#ctch

so when we enter hashimoto we’ve just begun what i lovingly call the ‘drunk spirits arc’ 

 -mari and sasuke enter into the community of Horse District. Mari picks up a ‘job’ (Dan’s doing) as a Satin worker moving risky merchandise through the settlement to Konoha and also as a regular beautician. Sasuke goes to a local school and gets his first hardcore taste of military propganda.

Sasuke’s school is run by loyalists teaching children from the surrounding areas that they’re Lucky They Get To Learn From Them, and that their local culture is nothing compared to the great Capital. Sasuke is unchill about this, especially when a child he’s emotionally latched on to ends up crying when they throw out the food her grandmother made, and picks fights.

Sasuke does not inform Mariko about this. 

for some reason the doctor will not see them 

this is about three months later. mari runs into hyuuga touma here on his families orders (a lie) who offers her a Deal She Can’t Refuse. she says no reflexively.

at home her relationship with sasuke seesaws. they find stable ground in mariko’s eclectic knowledge of uchiha lore and there shared love of cheesy dramatic xianxia but sasuke is Suspicious and Not At Home and mariko is not actually a homebody and doesn’t understand his little cancer sun brain. they try really hard. 

at work mari’s operation is upgraded from satin (perishable goods of high quality, illegal because of regulation not law) to silk (hot goods. dangerous everyway) and she silently promises to beat dan to death again. touma corners her on the way home with a Deal He Won’t Let Her Refuse. 

touma is also a transmigrator. huh.

mariko psychologically and physically beats the shit out of him. 

touma, once he recovers, realises that a) she also knows the story, b) is a mixed bag of mental health and c) she will kill him for a lot less than threatening her kid. and confesses that he’s shit fuck scared because the plot Is Now and ichigo and his wolves are coming. mari is like ‘who?’ and he’s like WOW NEVERMIND and fucs off

the doctor still will not see them

sasuke gets Umbridge Detention. mariko has to defend her workmate from a thief looking for a package much like Mysterious Stomach Contents. mariko buries it under the house and uses trap jutsu to cover it. sasuke, trying to wrap his whip marks, hears this. he does not come down for breakfast. 

mariko realises the doctor is probably a set up. she throws up in the kitchen sink. her personal moral and wavering trust takes a big hit. 

mariko can not afford to switch focus. she does not realise sasuke is Plotting until its almost too late.

the climax of this arc begins when the settlement is attacked by mysterious shadows. mari is moved to the emergency room. sasuke is interned with all the other kids for safety. they don’t see eachother.

 a young man with orange hair and the prettiest eyes mari has ever seen is admitted to her care, they flirt. a lot. to the point mariko is embarrassed for them both. she notices a senju symbol sealed with a spirit spiral on his arm goes OH FUCK I’LL HAVE TO FIST FIGHT A SENJU but flirts thru because she’s what? not a quitter.

she’s also a moral desolate spy whose done worse, so she deliberately gives him worse care than she could including a kind of stitch famed in the first war for killing the patient slowly. for a tense moment she thinks she’s made but ichigo just leans over to sweetly kiss her as a thank you.   

ichigo goes off half healed. mariko is still half sure she’s made. she deliberately sabotages the silk operation and finds that the wherabouts of the doctor are unknown and supposes that dan, in his horrible wisdom, sent her on a quest to find him. this seems in line with his personality. she also finds a bingo book with that doctor and sasuke in it. she revises her thoughts about dan: this is too many konoha assets to loose. someone else is doing this. 

she goes to find touma. touma offers her Another Deal He’s Begging Her to Take. mariko finally listens to toumas Horrid Backstory.

two years ago the hyuuga started to get ill. weirdly ill. touma, as a valuable but not VIP member of the clan was sent off to discover WTF was happening. touma already well known for his slavish devotion to the Main Branch and its young heir in particular, cracks it open: someone is trying to kill off the clan using a spirit technique. most of the VIP’s don’t believe him as their are only two clans capable of that, one being the senju and because admitting that the clan is being killed off by the ghostly remains of their past would require self-responsibility. touma, persistent, acquires three amulets for hinata, hanabi and neji, just in time. as the culprit appears to collect his bounties. ichigo, of course.

ichigo and touma grew up together. because its shounen. and touma realises that the wasting of the senju clan is due to ichigo’s bloodline limit -an offshoot of hashirama’s (if you’ve read nfts this is The Bad End results of the HashiMada fight). ichigo informs him that he intends to take the head of every major figure in the Original Plot including hinata. touma uses the spirits of the family, those he honours and who accept his genuine love for his lady and her charges to battle him back but its not something he can do twice. 

enter hashimoto, currently containing ichigo’s next bounty and a stalwart of konoha’s defense. touma engineers the presence of one of Dan’s operatives in the area, as someone who operates outside the usual Clan’s because he’s desperate to not let anyone important come here AND to let someone with influence know about the danger.

mariko: ‘you don’t know shit about dan holy fuck’

mariko: ‘what a bad plan’

mariko: ‘he would absolutely not do anything helpful with this information.’   

nethertheless, touma needs her help because now that mariko is here he has another chance. that other clan good at spirit bullshit? yeah. mariko points out that there has been a spirit user since uncle masaru went and lost the fuu summons. touma is like ‘........and?’ whatever, her kids on the line now. touma assures her ichigo would want to wait until shippuden so he’s all juicy and powerful but, like, he also thought dan would help so.

