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Chapter Text

KONOHA INTELLIGENCE DIVISION

SHINOBI PERSONNEL FILE

LAST UPDATED: XX/XX/XXXX [WARTIME PROTOCOL]

NAME: Inui Megumi (乾恵美)

NINJA REGISTRATION #: 009710

DATE OF BIRTH: January 13

ACADEMY GRADUATION: 10

GENIN: 10 | Team Hasu, Team Leader: Yamanaka Hasu  [DISBANDED] See: MISSION REPORT FILE #XXXX

CHUNIN: 13 | Squad 0497, Team Leader: [REDACTED]

TOKUBETSU JONIN: —

JONIN: —

REGISTERED TECHNIQUE(s) (AGE REGISTERED): Yin Smoke Release (11)

CURRENT AGE/RANK: 15 / Chunin

CURRENT DIVISION: Medical Corps

Shikaku frowned at the file in his hand.

As the Third War dragged on, his father, Shikarou, had been progressively training him in his duties as heir to the Nara Clan and as the next Jonin Commander. If his father passed in the line of war, Shikaku would be able to step up in his place.

Hopefully, his old man had the sense not to die and leave all that work to him prematurely. Shikaku hadn’t even gotten married to Yoshino yet, and the woman would probably murder him if he pushed off the wedding any more than he had.

For now, Shikarou lived, and his father had given him the task to figure out a discrepancy in a certain squad stationed in the heart of the Iwa front. Squad 0497, one of several medical encampments.

Essential as medical encampments were, the main vulnerability was that they were stationary. A stationary target meant easy pickings for the Iwa Explosion Corps to swoop in for an ambush. It went without saying that a Konoha medical encampment in Iwa territory would be targeted even more.

The team leader of that miserable situation was Jun, or [REDACTED] in any standard personnel file. One of the ANBU Commander’s own. The name ‘Jun’ was likely an alias, or maybe it really was his real name, but all Shikaku knew was that this Jun had the unenviable position of leading a squad with guaranteed casualties among his own members.

About two years ago, those casualties ceased.

The issue wasn’t inaccurate reports or tampered communications. Jun was loyal through and through. Besides the fact that he had fought and survived the Second War as a skilled medic and as a covert operative with a completely different specialty, Jun was a simple sort of man. Give him orders, and it’ll be done. Give him a team, and he’ll care for them. Give him a miserable situation, and he’ll make the best of it.

It was something else, and his father was going spare trying to figure out what was different.

If the difference was replicable, then the injured forces could ease their fears of being pelted by explosives while vulnerable in the medical tents.

Shikaku was given the task of figuring out where and what changed in those two years.

Hence, the file in his hand.

The completely innocuous file that should not be the reason for a zero-casualty team.

There was nothing special about a chunin medic-nin with civilian roots. Bog standard besides the useful medical specialty, and her genin team was made of a flower-district kid, a very distant cousin of Shikaku’s, and a Yamanaka jonin sensei. Maybe the Yamanaka was close to Inoichi in some way and could help provide Shikaku with some context, but Inui Megumi joined Jun’s squad after her chunin promotion while Yamanaka Hasu remained in the village due to his debilitating knee injury.

If you asked him to come up with a profile of a useful, if boring, shinobi, Inui Megumi would be near the top of the list. Yet, somehow, this file was itching at him out of all the other variables. 

The puzzle was sitting in front of him, waiting to be solved, and he couldn’t even find the seams to begin prying it open. It was frustrating, but he knew that this was the key to what had been bothering his father so much.

Also, it would be great fun to rub it in his old man’s face if Shikaku found out the answer first.

His musings were interrupted by the sound of shuffling entering the Records Room he was in.

“Shikaku!” Inoichi greeted him sunnily. “I heard that you were in here. Did you need any help finding something?”

“I found it already,” he drawled, waving the file. “Just need to figure out how it fits in this situation my old man’s given me.”

