'Those are boobs that I never wanted to see,' Jiraiya thought a bit glumly, feeling simultaneously like the worst kind of dirty old man and disappointed in himself for failing to be the great super pervert all the time. No one was perfect, of course, but he had high standards. Speaking of which.
"Why the hell did the fact that Danzo had this on his chest mean that you put it on yours?" He groused good-naturedly, using an ink brush to trace along a line to try to discern where it ended and where the overlapping strokes began. "The stomach gate would have worked just as well." And that way, he wouldn't have to stare at his goddaughter in a skimpy bra. Aiko shrugged, causing his brush to slip ever so slightly.
"It wasn't like I put a lot of planning into it," she defended mildly. "I didn't have an abundance of time." Helpfully, she tugged the fabric on her left breast a few centimeters over to expose the end of the tattoo.
Jiraiya flickered his eyes skyward and prayed for strength, and then did his level best to pretend he wasn't staring at boobs. It was just a canvas for an insidious seal; that was all. Just a seal condensed about the size of his goddaughters hand, which she had apparently pressed over her chest in a slightly off-center way, slipping barely over and under the base of her right breast and almost to the peak of-
'Think professional thoughts,' Jiraiya commanded himself. 'No matter how uncomfortable this is, it has to be done.'
But, boobs! He choked down a sob. He'd never forgive Tsunade for making him do this. She could have found another seal mas… okay, so that was untrue. He glared a little resentfully at the matrix in front of his face and tried not to breathe the scent of what appeared to be an alluring mixture of rosewater and dog in too deeply. Apparently, Aiko hadn't really figured out that as an attractive young woman, she was supposed to not smell like dogs. It was charming, in a way that helped him remember that he was not intending to view her as a sexual entity. Nope, just his goddaughter, who was still silly enough to roll around in the dirt with horribly hairy dogs instead of getting a nice, dignified summons. For her height, though, she'd grown enormous- gah!
"It's strange," Aiko commented, sounding genuine. "Usually when I move a seal, it acts like one of my own and it loses visibility until chakra is channeled into it. Is this one ever going to behave like that?"
"No," he snorted, taking a moment to regret teaching her how to make her own seals before she'd really been taught the mid-level theory. Talent, creativity, and insight were just a recipe for trouble without the rote knowledge of all the things that could and had gone terribly wrong in the past. In his short experience, Uzumaki were curious as cats, and nearly twice as likely to get their fool selves blown up. Mostly on account of how cats didn't have thumbs and explosives.
To be fair, he'd never trained an Uzumaki before. Could he really be blamed for misunderstanding what it meant to have a student with an Uzumaki's touch and instinct for fuinjutsu as opposed to being a fuinjutsu genius like Minato? Because they were very different creatures.
Jiraiya resigned himself to teaching. "You were right that this was meant to fail when Danzo died. That means that it's only dangerous when it becomes inactive. Your seals become visible when they're active or forcibly jolted with chakra, right? Well, this one is always active, and thus always visible. Worry when you can't see it," he joked darkly.
Aiko was the last person who'd have to worry about this seal when it faltered, on account of the fact that she'd have to have recently come down with a bad case of 'deceased' for that to happen.
At the moment, he really didn't see a solution. He really didn't want to experiment with a volatile explosive on someone he didn't want blown up.
He settled back with a sigh, and rubbed at his chin contemplatively. "Are you sure Danzo said that this would kill the ROOT agents when he died?"
Aiko blinked at his skeptical tone, and her eyes took on that distant quality that generally meant she was lost in thought. "I asked what would happen to 'us' when he died, and he said that he had no successor. He said that we would pass with him," she recited easily.
Jiraiya groaned, and slapped his forehead.
"What?" His goddaughter blinked up at him, honestly perplexed by his reaction.
