"Um… Not sure what I should do with these." Aiko bit her lip, looking at the oversized clothes she had shucked and set on top of the counter before her shower the night before. It would probably be polite to wash them before she returned them, right? It would also be a shame to return them from her laundry, because they still carried Kakashi's scent as they were, but they were also a bit sandy and wrinkled. Kakashi would probably launder them again right away because he didn't use the same detergent, but it couldn't be helped.
For form's sake, at least, she dumped them in the washer and liberally poured on some of the syrupy green washing fluid (and took a deep breath of the artificial but still yummy apple scent) before clanging the lid shut and moving to working on cleaning the sandy bits out of her own boots with a grimace. Hers were the only shoes in the genkan- Naruto and Karin had already left for their morning conditioning, and Hinata was out for a run with Kiba and Akamaru.
She had another two days of restricted activity before she could return to training, and Aiko already had an idea as to how she would spend at least some of the time. Learning how to set intangible seals and attach them to whatever she wanted had been a lucky break, but it also made her think of the potential problems that could arise from having so many active seals loose at once. Minato had utilized hundreds of them at a time—it was mind-boggling when she really thought about it. It also made it easy to understand just how other people had managed to get a hold of copies. No one had ever successfully deconstructed one and he'd blown through any traps set for him, but she didn't pretend to think she was immortal. There was always someone bigger and badder than you, even if you were as powerful as Minato had been.
Granted, his seals had dissolved on his death, so at least no one had been able to reverse engineer them. That had been a good bit of forethought. Hiraishin was only rare because it was jealously guarded. Jiraiya scoffed at the idea because he was a bit of an intellectual elitist, but she was sure that someone out there would be just as capable as she was of patching together even an inferior version with access to a finished copy.
Aiko would rather trap hers than let that happen. Hiraishin was nearly unbeatable… when no one else had it. She didn't need competition, thank you very much. Fuck fair play.
'And thank you Danzo-sama, for giving me the concept for this combination seal,' she silently mocked while rummaging through her notes on his silencing seal. He had combined a locking mechanism with paralysis. That wasn't exactly what she needed for her purposes, but it did make her think about how she could combine a locking mechanism with a destructive element that she could activate from a distance.
It was an undoubtedly nasty concept. If she felt anyone twanging at the structure of a seal and attempting to pick the lock, she could reach out and sever the connection so that it literally blew up in their faces. She had no idea exactly what it would do if it were attached directly to a person- would they blow up entirely, or would they just blink and suddenly be missing a patch of skin?
'Somehow, the thought is more amusing than anything else. I could probably vary the explosion by how violently I trigger it. I should test that out.'
Maybe it was just a little bit insanely paranoid, but no one had ever died from being too careful. At least, a statistically significant percentage of people didn't die from being too careful. There'd probably been some freak accident in Konoha's history that killed the twitchiest bastard around, but that was beside the point.
It was pitifully easy to draw up her additions after having mulled over them on the trip back (getting interrupted by the washer's beep mid-process) and attach them to a Hiraishin seal. She set it aside on her bedside table to show Jiraiya later, straining to reach from her cross-legged position against the wall at the head of her bed. She gave a stretch when she was done before scooting forward just a bit and extending her legs, digging her toes into the soft fabric of her comforter.
Her head lightly rested against the cool wall, pushing her hair out to tumble over her shoulders while she considered the implications of what she had just done.
'You know, this could be considered a way of perfecting a tracking specialty. Now that I can set a seal with a chakra pulse, I only have to be able to touch someone anywhere once to find them again. If I use the trapped one, I don't even have to find them again unless to confirm the kill.'
Aiko was sure that this episode of tampering wouldn't affect anything about the Hiraishin itself, but it couldn't hurt to have an expert opinion when Jiraiya was apparently willing to help her out. She'd have to hurry on that, though, before he left town. It would be best to switch out all her old seals for new ones as soon as possible and destroy the less efficient copies. Leaving prototypes lying around would be just idiotic. Well. Maybe she'd leave Kakashi and Yamato with untrapped seals. It wouldn't really be necessary in those cases. They were both trustworthy and not about to play 'rescue me Daphne' like poor Naruto might if Akatsuki got their way. She'd both give him a trapped seal on a kunai and a regular one as an invisible tattoo.
"You know, I thought Karin was exaggerating when she said you almost never leave the house for anything but work or training." Naruto frowned at her from the doorway. "That's so boring, Aiko. There's tons of stuff to do in Konoha that I couldn't do while I was away." He hopped onto her bed in a crouch, sending her bouncing up unwillingly, and he wiggled into her personal space. "Ino-chan's getting a group together to go out to the lake. I'll go if you do."
