"Are you ready?"
Aiko ignored the question, letting her gaze slide off of Ao and examine the place where she had been brought. Mist had made the (not unwise) decision to perform the sealing well outside of village boundaries to hopefully prevent destruction if she failed. Of course, they had also had to position her close enough to Mist that reinforcements could arrive if something went wrong.
They had likely also had the foresight to post teams between her position and Konoha. If she were to try to make a break for that direction with their new jinchuuriki or even just the tailed beast itself, they would be waiting to interfere.
She made a note not to make any sudden movements in that direction. They would almost certainly hit before asking any questions. They were trying to pretend that they trusted their new allies, but Mist certainly wasn't skimping on security measures. They must have offered something Konoha really wanted in order for Shizune to have agreed to this. Kakashi-shishou had been right. It was an idiotic idea, and if she made a single wrong move, she may as well kill herself to spare herself the trouble of dying horribly from potent exposure to poisonous chakra.
Aiko did her best to remind herself that she had always done her best work under pressure. It was true and she was hoping like hell that the trait applied to this instance.
"You are the candidate, I take it?"
The boy sitting cross-legged outside the decrepit little house glanced up at her with a little sullenness in his expression. He was all elbows and knees, clearly in that awkward stage where his weight hadn't managed to keep pace with his height.
"Hai, Uzumaki-sama."
Well, that was weird. Sure rolled off the tongue nicely, though. She tabled that thought for later and let her brow furrow. "No need to be so formal. I'm going to be seeing you naked, after all," she drawled, moving to grab his wrist and probe with her chakra to make sure he was water-natured. Good thing he was too young for her to ogle, or this procedure might have been even harder to focus on. "Aiko is fine. And you are?"
He flushed, even down his neck. "Shinji, Aiko-sama."
She let the inappropriate honorific slide and her eyebrow raise. "Shinji, huh? You ready to do this?" Aiko jerked her head to indicate that he should follow her inside and pried open the door, swiping through the seal on the door that was doubtlessly meant to keep it sterile and free of natured chakra that might contaminate it.
Ao cursed, frowning darkly at her. "There was no need for that. I will not be providing assistance."
She snorted with a bit of intentional arrogance. "That's an amateur's trick. I don't need it."
That was a lie. If she were ever making her own seal, she would definitely need to use that trick. But with one that Jiraiya had helped her design? If it failed, it wouldn't be because of a piddling factor like chakra contamination.
Besides, she was pretending to be an expert. If Ao was busy being irritated by her lack of modesty about her expertise, he wouldn't be counting how long it took her to get the job done. Hopefully. Her strokes were not nearly as effortless as those of a real seal master, simply from lack of practice. A month of cramming and a few years of dabbling did not an expert make. Then again, who in Mist would know the difference? To hear Jiraiya tell it, their seal 'masters' might serve their village better by starting up a band or moving away entirely so that Water Country wasn't quite so embarrassed by their hilarious ineptitude.
It was also possible that Jiraiya was just a sealing snob. If so, he must have really thought her promising, because he gave her yellowed sealing notes from 'an old student' of his. It had been a struggle not to roll her eyes at his feeble attempt to share something of her father with her without actually telling her that this was an inheritance of sorts. If she hadn't known what they could contain—the hiraishin, the holy grail of fuinjutsu—then she might have tossed them into storage.
Aiko heaved a sigh, examining the workstation she would be using and holding out a hand for the container with the Tailed Beast. The roiling chakra inside almost took her aback—it seemed much more active than that inside Naruto. Then again, it had been used much more frequently in the last decade. Perhaps the Three-Tails' mind was closer to the surface.
Wondering if she could make contact with that apparent consciousness, Aiko extended a tendril of her own chakra into the agitated blend of leftover chakra (that had to be Yagura's, she noted distantly) and
A
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Aiko pulled back into herself with a lurch, blinking furiously to ward off a sudden headache. Was… was that madness what it was like for Naruto to touch Kurama, or was that distinctly the three-tailed beast? She couldn't help but feel sorry, stupidly sorry for a creature that would kill her as soon as look at her. Her stomach churned. Did she really want to do this sealing? It... It might help save the Three-Tails (and I wish I knew its name, she thought crossly, it's disgraceful to use the species name instead as if it isn't conscious) from Akatsuki. On the other hand, letting it be free even for that brief period of time was arguably less inhumane than what she was about to do for a village she didn't particularly care for.
