Chapter 270: The Taste of Victory
"WAAAAH!"
Little Shisui's wail pierced through the festive chatter of the crowd like a kunai through paper. His tiny hands scrubbed at his streaming eyes as the full, unfiltered force of his grief poured forth.
Heads turned. Mothers clucked their tongues. An elderly woman squinted at Kushina with the particular brand of silent judgment that only grandmothers could deploy effectively. The attention pressed in from all sides—curious, mildly accusatory, unmistakably watching.
Kushina felt her face ignite. Every stare seemed to carry the same unspoken accusation: What did you do to that poor child?
It was just one candied hawthorn! ONE! And it's not even that big!
She had intended to tease him a little, maybe scare him into calling her Boss, then graciously return the treat and bask in her triumph. That had been the plan. The plan had not included the waterworks. The plan had definitely not included becoming the public spectacle of Konoha's victory celebration.
And yet, she couldn't deny a small, private truth: the candied hawthorn had actually tasted pretty good. Sweet. Tangy. A hint of victory.
But victory, apparently, had consequences.
"Here! Here, take it back!" Kushina thrust the half-eaten stick toward Shisui with the desperate energy of a hostage negotiator. "It's yours! All yours! No more crying!"
Simultaneously, she shot Akimichi Dango a look of urgent, wordless command. The kind of look that said fix this or I will make your life a living nightmare.
Dango understood. He always understood. It was both his greatest talent and his eternal curse.
With a soul-deep sigh that seemed far too heavy for a child his age, he reached into the depths of his snack bag—the emergency emergency reserve, the pocket he had hoped never to open—and withdrew a single, gleaming Colorful Stick. The Akimichi family's latest masterpiece. A dessert so new it hadn't even been officially released to the public yet. He had been saving it. Hoarding it. Dreaming of the moment he would finally taste it in solitude.
Why is it always me who suffers?
Shisui's sobs hitched. His small, tear-smudged face lifted. And in the moment his eyes rose to meet the light, the two black magatama that had been slowly rotating in his pupils vanished without a trace. As if they had never existed.
If anyone present had understood what they had just witnessed—a two-year-old child awakening the Sharingan—the commotion would have swallowed the entire celebration. The Uchiha clan would have descended in force. The Hokage himself would have been summoned. The incident would have been recorded in clan archives, dissected by analysts, held up as proof of either divine blessing or coming disaster.
But no one saw.
Uchiha Shisui, in the original timeline, had awakened his Sharingan at the age of eight during a life-or-death battle. It had been considered remarkable. Prodigious. A sign of genius that marked him for greatness.
This Shisui had awakened his at two.
Over a stolen piece of candy.
It said something profound about the emotional intensity of children. Their hearts, still unburdened by the compromises of adulthood, burned with a purity that could unlock powers most shinobi spent decades pursuing.
Kushina, blissfully ignorant that she had just become the catalyst for one of the earliest Sharingan awakenings in Uchiha history, watched Shisui's tears subside with enormous relief.
Children. You just give them something sweet and everything's fixed. Easy.
Shisui accepted the candied hawthorn stick in one hand and the Colorful Stick in the other. He licked. The sweetness flooded his mouth. His enormous, galaxy-filled eyes narrowed into blissful crescents. The grievance that had consumed him moments before evaporated like morning dew.
Akimichi Dango watched his precious, irreplaceable, not-yet-on-the-market Colorful Stick disappear into the mouth of a toddler who probably couldn't even appreciate the seventeen layers of flavor complexity.
The potato chips in his mouth turned to ash. Tasteless. Meaningless. Yet he continued to chew, because fat people did not waste food, even food that brought no joy.
His round face twisted into a topography of suffering. His hand drifted to his belly—his loyal companion, his faithful friend—and patted it gently. You understand my pain.
Kushina exhaled quietly. Crisis averted. The child was quiet. The crowd had lost interest. Her reputation was—if not intact—at least not irreparably damaged.
She made a mental note: next time, skip the teasing and go straight to the bribery.
Uchiha Mikoto returned not long after, sliding through the crowd with the effortless grace of someone who had been trained to move without being noticed. In her hands, she carried two small bouquets of fresh jasmine, their white petals still beaded with moisture, their fragrance drifting through the crowded street like a whispered secret.
She found her little brother exactly where she had left him. Standing quietly. Face smeared with the faint residue of recent tears but now arranged in an expression of sugar-induced contentment. His hands clutched the remnants of two separate desserts.
Leaving him with Kushina was the right choice, Mikoto decided.
"Mikoto-senpai! You're back!" Kushina's voice had undergone a transformation. Softer. Sweeter. The vocal equivalent of a lamb.
Good girl mode: activated.
"Yes." Mikoto smiled, lifting the jasmine bouquets slightly. "I bought flowers."
Kushina's gaze dropped to the bouquets. Her expression flickered—a micro-shift that was gone almost before it appeared. "Are you... giving them to someone?"
"Mm." Mikoto nodded, her gentle smile unchanging. "They're for Ragnar-kun. He has helped me so many times, and I never know how to properly repay him. So I thought... flowers. To welcome him home."
...
Hostility increased by one.
