Thankfully, everyone had been on time and made their way back to the meeting with little trouble.
Yamato seemed to be having a difficult time keeping his eyes off of Minato. He'd made the phenomenally embarrassing decision to shake Minato's hand and stutter that it was an honor to meet him when they'd been introduced. It had set an awkward tone for the debriefing that followed. Minato might not even be a local hero yet, so he certainly wouldn't understand why Yamato treated him like a celebrity.
"We need to find those people," Naruto grumbled, giving an uncertain look at Sara.
Minato hadn't appeared to care, but if she'd been the one in charge, Aiko would not have been pleased about Naruto deciding to bring a civilian to their temporary hideout. 'But I might not have much room to talk. I came back with a stray too.'
She was too relieved to really be grumpy, now that one of the people she trusted to give her orders was here. Yamato was a smart guy. He'd take care of them, and she would only have to worry about doing her part.
He was a dork of monumental proportions, but she'd prefer being embarrassed to being responsible for making decisions that could endanger lives without the benefit of extensive preparation and information. She just wasn't the kind of person who reacted well to unexpected stresses. It took a certain type of steel nerves to forge blindly forward. Naruto had that kind of bravery, and even Sasuke did to some extent.
Not Aiko. She would much rather have floor plans, psychological analyses, and a plan that could have been written with bullet points. Information was power.
"It's not going to be pretty," Choza warned gently, giving Sara a look of almost unduly parental concern, seeing as he was twenty five at the absolute oldest. She didn't have the sense to appreciate the kindness for what it was, though her eyes did soften and defensive posture seemed a bit relaxed around him. It was hard to stay on your guard around Choza. He just emanated 'good guy' like Karin gave off perfume.
'If we were really the good guys, we wouldn't be bringing Sara in on any of this.' Aiko turned her face away from the conversation.
Naruto might not be savvy enough to see that giving Sara what she wanted was doing the girl no favors, but Aiko couldn't help but notice. 'Sara is just a little girl, despite what she thinks. In a few years, she might have the know-how to complement her good intentions. As is, she's just moved from being manipulated by Mukade to being led by us.'
Aiko wasn't proud, but she wasn't going to interfere either. It may not be in Sara's best interests, but if she could be convinced to help permanently (hopefully, anyway) seal the massive stores of chakra that had made this place a thriving metropolis, it would help team Kakashi get home. She would rather protect her own interests at the cost of Sara's, but she couldn't do it without a wince. At least Naruto hadn't caught on. He saw only the best of people.
'Logic aside, this is a little colder than I expected from Minato.' Her eyes sought his out from across the room, silently searching for what was going on in his head. She factually knew that he'd been famous for single-handedly destroying armies, but that was years in the future, and a clear-cut conflict against trained soldiers. This was manipulating an oblivious child under the guise of helping her. Sara wasn't even cognizant of the fact that they were clearly marked foreign military personnel who definitely did not have permission to be in her city, for the kami's sake. She was obviously not prepared to advocate against them.
Grudgingly, she felt a bit of respect for Minato well up. She might not have been able to make that call, or at least not as smoothly as he did. Sara would probably end up thanking him for this when it was all done without a clue that she'd been used.
'Once a puppet, always a puppet, I suppose.'
At least they didn't actually have malicious intentions. Just ones that ran counter to her best interests: Konoha would be better off if none of their enemies had a chance to take advantage of the enormous power hidden in this city. 'To be fair, we are doing her an enormous favor by ridding her of Mukade, and that's before we take into account that we'll probably end up freeing whatever civilians we run into. If she were aware enough to realize how much sealing the chakra will hurt her city, she might be willing to make the sacrifice for those benefits alone.'
It was a bit of a moot point, though, when she didn't even know what was going on. Not that Naruto did, though Sasuke might.
'Sometimes, being able to read a situation sucks.' Minato was a good team leader after all, capable of making calls Naruto would be too emotionally compromised to settle for with much less information than Aiko would have needed to steel herself to the task. No wonder he'd been Hokage. Once he'd been tempered to a fine steel by the third war, he would be more than formidable.
"-can make one more search for your missing civilians," Minato offered easily, as if it hadn't been his plan all along. Now that Mukade knew they were here, he would have to move quickly. His first move would probably be to try to eliminate the one person who could wrest control of his chakra source from him. Dangling Sara out in the open would be the best way to get him to come out at the same time that it convinced her they were helping her out of the goodness of their hearts. She didn't even seem capable of considering that they wouldn't care about her people. Ironic, that, considering she'd half-way accepted that 'Anroukuzan' had been lying to her.
"Alright." The girl stood as if she was in charge, determination painted prettily across her features. "Masako said that there was one more place she knew of people being taken. We will go there now."
It took a moment to recall where the name Masako came in—that was the civilian woman who had found Naruto's group when they had returned to the palace to confront Anroukuzan, wasn't it? 'Better that they met her than found Mukade,' Aiko shivered. This situation should be controlled as precisely as possible.
"Just one more thing. Yamato-san, I'm going to borrow your second for a moment." Minato stood easily, brushing off his pants.
"Of course."
Aiko shot a mild glare at her captain for not even asking why, but trailed out after Minato to the stairwell. He wordlessly tapped down two floors and finally settled against a wall, resting one foot flat against the wall and slouching with his hands in his pockets. "I couldn't help but notice that you've been stressed and on edge."
She gaped.
'That's surreal. Why would he care? This isn't daycare, it's work. If I'm stressed, it's no one's business but my own as long as I do my job. And I have been doing my job. Right?'
When she didn't respond, Minato glanced over and raised an eyebrow slowly. "Is something wrong?"
"Well." Aiko stalled for time, bringing a hand up to rub at her neck. "It's just… Why are you bringing this up?"
His brow furrowed, and she had the intimidating sensation of holding his full attention. Naruto's eyes were a similar shade, but they had never been so piercing. "I would be rather remiss as a commander if I didn't at least attempt to see how I could help you. Clearly, something about this mission is bothering you."