SASUKE! sasuke has been silently leading a child revolution with his Upright Character and Protagonist Halo. he has successfully broken the will of his local teachers and formed a tight knit group of supporters (an early taka if u will allow) and now that they are on the cusp of Winning...the settlement is under attack, he’s a child, the spirits are coming from the rightfully displeased kin of the area and SASUKE is like SIX. so in ninja fashion he bravely learns of a way to suppress the spirits from his schoolmate whose grandmother was a priestess, remembers that Uchiha have Bullshit Powers from mariko adhd dumping in an attempt to bond and Bravely goes off to Die Doing His Family Proud. he’s a child and still Not Okay. 

mariko puts on her game face and travels to where touma says ichigo will be. it’s quite a way away. he’s surprised to see her and remarks on the kill stitch she gave him. they flirt. it’s embarrassing. ichigo offers her a job and mari’s like ‘nah’ and goes Full Uchiha. ichigo is like ‘....not a dealbreaker’ and goes full Senju. they have a horrifying fight where mariko gets gross and uses medic jutsu to fuck him up and ichigo uses senju spirit summons that are totally a reflection of his fucked up soul. ichigo’s face melts and his arms turn into weird trees and he grows a tail. mariko worries that she’d still hit. the fight ends when sasuke, with his child warband, begins to summon the Great Land Spirit. ichigo goes ‘oh fuck’ when a Beast emerges and demands the Senju Return What They Took and while ichigo looks for a way out mariko basically force-pushes a terminal heart murmur in him. ichigo looks comically betrayed but like. he’s gonna kill her kid? not that he knows that.

ichigo peaces out thru the portal to the great spirit realm. the Beast gives mariko a knowing look but leaves her alone to head towards hashimoto. mariko heads for her kid. the children are holed up under the abandonded shrine of a lost god absolutely writhing with evil, turns out the spirits are also mad at children! they don’t distinguish! sasuke is trying to calm the others and is preparing to bust some Uchiha bullshit when mariko arrives, bleeding from her eyes and covered in blood.

mariko knows one spirit technique.

just one.

demonic heavens release of the loyal concubine. in the story a uchiha woman is released from a disastrous marriage by following the thirteen instructions of a talking fox. she bathes in milk and gives succor to the kits of the fox when its injured defending her agaisnt her oni husband. in honour of this every maiden uchiha (read virgin) was required to do this spirit honour by succoring a kit and offering it back to the mother every ‘lucky year’. the next ‘lucky year’ was this year. the year all the uchiha are dead.

now mariko is not a virgin, but sasuke is, and she does the ceremony for him in place of the mothers who would do it for their babies. the spirit accepts this offering in full. 

(she does not think about this)

the end of the ceremony requires a full mouth of alcohol, hence why mothers do it for their children, and she pours a mouthful of the rancid stuff spilled on the altar in her mouth.

in her mouth the week old alcohol turns to milk and honey.

she summons inari

she has no recollection of what follows, being posessed by a goddess, but she sees the full history of the uchiha and their worship. their love. and accepts that she is not an outsider at all. she is a uchiha through and through.

in the clean up: sasuke comes forward about his rebellion and war wounds, mariko cries because she’s me and loves fomenting revolution against colonialism. dan does indeed come through and makes the entirety of hashimoto his problem and cleans house. erasing it from konoha’s periphary. mariko finds out that the doctor has been dead awhile but his work isn’t and absconds with it before it can get cleaned out.

sasuke and mariko return to konoha after about a year with a much more solid relationship. touma buys out her workplace and offers her shareholder status in it as well as other strategic businesses. after they reconcile touma apologises profusely and offers his own great secret in return. he arranges a play date with sasuke and hinata. sasuke stays home with his grandmother. touma starts shaking and freaking out but mari likes him so she helps him. eventually she meets hinata and only just realises how weird it is that she’s never seen her.

hinata is blind.

someone blinded her on purpose.

mariko walks home after comforting a crying touma who she knows is terrified of what will happen when people (read: other transmigrators) find out how off course things are. he’s kept people from knowing through judicious bribery under the hyuuga name but he needs mariko’s support to keep hinata safe. 

on her walk home she runs into a civilian who introduces her self as a line chef......named ‘rachel’. she’s naruto’s neechan and she wants a fucking word.       

end arc!

some loose threads: 

Mysterious Package will return

did Dan know it was a set up....eh. did he use the chance to disrupt konoha’s alliance to his advantage. yeah. 

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