"This is a bad idea," Chojuro muttered. "I don't like having high-level foreigners in the village when tensions are so high. He fidgeted, shoulders drawn in like he wanted to sink into himself.
Ao gave him a disgusted look. "Oh, man up already."
"Ao, don't be cruel, and stop your gender policing. It's very unattractive." The Mizukage pouted at her bodyguards. "Chojuro, don't you trust my judgment?" He went scarlet and began sputtering as if to deny that. "Everything will be fine," she soothed, ignoring his overreaction. "Konoha is our best bet for fixing our little problem." She closed her eyes and leaned languidly against her palm. "Whether they give us help as allies or we take it by force, the first step is gathering information. And how better than to have them readily give it to us?"
Chojuru still didn't like this idea, but he said nothing else. It was undeniable that something had to be done about the three-tailed beast that had been sealed in Yagura. The revelation that he had been controlled was slightly reassuring—it meant that the violence and insanity of the 'Bloody Mist' years had not entirely been the influence of the beast that was one of their best weapons. They could ill afford to lose it, even if its container had to go.
There was also no way around the fact that they had no one capable or willing to perform the seal to make a jinchuuriki for them. They had personnel who worked with seals, yes, but nothing of that caliber. It was possible that they could cobble together a seal that would work after a few months of scrabbling to make something work before the container the beast was held in failed.
It was also entirely possible and rather likely that they would fail and the beast would be released wherever they tried to seal it, angry after years of imprisonment and with its full power available. The casualties might be even worse if the amateur seal workers they had were incorrect about how long the beast could be contained in an inanimate object and it was released in the village.
Most of the other major villages had sealing 'experts', but even the best of Sand and Rock could not compare to Konoha's sealing experts. The only group that could possibly best Konoha's Jiraiya were the defunct Uzumaki clan… who, according to a rather recent bounty, were not quite so defunct after all.
"Those sneaky bastards were hoarding them all along," Mei had breathed out with an air of resigned amusement and utter relief at what seemed to be the solution to one of their largest problems, other than that fucking rebel faction that wouldn't give up and die already. If they could get a hold of an Uzumaki, who had reputably been sealing experts to the last man, woman, and child, then they could easily re-establish one of their most powerful assets and turn their attention to other problems. It wasn't as shocking in retrospect—they had one in the last war, and Konoha had always been closest to Uzu.
Without getting hold of a seal master, they would be better off throwing the container with the beast into an ocean and hoping no one else managed to take advantage of the resource.
If they were allies with Konoha, they could negotiate the sealing as part of their conditions for a mutual protection pact. It could benefit them as well to have stronger allies, so such a move would not be entirely altruistic.
Of course, Mei wasn't putting all her money on that bet. Senju Tsunade could take the view that it would be foolish to improve the military capacity of a village with a history of in-fighting, isolationism, and aggression. She could even be right. In the event that that Konoha refused to help them seal the Three-Tailed beast, then the next course of action would be to snag an Uzumaki, probably the one that had been so helpfully plastered on wanted posters. The kid was reputed to be a B-class shinobi, but a kunoichi of that level could be controlled. When their other option was kidnapping Jiraiya of the Sannin, it looked downright reasonable.
(They'd only just gotten the village under control. It would be a damn shame to have it destroyed by toads and be laughed at to boot).
Of course, that was assuming that Rock's information was correct. For all they knew, she could be a useless genin or the second coming of the Shodaime. Generally speaking, Rock couldn't find their asses with both hands, and the picture they'd scrounged up to accompany the entry had looked out of date. There was no way that they were looking for a B-class ten year old with a goofy smile. (and who smiled for official photos, anyway?)
A masked shinobi in the uniform of a Kiri hunter-nin knelt in front of Mei, holding out the copy of the admission verification that had just been processed at the front gate. She took it eagerly, having been anxious to find out who the Godaime Hokage had sent. Mei hadn't really expected that the woman would come herself, a fact that she was prepared to pretend to be slighted by if she needed more leverage.
The three shinobi waited silently on their Kage. Thankfully, she was a fast reader. Mei didn't bother to censor her expression as she read, vacillating between interest, irritation, and finally surprised humor.
She had to laugh with genuine amusement, wiping a tear from her eye and flicking it across the room with a delicate finger. "The Godaime Hokage sends her regrets that she cannot meet in person, but she sends her two apprentices in her place. Along with the escort team of Hatake Kakashi, two men with no last names, and one Uzumaki Aiko."
