Random Naruto thoughts - here's a tiny canon detail I really wonder about. When Kakuzu and Hidan fight Yugito at the start of their arc, Yugito is wearing what I'm pretty certain is meant to be a set of prayer beads on her left arm:
When she's nailed up mostly-dead after Hidan defeats her, they're gone:
Consistent in both the manga and the anime. And I find this so interesting because not many characters in Naruto are visibly religious or carry any kind of spiritual tools or talismans... but Nii Yugito, host of the Nibi, was apparently committed enough to her beliefs (probably Buddhist - I know other faiths also use mala but we're in a Japanese source canon here so Buddhism strikes me as the most likely intended implication) to wear a set of prayer beads as part of her regular attire. And who did she have to fight? The most devout religious fanatic in the whole damn series.
And that makes me really want to know how she lost her prayer beads. Did Hidan take them off her body after he defeated her? Did they just get broken and lost somewhere in the fight? Did Kakuzu grab them to pawn for spare change?
.......or does their disappearance imply that she and Hidan went head to head in some kind of direct spiritual combat as part of that fight, and Hidan won?
I see ur hogwarts AU’s which i love and I raise you
Moder day Naruto witches where Kakashi leads a covent with his non-magic husband Gai and their fifteen adopted magic children whom all have familiars and attempt to find their brand of magic, and its just a mess??? I dont have everyone worked out but my faves are:
Choji’s magic is emotion related, everyone feels more relaxed around him as a result of his calming presence. He wants to run a spa, and do aromatherapy so he works a lot with scents and their connections to emotions. His familiar is a baby brown bear.
Tenten forges weapons, silver knives for potion making, daggers of darkness and crystal cutlasses for rituals. She’s also an expert on cursed metal which made her rather popular, as she can dispel the items thorough conversation with the spirits. Her familiar hasn’t found her yet.
Neji and Hinata are both clairvoyant, but in very very different ways. Neji sees specific events that can happen, but only up to an hour ahead. Hinata can see the bigger pictures but is in need of crystal to clear her mind and vision, which neji doesnt need. Neji’s familiar is a crane, and Hinata’s familiar is a swan!!
WIP game: (I see you've talked about monsterfucking which I'd have had to ask about-) Tiny Akatsuki? *eyes*
Hello sorry I had to wait to answer this until I was on my PC because Tiny Akatsuki is in my desktop WIP files, not my phone ones. Okay, this is the fic where all of Akatsuki get de-aged physically and mentally (and memory-wise) to childhood/pre-teen/early-teen ages by a misfiring rinnegan jutsu (did Nagato fuck up? of course he did) and then have to work out who they are, who each other are, where they are, and what to do about it. I still don't have the plot fully laid out for this but it is mostly an excuse for devastating amounts of adorableness while also giving everyone in the most utterly broken Evil Faction out there a chance to have a second, better chance in life. Deidara is now the eldest and de facto leader, being de-aged back to fourteen and the only person in the group who can prove they're a jounin; Sasori is the youngest, at eight; everyone else is in between. Yahiko is alive and about ten years old, because the jutsu effect was a literal reversal of time and so his soul has ended up restored to his now-living, de-aged body; the only person not rewound is Nagato, who is instead still an adult but now unconscious (because he was the one controlling the jutsu that caused this whole situation). White Zetsu, tragically, decomposed entirely into a heap of Hashirama-tissue; Black Zetsu is on the loose and unaccounted for at the start of the plot (he'll be back later).
Snippet under the cut of Deidara and Itachi getting the absolute heck freaked out of them courtesy of Sasori:
~~~
The low, hunched figure with its sparse cornrowed hair and the mask that covered its lower face suddenly leapt into familiarity. "Fuck," Deidara whispered frantically.
That was a face he'd seen in the bingo books, not in a street somewhere. That was the Suna puppetmaster, the king of poisons, the walking nightmare with hundreds if not thousands of dead shinobi to his credit. Akasuna no Sasori.
The missing-nin wasn't moving. He crouched, staring at them with blank, unblinking eyes, and Deidara went still as stone under that awful gaze. His fingers curled around his right-hand mouth, and the clay that it was now chewing considerably more urgently than before.
The Konoha chuunin stepped up beside him, and Deidara glanced sideways at the other boy's strangely still features just in time to see his dark eyes wheel into the red of the sharingan. A shiver ran down Deidara's spine. He'd never seen the legendary Uchiha dojutsu for himself before, and it was every bit as uncanny as the stories said.
He hoped it would be any use at all against an S-rank missing-nin.
"Akasuna no Sasori," the Uchiha boy whispered.
