'I think this is the first time I've worn a kimono since the last festival.' The soft material just felt wrong against her skin right now. It didn't actually touch most of her bare skin, of course. Her inability to wear her normal gear that she was comfortable with had made her feel so uncomfortable and vulnerable that she'd eventually given in and bought a mesh bodysuit to wear under it. The metal re-enforced links trailed to her elbows and down to her knees, though the neckline swooped lower than she'd like in order to avoid any hint showing.
It wasn't preferable, of course. Aiko had always thought that bodysuits were hideous, and she preferred to wear protection only on her hands and forearms (leaving her fingers poking out the tips of whatever gloves she was wearing so she could use seals) and her shins, keeping the rest of her gear light so that she could move unimpeded.
For obvious reasons, it was hardly possible to wear shorts and a tanktop to the meeting where she would be formally introduced to the large council. With minimalism eliminated as an option, her next preference was to protect as many of her vital points as possible without looking like she was armored.
'I'm being stupid,' Aiko grumped, drawing a clean line of eyeliner in a dramatic swerve, and turned it into a cat's eye. 'Not only am I in Konoha, but this is just the large council. They're going to be just as pompous and ineffectual as the council I saw in Sand.'
Thank god that she would never have a seat on the council that mattered. That honor was restricted only for the Clan Heads of the oldest clans in the village, those who had been with Konoha since the founding. The large council was cluttered with representatives from tiny, dying, or unimportant clans, but she was probably representing the smallest yet. Generally, having four members in the active duty forces meant that there were at least two actual families involved in the clan when it gained that status. Shinobi careers were notoriously short-lived, after all. By the time a shinobi had children, they and their spouse was probably retired. Sisters who married out, parents who had retired, or children in the academy didn't count towards the count. It was a little ludicrous for a clan to consist of four shinobi with about a year and a half distance between the eldest and youngest, and she was getting saddled with this obligation on an idiotic technicality.
A little viciously, she smeared rouge across her lips and called it good enough. She had to look like she'd tried to impress, not actually be attractive. The idea of even pretending that she cared what these people thought was infuriating. Aiko wouldn't lower herself to actually want their approval.
This was just part of a mission, that was all. Tsunade had ordered her to accept the appointment because she'd thought it would make her more tempting to Danzo.
Apparently it had worked, though she wasn't entirely certain why. He was already on the large council, after all. He might want to use her as a vote towards whatever agenda he proposed, or to push initiatives that he didn't want to be openly associated with, perhaps. She would have been much more valuable to him if she had been on the small council, because he had lost any insight into those proceedings when Homura and Koharu had retired.
'Bully for Tsunade, she was right,' Aiko thought moodily, tugging her hair out of the round curlers she'd had to buy for this and pulling a swoop back on her right temple to secure with the glittering butterfly shaped pin that had been waiting in her mailbox when she'd gotten home. 'about Danzo, anyways. Does she really think that jewelry is a good apology for making me do stupid pedantic shit that she neglected herself for thirty years? Hypocrite.'
It hadn't been labeled, of course, but who else would have given it to her? It had come up free of poisons, seals, chakra, and a quick soak in her sink had taken care of the lingering possibility that anything technological was waiting inside the tiny pin to bite her in the ass later. It was just a blue and purple butterfly. It matched her kimono (four different shades of blue swirled together with white detailing) and it wasn't like she had any other jewelry to go with it.
Besides, the piece was both pretty and shinobi tough. Even when she shook her head violently, it stayed snugly wherever she'd clipped it. Must have been a high quality accessory, and it was striking against her hair.
Of course, the unusual good mood that came from the odd feeling that she was pretty was fleeting. 'I might as well have showed up in unwashed fatigues, from the way they're looking at me.' Aiko resisted the sneer that tried to rise on her features. She'd known well enough to expect hostility.
Plenty of the idiots in this village were still unnerved by Naruto, and suspicion only bred ill will. As children under the Sandaime's protection, no one had dared to raise a hand to either twin, but she'd never labored under the misconception that the village as a whole had any fondness for her even if it was just by association. No one wanted someone they saw as a potential threat gaining direct representation in one of Konoha's legislative and judicial bodies.