"I think that you two were experiencing a fundamental misunderstanding," Jiraiya managed, trying not to giggle at just how hopelessly bad at communication Danzo and Aiko must have been as a conversational pair. "Think on what he said: you were referring to ROOT as individuals, right? I think he was referring to ROOT as a group. His statement that he had no successor makes more sense in a context that assumes he was talking about what would happen to the organization after his death, not the individuals who make it up. He probably meant that ROOT would fall apart, since he didn't trust anyone else with a small army."
Danzo hadn't been completely divorced from reality. If several hundred of Konoha's shinobi just dropped over at once, it would negatively impact their ability to do their jobs. He'd been pro-Konoha, one hundred and crazy percent, not an idiot.
"What," Aiko said flatly.
If the situation had been different, he might have laughed at her put out expression. Instead, he nodded solemnly. "Yes, if you'd taken him to detonate outside of Konoha, there probably would have been no repercussions except that Tsunade would have to come up with a really good story for his wake when someone inevitably asks why it looked like he was squeezed through a fine mesh strainer on the way over."
His goddaughter was slowly turning red. Standing by the sink, Tsunade slapped a palm to her forehead.
Amused despite himself, he forced his expression to remain merely curious. "Shame that you tried to do the noble thing, and ended up just making a hassle for yourself and got a tattoo for your trouble," he sighed theatrically. "I don't think I can remove it, by the way. It's severely unstable after what you did to it." He heaved a careless shrug. "Here's hoping you learn to love the way it looks."
It was kind of cool-looking, if the observer wasn't much of a seal-smith. If they were… Well, it would take a brave man to squeeze those boobies after having seen twirls of explosive notes on them.
'As her godfather, should I be in support of scary seals that decrease the likelihood of boobie squeezing?' he wondered philosophically. He didn't really care if she got laid or not, but it seemed like a godfatherly concern to have.
"When it was on him, it was expressed in utilitarian black bars," Aiko said stiffly, as if that would help her situation.
Jiraiya nodded indulgently. "Like I said, you destabilized it. Bet it hurt going on, huh? You peeled off the polishing layer that was holding everything all neat." He mindlessly poked the seal, and then drew his thumb back as if burnt when the flesh under it gave in a way that reminded him exactly what he was touching. In an attempt to retain nonchalance, he quickly finished, "That's why you have this here. It's the underlying structure. Do me a favor, and don't try to move anything explosive again, okay kid?"
Maybe, given time to play with the sketch he'd made, he could figure out a way to gradually filter out the chakra locks that weaponized the damn thing, but he hardly wanted her playing around with it. Just wasn't smart.
She closed her eyes, leaned her face forward into her palms, and gave a quiet whimper. Through her hands, she glumly mumbled out, "I'm going to end up the most scarred-up, disfigured kunoichi there has ever been, aren't I?"
"It's not that bad," he tried to reassure her, even while a smile tugged at his lips. Who knew she had a spot of vanity?
"Well, out you go," Tsunade said briskly, tossing Aiko's shirt back to the girl. The teen blinked, but pulled it on over her head and hustled out of the examination room as best as she could. She lingered uncertainly at the doorway for a moment.
"Ah, do I need to come back?"
"I'll call you if I need you." The mask of polite detachment stuttered on Tsunade's face, and Aiko's eyes widened. Wisely, she beat a quick retreat out into the ANBU facility. Tsunade instantly looked pissed and rounded on him. "Why did you tell her that, you numbskull?"
Jiraiya blinked at her, honestly not understanding what he had done wrong. "I'm not sure I deserve that," he grumbled, furrowing his brow.
Tsunade rolled her eyes and slapped the back of his head. "That girl had one humanitarian impulse, and then you went and told her it was a waste of her time!" she snapped. Slapping him didn't seem to have satisfied her need to punish him, so she grabbed his shoulders with her scary claw-fingers and shook him in time with her next words. "That's not how you reward shinobi when they show improvement," she practically hissed. "Positive reinforcement is the first lesson in management!"
'Which clearly, you have mastered,' thought the man who had just done Tsunade a favor despite the severe discomfort the situation put him through.
