"Aiko."
The girl in question blinked warily. The first thing she really registered about her abrupt awakening was that she was levered up in bed with one hand gripping the metal of the kunai that she kept at her bedside. The second was that Sasuke didn't usually wake her up in the middle of the night by coming in through her bedroom window (how did he get past the sensory seal she'd put up? That was mildly disturbing.).
Her first real thought was that something had to be very wrong. "Sasuke?" She flung the covers off and let her toes touch the cold floor with only a little grimace before she looked up at him. His eyes were even harder to read than usual, as they blended into the dark.
"I need to talk to you about something important." He paused, as if the next worlds physically pained him. "I need help."
"What do you need?" she paused for a moment. "And do I need my gear?"
"Not that kind of help."
"Okay." She took that as permission to make herself slightly less indecent by wrapping a house yukata on and tying it loosely. It was hot out, so she'd gone to bed in clingy shorts and a tank top.
Actually, he was lucky she hadn't been less clothed, she thought somewhat wryly with the part of her being that wasn't totally panicking over what the hell Sasuke might need so badly that he'd come to her in the dead of night.
"I'm decent. Can we talk in the front room, or are you worried about waking up the other two girls?" When he grimaced, she took that as a desire for more privacy and folded her legs criss-cross on her bed, patting beside her to invite him to sit. "What's happened?"
And then he actually sank down onto the fluffy futon. She tried not to goggle- holy hell, he must be exhausted or really out of sorts or something. That just wasn't Sasuke-like behavior.
"Three days ago, Shizune told me that…" He abruptly stopped and started again. "The Uchiha didn't encourage mixing with outsiders. It had never occurred to me that anyone had defied that." He gave a bitter little laugh. "I suppose it's lucky that it didn't occur to Itachi either."
Something clicked. "Sasuke… Are you trying to tell me you have family in the village?"
He nodded blankly, seeming to stare down at his hands. "I had a cousin once removed on my mother's side who had apparently been seeing a girl outside the clan when… He was seeing a girl six years ago in secret. Second generation Chuunin from a family of merchants." He made a strange sound that was almost a laugh. "My family would never have approved. And now… she's the only family I have. I don't know what to do. I haven't seen her yet. She's five now. And sick. Very sick. Apparently there's a family disease no one liked to talk about."
'Well, that sounds familiar'. Aiko rubbed at her face harshly with both hands, trying to get her thoughts in order. This… this was huge. She swallowed. God, where do you begin with something like this?
"Have you met her mother?" Aiko instantly knew that was the wrong question. He shook his head sharply.
"She's dead. About a year now. The girl- Fukiko lives with her aunt." He paused, and actually bit at his lip.
'It's so strange to see Sasuke looking young and uncertain.' She felt a rush of sympathy. "Do you want to get to know her?" she asked kindly. "It's understandable if you do."
"But selfish." He practically spat, hands clenching around the sheets. "If Itachi found out—if anyone found out, she'd be in danger. Now she's just some bastard orphan and no one cares."
"Don't say that," she snapped back automatically. "She is not. She's your cousin, Uchiha Fukiko and she's going to be totally badass when she grows up. Unless she doesn't want to be a kunoichi, in which case she's going to be amazing in some other way. And you'll be beating off the boys with a stick, probably the girls too". 'I've seen pictures of your family, you beautiful bastard. The pretty is genetic.'
She didn't want to make the sexist claim that 'boys are dumb'. Really, the problem here had more to do with his age, deeply held issues about family conflicting with his formative beliefs about what it meant to be kin, and his total lack of experience with the under-12 crowd. But it would have been easier to lament that boys are dumb at that moment.
Aiko scooted to sit directly beside him and leaned in. "This is the point where I give you a hug and you don't fight it. Because you need it, yeah." He glared weakly at her, but didn't protest when she wrapped her arms around his chest and rubbed at his back. "I think you should meet her. But your worry about keeping her secret isn't totally unfounded."