'He's too good at the puppy eyes.'
Aiko flinched back, torn between wanting to make Naruto happy and not wanting to commit to a day around a large group of people. Once she was there, she couldn't escape without looking like a rude lunatic. "That's not fair," she muttered, giving him an irritable shove that sent Naruto dramatically flopping onto his side on the bed.
"I'm wounded," he wailed, snatching the unguarded pillow and curling up like a pill bug, face squooshed miserably into the blue fabric. "If you loved me, you'd go to the lake, and get a tan, and build a sand castle, and we can have a water fight, and there'll be a picnic, and-"
Aiko rolled her eyes and tugged out the pillow from behind her back to whap him with. She wasn't fast enough- he wrestled it away from her lightning-fast and added it to his horde, lifting his face just enough to give her a cheeky grin before sticking his nose back into the fabric.
"Alright, alright, I'll go."
He wasn't going to leave her alone about it anyways.
"Cool!" Naruto sat up like a meercat, grinning toothily. "I knew you'd agree. S'ats why Ino is waiting in the front room. She says you don't own a swimming suit?"
"I do own a…" She trailed off. "Huh. Why does Ino know more about my wardrobe than I do?"
Her brother shrugged, tugging on her arm and nearly sending her to the floor before she managed to unhook her legs and get her feet on the floor. He didn't even seem to notice, steam-rolling towards her door. "She knows everything, I guess?"
"Not everything, I need to take out a load of laundry before I go or it'll wrinkle." She raised her voice to be heard and pulled her arm out of Naruto's grip. "It'll be just a minute, Ino!"
"Kay!" came the answering shout from where Ino was probably raiding the cupboards for cookies. They were the disappointing boxed kind, but no one had been baking lately.
She'd washed Kakashi's clothes alone, so it only took a moment to fold them and stick them in her top drawer to deal with later and keep them safe from Smaug, who had finally become enough of a calamity to deserve the name.
Aiko tried very hard not to grimace and remembered the mental note she'd made while being lugged back to Konoha- she was going to pack so many extra changes of underwear and hide them in a seal that it wasn't funny. Hers had been shredded by explosive clay beyond all hope of recovery along with those poor shorts. It was probably unimportant at the time compared to what had happened to her still-sore hip and leg, but it had weighed a lot more heavily on her mind on that awful trip home.
Going commando was one thing. Going commando in someone else's pants? She couldn't help but cringe as she made her way to the front of the house. Wasn't being a ninja supposed to be glamorous? Ugh. The things she put up with for this stupid job. If that realization had occurred to Kakashi, he hadn't given any indication. Maybe he was just going to politely burn the pants when she returned them.
She'd already thrown away the bra she'd been wearing, a wasted expense she bitterly regretted. But she just couldn't wear it again now that the matching panties were gone. It would sit in her drawer and bother her every time she saw it.
"You have a bit of chocolate on your lip," Naruto helpfully pointed out.
Ino fluttered her eyelashes in what Aiko was sure was fake surprise. She gave her friend a dirty look from behind Naruto's broad shoulder that Ino completely ignored. "Oh. I don't feel it. Could you help me get it off?"
'Desperate, desperate, I am really desperate,' Aiko silently mocked. 'God Ino, talk about subtle.'
He shrugged and stepped forward to swipe delicately at her lower lip with a finger. He promptly proceeded to stick it in his mouth to lick the sweet off with a grin. "Kay." Ino determinedly maintained eye contact the whole time, mouth slightly parted. Of course, it was subtle enough for Naruto, so the strategy may have been well-chosen. She tricked him into touching her and got him to associate her with candy. But still…
'Ugh, gross.'
It was one thing to think her otouto was adorable. It was something completely different to have to watch Ino try so hard to flirt with him.
"Okay, time to go." She pushed past them and pulled on her newly cleaned open toe boots. They'd be weird with beach wear, but she couldn't force up the effort to care.
"I'll see you guys there, okay?" Naruto called over his shoulder. "I already have my trunks. I'll just meet up with Chouji and help him get the food over."
"Sounds good!" Ino chirped back.
Aiko waited until they were outside to give her friend a little shove. "Seriously, you pervert? Could you wait to molest my brother with your eyes until I'm not in the room? I'm not entirely sure what that was, but I feel dirty now." The shudder she gave wasn't entirely unfeigned.