'Sorry,' she tried to send through a featherlight touch of her own chakra that twisted into the meld and was almost instantly devoured by a foreign mind hungry for a gasp of air and contact. 'I'm sorry.' She was careful not to let herself be sucked in again—if she lost herself, she might not be able to claw her way back next time.
It had been decided that this seal would use the Hama gate much like Naruto's seal, so Shinji would be on the floor and doing his very best to be still.
'This is going to take at least an hour. That's a long time to lie back and think of England.'
Then she frowned slightly. Unbeknownst to her, her companions seemed to take that as a critique of the preparations and looked around nervously. 'It's just… the phrase 'Lie back and think of Mist' just doesn't have the same sort of feel to it, but I suppose that's more relevant to the situation at hand.'
"Well babe, we may as well get started. Ao, if you're remaining in the building I want you in the anteroom. I'm sure you're going to be staring the whole time, but do try not to do anything distracting like move around or drop dead." She (very calculatedly) waved absentmindedly at Shinji. "and you get naked. Just a minute, I have a towel you can use to protect your precious modesty, but that's all." If she really were an expert, she would be thinking about variables and what she was about to do, so she should appear to be distracted. Hence the drop in social niceties.
With an easy motion, she untucked a scroll the height of her palm and laid it out on the floor, using just one finger and a subtle brush of chakra to unseal it, drawing out a collection of ink, brushes, and the previously mentioned towel. It was fuschia and stained with bleach.
It had been purchased specifically for this use, actually, and faux-aged the day before Ao had shown up. Her supplies should look well-used and personalized, as if she had just grabbed them out of her own house at some point. It might tick Ao off a bit to think that it hadn't even occurred to her to check her supplies before agreeing to do something Mist thought was pretty damn important. But it would also help legitimize her and make the implicit claim that she did a lot of messy fuinjutsu.
'A whole lot goes into pretending we don't care what they think,' she thought with some amusement as she tossed the towel over her shoulder to the boy she could hear undressing. 'Has there ever been a more elaborately stupid deception between supposed allies in Elemental Nations history?'
She answered her own question easily: Probably, but she would never know of it. It wasn't like Konoha was ever going to admit to this particular farce either.
The two males lurked uncomfortably while she unstopped her blood-tinted ink and casually scribed the containment seals at the four corners and the ceiling in the exact center. The first time she had practiced this, she had idiotically put one on the floor as well. Jiraiya had cuffed her over the head for that.
"What's the point of that, idiot? Are you so worried about the badgers knowing what's going on that you'll risk letting your subject smear ink all over the place with their no doubt grubby skin?"
Aiko let herself smile as she completed the easy, familiar motions.
When she turned to see Ao lurking in the doorway suspiciously and Shinji scratching at one leg with his other foot, she rolled her eyes. 'This sealing would go much more smoothly without them here.'
Unfortunately, it was not to be. So she made do.
"Lay down, with your head exactly under that concentric circle design," she ordered. "No, on your back. Don't worry so much about the towel. Ao's seen it all before and I have a little brother."
Aiko knelt at his left side and lined up five bottles alongside his hips, in easy reach. Then she had a thought and smoothed her hand over her hair to make certain that nothing had fallen out of the braid falling over her shoulder—contaminating the sealing with human genetic material was a phenomenally stupid way to die. It was fine, so she placed her right palm on his heart and made the first stroke with his left, forcing his chest to still when he shivered.
"Stop that." The trailing tendril became the base of a spiral. She spider-webbed tiny elemental symbols along the outside edge, along with the translating key that Jiraiya had beat into her head. The boy under her hands shivered. She tapped her right hand in warning. "I know the ink is cold, but even minute movements could distort what I'm doing. Believe me, you do not want that."
With the basic form done, Aiko lifted her right hand and set the container on Shinji's heart where her palm had been before. "This is the tricky part," she muttered, brow furrowed.