Deidara replied with a fractional nod. "Akatsuki, un," he whispered back, and that was where he knew that black and red cloud emblem from, that was who'd caught them, fuck, fuck, fuck. He didn't know much about Akatsuki and the little he did know was more than he was supposed to - old man Onoki hadn't been pleased when he'd caught Deidara in the restricted mission records - but he knew enough to know they needed to be very, very afraid.
Or maybe very very brave. He spat a bit of clay into his palm, moulded it quickly into a tiny spider, and sent it skittering across the floor towards Sasori's motionless, hunched form.
The missing-nin still didn't react, even when the spider scrambled up onto his robes. Great, that meant Deidara had some insurance in hand. If Sasori moved to harm them now, he could blow the man to the Pure Lands with a single hand seal no matter what strange powers he might try to use.
"There's something wrong with him," Itachi announced, low-voiced. "His chakra isn't flowing through his body properly."
Apparently that was a thing you could tell with the sharingan. "Is he injured? Sick? Under a genjutsu?"
"I can't say."
Well. Deidara moved cautiously closer. "Hey," he said. "Akasuna no Sasori. I know who you are and I can blow you up if you try and hurt us, un."
No response. Another step closer. "Can you hear me?"
Itachi moved in beside him, a kunai held ready in his hand. "I'm trying a genjutsu but it won't connect," he whispered to Deidara. "It's as though he isn't looking out of his eyes."
"Maybe he isn't, un." Deidara was nearly close enough to touch the man now. "Hey. What do you want with us? Why are we here? Talk to us or-"
Blank eyes stared, and then, abruptly, the missing-nin bowed to them.
No - he didn't bow. His entire face fell forwards, impossibly hingeing off the front of his body, and there was another face behind it.
Giffed this small Hidan moment from Naruto Shippuden #76. As a HiDei shipper, I like to imagine he's pining for his boyfriend here because the little white birds reminded him of Deidara...
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
War hangs over the shinobi world on heat-haze wings, the Third Hokage is a spiteful old bastard, the trees won't stop screaming and Sasori can't sleep.
New Naruto fic, "Weight"! Featuring young Sasori on a mission to Konoha with the Third Kazekage, having a very bad time with heat, humidity and insomnia. Includes autistic!Sasori, sensory dysregulation woes, and a comfort ending. Gen, no warnings other than the canon-typical child soldier stuff. (Note: tagging SanSaso to reach people who might want to see this, but honestly there's no explicitly romantic or sexual content in here. It's just them interacting and some platonic kindness, so pre-ship or gen depending on your preference.)
hiii it’s the same anon from earlier!! I’m also an anon that was here a few months ago telling you about how I really love your JasHida writings, they’re my favorites, and how I don’t actually read a lot of fanfiction but I read yours a lot!! I’ve never kept up with a writer before now!! 🫶 I can come off anon if u want I just get nervous is all, it’s really nice of you to offer all that it’s making me shy, haha!! 💛
Oh, yes, I remember you! Hello and thank you again! <333 It's completely up to you whether you'd like to come off anon - I'd be happy to chat in DMs or whatever if you do want to, but I totally understand the nervousness so please don't feel obliged! <3
And I'm sorry it took me a couple of days to reply to this, I had to get to my PC where all my fic files are, but just for you here's a tiny snippet from a longfic I've been working on in which Hidan gets to meet his god face to face, while Jashin is (initially) disguised as a human. I'm nowhere near done with this fic honestly but I'm very invested in it and I really hope to get it finished eventually. So here's the reveal moment, where Hidan finally realises just who it is he's really talking to, heheh. No warnings, SFW.
~~~
Torine turns his head away from the candlelight, his hair falling like a black silk screen, and as his face moves into shadow, a change passes over it. Flesh and skin melt away. His right eye becomes a gulf of black, ringed by moonlight-blue bone. Lips fade to nothingness over long, pointed dark fangs that glint like a palisade wall of iron.
That isn't henge. That isn't even a Jashin-given curse mark. That isn't any jutsu in this realm of existence. Hidan freezes, staring up at him, stricken with awe. "Torine-?"
The face above him smiles, on the side that still can: lips tugging upward, the one remaining eye creasing at its corner. "Hidan," the apparition says, very fondly, sounding almost amused.
Its voice is Torine's, and also not; the same but more, layered now with inhuman bass harmonics and a warping hiss like a failing audio tape, with the drip of black water and the splintering rustle of rotting bones. Hidan shivers as that voice twines its way up his spine, intoxicated by the cold thrill of it. "What - wait - fuck… Jashin-sama?!"
The spectral smile only deepens. "My Hidan," that voice murmurs, soft as the deadly caress of falling snow.