A surprisingly bitter snort welled up. She ran her hand through her hair, nails scraping her scalp and tangling in her ponytail as she talked. "Aside from the potential that I'll never get to go home again, the fact that my teammates don't respect my authority at all, or the bit where puppets press every freak-out button that I have and my team apparently thinks that's funny?" Aiko finished hoarsely. Oh hell, were her eyes really welling up? Furious with herself, she rubbed at her eyes with the back of her right hand, her left curled into a fist, nails digging into her palm.
"Hey now." His hand was as gentle as his voice when Minato tucked his thumb into her hand and pried it open, rubbing the calloused pad lightly against her palm for a moment. "Want to talk about what's so wrong with puppets?"
She let her neck go limp so her head thunked against the wall and wailed quietly, fingers shaking with the restrained effort of not indulging the utterly pathetic desire to give herself a hug. "What isn't wrong with puppets?" In between gasps, she sank down the wall and let her arms rest on her knees. "I can't even look at the damn things without thinking about the worst day of my life. They're disgusting even when they're not made of people."
It wasn't really the puppets themselves (though they did make her skin crawl). It was that she couldn't help but associate them with being completely helpless at someone else's mercy. She never wanted to feel that way again. Just remembering waking up to find that she'd been held close to a rotting slave and counted as an equally worthless sack of meat made her stomach turn. Being completely devalued and unable to do anything to prevent it… what was the point in training over half her life if a stupid thing like pain medicine could make her incapable of fending against the slightest threats?
She was never going to be that helpless again, ever.
Minato had frozen, probably terrified that he'd gotten in over his head. He managed to cautiously offer, "I'm sensing some baggage here. Is this connected to the incident the boys were teasing you about?"
Woodenly, she nodded.
He coughed. "When you were kidnapped? Would you, uh… like to talk about it?"
'No one actually asked me about that before, outside of my debriefing.'
Aiko genuinely considered it for a moment. She didn't like people knowing about her emotional vulnerabilities because they might –god forbid- want to talk about feelings (hers or other people's: it was awful either way). But what could it hurt to talk to Minato? She was never going to see him again. He was a dead man walking. It was like talking to the memorial stone. Or Schrödinger's cat.
"Well, it's kind of a confusing story," she obfuscated, biting her lower lip for a moment before she continued. "I was in Suna and there were two missing nin who intended to kidnap the Kazekage- like I said, a long story," she hastily tacked on without looking at his face, because that was a bizarre thing to say out of context. "The first was killed, but the fight put me in the hospital." Aiko waved a hand dismissively, as if that wasn't terribly relevant to the story.
"Anyways, the second man was a bit smarter than his colleague and decided that it'd be really awkward for Suna to have to tell Konoha that they'd misplaced me and the Kazekage would have to come after me. So by the time he had me maybe twenty miles out of the city, I was sort of regaining my senses, but I was confused enough to think that I was hallucinating but still in the hospital until I realized that the nurse carrying me was in fact starting to rot and that I was covered in her blood. Long story short, there was a very real possibility that I was going to find out how he liked to turn people into puppets through a special process that retains part of their consciousness and special jutsu abilities. I can't think of a way for a puppet to have their own chakra unless they're alive in some form." Aiko shuddered, forcing her mouth shut with a clack of teeth.
"That…" Minato weakly cleared his throat. "That was a confusing story, but I can see where it would be traumatizing. How did you get away?"
"On my own," Aiko deflected, tone implying that part wasn't up for discussion.
The only reply was a distracted hum that implied he wasn't about to prod there. After a moment, Minato heaved a sigh and held out a hand to help her up. "I can't tell you what to do, of course, but I'd suggest that you talk to your team." He gave her a faint smile. "I don't think that they mean to stress you, and if they understood that there are some issues you can't joke about, they would back down. Does that make sense?"
She nodded wordlessly, fixing her mussed hair as they made their way back upstairs. Strangely, she felt a lot better. Maybe there was something to all that sissy propaganda about sharing your feelings to share the burden.
'Nah. Must be a magical Minato thing,' Aiko decided, wiping her face blank as they re-entered the room. They hadn't been gone terribly long, but everyone seemed ready to go. Kakashi, in particular, gave her an unusually evaluative look, tinged with a healthy dose of condescension that made her wonder if the sneaky little fuck had been jealous enough of her getting personal attention to listen in. They'd only been two floors away, after all. You had to work much harder to hide shit from him, even the bratty version.
Minato's group whisked away in a blur of light and motion on their super-secret-not-telling-you-guys-mission, but Aiko wasn't convinced. They were probably still following the group to provide the ambush party. She didn't let on as they crossed the ghost town to meet Masako and a small group of women who had come with her on this good-intentioned quest. At least they knew enough to be tense, though they seemed to gain confidence from seeing Sara among them. Probably because they thought that she was too valuable to be risked on a hopeless quest. They were right, though not for the altruistic reasons they probably imagined without the benefit of contextual knowledge.
The building Masako led them to did indeed have an ominous aura, but then again, all of them did. Sasuke easily broke the lock off and pulled the doors open, but Naruto and Sara took the lead in. Yamato slouched at the very back to watch over the group as a whole.
It was too quiet, even for a city in an artificial sleep. This was obviously a factory of sorts. There should be electricity humming and machines running… unless the equipment was powered by something other than electricity, she reminded herself. Something like manpower, for example.
'Mukade has to know we're here.' Tense, she augmented her hearing and paid close attention to her chakra sense.
It provided her first indication that Masako had been correct. There were a number of weak human chakra signatures not far away. Sara bristled when she took the lead, but Naruto and Sasuke's calm acceptance seemed to reassure her. That was a blessing, because she really didn't want the younger girl to open her mouth and talk. Sweet and determined she may be, but Aiko found her vexing. It would be a waste of breath to explain that she was the only sensor in the party.
She led them faultlessly through the darkness, through two long corridors and a contamination chamber before she opened the door that exposed the group to the harsh breathing of a group of dirty, half-clad men chained to a gigantic wheel.
'That is ridiculously old school. It's like a waterwheel at a mill, if a miller was ever nuts enough to use slave labor instead of a fast current to turn it.'
