#ftb fic

[macchiato-dreaming22]

I was tagged by @edai-crplpnk, ty :D

Please share your last sentence; or, if you don't have one, share a plot bunny or idea!

Kankuro sighs dramatically. “I’m so glad I don’t have to eat your stupid campfire fish anymore.” — In the Land of the Blind, Ch 18

@lavender-long-stories @lyricfrost13

Hello hello, wanna play?

[macchiato-dreaming22]

Karura lives au:

With Karura's, Tensei's and Kankuro's love of collecting stuff, the Kaze's house is gonna end up looking like Howl's bedroom in Howl's Moving Castle.

Temari and Gaara don't have that trait, but they sometimes do bring home stuff they think their mother or brothers would like.

Turns out, her little brothers aren’t sleeping, either. Temari finds them hunkered down in the workshop, where Kankuro is fidgeting more than tinkering and Gaara is clearly not reading the open book in his lap. “Budge over,” she grumbles, plopping her things down on the only bench clear of her brother’s stupid knick-knacks. Gaara scoots to the side, then pats at her pillow curiously with his free hand. “Uh,” Kankuro blinks. “Pretty sure there are oil stains on that one, jan.” “Will the oil stains kill me if I don’t agree with their political opinions?” “...nah.” “Then I don’t care.” Not right now, at least. Whoever has laundry duty next can deal with it, unless it’s her, in which case she might just buy a new blanket. A bigger one, even, because sometime after she falls asleep, it’s stolen from her by the grabby hands of also-asleep little brothers— which would be more heartwarming if her toes weren’t freezing.

— except from Chapter 46, To Rome

[macchiato-dreaming22]

I use the terminology ‘legacy’ and ‘lineage’ a lot in my Naruto fanfic series about an SI-OC in Sunagakure, Fade to Black. Let’s take a look at the main character’s expanded lineage: the Kazekage Family.

Here’s the link to part one of this monstrously long post. Beware of spoilers if you haven’t gotten up to chapter 35 of All Roads Lead!

The Kazekage Family

Reto

Canonically, we know very few things about this character. His name is Reto, he gathered the ‘tribes’ of shinobi who lived in the Land of Wind into a village, he was the First Kazekage of Sunagakure, and he captured the One-Tailed Beast without any form of magnet release. He also appeared at the very first Five Kage Summit with demands for fertile land and financial compensation in lieu of being sold another Tailed Beast. In FtB, I’ve written him to have been born 32 years before Suna’s founding. He was the most talented user of wind-release at the time and wielded the giant tessen— specifically, he was well-known for being able to fly on it. Prior to becoming the First Kazekage, two travelers happened upon his tribe and was extremely interested in the way that his tribe would ‘surf’ on the wind. Reto fell in love with and married one of them, and after Konoha’s founding, he was contracted by the Land of Wind’s daimyo to create a hidden village that could match the Land of Fire’s. He would go on to have three children and advocate for war in order to conquer more land for Wind Country’s prosperity. He was assassinated in the year 26 of the New Age at 58 years old, shortly before the end of the First Great Shinobi War.

Uzumaki Chihiro An OC, born 27 years before the founding of Sunagakure. A traveler from a faraway island to the east, Chihiro was very taken with the way that a tribe of shinobi she met in the deserts of Wind Country could surf on the wind like her people could surf on water. Her younger brother went on, but Chihiro stayed with them and married the man who would go on to become the First Kazekage, helping him in his mission to unite the shinobi of the desert and bearing him three children throughout their union. She was killed in action in 19 NA at the age of 46, one year after the start of the First Great Shinobi War.

Ebizo Canonically, he’s noted to have been a strategist and tactician, and presumably served his role during the Second and Third Wars before retiring. Despite the reference to irl puppetry in his name, it’s never mentioned if he’s a puppeteer or not. In FtB, I’ve written him to have been born in 9 NA as the youngest child of the First Kazekage Reto and his wife Chihiro. He has his mother’s pale skin and eyes, but if you look at the old family tree, you’ll notice that he inherited his father’s brown hair. He and his older sister are called the “Honoured Siblings”, so I figured they probably had some connection to at least one of the Kazekage because Konohamaru is similarly called the “Honoured Grandson” for his relation to the Third Hokage. I headcanon that his canon status as a jounin was mostly just a title/rank for the authority that he commanded as Chief Strategist of Sunagakure, rather than for any combat ability, despite his name which I headcanon was chosen by Chikamatsu, as Reto’s friend. That very lack of strength would be one of the things that saved him from being assassinated in 27 NA.