"We live in a ninja village," he deadpanned. "Someone is going to notice when I go to visit a black haired, black-eyed five year old. They're either going to assume I'm having an affair with the aunt or go do some investigating of their own. I'm not known for my love of children."
That was when a horrible, wicked thought occurred.
"You could be."
He actually recoiled at that.
Aiko puffed up her cheeks and blew the air out the side of her mouth as if to dismiss his skepticism. "No, really. I'm serious. I think that you should do a medical mastery project in pediatrics. You'd want to keep the specifics of what she's ill with very hush-hush, and obscure it by having a couple regular patients."
He stared. Really just stared.
It was both brilliant and completely stupid. People might question the apparent personality change, but not many people knew him at all and he had plenty of hidden depths. (Hard not to when you almost never talk to anyone about anything deeper than a mission report or lunch). Besides, all the gawking had probably already been done been Tsunade trotted him out as her new apprentice. And if she was right, he might be talking about the same obscure disease Itachi had… which was the only way she could see for him to have a chance at being helped at some point in the future.
She wasn't sure how to get to that point exactly, but she did know that the fate laid out for Itachi- dying at age 22 by a combination of sickness and suicide-by-brother was one she wanted to prevent. Not least because of what that would do to Sasuke. Aiko knew that she couldn't possibly understand what was going on in Itachi's head. Their experiences were far too different even without factoring the mental and emotional conditioning that he had doubtlessly bought into much more than she had, and he had made difficult choices she couldn't even dream about. She felt queasy at the thought of being asked to kill Kakashi-shishou or Sasuke or Hinata or Karin, even if it would save Naruto. She could have done it a year ago before she knew any of the last three very well. (She still couldn't physically kill shishou if she wanted to if he was in any condition slightly better than a coma, so that was a moot point). But now?
Uchiha Itachi was both completely mystifying (terrifyingly foreign) and someone she wanted to save. But that didn't mean that she was going to ignore the thought that his plan for life was completely insane. The last part, at least. Finding out that Itachi was innocent (and he would, he was Sasuke for crap's sake) after he'd killed the man would break Sasuke, or at least damage him irreparably.
"Why'd you come to me?" she asked, honestly curious about the answer. She hadn't thought they were that close.
He merely shrugged, then gave her a slightly disdainful look. "Who else was I going to ask about what it was like to raise a child? Kakashi? Shizune? Tsunade?"
The sarcasm was almost poisonous by the end, and she found herself giggling. "Okay, you have a point," she conceded. "and I will do my best to help you!" She gave him a cheesy grin just to see him roll his eyes at her. "Luckily for you, my best is much better than everyone else's, so everything is going to be fine."
~~~
After that wake-up call, it had been impossible to even consider going back to sleep. Instead Aiko began her morning conditioning significantly earlier than usual, running sprints around the village before the sky even hinted at a sunrise.
She was hitting a plateau in her speed training where it was much harder to get to the point of leg-shaking nausea that meant she had pushed herself again, but she wanted to get faster. Much faster. The only thing to do was go further and faster every day. She ran and ran and actually passed by Gai and Lee more than a couple of times when they got up to do their morning exercises, running around the village clockwise instead of her anti-clockwise. She also passed a gaggle of tiny girls who had to be ambitious Academy students, which made her smile and wave. It was hard not to giggle when they 'not whispered' far too loudly to each other about 'that was a real kunoichi, did you see?'.
Her failure to adequately prepare herself for an intense workout made itself known a few hours after dawn when she was brutalizing a training post. It manifested as a horrible sound from the region of her stomach that actually caused her to jump in surprise and take note of her hunger for the first time.
She stopped, mildly bewildered. 'I'm glad shishou wasn't here to see I'm such an incompetent nin that I can't even keep track of my own body.'
Then she had to extend her chakra senses to make sure she really was alone. Shishou was a sneaky bastard and he always seemed to be there precisely when she didn't want him to be. Luckily, she really did seem to be alone.