"Well, that's convenient," Ao muttered.
"They may as well have sent gift wrap," Chojuru half-laughed, reaching up to touch the handle of his sword reflexively.
Mei tutted. "Now now boys, play nice. That may be completely unnecessary." She stood, flicking a lock of hair over her shoulder. "Let's go meet our guests, hmm? They must be tired from their long trip. It would only be polite to greet them and send them to bed instead of forcing them to the negotiation table now."
~~~
'This place is sketchy as shit.'
Mist was everything she'd dreamed and more, sort of. Aiko stayed close to her shishou's side, doing her best to keep her gaze on Shizune and Sasuke's backs and fought to keep a neutral expression. It was a rare situation that made her feel like this—if she'd been a fresh genin, she might have cried.
It was just… well. It couldn't be pinned to any one thing. Perhaps it was the obviously years old bloodstains on streets and building faces. Maybe it was the fresh splatter over that- weeks at the oldest. It could have been the low-hanging fog that reminded her uncomfortably of how close Zabuza had come to killing her all those months ago.
But it was probably the combination of ambient killing intent and the way that every single person they saw stopped and stared silently, expressionless but somehow cold and evaluative.
She felt warmth against her side and realized she'd leaned so close to her shishou that she could feel his ambient heat. He gave no comment, but she reluctantly pulled back. As much as Aiko wanted to either turn around towards Fire Country or hide behind Kakashi, she had a job to do.
Besides, none of her companions seemed to be having trouble. She could understand why Kakashi didn't mind (he was the baddest fucker on the whole block, that's why, and probably the coolest, strongest, best-smelling person in the world); Sai had been brain-washed into near emotionlessness, and Shizune and Yamato were both elite ANBU shinobi in their own right.
But Sasuke? She couldn't let Sasuke be braver than she was. She had two years of experience on him and had probably killed more people than he'd said hello to in the past year.
Of course, he did have the benefit of being young and malleable enough for Konoha's military minded indoctrination and desensitization program to have worked. Aiko wasn't stupid enough to claim that she was the same person she had been when she first came to awareness, but she could be certain that if she were to point out every instance she saw of structural inequality or unethical behavior, she would be sent to a Yamanaka mind healer to get her head on straight. She couldn't afford that, so she was stuck patching together whatever coping mechanisms she could to deal with the stress of her job.
Usually, she found refuge in humor. Often it was dark humor. But it was hard to find even gallows humor right now when she felt like she could hardly breathe and the Mist was going to choke the life right out of her.
It was probably for the best that Shizune and Sasuke were the focus of attention, listening to their escort at the front of the group talk quietly. They passed into what had to be an administration building, and Aiko did her best to look like muscle—that was her job here. Thankfully there was some form of heating inside, and she relaxed a bit. As much as she complained internally about Konoha's awful heat, she'd gotten used to it and the damp chill here was very uncomfortable. It curled up into her lungs like it would never leave.
A woman who could only be Terumi Mei was waiting inside a spartan room with a muscled man at either shoulder like the best sort of accessory. "Greetings," she purred. And it really was a purr. Aiko knew immediately that this was a woman who wielded sex as a deadly weapon. "You are Tsunade's representatives, I take it?" She spent just long enough eying up Shizune and Sasuke to make it clear that it wasn't really a question. "I would like to personally thank you for coming, and hope that you enjoy our hospitality. You will be staying nearby, actually."
"I'm sure we will both benefit from this," Shizune smiled. It was false. "Konoha would like to extend congratulations on your ascendance to Mizukage and wish you the best. As a token of our thanks for this invitation, we would like to offer you a gift."
Mei raised an eyebrow. The bulky man on her right stiffened, glaring at Shizune suspiciously with his one visible eye. Kakashi stared back at him with a bored expression and his one eye. Aiko rather suspected that if things dissolved into some bizarre optical pissing match against the stolen Byakugan she was sure was hidden under that, Konoha would come out on top. (Granted, she couldn't be sure and her memory was fuzzy, but one of the other villages definitely had a bodyguard with a stolen eye).
"How generous."
Shizune held out her left hand, accepting the scroll that Kakashi passed into her grip without either of them so much as looking away from their respective glaring counterparts. Effortlessly, she pulled off the seal and unrolled it, passing a green-tinted hand over it in a rather impressively casual way and extracting an enormous sword that she pulled backwards and over her head, flipping it so that she held it in front of her sideways with both hands.