A little frightened that this was about to devolve further, he dropped to his knees to escape her grip and held his hands out placatingly. "Calm down, hime! Think about what you're saying. Was I supposed to lie to her? She'd figure it out eventually," he wheedled. "Aiko isn't that thick, and she has a personal interest. Wouldn't it be even worse if she found out we misled her?"
"Yeah, yeah," she grumbled, before heaving a sigh. "So how is this going to affect how we deal with ROOT?
~~~
"What are you doing?" Yukimasa's voice called out curiously.
Guiltily, Aiko jerked away from the closed examination door and blinked up at her captain innocently. He looked incongruously windswept, as though he'd been fluffing up his dark hair absentmindedly. "Being damned with faint praise," she informed him sweetly, and then started walking before he could figure out she'd been eavesdropping on the Hokage and scold her. "Fancy seeing you here."
"We have a training session in an hour," he cautiously informed her, as if he thought she really didn't know that.
'Yes, thank you, captain obvious. Is the sky still blue? How about water, is it wet?'
"I know," she simply replied. "Is there anything edible in the cafeteria today? I'm peckish."
Yukimasa snorted, eyes looking even wearier than usual. "Has there ever been anything edible there?" he asked rhetorically. When she didn't change direction, he winced. "You're seriously going to eat there?" When she didn't respond to the incredulous tone or change her path, he hastily added, "I'm pretty sure we only have the cafeteria as a way to punish recruits."
Aiko shrugged. "S'not that bad."
The look he gave her would have been more fitting if he'd walked in on her stabbing herself with needles.
'Drama queen. Everything served there is perfectly nutritious. If unidentifiable.'
He gave a suspicious stare to the plate she filled, but grudgingly deigned to sit at the same table with her. Before she took a bite, Aiko took a moment to examine him. She thought she knew what was going on, but couldn't really let on. May as well give him an opening. "Is there any particular reason you're hovering, captain? I think I'll survive the mystery meat without an A-class assist."
"I think that's supposed to be tofu," he deflected, running his hand through his hair in a way that didn't do much to hide that he was stressed. At her unimpressed expression, he gave a sigh and admitted, "I have some bad news. But I'd like to wait for Aoto to show up."
'Yepp, he's found out about Shou,' her mind filled in glumly. 'I'm going to have to do some acting. It would be inhuman to be completely unaffected, but sincerity would be a bad approach. As far as they know, I have no reason to feel guilty.'
That decided, she let her brow crease a little in worry and gave him a searching look, as if thinking over the implications of the fact that he hadn't mentioned waiting for Boar as well, but let the topic drop. She ate lightly, knowing that it would be a bad idea to have a heavy stomach before a workout, but also not eager to work out on an empty stomach.
When she heard the words, "Boar died in action," a few minutes later, Aiko allowed her body to become very still. Her eyes she purposefully widened just an iota, and her jaw clenched. This would have been easier if they hadn't ditched masks for training after they'd traded names, but she could still trick two people who were caught up in their own thoughts.
It did feel awful and strange to try to practice team drills with just three people. Yukimasa called a halt early, rubbing at the back of his neck. "I think we'll call it for the day," he decided softly, green eyes troubled.
'We'll probably have a replacement soon,' Aiko thought a little regretfully as she changed back into street clothes and left the room she maintained in the ANBU dorms. The idea of working with someone else on patrols left an unpleasant taste in her mouth.
Not that the team was always exactly the same—when one of them was on another mission that conflicted with patrol duty, a replacement was slotted in to keep the roster full, but that was different from an actual change to the team.
'What did you expect?' She scolded herself irritably, yanking her hair out of a ponytail with a bit too much force and all but stomping down the hall and out of the building. It was an almost obnoxiously beautiful day, but Aiko didn't spare so much as a thought for her change of surroundings. 'You killed your teammate, obviously things can't go back to normal. Grow the hell up, dummy.'
"Oh, hey! Aiko."
She blinked away from her thoughts and turned to visually search through the crowds for the source of that familiar voice.