'To be fair, they're right to distrust me if they're enemies of Naruto.' Aiko gave a pleasant smile in return to an unpleasant stare, remembering just how easily the man in front of her could be crushed under her heel. 'I don't tolerate shit, and I am very definitely going to advocate for Naruto wherever I can, since I've been dragged here. If I have to live in this village, I might as well do my part to cut down on the general idiocy.'
An eye for an eye, and all that. These people owed Naruto their lives, and she would make them remember that before all was said and done, if they were too thick to see it on their own.
He was going to be the Hokage, after all.
A woman with a large nose that she didn't recognize tried to look down on Aiko as she waddled to her seat. Forced to stand until she was introduced, Aiko used her artificial height advantage and what she knew was an unnervingly chill gaze to force the older representative to look away.
She'd be a shitty big sister if she didn't at least try to clean house before he took over. Naruto was more likely to be the charismatic and inspiring type of leader, not detail oriented.
"If all would come to order, we have a new member to introduce before we move onto today's agenda," some elder that she didn't recognize started quaveringly. His fingers shook, creating the impression that he was attempting to fan himself with the pile of papers he held. Aiko softened her expression, letting something that could be mistaken for kindness move the muscles around her eyes to fully commit to innocuousness now that the room as a whole was looking at her with curiosity.
Her introduction was brief in terms of words, but highly informative. There were a hundred something people in this room, all politicians of some stripe or another. Even if there hadn't been shinobi among them Aiko wouldn't have thought to trust that their visible reactions were really an accurate reflection of their thoughts. Judging their expressions and posture wasn't foolproof, but it was some measure of general sentiment, at least.
More than a few people seemed unhappy to see her there. That attitude was more prevalent in those who seemed to be Kakashi's age or older, an observation that came with two obvious explanations.
'I'm tempted to attribute that to resentment about the Kyuubi, but it could also well be that it irks people to see a fifteen year old getting public office,' Aiko thought, with a mind towards fairness. She wasn't wholly unsympathetic to the second assessment, but anyone who expected children to kill enemies of the state should also adjust their treatment of youths. You can't have it both ways. But it was tempting to assume that her relative lack of experience was going to make her more of an impediment to lawful order than a source of assistance.
Some of those murmurs were about her association to Naruto, however. She was sure of it. Anyone intelligent would sit on their resentment until they could feel her out, of course, wanting to know if she was really aligned with Naruto's interests or if she was manipulable. Her age wouldn't been seen as a detracting point so much as a potential source of weakness amongst some of the more mercenary minds here.
'Too bad for them my vote is already taken.' The idea brought a contrary sort of humor to the set of her lips. It was funny to think that Danzo had beat them all to that particular game, even if she wasn't best pleased about knowing he would be using her as a pawn to push some agenda here.
But of course, not everyone was hostile or obvious. Quite a few faces were welcoming in a disinterested sort of way, and others impassive. Some of them sought her out to talk on the first recess.
That was terrifying, to be honest. 'No one ever trained me to behave in this sort of setting,' Aiko thought a bit desperately, trying to keep bewilderment off her features whenever a reference went over her head or she didn't see a connection between topics. Some of this shit had to be intentionally obscure, because it wasn't as though she had no ability at tactical or political thinking.
Those natural inclinations appeared to be doing her no good, for once. It might have come from a fundamental difference in how a real clan heir or a savvy civilian politician was supposed to prioritize and think, but she could hardly help that. Her training had all focused on the most likely situations in her worklife—that she would be with comrades she trusted performing maneuvers they had trained in, in a hostile situation where she should trust no one, or in a hostile situation where she should kill everyone.
None of those options seemed to be the answer, and Aiko had the unpleasant chance to discover that her 'fight or flight' reflex in situations like this seemed to be broken, insistently chiming that she get the hell out of dodge while she could, perhaps by excusing herself to the ladies' room and shimmying out the window while no one was looking.
'I only wish that were an option.' She swallowed, hard, and tried to pay close enough attention to the current topic to repeat and investigate the information disguised with an obscene amount of jargon later. 'Running would be infinitely preferable to memorandums and socializing with total strangers. How does anyone flourish in this sort of environment?'
The ladies room's window was too small, in any case. If she were to try, Aiko would end up with her hips stuck and no leverage to force herself out. She'd have to pry the screws holding one of the side of the frame in place out to get an extra quarter inch of wiggle room, and that would be exceedingly difficult without any tools. (It was considered very bad manners to come heavily armed into a largely civilian government forum, apparently).
