"Man, this is awesome, 'ttebayo!" Naruto practically bounced around the room, waving his second successful seal in his grubby little fist. The first one had left a scorch on the hotel comforter that would never be repairable. Jiraiya silently kissed his deposit goodbye and decided to leave very early in the morning when it came time to skip town. In the meantime, he made a note to request that the maid service stopped.
"What did I tell you gaki?" He physically stopped the boy from fidgeting so much by grabbing his shoulders. Watching Naruto get excited made him feel incredibly tired. Had he ever had that much energy? "I've been telling you for months that fuinjutsu is a noble art!"
"Who cares about noble? That sounds so boring. Boom!"
He couldn't get too irritated, however, even as his apprentice cackled. Despite the fact that Aiko had been the one to bully Naruto into sitting down and learning the seal language, he was pretty pleased that he'd managed to get the boy at least mildly curious in the art. And she really had known how to speak his language—literally, they babbled at each other incomprehensibly whenever they ran into a difficult concept Aiko couldn't seem to explain in the way she had learned or if they got distracted and forgot he was there. It was altogether strange and humbling—where did they learn another language? He'd have to remember to ask, it didn't sound like anything he had ever heard.
It had probably been a terrible idea to teach a teenage boy how to make his own explosives, but he'd thought that type of seal had much more likelihood of actually holding Naruto's attention.
Lo, it was both terrible and great to behold. He gently pried the seal out of his apprentice's hands, already prepared to counter his protests. "Naruto, you're so excited that your chakra levels are wavering. If you're not careful, that's going to blow up in your hand, and then your sister will kill me."
Aiko gave a distracted grunt of acknowledgement, curled up in the same armchair where she had been for hours. Unlike her brother, she actually had a good attention span. (Then again, the comparison may not have been fair. She was under more pressure. When he'd put Naruto under pressure in past, the boy had always pulled through, whether it be the Rasengan, Shadow Clones, or learning to summon).
He had been expecting to get a much more academic student than the one he'd been working with for almost a year now. But despite Tsunade's notation that Aiko had been noted to be of above average intelligence, Jiraiya kept being surprised. If anything, Tsunade hadn't given the girl enough credit. She had taken to seals as a duck to water with an intense, unwavering focus and ability to intuitively piece concepts together. It was like she was working with a dictionary's worth of background knowledge ready to be applied to theoretical scenarios. It was uncanny. (Jiraiya took a moment to roll his eyes at himself for using ducks in a metaphor. He was starting to sound like sensei. Old coot had always loved birds.)
Her performance with some of the more technical and less imaginative aspects was less thrilling, however. She made simple mistakes in things like constructing an array that would filter chakra.
Well, he amended, it wasn't fair to call them 'simple' mistakes. The concepts she struggled with were still advanced ones, but the way that she breezed ridiculously high up in other areas made it hard to him to keep that perspective. She just couldn't seem to understand how to alter the array to take into account the nature of the chakra in use and in contact. He would have to teach her that by rote.
He had decided that with her chakra nature, it would be easiest for her to demand a jinchuuriki candidate with water-nature as well. She would only have to account for one nature translation that way. If needed, Mei could be fed some garbage about the Three-Tails being a water natured beast, but he didn't really care what she thought.
He'd sent a letter to that effect last week.
Naruto had actually coerced his sister into adding onto some of his silly letters. Jiraiya didn't see the point—she had seen most of their friends in Konoha less than a month ago, and she couldn't possibly want to write to that nutty Suna jinchuuriki or any of the friends Naruto had made along their trip so far. (Seriously, you can't take that kid anywhere without running into someone who he wanted to make his friend. If he didn't stop using the magic of friendship on every sad or troubled individual he met, he was going to have to spend more time writing letters than training.)
"I'm going out." Jiraiya pulled on his coat, tossing a look at the two teens over his shoulder. "You two hungry? I could bring something back, or you could actually venture out into the real world."
Naruto gave a longing look to his sister that she didn't seem to see. She had already turned her attention back to the book balanced on her knees and the notebook where she was taking notes with illustrations. "Food would be nice."