Her reaction was atypical—cries of alarm, relief, and grief rang out from the rest of the room. Sara was the first to act to strike off chains, with- 'My god, she unintentionally augmented her physical strength with chakra. That is not something an untrained civilian should be able to do.' Yamato seemed to note the oddity as well and kept a wary eye on Sara that implied he too was thinking about his old theory that the Queens of Rouran were benefitting from special training to interact with chakra rather than a kami-given gift that implied they were meant to rule. If that were true, she could have other skills. Maybe there was a reason she didn't feel intimidated in the presence of foreign shinobi?
There wasn't time to worry about that. The joyous reunions were cut off by a light flickering to life overhead that revealed a small militia of the red puppets hiding in alcoves around the room.
"It's a shame that you've gotten entangled with such rough characters, Princess Sara." Mukade stepped into the light, silent except for the swish of his robes on the ground. Masako stood tall, but most of the other civilians cowered. With good reason, judging by their emaciated states and downtrodden attitudes. As he surveyed them, his tone was dispassionate, but his eyes practically burnt with cruel eagerness. "You were so useful, too." He sighed theatrically, shaking his head.
'I'd had no idea he was here.'
Her muscles tensed. 'He's stealthy. Almost like Sasori in that I can't smell anything human. Is that a jutsu that puppet-masters know, or a sign that this is just a genjutsu? Should I kill him now? Could I kill him now?' He was in his home territory, and he seemed so cocky that it was hard to believe he was unprepared for a frontal assault. Sasuke shifted his weight from foot to foot as if he was considering the same thing. Naruto merely stepped in front of Sara and pinned the bastard with an unforgiving blue stare.
"She's not a tool for you to use, Mukade."
"No, not any longer," he agreed amicably. "She has been facilitating my goals for many years now, however, and I think that deserves some recognition." Sara looked at him, white-faced, clearly dwelling on the fact that she had unknowingly been complicit in the way he had abused and murdered the people she was meant to protect. The old man smiled in a way that looked almost friendly. "I have something I would like to give her."
A high shriek rang out from somewhere behind them, but hell if Aiko could tell the source. She was too busy moving to deal with the small army pouring in through the doors as if Mukade had been expecting to fight them there all along. Perhaps he had a spy among the civilian women who had come with them. Perhaps they had just been predictable.
"I don't think that's a gift the Princess wants," Minato's voice sounded from behind her. Aiko blinked at the deadpan, twisting just enough to see he and his team had come out of hiding. The future Hokage was standing over Sara who was sprawled on the floor, holding a three-bladed kunai almost casually out after having just deflected some attack Aiko hadn't seen.
"Eh," she grunted, turning back to her own fight. It would be stupid to get killed because she didn't focus on the enemies approaching her, even if whatever they were saying interested her. Mukade probably wasn't helpfully providing the key to his own destruction, so she turned to her own analysis.
'He hardly fights like a puppet master anymore. There's a reason that the best puppet users are renowned for their subtlety and control, not their numbers or power.'
Just throwing these devices at them indicated that he thought the resources were almost worthless because he just had so many of them. Mukade certainly had more than enough to hold his city, since they would just reform given time. He must be planning to make Rouran his center of power, a fortress from where he'd train and send out armies that weren't limited only to his conscious control and supported by local power.
(That was a pretty terrible weakness for someone who wanted to conquer the world. Perhaps he should have considered a new hobby.)
It had devolved into absolute havoc. The older team leapt to engage Mukade himself as it became clear that he was the large threat. Literally— the smaller puppets that were close to Mukade dis-assembled and reformed into an enormous, spider-like beast with bulging, black-slit eyes and creepishly humanoid teeth. Also, it apparently had scythes for hands. Aiko cringed and was grateful for her assignment— Kakashi and team Yamato worked on the mass of smaller, unmanned puppets that buzzed around like ants defending their queen.
Choza unceremoniously flattened spider-Mukade against the ceiling.
Naruto snorted.
"Fools!" Mukade shrieked, spittle flying out his mouth as he worked to cover himself in that clayish armor in a matter of seconds. "I am invincible, so long as I am in my city. All the ancient chakra Rouran can offer is mine. You are all going to die!"
'What is wrong with this man? Why not just go straight to his most badass form if he has multiple personal puppets?'
The next transformation was even more grotesque, but at least it was closer to humanoid. It had the same small-headed aesthetic as his smaller soldiers (not that they were particularly small at about 6.5 feet in height), but a series of razors up his back for some reason. Laboriously, it looked up—and Aiko grimaced. It looked like it had flat goggles, tusks, and a strange head protrusion that she could only liken to a tumor. The man himself was barely visible from behind one of the chest plates.
'Wonder what made him lose his cool. He seemed rather composed earlier.' Not for the first time, Aiko cursed that her taijutsu relied on speed and constant movement. It kept her from hearing most of the conversation as she flickered about the area, using her short blade to hack off puppet limbs and keep them away from the group of civilians.
"Am I really the only one who sees the painfully obvious solution to this problem?" Sasuke groaned, looking up to the sky as if praying for strength. Naruto shot him a pouty look, before kicking a puppet in the face.
"Don't be stupid, bastard. Of course not. But he could be lying. Come on, how many people have you fought that really had 'unlimited power' (he mocked in an intentionally low tone, wiggling his hands while the older team looked on in confusion and curiosity)? I'm still not convinced he's telling the truth, but it would sure make killing him easier in the case that he is."
"Try the simple solution first," Aiko advised dryly. She knew what they were implying: if Mukade really had unlimited power in Rouran, then they should take him out of Rouran. With two Hiraishin users present, that really wouldn't be that hard. But it would mean separating, so it wasn't preferable. "Brute force. Sasuke, would you escort Princess Sara and her retinue to somewhere safer, so Mukade stops targeting her? You're best suited to making a path through any number of these stupid puppets, even if they don't stay down. Isn't there that area where Mukade can't use his puppets, Sara?" The Uchiha grumbled a bit, but acknowledged his orders as Sara began coaxing the formerly imprisoned workers to get up, mobilizing the less injured or weary to help support their fellows. In an almost offensively inspirational manner, she began offering encouragement. It was "Will of Fire" grade-worthy drivel.
The kunoichi couldn't help but cringe. 'At least she's organizing them. It's about time she did something useful,' Aiko thought unkindly.