The meeting was everything she'd dreamed of and more in her worst imaginings, as it turned out.
The group was self-important, anal, and tied to procedure. At least she understood the structure now, but it really could have been summed up in about a minute. The large council met once monthly, but was divided into interest groups that investigated situations, proposed legislation, lobbied, and then presented the fruit of their labor to the group as a whole to be ratified before it got sent upwards to the small council and the Hokage. Enacting it was at their discretion at that point, but the large council contained a good number of influential people who felt that what they had to say was important and could make life marginally more difficult for the Hokage and Konoha as a whole if displeased.
For example, one of the most obvious designations that she noted was that of those who headed a guild. The five men and women who represented the most influential merchant guilds in Konoha could show their approval or disapproval by regulating prices and policies. They had actual material methods to steer the direction of Konoha's policies because they had a stranglehold on her essential goods.
Conversely, other groups had little clout individually, but could become a pain in the ass because of the collective they represented having some measure of potential power. The groups of small clan heads could theoretically create dissent or other attitudes among the general armed forces populace, compromising Konoha's workforce. Others relied on the clout of wealthy relatives who patronized Konoha with the implicit threat that miffing them would mean losing business: in other words, if you pull my pigtails I'm telling my cousin the Daimyo's brother's wife's pig's caretaker twice removed and boy, will you be sorry.
When she finally caught up with the tone of her own thoughts, she had to give a wry snort in amusement. Judgmental much? There were probably quite a few people in the group who were as eager to be there as she was.
'I should probably do a better job of hiding my disdain, now that I've apparently been subsumed into the collective.'
The kimono was unceremoniously piled onto the chair in front of her desk and Aiko pulled shorts and a loose cut-off top that stopped at her ribs over her mesh suit, breathing much easier in casual clothing. The formal wear wasn't uncomfortable, exactly, but what it signified was. Namely, having to go out into public and associate with large groups of people on a semi-regular basis. The fact that Danzo was there didn't help. Every time that he'd glanced in her direction, she'd fought the urge to cringe or sink under her table.
He hadn't hinted at any recognition or association between the two, but that had been expected. Whether he intended to use her as a 'yes-man' or as a front for agendas he couldn't openly support himself, Danzo would be better served by allowing the impression that her ideas were reached without any sort of collaboration from him. He'd want to seem impartial or hard to read, at least until he had a sense of the way that general opinion would fall in regards to her and how best to use her voice.
'I wonder if he was involved in my committee assignment. It seems like something he'd be interested in.' Aiko rolled her neck, touched her butterfly pin self-consciously (it was so pretty, she'd really like to keep wearing it even if it was too nice for her gear) and headed out the door again.
There was probably no point in wondering. It didn't much matter, at least in terms of what she could do about the situation.
Aiko had been assigned to a committee investigating the apparently unsatisfactory numbers in the shinobi population and working towards a proposal to rectify the situation. She wasn't entirely certain if it was a snub or not, to be frank. It could be a pointed association with her small 'clan', a random designation because it had been the most recently started committee, or a calculated one based on the premise that the head of such a tiny and non-prestigious clan would be eager to work hard to make a name for herself.
"I need to pencil in investigating actual numbers of academy enrollment, graduation, and death rates in sometime before that stupid meeting in a week and a half," she muttered to herself as she locked the door and pocketed her keys.
Whoever had proposed the committee had probably already collected data like that in order to make their case that the matter deserved investigation, but it was hard to want to trust the work of people she didn't know with unfamiliar agendas. The possible problems with that ran a wide gamut from 'incompetence' to outright lies.
The air conditioning was running at a frosty overdrive in the hall, but it didn't much matter, seeing as she was only making the ten step walk to Yamato's apartment. He had agreed to host the next team dinner, bless his heart, under the thin pretense that she would repay him back by teaching him to cook a little.
Yamato answered the door wearing a stressed look and an apron. Her lips twitched.
'I don't know how much hope I have for that particular venture. At least it's going to be adorable.'
Learning the layout of his kitchen was perversely easy, due to the fact that he had owned one skillet, one pot, and a four piece flatware set that had been a gift. Apparently, he lived on raw vegetables and scrambled eggs when he didn't want to eat out.
