"I see that Shizune-san has been taking you around," the blond man said calmly. He was making slightly uncomfortable eye contact, but the soothing quality of his voice and demeanor kept her from feeling too trapped. "How is her company?"
Aiko shrugged one shoulder, still clad in Shizune's kimono. "She seems kind." She paused. "Very helpful and professional. At least outwardly less bizarre than everyone else I've met." She crossed and uncrossed her legs under the table, unable to get completely comfortable wearing so much more fabric than usual. It was a little too warm, especially in a room with no air circulation. Shizune must be a terribly civilized person to wear a pretty kimono everywhere.
A tiny wrinkle formed between the man's eyebrows. "Oh?"
"Yepp." She popped the 'p' sound and raised one eyebrow, pretending that her heart wasn't thumping against her chest. "I met the Godaime-Hottie, Jiraiya-sama, and some really grumpy medic who sucks at hide and seek. Also he hit me with a clipboard," she tattle-tailed confidentially, leaning forward and lowering her voice. "I think he has temper problems."
He'd kept a straight face throughout her recitation of thoroughly inappropriate commentary, but the strangest expression crossed Ponytail's features for just a moment at the last bit. "I'm sorry to hear that," he said delicately, folding his hands on the table. "I believe that the young man you speak of would be Tsunade-sama's apprentice, Sasuke-san. You have been acquainted with him in the past."
Aiko shrugged, pretending not to notice the way his voice lilted up in a subtle invitation for her to pursue that line of conversation. She didn't care one way or the other about the grumpy medic, and certainly didn't care to hear about the fun times they'd had back in the good old days that she couldn't remember. She was just trying to get a reaction out of her interrogator to get a measure of his character. The man had to be more than he seemed to be. He didn't appear terribly intimidating. It might have been the bedazzled purple scrunchie he was rocking, though.
'Everyone here is eccentric. Obito was right about that at least.'
"In any case." Ponytail coughed once, gracefully letting the last topic go. "You may call me Inoichi. I thought that we would talk for a while about your recent experiences and thoughts. How does that sound, Aiko-san?"
'Awful. How about we not do that?'
Aiko leaned back in her hard metal chair, scuffing her foot back and forth across the concrete floor. "Fine with me, Ponytail."
He didn't so much as blink, which was off-putting. He wasn't reacting like he should be and she didn't like that. He was hard to read. "Alright. Why don't you tell me about your time out of the village?"
That was such an open-ended question that Aiko didn't know what to do with it. She opened her mouth, and felt her eyebrows furrow.
'How do I sum up a year of my life? I don't even know what he wants to hear.'
Slowly, she rubbed a palm against her thigh, resisting the urge to glance down when her hand didn't run over a weapons pouch with the motion. Of course it didn't. They'd taken away all her weapons.
Ponytail gracefully pulled her out of her head with a soothing hum, still sounding perfectly calm and unconcerned. "That's fine, Aiko-san. We can try another tack. When you were brought into the village, you were not in the best physical condition," he prompted. Hay-yellow lashes caught the dim light when he blinked slowly. "What happened that day? We do have some questions that you could possibly help us fill in about an encounter that the shinobi who rescued you had. Hatake-san theorized that your injuries had been inflicted by Akatsuki. Is that accurate?"
Something gnawed in her chest at that clinical summation. "Yes."
'but it was an accident.'
She swallowed the defensive reaction, letting him assume the worst of Obito. Aiko genuinely had been trying to leave Akatsuki: that was what she should rhetorically emphasize. Obito could look after his fuckin self, apparently. He didn't need her help.
"When most of Akatsuki left, I attacked the man who was watching me and tried to leave. There were … complications, and I didn't go fast enough before he came back."
It was all true, but the words tasted sour rolling off her tongue. Aiko was too caught in her thoughts to notice that Inoichi's gaze sharpened at the subtle emphasis she put on 'he'.
"I'm sorry to hear that," Ponytail sympathized.
'Me too.'
~~~
Inoichi nodded to Keiko politely as he passed her to enter Tsunade's office. Jiraiya had apparently been downgraded to 'doorstop' sometime recently. He wasn't excelling at the job. The toad sannin let go slightly too early, nearly letting the door shut on Inoichi before leaning against the wall.