Eyepatch guard had flinched forward and pulled out a weapon sometime while Shizune had extracted the sword. His companion had cursed, but stilled with wide eyes to stare at the sword Shizune was holding. It was menacing and significantly taller than the woman holding it, easily out-weighing her by at least 20 lbs. She very noticeably didn't look the slightest bit strained by it.
"This was confiscated by one of our teams against Momochi Zabuza."
Mei had tensed. She was putting up a good show of nonchalance, to be sure. Nothing in her facial expression or body language from the torso down was hinting at anything out of the usual. But the delicate muscles in her neck were pointedly still, all but shouting that she was intentionally not reacting.
Shizune gave a sharp little smile, with more than a hint of, 'You didn't know that he was dead, did you,' behind it. As much as it was a generous gift, it was also a slap in the face with a reminder of the difference in their villages' respective power. It would only be better if…
"If I may be so bold, what team do we have to thank for ending our most infamous missing nin?"
Yes. It would only be better if Mei gave that opening. She must really be off-guard, Aiko mused. It was really sort of fun watching the back and forth exchange and guessing at the subtle undercurrents.
Shizune knew the opening was too easy to pass up as well. She gestured easily at her companions. "That actually would have been the genin team led by Hatake Kakashi here."
"I see." Mei gave a very fake smile. "Then I should extend my thanks to you in person."
"No need," Kakashi said with a held up hand and an eye-smile. "It was actually my apprentice here who killed him." Then the bastard who'd sold her out in front of a room of S-class ninjas helpfully prodded her forward so that he didn't have to deal with them anymore.
'Fuck you, shishou,' she thought darkly as the room became quiet and something strange passed over Mei's face when she looked at the girl. But only for a moment, then it was gone. Aiko didn't risk words, giving only a slight incline of her head that could pass as a bow or acknowledgement and raising her face to look directly into Mei's eyes. They were hard and considering.
Then she smiled and the room lit up. "Well then, thank you, Aiko-chan. I expect great things from you."
Unnerved by the tensions she sensed but didn't understand, she just nodded. 'Why does the Mizukage know my name?' her mind shrieked helplessly.
"Well, I'm sure you are all tired from your long trip. Hana, please take our guests to their chambers."
The shinobi who had taken them through the village nodded blankly, turning around and leading them out.
Later that night, Aiko relaxed onto the bed in the room she would be sharing with Shizune. This was of course after Kakashi and Yamato had swept the whole apartment for listening devices and techniques, traps, and all manner of explosives. It had been so clean that they had become suspicious and ran a second sweep. That also turned up nothing.
Understandably, they had been on edge since.
Aiko had taken advantage of the luxuriously oversized tub and taken a bath with Shizune. They'd intended to talk about how the meeting had gone and debrief, but had ended up just enjoying the soak. After about an hour and a half, she had trailed out of the bathroom with a blue towel piled on her head and another around her torso, passing her grumpy-looking teammate on the way out.
Sasuke had gotten stuck with Sai as his guardian shadow, a proposition he was much less pleased about than Shizune was to have Aiko or that Yamato was to be able to room and work with his senpai. Sasuke had apparently been crabby enough to snap at Yamato about his obvious enthusiasm to sleep with Kakashi. Poor guy. ('In the same room,' he blustered, ears burning, 'not 'together' together or anything, unless- I mean… I'm going to go patrol.')
"It took you two long enough," he all but growled. Shizune came out of the room after Aiko and poked his nose shamelessly.
"Don't be a grump, Sasuke-kun. It doesn't suit you at all. The bath is free now, you should go have a soak." He looked as though he wanted to heave a sigh, but merely got to his feet and picked up the pile of clothes he must have gotten ready while they had been in the bath.
Sai looked up from where he was seated cross-legged on the floor with a sketchbook. "Are we bathing together as well, Dickless?"
Sasuke gave him an acidic look that could burn through metal and slammed the door behind him.
"I suppose not," Sai hmmed, sounding slightly disappointed.
Aiko rubbed her towel on her hair, crossing the room to pat his shoulder. "Don't worry about it. Sasuke is a little hard to get to know." She gave him an easy smile, disengaging effortlessly to go put on new clothes. Sasuke would probably sneer at her oversized red t-shirt and the loose blue pants paired with them, but they were comfortable.