"This is really sad, you know…"
Yamato looked a bit guilty, shuffling his feet while she snooped through all his empty cupboards. "I got the items on your list?" he offered half-heartedly. Aiko turned to the fridge and knelt to examine the items neatly arrayed in-
"Are they in alphabetical order?" Bemused, she poked the cucumber, neatly sitting between bok choy and a daikon radish.
Defensively, he mumbled something about having been told to put things away.
'That is impressively anal,' Aiko allowed, running her hands over a few of the goods that definitely did not need to be refrigerated. Rice, for example. 'Poor man. He really is a babe all alone in the woods. At least he can navigate a grocery store. I'm almost surprised that Mr. Anbu genius got stuck with those missions as a genin too, but I don't see how else he would have learned. Clearly, no one taught him anything about the kitchen.'
"Measure out two cups of rice and soak it, would you please?" She handed him the chilled bag of grains. It would probably be best to keep her instructions brief, simple, and work him up to more difficult tasks later.
Yamato seemed to think that it was some sort of dark sorcery, judging by the look on his face, but when given careful instructions he had managed to put together green tea ice cream and set it to chill in his empty freezer while she worked on the stir fry. He cut the fruit salad on his own, but got miffed and accused her of fucking with his head when she instructed him to squeeze a lime over it, tip in a teaspoon of sugar, and then dust the whole salad with chili powder.
Aiko wasn't joking. Fruit salad was amazing that way.
Her hand slipped, sending bits of the vegetables she was adding onto the stove top instead of into the wok. Yamato gave her an odd look, but she was a bit preoccupied by the layout of her seals.
'I sense a disturbance in the force.'
When the first arrival casually let himself in a moment later, Yamato looked just about as dumbfounded as she felt.
'Kakashi is early. Why is Kakashi early?'
"Did someone die?" she blurted, reflexively hirashin-ing to his side. He favored her with a confused look.
"Can't I just be early?"
"No…" Yamato drew the word out, quirking his hip and rolling the strawberry he'd been about to cut between his fingertips. "You're never early, senpai."
"That's a lie," Kakashi demurred, collapsing bonelessly onto Yamato's worn couch. "I distinctly remember being early once. In any case, I'm not early. I'm late, you see. Wasn't I supposed to be here yesterday?"
Aside from how outright weird Kakashi was being (not only was he early enough to lurk about while they finished preparations, but he actually said something that could be construed as a compliment about her hair pin) the dinner went much better than the first attempt had.
Her day didn't turn into a bummer again until she got back to her apartment and realized she needed to write up that report on Gaara and Terumi Mei for Danzo. She had seen him only yesterday when she and Sai had given him the rest of the materials they had found on their second exploration of Orochimaru's base, and then again at the Council meeting, but he could call her asking for this report at any time. It wouldn't do to be unprepared when he summoned her. He wasn't a man who tolerated even the slightest dissidence, and she didn't want him looking particularly closely at her actions.
'I do feel a bit guilty giving him information on these two, but it's not like I have much of a choice. I can avoid giving him information he couldn't get otherwise, but protecting foreigners isn't worth endangering this mission. My neck is on the line. I like my neck more than Mei's, and Gaara can take care of himself.'
The only thing she was really unsure about was sharing that she had given Hiraishin seals to both of them. If Danzo knew that, it seemed likely that he would run her ragged going back and forth to them.
'Then again, he can hardly do that without Tsunade hearing about me being there when she'd know it wasn't on her orders…' Aiko tapped the back of her pen on the notebook she was using thoughtfully, leaning back in her desk chair.
Danzo was a lot of things, but he wasn't inept at covering his tracks. He wouldn't make an amateur mistake like that. If he absolutely needed one of them dead, he might be willing to send her to assassinate them, but he would be fully prepared to assume that she was a loss as an agent after that, if there was any hint that Konoha had been involved or it she was seen. He would have her painted as a rogue agent and probably sent as recompense to the country in question.
That would only be an issue if something drastically changed. He had no love for either kage, but unless he hated one of them in specific and stood to gain from their death, no such mission would be given. The old man was canny enough to know that they would just be replaced with another kage he probably didn't like. He might prefer the evil he knew to the one he didn't.