Chiyo Canonically, it’s implied that Granny Chiyo was a powerhouse back in her hey-day. Like, an absolute unit. She was a major player on Suna’s eastern front during the Second War against Konoha, to the point that Tsunade’s main role was to cure the batshit amount of people that Chiyo was poisoning left-right-and-center. It’s also notable that she fought Hanzo of the Salamander and survived— a feat that only four other people in the series can lay claim to (Mifune, Orochimaru, Tsunade, and Jiraiya). She was also Suna’s foremost expert on puppetry, poisons, sealing, and possibly medical-ninjutsu— for all that Tensei doesn’t spend a ton of time with her that we actually read of, his arsenal most closely reflects Chiyo’s more than anyone else’s. In FtB, I’ve written her to have been born in 8 NA since Narutopedia lists her as a year older than her younger brother Ebizo. She has her mother’s pale skin and her father’s eye-shape, with black eyes as a throwback to either of her paternal grandparents. I should note that I was inspired to make her half-Uzumaki because her grey hair had a tinge of purple to it, and we see that Uzumaki Mito’s red hair also faded into a purple-brown colour in her old age rather than grey, so Chiyo would have had red hair like her mother and older brother when she was young! Also-also, her son canonically has crimson-red hair, and so does her grandson Sasori, so her hair was almost definitely red. Ironically enough, she’s the only one of her siblings that weren’t named after a renown irl line of puppeteers, instead being named after her mother Chihiro. Chiyo was also Chikamatsu’s direct student, which I headcanon because she has his infamous Ten Puppets, and thus had to swear his oath of abdication that she and her line after her would give up their claim on Kazekage-ship— that would become one of the things that saved her from being assassinated in 27 NA, along with her reputation as a young rising star in the Playhouse.

Koshiro An OC, born in 2 NA as the eldest child of the First Kazekage Reto and his wife Chihiro. He has a less-saturated version of his mother’s red hair and his father’s green eyes, as well as the eye-shape, and tan skin. He fell in love with and married a civilian woman named Ami and had two children with her. Like his father, Koshiro wielded the tessen, and he was allegedly KIA in 27 NA while fighting against Iwa on the northern front, shortly after his father’s assassination and before the end of the First War. I headcanon that his name, a puppetry-reference like Ebizo’s, was also chosen by Chikamatsu.

Ami An OC, one of the first children to be born as a citizen of Sunagakure in 1 NA. Ami was well-known for her beautiful fair skin and black hair that she partially covered with a hijab. She was a civilian who fell in love with Koshiro, and bore him twin children before she was found dead in her bed from poison in 27 NA not long after news of her husband’s death on the frontlines of the war was received.

Kanza An OC, the older twin born in 20 NA. He had his mother’s pale skin, dark hair, dark eyes, but his father’s and grandfather’s eye-shape. He idolized Shamon, his grandfather’s/the First Kazekage’s aide, and aspired to be a bunrakubuki-style puppeteer like him. He began studying puppetry under his paternal aunt, Chiyo, only to die from poison on the same night as his mother Ami when he was 7 years old in 27 NA.

Hana An OC, the younger twin born in 20 NA. She inherited her father’s tan skin, red hair, and green eyes with her paternal grandmother Chihiro’s eye-shape. She survived the assassination attempt that killed her mother and older brother due to having some immunity from studying poisons and having started an immunity regime (taking tiny doses of poison until your body stops having negative responses to it). A member of the council took her into hiding until she became competent enough to defend herself from any further assassination attempts. After the death of her family, Hana abandoned her aspiration to become a poison mistress like her paternal aunt Chiyo, and instead took up the tessen legacy that her father and paternal grandfather once carried. Despite hardening her heart, she eventually met and fell in love with a Suna shinobi named Natsu, and had one child with him before being KIA during the Second Great Shinobi War in 53 NA.

