"Hatake, put down that damn book and pay attention for once in your life, or I'm going to leave you in the dark."
He glared a little, but obediently tucked Icha Icha Madness away safely.
Tsunade rolled her eyes and sighed, momentarily considering the intelligence of trusting this smartass with anything. But it was his kid.
"Uzumaki, you're clear to tell Hatake what I classified earlier. Usage is now at his discretion."
Aiko nodded, but Hatake and Yamato gave her sharp looks. She cringed a little.
"You will be taking two genin corps teams as backup so that we're sending a respectable force. I expect you three to keep an eye on them."
"Genin," Yamato asked disbelievingly. Tsunade gave him a dirty look.
"Yes, genin. We're a bit understaffed. Besides, they're just needed to supplement Wind's border guard and allow their Chuunin relief. As is, they're three men short for a full watch at the area of the incidents. You'll be dealing with the actual excursions, along with three teams from Sand and three from Mist."
Kakashi sniggered at the snub. Ostensibly, by sending three teams, Konoha was contributing just as much as her allies. But the rank disparity would almost certainly piss people off. Tsunade pretended to look innocent about the implicit claim that Konoha's genin were equal to Sand's Chuunin and that a three man team from Konoha was as good as nine people from Sand or Mist.
The only one in the office who might possibly have bought her innocent expression was Tonton.
'Kami, it's a good thing that Gaara has been working on his temper. I bet Terumi Mei is hopping mad, though.'
The Hokage cleared her throat. "The Border stretch in question is the one that runs along Bird Country." She rolled her eyes a little. "Ten guesses as to which country probably let Sound get there unhindered from Grass," she said dryly.
'And if we guess 'Rain', she'll probably hit us.' Aiko pressed her lips together to avoid an inappropriate smile. It really wasn't funny that Earth appeared to have let Sound pass their borders unhindered at least twice. Of course they had plausible deniability, but it seemed pretty plain to see that the Tsuchikage didn't mind letting someone else take a swing at Sand.
That meant that even if he wasn't actually planning to go to war with the Leaf-Sand-Mist alliance, he didn't wish them well either.
'Actually, Rock and Lightning might feel threatened by a three country alliance,' Aiko realized. 'I would, if it were me. It looks like we're militarizing, even if we don't actually plan to start anything.'
"You'll be reporting here, and the time your team is expected to report is on your mission file, along with all other relevant information. Meet the two genin teams downstairs, they should be in the second waiting room. Any questions?"
No one had any, so they got the hell out and met the genin teams.
"Aiko-senpai!"
Akira caught her in a hug around the waist, digging her pony-tailed little head onto her chest. Aiko stiffened, not exactly certain as to what she should be doing. Usually only Naruto gave her surprise hugs. Her standard procedure for that was to let him do what he wanted and maybe pat his back a little.
'I didn't think the ducklings liked me that much…'
Luckily, the other two ducklings and the three older genin corps members in the room were much more reserved. Ken gave a little wave, and Emiko gave a polite nod. Once she'd finally pried off Akira and exchanged greetings with the genin she knew, the other team introduced themselves. It happened to be an all male team, with a much wider age group than the other genin group. The youngest looked to be about thirteen, but the other two had to be between sixteen and nineteen or so.
"Yamato, teams 2 and 3." Everyone jumped at the sudden serious tone of command from Kakashi, who was in charge of all the squads. "Go to the gate to await departure. Aiko, I want to talk to you at training ground 7."
She fingered the kunai in her pocket nervously as she followed her shishou, trying not to look too nervous. Tsunade had 'allowed' (read: ordered) Aiko to practice and demonstrate the Hiraishin on her private grounds. In retrospect, that was probably so that she knew whether or not it was wise to clue in her commanding officer that the technique was at his disposal when she sent them into the field. But it had never even occurred to the otherwise-thorough Tsunade to ask if Aiko could do anything other than what she thought of as the 'standard' Hiraishin.
And why should it have? Aiko hadn't actually really made modifications to the seal, per say. Her triangulation was only a different way of thinking about the Hiraishin, not an actual modification. Minato (and probably the Hokage who had invented it) had been able to appear in slightly different locations to their seals as needed, so their seals hadn't really been that different.
Really, her idea said more about her relative laziness than any actual flaw in the technique. Why throw the seal again and again when she could use three stationary ones for a similar purpose?
