"Nine thousand six hundred and sixty-five, nine thousand six hundred and sixty-six, nine thousand six hundred and sixty-seven…"
Two passing maids did a double-take as they passed the prime minister's room. They were wearing stereotypical French maid outfits, complete with frilly white aprons and headbands and tiny black miniskirts. The first was armed with a broom, her fringe covering her right eye, while the second loosely carried a dustpan and brush, her fringe covering her left eye, just like a certain pair of blue- and pink-haired maids.
"Nine thousand six hundred and sixty-eight, nine thousand six hundred and sixty-nine…"
"Is everything quite all right, Your Honour?" the broom maid said, sticking her head through the door, which had been left ajar. "Prime Minister…?"
She hesitantly pulled open the door to have a better look. The prime minister was staring blankly at the wall opposite the bed, his mouth barely moving as he muttered numbers under his breath.
"Genjutsu…" the dustpan maid murmured.
"Mireille!?" the broom maid yelped as her companion brushed past her. "You know we're not allowed in the Prime Minister's room without supervision!"
The dustpan maid reached up and grabbed the prime minister's shoulder, forcing him to meet her gaze as her eyes flashed red.
"As expected, she's here…" she muttered under her breath.
Thankfully, there hadn't been any booby traps planted inside the illusion, so it was a simple matter of reversing what had been done to the prime minister and then reading his unlocked memories. She planted her own genjutsu in the man's mind, before turning on her heel and stalking out of the bedroom.
The pink-haired girl was in the royal library!
"Oi, where are you going?" the broom maid cried. "We're supposed to be cleaning the foyer! You're going to get us in trouble!"
Just as the dustpan maid was beginning to wonder whether it was worth hypnotising the broom maid, a third maid appeared at the next intersection, clearly making a beeline for the prime minister's room. Upon sensing each other's chakra, the pair froze, their eyes flashing scarlet as they sized each other up, each rapidly picking apart the flaws in the other's disguise…
"Nice miniskirt, pervert," said the newest maid coolly. "You truly are a testament to the clan."
"Run," the dustpan maid said simply.
Before the broom maid knew it, her two coworkers' arms turned into blurs of motion as they pulled strangely shaped knives from their pockets and flung them at each other. They collided in midair in a shower of sparks and a cacophony of metallic pings.
One of the knives embedded itself at the broom maid's feet, and she finally let out a shrill scream. A fraction of a second later, the dustpan maid dispelled her disguise, reverting to her male form in a puff of white smoke, and the broom maid fainted as her entire worldview collapsed in an instant.
"How much did you see, Sasuke?" Uchiha Nanashi asked casually.
She unfurled the Fūma shuriken hooked to the back of her maid uniform and hurled it at him. The massive shuriken whizzed down the corridor, shredding the sides of the wall as it flew, but Sasuke flipped a kunai into his palm and ducked under the shuriken, jammed the tip into its central hole and forcefully pinning it to the wall.
Sasuke's eyes pupils shrank as he discovered that Nanashi had followed in the shuriken's shadow, using it as cover to close the gap. He leaned back to avoid a slash to his throat, kicking at her chest as he performed a back handspring, but she easily parried.
"Nanashi," Sasuke said as he landed on his feet. "There's no need for us to fight."
Her eyes were ordinary Mangekyō Sharingan, but his were one and two steps above hers: the Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan in his right eye and the six-tomoe Rinnegan in his left. He was both stronger and faster than her, so the outcome of a battle between the two of them was a foregone conclusion, even if he held back to conserve his chakra and avoid hurting her.
"I'm no longer the Uchiha clan's nameless weapon," she replied coolly. "Lord Orochimaru discovered my true name… the name my parents gave me before they died is Hikari."
"Hikari… that's a beautiful name," Sasuke said smoothly, bobbing and weaving between her punches. "It fits you very well."
Quick as a flash, Sasuke batted aside her strikes and grabbed one of her arms, pinning it behind her back as he flipped and slammed her into the ground. He pressed his knee into her spine, applying pressure.
"Submit," he whispered into her ear. "Come back with us to the Hidden Leaf Village; we may only have been comrades for a brief time because of Orochimaru's betrayal, but I know I can convince Sakura to let you rejoin us. We can rebuild the Uchiha clan together—"
"I would rather die," Hikari snarled. She then took a deep breath, before screaming at the top of her lungs, "HEEEELP! FIRE!"
Blood dripped onto the polished stone floor as the three tomoe in her scarlet eyes spun into three arcs… and without warning, a wide swathe of the corridor spontaneously erupted in a furious blaze of black flames. The fire began consuming the tapestries hung along the walls, and the stone cracked and hissed with heat.
"Your move, Sasuke," Hikari said sweetly.
Sasuke could not bring himself to kill the last pure-blooded Uchiha who had had no part in the massacre, and Hikari knew it well. And Sasuke knew very well how it would look when people arrived to put out the fire: a strange man trespassing in the royal palace, pinning a poor, helpless palace maid to the ground beside a fire…
"Don't think I've given up on you," Sasuke said, releasing her from his grip. "You're coming back to the village with us."
He could already hear footsteps and voices approaching from down the next corridor.
"Don't count on it," Hikari replied as she pushed herself to her feet, before vanishing in a puff of smoke. "See you never."
Sasuke extinguished the Amaterasu flames with Kagutsuchi before transforming back into a maid just in time for the palace's servants and guards to arrive, buckets of water in hand.
"Coming through, coming through!" King Sora said giddily, his round belly bouncing as he charged through the crowd, waving about his golden sceptre. "Aww," he said in disappointment, seeing that the fire had already been taken care of. "It's already extinguished…"
"My apologies…" Sasuke said with a curtsy.