Why, hello there, little monster.

She imagines it to be a face in the crowd that hunts her every Kyuubi festival. It's not like she doesn't know why anymore. Kurama can't bring himself to hate her because she's stuck, after all, in the same situation he is.

Problem is, her soulmark is indigo. She doesn't know what indigo means, because it's not a color for soulmarks. Something in her hides it, because it's one of the many things that mark her as different.

So, she's smart. She skips and causes trouble every time a teacher is rumored to be cataloging soulmarks, because there's one way to tell a body is really a body.

What their soulmarks say.

So she hides it, and when Iruka stops her, insisting she stay because somehow he knows that she's skipped her previous teachers' inspections when she blurts out the first lie she could think of.

"I don't have a soulmark!"

All the blood drains from her face, as she's practiced before. The room goes silent.

Whispers start to circulate, and Naruto knows that the Sandaime knows she has a soulmark. It's probably marked somewhere in his files, tucked away.

But for the adults, she knew the hunting thing was going to get worse.

It's not the best situation for her and she knows it.

Honestly, if her soulmate said anything else to her, it would have been better.

Waaay better. Having 'why hello there, little monster' written in elegant script on her lower back isn't something romantic, it's plain mean.

~:~

Rokudo Mukuro has a soul-clock. It's a clock that, when it counts down to zero, you meet your soulmate. Chikusa and Ken have them, one for each other; they'd known since they'd touched that they were soulmates.

His is black. In the mafia, black meant civilian, and that meant he was going to have a civilian soulmate.

(No, thanks.)

He dreams, sometimes; he's lived different lives and there's one thing that's there. A partner.

Whether he's a plant or an insect (he doesn't like to think of that life) or a woman, there's always someone (thing, he supposes, considering he was a plant. And an insect, at one point!) there. Once, they met and his other half died violently. Once, his other half had to watch him die.

(He was pretty sure they died together as plants, so.)

He has a general sense, now, of his other half. Maybe they didn't have the same sense; he has the feeling his other half is an old-soul, a soul that, while attracted to his world, was not a part of his world.

No. The old soul belonged to another world in a constant battle of life-and-death.

Mukuro feels a tug on that sense one October night.

(He only knows it's October because of the leaves.)

The ten-year-old closes his eyes, and his illusionary self appears to her side.

She's being chased by a mob. A mob.

His Path eye flares as his Flames flare as well. He grabs his other half's arm and she lets out a gasp of pure terror. Maybe because he's holding his trident, he doesn't really know. But his soul-clock heats up the moment he touches her, and he tries to search for the right words as the words of the mob behind him ring.

To the mob's eyes, the two vanish.

But in reality, they're in the same spot, the blue-eyed girl staring at him in pure fear.

"Why, hello there, little monster," he says in what is supposed to be a comforting voice.

He doesn't have much of a comforting aura, apparently, because the girl's terror ratchets up.

"My soulmate is a creep!"

She attempts to yank her arm out of Mukuro's hold.

"If you leave they're going to attempt to hurt you again," he tells her, this time leaving out the attempted comforting. He can't do it, apparently.

"Yeah? And what're you gonna do?" There was that fear again.

"Not hurt you," Mukuro promises. "Where do you live?"

The girl stares at him before wrenching her hand out of his.

Before he can call her back, she's vanishing into shadows.

Mukuro follows her as best as he can, only catching glimpses of her at a time. She lives in an apartment, and he can see a door shut.

He closes his eyes and materializes in the apartment, ready to open his mouth and make excuses to her parents/siblings, only to fall silent completely to stare at her.

She's clearly an orphan, judging by the general messy state of the apartment. Why she's living alone is also clear, given the fact a mob nearly ran her down.

She's making tea, two cups of it.

"Please take your shoes off," she requests in a small voice. He sees the way her hand shakes and realizes she's still scared of him.

He lets the trident fade into illusion. He's stuck here until his Flames manifest fully again; he should make the best of it.

"Am I your soulmate?" she asks, peeking up at him shyly.

He nods. "I don't live in this world," he explains, revealing his clock. "When you touch your soulmate, it warms and ends the clock."

Her eyes widen. She looks fascinated by his world.

"So how long have you been living here?" Mukuro asks.

"Since I turned six," she shrugs. "The civilian Academy has ninja sign-ups after first grade."

"This is a world of ninja?" he wonders, eyeing her bright orange clothing.

She nods, ducking her head shyly. "Yes," she says quietly. "It's a world of ninja."

~:~

Naruto is still scared of Mukuro, but that fear is less than her fear of ninja finding him here. It's his chakra signature that makes her worried, so she lets her chakra settle around her.

And freezes.

Because her chakra automatically recognizes people around fifteen feet (and growing.)

It doesn't register Mukuro's presence.

"I can't feel you," she says, brave enough to touch him. He's real.

She tries to read an energy off of him.

Deception, she reads. Indigo. Chocolate. Truth.

He did not lie to her.

He hesitates, then smiles a bit ruefully. It's still kinda creepy.

"It's because of this," he admits, holding out his hand. An indigo flame ignites in his palm. "They're called Soul Flames. Or just Flames. There's a bunch of Flame types out there. I'm a Mist Flame in my world. Illusionist."

"Oh," Naruto says, inwardly… Kind of disappointed.

"I can also possess people by scratching them with my trident."

Naruto's eyes widen. "A-are you gonna do that to me?"

"To get you to my world, maybe," he says firmly.

Naruto stills.

"What?" she doesn't dare to hope. "W-what did you say?" she asks again, staring straight up into the older boy's mismatched eyes.

He looks unsure, all of a sudden. "T-to get you to my world?" he suggests timidly.

Naruto doubts Mukuro is unsure about a lot of things. Maybe a bit stressed, because he does seem tired, but unsure? No.

Mukuro isn't that type of person, she decides.

"I'd like that," she whispers, feeling choked. She clears her throat, not wanting to cry in front of her soulmate, and instead walks over to the couch. Mukuro follows her, looking around interestedly.

"How old are you?" Mukuro asks suddenly.

"Eight," she replies absentmindedly, grabbing a few towels off the floor.

"And you've been living on your own for two years?"

"About," she responds. "And most people don't think I have a soulmate, either."

She pauses for a moment, then shows her back to Mukuro. He makes a noise of assent. "That's my writing," he says. "Is color in your soulmarks normal?"

She shakes her head, and hesitates.

Mukuro withdraws his hand.

"What's wrong?"

She turns to him. "There's something you need to know."

She tells him.

There's a terrifying expression on his face, an expression of such rage it makes her shrink a little after she tells him about Kurama (not his name, not until Kurama knows he can be trusted).

He quickly reassures her. "It's not you," he promises. "It's just… Something similar happened to me." He hesitates, and Naruto forces a smile.

"C'mon, I told you my darkest little secret," she says to him lightly. "You can tell me yours."

It's not like I can judge.

He tells her. About being experimented on, gaining the Six Paths in his eye. About him meeting her in different lives (in all of them, he reveals, but in some of them you died and some of them I died and one we both died.). About being an insect.

(What type of insect?

I think it was a spider. Like, you were a black spider and I… think I ate you, he admits uncomfortably at that moment.

Naruto stares at him for a moment. Mukuro, you're stupid. His eyes darken in either anger or annoyance, but Naruto breaks out into a smile. Spiders aren't insects, you idiot. They're arachids.

-Nids, he corrects her absently. ArachNIDS.)

She really can't judge him, after all, so her smile deepens.

The night lengthens. Both of them fall asleep on each other like children do, because it's late and they don't really have much to talk about.