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Amano hasn’t been active ANBU since Tokimi-ba insisted on turning over all her police responsibilities to him, hasn’t worn the Crow mask in months. That doesn’t mean certain people won’t sneak around invisibly to complain, especially when the topic is Uzume.
He can’t actually stop Uzume from doing whatever she feels like doing any more than he could ever stop Kakashi from making unhealthy choices, but he does understand the urge to complain. Amano wishes it were hard to believe that Uzume challenged the Hokage to a spar, but it really, really isn’t hard at all.
“Uzume, what were you thinking?” he greets Uzume under his breath when she finally turns up at the police station he can’t presently leave.
Her expression is at once too flat and too smug, all wrong, like she’s feeling too many things to hide any of them properly. “Privacy seals,” she barks, crossing her arms, and that’s not a good sign, he can’t remember the last time Uzume wanted to have an absolutely private conversation instead of bothering every cop in hearing range with whatever her topic of the day might be.
Amano hits the privacy seals, holding his breath and hoping this problem won’t be anything he and Uzume can’t cope with...hoping Hikaku is safe. “What’s wrong?”
Uzume lets out a snort, mixed laughter and frustration and a thread of fury that’s worrying him. “Not as much as there was before the spar with Tsunade-sama. It’s a long story.”
That’s not a promising start. “Go ahead,” Amano says warily.
“I’m a shadow clone,” Uzume adds, “don’t kick me.”
Amano raises his eyebrows. The shadow clone jutsu has a lot of cost and risk involved for not much gain, given Uzume’s moderate chakra reserves and aggressive attack style. Tokimi-ba had long ago decreed that her daughter Uzume in particular should never use shadow clones.
The clone grins and kicks him in the leg, hard. Amano sighs and retreats behind his desk. Yes, that was why.
“Are you going to tell me or not?” he prompts Uzume’s clone.
Her face goes momentarily grim. “I can, now,” she says. “It’s okay now. Probably. Inoichi and Tsunade-sama are on our side.”
Amano dislikes just about everything about that phrasing, for all that Uzume seems to mean it as good news. Specifically the implication that there was a plausible scenario in which the Hokage and the Yamanaka clan head who’s helped Mikoto-sama so often might not be on their side.
He says nothing and tilts his head, encouraging Uzume to continue. Demanding details when he doesn’t know the overview will only confuse matters more.
The shadow clone throws herself into Uzume’s chair with a perfect imitation of Uzume’s darkest pout. “You don’t want to know any of this,” she warns him. “I don’t want to say any of it, either.”
Uzume is rarely wrong about that, and yet it can’t matter. “If I need to know it, I’d prefer to hear it as quickly as possible,” Amano tells her.
“Fine,” Uzume huffs. “You asked.” Even so, she delays by burying her face in her hands for a long moment.
“Is Hikaku all right?” Amano demands, out of patience on at least that vital point.
“He’s not hurt,” Uzume replies at once, which is some relief, although that’s a suspiciously specific denial if Amano has ever heard one. “I’m looking after him.”
Amano sighs. “Good. And?”
The clone grumbles another moment, then reluctantly picks up the thread. “And some kid told Mikoto that Danzō stole Shisui’s eye to use on the Hokage.”
The implications spin out so horrible and inescapable that Amano can only grip his desk and try not to fall over. “Couldn’t you have given me any warning before you and Hikaku took off to confirm that and break Tsunade-sama out of it?”
“No,” Uzume snaps, flat and grim, and…
Amano’s breath hisses out. “No,” he gives in, “I suppose not.”
Not when any knowledge would put Amano under the risk of being arrested as a conspirator if anything went wrong. Not when the Uchiha are still reeling from an incomplete massacre and an in-depth treason investigation combined less than a decade ago. Not when far too many ANBU still seem to assume that Amano’s position as head of Konoha’s police force is some sort of undercover operation to keep the Uchiha under control, which it is not and never has been.
“You’re clear,” Uzume mutters, “you and the police. One of Hikaku’s clones checked earlier.”
Amano hadn’t drawn much attention to himself before Danzō’s death, and neither had Crow as an ANBU captain, a persistent worry proven right in ways he never expected. How many people have yet to be cleared? Amano can only hope Inoichi is quick about the job.