In the hours before it became late enough to go to bed, she pulled out her supplies and worked on the sky-blue book of movie transcripts. She was on a bit of a roll and having a lot of fun expanding on Haku's background (hey, she wasn't bound by time limits or a budget, so she may as well include the scene where Yubaba tricked him into her service when he was trapped in the spirit world instead of edging it in at the last minute). She curled into the couch with the notebook resting on a pillow on her lap, taking a page off of writing to fill in one of her stylized depictions of Haku as the river spirit.
"You draw."
She looked up at Sai, mildly startled. She'd all but forgotten that there were other people in the room. "Um, yes. Mostly just people. I'm no good at scenery or animals."
"You're not that good at people either," he monotoned, gaze focused on her paper. "This detailing is highly unrealistic. The eyes are too large, and the proportions are all wrong."
Aiko seriously considered reaching out and shoving her pen into his gut just to watch him bleed. 'That won't help anything,' she reminded herself. 'You decided to go with 'calm' and understanding. Stick to it. He might respond well to reason.' Out loud, she let just a hint of irritation color her next words. "Actually, it's meant to be that way. It's a stylistic decision on my part, not a failure to understand human anatomy."
"Why." Yamato, the only other person in the room, looked up and gave him a slightly disbelieving look. She felt a strange, sudden kinship with him.
"It's just how my art looks. I take it you're more interested in realism?" Maybe turning the conversation around on him would give her a better idea of where to take this or get him to back off so she could go back to work. This picture wasn't going to color itself.
The ANBU just stood there, unresponsive for a moment. "I am not aware of this terminology."
"Right," Aiko muttered, turning back to her work. "Of course you aren't."
How long was that goddamn diva going to spend in the bath? Things became silent and awkward. When Sasuke finally flounced out in his fancy silk pajamas (decorated with one of those enormous, garish fans on the back), she gave him a downright filthy look. He looked confused.
"Sai, go take a bath."
~~~
Tsunade groaned, rubbing at her forehead and wishing that everyone else would just drop dead. It hadn't been clear until now just how much Shizune ameliorated her obscene workload. She had been able to keep up, of course, but she had a massive stress headache. Poor Keiko was on the verge of tears. Tsunade only wished she could have made the poor secretary's day less stressful, but she had a question she needed answered while she was thinking of it.
Besides, she needed to get out of the building or she was going to snap and level it. It was ugly anyways.
It wasn't hard to find her former mentor, although she was slightly haunted by the betrayed look on her secretary's face when she had cancelled all appointments and escaped. He hadn't been leaving the family property lately, apparently content spending much more time with his grandson than he'd been able to before.
Tsunade pulled up a seat beside his position overlooking a fragrant garden, fingering the latest update from Jiraiya. He seemed to be engrossed in bird watching. She glanced at the avian cleaning its wings on the central pond, unimpressed by the view. "Sensei."
He didn't react. She frowned.
"Sensei." He blinked gummily, turning to look at her.
"Did you say something, my dear?"
An alarm started going off faintly in her head. Unnerved but not exactly certain what was wrong, Tsunade shelved the unease and showed him the letter. "I just got a letter from Jiraiya, asking why you tested Aiko on fuinjutsu but never followed up on teaching her after she showed promise."
Hiruzen frowned slightly, turning to look at her with a puff on his unlit pipe. "Aiko?"
Tsunade rolled her eyes and snapped at him. "Yes, Uzumaki Aiko, remember? The redhead."
He gazed blankly at her for a moment, before seeming to understand. "Ah! You mean Kushina-chan. She's being trained, of course."
The fifth Hokage stared uncomprehendingly. Then she stood and cursed thoroughly, managing to startle the ducks in the pond. "Well, this explains a lot, like those exhaustive notes," she sighed. Her stress headache was suddenly compounding and turning into a migraine. How had no one noticed that the Hokage had been having memory lapses? How long had he been hiding this?
She felt pity swell up, and felt like the worst kind of traitor. The stress her mentor had been under for the past ten years or so was largely her fault. She had known that he was too old for such a stressful job. He had never wanted to retake his position, but no one capable and willing to take the job had stepped forward. Konoha had very few S-class nin at any point in time, but in the wake of the Kyuubi attack and the end of the war Tsunade had been fifty percent of that group. With Orochimaru turned traitor and Jiraiya in avoidant mourning, Tsunade had been the obvious choice.