It was also the part that took the longest time. With excruciating care and repetition, Aiko inked a filtering seal onto the top of the little box that currently contained a three-tailed demon and placed it exactly on top of the matching seal over Shinji's gut. He gasped and flinched, eyes wide open. "You'd be better off with those closed," she advised gently. "The calmer you are, the less uncomfortable this will be."
If she could have, she would have drugged him for this. But the rush of foreign chakra would flush any sedatives out of his system anyway.
She placed her right palm on top of the little box, and pushed. Shinji immediately began to scream and tried to move. Aiko had been anticipating that. Her own chakra solidified and coalesced into cold silver chains, much more delicate than usual almost as if they were part of a necklace. They slipped and shot, trailing from the center of her back, around and over her shoulders in order to secure him in place. She might have soothed him again, but he wasn't listening.
'I hope Mist has a medic who can do something about these chakra burns.' Aiko grimaced, ignoring his screams. Damage to the chakra system was the major drawback to putting a tailed beast into an adult. Only very young children had undeveloped systems that could be taught to tolerate a sudden influx of a foreign substance. But she refused to take part in that in a non-emergency situation like this. Perhaps it was selfish, but on some level Aiko believed that the need for informed consent to a life-altering procedure like this was more important than damage that could be mitigated by good health care at the cost of sentencing an innocent child to hatred and fear.
At least Shinji wasn't alone, she noted sardonically. She wasn't enjoying this part either. Through gritted teeth, she ignored the white hot whine of pain in her palm where residual chakra from the struggling, no doubt panicking beast surged against her skin like electricity hidden in thousand pound waves.
'I'm going to need a medic when I'm done,' she noted distantly.
Things were definitely not going as smoothly as she had hoped. But this was one of the scenarios Jiraiya had covered with her, so she bit her lip and endured through the pain. Somehow she managed to split her attention between the constant steady push and the corresponding sigils she was inking with her left inside the spiral to lock away what she had sealed and prevent it from coming back up.
It could have taken hours, days, or been over in forty minutes. It was impossible to keep track of time when all she knew was the next repetition and pain screaming at her consciousness. A real master like Jiraiya would have done this in half the time without the unpleasant side-effects, but she was just lucky that it was starting to look like she would survive. She must have made a minor placement error earlier on and missed it, otherwise this would have only been uncomfortable.
But eventually Aiko had tucked away everything but the residue burnt into the friend tenketsu in her hand, which she knew better than to try to manually force into the seal. It would dissipate on its own, or she could get Jiraiya to help her later. As long as she was very careful, it shouldn't do any damage to her or anything else until it was treated. (the 'anything else' part of that was crucial, as this chakra would definitely burn the skin off any other living thing it touched. She mentally resolved to give no hugs for a while, unless she ran into some Akatsuki or something).
Aiko wearily tossed the box aside, letting it break against the wall, and slumped down to rest her forehead on her knees. Gradually, she began to notice sounds from the real world again. She hadn't even noticed that she was tuning them out, but the raspy sound of Shinji's breathing and the brisk scrape of sandals that must have been Ao pacing in the halls tugged at her awareness. She focused on her Karin-honed chakra sense for just a moment out of pure reflex to be sure that Mist hadn't been up to anything while she hadn't been paying attention- and froze.
"Ao! Are you expecting company? We have a small group within four miles."
"What?" he rumbled, bursting into the room. She lifted her head to peer at him. His gaze went distant as if he were focusing on his sensory abilities as well. He gave a jerk and a curse, tugging the long cloak off his back and hurriedly wrapping it around the unconscious boy on the floor.
"I take it that's a no," she mumbled to herself. Then she cleared her throat. "Rebel faction that doesn't want Mei to have a jinchuuriki, perhaps?" she shrugged the thought away. Speculations could wait. "Well, obviously someone dropped the ball on that whole 'secret time and place' thing you guys had planned." Ao scowled at her, flinging the unconscious jinchuuriki over his shoulder.
"Enough, smart mouth. If they're here for him, we need to go."
Aiko cast a quick glance around and determined that there was nothing there she couldn't afford to leave and followed Ao out. She had to cradle her injured hand against her torso to keep the burns from getting any more irritated than they already were.
As they started running, she used another chakra pulse to get a lock on the signals she'd felt earlier.
"Oh, hell."
She could practically hear her companion roll his eyes. "What now?"
