Chapter Text
When the Aburame wanted privacy, no one in Konoha trespassed. That was more common sense than courtesy because, on the rare occasions when it happened, crossing onto their land was a lot like throwing rocks at a wasps' nest.
The wasps couldn't be held responsible for what happened next.
Shikako sat in a tree just outside the boundary and hoped that someone would notice her being polite. She also hoped they would assume that she was there to help.
Which she was. It was just also sort of her fault. A little bit. As much as the giant, Stay Puft Marshmallow Man smashing the city had been the Ghostbusters' fault.
Because, when a creepy extra dimensional being wandered into her dreams and asked about team preferences for a long term undercover mission, specifically a mission that would reveal her secrets, she'd thought of Shino. She'd thought of other people, too, mostly in order to panic about their reactions, but Shino had felt distant enough to be safe and familiar enough to be trusted.
The-- The thing had picked up the idea of Shino and turned it over in its metaphorical hands. Then it had said, "Possible. We can exert leverage to secure his cooperation. Two will not, however, be sufficient."
Shikako had known that it wasn't just a dream because Gelel sang around her the entire time. The thing didn't feel malevolent, not the way that Jashin had, but it also didn't feel friendly.
"We can warp time and worlds," the thing had said, "but we can't tell you what to do after you get there, not specifically. You, Nara Shikako, have both knowledge and power. Enough of both. Probably.
"We will pay, but this mission... Your Hokage would not consent, and she would be right to refuse. Whoever goes with you will be changed. Hence personal hostages."
Shikako rarely hated, but she had in that moment.
"Hatred leads to the Dark Side," the thing had chided.
"I'm not a Jedi," Shikako had said.
"You have the weapon of one." The thing had sounded amused.
When Shikako had awoken, Kino had been gone. Nobody remarked on his absence. It was deeply weird, and Shikako took it as a threat.
Look. I can alter the past, and only you will notice.
She hoped Kino wasn't scared. She hoped she remembered enough about Star Wars to be useful. The canon was huge, and it had still been in active production with new revelations and patchwork retcons. Were the novels canon? The games? Just the movies?
After about ten minutes of sitting in the tree, Shikako cleared her throat. She felt a little silly, and she wasn't sure it would work, but she said, "Please tell Shino-- aɪ nəʊ waɪ ˈrɒbɪn wɜːkt wɪð sleɪd."
Shino would remember the phrase. Probably. She'd given him that one because of his cousin, the one whose name she couldn't remember. She couldn't-- wouldn't-- tell Shino directly, but she thought he might find out on his own.
Shikako just wasn't sure kikaichu could carry a verbal message. Even if they could, she wasn't sure they'd notice the request.
Shikako was very afraid that she knew how the thing intended to leverage Shino's cooperation. She wondered why the collective Aburame memories hadn't been affected the way that her clan's had been about Kino.
Possibly the kikaichu couldn't be made to forget?
Or maybe it was just that Shino wouldn't need the same sort of proof that Shikako did.
She repeated the phrase at five minute intervals and tried to find the voice from her dream. She was sure it had to be listening, and she wanted to suggest other members for her team. Well, she wanted answers that would determine who she might ask for.
Sai was only helpful if Shikako could free him. Otherwise, he wouldn't be able to keep her secrets.
Could she recruit outside the village? How long would the mission be? It might be worth asking for someone like Deidara if Shikako would have time to win his loyalty. More because he'd be useful after they got back than because she thought he'd be useful in a universe with Jedi and Sith. She had the impression that Deidara's loyalty to the Akatsuki was looser than that of any of the others. He'd had to be coerced into joining.
Was there anyone from Cloud or Rock who could be persuaded to an alliance of convenience when trapped in another universe? Probably but, again, she didn't have enough information about anybody she could work with.
Kankurou would need to write the story down, and Gaara-- Gaara would keep her secrets, but if they were going to be gone long in this world's time, the Kazekage was off the table. Plus, Shukaku would go Sith in a heartbeat.
Maybe Temari? If they went to Tatooine, someone from Sand could be useful, and Shikako wasn't as deeply invested in her friendship with Temari as with Gaara.
Not Haku. She couldn't tell him the truth. Not even for Isobu's help. Isobu wouldn't be the same risk as Shukaku. The twins would be useful, but Shikako wasn't sure she was cold enough for that. Not if she wasn't also willing to consider Hanabi.
If she took a Hyuuga, she was taking Neji, and that was a terrible idea. All of this was a terrible idea.
But Neji wanted the same thing that Sai did. Sort of. A chance to study one seal could be a chance to study two.
Tenzou knew how to keep secrets. At least, she thought he did. And Anko would probably understand why Shikako had to keep secrets. Maybe.
But both of them would probably try to take over as mission leader. Ibiki probably would, too, and he wouldn't forgive her secrets.
