Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

Snowflake was a real person.

It was dizzying. Exhilarating. A little terrifying. She had signed a binding legal contract, universally acknowledged as the pinnacle of romance, and now there was a document in a folder on a shelf somewhere in the Tower affirming that she, Gōketsu Snowflake, was capable of conducting independent business transactions, and therefore was real.

The rights that Leaf afforded to a foreign legal entity, while pitiful compared to those of a citizen, were a bounty beyond anything Snowflake could have imagined having. She could open a bank account (though she was still completely financially dependent on Kei). She could rent housing (though her personal possessions would not fill a storage chest, and she did not require a place to sleep). She could appeal to the courts for arbitration (though, through Kei, she had the entire lawyer clan to call upon anyway). Above all, she could stamp a piece of paper with her seal and it would mean something.

Then there was Kei. Snowflake could not believe that she had confessed her love for her creator, a secret she had once intended to hide within the phantasmal layer and take to her physically impossible grave. In public, even. Had she made a terrible mistake, binding herself further to the person from whom she needed all the distance she could get? Or was reshaping their bond with a free, deliberate choice itself an act of emancipation?

Not even the Nara Library held the answers. She had checked.

Kei, of course, had just performed her own act of emancipation. They had talked late into the night, Snowflake enduring Ami as a conversation topic because Kei needed reassuring that she had not made an unrecoverable error that would destroy her relationship with the person closest to her (Snowflake was not jealous; why would she be?) and leave her helpless and adrift within a cold and hostile world. No, Kei had grown in a way Snowflake had not known they could grow. Snowflake was proud of her Advocate, and curious how the impact of the choices made would propagate to her own psyche. Would she become more confident? Would her agency expand? Would Snowflake, dare she dream, become more capable of living without Ami?

Snowflake, with her depressingly poor powers of self-analysis, could not begin to guess how to unwrap the present Kei had incidentally given her.

Yet this morning, reflecting on the previous night, she had come to one realisation. Perhaps she had become more confident. Perhaps her agency had expanded. Perhaps it was delusional to believe that personal growth was so linear and simple. No matter what the cause, Snowflake had realised that there was something real people were permitted to do, and she was capable of doing it.

Kei would not. She had had her chance, and been unable or unwilling to use it. Nor did she intend to seek another. But Snowflake… Snowflake had the power to make a different choice. Kei might resent her for the memories, or even resent her full stop. But once Snowflake realised that she was capable of it, as an independent being not bound by Kei's choices, and once she realised that if she waited too long, the opportunity might pass, she could not allow herself to hesitate.

"Good morning, Hazō," she said as she entered the Gōketsu compound only to find its master chattering cheerfully with one of his civilian carpenters about air spirits instead of doing any of the work he was allegedly snowed under with. Still, his childlike enthusiasm when it came to discovering the deep truths of the world was not one of his worst points (setting aside his motivations, which tended to be less academic and more "shiny thing go boom").

"Hi, Snowflake," Hazō said, turning away from his interlocutor (who would not dream of considering his conversation more important than one between two shinobi). "That ribbon looks very nice on you."

Snowflake blushed.

Unfortunately, Kei and Snowflake's sense of their own appearance was more tangled than a ball of chakra bull intestines after ten minutes with Jūchi Yosamu. Kei considered herself displeasingly plain. Snowflake therefore considered herself displeasingly plain as well. However, Snowflake considered Kei unambiguously attractive, with her smooth lines and her precise motions. Since she and Kei had the same aesthetic sense, the problem went both ways, and then Kei inherited Snowflake's memories, and Snowflake was reinstantiated with Kei's memories, and it became fully recursive. Between all of this and her hesitant, artless attempts to develop her own style, Snowflake was much more sensitive to comments on her appearance than she would have liked.

As for the ribbon, it had been a revelation to learn that Isanese ribbon language was no less complex in its own right than Leaf flower language, perhaps even more (and given her and Kei's unhealthy levels of Ino exposure, Snowflake felt she was in a unique position to compare). There was something oddly satisfying about being able to speak a private language understood by only two other people in Leaf (two and a quarter if she counted Noburi). Today's ribbon was the plain silver ribbon of unexpected gifts, often worn by huntresses bringing home a magnificent catch such as a chakra boar (Yuno had many stories about slaughtering chakra boars), or by young women about to explain to their lover why an urgent wedding was in order.

"What brings you to your humble home?" Hazō asked. "It's not that I'm not happy to see you, but I already heard from Kei about the dinner, and, well, Mari is around right now…"

Snowflake looked at Hazō silently for a few seconds. The words, even prepared and rehearsed, were still difficult. Nevertheless, if Kei had been able to speak of her dangerously changing feelings to Ami…

"Hazō," she asked finally, "could you tell me where Mari is? I wish to talk to her."

Hazō stared at her in understandable confusion. "Really?"

Snowflake nodded.

"She's on the roof with Akane, standing guard while Akane replants the mountain hydralisk in some slimier creep to prepare it for the change of seasons. Do you remember the basic safety protocols?"

"Hazō," Snowflake said reproachfully, "Kei helped optimise them. Akane hadn't even factored in the delayed-effect venom from the borage."