"They know we've left," she half-shouted over the wind. "They're coming in fast and altering trajectory."
"I know." He said nothing else, but increased his pace. Aiko's mind was racing.
"How far do we need to go before we can signal down help?" He didn't even try to pretend there were no Mist loyalists stationed nearby, grunting out an answer.
It was close. Very close. But not close enough that they could reach help before their pursuers caught up. She didn't like the plan that occurred to her. Not at all. With a Konoha nin, sure. She trusted most of them relatively well. But Ao could leave her to die without blinking an eye.
But it was the only plan, so she spoke up. "One of us needs to stall so the other can flag down help." Her lips twisted bitterly. If she showed up without Ao (with or without the jinchuuriki) there would be suspicion. Even if they didn't attack her on sight, they would almost certainly take far too long to listen to her and head back to help Ao. She couldn't afford to let Ao fight here because she couldn't ensure his safety… and she didn't see a way to get out of this mess alive if he didn't.
He gave a harsh little laugh of surprise. "You trust me, kid?"
Aiko didn't answer, but she stopped running. "Hurry up, old man." She muttered as he faded into the distance. She dimmed her chakra signature and began to cut sideways so that she could intercept the interlopers, trying to calculate just how much freedom of movement she had even with her pained hand.
'Four, white masks and unmarked allegiance,' her mind tabulated as soon as they broke free of cover. She didn't expect that they would actually fail to find her. Aiko only needed a moment of surprise to help even the odds a bit.
And she used it, forcing out a much thicker, longer chakra chain than she had used earlier that day and guiding it, twisting, along her left arm in a straight shot that caught the approaching shinobi closest to her through the heart. It was a bit messy—rather than try to tug it out, she instantly dissolved that chain and leapt away to dodge the surprisingly weak barrage of shuriken that dotted her old position.
'Something is not right. Unless they have genin level throwing skills, that should have come much closer to hitting me. And if their shuriken skills were so poor, they wouldn't be armed with them.'
But the alternative was unthinkable—the possibility that they didn't want to kill her. She had ambushed and killed one of them already. That was enough to make almost anyone lose their temper and fight with seriousness. The only reason not to was if you needed to take someone alive. The thought sent chills down her spine and panicked adrenaline surging through her veins.
None of them said a thing. It took a lot of discipline to remain silent and apparently disinterested in combat. It wasn't exactly common to exchange real conversation with your opponent like Naruto might, but most people at least made threatening statements or grunt sounds when they did something strenuous.
That alone told her more about her opponents than the little she could gauge from their drab uniform-style clothing. They were a trained unit, and not the ragtag Mist dissidents she had supposed. That tugged at something in her consciousness- but no, it couldn't be.
'Three targets. One female, two male.' One of the males carried some sort of sword, so she chose to ignore him for the moment. That could possibly be used to deflect her chains, and she didn't want to waste time re-materializing them more than she had to. Her normal jutsu repertoire was almost useless here- these opponents were too advanced for them to work in direct combat, and most of her skills were biased towards helping her avoid direct combat. Besides, with one hand almost useless, it would take far too long to channel chakra.
The other male was aggressive, leaping through the chain she'd flung to engage her in close combat. She dropped the technique entirely, falling back on the skill that was still her strongest. Taijutsu was what she practiced most. That focus seemed to serve her well right then—if she hadn't been obsessive about the skill, this opponent would have incapacitated her with the first blow. He opened with a crushing kick to her ribs that she side-stepped, then spun around before she could get in a retaliatory hit and aimed a punch at her torso. When she unthinkingly blocked with her right, a crunch rang out and she involuntarily made a pained noise.
'I can't fight this guy close range for long. He'll rip me apart.'
It was like… well, it was like fighting a stronger Sasuke if he were twice as fast and wanted to seriously hurt her. She saw the same technical perfection and ruthless efficiency in this opponent's movements. This person had been practicing taijutsu much longer than she had. She took that as confirmation that they hadn't been trying to kill her—no one with taijutsu like this would carry shuriken if they were so bad with them. He had engaged her this way to incapacitate her.
So she cheated.
Aiko leapt straight backwards, ignored the screaming pain and forced out an enormous series of chakra chains, tracing one down to wrap around her injured, burning hand as it moved and pushing the leftover demonic chakra into it. Her tenketsu would be forced open and she wouldn't be able to use any jutsu with it until someone provided medical assistance, but it served to seriously poison her chains.