He stuck his lip out and pouted, but Naruto flopped back down on the other bed and bounced. "Yeah, bring us back food, ero-sennin!"
Jiraiya narrowed his eyes. 'Hard-working Aiko gets beef. Naruto is getting the driest chicken karaage I can find.'
It was hard to believe that Naruto still hadn't caught on to the way that Jiraiya passive-aggressively rewarded and punished him for disrespect. You would think that working under someone like Hatake would have taught him to at least spot it, even if he didn't want to alter his actions.
'Who am I kidding, Naruto is far too clueless.'
Aiko actually looked up, mildly startled, when the full grown man in the room burst into giggles before stumbling out the door. Naruto merely rolled his eyes. "The old guy does that sometimes." He kicked his feet against the singed bedcovers, then rolled over onto his stomach to make a grab for the remote to the antique television in the room.
She rolled her eyes and did her best to tune it out. Naruto loved those awful soaps.
In her past life, she must have been terrible at math. Just utterly abominable. Sometimes she felt a connection straining to be made and she was sure it meant that just beyond what she consciously remembered was a concept she had learned but forgotten. It was like having a word on the tip of her tongue. She felt like if she only scraped it against her teeth long enough it would come off and make sense.
But it never did.
Luckily, not all of sealing was analogous to math at all.
Naruto turned to stare at her. Aiko pretended not to notice, immersed as she was in what she was learning.
"Hey. Aiko."
She swallowed the sigh she wanted to heave and looked up, blinking away weariness. 'I can't be rude. It's not his fault I'm in over my head.' He was just excited to spend some time together after a year apart. There was nothing wrong with that, even if it did make it harder for her to do the studying she desperately needed to do.
"Yes, Naruto?"
He gave her a grin that she associated on some deep, primal level with the Grinch who stole Christmas. She recoiled. "I invented a totally new technique and kicked the pervert's ass with it. Wanna see?"
'My keen intuition tells me that this isn't going anywhere good.' She closed her book and stood, giving a stretch. "Sounds good. Should we go outside?" Okay, so she lied. But how could she tell him that she already knew most of the things he would learn?
He shook his head, flushing just a little bit across his cheeks. "Ah, no. I think it's better in here." He brought his hands up into a cross. "Sexy Jutsu!"
'And that went exactly where I expected it would.'
Except that it didn't. When the smoke cleared, it became frighteningly obvious that she wasn't looking at Naruko. She probably had an expression that would have looked more appropriate if she'd just been slapped with a fish, because Naruto giggled.
Or rather, the totally sexy seventeen year old version of herself did. Anko, eat your heart out and prepare to hand over your 'Sexy Kunoichi' title.
'Suddenly I care about my looks. I want to look like that.'
She felt her cheeks burn red, and she giggled. "That… That is just the best thing ever. I'm super flattered."
SexyAiko cooed, posing cutely. "Mou, you really think so?"
"Yeah." Aiko strode over to examine the facsimile from different angles. "Although this is definitely intended to appeal more to a male heterosexual gaze. Is that intentional? It's not accurate, and it could stand some refinement."
Naruto puffed back into himself with a pout and a baffled expression. "What do you mean? This version is perfect! I worked on it for hours!"
She shook her head. "Ah, never mind." As long as she didn't go nuts and get any extra ribs implanted, she wouldn't end up with the oddities of Naruto's Sexy Jutsu anyway. (and if she got to that point, she undoubtedly had bigger things to worry about, like her traumatic brain injury that led to decreased judgment).
~~~
He had to stop for a moment to gape. Shizune blinked dumbly and lowered her arm guard as if to check that he really had cracked it in half. Then she gave a shriek.
"Ah! You did it!"
Sasuke normally tried to go with 'stoic' or at least 'strong and silent', but he couldn't help but crack a positive facial expression. (Even in the comfort of his mind he couldn't call it a grin.) "I did it," he said with no small amount of satisfaction.
Granted, he hadn't intended to at that moment. He had simply slipped into the action he had been practicing nonstop lately. Tsunade had taught him the theory behind her augmented strength, but warned that it would take years for him to be able to utilize it to the fullest potential. Strength augmentation wasn't unique to Tsunade, but the heights that she took it to were.