Ino made a rude sound in return. "Whatever. I was doing no such thing."
That blatant lie aside, the two made a trip to the downtown area where Aiko grabbed literally the first swimsuit she saw- one of the ones that had been on display in the window.
"Holy cow," Ino whimpered. "My mom would kill me if I wore that."
She raised an eyebrow skeptically and shook the green slips of fabric at her friend. "Seriously? It's just a bikini."
Ino gave a nervous laugh. "Are you kidding? I have a one-piece with an attached skirt." She paused. "That reminds me, we're supposed to get the beach towels, sunscreen, and tanning lotion."
Aiko gave her friend a dirty look. "And I assume I'm to pay for all of this?"
"It's not like you can't afford it," Ino said practically. "Oh, by the way. I just got the first edition copy of that first book in the mail. I opened an account for you and a box at the post office instead of sending anything to your house. I can give you the key if you stop by my house on the way home." Then she stuck her tongue out at Aiko, barely managing to suck it back between her teeth before the redhead could make a grab for it. "And no, I'm not a moocher. I brought my wallet too."
"I don't really mind," she admitted. "Just keep your allowance. How many people are we expecting?"
"Ah…" Ino put a finger to her chin. "I think ten total. You and Karin, plus the three groups who graduated in my class."
"That's not so bad," Aiko muttered, carelessly pushing open the door to another boutique and ignoring the jingling bells above head. "Wait, how the hell did anyone get Sasuke to agree to this?"
"Who knows," Ino snorted. "Naruto did it. Maybe they made it into some sort of competition. I don't understand boys. By the way… You really shouldn't have made that joke about them. Temari believed it."
Confused, Aiko turned to look at her friend. "What are you talking about?"
"Temari believes they're a couple." It would have seemed serious if it hadn't been for the smile tugging on Ino's lips. "While she thinks it's totally hot, she's moved on to trying to flirt with some other hunk, I'm sure."
"And you think that's hilarious," Aiko deadpanned before grabbing a pile of oversized beach towels and counting off. "One, two, three…"
"It is," Ino casually interrupted, tugging on another pile. "Don't get those, these are much nicer. Is there a reason you're only grabbing green ones?"
"I don't want to have a ton of mismatched towels," she frowned, neatly piling the less luxurious fabrics back up on the shelf in favor of the ones Ino had pointed out. "Wouldn't that drive you nuts?"
Ino snorted. "God, you're so weird." She made an affectionate kissy face at her friend. "I say that with love."
"You say that because you're eying that nail polish," Aiko shot back. "What's so interesting about it?"
"Kay, you caught me." The little silver charms on Ino's wrist chimed when she reached to pull out a little bottle of slate gray polish. "It's those really cool scented polishes."
Aiko stopped entirely to give her friend a condescending look. "Aren't those for kids?"
"No, you absolute plebian," Ino snarked. "Not the temporary gel things. These are perfumed and they smell when they're dry, not wet." She gave a disappointed frown. "They're so expensive, though."
She took a moment to roll her eyes. Ino was so damn cheap. "Just grab one of every color that you like and we'll try them all out. Maybe one of them will smell good enough to distract me from that nasty coconut suntan lotion Karin smothers herself in."
Ino whapped her with a towel. "She uses the brand I recommended!"
"Then I'll need even more scented polish to distract me from your mutual stench."
The affronted look she received in return for that jibe was pretty glorious.
Ino was already wearing her suit under her skirt and a sleeveless shirt, so Aiko made a hasty wardrobe change in the restroom while Ino went through the check out with her wallet. Ino gave a mocking wolf-whistle as soon as she saw her, puffing her lips out. "Look at you and your naked self!"
She just rolled her eyes at her friend. "Whatever. They wouldn't sell this if it wasn't decent." Still, she pulled a towel out of one of the bags and tied it around her hips. Even with their errands, they weren't the last of the group to meet at the gates. Almost everyone was waiting- Hinata, Karin, Sasuke, Kiba, and Shino had all beat Naruto and Ino's boys out.
Sasuke and Kiba, neither of whom were particularly close to Ino, seemed oddly pleased to see them. Maybe they'd been waiting for a while and thought the girls would be dragging the slackers behind. Ino did usually perform that function, but unfortunately not today. As sad as it was, Naruto was the most punctual out of the three still missing and would probably be the one to urge Chouji and Shikamaru along.
They could be waiting a while. He didn't have much of a sense for urgency and timing.