"I didn't know you were back," she greeted neutrally. Her tone didn't match the way she dutifully opened her arms up for a hug, which Naruto bounded into. Karin and Sasuke trudged behind, looking just as filthy as the blond, but less cheerful about it.
"We just came in," Karin sighed, adjusting her glasses and rubbing futilely at caked-in dirt that looked like the world's worst tan line under her right eye. "The whole Akatsuki hunting thing isn't going as planned."
Naruto scoffed at her and waved a mocking finger in his cousin's face. "Tsk tsk, we're not supposed to talk about our mission before we debrief," he playfully scolded.
Once the irony inherent in that statement had sunk in, Sasuke reached out robotically to punch Naruto in the gut. "First of all, it's Aiko, not an enemy nin," he sighed. "And secondly, protocol isn't funny. I hate to say it, but the moron is inadvertently right. We need to go report."
"Have fun with that," Aiko waved them off, feeling amused despite herself. They really did look good as a team: long suffering Sasuke herding the much more energetic and naughty Uzumaki around like brightly colored cats winding around his ankles for attention. Their skill sets were complementary as well, despite the fact that there were two medics on the team, a situation that was normally tactically untenable. Karin and Sasuke were both sufficiently sturdy that they would be assets, not dead weight in need of protection. All three of them had both close range and long range skills, and contracts with scarily heavy-duty summons. They were pretty well prepared to complete any non-specialized mission that didn't involve subtlety or diplomacy.
'Maybe Tsunade-sama will keep them as a team, for nostalgia's sake if nothing else. Snake, slug, and toad makes a good combat combination.'
She stopped in her tracks when she reached her apartment. Not because anything was necessarily wrong, but because someone seemed to have made the mistake of thinking that her apartment belonged to someone else.
"Ah, hello?" Aiko asked uncertainly. The burly man leaning against the wall unfolded to look at her—and she blinked in recognition. "Ah, Akimichi-san," she greeted uncertainly.
He gave her a good-natured grin. "Come now, didn't I tell you to call me Choza?"
'Oh. I guess he remembers.'
"Did you?" she asked noncommittally, juggling her keys. "That was a while ago." 'And I didn't expect you to seek me out,' she finished silently. He seemed to pick up on that, and raised an eyebrow at her.
"It seems like yesterday to me." He straightened and stepped away from the wall. "I don't mean to be rude, but may I come in? I'd like to speak with you."
'About what happened in Rouran? What really needs to be discussed?'
She was confused, but obligingly enough held the door out. "I'm afraid I don't think I have any house shoes in your size," she admitted apologetically as she switched out her own shoes. Choza was built far bigger than Kakashi or Yamato. He didn't seem to mind skidding around in his socks as she prepared tea, so Aiko shrugged the breach in decorum off.
"So…" she began uncertainly, not sure how to ask 'why are you in my house' without seeming rude. It wasn't as if she was particularly put-out by his presence. From her little experience with him, he seemed like a nice man.
Luckily, he took pity on her. "Nasty business with Danzo, eh?"
It wasn't an opening she was expecting. "Excuse me?" Aiko asked cautiously, hiding her mouth behind her cup.
Choza seemed amused. "Come now, no need to try to keep things from me. I was the one who poisoned him. You can hardly incriminate yourself to me."
Oh. That made more sense. "I wondered how Tsunade-sama had taken care of things," Aiko admitted frankly. "She moved much more quickly than I had anticipated."
"An understatement, I'm sure," Choza snorted. "Danzo's being painted pretty for the sake of village security, but the small council knows the gist of what happened. Indirectly, that's why I'm here, by the way." He took a small sip and politely put down his tea. "Were you aware that the small clan head council was voting on whether or not the Uzumaki should be on the large council?"
Bemused, Aiko shook her head. "No, but I wouldn't mind losing that," she admitted honestly. "It would be a relief. I only accepted the nomination because I had to."