"Super expansion jutsu!" Choza grunted, batting Mukade's new, bloated form against the opposing wall with a hand like a fleshy fly swatter. He went down with an enormous sound of breaking material, but when Mukade got back up there was no sign of damage. Worse, he brought out one of the abilities she'd seen on some of the smaller puppets—hundreds of tendrils of chakra strings sprang out, slicing both on their own and with carried weaponry.
Mildly surprised that the fight was still going on even though she'd been distracted by planning, she barely jumped away in time to avoid shrapnel from the collision.
"The team commander approves of what the underling orders," Yamato said tonelessly, somehow managing to make her feel sheepish for forgetting her field command was over without actually scolding her. She gave an apologetic smile as Shibi unleashed a straight-up terrifying amount of insects. They swarmed over one of the thing's legs, siphoning off chakra. Apparently he didn't believe Mukade was telling the truth about having unlimited power.
He was on her side, but still she kept a wide berth. Yuck. Give her a mammal any day. Slugs, bugs, snakes, and toads… why were the summons of almost everyone she knew so damn creepy?
Sasuke sneered at Yamato before leaping away towards Sara, leaving the parting shot, "What are you even here for? We were doing fine," hanging in the air as he herded Sara's group to the door, darting backwards at the last moment to throw an attacker through the wall.
"The hero shows up at the last moment?" Naruto offered with a hint of laughter at some shared joke Aiko didn't get, using a genjutsu that left afterimages that almost seemed to be clones in a blur of movement, confusing the poor stupid simulacrums that were attempting to get together to form another one of the large puppets while Mukade menaced the older team.
They could barely hear Sasuke's snort as he left the room. "Maybe you'll get a bridge named after you."
'I don't know exactly what's going on, but I do know we're mocking Yamato.'
"He probably just showed up to steal more of my thunder," Aiko punned, giving their long-suffering captain a cheeky grin. "I'm accidentally giving him a decent reputation. I should probably henge into him and go do something really embarrassing, like beg Tsunade for a date."
Minato choked.
Naruto groaned. "Aiko, that's terrible. You ruined it. We had a good thing going on."
Unapologetic, she shrugged, dodging another one of the attackers and wishing that she could use her Hiraishin here.
'I mean, I could actually use just Hiraishin, but it would be really stupid to use explosives in here. Not in this enclosed space with so many allies who aren't used to fighting around me.'
Fighting with Hiraishin had been traumatizing enough when she'd first started to use it around allies. Really, it was best used when she was alone, even if she was much better with it now. At least it was hard to mess up when she was just planting them and occasionally using one to rubberband behind a clump of enemies that might have otherwise stymied her. When she wasn't throwing anything, and no one was paying particular attention to her, it would just seem that she was extraordinarily fast, not using a legendary sealing technique.
To be fair, what she was doing was weird, even for a technique that had only been used by two other people before.
"Shuriken shadow clone jutsu!"
'Well, that's a new one,' Aiko noted dully, looking up to see the effect. She didn't expect to be impressed. But she was.
"I want that."
A freakish amount of aerial weaponry was suspended in the air. No, not suspended. 'There's just that many generating,' Aiko realized, knees weak with weapon-lust. She wasn't entirely certain if she was mindlessly zoning out, or if it was really glowing with an otherworldly green haze and lasting for like, 3 to 4 seconds. Either way, it probably deserved a full orchestral score and not just Mukade roaring mindlessly under the repetitive 'shunk-shunk-shunk' of hundreds of small impacts. 'I need that. If I don't get that, I'm going to be forever sad.'
"Minatoooo," she called in the same cutesy voice Naruto had copied for his sexy no jutsu, aiming her best puppy eyes at him. He looked mildly alarmed, turning to face her even as the last of the green light tingeing his yellow hair faded and Mukade lurched backward and knocked into the brickwork. It was probably the first time he'd heard her sound remotely appealing or less than professional.
'Not even worried about Mukade. He is just an over-jumped Chuunin. Infinite chakra hasn't made him a better shinobi. Any two of us could probably thump him if he'd stop regenerating.'
"I don't think we have time to talk," Minato demurred, looking mildly flustered.
She shook her head, letting her ponytail and bangs flop cutely. "No, stop." She paused deliberately and pouted, clasping her fingers in front of her chest. "Collaborate. Please, please, please show me that again. I want that so badly. I've been good."
Minato was flabbergasted.
"Beg later," Yamato grunted, clapping his hands together and drawing them apart. When they were about a foot apart, a spark of green appeared in the center—and then exploded into brown tendrils and a gigantic column of wood that he rather unceremoniously swung around to knock Mukade's legs out from under him. Naruto giggled.
"I can do you one better, Captain Yamato!"
That was about when Naruto summoned two clones: one to deflect attacks while he was preoccupied, and one to help him mold a Rasengan.
Minato looked like he'd just crapped his pants out of shock when Naruto barreled forward and planted his personal jutsu into what would have been the heart on the massive puppet construction. Then a heart-stoppingly handsome grin spread across his face, even though Naruto cried out in dismay when the jutsu wasn't powerful enough to put Mukade down, getting clipped by the massive hand that moved to bat him away in the instant when Naruto was within reach before jumping back. At least he caught himself and landed safely, immediately readying to leap at Mukade again.
Minato was still staring, looking like he'd just seen the essence of all that was good in the world.
'He's sure now,' Aiko concluded, feeling nothing at the thought instead of envious and possessive as she had predicted. 'He's sure Naruto is his son, and he's happy.'
As he should be, frankly. And… And Naruto deserved that, though he looked a bit stunned at the grin when he turned at Minato's voice.
"Naruto! I have a better idea. Come here, and make another one."
The teen gave Minato a look that implied he hadn't been paying attention. "Why? It didn't work."
He curled up the corners of his mouth to turn his grin catlike and held up a single hand, filling it with a Rasengan of his own chakra. It was bizarrely… green, for a jutsu that Aiko had always associated with Naruto's blue chakra. Curious, she kept an eye on them in between dodging the decreasing number of individual puppets. Shibi had discovered that he could drain them of chakra and prevent Mukade from using them again, but he had to leave kikai insects on them and deplete his arsenal. He'd dropped from the fight against the main opponent accordingly and let the people with the big, destructive jutsu pound him again and again. He was much more useful against the regular puppets outside of Mukade's direct control.