“Let me see,” Inoichi motioned for the file. He took a moment to thumb through it. “Huh. Megumi-chan?”

Shikaku lit up. Nice, a source right here. Less work. “You know her?”

“Yeah, she’s one of Hasu’s genin. Saved his life from a whole platoon of enemy-nin after they messed up his leg bad. Her and Kouki-kun played it quiet and picked off the platoon until they were all dead. Shame that his other student Ren-kun didn't make through though.”

“So, a couple of fresh genin took on a platoon and survived?”

“Don’t sound so doubtful,” Inoichi scolded. “Kouki’s one of your clan. Have some faith.”

“This Megumi-chan isn’t from my clan though. And she’s apparently the other one who saved your Hasu.”

“Ah, Hasu said it was because of her personal technique,” he rubbed his chin. “It wasn’t much of a technique before, just an alternative smoke bomb with some numbing effects, but the stress of the situation caused some sort of reaction? I’m not too sure on the details, but Hasu swore up and down that was what saved him.”

Shikaku’s eyes fell to the line of REGISTERED TECHNIQUE(s) (AGE REGISTERED).

Yin Smoke Release.

Unintentionally, he was reminded of the Nara Clan’s own Shadow Imitation Technique which was also yin-based.

Smoke.

CHUNIN: 13.

Transferred to Jun after Yamanaka Hasu’s injury.

Smoke.

Inui Megumi’s Yin Smoke Release. Capable of picking off an Iwa platoon.

Two years of zero casualties.

CURRENT AGE/RANK: 15/Chunin.

The facts slid and rattled in his mind before he spoke again. “Thanks, Inoichi. I think that information solved most of it.”

“Oh, well, you’re welcome.”

Shikaku smirked. He was going to lord this information over his father. Two years of discrepancies driving Nara Shikarou, Nara Clan Head and Jonin Commander, up the wall, and Shikaku solved it with just a single file.

.

.

.

Inui Megumi, huh. Nara Kouki was her surviving genin teammate?

Time to flex some clan heir privileges and find out some more about this Nara cousin of his.

Chapter Text

Uchiha Fugaku heard the commotion outside first.

“You expect someone as busy as Chief Fugaku to lend his time to someone who doesn’t even bother to introduce herself?” a muffled voice sounded through the door.

Despite proper conduct, several officers turned their attention from the current morning meeting to the voice outside. Fugaku suppressed the urge to sigh.

Yashiro.

While he was a good officer and right-hand, his temper often got the better of him. Hopefully, he wasn’t taking it out on a civilian. That would cause friction….

“Inui Megumi,” a rather crisp voice cut through, tone all military precision. A shinobi then.

“Ah. The one that our Jonin Commander had to drag into her promotion?” Yashiro probed.

The crisp voice immediately mutated into a beguiling pitch. Fugaku had to check his ears to confirm if a shinobi was really using the accents of the capital.

“I wouldn’t dare presume to know the mind of our Jonin Commander, but I simply had found myself undeserving at the time.”

Noble as well then.

The absolute contrary nature of a noble being a shinobi was ridiculous. Nobles were meant to sit in their cushions high above the earth, were meant to hire shinobi for their work, were meant to maintain their status quo with desperation.

Then again, Fugaku had heard some interesting gossip about Inui Megumi from Shikarou.

“Can you believe it?” Nara Shikarou, long time friend of Fugaku and current Jonin Commander, said. “My son found out why Squad 0497 had zero med-nin casualties from the past two years.”

Fugaku eyed the paper flapping in his hand. While Shikarou and him were close, the lack of respect to any shinobi files still had him bristling. “Squad 0497?”

“Oh, you know,” Shikarou said slyly. “That medical encampment right in the middle of the Iwa front.”

Interesting.

“Rare. Those are prime targets for the Iwa Explosion Corps.”