Natsu An OC, born in 17 NA as the grandson of the councilor who took Hana into hiding. He was often described as a “good-natured grump” and supported Hana’s every endeavor, including her efforts to tear the Playhouse and puppeteers apart on the suspicion that their puppeteers were the ones who killed her family. After marrying her, they had one child before he was KIA  during the Second Great Shinobi War in 52 NA.

Hibiki An OC, born over a decade after her older half-brother Natsu in 28 NA. It’s clear that their shared father’s genes run strong, with the both of them sharing tan skin, brown hair, and beady black eyes. As one of the councilor’s granddaughters, Hibiki was politically pressured to marry the man that would go on to become the Third Kazekage, and their union was officiated two years before Shamon the Second Kazekage was assassinated. She bore him a son that both she and her husband Sarou loved dearly, but was ordered to sacrifice him to the fate of being a jinchuuriki for the One-Tail. She would go on to be KIA in 55 NA at the tail end of the Second War.

Sarou Canonically, the Third Kazekage was never named, so I took the liberty to name him. “Sarou” is my little joke-pun-name because “Saburou” means “third son” and I just knocked out the middle syllable for laughs (“third son” is not the kanji I choose to use for “Sarou”, though). Anyways, we know that he was the progenitor of magnet-release, in that Kishimoto-sensei told us he studied the One-Tail and learned it through mimicry, only with round particles of iron sand rather than actual dry-dirt sand. That’s why I consider magnet-release to be a hiden technique rather than a kekkei-genkai— he learned it, rather than was born with it. Supposedly, he was the strongest shinobi that Sunagakure ever produced. However, he was killed about two decades prior to the start of Naruto Shippuden by Sasori in 62 NA. In FtB, I’ve written him to be born in the year 28 NA. He became the Third Kazekage in 50 NA after two years of political strife following his predecessor’s assassination in 48 NA, and ruled until 62 NA when he disappeared— ambushed and kidnapped by Sasori to be killed and turned into a human puppet, not that anyone else knows that for a long time. Since the First Kazekage Reto claimed that the Land of Wind was “desert-locked” during the first Five Kage Summit, I headcanon that the Third Kazekage went and conquered a bunch of land to the south in the two wars that happened during his tenure. He was a quiet, reserved individual who cared for and was deeply proud of the people he claimed as his, namely, his lineage. 

"My blood is iron, as are my kin— stronger than even a desert storm," Sandaime-sama tells him. — excerpt from All Roads Lead, Chapter 4 (credit to @lyricfrost13 for originally coming up with the line in her fic Tangled Shards)

Tenoi An OC, born and made a jinchuuriki to the One-Tailed Beast in 47 NA, one year before the Second Kazekage was assassinated. He inherited his mother’s tan skin and brown hair but his father’s golden eyes. He died in 57 NA for reasons that will be revealed in the future.

Kazuo and Hina Canonically, we weren’t given any names for Sasori’s parents, so I stuck with the K for guys and H for ladies theme that I accidentally started lol. These two were master puppeteers who fought on the eastern front against Konoha during the Second War before they were killed by Hatake Sakumo, the White Fang. I don’t have much for them because they’re not super relevant to FtB, so... yeah.

Sasori Come on, we know plenty about this guy already. He’s Tensei’s second-cousin in FtB, but note that while Tensei called him “Sasori-nii”/“big brother Sasori”, second-cousins and first-cousins-once-removed are usually called “Oji-san”/”uncle” due to being part of the speaker’s parents’ generation. 

Karura and Yashamaru  We spend a decent amount of time with them in FtB, but since canon offers so little, I really tried to expand upon their characters! The twins’ grandparents were civilian merchants from an artisan village called Hari-mura that immigrated to Sunagakure during its early days, before Hari-mura was even a part of the Land of Wind. Both twins were weapons specialists, inspired by that one scene in the anime where Yashamaru does some invisible wire-work on a bunch of kunai to kill Gaara with, but I was further inspired by @lyricfrost13​ (again) to make Yashamaru lightning-natured and give him glass senbon. The epithet “Glass Hawk of Suna” was just so metal, okay, I had to— and besides, you’re telling me Rasa’s right hand man didn’t have some tricks up his sleeve? FtB!Yashamaru was also the Anbu Commander as Agent Iris before Rasa effectively retired him from the field to be Gaara’s handler. It also seems like he had some kind of relationship with his anbu successor, Anbu Commander Macchia... As for Karura— well, considering the First and Third Kazekage’s wives got KIA, the council made Karura retire to become a housewife and birth more heirs. Tensei hints a couple times throughout the story that he thinks she might have missed being a kunoichi. I think she did genuinely love Rasa, though, and her kids as well. 