Of course, her opponent was no doubt ready to dodge the chains he had seen drop his teammate like a stone... so she didn't shoot them at him like a projectile weapon. Aiko flung one up to block the sharp hit aimed at her collarbone, and twisted the rest of them out into a wide arc that surrounded the pair. The move was so phenomenally stupid that her opponent didn't seem to see it coming. No teacher would actually recommend trapping yourself in close-range with a taijutsu type. It was suicide, and not the kind that preserved your honor. The kind that made you a punchline in some bar later that night while your killer and his drunk buddies snickered.
This was the tricky part, she noted glumly. If she fucked this up, she'd be pulping herself with her own weapon. Once he was done being sad, Kakashi-shishou would so totally judge her forever.
The dome of chains condensed, clanging into a short space that forced the two shinobi inside into an impromptu hug—and burned her opponent alive with the demonic chakra that she had laced it with.
But he didn't scream.
Thoroughly creeped out, Aiko dropped the technique altogether and cased the situation—
And blinked in surprise.
"They fucking left," she said, disbelievingly.
Well, that seemed to confirm that they were after Shinji, and made her feel like a self-centered idiot for thinking that they might have been trying to capture her. Her fight had been short—they could only be a minute ahead of her at best. She leapt into the chase, not even bothering to track by sight. It was faster to flicker on her chakra sense and follow their straight path towards Ao. He had to be close to reinforcements by now.
As she ran, she tucked her injured arm fully inside her flak jacket as a makeshift sling to prevent it from being jarred. With her left, she drew out a trio of kunai and tucked her index and middle fingers through two of their rings and pinched the other between her thumb and index. She was already releasing it when the two shinobi harrying Ao came into view. The older shinobi had dropped his burden unceremoniously on the ground and was using senbon to force the two opponents away from his charge. He looked up at her for a brief instance, and she felt a thrill of fear that he'd left Shinji open to either one of the masked shinobi.
Then he reminded her that he was an elite, both as a hunter-nin and one of the two people a kage trusted to act as her bodyguards when he effortlessly intercepted the drive the masked man made towards Shinji and threw him into a tree like a ragdoll. Aiko winced at the sound of his head cracking against the wood.
The four shinobi were still for an instant, and seemed to size each other up. Aiko half expected them to pair off into fights at that point—and then the crunch of another Mist shinobi landing in the clearing before flinging a line of shuriken at the interlopers startled the tableau.
The female moved to defend herself. Her last companion fled in a flicker of speed.
Aiko gaped, for a second, and then her brain caught up. "He's going to get rid of the bodies!" she shouted to Ao. He grunted.
"Well, stop him then." Left unsaid was that there must be something to hide if he was fleeing to the spot of the older fight instead of making a break for freedom.
She might have been mistaken. Either that or he was fast enough that he had already gotten what he needed and fled. Aiko examined the scene, frankly unnerved that nothing seemed to have been disturbed. Had he really just been fleeing for his life?
The strange, improbable suspicion that had occurred to her earlier when she had noted the masked shinobi's discipline and resurfaced when they maintained silence even through intense pain rose again.
It was stupid, she knew. She shouldn't even be thinking it. There was no reason for Danzo to have known about this operation. Only Mei and possibly Tsunade should have known the details. And why would he want to sabotage relations between the two?
Just to assuage her suspicions, she knelt and forced open the rapidly chilling jaw to stare at the tongue. ('ew', she noted vaguely). Then she let the jaw drop.
"Well, fuck."
Tsunade probably needed to know about this. Mist probably didn't.
A quick pat-down revealed that the corpse in front of her carried slight hints that were meant to point to Mist funding. Danzo was thorough. Their black clothing was local textile material, and the poison she smelled on their weaponry was definitely a supposedly-exclusive Mist recipe.
But the seal on that tongue could only come from one source, to her knowledge. She wasn't familiar with all of the parts, but she could definitely piece together that it was a stupidly thorough bit of fuinjutsu.