And again, a large part of her interest was protecting her own skin. If he ever found out that she had hidden information from him, her life or at least free will would be forfeit. If Mei had put together that Gaara had a Hiraishin seal, Danzo could as well.
So she wrote that information down, though Aiko obscured that the seal had been given to Gaara of her own initiative. She discussed Gaara's history, estrangement from his village, siblings, troubled family history, and personality.
'I'm a little surprised by how much I know about the guy off-hand.' Rotating her wrist and flexing her fingers to rid herself of a cramp, she set that aside and set to analyzing Mei.
That report had considerably less contextual information, but the disadvantage was probably off-set by how much she had to say about the woman's personality, thought patterns, and motives, as well as her upcoming mission that would put her in close proximity off and on for an extended period of time. For all her intelligence, Mei would be possible to manipulate. She was predictable, despite being an odd blend of pragmatism and playful ego. Certain things were likely to set her off, and she trusted very few, as demonstrated by sending Ao to assist Aiko in sealing the three-tailed demon.
That incident was writ up in full honest detail. Danzo had sent a mission with at least one survivor to prevent the maneuver, so falsehoods would be pointless.
'Well, I'm not being completely honest,' she acknowledged in the safety of her own head. 'But it's the story that's been told so many times that it may as well be the truth.'
There was no point in letting Danzo know that she hadn't really been a seal master at that point. She was getting pretty damn close now. If he were concerned that another seal master might be able to free his agents, he wouldn't have recruited her in the first place. The man must have some sort of failsafe, or was just arrogant in his abilities. Not that arrogance would be unwarranted. He'd been perfecting his art for decades longer than even Jiraiya.
Mastery wasn't about completing a certain set of achievements to level up, or even memorizing as many symbols as possible. Those things helped, of course, and she had a fairly solid background in both theory and practice. A seal master was someone who could use problem solving to both unpick and create their own work. Jiraiya was better and faster than she was, but that didn't mean that her ability to think through problems was lacking so much as it did that he was unrivaled in experience. She'd be pretty fucking awesome too, if she'd started working on it forty years ago.
'To be fair, I think I have an advantage over most people who try to study fuinjutsu. Lately…' Aiko frowned thoughtfully, sucking on her lip. 'I think I found out why Uzumaki were said to be especially able at the discipline, and it makes complete sense with what I know about Uzumaki characteristics. It's that Uzumaki are prone to sensing chakra in a really detailed way. Karin might be an absolute genius, if anyone ever sat her down and tried to teach her sealing.'
She was nowhere near as talented as Karin was, but the more she worked with seals, the better her sense for chakra became. Lately, it was to the point where she sensed chakra signatures she was familiar with almost as vividly as if she was literally seeing them. If she had been taught to work with fuinjutsu from childhood, that ability might well have developed years ago.
When she had her two reports completed, Aiko had to dither about what precisely she should do with them. Danzo had said he would send for her, so she would probably be punished for seeking him out to hand them in, but she hardly wanted these found. Her apartment was respectably secure, but clearly not enough so to keep out other elites.
Aiko settled for tugging off her headband and painting a storage seal on the underside of the metal plate, forcing the materials inside. It was one of the few things that hardly ever left her side, and not conventionally thought of as valuable for reasons other than sentimental or political.
There was a reason that this wasn't convention, of course. It was much easier to put seals on paper because it could be easily disposed of if necessary. But she could just pull the seal up.
That brought an idea… She knew that she could pick up a seal and let it dissolve. Absentmindedly, she sank to a cross-legged position and bent over with her elbows on her knees, trying to think through the possible implications of that point.
'If I can dissolve a seal, can I pick something up in the same way and then hold it together instead? If that's possible, could I then replace or re-use it somewhere else?'
The theory was compelling, and she hadn't read anything about it before. So she made an innocuous seal – one meant to make an object lighter and easier to carry—onto a plain sheet of paper. Explosions and time-space manipulations like storage seals were her personal bread and butter, but they were probably among the least safe to experiment with. If a seal like that dissolved when she tried this exercise, the experiment would just be a failure. But if it only partially held together, she could end up short a hand.
And that would be an awful bummer.
By contrast, an incomplete version of something simple like what she'd sketched would just become null or less efficient. Much less risky.
