Knitting Fate (Canon Patchworking with Uchiha Ren Part II)

Fifty-Eighth Thread

This chapter has been beta'd for you by hestia8693. I'd be lost and dead without her, probably. Praise thee!

*

Heeeeey. So university happened. I failed an exam, gotta buy me a retake. Life goes on, I'm perpetually late.

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***

"Growth is never by mere chance; it is the result of forces working together."

James Cash Penney

0

Ren chuckles, reading the letter once again. Kisame is such a great friend, or just person in general. He even shared her cupcakes with Itachi – except Itachi scoffed at them because they could've been poisoned, and then proceeded to look angry when Kisame inhaled them all.

Honestly, her cousin's moods are worse than those of pregnant women.

"Who are you writing with?" Kakuzu asks eventually.

"A friend of mine. We're closer, distance-wise, than we've been in years so messages arrive much quicker than usual," she explains, because it's true. Kisame and Itachi are in Kusa, somewhere, near the Taki border.

"Can't you just meet, if you're close enough to send multiple messages a day?" he asks, and Ren grimaces, remembering all the shady shit Akatsuki would be up to and, most importantly, Itachi, who might actually try to kill her. The worst part is, Kisame would most likely go between them, and she'd hate to turn Akatsuki against him. Those fucks are dangerous.

"We're from as opposing factions as it gets, old man," she sighs. "I wish we could, trust me, but it probably won't happen anytime soon."

Not until they are dispatched to try and capture Naruto, post chūnin exams, at least.

"And even if it does, we're probably going to try to kill one another."

*

"Should we bother trying to impersonate the ROOT guy, or should we just go for the kill?" Ren asks two days before the appointed meeting with Doku Romi. She and Kakuzu are in the storage doing an inventory of everything they had looted from the hideout, preparing to leave at a moment's notice. They both agreed that it would be best if they arrive in the area before Romi to get to know the terrain and maybe lay some traps.

Personally, Ren is itching to put a more lethal twist to some of the pranks Naruto loves to pull on the villagers.

"Why should we?" Kakuzu asks. "I know how Doku Romi looks like so I can confirm it's her. And with poison masters, it's best to take them by surprise and take them out before they can poison you."

"Fair, it's too dangerous," Ren agrees, because it's true. She has her spiders, and Takuya-sensei, but they're just summons, and the target is a high-rank missing-nin. Honestly, the only reason she's going after Doku Romi is because Kakuzu is with her. Contrary to popular belief, Ren isn't stupid, nor does she have a death wish – she knows when an opponent is too much for her to handle.

Arrogance is what kills people in this world, after all. She can't afford much.

It nearly cost her already, believing that her spiders were a foolproof method against Danzō. But there are places even they can't get into, things they can't relay. Hence her mission getting infiltrated.

Lesson learned, please and thank you. She'd be even more careful from now on.

Also, should she bother telling the Hokage? The senile old fool is so deep in Danzō's pocket it isn't even funny. There's no guarantee whatsoever that he would do anything about it, hell, he might even try to get rid of her himself.