He stared at her for a moment, and then tossed his head back in a genuine laugh. "Aiko-chan, you're killing me." Choza patted the table in a strange gesture she didn't recognize, before helpfully elaborating. "I mean that they think it's demeaning to put a clan that Konoha has recognized as allies since the time of the first on the large council. You're officially invited to the small council."
His expression was open and friendly. She almost felt bad for groaning audibly and cradling her head in her hands. It was a concerted effort not to whine, 'seriously?' like a bratty preteen. Of course he was serious. He wouldn't come over here just to mess with her head. A hand the size of a dinner plate reached out to comfortingly pat her shoulder.
"You know," he began cautiously; "you don't have to accept."
Optimistically, she lifted her head just a bit to peek at him through her fingers.
"Really?"
He seemed to be stifling a smile at the hopefulness in her voice. His eyes were crinkling up slightly. "Really," Choza confirmed solemnly. "It'll still be there for you, but it can be deferred for quite some time. No one can make you accept the seat, not even the Hokage."
"That is the person I was worried about pressuring me," Aiko half-grumbled, too cheered to really be properly resentful of how bossy Tsunade could be. "That wouldn't have any negative repercussions?"
Choza seemed to waver slightly. "Well, yes and no," he admitted. "It depends on what you want. How familiar are you with the laws governing clan conventions?"
Aiko gave him a blank stare as an answer. He seemed a little outraged by that.
"No one taught yo- Of course they wouldn't have," he interrupted himself with a sigh, smoothing a hand over his chest armor in thought. "Kushina would have been the one who'd do that for you." The clan head fixed her with a sympathetic look. "She was a remarkable woman," he confided solemnly. "I can't replace her, but if you'd like, I could try to remedy that gap in your education."
It seemed like a suggestion that would only help her.
'But I can hardly ask what his angle is,' she scolded her paranoid mind, even as she struggled for a response. 'That'd be rude, especially since he's offering to do me a favor.'
Choza seemed to have some hint as to her dilemma, because his face softened into a soothing smile. "I regretted not doing right by you kids," he admitted softly. "I told myself that it wasn't my business, and that you seemed to be growing up perfectly well. Besides, I could never have explained why I cared, since we were forbidden to so much as hint about your parentage until Tsunade made the information public. But Minato was my teammate and my friend. He would be proud to see the young woman you've become. I think you should know that."
She was struck completely dumb, and more than a bit uncomfortable. Would he really have been proud of her? And why was Choza reaching out to her and not Naruto?
"Your brother seems to have found confidants," he continued.
'That was positively uncanny,' Aiko thought, bewildered. Was she really so obvious, or was he just that insightful?
Minato'd had odd moments like that too, now that she thought about it. Maybe it was some secret jutsu that fathers had. Like how mothers and Hyuuga had 'eyes in the back of the head no jutsu', supposedly.
Or perhaps that had been a joke and she'd just misunderstood? The woman who'd said that at market had laughed afterwards. It sort of sounded like a useful jutsu. She hoped it was real.
"He's good at finding parental figures, actually," Choza continued with a mild smile that took the potential sting out of the words and their corollary implication that Aiko wasn't good at endearing herself to possible parental figures. "Don't think the village didn't talk about him calling the Sandaime 'grandfather'," he chortled fondly. His eyes went a little misty when he continued, "and Ichiraku-san nearly went out of business when he first started encouraging Naruto to hang around the stall. It took intentional intervention from cooler heads who understood more than most what it means to have a bijuu sealed to keep him enough patronage to stay afloat. But he couldn't have known that anyone would advocate for him. A businessman doesn't endanger his livelihood lightly. No, Naruto seems to be doing fine."
"But I don't play well with others," Aiko completely dryly when he seemed to be struggling for words. "No, it's fine. I know I'm not half as charismatic as Naruto is." She shrugged to show she really didn't mind. "But I get along fine, and I don't really need to be taken care of."
Choza regarded her sadly for a moment before painting on a little smile. "Doesn't hurt to have a friendly ear, though, does it?" he asked rhetorically, politely removing his gaze. "Hatake-san is a good man, but I doubt that he routinely sat you down to talk about your feelings when you were a genin."