Still, he was fairly proud of his first successful usage. Sasuke was sure that now that he knew what it felt like, he could replicate the circulation and alteration in his limbs.
He was actually pleased enough that he didn't react in time to Shizune's exuberant hug. Sasuke instantly stiffened, fighting two instinctive urges.
The first urge was to use the substitution technique with a cactus.
The second urge was to go for the throat with a kunai.
But… he did like Shizune-senpai passably. And she was just caught up in the moment. But. He did have standards of behavior to uphold. He could not let her think that her behavior was appropriate or desirable.
"This isn't going to be an everyday thing," Sasuke warned darkly.
Shizune laughed in his ear and let him go. "Only on special occasions. I promise. Chya, that was wonderful timing! Were you saving that until the last minute before I had to go?"
He hadn't been, but he gave her a smirk that let her read whatever she wanted into his expression.
Aside from the fact that he had been drafted to cat-sit, all was going well. (and he was still a little taken aback that Karin had been bold enough to assume that he wouldn't mind, only telling him at the last minute because apparently 'the pet-sitters are so expensive it should be a crime, I wouldn't pay them if everyone else in the world were dead. Right, Smaug?' *angry meow* )
Though he liked cats in general and as a concept experienced from a distance and perhaps photographs, he wasn't pleased about that particular feline. There was something seriously wrong with it.
Sasuke didn't have the heart to tell Karin no, though he made clear it was just this once. Not for her own sake, but because he actually felt a little pity for Hinata, who would doubtlessly be the one to find a cat-caretaker if he didn't agree. Even if he hadn't worked in the Hokage's office and heard about every stupid thing that happened until he thought he would vomit, Sasuke would have known that something was seriously wrong with Hyuuga Hinata and her family.
Or rather, wrong with Hinata, as she had reneged completely on her name. She'd seemed a little surprised that her family was fighting her decision so hard, but they had no legal recourse to prevent her from leaving. If the clan head had been anyone other than Hyuuga Hiashi, Sasuke might have thought it was his inept way of proving that he wanted her to stay in the family.
As it was in fact, the notoriously unpleasant man in question, Sasuke rather thought that Hiashi was trying to cow his wayward daughter into obedience by frightening her with all the terrible things she would have to agree to.
She must have been prepared, because in the hearing where Sasuke had taken notes (Tsunade couldn't be bothered to attend such a farce) Hinata had shown a hundred times more spine than he'd ever imagined she could have. Hiashi must have regretted discarding the girl as useless—she looked more like an impassive, powerful leader than he did when he threatened her with a list of repercussions (and rapidly generating ability at faking impassivity), long past the point where it was obvious she already knew. It must be unpleasant to know your child is that desperate to get away from you.
Yes, she was aware that she could never have biological children.
Yes, she was aware that she would have no last name unless she chose one for herself.
Yes, she was aware that she was legally bound to keep all the secrets of the Hyuuga and could not pass them along to students she might take.
Yes, she had something to add for the record. "Fuck you." A pause. "Thank you for your time, Hyuuga-san."
Sasuke had to look up for a moment and briefly contemplate if the literal insult was more biting than referring to her father by his last name and an insufficient title. Ouch.
Anko and Karin had broken out into thoroughly inappropriate clapping and hooting at that point, accompanied by surprised laughter from Kiba and near simultaneous face-palms from Kurenai and Shino. She had a pretty good cheering section, actually.
For the first time, he deigned to acknowledge her as a person beyond the social niceties when she had returned to file her final declaration paperwork the next day. She'd flushed tomato red and bit her lip before leaning into whisper, "I-I'd been practicing that for weeks."
Unfortunately, he seemed to be just about the only one outside her circle of friends who was impressed. Granted, most people didn't care. But he'd actually seen her spat at on the street by Branch Clan members (baffling, shouldn't they emphasize with her?) and noted that she didn't have many fans in the traditionalist sects of town either.
Morons. It was all well and good to say that one should be loyal to their clan, but if someone from the clan wronged you, then you had every right to retaliate. Hinata only had one form of recourse.