Having a conversation with an S-level shinobi at his back would have been an unsettling experience for many shinobi, but Inoichi didn't bat an eye. "Hokage-sama," he greeted. When he pulled up from an immaculately proper 45 degree bow, she was regarding him impassively.
"Inoichi-san." Tsunade-sama shuffled the papers on her desk, ostensibly so that she was looking at Aiko's file. "Please proceed with your findings."
He'd already planned how he would summarize his report, so he easily complied. "In my opinion, Uzumaki-san isn't a threat to Konoha's interests. With the proper treatment, she can be re-acclimated to her old position. In time, she may even regain the majority of her memories. The question of whether or not she will be ready to put on a show for Konan-san's trial is less certain, however."
"Why?" Tsunade-sama folded her hands, not paying her papers one bit of attention. "You implied that she's relatively stable."
"I didn't say that," Inoichi corrected mildly. A pale face swam across his mind's eye with the same cautiously blank expression the girl had worn for most of her interview. "At the moment, she's far from it. The leader of Akatsuki did a great deal to ensure that she was emotionally invested in his interests and person. She has built him up to an infallible, near mythic status in her mind. He was the center of her world and her most important person." Tsunade curled one side of her lip in revulsion, so Inoichi hurriedly added, "In a platonic sense." He cleared his throat, and pitched his voice back down again. "Uzumaki-san was injured after she attempted to leave Akatsuki, which would indicate that she is unlikely to return to him willingly. However, she thinks it is inevitable that he will find her again, and even looks forward to it. Uzumaki-san wants to settle some sort of grudge."
Jiraiya snorted. "That's vague."
"That was one of the topics she was cautious to avoid." Inoichi spread out his hands, palms up. "On the whole, she was forth-coming with what she thought I wanted to hear. Uzumaki-san isn't hiding much, but she definitely does not trust Konoha's benevolence. I chose not to push. She was already aware that she is a Konoha kunoichi and assumed that she would be required to resume that role in time. As she begins to feel more comfortable and trusting, she will open up."
"How do I make that happen?" Tsunade asked seriously. A bit of breeze from the open window behind her rustled her hair over her shoulders. "She might have information about Akatsuki that could help us keep Naruto safe."
Ignoring the spontaneous Hero Wind, Inoichi cast his mind back to exactly what he had concluded. "I respectfully suggest that you assign her to a Yamanaka mind expert working in collaboration with an expert in trauma and repression in order to do what we can to prompt her memories and encourage her to ruminate on the ones that she has re-acquired. Other than that, keep her in the village and with other Konoha shinobi in order to re-integrate her. She will need to re-learn social norms. Her viewpoint is very much skewed by what Akatsuki chose to expose her to."
The Sannin exchanged glances that gave away little, but some of the tension in the muscles around Jiraiya's eyes relaxed.
After he realized no one else was going to speak, Inoichi cleared his throat. "It's going to be a slow process and she needs to make overtures on her own. Uzumaki-san chose to leave Akatsuki because she realized that her supposed friend had intentionally cultivated a relationship with the intention of manipulating her. Anyone who reaches out to her will be viewed with similar suspicion. She's going to be misbehaving and pushing boundaries," he warned. "Uzumaki-san is waiting for the other shoe to drop and see Konoha expose less than altruistic intentions. Let her make the first overtures of interest, but be sure that someone is ready to talk to her about anything or anyone she expresses interest in."
Tsunade sighed, letting her bangs cover her face and rubbing at a temple, but her lips twitched. "So, we definitely won't be locking her in a room with her brother and letting him use the power of love on her."
Inoichi somehow kept a straight face. "She might actually run screaming if he did. I gained the impression that excessive honesty and expressions of affection are difficult for Uzumaki-san."
That almost wasn't worth commenting on. That was true for almost every shinobi.
"So she's basically the same person. She just doesn't remember why she should give any of us the time of day and has a new, debilitating mistrust of people who are nice to her," Tsunade summarized dryly. Jiraiya gave an uncomfortable cough from the back of the office.
"Also puppets for some reason," Inoichi said contemplatively.
