Knitting Fate (Canon Patchworking with Uchiha Ren Part II)

Fortieth Thread

At last, the long awaited (at least by me) time skip. And also it's time for me to ay – I'm off to hiatus. It should take me about a month, but I need to finally get my shit together and get my driving license, and also September is ending soon, and with it – my holidays. Hello university. So yeah, I'm taking time off to settle in, but I'm pretty sure I'll throw in an omake or two in the meantime – especially one about Ren getting her hand cut off, because I'm pretty sure you'd like to hear it.

See you by the end of September!

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"If you love life, don't waste time, for time is what life is made up of."
― Bruce Lee

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Ren got over her chakra exhaustion within a week, and basically right after that was put on active mission rooster. Because of that, soon next months have gotten pretty repetitive. It was a routine, but a quite pleasant one, to be frank. The kids were busy with school, Ren was busy with... Well, quite literally everything. She would go on missions of course, mostly boring C-Rank escorts and deliveries in the proximity, who eventually kept progressing in their difficulty and in fact that Ren was more often than not sent alone – and then, with time and experience, came B-Ranks. Which were basically C-Ranks that involved killing people who were either bandits or low-level ninja. Usually among bandits. And Ren, as a nice and well-trained, exemplary murderer for hire of a weaponized child didn't even bat an eye on spilling their blood.

Not to mention that her first kill (as Ren, Renee had her own luggage) was that ROOT woman trying to snatch Torune. Huh. It didn't even properly register, to be frank, what with Ren being much more interested in the fact that she unlocked one of her Mangekyo abilities and that Hana was angry, again, than the fact of the kill.

And who said she was alone? While she had to dodge going on missions with Danzo-planted ROOT-puppets – he was trying to cause her to have an 'accident' on mission, old asshole – which wasn't that difficult, considering her... Spy net. Spyder net, because Ren was a person for bad puns – but what mattered was that the things they had relied to her have been most disturbing, but allowed her to largely avoid trouble from Danzo – along with that one assassination attempt that he made when particularly aggravated, in-village. Ren unabashedly glued herself to Gai's side for entire week, and when her sent assassin actually finally ran out of patience and struck, he got taste of Takemikazuchi to the face, with witnesses.

Ren might or might not have gained an ANBU tail for her in-village stays because of that. Danzo wasn't pleased, but the same couldn't have been said about Ren.

Also, let it be said, spite and rage are amazing motivators. At least when it comes to Ren and Hana – because Ren is certain that the only reason Hana went and got the chūnin promotion instead of just remaining in the hospital was to go on field missions with Ren. Frankly, it caused Hana more exasperation than ever, but she never relented. Friends are such an amazing thing.

(Although Hana wasn't exactly happy when Ren took a blow for her and lost an arm because of it. At all. But hey, she re-attached it, so Ren didn't really know why she was still angry weeks later.)

If she wasn't on missions, she was training. Guy, who was the spawn from hell; when she wasn't on medical leave, and each session with him would make her ache in places that she's sure were not supposed to ache from physical activity. Hell, she was pretty sure that there were instances where the hurt itself was hurting – although, she could not deny the effects it was giving her. So she smiled and nodded at Guy's youthful screaming outbursts and ran fifty laps around the entire fucking village walls length. And then proceeded to be fed dirt by Guy in sparring – until she was more often than not able to hold her ground for a few short moments that seemed to lengthen every time they sparred. But she still ached to her very bones.