"Ultimate Supreme Rasengan!"
It was beautiful, a tumultuous mix of blue and green. Her jaw dropped, but not at the massive chakra construct that roared from father and son to just Naruto.
'That is by far the stupidest name I have ever heard.'
Her eyes met with Yamato's. He looked just as horrified as she felt. Maybe more, since he had a lot of respect for the guy. His cheeks turned pink with the effort of restraining what was probably laughter.
As one, every puppet that their opponent had been controlling fell limp, clattering over the floor when Mukade devoted all of his efforts to one issue. Naruto held it above his head like a beacon for a moment, letting the entire thing wreathe him in a spinning pillar of mixed light before he lowered it and sprinted for the weak spot where Mukade's second form was still visible. "Supreme Rasengan!" He called, and put Mukade down for what might be the last time.
'Yamato is probably too polite to laugh openly at the Fourth Hokage.' Aiko let out an unrestrained, barking laugh and felt her cheeks hurt with amusement. The laugh turned to a sniffling giggle exacerbated by the adrenaline rush, and she crossed her arms over her gut as if to hold in the laugh. It didn't work.
"I don't mean to critique your performance, little brother," Aiko gasped, bending over and pushing a fist into her knee, outright crying with hysterical laughter. She didn't notice Minato jerk and let his jaw drop, mouthing the words, 'little brother' to himself. "But you forgot the 'Ultimate' part!" She outright howled, and shook her head. "and you, Minato. Ultimate supreme Rasengan?" she asked incredulously, stumbling over the words as she rudely pointed at him. "I think that name made me a little dumber through exposure. You may as well-" she cut herself off and took a breath. Intentionally, she lowered her tone to mock in a tone as close to Minato's as possible and set her hands on her hips, "Most bestest awesome Rasengan! Super cool badass Rasengan! Why the hell not?"
Minato turned faintly pink and let the remnant chakra he'd built to contribute to the technique fade, still standing over the fallen criminal. "It was a split second thing," he protested weakly, looking slightly broken and baffled. "I had to call it something."
"You, uh." Yamato cleared his throat, and manfully offered, "You could just not shout something that one time and name it later."
"Heathens," Naruto said scornfully, letting his clone dissipate. "That's a great name!" He tried to scowl, but was too busy grinning for the expression to really work. "I'm going to rename all my techniques that way!"
A snort of an undignified high pitch of indeterminate meaning escaped Yamato's clenched lips at that point.
'Wow, Minato is just a big kid. That's definitely a childish name. It wouldn't have been at all out of character for one of the Academy students to shout something like that while playing ninja.'
For the first time, she realized that at this point in time, he wasn't really that much older than she was. He was somewhere from 19 to 22, probably.
She glanced at him. For some bizarre reason, he was staring at Kakashi as though he'd never seen him before, or he'd just committed some personal betrayal. God, what a weird guy.
Strangely, she found that charming. It was nice to see that Minato was just human. He was powerful and intelligent, but also a bit of a dweeb. Maybe that was where Naruto had gotten his fondness for dramatics. He didn't seem baffled by the frankly terrible name at all.
And that was when Mukade jerked back to life. The behemoth gave a horrible groan that shook the rubble on the ground and pounded its fists into the ground twice before pushing itself up, swaying sideways.
At the top, partially exposed by the damage, was the face of their real opponent. He looked absolutely unhinged at this point.
'Head injury when they knocked him down?' Aiko deduced. 'The puppet is nearly indestructible, not his body, and it's not like it is properly padded. That blow probably really shook him up.'
It would have been a convenient time for him to decide to end this farce. He didn't even seem capable of using his smaller puppets anymore, which left him so outnumbered that he was just going to get bashed down again and again until the internal bleeding did him in if nothing else. But that could take quite a while, and someone might get hurt.
'Maybe it's time to go to plan B.'
Sasuke bared his teeth in a feral war-cry and felt the strangely chill desert air cool his face in the instant before he brought his foot down on the puppet that had just tried to cut their group off, sending it into an actual impact crater before the shatter-resistant material finally gave up with a groan and crumpled inwards. "Keep moving!" he called, voice lower and raspier than usual from the particles he'd breathed in that scraped at his throat. Through the dust, he darted around the struggling caravan, trusting Sara to lead them while he picked off any non-living thing that got too close. Since the highest authority was watching, he made a half-assed attempt to limit the property damage, but to some extent, Sara was just going to have to deal and be grateful for her life.
'And that of her people,' he noted grimly. 'Few of them as there are.'
Either there were many more people interred in similar facilities across the city, or the thousands of people that had occupied this city had really been reduced to something like a hundred and fifty.
'Not my problem right now.' He spared a moment to extract the rubble that was pressing into the bloody gashes on his knuckles and seal the cuts with an easy wave of chakra. 'We've done enough. Sara can deal with the aftermath. Namikaze's team might even help them.'
Team Yamato wouldn't be around, after all. He didn't even think about the possibility that they would fail to go home. Aiko was too damn stubborn and pig-headed to even accept it as an option in theory, as far as he could tell. He wasn't going to be the one to intimate there was a reason to doubt it. It wasn't that he was intimidated by her, of course. The concept was singularly unpalatable to him as well. If he stayed here, he was going to have to watch his clan be killed again. Traitors or not, the idea of seeing a living Uchiha and knowing that he couldn't change events was enough to make him feel sick to his gut.
It was better to treat this as another mission and just move forward. This situation seemed like an unparalleled opportunity, but Sasuke smelt a lie. Nothing could ever come that easily. How much worse would it be to stay, attempt to fix events to his liking, and find that he either made things worse or that Aiko was correct about events being self-correcting? It would drive anyone mad. No, there was nothing for them here.
'No matter how suspiciously similar Naruto looks like the Fourth Hokage,' he noted with a scoff, ripping a puppet's clean head off. 'And isn't that interesting? The jinchuuriki looks like a lab specimen made from the man who sealed the Kyuubi. How did no one figure out that connection?' He grunted and wiped a bit of sweat off his brow, noting that the group appeared to be in the clear. No more enemies were appearing. They were in the final stretch now, most of the civilians piling in through some sort of odd gate.