What about a medic? Kabuto's skills would be perfect if he weren't prone to treachery and casual murder. Sakura-- Maybe Shikako could work with Kabuto? No. That was a no on the healer.
Was she limited to people who were currently alive? The thought of Aoba made her throat close, but, if she could have dead people, she'd probably ask for an Uchiha so that Sasuke could be less alone. Except that there weren't many she knew enough about. Would an Uchiha genin work? There'd been more than one killed in the Massacre.
What about Naruto's parents or Tsunade's brother? Or Uncle Ikoma? Or-- Or--
She probably couldn't have all of them, and there was a chance that they'd just be dead again when the mission ended. She didn't want to give any of her loved ones a monkey's paw.
Wait-- The Star Wars universe had ghosts. They were sort of normal. She frowned. She couldn't recall any of the ghosts being truly useful. They didn't spy or teach or, well, any of the things Shikako would do as a fully mobile ghost.
Could Shikako catch a Force ghost in a seal like the one holding Maboroshi Kisuke? That might be a way around the dead again part of things at the end of the mission.
Would Naruto like having his parents' ghosts hanging around? Why was she even asking the question? She knew his answer.
She was less sure it would be good for Naruto to have them around. They'd missed fourteen years of his life, and he couldn't possibly be the child they'd imagined. No child ever was; it was just that parents had time to adjust as the child grew into themself.
Then again, were seal bound ghosts or Force ghosts, whichever, protected against the edo tensei? That would be a reason to hold onto Naruto's parents. If she was doing that, she might as well wish for the Second to show up, too.
Except--
Shino's arrival interrupted Shikako's spiraling thoughts. "You know something," he said quietly. "Why? Because I remember those sounds. I remember what they mean."
Shikako thought she could hear all of the Aburame in his voice. She nodded. "They took one of mine, too." She tried to remember if she'd ever given him the phrase for a person everyone had forgotten except the person speaking. "It's off the books but not against clan or village interests. I'm packed."
"There are no other disturbances in the village," he said.
"No one else remembers my baby brother." She hated saying it. "If we go, we get them back. Even if we don't make it, the clans will get them back." She hesitated then added, "I don't know who the rest of the team will be, but we're supposed to be an out of context solution." She bit her lip. "I don't know what leverage they'll use on the others. It might... They could have taken us, and no one could have stopped them. I think--" She choked on the words.
"Pack your things, Shino," she said. "Mission of indefinite length with no resupply. I'm not sure how long we'll be gone, relative to here, so your clan might have to cover for us and for whoever else."
Shino hesitated.
Shikako thought she wouldn't have recognized it as hesitation before their time loop.
Shino nodded. He turned and walked back through the angry swarm.
Shikako waited. If you really want us going somewhere, you'll have to provide transportation. She felt a pressure on her mind that she took as a response.
For a moment that seemed like an eternity, the eldritch presence-- the client-- seemed to be riffling through the people she knew and the people she knew about. Both what she knew from first hand interaction and what she remembered from the anime.
We've selected your team. You have fascinating ideas and priorities. You and the young Aburame will have two days local before the rest of your team arrives.
____
They were on Alderaan. The client had told Shikako that much and had promised that they'd understand and be able to make themselves understood in any language they could physically speak.
Shikako's first priority was to figure out when they were. The client had given a date, but Shikako had no clear referents for the systems used. Staying on Alderaan to do the briefings made more sense if Princess Leia Organa wasn't yet the Senator for Alderaan.
Fortunately, Shino trusted her enough to wait while she spied and discovered that Queen Breha Organa was married but still childless. Once she had that information, she took ten minutes just to breathe deeply. She hadn't seen any mention of war, not yet, but Anakin Skywalker was probably already a Jedi padawan.
At least they probably had two decades before the Death Star destroyed the planet.
When Shikako returned to the massive tree where she and Shino had made camp, Shino gave her his full attention. "You have the briefing," he said. "Why? Because--"
Shikako waved a hand to cut him off. "I do," she said, "but it's complicated, and I'm not sure where to start."
"The client's requirements are the usual place to start."
"Not this time," Shikako told him. "The requirement was to come here, stay for an unspecified amount of time, and do something to alter what's going to happen." She scrubbed one hand over her right eye. "We're allowed to make it worse if we want. Or better if we can figure out how. Or just cause chaos. I think..." She hesitated. "Do you trust me?"
Shino went completely still.
Shikako had the impression that it was more bafflement than anything else.
After about three seconds, he said, "I would not be here if I didn't. If I didn't trust you, I would have joined the search for... for our Queen-in-Waiting."
So it was the kikaichu who remembered. "Chiyako-chan," Shikako said. "Your sister. She's eight." Shikako pulled out the friendship bracelet Chiyako had made. "She gave me this the night we met." She offered it to Shino.