She roughly guessed by how long she'd been out that it must have been about seven in the morning when she made her way home to find that her two housemates had already left to workout. There was a note on the table from Karin about dinner, with a jotted addition from Anko informing/begging for dinner as well that made her laugh.
"When did I become the mom figure?" Aiko looked around the empty house, a bit baffled by just how much her life had changed. She had a sudden bout of homesickness- it was really more like 'NarutoSickness', really. Being separated from him was very strange. She hadn't realized that he had become an emotional crutch for her to the extent that she would constantly miss him or wonder what he might have thought about something.
She shook the strange thoughts away, taking a shower and dressing plainly again- in green this time, slightly influenced by her almost-partners in her workout that morning. Without blowdrying it, she tugged her hair back into a messy bun and left the house in search of a speedy breakfast. By that point she was ravenous, and it was hard to want to go through the motions of making her own food.
The streets were bustling at that time, and she had to wait a few minutes for a table and a few minutes more after she'd been seated for the same girl who'd helped her at the festival to come and take her order. "How did that end, by the way?" she asked absentmindedly after they'd mutually confirmed that the other had a good night after they'd parted.
She gave a laugh like a bell, clear and beautiful. "How does it ever end?"
Aiko snorted. "I suppose I thought Maito-san would be too preoccupied." She'd assumed he was busy making nice with the important people, since she didn't see him with Lee all night.
"Too-preoccupied to challenge half the village to fisticuffs, ikebana, and making sparkly paper lanterns to compete for paper flowers?" She raised an eyebrow neatly. "He destroyed the competition again, I think he had a hundred something this year. He's never too preoccupied for that. I think he lives for this festival."
"When you put it that way…"
The food was both speedy and excellent. After she'd wolfed most of it down, Aiko pushed away her bowl of fruit and pulled out the book she was currently working on. She was constantly surprised by her own memory for long-ago read literature (or never read, in one sense of the word). It seemed that the more of it she wrote, the more she remembered. She had a book where she was currently transcribing what she remembered of Shakespearian poetry, but this book was an altogether more frivolous collection of movies written as books. It was actually a more creative a project than re-writing books in some ways, since she had to abandon the visual aspects of the film (aside from occasional sketches in the pages) in favor of introspection and other narrative strategies.
Besides, translation was actually a form of art as well, and she wasn't dumb enough to leave large examples of English script around. For one thing she couldn't possibly explain it, and secondly it wouldn't be useful as code between her and Naruto if there were enough examples for someone like Shikamaru to figure out the language on their own. (and someone would be able to. There was always someone smarter than you, no matter how clever you thought you were. Unless you were Kakashi-shishou, in which case you were perfect, but that was beside the point.)
Chihero was hugging her clothes outside the bathhouse, having just broken through the spell that stole her name when someone tapped on her shoulder and Aiko put down her pencil to glance up at Ino. "Hey, girl," she greeted absently. "You look nice this morning."
She looked like she always did, actually, but it was best to lie to Ino. Even Ino's bad days were still pretty anyways, so it didn't much matter.
"And you look tired," Ino replied primly, giving her a one-armed hug around the shoulders and peering nosily down at the book.
That was probably true.
"What are you writing?"
Aiko fidgeted uncomfortably, fighting the urge to rudely shut the book. "Nothing important." It just felt strange to have someone else reading what she wrote, even if it wasn't totally her intellectual property. It was like she would be sharing far too much of herself.
The blonde rolled her eyes and snatched the book, flipping to the front page to see the illustrated title page. She squinted at it for a second before thumbing through the pages rapidly. "I didn't know you had any artistic ability. Those pictures are really pretty."
'They should be. I had years to just practice sketching while Iruka was lecturing in the Academy.'
"Thank you," she said instead of the more honest but less admirable sentiment in her head. "Can I have it back now? I feel really anxious watching you read it."
