Genius Hyuga Twins

Chapter 33: Pain

Tsunade knows that the next big moment to happen will be Pain attacking the village. She has been upping the drills run in town on the shinobi, and has been working with the barrier corps to have different defensive strategies ready. Jiraiya had also come to her requesting to go an infiltrate the Rain village, but Tsunade ordered him to take Naruto to Mount Myōboku instead for sage training. Naruto's leaving earlier this time than in the story, but will be back and forth to the village more so. As a cover, Tsunade told Jiraiya she was sending a specialist to infiltrate the Rain Village, and she 'sent' me. I'm not actually going to the Rain at all, instead I'm going to be monitoring the outside of the village and just spending the next little bit of time training and preparing for the Pain attack.

News got spread around that Sasuke killed Orochimaru and is forming his own team. I was oddly a little bitter that the credit wasn't going to me, but I didn't care that much at the end of the day. I told Tsunade and Kakashi about the hawk I received right after I got it, so they at least know what's up. Sasuke hasn't sent anything more, but I don't expect to hear from him until after Itachi dies.

Tsunade had ordered for a large specialist team to go around and find Itachi. She offered for me to join them, but I advised against going at all. Unfortunately, the plan had already been put into motion when she offered, so I just opted out. I knew this was the mission when Naruto and our friend will try to find Itachi but will just run into Sasuke. They will fail, and Sasuke will fight with Itachi. Unfortunately, Itachi will die soon from his illness, I think he's just waiting for Sasuke to fight him. I gave Kakashi a warning he might run into Obito on the mission, and I left it to him on how he wants to handle that.

Naruto sought me out after he came back from the failed mission. "Ami... I saw him. I saw Sasuke, but I failed. I couldn't bring him home." He tells me sadly as I am home for a short 'break from my mission'.

"Naruto, he still has something he needs to accomplish. He can't see a way out of his darkness until he finishes his mission. Until he kills Itachi." I say truthfully and sadly to him. "For now, all we can do as his friends is train ourselves to be ready to stand by his side when he returns. I think... I feel like he will come back on his own, when he's ready. When he's not lost. He might need you to smack him around a little to stop brooding and come home earlier, but you'll do fine at that when you see him again." I compliment him as he grins at me.

"I saw Kabuto, too. He's gone sort of crazy. That arm you chopped off? He replaced it with Orochimaru's arm. He gave us intelligence on the Akatsuki, but I just don't know what his goal is at all." Naruto complains in confusion.

"Great..." I say sarcastically. "Just can't win with that guy." I grumble out. He stays and chats a little longer before he has to head back to his training with Jiraiya at the toad land.

I set up to meet with Kakashi outside of the village, getting an update on how his part of the mission went with his old friend. "How did it go? Did you see Obito?" I ask him once we are relaxing privately by a waterfall.

"I did." He says grimly, then sighs. "He was completely unrecognizable. There was no semblance of Obito in him anywhere. I... I tried to talk to him. Without telling him I knew though, it was hard. I tried to relate, and understand him, but I just couldn't."

"You didn't tell him you knew?" I ask curiously. "I really didn't know which way you would go with that."

"I didn't either. It just didn't feel like the right time to reveal we knew." He admits. "Though you should know, he asked about you. He thought Hinata was you at first until someone called her name, but Obito was looking for you, Ami. I think he knows who's been killing off his Akatsuki members." He warns me seriously.