Bonus Round: Seramu and Sara Rasa annexed the Kingdom of Roran in the middle of Wind Country in 63 NA, but Chihiro’s younger brother ended up in Roran and married to the then-Princess Seramu. Seramu and Chihiro’s brother’s child would go on to become Queen Sara of Roran during Rasa’s conquest of it in 63-64 NA, as noted in Chapter 8 of All Roads Lead. Queen Sara would then be Rasa’s second cousin, and Tensei’s second-cousin-once-removed. 

[macchiato-dreaming22]

FtB Writing Update - 20230315

The outline for the third instalment of FtB, tentatively titled "In the Land of the Blind", has been finalized! Additionally, chapters 1 - 5 have been completely finished as well as polished by our dear beta @qwerty224561 :)

[macchiato-dreaming22]

All the interactions between Itachi and Tensei are so good.

Makes me wonder about a world where Tensei was reborn as the heir to the Uchiha clan

Some meta-lore for Fade to Black:

Back during the very, very first draft of an Naruto SI-OC fic that featured an older sibling figure of several plot-relavent side characters, Tensei was going to be one of Uchiha Tajima's sons who died in canon. Specifically, Madara and Izuna's older brother, and thus the heir to the Uchiha clan. The main point of divergence from canon was going to be his survival and subsequent ascension to becoming the Uchiha clan head instead of Madara. I had a vague outline going from the last two decades of the Warring Clans era to the founding of the hidden villages all the way to the First Great Shinobi war before I found greenekangaroo's Rasa and the Cat fic back in 2022, and from there... well.

Pros and cons of writing a politics-heavy fic set in OG series-era Suna: there's just enough scaffolding to build off of and structure the government/political atmosphere/laws however you want, but you will forever be unsatisfied by the lack of substance to sink your teeth into

Pros and cons of writing a politics-heavy fic set in founders era Konoha: there's a decent amount of material to reference but you have to trawl through so much slow content and wiki pages to find it, and when you do, you realize there are holes and contradictions all over the place that you'll either have to follow to the T or big-brain an explanation for if you want your fic to be canon-compliant

Obviously, dear reader, you know what I chose :]

[macchiato-dreaming22]

I think Tensei really undersells how well-liked he is by the people of Suna.

I believe he's pretty popular with them

My bad, I've been having Tensei focus too much on the problematic people within his life and not enough on the smaller things that he should be grateful for. Common L when dealing with politics. One moment, dear reader, I need to get out my Asain card and not be a dumb American for a moment—

Tensei's reputation with the general populace, the normal folk, only matters as much as the members of the council are willing to accurately represent their respective groups. And because human nature is the way it is and power corrupts, this is often not the case.

Buckle the fuckle up for some background context:

To my understanding, the United States essentially has two systems of voting when it comes to electing certain government officials: the popular vote, and the electoral collage.

The popular vote is where most of the elligible citizens who will vote do so for their mayors, governors, and state legislators. This is your typical democratic deal where each person's voice is worth one vote, no matter who they are or what they've done.

The electoral collage is where government officials called "electors", who are appointed by their state’s political parties, vote. This is because the founding fathers believed that the average american at the time of the country's independence was a dumb sack of bricks who wouldn't have the education to understand what's "actually" best for the country, and thus would need educated people to represent said best interests. These representatives— the electors— are my go-to thing to point at when people say that America is a democracy, because no, America is a democratic republic, actually. The pledge of allegiance that plays over the intercom at public schools every day literally says "and to the Republic for which [the flag] stands" when listing the things we're pledging our loyalty to.