When she'd had time to think after the tongue-lashing/impromptu career advisory session that Tsunade had given her, Aiko had realized that her modified idea should be kept close to the vest. If everyone would assume they knew the weakness of her technique (that she had to appear next to the seals, which was why Rock had always tried to steal Minato's kunai) then they wouldn't actually be making plans that took advantage of her real weaknesses, which were more along the lines of her repeated inability to transport more than twenty times without getting a nosebleed. That was a generally good sign that her regular cognitive function would be deteriorating as well, due to low oxygen levels.
'At least,' she amended, 'I hope that will keep anyone from finding out about my real problems until I can mitigate them.'
To that end, she had affixed seals to four kunai. Enough that she could set up an array if she needed to, but also few enough to convince a casual viewer that there was no reason to assume she'd done anything different if she just used the 'standard' Hiraishin.
It smacked of lying when she thought about keeping the information from Kakashi, one of the few people she really trusted. Then again, it wasn't like she'd ever been completely honest with another person in her living memory, and it would be hard to explain her apparently revolutionary idea without hinting at her extra, unexplainable knowledge. She'd tentatively decided to tell him about the modification with the weak explanation that it had just occurred to her, but only after she knew how he'd react to finding out that she'd been experimenting and hadn't told him. He'd respect that Tsunade had classified the information. That was what being in the chain of command meant, after all. But he wouldn't be happy about having been out of the loop in the first place.
He stopped first, and turned to face her. For once, she couldn't read his expression.
That was a little unnerving. She had learned to read what was really going on under that mask a long time ago. The only time it could really keep his thoughts (or reactions, at least) from her was if he was intentionally stilling his face.
That made this a conversation between a commander and his subordinate, not Kakashi-shishou and Aiko. She straightened accordingly and met his gaze levelly.
"What did the Hokage refer to as classified information?"
Aiko closed her eyes to steel her nerves, and slipped her left hand into her kunai pouch where the special kunai were being kept. He had no doubt noticed the extra weaponry. She opened her eyes as she flung it to the left, and flipped positions to catch it just before the tip touched a tree trunk… without moving her unbent legs or turning her face. She turned to face him again, somewhat comforted by the extra distance. "That. When I was with Jiraiya, he gave me notes from a former student. I found his explanations and analyses of his process with the Hiraishin… so I deconstructed it and made my own adaption."
'Well, the mask isn't doing much good right now,' she noted with black humor. He looked shocked, an expression she'd never seen written so clearly before in his dropped jaw, raised eyebrow, and wide eye.
Weakly, he cleared his throat. "And you took this to Tsunade?"
She winced. Aiko had hoped he would forget that detail. "Ah, no. She found out when I got slightly overexcited with my first try and ended up with minor injuries. She classified it immediately, had me show her my seal, and then had me practice under her supervision."
"Minor injuries?"
"A nose bleed and a burst blood vessel in my eye from rapid changes in pressure."
Well, sort of, anyway. That was easier to explain.
He didn't even look like he was seeing her. Kakashi didn't look upset so much as nostalgic and mildly blindsided.
Aiko started to feel a bit irritated. Shouldn't he say something? Be mad or proud or something, not just stare over her shoulder?
As if he'd heard her thoughts, he gave a fake eye-smile. "I suppose this coincided with your decision to ask Gai for extra training? You know, you could have talked to me if you felt I wasn't giving you enough to do."
She flushed red. "That's not it!" Aiko cleared her throat and started again, more calmly. "That's not what I meant. I mean, Tsunade told me I wasn't allowed to use it because I'm not strong enough to deal with everyone who hates the Hiraishin. I was supposed to ask you for a more powerful attack when you got back, but then you taught me summoning right away."
The smile that followed was reflexive and natural. She loved the dogs, even though she didn't know most of them very well yet. Pakkun had even introduced her to a 'puppy' (puppy her ass, that dog was almost as big as Aiko) who needed a summoner and they were in the meet-and-greet stage.
"I see." Now he sounded proud, and a little amused. "Do you have the Hiraishin mastered, then?"
Aiko shrugged. "I have it pretty well under hand, but 'mastered' would be a strong word. The more I use it at once, the less precise I am.'
He cracked a smile. "That's amazing, Aiko-chan. You should have asked me. Maybe it's time for you to learn Rasengan. Your brother has it, after all."
She stared, the smile slipping off her face. Kakashi frowned at her, sensing the change in attitude.
"Why do you always do that," she blurted out, unthinkingly.
The far away gaze she'd noted a million times was gone, but she hadn't forgotten it. "Is something wrong?"
'This is a conversation I never wanted to have with you, that's what's wrong.'
Aiko took a deep breath. "I don't want to learn Rasengan."
He was very still, for a moment. Then he moved closer, as if trying to understand her. "Why not?"