“I don’t know whether to be proud of Shikaku or tell him off for the cheek he gave me for finding out before me,” Shikarou shook his head with a lopsided smirk. “Look at this file, Fugaku, and tell me that you would think that this is the reason…”

Fugaku remembered looking at the file.

Inui Megumi.

While it was indeed slightly unexpected, Fugaku wasn’t as surprised as Shikarou had been. Perhaps it was the difference in work, but Fugaku often found that the least expected person committed the most unconventional acts. Usually criminals, but still. The logic carried over.

Meanwhile, his men were no longer paying attention to the meeting at all. Tekka, an intern nearly ready to graduate as an officer, was presenting, and even his words tapered off to listen.

Ridiculous, all of them.

“Dismissed, all of you,” Fugaku barked. “We will resume after the morning patrol roster finishes up. An hour.”

Like cats finding prey, they all immediately scattered to beeline to the door. Clearly, Fugaku needed to schedule some training in discipline for this lot.

With that dark thought, he strolled out to find out the cause of this distraction.

Inui Megumi was the most impertinent and insufferable jonin Fugaku had the singular displeasure of meeting.

Borderline insulting his clan. Having the audacity to dare him to overreach the Uchiha Clan's power to the hospital. Snipping at all the perfectly reasonable claims he made in response with more counterpoints. Even giving a gift wrapped with the same fabric his wife Mikoto wore so beautifully to their engagement ceremony, only after she sat down.

That morning meeting was never resumed. Two hours. Inui Megumi made him waste two hours, reeling him in and dangling bait after bait for him to continue to argue with her.

The sheer temerity of this girl had still had his temper burning at embers of his anger.

Fugaku ended work early and came home to see Mikoto in the middle of dinner preparations. When he went to the kitchen, she was gutting fish, entrails bright red in her hands.

He set the gift—wrapped in the fabric of Mikoto’s engagement kimono for gods’ sake…! —on the counter before selfishly allowing himself to wrap his arms around his wife’s waist and lean his head on her shoulder. Fugaku hadn’t seen Itachi come out to greet him, so he gave himself this moment of weakness to show.

“Dear?” Mikoto blinked in surprise. “You’re early. Did something happen at work?”

Instead of being a proper man and explaining, Fugaku decided to sigh heavily before pressing his head harder onto her shoulder.

“Oh my,” she laughed. “Must be someone from work rather than a case causing you this grief.”

Even years after their marriage, Mikoto still surprised him with how well she read him.

“Something like that,” he grumbled into her neck. “Not work…someone came in to see me for a meeting. What they said would be beneficial to the clan…just…the way it was presented…”

“Wicked-Eye Fugaku didn’t get to see the point first and was strongarmed into agreeing with them, then?”

“Mikoto.”

“My, Fugaku,” she teased, still cleaning the fish. “It’s just how you are. That’s how we first met, didn’t we?”

“You were much more gracious about it than this person was,” he murmured.

Mikoto was five years younger than him and had been so adept in spinning him to her tune that in his ill-tempered youth, he couldn’t see it until they somehow were already courting. The memories soothed the last of his temper, and he let go of her with a small sigh, leaning against the counter.

Mikoto washed her hands and set the fish in the refrigerator before turning to face him. “If it’s for the clan’s benefit, wouldn’t it be alright to listen to this person?”

It was that simple. Just…

“The jonin who brought me the proposal is a shinobi with noble roots, I’m certain. I caught a hint of the capital accent in her voice before she met with me.”

A supremely unimpressed look crossed his wife’s face. “Dear. You know better than to judge based on status. You’ve worked with citizens from all classes. What is the proposal this jonin brought?”

Chastised, Fugaku picked up the gift and handed it to her before explaining.

.

.

.

“Fugaku,” Mikoto breathed out after he finished. “If the clan agrees, the benefits of this…”

“I know,” he grumbled. No matter his opinion on her sheer impertinence, Inui Megumi had been articulate in outlining her proposal to the Uchiha Clan.