There was a beat of silence while Jiraiya's eyebrows shot up at that bit of trivia.
"No, that's an old issue." Tsunade dismissed. She folded her hands and rested her chin on them. "So, where should we put her? I can't leave her in the hospital. Her old landlord could probably find a place for her, but that wouldn't provide enough supervision. She might have to go back to stay with Naruto and Karin..." The Hokage trailed off at the grimly amused shake of Inoichi's head.
"Not unless you think they will be able to treat her as a stranger and not push for an emotional attachment before she was ready to reciprocate." The grimace Tsunade didn't hide was almost expected. That was what he had thought. "She has to have space to be alone when she wants to be," Inoichi cautioned. "If she's knows that she is under watch all day, Uzumaki-san is going to snap. After a few days, someone can suggest that she go home as long as they don't pressure her. Other than that, I would put her with someone she isn't threatened by and give her a schedule to keep with a set training partner. Probably someone that she's already met so that she isn't being overwhelmed with new people."
Tsunade slowly let one eyebrow rise, not in the mood for guessing games.
"If you were to ask her opinion," Inoichi sighed. "I'm relatively certain that she'll request to stay with Shizune-san." He ticked off possibilities on a hand. "Your other apprentice seems to have bludgeoned her with a clipboard, she finds you intimidating, and putting her with Jiraiya-sama would be a terrible idea." He could all but feel the older man welling up with indignation, but he remained firm and explained his position. "She is under the mistaken impression that Jiraiya-sama is a writer of considerable talent. Given the chance to learn from and emulate his behaviors-"
"Shizune it is," Tsunade interrupted in a strange sort of tone that implied her throat was closed up. She cleared her throat and sat up straight. "Although she doesn't have time to train Aiko; she's far too busy getting ready for when I have to leave. I'll give that duty to someone else."
There was a moment of sullen silence. "I'm offended by that whole conversation," Jiraiya muttered, kicking the wall. "You can't keep me away from her, anyway. You need me to help her get Hiraishin back so that no one else knows something is wrong. My goddaughter is the only one that has taste."
"Bad taste," Tsunade said firmly.
Inoichi shrugged mildly, ready to go back to his home. "She also referred to you as the 'Godaime Hottie.'"
Tsunade paused for a moment, and amended, "Her literary taste is bad." Her lips twitched.
Yamanaka Inoichi hastily left, trying not to hear the sound of breaking glass behind him or Tsunade-sama ordering her old teammate not to look so damn smug.
~~~
That night, Aiko stepped cautiously through the doorway that her guide held open. This wasn't her first choice- she'd much rather be alone- but it was much better than going back to the hospital or interrogations. Or staying out on the street. There were just so many people and the skin on the back of her neck wouldn't stop prickling. It felt like they were staring, though she hadn't caught anyone at it.
'I want to go home.'
She closed her eyes, just for a moment and took a steadying breath.
'Not that I have a choice.'
She should behave. Whatever impression she left on Shizune could influence how these people treated her and how long she was forced to see their hack psychologists. It couldn't be an accident that she had been sent to live with the Hokage's assistant. The woman she had been given to was influential.
With that in mind, she resolved to step carefully.
Her mouth tasted sour. "Thank you for having me." Aiko shucked the clear plastic sandals that someone had found for her at the door, peering into Shizune-san's warm, sunny home. Like most Konoha citizens, she lived in an apartment complex. Most of them couldn't be this swanky, however. From what she could see, it was a sprawling open room filled with bamboo, tiny bonsai trees, and tanks filled with little orange goldfish.
'Of course the Hokage's apprentice doesn't live like everyone else.' Aiko gave the least obvious sniff that she could, noting that the faint scent of Shizune's floral shampoo and the tang of hospital air-freshener prevailed. Well. The poor woman probably couldn't do a thing about that aspect of feng shui.
"It's no problem at all. I hope you don't mind that I don't have a proper guest room. I have a futon that will fit well in my office." Shizune padded ahead of her barefoot, running a hand through her hair. "Would you like anything to drink? I'm sure that Inoichi-san kept you talking." She sounded rueful.
"He's chatty."
'Yes, he is.'