"I don't think we should have this conversation." Aiko swallowed, hard, pushing back the words that she knew weren't a good idea to speak aloud.
"Aiko. Why don't you want to learn the Rasengan?"
'I can't say no to that face,' she thought miserably. And the words came out, hot and heavy with all the weight of the years where she'd never hinted at the thoughts she was expressing. "Shishou, sometimes you look at me like you don't even see me. You're seeing Minato or Kushina or some half-assed amalgamation of the two. I'm not either of my parents. That's why you pushed the chakra chains so much, right? Because Kushina was good at them. Well, I'm not nearly that good and I never will be," she added fiercely. 'I don't even want to be. I'm Aiko damnit, not Kushina.'
He was pale, but she was on a roll. "And I know that's why Jiraiya gave me those notes," she added quickly, letting something strange slip into her tone. "That's why he taught Naruto Rasengan. He thinks we're them too, not us."
"Who told you about your parents? I wasn't allowed to." His voice was quiet, and painfully devoid of inflection or tone.
And ohhh boy, wasn't that a loaded question?
"No one. Tsunade was going to tell me earlier, though. But I'm not stupid, you know. I don't know how anyone expected us to see the pictures in our textbooks and not see that Naruto looked exactly like the Fourth Hokage and we 'just happen' to have the last name of the one other S-class war hero from the last war." She didn't even try to hide the irritation. "The one who was famous for using chakra chains, which you were insistent I could learn." She leveled him with an unimpressed look. "It'd be almost harder not to figure it out if you have even the slightest interest."
Kakashi gave an odd chuckle, as if he didn't know what to think. "Sensei's in your textbooks? So it wasn't the hundred meter monument that clued you in, huh?"
"That's an awful likeness," she muttered. "Whoever made it shouldn't quit his day job."
He made a choking sound, twitching slightly. His head shook slightly, and he let his hand cradle his cheekbone, fingers splaying out over his eyes. The end result was that he looked like he had a massive headache.
"Right," he finally muttered, letting his hand slide up to his forehead and further up to ruffle at his hair. "I get it, adults are stupid. I held similar sentiments at one point. What does that have to do with not wanting to learn Rasengan? It's a very powerful move, and Naruto learned it in record time. It's your legacy."
"Well, I'm not Naruto either," she snapped irritably. He looked a little unnerved by the uncharacteristic temper, leaning back slightly. It was clear he was uncomfortable. She'd known he had no stomach for emotions, and that logic was the way to get through to him. If she wanted Kakashi to take her seriously, she had to remain as calm as possible. But at this point she was on a roll. She'd told him exactly why she didn't want to learn it and he just didn't want to understand. Shishou was far too intelligent to not understand the concept. It just wasn't that hard.
These were thoughts she'd had for years, but never expressed. They were practically heretical in the post-Kyuubi konoha, and wouldn't have made life any easier for Naruto.
But Uzumaki Kushina and Namekaze Minato weren't her parents. She didn't have parents, and didn't really think Naruto did either. If he wasn't desperate for parental affection, he'd probably come to the same conclusion.
What kind of parent died for their village when they had two infant children?
Her voice was cold. "I'm sick of you looking at me and seeing dead people, Kakashi." He recoiled as if struck. "Because that's what they are. Dead people that I never knew, who were never any sort of parents to me." She laughed bitterly. "They aren't anyone's parents. I'm more Naruto's parent than either of them. I raised him." She placed her hand on her chest and let it make a fist convulsively. "A good shinobi dies for their village. A good parent would have lived for their kid."
She turned away, courage failing. The words had been bottled up for fourteen years. This hadn't been the time to share them.
"It's like I don't know you," he said finally, quietly. Aiko screwed her eyes shut, breaths shuddering.
That had been an outcome she was afraid of. Kakashi had never liked her on her own merits. He'd only wanted her as a student because he looked at her and thought of Minato. She'd never considered either of those people her parents. She was an adult and she didn't need parents. Maybe she could acknowledge them as family in the same sense that Karin was, someone who she might like on a personal level if she got the chance, but that wasn't a parent.
Her hand clenched around her thigh, and she kept her voice carefully calm. It still broke a little. "Maybe it's not fair to them, but they're my feelings and I'm allowed to have them."
There was a moment of stillness, like a breath. Then the training ground was silent, and she knew she was alone. Aiko opened her eyes, took a calming breath as she roughly rubbed at her eyes, and made her way to the gate.