In the uneasiness of the aftermath of war, the Uchiha Clan could solidify their standing by sending out a small number of youths in this new hospital unit to be trained. In a personal technique developed by a jonin. Yin Smoke Release seemed exactly the sort of thing that any proper Uchiha would be good at with their natural fire and yin affinities. The clan would benefit.

Just…

“I know you’re a bit miffed that someone so young was able to bait you so easily, dear,” Mikoto soothed. “But at least she didn’t come to our clan grounds for this.”

He shuddered at the sheer idea of Inui Megumi trying the same tactic on his own clan elders and members.

“How about this?” she smiled. “I knew her mother, Chiyo-san, since I graduated from the Academy. I’ll make a social call to invite her daughter to tea. Her mother is a pleasant person, and I’m sure she’ll agree.”

Not a bad idea. His wife was his better in this sort of interpersonal issue, after all.

“That sounds ideal,” Fugaku nodded. “I’ll bring it up to the clan in the meeting tomorrow then.”

Mikoto pressed a kiss to his cheek. “All sorted then, dear.”

Chapter Text

Itachi had just turned four when Father brought him to see the battlefield.

Father had meant well.

Even Mother had approved of the idea, for the Third War had seemed never-ending from what little he had heard in whispers at night. He hadn’t been allowed to stay up to greet Father when he came back from the battlefront. Something about him being too tense and on-edge so soon after whatever he did.

“Your father sees a lot when he and the Military Police go out for sweeps of the post-battlefield,” Mother said when Itachi asked.

“A lot?” he parroted back.

“Shinobi life isn’t just the shuriken and kunai practice you like so much, Itachi. Sometimes there are some things that weigh heavy on the mind.”

Heavy on the mind.

Itachi was too little and too young for him to truly understand what that meant. All he knew about being a shinobi really did amount to the shuriken and kunai practice that he did. Also, something to do with his Uchiha heritage. From the praise Father and Mother gave him, he had much better instincts than most children his age.

Itachi didn’t know many other children. Or if any of them did shuriken and kunai practice with live steel as he did. They were all too loud and too dull.

Father and Mother were smart though. The beloved Uchiha Clan Head and Clan Matriarch that made the clan proud.

Which made it so much harder when Father took him to the battlefield to see a field of corpses.

Post-mortem sweeps, as Father said. Itachi would be safe, but he was to carry a pack of kunai to protect himself as needed.

Blood. Smoke from explosives. Live steel discarded so easily next to countless bodies. Dead bodies.

One of those dead bodies was Itachi’s doing.

An Iwa-nin had asked for water, and Itachi had pulled out his own canteen before the man suddenly rose to attack him. It had been instinct from hours of kunai practice. A single slice to the throat, precisely at the angle where blood would gush and the air would wheeze out of lungs. Easy. Just like he had practiced so often. Yet for some reason, until now, he never connected all his shuriken and kunai practice to killing by his own hand.

His first kill done just like that, and Itachi had no idea why the man had attacked him.

“This is war, Itachi,” Father said solemnly, watching the life bleed out from the man who had made one last stand against Itachi. “Countries fight countries in war, not people. That is why strangers will try and kill each other even if you did nothing wrong.”

Itachi stayed mum.

“Remember this sight, Itachi. For this is the shinobi world,” Father continued.

Blood. Smoke from explosives. Live steel discarded so easily next to countless bodies. Dead bodies.

Itachi wasn’t sure what being a shinobi meant, to throw away lives so easily.

What was the meaning of life then?

That question lingered in his mind, even as the war came to an end with a ceasefire. Even as Father and Mother remained busy with the postwar duties. Far too many people had died in the line of the war, the third of its kind since Konoha had been founded. Yet some famed war veterans were lauded as heroes.

Heroes. Those same heroes must have killed a lot to earn such a title.