Aiko purposefully refrained from commenting and made a noncommittal sound as she followed her hostess to the doorway of the kitchen. That… was a lot of counter space. Aiko raised her eyebrows, not trying to hide that she was impressed. If she had made a prediction, Aiko would have guessed that Shizune's home was as utilitarian as she seemed to be. That was not so. If anything, it seemed like a zen sanctuary.
'She's confident in her abilities. No one who wasn't would live in a home with big windows like that.'
While Shizune's back was turned, Aiko palmed a kitchen knife off the counter and slipped it under her obi. It was good to have steel in her hands again. "Whatever you have would be fine," she said belatedly when Shizune gave her a questioning look. The older kunoichi returned from the fridge with a carton of juice a moment later.
She liked Shizune reasonably well, and the fact that the older woman went to bed early did give her a comfortable amount of space. Aiko still slept with her filched knife hidden under her pillow. She would have felt much better if they hadn't taken away her weapons and gear. Uneasy, she tossed and turned for a hideously long time, considering and discarding nervous predictions about what the next day would bring.
'If I don't piss them off, they'll have to give me my things back. Or something comparable. They don't have me here out of the kindness of their hearts- they'll want me to work eventually. I can't do that in a hand-me-down dress with my bare hands.'
Morning dawned with oppressive brightness into Shizune's flat. Aiko woke suddenly, muscles tense and still for a long minute before she realized that she was alone.
The knife was gone. In its place was a well-worn sleeping cap in the shape of a walrus. She picked it up and gave it a quick sniff, frowning. The scent it carried was… comforting, safe. Her head reeled. Aiko barely noticed burying her nose in the soft fabric to breathe it in. Lavender detergent, spiced shampoo, and a little bit of sweat that hinted at the personal chemistry of the person who'd worn it. Someone male and young. She closed her eyes. It had to mean something. Someone was making a point. Someone who could reach under her head without waking her was trying to make a point.
'I don't get it.'
She tossed the thing aside and tried not to focus on the way her stomach lurched.
Still clad in Shizune's extra dress, Aiko made her way out to the kitchen where Shizune was seated with a newspaper and a cup of coffee from some shop with a cheerful blue logo. She glanced up and then tilted her head toward the counter where another beverage sat. "I didn't know what you like, so I just got you a cappuccino. I hope that's alright."
'The hell is a cappuccino?'
Aiko nodded and took her drink to the table. She took one sip and carefully controlled her features.
'Awful. That's what it is. It's mind-bendingly bad.'
Subtly, she scraped her tongue against her upper teeth to try to get the taste off. Shizune didn't look up from her paper, clearly preoccupied with whatever was going on in the inner pages.
"I have work in an hour and a half. Do you know what you would like to do for the day?" Paper rustled as Shizune flipped over to another section, glancing over at Aiko for a moment. She somehow looked perfectly composed even though it was five in the morning.
When was the last time she'd been awake before seven? Aiko couldn't help but remember that she hadn't brushed her teeth and that her hair was probably one big knot. Self-consciously, she poked at her hair. Yes. It was matted in the back. Why wouldn't it be?
Shizune's voice sounded wryly amused. "Ah. Yes. I'm afraid I don't have time to take you out, but you definitely need supplies. I'll request a budget from Tsunade-sama and have someone sent over who will accompany you."
"I can shop on my own," Aiko rebutted sharply, puffing up.
'What does she think, I'll get lost in the scary new village? I'm not a child.'
"I know," Shizune said mildly. "But someone who knows where the shinobi outfitters are would be a helpful guide, and they might as well keep you company while I'm gone. It'll probably be one of Tsunade-sama's poor beleaguered Chuunin assistants. They would prefer carrying your groceries to running messages and filing."
Aiko didn't buy the implication that she would be doing anyone a favor but relented, shaking her head. Pride was nice, efficiency was nicer. "Fine." She blew air out of the side of her mouth and deflated. "What time should I expect this person?"
Shizune shrugged one shoulder. "Half an hour to an hour after I leave, perhaps. If you can't wait, you can shower with my things and pull another dress out of my closet."