Aiko licked her lips and settled down with a contemplative stare at her prospective experiment. There were multiple ways to go about this. She could try reinforcing it with threads much like chakra strings in order to compel the seal to hold its structure while she moved it, or just overcharge it to make it sturdier, removing the excess when she set it back down. Perhaps no extra chakra would be necessary if she hurried to place it somewhere new instead of waving it into the air as was her habit.
'If it's done with someone else's chakra, there might be an extra step,' Aiko carefully hypothesized. 'I might not be able to support a completely incompatible piece. If that's true… Convention does already support that you can splice some of your own chakra in to alter a pre-existing seal. That might be enough, or I might have to go through a process of filtering my chakra in while siphoning out the foreign material in order to move a seal.'
The implications of that were staggering. If it was possible to do that, she could steal other people's seals, which both meant that they would be available for her one-time use and that she would gain an intimate understanding of the piece itself through saturating it. It might make it possible for her to replicate others' intellectual genius without having to reverse engineer it.
A thought occurred.
'Why do all the really cool ideas I come up with boil down to doing less work to get more results? Am I really that lazy? God, I must be a total asshole, ripping off of everyone else's hard work. I don't have a single original technique. Even the things I invent are just variations on someone else's genius.'
But she was getting ahead of herself. None of that would be possible if she couldn't make a simple exercise like this one work. It may well be that there was some good reason that it would be completely impossible, which would explain why she hadn't read about it before.
"On the other hand, it might just be completely badass," Aiko muttered, tearing out another sheet of paper and laying it on her lap before plucking up the seal she'd drawn. It twanged anxiously—but for once, instead of encouraging it to unthread by picking at the fraying edges, she closed her eyes and stilled her own well of chakra, concentrating on a meditative state and attempting to calm the minute shivers of the lifted seal. It seemed to waver along the edges, frequency shifting and attempting to come apart at joints.
She managed to hold it together for three full seconds before gently calming it failed and the seal threaded into nothingness.
Aiko opened her eyes and considered that outcome.
"I think that's a good sign," she decided after a long moment, rolling her ankle so that the toes brushed the ground and leaning forward to paint out another symbol. As soon as her fingers touched the brush, she shook her wrist violently and dropped it. "Stupid," she scolded lowly, sweeping a bit of loose hair behind her ear. "I may as well use a pulse instead of a brush for something this simple."
The more she used a seal, the easier it was to create without ink, but even if she'd never made it before, a streamlined seal like this should be one she could make by pure chakra. By now her trapped Hiraishin took less than a thought to set, but that was because she'd practiced with it. This one, comparatively simple, took almost a full second of visualization to recreate invisibly on a clean section of paper. It had barely set when she held her palm over it and pulled it upwards.
This time, instead of attempting to still the array, she calculated a circuit and sent her own energy humming along continuously, keeping anything from stilling at all while she waveringly moved it over to the next piece of paper.
"Whoa. Definite difference there." Aiko blinked at the array in her hand and gently pushed it onto the second surface. It didn't quite want to take, threatening to overload… 'That's probably the excess protesting.' She scrunched her forehead in concentration and skimmed the top, letting the chakra that had been supplementing the seal dissipate.
And the seal took.
"Hot damn," she breathed reverently.
Then she gave a fist pump, tilting her head back like a dog about to howl. "Fuck yes!"
Thump thump
Aiko jerked guiltily and looked in the direction of the wall she shared with Yamato. "Eh, he'll get over it."
'The next thing I should do is see if I can do that with someone else's seal. Moving and re-using my own seals is interesting, but that would be the real prize.'
But who could she get a seal from? She supposed she could go to the supplier and just get some of the mass-produced crap. But those were often low-quality, and they only sold explosion, storage, and percussive tags at standard retailers. There just wasn't enough of a market for anything more specialized.
"I still don't want to lose a hand experimenting," Aiko grumped, running her nails through her hair. "I don't know, I could ask Naruto to pass a request to Jiraiya through his toads?"
She found her brother the next day and asked him to do just that, expecting to just get his acceptance and run off to start on her next mission.
"What's so wrong with your seals?" Naruto asked distractedly, reading through the note she'd given him.