He understands Uzume’s reluctance better now. If he doesn’t prompt her, she might not say anything, and it’s all too obvious she needs to. “Some kid,” he quotes her phrasing, “one of the others Danzō kidnapped?” Hikaku had used words like recruit and train but Amano’s been a cop long enough now to recognize and hate a kidnapper.
Uzume grimaces. “Yes and no. Funny story.”
Amano braces for impact.
“You remember Shikako-chan?”
Of course Amano remembers Shikako Nara, Sasuke’s tiny friend with her backpack full of explosive seals, the kid who’d drawn Crow’s attention along with half of Konoha the night of the massacre in time to save Uzume and a majority of the Uchiha. The child presumed dead at Itachi’s hand.
He’s got a sinking feeling already. “Danzō got her,” he guesses, because little else could put quite that expression on Uzume’s face.
“Turns out Shikako-chan was Hikaku’s unidentified partner.”
Twice she’d fought a battle Amano would have gladly fought in her place and he’d been too slow to recognize it, too slow to back her up. Disappeared from her family within her own village because Danzō ordered it. “No wonder the kid had a grudge,” he murmurs in sad approval, relieved three times over again that Hikaku had successfully killed Danzō years ago and put an end to at least some of his plots.
Uzume takes a moment to vent her emotions by swearing at Danzō, even more creatively than usual.
When she starts to wind down Amano asks, “How did this come to light?” It doesn’t seem unreasonable that Shikako-chan might have found a way to leave behind some evidence, though he’d have hoped that if she did manage any such thing the investigation would have turned it up before now.
Uzume hisses a long sigh and slumps sideways in her chair. “This is where it gets really weird,” she warns him.
Only here? Amano presses his hands against his temples in the preemptive futile attempt to make sense of whatever Uzume’s brought for him this time. There’s no point in putting up a shinobi’s cool mask with Uzume, she’d just kick it down.
“Ibiki’s been interrogating a pair of weird shinobi who showed up at the gate a while back,” Uzume starts. “Hikaku reported them as suspicious, so he’d been helping. Turns out the injured one looks just like Aoba Yamashiro and the other one’s a Nara girl.”
Amano withholds comment, unwilling to give Uzume more reason to get sidetracked. He remembers the alert from the gate, nothing out of the ordinary, and Uzume’s crow-message that Hikaku had called on her for backup, an event so rare Amano doesn’t think it’s ever happened before.
Uzume rakes a hand through her hair, evidence of her discomfort with the whole situation. “The girl claims, and Inoichi’s mindwalk of the Aoba copy seems to support, that they’re from an alternate version of Konoha. The girl plays with seals and when they got into a bad enough spot she tried to copy the Hiraishin and landed here.”
Yeah, okay, this is the weird part, Amano has to admit.
The clone waves both hands in irritation too tired to be adequately expressed. “So apparently in another Konoha, Shikako Nara was too spooked by everything to make friends with Sasuke. She didn’t get kidnapped; she noticed Danzō enough to be paranoid about what he’d do if she said anything. Especially after all the Uchiha except Sasuke got murdered.”
Amano winces. Even Uzume? Even the children? “She noticed...Danzō, not Itachi?”
“You can interrogate Mikoto later,” Uzume mutters. “Shikako claims to be a chakra sensor of some skill.”
“Might have sensed Danzō using Shisui’s eye even if she was too far away for anyone to realize she was there,” Amano speculates, thoughtful.
“Danzō is still an active threat in her home,” Uzume reports, tone flat. “No one to take him out, and although Hikaku’s alternate is alive there he hasn’t displayed the Sharingan at all, to Shikako’s knowledge.”
Probably still in Danzō’s clutches, then, if the other Hikaku had survived so long.
She scowls. “Hikaku volunteered to go and help if Shikako manages to reverse her broken Hiraishin. I told her not to take him anywhere without me.”
“Of course he did.” Amano heaves a sigh. “And of course you did. I hope you realize that if you try to go without me, I’ll make you regret it and then I’ll tell your mother.”
Uzume’s clone smirks at him, shoulders relaxing into her chair for the first time. “I thought you’d say that. Don’t worry, I’ll let you have some of the fun.”
However weird this gets, Amano’s determined to face it with Uzume. Not even the prospect of traveling worlds with a teenager who’s already broken the Hiraishin can daunt him.
He’s not quite sure how to tell Tokimi-ba that he might be going for an indefinite vacation and leaving her the police department paperwork again. Maybe in a note?
Maybe not. He does want to have some motivation for coming back alive.