He wondered if it came as easy to them as that instinctive slash Itachi made towards that man who attacked him.

Itachi was not yet old enough to visit outside the Uchiha Clan Compound into the village proper, but he still wanted to talk to those heroes. Ask them about what the meaning of life meant to them. If each life weighed nothing to them once they had killed so many.

He got his chance when attending a memorial for all the fallen shinobi as the Uchiha Clan Heir.

Orochimaru had been standing aside the solemn gathering, a singular figure cut in the same plain black mourning uniform, his hair long. Mother said that long hair was a traditional symbol of strength even back in the Warring States Period. Maybe this Orochimaru, one of the Legendary Sannin and a hero, could answer Itachi’s lingering question.

“What is the meaning of life?” he asked Orochimaru, standing in front of a lone grave instead of the large memorial statue.

The Snake Sannin stared down at him and answered promptly. “There is none. There is only meaning in life if it’s eternal.”

Oh.

Itachi turned quickly to sneak a glance back at Father, who he had snuck away from when he was caught in talking to someone else. By the time Itachi turned back, Orochimaru had already walked away from Itachi, that long hair swaying in the wind.

Clearly that question had not been welcomed, but the answer was honest, from what little Itachi could make of it.

There’s no meaning in life?

But no one wanted to die, right? There had to be some meaning in life if no one wanted to die?

There had to be another point that Itachi was missing.

Father showed him the shinobi world, the world that Itachi was meant to enter as the clan heir of an ancient and esteemed shinobi clan. Orochimaru, a famed war veteran of two wars, told him that there was no meaning to life.

Day after day, he wandered out to the ancestral cliffs and lands around the oldest properties of the Uchiha. Itachi consoled himself with the knowledge that at least he was still within Uchiha lands, even if he wasn’t in the compound itself. Near the Naka River, where the crows called to him, mocking him with their black wings and beady eyes.

Crows were an omen of death. Maybe their frequent visits meant that there truly was no meaning in life. Just death.

Was Itachi meant to follow that same path? To fight, kill, and die that same bloodied path in battle?

What is the point of life, anyway?

Then Mother had a frequent caller for tea.

Rare, that there would be visits to their home, the Uchiha Clan Head’s home, as hidden as it was from even their own clan members. Even rarer that the visitor was from an outsider.

A jonin, from what little Itachi could gather with cat-soft stillness, far away from the sensing range of his mother and this unknown jonin. Pale blonde hair. Tall, like Father. Lean-muscled, like Mother.

Maybe this jonin, who had been calling on Mother so frequently with the same sweets that Father and he liked so much, could answer Itachi instead.

Inui Megumi. That was the unknown jonin’s name.

Itachi had been rude, not even asking her name before he asked his question. Mother would be disappointed. Perhaps that was why Orochimaru didn’t answer him properly before leaving him.

Inui-san had been kind, answering all his questions in terms that even someone as inexperienced as he was could understand. Inui Megumi had fought in the war, yet she was a medic-nin, something that Itachi hadn’t known that shinobi of her caliber could even be. Jonin were meant to fight, he thought. She had fought to protect, not just kill. 

Yet she seemed oddly fixated on the fact that even as shinobi as they were, fighting was meant for war.

“Sometimes the people I heal go back to fight. Sometimes they go and do that and come back, and that cycle continues. Yet, that was during war. We’re out of war now, so now there should be less fighting. Then we figure out what we want from there. Life moves on, and each one of us continue one step at a time figuring out our own meaning of life besides constant battle.”

Itachi wondered if Inui Megumi and Orochimaru had such different views on the meaning of life because she had fought in one war while Orochimaru had fought in two.

That didn’t make much sense to him though. People didn’t change their whole meaning of life just because they saw more death, right?

At least, that’s what Itachi could assume. He agreed with Inui-san’s philosophy of life much more than Orochimaru’s, so maybe that was bias on his part.