Aiko shrugged, not eager to get into the long explanation. "They just can't be mine for an experiment I'm doing, that's all."
Naruto nodded seriously. "I see, I see." He crumpled up her note and merrily tossed it over his shoulder, lunging to pick her entirely up in a hug, awkwardly lifted with her waist to his chest so that she could only pound at his back with her fists. She shrieked as her feet cleared the floor, arms squeezed to her sides and unable to move. "You should have asked me! I trained with the pervert forever, Aiko-chyaaannn."
"Put me down."
"I can do it for you! Are you sure they can't be explosives? I like to make explosives."
"Naruto, I'm going to bite you if you don't put me down."
Her hair whipped him in the face while he spun, but he paid no mind. "How about pudding? I can do this thing where I fill a storage seal and weaponize it to- Ow!" He dropped her over his back like a sack of flour, twisting to pout with teary eyes at the spot on the side of his ribs where she'd managed to claw.
"Pft." She made a rude sound, pulling her now tangled hair back. "Serves you right. Calm down, crazy. I do appreciate you offering to get me those seals, but they really do have to be something innocuous."
Odd. She wasn't used to thinking of Naruto as an adult with advanced skill sets to offer her. He still seemed like her goofy little brother most times.
"Washboard. Are you leaving tonight?" Sai blinked docilely at her, curled up on the floor in front of the couch with his sketchbook.
'Oh kami, he's so pretty.' Aiko turned her face up and hummed, waiting for the warmth on her cheeks to fade. "Yes, I will. It's not like I have a lot of travel time, though. I'm expected in a few hours. It'll only take a moment."
If she'd been looking down, Aiko would have seen him frown slightly. "I see."
She did know to glance down at his crisp tone. "Is something wrong?" Aiko pulled forward slightly to scratch her nails lightly down the back of his head and neck, bending over his body to blink down at him. "That sounded dissatisfied."
"I wonder why the Mizukage has one of your best weapons, that is all. It seems like an opportunity that should only be gifted to trusted allies, if you do not intend to use it to kill her. Do you intend to kill the Mizukage?"
Shocked, she jerked back. "Of course not." That was an odd thing to say. A bit hostile, actually. Almost as if… "Sai," Aiko crooned, leaning over to touch the tip of her nose to his forehead and grin obnoxiously. "Are you asking me why I haven't given you a seal? Of course I trust you." Stiffly, the boy on the floor averted his eyes.
"Do not be ridiculous. I require no such token."
"Well, too bad." She mischievously blew a little puff of air into his face. "Do you have a weapon I can use? Something you keep with you?" He didn't manage to answer before she leant back and tugged lightly at the short blade on his back. "This, hmmm?"
Sai bent his face forward and his fingers ghosted up to unfasten the strap across his chest securing the weapon without a word. Delighted, she pulled the whole kit off his back and onto her lap.
"This will just take a moment. Would you hand me- yes, thanks."
A twinge of pain was the only thing to alert her that she'd gone to nibble on her lower lip again in her distraction. She opened her mouth just enough to let the skin slip free, holding her breath and unblinkingly focusing on the symbols she was painting on the underside of the hand guard. Respectfully, Aiko sheathed the blade and set it on the floor, leaning against the couch.
Her Root comrade hadn't moved an inch since he'd moved to allow her to take his weapon. Somewhat awkwardly, Aiko unfolded her crossed legs and slipped her right leg along his side, toes barely glancing along the floor. Her left stretched out to her aside along the couch, and she placed a tentative hand on his shoulder to help her balance as she leaned over enough to see his face. "Sai?"
His face tilted up, expression unusually warm. Something in her chest thudded at the slight glitter in his dark eyes. "Took you long enough."
A shiver traced a jagged line up her spine. Wow, he was cute when his mouth was just barely turned up in a faint hint of good humor. Of course, now that she'd noticed them, she just couldn't stop. They looked…
Aiko leaned down impulsively, touching her lips lightly to his. "Soft," she murmured, not thinking about the fact that she must be breathing on his face. A hand absentmindedly slipped off of his shoulder to curl across his chest. That was how she found out that his heart was beating erratically.
Once she realize what she'd done, Aiko recoiled back, face flushing.