Anyways. Each elector's voice only counts as one vote, yes, but the number of electors in each state varies based on the state's population (which contributed to the southern states counting enslaved people as 3/5ths of a person despite the popular belief at the time that African American slaves were not "people"). That's why you might notice presidential campaign efforts focusing more on states with bigger populations and thus more electors such as Texas, New York, etc. and less on states with smaller populations individually such as Wyoming or Delaware. Now, toss in the fact that electors don't always vote for the candidate of the party that they're pledged to, and we've gotten too deep, back up, I don't know enough about that. What I do know is that if a state has nine electors and five vote for celery while four vote for carrots, the entire state gets slapped with a giant celery sticker. Save file and repeat another forty-nine times with states that vary between three electoral votes (Vermont, the Dakotas, Alaska, etc.) to fifty-four (California).

In 2016, Donald Trump won the electoral vote, and Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. Guess who became president?

Moving on to Suna now.

Sunagakure no Sato is not a democracy. On a good day, it's maybe an oligarchy, not entirely dissimilar to the three consuls thing that Rome did for a bit before Julius Caeser said "fuck it we ballin'" and declared himself emperor. A bunch of rich, influential people who are already leaders of another group act as representatives, which the law only allows them to do for a limited amount of time called a "term", at which point they have to step down and let someone else have a turn. In the case of FtB, one term is supposed to have a maximum limit of thirty years.

However, the councilors of Suna choose successors largely through nepotism. Anyone on the council may nominate a candidate for a seat, but generally, it's the preceding councilor who presents a potential successor for the others to vote on. So long as a majority vote of the council's other members is in favor, that heir will become the next representative of that particular seat on the council, and thus the seat is usually kept within a single family.

Do you see where I'm going with this.

I repeat: Tensei's reputation with the general populace, the normal folk, only matters as much as the members of the council are willing to accurately represent their respective groups. And because human nature is the way it is and power corrupts, this is often not the case.

[macchiato-dreaming22]

Rotating Tensei in my mind as if he's inside a microwave

He's a great character

Thanks mate, means a lot to me. FtB has been my pride and joy for the last two years, and I've worked really hard on my writing skills, especially when it comes to character development!

Here's some old notes of the big phases I had planned for Tensei wayyy early on:

[macchiato-dreaming22]

Tensei having the freedom to be dramatic during fights bc it isn't his village getting destroyed for once.

Bold of you to assume that those two aren't going to get their turns. Oh, anon, you're going to have so much fun when we return to Kirigakure in the third instalment >:D

Okay but get this: urban warfare is a pretty different ballgame from what shinobi in the Narutoverse are generally used to (e.g. espionage, sabotage, assassination, travel escort, and guerilla-style tactics in forested or open-field warfare). With the exception of the jumping of Uzushio, it seems like shinobi don't usually invade or seige other hidden villages (specifically hidden villages, because we know small civilian ones in the minor nation that Amegakure is in got screwed over badly during the second war). I'd wager that many Konoha-nin weren't used to worrying about an entire building being dropped on them while they're fighting with blades weapons in the street, or being limited by the instinct to limit collateral damage to your own neighborhood and civilians that you might know and care for on a personal level, or navigating rubble. I mean, most of the buildings in Konoha are made of wood and plaster; have you seen images of Shanghai after the Japanese rolled through, or the capital of the Philippines after the Japanese rolled through, or— you get my point. It's a headache to orient yourself when the landmarks and street signs are gone and there's tripping hazards everywhere. Tensei and Jiraiya just have the luxury of skipping over all of that with their respective techniques, and I was having trouble describing it in a narrative sense (gotta practice using the environment more in my fight scenes), which is why the Hyuga Affair 2.0 happened in the forest just like canon.

Tensei had offered the sage a ride on his iron platforms because what the hell, no, do not send the giant toad through the village after the giant snake, does no one care about the collateral damage? Jiraiya tells him that he’s insane for worrying about the infrastructure in the middle of a military invasion, and they agree to disagree. Tensei supposes that the older shinobi doesn’t have to answer to a council of pissed-off representatives and hundreds of angry puppeteers for wanton destruction, and then he realizes that, for the duration of his stay in Konoha, he doesn’t have to, either. Which is why he’s hitching a ride on a giant toad who is being none too careful about what he crushes underfoot, even if Tensei does feel a twinge of sympathy for all the people whose homes and businesses are being destroyed. At least they’re avoiding the bigger power lines, because the hospital is going to have an even more shit time of things if those go down. — To Rome, Chapter 36