Not only had she not stepped up when she first should have, she had even failed to provide support for her aging mentor. Tsunade sank down into her chair again, cradling her head in her hands. She had been highly critical when she had left to become a missing-nin in all but name. She had abandoned him in his time of need almost as thoroughly as Orochimaru had. And yet he had never lost faith in her, knowing that she would return home years before she did.
Tsunade tiredly patted her sensei's bony shoulder as she left, silently resolving to do better by him. But first things first, she was going to parse through his old notes to figure out what else she had missed.
Hatake could start the Uzumaki girl on sealing, she decided. He wasn't exactly going to be called a master anytime soon, but he knew enough to stop a rampaging Jinchuuriki. (She was relatively certain that fact had factored highly into the decision to make him Naruto's sensei).
She'd send him a message via slug. He may as well make himself useful while he was lounging around in Mist. Lazy little shit. She valiantly ignored that she'd been the one to send him there in favor of being irritated that he wasn't here to yell at.
~~~
"Are you sure you want to do this?" Karin fiddled with her glasses in lieu of fidgeting more obviously, feeling the nervous urge to twist her fingers in her skirt.
Hinata took a deep breath of the afternoon air, obviously feeling some nerves but bolstered by having the support of her best friend at her right side and both her mentors, although Kurenai and Anko weren't there with them at the moment. The hope was that in the rush to get out for the day, the office workers wouldn't have time to gossip about what she was about to do.
She had gotten advice from both of her mentors and talked over her options. Anko had been surprisingly calm and fair-minded about the whole thing, abandoning her usual devil-may-care act and showing an analytical intelligence. Kurenai had been less knowledgeable, but her unconditional support had been just as helpful. Hinata knew that when she told her other teammates, Kiba and Shino would be just as supportive.
Sometimes she had to stop and marvel at just how much her life had changed. Now that she had been branded and disgraced, no one cared about how she performed anymore. No one seemed to judge her, and Hanabi had no reason to work her fingers raw practicing to defeat Hinata. Getting the brand might be the best thing that had ever happened to her. Her little sister was now safe from it, and had no reason to feel competitive. It was a weight off her shoulders.
Her new freedom was exhilarating. For the first time in her life, Hinata had friends who supported her unconditionally. Sometimes she laid up at night and felt so happy that she wanted to cry. So many people saw potential in her where her blood relations had seen only failure.
Kurenai-sensei had always been kind. Shino wanted what was best for her. Kiba wanted her to be happy. Anko-sensei offered tests that she understood in things like teamwork and self-discipline for the good of the whole. And Karin…
She turned a watery smile on her favorite person in Konoha. There must be something very special in the Uzumaki line, something a hundred times better than the Hyuuga eyes or an Inuzuka nose. They never gave up or cared what anyone else thought. Karin had seen her at her absolute worst, after a month of hospitalization, and seen something no one else had. She would always be grateful. This… this was what it was like to be family and not a clan.
"I'm certain." Hinata clenched her fingers tightly around the paperwork that would declare her intentions to sever all ties and obligations to the Hyuuga. It would cause uproar, of course. It was a very aggressive, hostile move.
But the Hyuuga's practice of branding their branch families with controlling seals had caused disquiet in the early days of Konoha's founding. It had been the very first Hokage who had pointed out that this system amounted to slavery, unless there was a way to discard one's name and leave the clan.
The logic was that choosing not to do so would constitute implicit agreement to the system, although it was certainly coercive and unethical according to Aiko. (She had said something that Hinata hadn't really understood in a very impassioned way, but she appreciated the support nonetheless). She'd claimed that the practice of branding clan members while they were toddlers completely undermined the system and then dissolved into incoherent ranting in that funny made-up language she and Naruto had used back in school. The Hyuuga had been willing to make the concession for the protection of a fledgling village, drastically weakened after their own fighting with a clan that no longer existed.
It had never been used before. The consequences were harsh, after all. She would have no name, like an orphan or whore's child, and the Hyuuga would likely curse her and her family forever. That was likely to be a moot point, because she would have to agree not to ever have a child of her blood and pass down the Byakugan. Karin had been outraged by that point. It made Hinata sad too. She had always wanted to be a mother one day. But… Did she really need to dream of one day building a family when she had one now?