She couldn't do anything about the man escaping, or the one she had left Ao fighting. It was hard to hope they escaped, but that would simplify things. Aiko awkwardly pulled out an open scroll and her one remaining bottle of ink. She had to use her teeth to take the top off, and this was probably the ugliest seal she had put together in months. But it worked.
Aiko thanked all the stars she could think of that at least the corpses were starting to congeal, because hacking off a man's head was hard with one hand was hard enough without blood spraying into her eyes. That was like, the worst. Being on a time limit didn't help.
Luckily, she had a full scroll and two scorch marks on the ground by the time she felt someone approaching. A mist shinobi looked down at her placidly. "I'm to escort you back to the village to talk to the Mizukage."
"Glorious." Aiko climbed to her feet. The scroll in her pouch hung heavily on her mind. But as long as no one searched her, (which they couldn't do if they still wanted to stay attached to Konoha) there would be no way to prove she had taken anything.
Luckily, no one seemed to accuse her of anything untoward. It was probably because they didn't care to bother with it. She discerned that Ao and his back-up had managed to take the last woman captive. They were probably going to torture her until she talked. Because the seal on her tongue would keep her from talking, they would be torturing her until she died and ending only with unsatisfactory hints that she had been connected to their rebels. If they pried open her jaw and noticed the seal, they would almost certainly suspect that a sealmaster beyond what the rebels could boast had been involved. But Mei's paranoia about the rebels probably wouldn't allow her to completely dismiss the possibility.
Actually, she knew, that might make it worse. Mei would be worried that her dissidents had acquired funding or support.
The highlight of her debriefing was that it was short. The Mizukage was in a surprisingly good mood, which formed a nice contrast to Ao's habitual doom and gloom. Aiko sensed that as soon as she walked in, with the keen senses of an elite nin.
"Drinks all around!" Mei toasted to nothing, before tossing back a glass of something pink that practically sparkled in the light.
Aiko blinked, taken aback. "Um…"
She didn't have a default response for that. Luckily, Ao stepped in for her with a glower that made the Mizukage roll her eyes. "Oh fine. It's not even alcoholic, you spoilsport," Mei pouted. She shoved the now-empty glass away and gave Aiko a sultry stare. "Well, I suppose I owe you my gratitude."
"It was my duty," Aiko responded easily. She'd been prepared for that verbal trap. It didn't do to have foreign villages 'owing' you favors that they might seize opportunities to pay back.
Mei threw her head back and laughed. "You're sharper than you look," she accused. "If you ever find yourself in need of career opportunities, feel free to come talk to me." She gave a little sharp smile that detracted from the fact that she was blatantly recruiting a foreign nin. Jiraiya must have been right about their desperation for sealing experts. "I'm sure you'll want to get going," the Mizukage drawled, tapping her fingers against her desk restlessly as if she wanted to push it away. "Heaven only knows that if you don't get that grump who came to get you out of the village, he and Ao are going to get into fisticuffs."
Her skinny, young-looking bodyguard choked on nothing. It wasn't the best attempt Aiko had ever seen at impassive inattention.
"Ah… You mean Kakashi-shishou?"
Terumi Mei glanced consideringly at her from under long eyelashes. Then amusement glittered in her eyes. "If that's the one with the silver hair and the fantastic ass, then yes."
Aiko followed that to its logical conclusion and then recoiled, eyes wide. 'I bet he does have a fantastic ass.' She must have looked appalled or grossed-out or something, because Mei gave a laugh that shook her shoulders. 'Oh. I bet she thinks I think shishou is really old.' She took the assumption and ran with it, shuddering theatrically. "Well, now you've put thoughts in my head that can never be un-thought."
"You're welcome. He'll meet you in the lobby, I'm sure."
"Uh…" Aiko considered asking to see a medic before she left. It would be pretty uncomfortable to travel the entire way home with a broken forearm and chakra burns, not to mention that shishou would not be pleased about the poor condition she was being returned in. Then again, Mist's medics were notoriously bad. She would like to go home instead of getting trapped in a hospital with unfriendlies around while she was vulnerable. Instead of saying a thing, she gave a bow and a polite good-bye.
~~~
Tsunade was just sitting down on the couch in her office to read when there was a knock on the door. She heaved a sigh, wondering why the hell she even bothered. The instant that she relaxed, someone showed up to tell her about depressing problems. She should go back to her desk to present an imposing figure…
'Fuck it, I'm staying here. They can stand.'