Ino shot her a look that probed far too much for her comfort, and she suddenly remembered just how sharp the other girl was. "Here." She sat down across from Aiko and stole a sip out of her ice water, wiping her hand on a napkin with a grimace at the condensation. "Is that what you used to do all the time when we were little- write and draw? I sort of assumed it was something academic and not stories." Unspoken was the, 'I misjudged you and am now re-evaluating' that crossed Ino's eyes.
She took a moment to curse the Yamanaka for teaching their children clinical psychology (even if it was nowhere up to her standards).
"Yes. I write a lot, actually."
Ino pursed her lips. "Hmm. Would it bother you to lend me a couple if you didn't have to watch me read them?"
Aiko rolled her eyes. "It's not that interesting, but sure. Not that one though, it's nowhere near done." My neighbor Totoro, on the other hand, she had recently finished. That might appeal to Ino. "If you want, we could go to my house and you could pick out a couple."
"How many do you have?" Ino asked nonchalantly, popping a bit of melon in her mouth from Aiko's forgotten bowl. She nearly choked on it when she got her answer- an approximation, since Aiko didn't really keep track. "For real? Girl, when do you have that kind of time?"
Aiko debated the wisdom of telling Ino that she hardly slept and anyways, that when all one had to do was work out maybe six to eight hours and eat a few times a day there were hours and hours left available for writing, but merely shrugged instead.
Ino goggled at the shelves that lined Aiko's bedroom, but placidly enough took the books Aiko handed her and a few more with pretty covers. It wasn't the best way to judge books, but she just shrugged. It didn't really matter…. Although Ino would be the first person to ever read anything she'd written, actually. She had told some of the stories to Naruto when they were little, but he'd never wanted to read them. He'd never really become fond of it, and Aiko actually suspected he had undiagnosed dyslexia.
"I'll return them when I'm done," Ino informed easily while she shoved her feet back into her sandals at the door. "This is actually great, I'm working in the shop all week and I needed something to read."
Aiko furrowed her brow awkwardly. "You're welcome, I think?"
"That's correct. Thank me, your gorgeous rival." Ino lifted her chin up and posed haughtily, one hand flicking out her long, sleek hair with a 'schwick' sound and sending it fanning behind her.
She snorted rudely. "Not much of a rival, Ino." The other girl had joked about fighting for the top kunoichi spot way back when, but after Aiko had graduated early she'd thought that was over. You couldn't have a rival who was just starting their shinobi career, could you? Then she was arrested by blue eyes when the other girl turned back to her.
"Don't dismiss me," Ino snapped. "I'm a damn good kunoichi too." She tossed her hair over a shoulder. "You owe me a workout, you know. We never started back up after you cancelled to work with the crazy snake lady."
That was fair enough, so they set a time to meet up and parted ways.
~~~
Kankuro actually put down the tiny screwdriver he'd been using to remove a spring lever that needed maintenance. He opened his mouth and tried to say something a few times, eventually closing his eyes and pushing his puppet away so he could rest his elbows on his workspace. He deposited his face in his hands and took a long moment to decide what part of the ridiculous statement Temari had just made deserved a more immediate reply.
Things had been more peaceful without his siblings. He almost regretted that they'd come back so soon. He'd gotten so much work done uninterrupted and slept much better when there was no chance of waking up to see light reflecting off Gaara's unblinking eyes (the kid was still fucking creepy sometimes even now that he was trying to be all touchy-feely).
He just couldn't make a decision on his reply. It all sounded ridiculous. But did the part of her response to the politely disinterested 'How was Konoha' that was 'I'm nominating Gaara for Kazekage', deserve a speedier response than the continuation 'he may have a girlfriend now, by the way'? He knew he probably should respond to the bit about being allies with Konoha now, but… but...
"How does that even work?" He pushed back his hood and fisted a hand in his hair, tilting his head to look up at her smug little grin. She always liked blindsiding him. "Gaara? Girl? Gaara?" He made an inarticulate sound of frustration from the back of his throat.
