from Tradition into L'chaim. She definitely wasn't my avatar since I wouldn't butcher Fiddler on the Roof like that. But I wasn't going to let it get to me. Kako was fun, even if she made no sense. I did check to see if she was someone else's avatar. It was against the rules (lower case rules this time, because most restrictions on entity-entity interactions weren't hard wired into us), but some entities had no sense of propriety or respect for the classics.

Kako treated medical jutsu differently than sealing. She didn't have the same drive to really understand what she was doing there. She didn't exactly grind the skill, but she made it known to the neighborhood that she could heal the little stuff, and there were lots of people who were willing to let her practice on them for things like small cuts and scrapes, especially kids who didn't want their parents to know they had gotten into a spot of trouble. Reputation points flowed like water.

I had trouble classifying Kako's gameplay style. I mean, most people who get the Gamer ability fall into neat categories. You've got munchkins who upon seeing that there are numbers attached to everything want to max out every number they can. You've got social types that try to max out their reputation with every person and faction that they can, with the notable subtype of the harem seeker. You've got questers that focus on doing every quest that they can. And there's my least favorite: the killers that go drunk on their power. If I really was omniscient I would be able to tell what category a person would end up in beforehand, but I've just got good guesses.

Kako didn't really fit any of the molds. True, she was prepubescent, but that really only eliminated being a harem seeker. Actually, that didn't even eliminate being a harem seeker, since I've seen it happen with an eleven year old before. Thankfully, it was a chaste harem that involved a lot of cuddling… right up until puberty hit, where it turned into a lot of sublimation into cooking and eating.

In any case, Kako wasn't a munchkin… in terms of her Gamer abilities. She definitely didn't grind for grinding's sake, nor did she otherwise minmax her stats, even if she gamed the legal system to an impressive degree. The closest she came to that was studying sealing, but given that she didn't grind, it seemed like something she actually enjoyed. She was very social in her neighborhood, but that seemed to be a means towards an end rather than an end in and of itself. She definitely wasn't a quester, since she turned down quite a few quests that I pushed in her direction. And definitely not a killer since the only reason she went into a dungeon was for the time dilation to study seals. Even loot couldn't tempt her since she seemed paranoid about having money she couldn't explain. Well, no, it was actually spending the money she couldn't explain. She had an impressive rainy day fund.

The thing was, Kako had to remain an active duty ninja to be considered an adult, which limited things… slightly. It was slightly silly how little work you had to do to be considered to be on the rolls. The thing was, I didn't think Kako realized how many people around her knew a few chakra tricks. They either quit the academy, failed as genin or just picked a few things up since they were in a ninja village. If you could do the leaf exercise, then you could operate a seal.

I pointed her at a bunch of kids that weren't ninjas but could operate seals and that could use the money. They were all older than her, in the range of seven to eleven, but she bossed them into a little company. With storage seals they could do deliveries and some cleanup work that it would normally take adults to do. The kids got near adult pay and paid a rental fee to Kako for the storage seals.

New Achievement

Loophole Abuse

I'm surprised this is the first time you earned an achievement named this

100xp, 1000 ryo

That doesn't do a lot to help with her money laundering problems, but it does get word of mouth about the little girl who is a prodigy with seals. Kako didn't want the attention, but she could use it. She had muttered something about needing to be visible enough to stay out of Danzo's clutches, which is something else she definitely shouldn't have known about. I would know, being able to look back on her entire life. I didn't know why this was more surprising than her knowing English, but it was. Either way, I integrated faction attention/threat levels as part of her quest rewards.

Kako took a number of quests that leveraged her sealing skills and kept her off the Root radar. Mostly. For example, providing privacy seals to restaurants increased Danzo's attention to her, but increased the average ninja's attention to her more, making it riskier to grab her.

New Achievement

Walking on the Edge

That knife balance between being interesting and too well known to mess with

500xp, +2 to Intelligence

Unfortunately for Kako, that just meant avoiding Root's direct involvement.

By the time she turned seven, she had reached Special Jounin level in skill. If they were being objective, that could be in either sealing, sensing or healing. That last one would never happen because the hospital is deeply suspicious of people learning healing outside of their walls, but she had the skills.

She could have reached Jounin level if it wasn't for the fact that she prioritized utility skills over combat skills. Instead of grinding taijutsu or throwing skills she worked on things like cooking and sealing. Admittedly, sealing had combat uses, but not the way Kako used it. Unless you count the time she came up with a seal that I swear would cause nuclear fusion. Good for blowing up a village or ten. Not so good for the levels of personal combat that were common in this world.

New Achievement

Please Don't

Created a seal that the gods themselves find disturbing (I would know)

+2 to Wisdom (Obviously you need more of this)

"I'm guessing you wouldn't like the idea I had about anti-matter then."

New Achievement

Pretty Please

With sugar on top

+5 to Wisdom (Lots more of this)

Thankfully her foray into theoretical nuclear physics was impractical. She didn't have the deuterium necessary for her nuclear fusion seal to actually work. It was just something she sketched out while waiting for Shikamaru to finish his bottle. Granted, extracting deuterium from seawater was a lot easier with water chakra than I liked thinking about, but Kako listened to me and didn't do anymore research in that direction.

This did remind me that Kako really needed to make more friends, as impractical as it was for a seven year old single mother. I eliminated the idea of friends her own age as unrealistic. About the only one that would work was Itachi, and his role in the Plan made that awkward at best.

Sadly, and I did the numbers on this three times to be sure, the best option seemed to be Inuzuka Tsume. It was a bit underhanded since Kako had been adamant about not making chunin, but Tsume would be sure to bully the girl into leaving the genin corps. Honestly, there were a lot of tower jobs that Kako could do that would meet her goals. Plus, Tsume really didn't care what someone looked like as long as they were competent. She would manage to forget Kako was seven after knowing her for a few months. All the same, I already had a headache from the chaos this would cause, and I don't even have a head.

Causing snowfall to increase on some glaciers was a poor substitute for an ice pack on the forehead, but it was the best I could do. Minimally fortified, I was about to send Kako a quest when she sent me a thought. "Hey, Gaia? Thanks for being my best friend."

I don't cry. I'm physically incapable of it. If precipitation increased world wide after that, it was a complete coincidence.

Kako looked up at the sound of the ding.

New Achievement

Heart of the Goddess

Thank you for being mine

+2 to all attributes