When she made it, all she saw of Kakashi was his back before he silently took off. Yamato gave her a distinctly baffled look that she answered with a glare. 'Mind your own damn business,' she thought fiercely. He was smart enough not to even try a conversation. The pace was brutal, and soon the genin were struggling.
Yamato carefully didn't look at either of his teammates. 'My tactical assessment is that something weird has happened.' He'd never seen Kakashi-shishou and Aiko so obviously on the outs with each other. He wasn't going to touch that situation with a ten-foot wooden pole, in no small part because Aiko would ask him if he was compensating for something. She looked to be in a mean mood.
Aiko had no idea what the second team of genin was named, and didn't even care enough to feel guilty about it. The trip proved that none of them were very interesting. Aside from Akira's easily rebuffed attempts to ingratiate herself with the upper level shinobi (Aiko had been relieved to find out that the girl had just wanted to snag herself an upper level sponsor, because that meant that she hadn't accidentally made a friend and then neglected her for months), everyone stayed in their own squads.
'Wind Country hasn't gotten any more pleasant,' she grouched internally as, over the course of a day of running, the trees got shorter and dirt turned to sand. Breathing in such dry air was an uncomfortable transition, and they had to stop twice to allow the younger teams to catch their breath and adjust to the dryness in their mouths. Without words, the senior nin stopped and set up camp for the night the third time that the genin couldn't go on. The second day of travel was just as painfully silent as the first. Even the genin eventually managed to shut their mouths and just concentrate on running.
Kakashi still didn't look at her.
Sand was pleased to see them show up. They were somewhat less pleased when the low level of the two younger teams became known (although annoyingly, they seemed to think Aiko was the third team member for the boys' team and that the tall one with the stupid hair was the Chuunin).
'I'm not that short,' she glowered. 'A year ago, I was the tall one, you stupid fucks.'
The teams separated, a team of Chuunin waving for them to wait and taking the genin with them to the wall. Aiko waited, dull-eyed and uninterested while Yamato fidgeted and Kakashi looked uncharacteristically professional. She only managed to drum up some interest when she realized she recognized all three members of the team that touched down in the clearing and stood to look at them.
Granted, she only knew of Baki in the vaguest sense. She might not have recognized him if Temari and Kankuro weren't on either side of him… and both giving her weird, assessing looks. She bared her teeth in response, not feeling up to taking anyone's shit today. Normally she'd fake nonchalance and deflect aggression around foreign nin to avoid getting into a fight. It was what she had done in past, when she first met them in Sand and they decided to act like jackasses for no reason. But today she was pissed off.
When they simultaneously paled and exchanged 'creeped-out' looks, she had to wonder if her scary face wasn't a little too scary.
(Temari grimaced, trying not to cringe. 'It looks like when Gaara tries to smile.'
'I was kind of expecting a tiger with lipstick,' Kankuro thought optimistically. 'By comparison, she seems very nice. Nicer than a girl that I thought Gaara would tolerate and take out for ice cream would be, anyway.')
Kakashi gave Aiko a sharp look, devoid of any of the usual affection. She huffed and turned away sullenly. So that's how it was. He provoked people all the time, and they'd started it anyways.
If the world had been a fair place, she would have been led to her room and allowed to go do her best to drown herself in the shower, maybe scream into pillow for a bit and write an angry poem. But it was a shitstorm of totally unfair suckiness designed to make even the worst of days worse, so that was when some shrieking harpy landed in the clearing, heralding what was probably the worst surprise attack in the history of ninja that hadn't been orchestrated by Naruto.
Yamato cut her down in an instant, looking almost surprised that he was the first one to move.
"That's just perfect," Aiko muttered, angrily yanking the sword on her back out of the hilt with an icy sliding sound that matched her bad mood nicely. Kankuro was moving to arm himself as well, his oversized doll flying off his back and leading the way into the trees. Baki overtook him in a breathless moment, hitting the next visible Sound ninja so hard he flew into a tree. Temari was waiting to slice him into pieces with a wind blade attack from her iron-tipped fan. The corpse collapsed, jaw falling open grotesquely and intestines spilling out, lung tissue splattering the ground and even onto Temari's front.
Kankuro just pouted and mumbled something bitter about them being glory hogs. As Temari actually took the time to stick her tongue out at her brother (completely disregarding the flesh sticking soppily to her kimono), the Konoha nin leapt into the fray. Honestly, what kind of surprise attack was staggered entire seconds apart?