"It's stuck!"
'I don't know, if only you had a superhuman shinobi with you who you've actually seen toss thousand pound puppets, you might be able to open it. Oh well, I suppose you should just push futilely at it yourself and cry that it's not working,' he mocked internally, instead moving to push Sara's hands aside and push the stone plate that would activate the gate himself. It immediately started grinding and opening with multiple sets of plate doors from the sides and above.
A ragged cheer came up from the assorted group behind them, stumbling and rushing inward to safety.
"Sasuke-san, would you help them in?"
He rolled his eyes, but shunshined inside the dark, dank little sanctuary that Sara had brought them to. There was a definite sort of stillness in the air. To help prevent turned ankles, he used a tiny puff of fire from his lips to light a candle from the protruding stone that served as crude shelves and handed it off to one of the more capable looking women nearby. He was moving to investigate a particularly sickly-looking sore on one of the men they'd rescued when a murmur of discontent traveled through the crowd.
"Princess!" Someone called out in mild distress from the crowd of civilians in the closing rock garden.
'The gate is closing. Why is the gate closing?'
Sara's face was outlined in shadow, the sun at her back. "I need to do what I can," she said firmly. "It's my duty to protect my people. Please, stay here, and be safe! Sasuke-san, I'm trusting you with my people." Her voice was firm, and she looked more regal than she ever had before.
'Mother, I'm going to make you proud, and protect our city,' Sara thought.
The wall began to grind shut with an awful racket. Sasuke slowly raised an eyebrow, flickered behind the girl who had thought to lock him in the rock garden, and effortlessly pushed her inside before stepping in himself, hands already stuffed in his pockets and slouching boredly. The room was shrouded in near darkness and awkwardly silent as the last hole to the outside was shut off.
"I don't appreciate the theatrics," he said dryly, voice echoing slightly. "You're a civilian. You're exponentially more likely to get someone killed running to protect you than do any real good outside." The others in the room were dead silent, probably pretending they weren't listening to their queen get scolded.
"But I'm the only one who can interact with the chakra!" she cried out, eyes wide with distress and her hands on her hips. "How can Mukade be stopped, if he can just keep regenerating?"
"The others will figure something out," he sighed, silently cursing this irritating girl. At this point in time, he would gladly trade her for three copies of Yamanaka Ino. "That's their job, and it's insulting for you to presume you can do it better with no training or qualifications whatsoever. Don't whine. If you intend to actually rule and not just be used by unscrupulous strangers to abuse your people by the hundreds, maybe you should sit quietly in a corner for a while and think about what it actually means to be responsible for the lives of hundreds of other people." With scathing sarcasm, he added that, "I've never been queen myself, but I suspect that it doesn't mean charging out on some half-cocked heroic mission that would probably leave them leaderless and you dead in a ditch."
Tsunade had always been a proponent of the tough love school of thought, and Sara looked like she needed a swift dose of reality. She was a smart girl, but the proper reaction to finding out that you'd been tricked into endangering the people you cared about was not to endanger them in search of revenge you weren't even qualified to get.
Minato had been right. It would be best if they convinced her to seal off the well of chakra so it couldn't be used by someone unscrupulous again. But he'd only accept that it had to be done now if Aiko came and got them on Yamato or Minato's orders after reassessing the situation.
"This isn't working," Yamato muttered under his breath as the monstrous form Mukade had taken picked itself back up and then spontaneously grew a spiked tail like a scorpion for no apparent reason. Levity aside, if the combined efforts of Minato and Naruto (two heavy hitters if he'd ever seen one) wouldn't put Mukade down, then he hadn't been lying about having nearly limitless power as long as he could steal from Rouran's supply. They couldn't eliminate the threat he posed without removing his access to the chakra well he was siphoning. The easiest way to do that would be to let Aiko grab him and Hiraishin him out of city limits. Of course, she would need a seal to travel to, either his or Naruto's, since Sasuke had already been sent away somewhere they definitely did not need to send the missing nin… He raised his voice into a sharp order. "Naruto! I want you to head out the East Gate, it's closest. Kakashi, accompany him."
The bafflement of the other team was apparent, but he didn't feel the need to explain his plan. They'd understand in a minute.
He could have gone himself, but there had to be two teams. Aiko could take Mukade away from his power source, but he would still have to be fought to the point of exhaustion in order to be killed. She could hardly do that alone. But whoever remained here would have to stall and keep Mukade from causing more harm than necessary until Naruto passed the limits of the chakra well, something even an amateur sage would be better equipped to gauge than he. He hoped, at least.
'Besides, I'm more equipped to stall than Naruto is. He goes all out, and that would be wasted here.'
That would make four people against Mukade until he and the two ANBU members could catch up. At least, if Minato had the sense to travel to the seal he'd given Naruto, it would.
Despite not understanding what was going on, the other team leader seemed to decide they must have a decent plan. When Kakashi turned to Minato for orders (reminding him that this kid didn't know him or trust him as a comrade yet) the blonde nodded. "Go with him."
"Ugh, really?" Naruto cancelled his clones and jumped over a poisoned blade from one of the hundreds of puppets swarming like maggots. "We'll kick so much ass that you old people won't believe it. Come on, chibi-kashi!"
"What are you talking about?" the preteen grouched, giving Minato one last resentful look as if hoping the older blonde would change his mind and take back the order to follow Naruto.
"I'll come with," Aiko offered, falling in. She wasn't much use in that fight anyways. Three would have an easier time getting out than two, after all, and she could instantly travel back to Yamato to get Mukade once they'd gotten out of city limits. Besides, she would know when they were far enough this way without having to flicker to Naruto and check. It was probably for the best that Mukade didn't know that they were going to take him away from his battery. He'd work much harder to put them down if he knew that was possible.
"What are they doing?" Minato called out, using another barrage of his shuriken shadow clones to push Mukade back and keep him from pursuing the younger team.