Hostility increased by two.
Kushina's inner meter, which she refused to acknowledge existed, ticked steadily upward. Flowers. Jasmine flowers. Fragrant, beautiful, perfectly appropriate jasmine flowers. Being handed to Ragnar. By this unreasonably perfect girl.
Since when did Konoha's criminal code stop applying to romantic warfare?!
Mikoto, serenely oblivious to the emotional arithmetic occurring beside her, turned her attention to her little brother. "Shisui, did you behave? Did you cause any trouble for Sister Kushina?"
Shisui's licking paused.
His enormous eyes shifted from his gentle sister to the red-haired demoness who stood just behind her, and within those galaxy-filled depths, a primal survival instinct flickered to life. He was only two years old, but he was an Uchiha. He understood, on some bone-deep level, that he was standing at a crossroads. A question had been asked. The answer would determine his fate.
"No," he said, his voice carrying the careful innocence of a child who had already learned that adults were not to be trusted. "The red-haired big sister was very nice. She gave me delicious things to eat."
Behind Mikoto's back, Kushina's shoulders—which had been tensed for combat—relaxed into satisfaction. A smug smile played at the corner of her lips.
"After I finished eating, I wanted more," Shisui continued, his tone perfectly guileless. "Red-haired big sister, do you have any more?"
His huge, luminous eyes fixed on Kushina with bottomless, cherubic expectation.
Kushina's smile froze.
What a clever little devil.
Mikoto looked between them, her expression mild and curious. "What did he eat, exactly?"
"Oh, nothing much!" Kushina laughed, a touch too brightly. "Just a little snack. Dango! Another one!"
She turned to her loyal subordinate with the desperate authority of a general ordering a doomed cavalry charge.
Dango did not react. He had moved beyond reaction. He had transcended the mortal plane of emotional response and entered a state of Zen acceptance. He was a tool. He had always been a tool. He gazed at his snack bag—now dangerously depleted, its contents sacrificed on the altar of Kushina's social maneuvering—and reached inside with the mechanical resignation of an automaton.
One candied hawthorn stick. One Colorful Stick. His last Colorful Stick. The one he had been saving for the day he became Chūnin. Or maybe Hokage. Some milestone that justified its consumption.
He extended both treats toward Shisui, his round face arranging itself into a smile that was technically a smile but spiritually a scream.
"Here you go, little brother."
Shisui received the offerings with the quiet dignity of a temple deity accepting tributes. Happiness radiated from his tiny form like heat from a bonfire.
"These are from the Akimichi dessert shop," Mikoto observed, genuine surprise coloring her voice. "Their newest line. I didn't realize these had been released yet."
Dango's expression of existential suffering flickered with a spark of pride. The Akimichi clan's culinary empire was his one source of uncomplicated joy.
The Akimichi loved food. Not merely as sustenance, but as art, culture, and legacy. Their chain stores spread across Konoha like a delicious fungus, with branches in every city throughout the Land of Fire. The Land of Fire, wealthy and developed compared to its neighbors, supported a level of commerce that bordered on decadent. While the Wind and Earth countries struggled to feed their populations, the Land of Fire had entered an era of specialty desserts, themed restaurants, and seasonal flavor rotations.
One nation in heaven. Another in hell.
This was the world the shinobi system had built.
"Kushina," Mikoto said, watching Shisui devour his treats with undisguised fondness, "you're really such a good girl. If Shisui had a big sister like you, I think his childhood would be very happy."
Record scratch.
Shisui's tongue froze mid-lick. His eyes lifted from his candied hawthorn and found Kushina's face with the slow, deliberate focus of a prey animal spotting a predator in the brush.
If the red-haired demoness was my big sister...
He considered the proposition. On one claw: emotional terrorism, stolen candy, and the distinct possibility of lifelong psychological trauma. On the other paw: unlimited access to Colorful Sticks and candied hawthorn.
The math was complicated.
"Kid," Kushina said, catching his evaluating stare, "what's with that look?!"
Their eyes met. Something passed between them. Not affection, exactly. But recognition. A mutual acknowledgment that, against all odds and reason, they understood each other.
"Actually," Kushina declared, her voice shifting into a register of exaggerated generosity, "I'd be happy to have a little brother like Shisui!"
She reached out and planted her hand on top of his head, ruffling his dark curls with perhaps a touch more force than strictly necessary.
Shisui endured the assault with stoic dignity. He lifted his candied hawthorn and licked it once, slowly, maintaining eye contact with Kushina the entire time. Then his expression melted into the sweet, innocent smile of a cherub who had never committed a sin in his life.
"The red-haired big sister is so nice," he said.
"...Heh. Heh heh."
Kushina's laugh was a study in barely contained retaliation.
In the background, Akimichi Dango crunched his potato chips and said nothing. He had witnessed many things today. He intended to forget all of them.
In the distance, the roar of the crowd swelled to a fever pitch. The returning column had reached the gate. Banners snapped in the wind. Children shrieked with joy. Somewhere among the marching shinobi, a figure moved with the easy, unhurried confidence of a predator who had nothing to prove and nothing to fear.
The Demon of the Battlefield was home.
(End of Chapter)
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