The brutally short altercation that followed served to prove that the ninja they were facing were…
"Total incompetents," Temari growled, kicking a corpse irritably. "Most of them are no-name genin and shit like that from various villages, missing nin that no one cared about. I don't know what the hell Sound does, but they've all been genetically altered and sent out to fight." She sneered and wiped a bit of loose hair off of her face. "I don't know where Sound is getting all of them, though. They just keep coming."
"Seems like a waste of expensive resources," Yamato mused, mildly interested (and somehow managing to look like a mild-mannered librarian even through the blood spatter on his face). "Those genetic alterations can't be cheap. Why wouldn't they bother to give them at least basic tactical training?"
The six-man squad they'd fought… well, it hadn't been much of a squad. They fought like overpowered Academy students, with no sense of strategy or teamwork. She could see why the border Chuunin teams might have problems with them, but with a few Jounin to oppose them they were hopelessly outmatched.
"Please tell me you have showers at this base of yours," Aiko interjected, wishing she'd thought to pull up the mask attached to her shirt. 'God, I hate getting blood on my lips.' It was so hard not to lick them when she kept feeling them stick and crackle.
The look on Kankuro's face wasn't encouraging. She narrowed her eyes at him.
Omake- one that was actually requested!
Inoichi hummed cheerily in the way that his wife hated, tugging his hair into the standard ponytail. Then he stopped and frowned at his wrist, realizing that his black rubber band wasn't where it should be. He looked around the floor, but didn't spot it.
"That's strange..."
He shrugged and re-secured his left hand's grip on the ponytail, striding down the hallway and elbowing open his daughter's door. "Ino, honey, can I borrow a hair tie?"
She looked up from her spot on her bed, laying on her back with a book held above her face and leveled him with a thoroughly unimpressed look. "Dad, you've got to stop borrowing my hair stuff. I want my mousse back. But fine." she rolled her eyes in that 'teen girl' way and turned her attention back to her book. "You can have the lavender one on the dresser."
"Thanks, sweetheart." He snatched up the tie in question and wrapped it around his hair twice with a look of intense concentration that he caught in the mirror. He turned his head from side to side to appreciate the perfect way the hair fell, before his mind caught up with the thoroughly uncharacteristic detail that his daughter was reading a real book unprompted. It had been months since he'd last seen her with anything other than those terrible magazines that he'd gotten sick of and banned. ('120 ways to please your man indeed,' he thought vindictively. Not for his baby girl!)
"So, got a new book?"
She grunted distractedly. "I borrowed it from Aiko. It's really good, dad. You should read that one there, with the green cover. I finished it already." She curled them up and lifted one knee to cross her legs, letting her ankle swing idly.
"Oh?" He let an eyebrow raise. It was hard to believe his baby had much in common with the Uzumaki girl for reading tastes. From what Ino had told him (repeatedly and loudly at the dinner table) back when they were in the academy together, she was a straight-laced brainiac with very little humor or personality, but a general good nature.
Curious as to what Ino might have found so interesting, he bent to pick up the first book off the short stack beside her bed, and immediately noticed something odd. "This is a drugstore diary..."
'Ino, you're not reading the poor girl's journals, are you?' He gave her a suspicious glance, but she appeared more absorbed than amused.
"Yeah, she wrote them," Ino said distractedly a second later, turning a page and blinking over at him briefly.
He stilled. That was odd. Skeptically, he glanced down at the pile by his daughter's bed. It wasn't impossible, per say, that a fourteen year old with a full-time job could have written six books, but it did seem unlikely that they were any good. Inoichi fought a very short war with his skepticism, but his innately nosy nature won out and he flipped open the green book.
A page in, he sat down hard on Ino's pink chair and really began to concentrate. That was how his wife found them. She rolled her eyes. "Honestly, you two. Breakfast is cold and you're both late for work."
Ino shot up like a rocket, suddenly alarmed. "Oh crap!" She cringed away from the scolding that curse prompted but dashed around her room shoving gear into her little pouch and tugging up her own hair with a brush and some bobby pins.
"Ino, leave that book." She gave him an odd look.
"Dad, I'm not done with it."
He gave her a stern look. "You can finish it later. Don't tell your little friend I borrowed these, okay?"
There was no normal fourteen year old that wrote like this. 'Maybe that's why she was given to Hatake,' he hypothesized years too late. 'Weird, socially disinclined geniuses should stick together and all that.' Tsunade didn't seem to know about this. He'd gone to her strategy meetings with Shikaku before, and the Hokage brought up Naruto more often than she probably realized. It had been almost impossible for her total lack of knowledge about his sister to come up.
'At the very least, it'll provide an interesting read while I wait outside her office,' he thought smugly. 'And an excuse for being late to the office.'