'What's wrong with me? Am I really back to normal with that stupid genjutsu gone? I don't remember being this impulsive. Hormonal, yes. Impulsive, no.' she frowned. 'Except for that thing with Tenten. And when I got that tattoo. I suppose I could consider the time that I let Gaara pound me into the dirt because I thought it would incite Naruto to use the Kyuubi might count, too.'
Huh. Maybe she really was impulsive, but that was a matter to consider later. Feeling sick, she opened her mouth and started to pull her hand back up. A warm hand curled around her wrist to halt the movement. "Am I so frightening, Washboard?"
"No," she snapped back reflexively, pouting at him. "I'm not scared. I'm not."
"Then perhaps you should not act as though you are?" he posited innocently, gaze flickering to her lips once before they met with her eyes again. His body shifted slightly, so that his back was no longer flat against the couch and his shoulder was brushing the fabric. That opened up his body language to display pretty clear interest in her, a clear juxtaposition to his earlier posture.
'He's into this,' Aiko realized, feeling a little thrill. 'It's not just me.' Well. Neither of them was very experienced, she'd guess. But how hard could it be? They'd both done plenty of research, and tons of idiots managed to figure this stuff out on their own. "Why don't you do something, huh?" she prodded, letting her eyelids slide down so that her vision was partially obscured by her own lashes.
Of course, she was immediately lost at his reply, voice silky and slightly lower than usual. "I prefer to let you lead."
'Okay, that's strangely really hot. Even if it's just that he's unsure of what to do and he doesn't want to make an ass of himself.'
Her knees hit the floor to the side of Sai's body as her hands connected with his shoulders, forcing him down to the floor with her body braced above his. "Alright then." The abrupt adjustment to his hips and torso sent his bent knees splayed out to the side of her legs, so she readjusted her position over the older boy. He looked strangely surprised, for someone who had just taunted her about seeming restrained.
"Washb-"
"Aiko," she corrected, hooking the fingers of her right hand under to pull his high collar down even as her left trailed up his bare abs to slip under his shirt and play at his warm skin.
In lieu of reply, he shuddered, looking vulnerable and strangely anxious for someone who was normally so collected. Self-consciously, he bent his right elbow to allow him to scrape his blunt nails lightly up the back of her bare thigh, stuttering slightly when it reached the hem of her shorts.
"That felt good," she panted under her breath, bracing herself on her left elbow and curling to bite lightly at the skin she'd exposed on his lower neck and collarbone.
"Nn-"
Sai gave a shocked whine, body jerking underneath hers. She grinned, releasing the skin beneath her teeth to give a light lick before attaching her lips tightly to create a vacuum against his neck. Now that it wasn't needed to hold his collar down, she switched her weight to her right arm placed snugly against his ribs, close enough to feel his harsh breathing, while she brought her left back up to massage at his other shoulder.
When she pulled up, it was to the gratifying realization that his paper pale skin was already coloring. 'Now that I think about it, this is the second time I've marked Sai.' Aiko ran her dry tongue along the inside of her own lips, satisfaction welling up. "Nice."
His hand had frozen on the very top of her thigh, thumb brushing her ass as if he was too stunned to continue moving. Helpfully, she pushed herself backwards into his hand and dove down to see if his abs were really as nice as they looked. The only scientific way to investigate was by licking them, after all.
'Yes,' she judged clinically, moving with the way his body swayed with his lower back arching up. 'They are indeed nice. What about those pecs, though? I can't even see those. They need to be checked as well.'
Industriously, she pulled down the zipper at the center of his half-shirt and immediately pulled it out of the way so she had a clear path to brush her lips up his torso, interspersing the trail with little licks. The hand on her rear tightened compulsively, and she had to squeeze her eyes shut to concentrate on what she was doing, fighting to focus when the rapid beating of her heart was making it hard to do anything but collapse. Her legs were shaking, but she didn't want to stop.
So that her weak legs didn't cause her to completely collapse, Aiko leant back to rest against her comrade's hips… and froze, eyes wide.
'I shouldn't… I really shouldn't….'
"Is that a kunai in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?"
And Sai turned bright red, using shunshin to escape. Without her support, her knees splayed out to either side and she jerked down before she managed to catch herself entirely.
"I'm never going to get laid, am I," Aiko groaned, slumping onto the floor and grumpily banging her fist against the floor. "Fuck."