Temari gave a smoothly controlled shrug. "Honestly, I'm a little confused too. I was exaggerating a bit. She flirts with him and he seems to want to spend time with her to the point of agreeing to stay for their festival. But I don't think he actually has a sense of romantic interest yet."
That was marginally less terrifying. Gaara was scary enough without excess hormones making him moody and horny. Please god no, not for a few more years. Maybe sometime in the future he'd be brave enough to tease Gaara about it, but not now. So he changed the subject. "So… Kazekage, huh." His voice was flat. "Why."
His sister leapt straight up and took a perch on the edge of the tall wooden workspace that lined the room (and he took a moment to marvel at just how birdlike she was) and gave him one of her sharp little smiles. "He wants to, of course. And how many S-class shinobi do we really have? If we're honest, we only have one candidate. The Council is just wasting time and resources."
The Council of elders was jockeying for power like a bunch of whiny children, nominating themselves and relatives. It was all rather pathetic.
Gaara didn't want to rule by fear. He wanted to become Kazekage because people saw him and trusted him to protect them, not because they were too frightened to say no. But Temari rather thought that he was going to have to gain their trust as Kazekage instead of before, because the time to act was now. Sand had already been leaderless for months. But by sending her to make negotiations, they had inadvertently empowered Temari far too much if they wanted to control the field. They had made her responsible for the alliance that could save their skins and acknowledged her as the most qualified to make decisions about Sand's future.
She was going to strangle them with the loose leash they'd given her.
That wasn't the only trick up Temari's sleeve, actually. Gaara wouldn't like it, but if things looked to be going badly she was going to clobber the Elders with the full force of the borrowed clout she had from Tsunade. It would reek of Leaf trying to put a puppet government in place in Sand, but that impression could be rectified eventually. Temari was persuasive.
She'd had to be to get that damn Senju woman to take her side, actually. At first, the older woman had seemed mildly amused by her impudence and made the point that she had no place in Sand's politics. Temari knew where she was coming from—if Tsunade endorsed Gaara and another candidate became Kazekage, that could severely damage their relations.
On the other hand, as she made clear, if she helped put Gaara in power then she could be sure that their alliance would be nigh unbreakable. She hadn't wanted to admit what a strong hold Konoha had over her brother, but the Hokage probably knew all about whatever world-altering charisma Uzumaki Naruto had used on her hapless brother. She'd allowed him in the village, so she must have.
It had been a game of convincing her that there was much more for Leaf to gain than to lose in the venture with little risk. There were few who were willing to stand up to Gaara. He apparently wasn't smashing people who displeased him any longer, so she was going to have to settle for reasoning with them. (Inconvenient, that he'd given it up just when she needed it). Temari didn't like that idea much, but she liked it much better when she had financial and other backing from one of the most powerful villages in the continent.
~~~
Naruto pouted up at the ceiling of the hotel room, bored beyond belief. He'd been forbidden to train any further that day on what he'd been working on. The old man didn't want him using destructive jutsu unsupervised.
On one hand, Naruto recognized the logical value of that order. On the other hand, his teacher was a big dumb pervert with a big dumb face. Also he was dumb. Had Naruto mentioned that? "I bet he'd pay more attention to me if I were a pretty girl," Naruto muttered without really thinking about just how terrible and traumatizing that attention would be. And then he had an idea both terrible and brilliant.
He had been told to practice with his solid shadow clones, after all. Perhaps he could combine that directive with his prankalicious thought about a girlie alter-ego.
Naruto bounced nearly a foot in the air as he escaped the bed, scurrying to the full-length mirror and examining his reflection. He'd apply a standard henge first to figure out what he wanted to look like, and then figure out how to make a solid clone shell over it. He could make an actual clone, but that seemed less fun that doing it himself.
He studied his features, noting the too-sharp teeth, jaw that was just starting to turn square, and how his shoulders were getting to be too broad to be girlish. Hmm. This would need some thinking.
"If I were a girl, what would I look like?"