Medic-nin, though.

“For a medic-nin like me, life is a bit contradictory. A lot of people that I see are people that are hurt. So, it’s my job to help heal them so they can try and move on to continue their lives.”

Mother had told Itachi not to wander off so far, so he chose to hole up in the Uchiha clan library, trawling through countless texts for any mention of medical ninjutsu and historical retellings of healing in the shinobi world.

Uchiha were known for combat. If they healed, maybe their ancestral leader Uchiha Madara wouldn’t have lost himself in the grief of the loss of his brother, Izuna, to the point of disgracing the Uchiha name by defecting the village.   

As Itachi did his best to read through the texts he could understand, he wondered if Madara had thought about the meaning of life after his loss. If healing ninjutsu would have healed the aches of losing his brother.

Strange, the concept of healing and medic-nin in a shinobi world where it seemed like everyone else was meant to fight, kill, and die.

In the months after, Itachi lost himself in the clan library. A new Yondaime was inaugurated.

Father had been oddly pleased recently, a mix of exasperation and pride, and Mother was equally happy. It was a change from the somber air the house had during the war. From what little Itachi eavesdropped from the discussions his parents had, apparently, Inui-san had successfully petitioned the clan for an Uchiha representative in the hospital as a part of a new unit.

“It’ll be an Uchiha foothold in the village governance,” Father murmured over the sake that Mother poured for him, in the deep hour of night.

Itachi was supposed to be asleep. There was a tiny crack in his bedroom floor above the living room that his parents sat in. A remnant of when a previous heir had probably dug his kunai to eavesdrop before it was forgotten. It didn’t seem like the sort of thing Father would do, so perhaps it was another, long dead one.

“Remember how displeased you were when you first heard of the idea from Megumi-chan?” Mother laughed, the soft sound seeping through the floorboard’s crack. “I recall spoiling you that same day…”

“Mikoto.”

Softer murmuring continued, too quiet for Itachi to overhear, and he slid back to bed.

A new hospital unit? Was that what she meant by ‘figuring out her own meaning of life besides constant battle?’ Was it another extension of ‘her job to help heal to allow others to continue their lives?’

Shifting in his sheets, he continued to wonder.

.

.

.

“Look,” Shisui hesitated. “I know you’re curious and all about the alliance the Uchiha have with the hospital, but I don’t really think—”

“I’ve met Inui-san before,” Itachi interrupted. “She visits Mother a lot. And she’s kind. She won’t mind if I follow you.”

After finding out that Shisui was the representative sent by the Uchiha for the new hospital unit, the Enmaku Unit, Itachi immediately figured out his schedule to convince him to tag along. He did not spend months in the clan library trying to figure out the meaning of medical-nin when the answer was right in front of him the whole time.

Especially since Inui-san seemed to find her own meaning of life. Itachi wanted to know more about it.

Shisui looked vaguely harassed, and Itachi did his best to put on the face that got him an extra serving of sweets after dinner.

“Okay, that’s fine and all,” Shisui tried again. “But I don’t think your mother would be happy that I’m bringing out her son to a training ground when you’re not even in the Academy yet.”

“It’s fine. I’ve been to one to practice shuriken and kunai.”

(Although that had been done with less frequency since…that time on the battlefield and his dive into the library.)

“That is not the same. Those are clan training grounds, not a live training field for shinobi…”

“Please?” Itachi made his eyes as wide as possible. It got him pinched cheeks at the dango shop, but Itachi needed Shisui for this. He couldn’t go and interrupt the teatime with his mother and Inui-san, that would be rude. “Shisui-san, I really would appreciate it.”

Shisui rubbed his hands over his face. “Oh fine. It looks like you’re going to follow me anyway even if I say no.”

Itachi let himself turn smug on the inside. “Thank you, Shisui-san.”

“Come on now. Hopefully I can sneak you back before our Clan Head catches you out and about on any of the patrols.”