Sharing soap? She couldn't be serious. Aiko skated right past that suggestion. She'd never shared basic hygiene supplies before and she wasn't about to start. That was just a little weird. She didn't want to smell like Shizune.
Waiting half an hour didn't sound so bad. She could wait a while to take care of basic hygiene and try not to ruminate on who had washed the rock dust and blood off her body while she'd been unconscious (or why she sort of smelled like hand sanitizer). What was another half an hour of ickness against the luxury of getting her own clothes and shampoo?
Of course, Shizune turned out to be a big fat liar. The man who showed up two hours later was almost certainly not some beleaguered Chuunin. He wore the Konoha flak jacket, yeah, but no Chuunin moved like that.
Also, she recognized him.
"Yo." Hatake 'Bakashi' raised a single palm on the other side of Shizune's doorway. He was slouched casually, but he still loomed over her.
The man that Obito had thought about as some weird rival didn't look like a mouth-frothing friend-killer, but looks could be deceiving.
Her fingers tightened on the door. He could well be very dangerous, no matter that he'd been her teacher at some point. Everything she'd been told indicated so.
On the other hand, she wasn't proscribing to Obito's worldview anymore- so that one-sided rivalry might be a good sign so far as Hatake's character went. He might be a really nice guy who hugged puppies and big fluffy bunnies.
She stalled for a moment, paralyzed in the face of making that judgment with so little information. Her heart was pounding and breath didn't want to come. Air, where was the air gone to?
Bakashi tilted his head slightly in inquiry, his hand falling back to his side.
Aiko shut the door in his face and locked it.
'Nope. Not dealing with that right now.'
There was a knock a few seconds later, as if he was mildly confused. She ignored it and went to take a shower, fed up with waiting in yesterday's clothes.
Floral scented bath luxuries weren't that awful. It could be worse, Aiko reminded herself firmly, pretending she wasn't rubbing someone else's handtowel on her skin. But- ugh, it was so unsanitary. With a shudder, she turned off the water and fled as soon as humanly possible, heart pounding a tattoo against her throat.
Stupid. She had bigger problems. Like the fact that she was supposed to be meeting someone for a training session in two hours. Would Konoha decide they didn't want her if she wasn't up to par?
Aiko chewed on her lower lip and tried to soothe the roiling in her gut with tea. She ended up pouring most of it down the drain and pacing in the small space available.
'I have to impress whoever they send. I don't want to find out what will happen if they don't want me anymore.'
The next time someone was at the door, the man on the other side was less visibly suspicious than Bakashi. He offered her a slightly crooked smile, displaying vividly white teeth.
'Someone listened to their mom when she said to brush three times a day. That smile is beautiful. He should be on posters. It's almost unreal.'
Actually, with the rock-solid build, square jawline, and painfully wholesome aura that her visitor owned, he looked shockingly like-
"You look like an underwear model," Aiko said bluntly, tilting her head to the side. "Are you?" Her foot tapped against the floor with poorly restrained nervous energy. This was the person she was supposed to fight? Was she supposed to be able to beat him? Could she? Hard to tell.
He didn't even blink. "Hello, Aiko-san," came the calm reply. "I'm Yamato, a Jounin shinobi of Konohagakure, and the Hokage has asked me to assess your current level. Are you ready to go?" His hair, somewhere between 'clean-cut' and 'intentionally messy', did not waver in the breeze from the open window in the stairwell. She suspected hair gel.
'A Jounin, huh? So, that's a tentative no to the underwear thing, but I'm still nursing suspicions.'
"Sure." Aiko placed a palm in the center of his chest and propelled him out of the way, using the grip to roughly gauge his musculature. Her free hand pulled the door shut behind her with a soft click. "Lead on, Nadeshiko."
'He's got a lot of muscle on me. I think he's physically stronger than Obito even. Close ranger fighter, or something that involves heavy work.'
He might be slow, then. Slow-twitch, bulky muscle could weigh down a shinobi. Then again, she probably wasn't supposed to kill him and most of her techniques were lethal by design to avoid a drawn out fight. Damnit.
"I wish you wouldn't call me that," Yamato protested mildly, disentangling her hand from his vest and turning to jog down the stairs. "That pun finally died out a few months back and I was glad to see it go."