Snowflake did not have her own room in the Gōketsu main building, which had been constructed in a hurry and for a family that had not included her. Since she did not wish to venture into Mari's private sanctum (not for profound symbolic reasons; the unrepentant mess in there simply set Kei's teeth on edge), they had instead elected to use Kei's room, a choice which came with its own confusing layers of symbolism, but on the other hand was a calming place at a time when Snowflake needed calm. Gazing at the ceiling painted with Mist stars, Snowflake could believe that she was not about to do something foolish and precipitous which would ruin multiple relationships.

"Snowflake," Mari said softly. "I didn't expect to see you after the way our last conversation went."

Snowflake's eyes stopped tracing the outline of the Twins, Kei's birth constellation.

"I do not retract anything I said," Snowflake told her. "You hurt Kei terribly. You took the trust she longed to restore and annihilated it. You risked sacrificing her life. You chose to sacrifice her heart. The birth mother who emotionally abandoned her was not half so cruel."

Mari gave a slow, sad smile. "I'm not her mother, Snowflake. With my background, and my personality, and the way I choose to live my life, I could never be qualified to be anyone's mother, much less hers.

"If you came here to condemn me some more," she added after a pause, "then you're wasting your time. I can and do apologise for not having been smart enough, or creative enough, or good enough at improvising, to come up with a better solution. I can and do apologise for hurting you and Kei. But I can't apologise for not doing better than my best."

"That is not the purpose of my visit." Snowflake looked up at the Twins again. She hoped they didn't look further apart than before. "Mari, you placed my life on the line as well that night, and that of all my sisters as yet unborn. I am confident that this did not occur to you at the time. And in addition to all of my own feelings on the subject, I have felt everything Kei feels. That is why I am uniquely qualified to say this to you:"

She braced herself. So did Mari.

"I forgive you."

The words reverberated through the room that possessed no acoustic properties of note, bouncing off the walls and attenuating only slowly. Both Snowflake and Mari sat there, listening to them as they faded, and unsure if they understood.

"Do you mean that?" Mari asked in a tone of pure disoriented bewilderment.

"I forgive you," Snowflake repeated. "I do not require a mother. I do not require a guardian. I may not be an adult in any meaningful way, but it is enough for me to have my creator and my Advocate. I do not require you to be to me what you were to her.

"I do not require you to be perfect, and I accept your failure to surpass your limitations. I will not pretend that our relationship is unaffected by your actions, but here and now, I absolve you of the pain I feel and the pain I have inherited."

"Why would you do that?" Mari asked. "Weren't you furious about how I treated Kei?"

"I am not forgiving you for what you did to her," Snowflake said. "Only Kei can do that. I am forgiving you for what you did to me, and for what your actions against Kei did to me. I cannot choose my emotional reaction to what you did, Mari, any more than she can. But unlike her pain, which is intolerable, mine is still within the realm where I can choose how to respond.

"This entire situation has been a disaster for everyone. The pain has rippled out, spreading through Kei and myself to Yuno and from her to Noburi, to Ami and from her to Hazō, to everyone in the Snow Globe forced to watch Kei suffer, and back to you from every source. I cannot control the hearts of others, but I am choosing for my pain to stop with me. Whatever guilt you feel about risking my life and hurting my feelings, it has been enough. I forgive you, and ask you to forgive yourself."

Mari smiled, and her smile held a warmth that Snowflake had forgotten and Kei was not ready to remember. It was fortunate that an exercise of initiative on this scale would be easy prey for the phantasmal layer.

For a little while, neither of them said anything. Snowflake had run out of things to say. Mari, blindsided by the whole encounter, likely did not have anything appropriate in stock to begin with.

"Thank you, Snowflake," Mari said finally. "I think I've been waiting to hear that. Half the clan thinks that just because I did the right thing, there are no consequences. The other half thinks those consequences are final and there's nothing left for me to do but hate myself. I've been waiting to hear someone say that there's a way forward. For us. For me."

It was the slightest of foundations. A point of self-definition that might end up as nothing more than that. Still, Snowflake held out hope. If Snowflake successfully forgave Mari, sincerely and deep down, then perhaps someday, whether in months or years, it would allow Kei to forgive Mari too.

"So," Mari asked, "where do we go from here?"

Snowflake had to admit she had not actually thought that far. Would it be acceptable to go home now? Or would ending an adversarial relationship without putting anything in its place just result in discomfort and uncertainty for all involved?

"I suppose," she said, considering, "that having normalised relations, we should reaffirm this through some kind of activity that demonstrates that we are no longer in conflict. Perhaps… Mari, could you give me style advice?"

Snowflake had assumed that they would spend a few minutes, perhaps as much as half an hour, discussing different types of attractive clothes, or whatever it was that personal style involved. This assumption lasted until Mari's eyes lit up with the ravenous delight of a woman who had spent three long years waiting for Kei, or someone who looked exactly like Kei, to ask her that question.

"Let me grab my purse," Mari said with the grin of Yuno discovering a new species of chakra beast. Above her, her birth constellation, the Scorpion, revealed the sting hidden in its tail.

Snowflake realised two things at the exact same time. First, she had awakened a monster. Second, she had just framed this as a necessary bonding experience and there was no way to back out.

Third, the Scorpion added just as she thought she'd grasped the extent of her doom, when Kei received the traumatic memories of a full day of shopping for clothing, accessories, and whatever else it was that Mari intended to inflict on Snowflake, she would find new and creative ways to exploit the fact that Snowflake was functionally immortal.