"Come in."
Hatake Kakashi pushed his little apprentice in. The girl looked pale and awful, frankly. For some reason she'd cradled her arm against her chest and her zipped vest was covering it.
"Fix it." He glared at her.
Aiko coughed. "Ah, actually I think I should debrief first."
A thrill ran through Tsunade. "Hatake, get out or shut up. I'll take care of this, but I want to hear what happened. She'd need to give me details before I 'fix it,'" she concluded with sarcastic air quotes. "Uzumaki, report."
The girl stiffened professionally. "I met with a one-man escort, the Mizukage's bodyguard Ao and proceeded to an unknown location. I could locate it again if necessary. The sealing was successful with minor complications, ending with chakra burns on both myself and the subject. Subject was one Shinji, last name unknown, male Mist ninja. Approximately age 12. Almost immediately after the sealing was successful, four interlopers began pursuit. They were disguised, but their textiles and poisons were local. One was incapacitated and brought into Mist's custody, one escaped, and I have two sealed in this."
She held out a make-shift scroll (clearly not one she had purchased from the standards suppliers). "Due to the hints on their person and their interest in acquiring the jinchuuriki to the exclusion of other targets, I had initially thought that they were Mist dissidents attempting to prevent Terumi Mei from gaining access to a powerful weapon. That would account for their lack of interference until the sealing had been completed. However, at least the two that I killed had a strange seal on their bodies that implied access to fuinjutsu far above what Mist could provide."
Tsunade's expression had been stilling as she talked. Her shishou seemed just as interested—he hadn't asked a thing on the way home. That made sense—it was considered unethical and illegal to share mission details before the completion of the mission, but she would have told him if he'd asked.
"Where was this seal?" She leaned forward.
"On the back of the tongue," Aiko informed.
Tsunade carefully kept the pleasure off her face at that. "I see. If given a copy of this seal, would you be able to decipher its purpose and possibly devise a counter?"
The teenager looked a bit stunned. "Ah, I could try. I was able to pick out its general purpose at a glance. It seemed to prevent the carrier from talking, although I don't think it makes them literally silent. It's likely in regards to sensitive information."
The Hokage was mildly impressed. She'd already suspected, but if the girl had gotten that from one look… this might work after all. "Consider yourself on a sabbatical to investigate this project, then. I'll get you a copy tomorrow." She rolled the scroll between her fingers consideringly, and then stuck it abruptly in her shirt. She didn't want to lose it in the couch cushions.
Hatake choked on his tongue.
"Come over here then, girl." Tsunade patted the couch. "And let me see those burns."
When she'd healed up the kunoichi and waved Hatake out of her office ("Before I toss you through the wall," she'd roared) Tsunade went to crack open a celebratory sake. Then she realized that Shizune had once again purged her supply and left candy and mints. Sulkily, the Hokage popped something sour and cherry-flavored into her mouth and crunched.
'Well, that worked out.'
She let herself smile for the first time, now that she was alone.
'Danzo took the bait, and now I have a sample.' She couldn't prosecute him for the Uchiha affair without endangering poor Itachi, but she knew that he had to have his fingers in other pots. The only reason he hadn't been caught before was that his people couldn't talk. If that seal was broken, it would be child's play to bring him down.
Tsunade was particularly smug about that manipulation. Honestly, it was like the man thought his spies were the only ones in the world. When hers had found out about the location, she had leaked it for his to find with just barely enough time for him to send out a team. She'd known that Mist didn't trust Konoha—the Uzumaki girl would have been surrounded by anxious shinobi ready to leap into a fight. The battered state of her shinobi was a little surprising. Mist had been too paranoid about the possibility of a failed seal and stayed too far back to assure the protection they had promised.
'When they borrow my things, they should return them in a little nicer condition,' she noted sarcastically.
Of course, Mist was probably more worried about the sudden likelihood that their rebels had found sponsors. What a tragic coincidence that Danzo chose to use the easy target as a cover for his operation if they were caught. Who could have predicted that?
The worst part about being the Hokage was that you didn't get nearly enough chances to smugly share the proof of your obvious brilliance. When everything went well, no one would ever know.