'Someone else beat me to that? I thought it was a good pun.'
Her expression soured, just a bit. "Yamato it is." The last of her quietly spoken words were nearly swallowed by the wall of sound that washed over them when Yamato pulled open the door. A hot wave of air carried in hundreds of murmuring voices, the groaning of wagon wheels, and distant shrieking from happy children.
'It's awful.'
She had to steel herself to take the first step outside into the fray.
It was positively surreal. How had she gone from living with Obito to… to here, in this crowded mess of a city?
"I can't help but notice that you seem to be underequipped." Yamato paused for a moment on the stoop before he pushed out into the crowd, rubbing at his jaw with a finger. "Is that… intentional?"
Aiko twitched, rubbing her index finger against her thumb. "No," she said shortly. "Shizune said that someone would take me to get equipment, but the person who showed up was so sketchy that I shut the door in his face."
Yamato made a small sound of agreement, as if that was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. "Ah. Suh-keh-chi?" he asked carefully, as though the syllables were slightly foreign to him.
"Very." She flicked her gaze up to his profile, matching her stride to his and keeping a little closer to his side than she would like. He was pretty good at clearing a path through the throngs of people out doing their shopping. "Bad posture, messy hair, suspicious mask, and he was definitely not a Chuunin. Shizune told me to expect a Chuunin. I detected shenanigans and locked the door." She carefully did not contemplate that her reasons had been rather more personal than his unkempt, seriously suspect appearance. Yamato didn't need to know that. Aiko skirted slightly behind Yamato for a moment to avoid a woman carrying a large basket before darting back out to catch up.
'Wow, there are a lot of people out. I don't think I've been to anywhere that even sort of compares in terms of population density. Are all shinobi villages like this? They're packed in like animals.'
Yamato swallowed, face painfully blank. "I suppose it is important not to wander off with suspicious characters."
"Oh, definitely," Aiko agreed, watching two scruffy children race, both holding what appeared to be younger siblings on their shoulders. "Come to think of it, I probably should have made sure you were the right person; but you just don't seem that suspicious and you were actually on time."
"Your caution does you credit," he managed in a slightly higher, stiff tone.
'I was serious. Is he making fun of me?' She shot a suspicious glance up at her companion, managing to nearly blind herself on a glint of light from his metal face-place. That did make it harder to read his face. Maybe that was why he had it?
A flash of purple stapled to a telephone pole caught her eye- an advertisement for some kind of festival game calling for registration, apparently. Aiko looked at it a moment longer than strictly necessary, more interested than the sheet warranted.
'Why do I want to sign up? Am I suddenly eight or something?'
"Aiko-san?" She started guiltily and stepped quickly to catch back up, noting the tension in her escort's well-muscled neck.
Her face colored. "I'm here, I'm here."
Yamato made a humming sound, but paid more attention to her after that. Gradually the crowds thinned and the buildings transitioned from brightly-painted, oddly shaped multi-story affairs to sprawling traditional homes interspersed with occasional tall gates, numbered from 18 to 24. Yamato took her to gate 25 and pushed it open with a tap of chakra and a palm to display tall, healthy grass sprawling over a lightly hilled area. A cluster of trees in the distance cut off her sight.
'This is a Konoha training ground?' Aiko sucked on her lower lip, taking it in. It looked more like a small park than anything. She could smell the fresh scent of fast-moving water somewhere nearby to the east.
'Fancy.' She couldn't help but sneer, just a little bit. 'Obito and I did just fine with the backyard and mountain steppes by our safehouses. You don't need a specially designed field.'
Then again, when you lived in an industrial area, maybe you did. If Konoha hadn't specially set aside land, their shinobi wouldn't have any room to workout. In other words…
'I'm kind of an insufferable snob.'
Chastened by her own thoughts, Aiko scratched behind her ear and ducked her head a bit. Yamato was closing up the field- probably to ensure that no one else wandered into the middle of their practice and risked bodily harm.
"So." She spun slowly to survey the area, clasping her fingers in front of her body. "What are we trying to accomplish?"
"Today, I think we'll just gauge your current level. Without your weapons you won't be fighting at one hundred percent, so don't feel too pressured."