Involuntarily, she snorted. He most certainly had not.
"Alright," Aiko gave in on an impulse. "I would love to learn from you, Choza-san."
"Wonderful!" He clapped his hands. "How does tonight sound? You should know your options, before a reply is required."
That first time she met his family for dinner (because conversations with friends are best had over food, Aiko-chan) it rapidly became apparent that there was a lot that she didn't know. For example, that he could help her access sealed records of her clan's history, and that Minato had once eaten so much mochi that he threw up gelatinous pink vomit on the Fire Lady's shoes at a cherry tree viewing festival. Luckily, she didn't recognize him ten years later when he was sworn in as Hokage, or it might have been awkward.
It was weird to sit at a table with someone else's family and learn about her own, but she could get used to it.
~~~
"Can't I bring my only adorable godchild a gift when I see them for the first time in a very long time?" Jiraiya wheedled, holding out the eldritch abomination dangerously close to invading her personal bubble. Aiko took an unsubtle step backwards.
"I'm your godchild too," Naruto pointed out distractedly, even as he flipped through the book of pre-made sealing notes he'd been gifted.
"Yeah, but you're not cute," Sasuke helpfully filled in, none too subtly peering over the blond's shoulder. At least, until Naruto dropped the notes to the ground and leapt at him.
Aiko ignored the ensuring fight where Naruto tried to tackle Sasuke to the ground to get him to admit that he was adorable, believe it, and gave Jiraiya a weary expression. She was perfectly fine with him pretending that they hadn't already exchanged their greetings. This was less fine.
"How old do you think I am?" she asked skeptically. His eyes watered in surprisingly convincing grief, so she reluctantly reached out and accepted the oversized plush frog. "Thanks," she lied unconvincingly. "I'll treasure it always."
'and burn it immediately.'
"Isn't it adorable?" he giggled, reaching out to tweak her nose.
She closed her eyes and grimaced, tolerantly enduring his attempts to embarrass her. Okay, enough was enough. "If you're going to buy my affections, you're going to have to step it up," Aiko warned him. The glint of amusement on his eyes let on that he wasn't really insulted, so she continued even as he mimed heartbreak. "I'm thinking something that sparkles."
"How shallow, Aiko-chan," he cooed, wiping away a fake tear. "Maybe you're just being bitter that I never shared my contract with you. How would you feel about-"
"No, that's fine," Aiko interrupted. The slightly high pitch and sudden interjection betrayed enough obvious weakness that all three of the males in the clearing turned to give her an evaluative stare. She took a moment to curse Jiraiya for ambushing them as they waited on Kakashi for training. Shinobi were drawn to weakness, unfortunately. Hazard of the trade. Even as she cursed herself for the tactical error, Sasuke slowly drew one eyebrow up with an unpleasant smirk.
"If I didn't know better, I'd say that someone was afraid of Jiraiya's summons," he commented archly.
'You traitorous bastard,' Aiko thought furiously, pinning him with a glare that said one more word would be the reason she snapped and stabbed him with the straw from her juice box. He was silenced.
Unfortunately, it was impossible to cow the other two. They were sharing a crooked smile that rather unpleasantly reminded Aiko that they were both tricksters.
"Don't be dumb," she bluffed, turning her face away as if bored. Her hand clenched around her juice box just a little too tightly to truly be casual. "Who on earth would be bothered by toads?"
'Toads the size of cats, that smell strange and moldy and they're slimy and eughhh'.
"So this doesn't bother you at all?" those two rotten bastards asked in unison, each suddenly holding a toad out at arm's length into her general vicinity. Aiko gave an unwilling jolt and an 'eep' sound, and sucked in a steadying breath.
"Of course not."
The lie might have been more convincing if she wasn't carefully leaning away from actual contact with the confused looking amphibian in Naruto's hands. Jiraiya chuckled unpleasantly.