Yamato shrugged, before realizing that the older man couldn't see him. "I can't explain right now, but you'll want to go to Naruto. You'll know when."
Minato gave him a skeptical look, but just indulged himself in one last look at the backs of his kids.
His kids.
It was probably an inappropriate time to feel as good as he did at that moment, but he couldn't help it. A grin split his features, which was probably a bit creepy when he was engaged in a fight for his life. 'I get to have a family. Does this mean that Kushina really is serious? I don't see how else I could get a red-headed daughter.'
That brought up another can of worms, of course. His protective instincts weren't entirely certain if the 15 year old needed to be given a stern talking-to for apparently ending up with someone he only knew as a 9 year old, or if Kakashi needed to be disciplined for his alarming decision to start a relationship with his daughter.
'Then again, he's not going to ever try to sneak around me,' Minato mused, considering the possibilities. 'That would cut down on teenage shenanigans.'
"What is going on?" Kakashi half-shouted, his high pitched voice clearly irritable about leaving the fight.
"You'll see," Naruto grinned, heady with anticipation.
"Close your mouths and run, gentlemen," Aiko drawled, trying to slip out of her unprofessional good mood and into business mode. She wasn't worried, precisely. Naruto and Kakashi were both excellent shinobi and might be able to take Mukade down even if she wasn't there. Still, the responsible thing to do would be to focus.
The Hiraishin barely needed to be thought about. No matter how big his stupid puppet was, she could move it. There didn't seem to be any significant connection between mass and effort, now that she was doing the damn technique properly.
But what would come after? She didn't want to depend on one of the boys whipping out something massively destructive and just sit back to watch. Aiko wasn't a transportation system, she was formidable shinobi in her own right and the idea of counting on someone else to fight her battles galled.
Sen Tsurara would be acceptable, but not nearly as destructive as the poorly-named-but-epic Ultimate Super Awesome Badassness Rasengan or whatever the hell it was. If that combined technique hadn't actually put him down, hers surely wouldn't, and it took several seconds to regenerate anyways.
No, she would be better off planting explosives. Probably explosives attached to Hiraishin, since those could be detonated from any distance and not simply a crude timer or block detonation like the other explosives she knew how to make. It would require that she get in rather close to all that awful spinning, poisoned weaponry, but then again, so would pretty much everything in her arsenal with significant firepower at all. She'd just have to not get hit.
"We're out," Naruto barked, skidding to a stop. "Be ready to dodge, chibi-chan." Kakashi made a thoroughly revolted face and opened his mouth to say something biting.
Aiko didn't hear it, because she was gripping Yamato's arm to steady herself against the shaking of the ground in the area where she'd left the fight against Mukade. Well, not the exact location, but there was an easy to see trail showing where the rampage had wandered.
"Holy shi-"
"Shibi!" Choza interrupted, face pink. "That's not appropriate in front of a lady."
She gave him a look askance, but refrained from commenting that she was hardly a lady. "I'll see you boys in a minute," Aiko called out with more bravado than she felt, flipping and dodging around the flying rubble and chakra strings to latch onto the end of Mukade's scorpion tail thing. It was probably the fastest piece of the puppet, and therefore the one he was most likely be able to hit her with. The last thing she saw before she laid her palms flat against Mukade and latched on with her chakra was Minato's wide blue eyes. Ha. Aiko had to close her own eyes to concentrate, select Naruto's seal, and pull Mukade's grotesque puppet body all the way outside of Rouran's city limits, well away from the ventilation system he'd been feeding off of.
Apparently, Mukade wasn't one of the people who felt dazed by unwilling Hiraishin travel, because the tail she was latched onto cracked like a whip, sending her flying along for the ride, concentrating on clutching desperately for just a second. Just one.
That was all it took. A splitting pain registered before the visible light of the thin chakra strings that had emerged from one of the joints in the puppet did. She lost her grip on the tail, letting her momentum carry her limply up and at an angle away from Mukade's bulk. Aiko might have completely blacked out for a moment, because the next thing she knew was the ground rushing up to meet her with monster truck force.
'That is going pulp me like an orange,' Aiko realized without the necessary alarm that should accompany that kind of realization. Somehow she managed to grip Naruto's tag and lurch into the ground at his feet, coughing up blood, hot and metallic in her mouth.
Dazed, she looked down. It was a wonder that the five strings that had connected with her torso hadn't knocked her off the puppet on their own.
'I suppose it's that Uzumaki constitution and chakra I have to thank,' she blinked stupidly, letting the hand that wasn't supporting her ghost over the five bloody lines gashed across her torso at a severe angle that opened a relatively thin set of slashes that covered the area from her right hip to her left shoulder. Her own chakra must have neutralized Mukade's as soon as it properly clashed. If it hadn't dissolved them, the strings would have sliced her like a cheese grater.
'Well, that's embarrassing,' she noted, blinking back tears of pain. This was nothing. This was just a distraction. The cuts were so thin, and her constitution was so good that she had no excuse to lie down and die. Of course, her agility was going to be shot all to hell, and 'not being where the other guy hits' was her main strength in taijutsu.
New plan.
Mukade's machine was made of a light weight but durable organic material. One built to function in the arid desert.
It wouldn't do well with water.
Oddly, she didn't register hearing a thing. The world was moving in slow motion. Naruto was wreathed in a horrific red light, eyes feral and nails extended to points. Kakashi was dodging something that looked terrifyingly like a blast from a science fiction plasma cannon. Minato had suddenly appeared at Naruto's side and lurched backwards.
And she dug deep within herself, opened her mouth, and wordlessly, signlessly, took a steadying breath and forced up a massive ball of lurching, angry chakra into a powerful spigot of nearly freezing water. It impacted Mukade's machine slightly above the rapidly spinning hula hoop contraption, making a mushy impact crater that squished the clay up into concentric circles. The violent upswell practically pulled her insides up with mind-blowing force, and her teeth clacked shut. For a moment, her vision was white. When it came back, her body was already going through the motions to pick up the water dripping off Mukade's puppet body and throw it back at him, forcing it between the joints, turning it to a slimy mess and reducing his maneuverability.
'There's still no sound,' she noted idly, eyes heavy. It was a bit hard to tell, because the rushing in her ears could have been moving water, but it wasn't.