It was just as well that the only all-female team in the village had been designated to be Shizune's escort to Nadeshiko. Hinata needed to get out of town.
Although he saw the value in it now, that assignment had frankly perplexed him when Tsunade had talked through it. Did they really only have one female team? They weren't even an official unit, for crying out loud. Sasuke could think of three all-male units off the top of his head, plus the one that had the disturbingly masculine and uncouth Ino in it. (Sasuke had been raised to think that ladies didn't scream and hit people all the time, no matter how infuriating Shikamaru was. Well-bred people could keep their temper in check, ladies especially. If they had to retaliate, they would do so calmly and with sufficient severity to insure the problem would no longer continue.)
~~~
"We're almost fourteen," Naruto pointed out idly, five days before Aiko had to go back to Mist.
Understandably, she was preoccupied. Jiraiya had drawn up the exact seal she would be using and she had felt Naruto's own demonic chakra until she was certain she knew she could slap down the translation signals at the right frequency. With the seal memorized, all she really had to do was be prepared for anything that could go wrong.
That was surprisingly not soothing.
The most frustrating part was that Aiko was certain she almost understood what was going on. If she had just a little more time, she would be able to put together the pieces that she was reading into a coherent whole.
But the point was moot, as she already had been notified that Mei would be sending an escort to meet her. Mist was still insistent about not having Jiraiya in the village, and Tsunade had to agree after they pointed out what he'd done the last time he had been there. There was doubtlessly a great story there, but no one was telling it to Aiko.
Still, something very strange had to be going on. Why would Konoha let her go there without a friendly escort? Okay, Mist was supposedly friendly, she knew, but not in any real sense. She had to be missing something very important, and it nagged at her.
"Aiko?"
She came back to the real world with a start, rubbing her face with her free hand. "Sorry, I got distracted."
It was hard to care about her birthday when she would be doing the riskiest thing of her life to date on October sixth.
"What do you want to do?" He stood on the bed and bounced idly, reaching his fingers up to scrape at the ceiling. Little flakes of something white fluttered down to litter the bedcovers. She made a face.
Naruto incorrectly interpreted her expression, stopping his movements to point at her. It might have been more imposing if he hadn't been still bouncing slightly from the momentum he had accumulated. "Don't say you don't want to do anything! We can celebrate tonight. I bet there's lots of stuff to do here, in scenic… Where are we, again?"
Aiko shrugged. She had no idea, frankly. Jiraiya liked to move them around a lot, and she'd been rather distracted.
Naruto steamrolled past that potential problem with his usual brand of nonchalant bravado. "Let's go already?"
"Alright, alright," she sighed, heaving herself to her feet. She had barely left the books for a month and a half. Maybe she should get some sun. Her performance might be better if she were relaxed than if she crammed, anyways.
She wasn't entirely sure where Jiraiya was at that moment. He often went out at night. Aiko pulled aside the curtain and blinked out. "Huh. It's still day."
Naruto gave her a scathing look. "You really do need to get out of the room sometimes."
"I do," she protested weakly. "I leave every da-"
He rolled his eyes, anticipating her argument. "Workouts don't count."
When they walked out, Naruto pocketing the key, Aiko felt that she vaguely remembered arriving in this particular town. She let her feet guide her to the business district. That wasn't hard, largely because hotels tended to be near the attractions.
'Not that there's much to be attracted to,' she thought dryly. Jiraiya seemed to like thoroughly boring towns. It wasn't a particularly small place by any means, but it seemed to be an agricultural community with very little to do. Heavens only knew what Jiraiya could be doing out all night, coming back in the early morning smelling of perfume. What indeed. Aiko had chosen not to enlighten her poor brother. He seemed completely convinced that Jiraiya was repulsive and no woman would ever like him. Aiko wasn't attracted herself—that would be taking the concept of the 'older man' a bit too far—but she could see the appeal in a detached sort of way.
Naruto, in contrast to her boredom, seemed to think that everything was the Best Thing Ever. A new jutsu? Best Thing Ever. A movie he'd seen a dozen times? Also the Best Thing Ever! A new friend? Best Thing Ever! Homicidal Maniac? New Best Friend, which translates to Best Thing Ever!