"I remember," Shino said as he reached out to take the bracelet. "But..." He raised one shoulder in a shrug then tucked the scrap of cloth into his coat. "The hives don't care about names, and no one else remembered. No one heard me when I spoke of her as anything but Queen-in-Waiting."
"I didn't try talking to anyone about Kino," Shikako admitted. "I thought... If they believed me, it would be worse, and they-- They might try to stop me leaving. Not T&I, just a lot of very concerned Yamanaka aunties and uncles offering me tea and a chance to talk. They're not supposed to look inside my head, but I don't think Tsunade-sama has told them why, so they'd probably try."
Shikako pulled out a bottle of ginger honey syrup that she knew Shino's kikaichu liked. "You're all probably tired." She waved to indicate his hive as well as the portions of him that were human. "I've got Akimichi ration bars. I'd rather not risk anything complicated while we're hiding from the locals."
"That would be appreciated. Why? Because it has been a long day already." Shino accepted the bottle and dribbled some of the syrup on the branch he was sitting on.
Kikaichu came out and gathered up what Shino had poured. Shikako thought they were taking it back inside him to share.
Shino poured a little more syrup. "You asked if I trusted you. I think... The real question is if you trust me."
Shikako tried to find the right words, the real starting place. "Some of this-- You're going to end up knowing things that would get me killed by our own people. Well, if you count Shimura Danzo and his allies as our own people. Or Uchiha Madara. Do you believe in reincarnation?"
"If you say it is possible, I will bow to your expertise. Why? Because of other things you've said were possible."
She looked away. "I was reborn in Konoha with memories of a past life, of another world. I don't know why I remembered my previous life. I don't know why other people don't. My old life was in a world without chakra. That is, nobody used it. I don't know if natural chakra existed in some way that people couldn't sense. It was-- More technology. Less war. Well, different war.
"Being a baby was terrifying. I couldn't understand what people were saying; I couldn't see very well; and my body was-- I couldn't move. I constantly felt like I was drowning because of the chakra in the air." She glanced back at Shino to see him nodding acceptance of the factuality of her account.
As far as Shikako could tell, nothing she'd said so far had upset him. "I love Mom and Dad," she said. "It took a while because I remembered being an adult, remembered a different family." She looked up at the clouds. "I grieved a different family, and I felt like I'd replaced the baby Mom and Dad expected."
Shino didn't move, didn't say anything, so Shikako went on, "My first life-- That world had a lot of movies and books and just... a lot of stories." She cleared her throat. She felt like the words were getting stuck. "This world-- Alderaan-- is from one of those stories. Well, more like a cycle of stories. I only know parts of it, and I've forgotten some. It was... a cool story but not Konoha-relevant, and if I retold the story, I'd be changing the names and details anyway."
Neither of them said anything for several seconds.
Then Shino asked, "Was Konoha in one of those stories?"
Shikako nodded.
"Ah. So you were destined for Team 7."
Shikako flinched. She pulled her limbs in close and said, "Sakura was supposed to be on Team 7. I stole her place. There wasn't a Nara Shikako in the story. The story had a happy ending. A lot of people died, but the world didn't end. I don't know how the story comes out with me in it."
"Your life is weirder and more--" Shino hesitated, and Shikako thought he was looking for a word. "I meant it as an expression of sympathy."
Shikako heard the apology in his words, so she nodded. "There are a lot of bad things I knew about but was too cowardly to fix. Or just... It's a long way to Mist or Sand or... And, if I told anybody, I knew T&I was the best case. Well, maybe dying was the best case. Now-- How does it feel to know I've been lying to you all these years?"
"I trust you, Shikako," Shino said flatly. "Why? Because you are kind when it gains you nothing."
"That camouflages the times when I'm kind because I need something."
Shino made a noise that wasn't quite a laugh. "This story, the one with Konoha, what was it called?"
Shikako's answering laugh was a little choked and wet. "Naruto. It was called Naruto. I always knew he was important. I know who his parents were and why no one's ever told him."
"Huh." Shino made the syllable sound like he was recontextualizing his entire world.
"He's really inspirational when he's trying. He'll be an amazing Hokage after the Fourth War."
"How much of this do I need to know? Why? Because we're on Alderaan--"
Shikako thought the planet's name sounded a little weird with Shino's inflections, but she didn't say anything.
"--and none of this is mission relevant."
"I'm telling you because I can't explain what I know about this world otherwise. Also, right now, there's no way--" She shook her head. "There's too much I couldn't explain."
"You could," Shino said. "You're a Nara, and your missions tend to end up classified. And everyone knows that you break reality or, at least, how people perceive reality." He tilted his head to one side. "You could have faked a detailed briefing. Why? Because the client put several new languages into my head in under a minute. Mission details would be nothing."