Aiko nodded, acknowledging that she understood.
'Oh, that's good. Not as much pressure as I'd thought. Konoha is a little soft.'
That was good, though. She didn't want to have to use her Rinnegan. No one had asked about her eyes. Maybe they didn't know.
She moved to settle into an athletic stance, and jolted back into reality when the tight material of Shizune's dress restricted her movement around her ankles. That was going to be annoying. Actually… Aiko bent to hitch the fabric up, tying it to the side against her thigh.
A high-pitched "urp" sound eeked out of Yamato's throat. She jerked up to see what was wrong, only to see that he was pointedly looking away from her.
"What's the matter with you?" Aiko frowned, finishing tying the ends of Shizune's kimono and checking her range of movement now. Not great, but okay.
"Nothing." Yamato coughed, clearing his throat. "Nothing is wrong."
With an eye-roll, she slipped into a defensive stance. "Just attack me already." She still didn't want to attack him. She didn't have her weapons, any poison, and jutsu could be too dangerous. She'd never fought with anyone other than Obito that she didn't want to kill. She didn't know how to be safe with them.
Instead of arguing, Yamato flowed forward in a surprisingly swift movement to engage her in taijutsu with a low kick. She jumped over the side-sweeping leg and darted behind him, ducking under the punch that followed when he twisted after her.
'I was wrong. He's not slow.'
He wasn't as fast as Obito, though, and that was good enough. Some motions were closer than others, but she managed to move away from every blow. After a few minutes she gritted her teeth and made an offensive movement of her own, throwing a technically perfect but underwhelming punch. He bent over backwards at the waist and moved into a flip, nearly managing to clip her well with a double-kick. She moved back so fast that she felt whiplash, fuzzy spots crawling over her vision.
"Stop." Yamato tossed his head some time later, as if to get sweaty bangs off his face. Again, his hair remained still. Definitely gelled into place, then. "Let's try ninjutsu." He had to have read the trepidation on her face but he widened his stance and held his hands in a seal. "Wood style!"
'Wait, what?'
She froze, mind sputtering on what she was seeing instead of picking a counter technique. The material that rocketed at her was much darker and thicker than Obito's vines, but it was the same technique.
'This can't be that common. I know Yamato. He's the training partner that I thought of when Obito first used this on me.'
The instant of hesitation cost her- her mind blanked on a suitable ninjutsu, and she threw her body out of the way instead. The wood curled back at her, giving her barely enough time to side-step and brace a hand on it to flip over.
"Aiko?" Yamato called out, confused. "Use ninjutsu. How about your chakra chains?"
Oh. That'd work. She jumped backwards, welling chakra along her spine.
Using her chakra chains was more annoying than anything, really. They were bulky and kind of clunky- not really fast enough to cut through the wood ninjutsu that Yamato could hurl at her (and that explained his physical strength, wood was heavy). Aiko ended up doing almost as much dodging as before, carefully positioning herself so that she could make token swipes that cut at the seemingly never-ending barrage her training partner could summon up.
Yamato only called a halt once her breath was coming in ragged gasps and sweat was tickling at her hairline, slipping behind an ear. She ducked her head to rub at the trickle with a shoulder. One hand trailed down to tug at the kimono where it was sitting heavy and lopsided against her leg. Kami, that was hot. She needed to get some shorts before she had to do this again. Shizune was nuts, just totally nuts.
Politely, her training partner averted his eyes while she fiddled with her clothes. He wasn't as worn out, but then again, he'd been more stationary. "I don't know about you, but I'm starving." He scratched at an arm, fingers slipping under the sleeves he had rolled up to his forearms.
'I would rather shower than eat, but I'm still short on clothes.' Aiko tried not to be too obvious about plucking the dirty, sweaty material of the kimono away from her chest.
In the corner of her eye, she could see Yamato glance at her with poorly hidden amusement. She couldn't blame him.
"You'll take me to get some things after?" she prodded.
His closed-mouth smile was even cuter than the big boy-next-door one. "If you don't think I'm too suspicious."
She reared back and punched him in the arm, a little vexed when he didn't even try to dodge. "Shut up and take me to dinner."