A wave of searing hot chakra hit her like a wall, and she flung her hands up to protect her face. That let it connect with her torso unabated and bubble into the open cuts that made her top downright indecent, even slicing through the gray half-mask slumped around her neck like a stretchy cowl for a time when she'd need anonymity. The thick straps for her sword still clung together, but her knapsack was a completely lost cause. It had hit the dirt behind her.
The chakra seemed to have been coming from Naruto. Apparently she had more hearing than she had realized, because she could hear Mukade screaming.
The world was tilting.
Only a few moments ago, the sun had been above and to her left. It was quickly listing above head and now to her right.
But she never hit the ground. The world was a bit blurry from a combination of what was probably shock and abrupt chakra drain, but she managed to make out a wild mane of yellow hair and a strong jaw. Relieved, she let her body collapse and registered Minato's scent for the first time. It was nice and comforting- masculine and with more than a hint of weapon polish. "Daddy," Aiko sighed, curling her fingers into his flak jacket and nudging her head into his side.
She came to with a stinging in her eyes, and her first reflex was to swat violently at the man hovering above her. "Don't," Sasuke tersely said through his teeth, releasing her wrist and gently hooking two fingers under her jaw to check her pulse. "You really have no sense for restraint."
"Nggggh." She groaned, baring her teeth mindlessly at him and attempting to pull away from the brisk check-up she was getting.
"You'll be fine, you whiner." Sasuke flicked her nose with two fingers a little painfully. Aiko whimpered and crossed her eyes, a hand flying up to protect it from another blow.
"You're mean. A mean man," she accused, sitting up. There was a horrible pain under her eyes, but everything else felt pretty functional. A little beat up and weary, but functional. "What happened?"
"Not much, you've only been out a couple of moments. It was just shock and you were already healing up." Sasuke's dark eyes flickered over to the left. She followed them to see Naruto sitting beside Minato and talking quietly. She managed a smile.
"That's good. Mukade's dead, then?"
Sasuke grunted. "No. Not yet." When she turned an alarmed look at him, he deigned to explain, "Namikaze thinks that we'll be whisked away as soon as he's dead. Mukade is unconscious and immobilized. Just to make sure there are no more screw-ups."
"Oh." Aiko looked around, realizing for the first time that they were back within Rouran. Only out for a few minutes, her ass. Well. Unless Minato had taken everyone back, she supposed. That was possible.
"Ah, I see you're awake." Minato was almost offensively cheery, giving Naruto a sturdy clap on the shoulder. Kakashi looked more than a bit sullen about having to share the attention, but didn't say anything. "There's just a few more things to take care of. Princess Sara and I have the chakra ley lines stabilized and sealed. Mukade is ready to go—you'll need his head for the bounty, right?" At Yamato's amiable nod, he forged on. "Alright. The last thing is the most important. Too much knowledge of the future could change the past, and we can't allow that to happen. I want to use a secret jutsu that will lock those memories away."
"No deal!" Aiko blurted, eyes wide with alarm. 'I do not want anyone else fucking around with my head.'
Apparently, he hadn't expected objections. Which was insane! Who would allow that without so much as a second thought?
Apparently, everyone else here would, if the Fourth Hokage was the one who suggested it. A little bit of bile rose up. "Look, assuming that your argument holds water and that it's even possible to change the past, there's absolutely no reason for you to use that jutsu on anyone who is going back to the future. It won't matter for any of us." Aiko gestured at her team.
Minato looked a bit unnerved by her vehemence, but conceded the point. "I didn't think of it that way. I wasn't planning on permanently sealing away the memories, in any case," he explained soothingly. "Just suppressing them for a set time period. How long should that be?"
Aiko gave him a watery smile, thankful that he'd dropped the subject. "Oh, say… Nineteen years and eight months. Approximately," she calculated, thinking back to the newspaper date she'd checked when they'd first left Rouran.
He rolled his eyes, and mockingly echoed, "Approximately. Right."
It actually was approximate. She wasn't going to count days.
"You're really going?" Sara asked quietly, staring at Naruto like he had all the answers to the universe. "But…"
"You'll be fine," Sasuke gruffly interrupted, turning his face away. Naruto companionably punched him in the shoulder.
"For once, he's right," Naruto smiled, carelessly and for once looking handsome and adult instead of adorable. "You're going to be a great queen, Sara. And I bet we'll meet again one day."
'No, you won't. She probably dies in a couple of years. Why are you lying to yourselves?'
"Not to rush this, but I think we should take care of this before he wakes up," Yamato pointed out with a self- effacing laugh, indicating Mukade. "He was troublesome enough the first time. I don't really like the idea of letting him realize he can grab onto chakra again, even if the source is sealed off."
"You're probably right," Minato sighed. "Well. I suppose this is goodbye, for now." He regarded them warmly. "I'll be forgetting you, technically, but I bet by the time you get back to Konoha, we'll have a lot to talk about."
It was a damn good thing he wasn't looking at Naruto, because Aiko had a much better poker face.
"Who wants the honors?" Shibi droned, sounding uninterested. He probably wanted to go home, too.
"I'll do it," Yamato sighed. "I had hoped to return him alive to be tried, but clearly that's not possible." With a meaty thud, he separated Mukade's head and quickly worked to tuck it into the sealing scroll prepared for that purpose.
'Duh, he's a missing ninja. Of course he refused to be taken alive. Gaara wasn't asking you to bring him back to Suna for tea and gossip.'
She didn't say anything like that, of course.
"What do you know, I think you were right, old man," Aiko huffed, looking down at her hands. They were turning a translucent blue that was a bit creepy, really.
"Old man?" Minato scrunched up his nose—in oh god, that was the way that she and Naruto both made that motion—and looked miffed. "I'm not old at a-"
Wait a minute. That bastard!
"Wait!" she interrupted, waving aside his boring denials of his obviously decrepit state. "You never taught me that shadow shuriken jutsu show me the handsigns quick!" Aiko ran her words together, trying to get it all out in time as she rapidly faded from intransience.
It was already too late. The last Minato ever saw of her, Aiko was giving him a stink-eye that any father could be proud of.