Shikako shrugged. "The client said my secrets would come out. I'm being pre-emptive. Also, I trust you. I don't know who the rest of the team will be, and some of the options I thought about were-- We're going to need a different explanation, and we're going to have to agree on it before they show up. We also need a mission objective."
"Okay," Shino said. "Start at the beginning. Why? Because it is the beginning."
Shikako signed and closed her eyes. She let her head fall back against the trunk of the tree. "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..."
Shikako ended up talking about the movies in release order rather than chronological order. She mentioned a few of the books she'd read but emphasized their dubious reliability by taking a tour through A Splinter in the Mind's Eye. She also talked about some of the games, but she hadn't played all of them, and some of them were set in times and places that weren't going to be directly relevant. When she got to the prequels, she included what she knew of The Clone Wars. She didn't know how many seasons it had run, but she'd only seen two seasons, maybe part of a third. Or maybe one season and part of a second? It blurred.
She paused between movies to eat and to give Shino time to ask questions. She'd given him paper so that he could note the questions without interrupting her. Sometimes, while listening, he scratched out unspoken questions that he felt had been adequately answered.
One of Shino's questions had to do with defining the word 'galaxy.' Their education in astronomy had been limited to using stars to navigate, so it wasn't a concept that had come up in their Academy years.
Shikako thought hard before she said, "A planet full of people could be like an individual Aburame and their hive with a solar system like an Aburame nuclear family. Just... A galaxy is like filling our entire continent with Aburame, each one a planet but the inhabitants of their hives varying from place to place. Bigger than that, really, but the general idea works."
The set of Shino's shoulders, the tilt of his head, told Shikako both that he understood and that he was appalled. He set his notebook down. "The scale is too big for a plan," he said. "Even with a thousand teams and a decade to prepare."
Shikako fidgeted because he wasn't wrong. "Palpatine's the lynchpin," she said, "or maybe Anakin. Assassination?" She frowned.
Shino shook his head. "The war would go differently, but it would still happen. And... you said that, in some stories, Palpatine comes back. As to Anakin, the story showed the scheme that worked, but, if it wasn't a story about Anakin--" He hesitated, cleared his throat then said, "If you were Palpatine, how many different plans would you have for becoming emperor and destroying the Jedi?"
Shikako groaned. She pulled her knees in to her chest and rested her head on them.
"Also," Shino went on. "Our mission isn't to stop Palpatine. You're letting the story bias you."
Shikako hissed in frustration. "It's the obvious goal."
"It's not." Shino insisted. "Our mission is to be here and do whatever the hell we want. We could blow up buildings or buy an apiary. We could make a Princess Fuun sequel movie. We could sit in this tree and meditate until our food runs out."
"I'm sick of ignoring old men murdering and enslaving people." As soon as the words were out, Shikako regretted them. Not the truth of them. She'd needed to realize why she hated Palpatine so much more now than she had when she considered him fictional.
After several seconds, Shino said, "I am concerned. Why? Because that sounds like you know of more than one."
"It doesn't matter," Shikako replied. "Nothing back home is relevant, remember?"
"I must change my view. Why? Because you are clearly emotionally compromised because of something about this mission."
"We should sleep on it," Shikako said. Surely she'd come up with an answer over night. Right? "Can your kikaichu keep watch? I don't think this counts as hostile territory in the ways we're used to. We might get arrested, but nobody's going to try murder us while we sleep."
Shino didn't answer verbally. Instead, many of his kikaichu disappeared into the foliage around them.
____
Shikako dreamed about the Uchiha dying, but this time, they were shot by blasters and cut to pieces by a red light saber wielded by a man in a bulky black suit. Uchiha children died, over and over and over, in a Jedi creche.
Shikako woke to the thought that she hadn't wanted to see parallels between Anakin and Itachi. She supposed it followed logically from her having connected Palpatine and Danzo and Palpatine and Madara, but she hadn't wanted to think about Itachi as a tragic protagonist.
She wondered for a few seconds if this was a heavy handed message from the client-- For all the talk about not being able to dictate her actions, she was almost certain she'd been chosen because she was likely to favor the Jedi over the Sith-- but she thought her own subconscious was entirely capable of making the connection on its own.
If the client had been wrong about her biases, the dream would have been a hard shove toward burning the universe for spite.
Living in a story was just living. She knew that by now. She also knew that the exciting parts of a story were the least fun to live through. The exciting parts of the Star Wars universe made the Uchiha Massacre look like a penny ante game.
At least, this time, she didn't need to deceive her friends and family to hide what she knew. A client who could read minds and insert languages into a person's head-- and who took hostages-- could be blamed for any new information or bad intelligence.
Even Ibiki would accept that one. Right?