That was slightly exaggerated, but Aiko didn't think anyone would blame her. To be fair, (to her knowledge) he'd only made friends with one homicidal lunatic, and she'd done her best to befriend the same one. Yeah. That holds up to scrutiny.
Okay, maybe they would blame her. She decided not to make that joke aloud, even if Naruto's inadvertent impression of a Golden Retriever on crack cocaine was hilarious.
When the escort did come, Aiko was surprised to see someone she recognized. It took only a few seconds to guess at the meaning behind the selection of a one-man squad.
"Ao-san, thank you for escorting me." She gave a respectful bow, feeling Jiraiya's ambient body heat from her side and knowing it would probably be best to deflect tensions.
The Mizukage's bodyguard had probably been sent for both practical and political reasons. Firstly, it eliminated any chance that Mist could claim this operation had not fallen under their purview. That protected Konoha if it fell through. That thought soothed her raw nerves slightly.
The second implication that came to mind was that it could be meant for her comfort—she only knew a few Mist-nin and Ao wasn't particularly friendly, but at least she could be relatively certain she wasn't being led into an ambush by a separatist. The thought had crossed her mind. Doubtlessly Mist had done their best to keep the location and time of the sealing confidential, but there was always someone better and smarter than you (unless you were Kakashi-shishou).
The selection was also practical due to Ao's elite status and hidden, 'secret' Byakugan. He would be well-equipped to detect and deal with any deception on her or Konoha's part. Even without knowing about his hidden eye (as she had to pretend) seeing him might have made her wary about her chances of succeeding at any plot.
Luckily for her, there was no secret plot. All she had to do was fulfill Konoha's part of the bargain.
~~~
Sai would rather have preferred that it did not come to this. He felt no particular desire to harm the strange girl who had been his teammate the last time he had been in this country. Then again, he also did not feel a particular desire to harm the three root members who were his teammates now.
It would be a stretch to claim that Sai liked Uzumaki Aiko or that he had any feelings towards her in particular at all. He simply did not, even though she occasionally inspired something that might be confusion (an itch in his throat that wanted to be satisfied with a question, but no). But she was a useful source of information despite being less emotionally volatile than the Uchiha he'd had to shadow, a respectable combatant, and she appealed to him aesthetically. Perhaps he would draw something inspired by her if she was killed.
Another man might have been thinking of her exotic coloring or smile when he thought that. Sai found her interesting despite them, instead of because of them. Or rather, the way that her flat character seemed to contrast with the bright colors she wore, like a rainbow twisted into a poisonous serpent with white, white teeth and a pointed smile. She would translate well to two dimensions, he thought.
He still had yet to investigate what she had babbled about after he had informed her that she had a certain flatness about her. At least it was less displeasing feedback than what he had gotten after he realized that the Uchiha's poor attitude could only be compensating for something. Perhaps one was not supposed to give honest character assessments when bestowing nicknames? Then again, if that were true, the Uzumaki might have reacted with more force, as the Uchiha had. Difficult to say.
But he had been told to ingratiate himself into their fold, and so he had to learn how to blend in with them. Regardless of the problems that his literary resources had not anticipated, he had been told to learn, and so he would.
Ingratiating himself had gone much more smoothly with the Uzumaki than it had with the Uchiha. He had done his best to hold a conversation with the young male, but even his best efforts had not yielded anything nearly as successful as his conversation with the Uzumaki about art.
There would be further opportunities for practice. He had been told not to damage village resource Uzumaki unless absolutely necessary and make certain she could return despite the pursuing Mist squad she would undoubtedly have. The only example of a rare bloodline ability was to be preserved if at all possible for further usage, but measurably less valuable than a newly made, vulnerable jinchuuriki. In the first few hours after the sealing, the jinchuuriki would lose consciousness and be completely unable to call upon the tailed beast even if they knew how.
Sai had to blink himself back to the real world when his next footstep actually made a whisper of sound and three masks swiveled to look at him as if for orders. He noticed with a slight decrease in impassivity that he had drifted away into his own thoughts for several seconds. That was most inappropriate. He couldn't let Danzo-sama down.