Then he snorted. That was a stupid question. He already had a model, no thinking required. He transformed into his sister in one of her weirdly boring outfits. (She had like a thousand of them, but they were all almost the same. He didn't get the point.) Now he was a pretty girl, but far too young even for the pervert. He scrunched up his nose in thought, remembering how those girls in the movie posters always looked. Aiko already had really long legs, but…. Poof. They became even longer, and curvier. But they looked strange coming out of her hips, so… poof. He swiveled, modeling and checking other angles.
"My ass is fantastic," Naruto muttered with some satisfaction. Or was it Aiko's ass? Whatever. He put both hands on his hips and straightened his torso exaggeratedly, eying the slight bumps of a precocious 13 year old. "Too flat to interest the pervert." He had to consciously work on not blushing at that thought. It was weird critically analyzing his sister's body. Maybe he should have used another girl as a base, but he'd started off by thinking he was going to make a girl version of himself, not a sexy version of like, Ino or something. His mind supplied what that might looked like. Then he really did blush and felt a little strange.
'Maybe it's better if it's my sister after all,' he flushed, going back to his project. Some experimental bouncing demonstrated that what he'd given himself for a chest was the wrong texture completely, so he poofed it away and tried again, applying the henge three more times until he was satisfied with the results. His observations had indicated that bouncing was important, though Naruto wasn't exactly certain why.
Now the face looked too young for the body, though. He scrunched up Aiko's nose in thought (it was straight and small, much like his) and elongated her face slightly, flattening the last hints of baby fat in her cheeks. That was a step in the right direction, so he exaggerated her cheekbones and widened her eyes slightly for extra cuteness. "I'm awesome!" He gave himself a thumbs-up, and then immediately cringed at both how the boyish posture looked with this body and how masculine the hands still were. He'd forgotten about that. He'd have to fix both of those things.
Of course, now the outfit was pulling in weird ways and messing with the total effect…
When Jiraiya returned to his hotel room, he expected to find his blonde apprentice glaring at him with all the ferocity of a wronged kitten. (It was almost worth teasing the kid to see him puff out his cheeks and pout. Minato had done that too). He was conflicted on what he found instead. Should he wonder where the boy was? Had he wandered into the wrong hotel room? And who got ready for bed at nine at night, anyway?
He collapsed against the doorframe, nose slowly leaking blood as the very nude, very fit, unnaturally pretty redhead in the room just dropping her silk robe gave a girly squeal and moved to cover herself with her hands. It was not very successful.
"W…would you pay attention to me?" She blinked up at him prettily and blushed pink, and all of the available blood for thinking departed, ending all those stupid thought about how strange the situation was. He grinned stupidly. Wow, those were some intense eyes. He was a sucker for pretty eyes, although most wouldn't guess it.
"Whatever you want, baby."
She bounced. And then so did her chest for a few precious seconds later. She clasped delicate, pretty hands in front of it, blocking a very important view. It took him a moment to register the oddity of what she said next, and the slightly lower tone in which it was said.
"I thought so, you old pervert."
And suddenly the pretty girl was gone and his apprentice was there laughing at him and pointing and saying something about I knew you would pay attention to me if I were a pretty girl and Jiraiya had to stop for a moment because his brain was crying 'Oh god, I just got an erection from a 13 year old boy' and was answered by the equally horrifying defensive 'he's almost fourteen' but other parts of him were wondering where the hell he could find a girl like that, hopefully now, please.
But he couldn't let the kid think he'd been disturbed, or else this would get used against him again. That he could not abide. Jiraiya valiantly rallied his senses to put on the super pervert act again (Well. Sometimes it was an act).
That was about when he absorbed the babble that Naruto had based the solid transformation off of his sister and Jiraiya had to stumble to the bathroom to throw up. That might put him off onsen watching for a whole week.
He banged his head against the bathroom wall, ignoring whatever questions his apprentice was asking. He was scum. He was lower than scum. He was attracted to his godson pretending to be his goddaughter. Oh god. Oh god.
He threw up again.