~~~
Kakashi closed his eye experimentally and tried again to see if the scene would change. Nope. Aiko was still shrieking and running away from her brother, who appeared to be doing his level best to stuff a toad down her shirt. He couldn't catch her, but that wasn't stopping him from trying.
"Isn't he a little old to be doing this?" he asked Jiraiya, uncertainty plain in his voice.
The toad sannin just shrugged. He was holding two obnoxiously oversized stuffed toads, which Kakashi decided not to ask about. "Never too old for that," Jiraiya deflected. Then he dumped one of the stuffed toads in Kakashi's arms and shared an amused look with Sasuke. Strange, that they were getting alon-
Too late, he realized the toad was not, in fact, stuffed at all. Manfully, he dropped the indignant amphibian and jumped backwards, giving both of them a glare.
"Naruto, that's enough," he barked out, taking what little control of the situation he could. It was impossible to scold Jiraiya, so he didn't even try. "Leave your sister alone." To the sniffling redhead who was murmuring something incoherent about ickiness in between shudders, he added with a sigh, "Aiko, use your words." After a moment's contemplation, he added, "or your kunai."
He wasn't completely unsympathetic to her plight, after all. Toads were rather unpleasant.
After a moment of staring glumly down at his hands which were now far too filthy to touch his precious book, the sole female seemed to take his words to heart, irritation taking over now that the immediate danger of toad slime on her skin had fled. "You," Aiko growled, whirling on her brother with an unusually flushed cheeks and wide eyes. Naruto recoiled. A moment later, so did Sasuke when she turned her glare on him.
Kakashi purposefully shuffled to the side, out of her direct line of sight.
"You..." she struggled for words, before bursting out, "I just want you to know every time you laugh at the pervert sannin for peeking at half-naked women, that's going to be you forty years from now." Jiraiya was beginning to whine about not being that old, but Aiko cut him off mercilessly. "Because you do immature gross things like that around girls, you're going to have to resort to spying because no woman is ever going to touch you down there." With one last bit of drama, she gave a Vanna White-esque sweeping motion at Jiraiya, who seemed unpleasantly surprised to be the center of her demonstration. "Behold, the future," she all but hissed. Then she flipped her hair over her shoulder and stomped out.
Kakashi watched it all happen, and wondered if she'd forgotten they'd agreed to a group workout. Jiraiya-sama was an artist, and a connoisseur of romance, but she had something of a point.
The boys looked stricken.
'Time to get some payback,' Kakashi thought, remembering that there was mucus on his sleeve and not feeling particularly charitable.
He heaved a sigh and put his hands in his pockets, slumping casually. "You know," he mused, "As your sister, Aiko is ideally placed to ruin any relationship you ever have, Naruto." As the blond flinched, Kakashi turned to Sasuke. "And how is re-building your clan going, Sasuke? Do you actually know any women under thirty other than Aiko? Maybe you should be nicer too."
It wasn't entirely a stretch. Sasuke spent time with Tsunade, Shizune, Keiko the secretary, annnd no other females as far as he'd ever seen. If he wasn't planning on splitting in thirds to form generation 2.0 of the Uchiha clan, he'd have to either sweet-talk Aiko or make at least one female friend. With his lovely social demeanor… Well, he was lucky one woman his approximate age tolerated him, Kakashi thought rather hypocritically.
Sasuke blanched at the jab. One eye began twitching uncontrollably.
'Perhaps he just short-circuited,' he thought with amusement. 'Quick, someone teach the robot to love.'
Kakashi turned to Jiraiya, who seemed to be warily waiting for his scolding as well. He merely shook his head pityingly and turned away as if there was just no hope there. Jiraiya looked torn between outrage and insecurity.
The boys were unavoidable casualties. It was tragic all around, but they were necessary sacrifices in order to really strike a killing blow at the heart of the man who had dumped a toad on his hands.
"Kakashi has no room to talk. It's not like he gets any gets any dates," he heard Sasuke mutter sullenly as he took off.
'And that one is going to be running laps with Gai tomorrow,' Kakashi decided, irritated. 'At four in the morning. No, three.'