Ino immediately tossed their bags at a surprised-looking Shino and pulled their papers for approval to leave the village out of her pocket to go talk to the gate guards. Aiko went with her and listened idly. She'd never bothered to get a pass like this before, but it wasn't an unfamiliar concept. They were only going about a mile and a half out of the village, and day trips like this were often approved. They would have to return before the gate guards were switched out for ANBU at night, but other than that their only possible restriction was being ready to return to duty if a messenger was sent for any of them. Chouji and Naruto wandered up with Shikamaru plodding along sullenly behind them, each laden with what looked like a terrifying amount of food. Naruto was cheerily lugging a small cooler, not even having the decency to look strained under the weight of a plastic tub filled with ice and liquids.
Aiko let herself meander to the back of the group as they left, a little more comfortable at a distance. Of course, this group was full of antisocial people like herself, so she ruefully nodded at Shino when he pulled the same trick. At least he didn't try to talk.
The group took the entire walk at a civilian pace and set up on the southern shore about twenty minutes after they'd left. It… wasn't bad. Hinata was the only other girl not slathering herself in the nasty suntan lotion, so they took turns helping each other with sunscreen and immediately laid down to take sun naps while their rowdier peers took the plunge at a run, screaming and splashing each other. Naruto and Sasuke seemed to be very seriously involved in a competition to see who could use jutsu to slap the other with an enormous wave of water. Sasuke won by summoning a surprised looking slug that plopped down and soaked even Ino where she was examining shells in the shallows. Shino plopped down about five feet away from Hinata and immediately pulled out a book.
When she woke up from her nap, drowsy and warm, the first thing Aiko noticed was that the group had moved on to playing in the sand. Kiba was currently being buried in sand. Of course, he was fighting it, which was probably why Sasuke was sitting on his legs and Naruto was using water clones to hold him down and further soak him every time he struggled too violently. Aiko sat up and rolled her eyes fondly, smacking dry lips. Those two were such a nightmare.
"Want a drink?"
At her nod, Chouji tossed her an unopened bottle of grape juice. "Thanks." She uncapped it (grimacing at the scrape of the textured cap against her palm) and took a long pull. "S'good." Hinata blearily sat up, wiping at an eye with her hand and gave a soulful look in the direction of the cooler. Chouji snorted and propped it back open. "Have a preference?"
Hinata had apparently heard of the scented polishes before and was familiar enough to have a preference. She took the soft pink one (scented like candy), so Aiko picked one at random by color (red) and painted her own claws. She only checked the scent when it was dry and was pleasantly surprised by the tea rose scent.
"Better than I expected," she admitted easily to an insufferably smug Ino with grey floral scented nails. It retained the aroma all day, so she kept catching a whiff when she moved her hands around.
'I can't help but think that this would be an excellent aid for setting olfactory genjutsu,' she noted. It actually wasn't uncommon to use nail polish for a spot of color that snagged focus in a similar way for visual genjutsu, so her idea wasn't completely unique. If she had more experience with genjutsu, she might have tried it. As it was, she had easily picked up the visual one Jiraiya gave her, but that one only affected the one sense and she had no training in other types of genjutsu. Shame.
It was amazing that they could waste an entire day doing nothing of value, but it was dark before they had put the last touches on the city made of sand (and then destroyed them all in a mixed jutsu and mock-wrestling fight that reminded Aiko of nothing so much as Godzilla in Tokyo).
Papers stamped and ids checked, the group moved to separate at the gates. Ino made a violent grab for Aiko's arm when she meandered too closely to Naruto, Karin and Hinata.
"Ah, hold on, you're coming to my house remember?"
She had forgotten entirely, actually. By the way Ino rolled her eyes it was obvious, so Aiko didn't even bother lying, just tagged along obediently.
"Don't run in the house!"
Ino grumbled something incoherent at her mother and stopped her dramatic slide across the wooden floor on her slippers, crabbily padding to her bedroom. Aiko cringed imperceptibly at the doorway as she always did. There was just something so offensively disorganized about it. The walls were all painted different shades of purple and covered in mirrors, paper flowers, and a hundred bits of assorted jewelry and beauty products. Ino was like a magpie in human form- if it was pretty, she wanted it.
Despite the way it looked like hellish chaos to Aiko's somewhat minimalist eye, Ino easily located what she'd come for and passed it over. Aiko had to cringe at the cover. "That's not what I drew at all," she grumbled.
Ino gave an apologetic shrug. "They thought the illustrations were too odd, and they re-did them in a more palatable style. If you hate them, you can send back an argument or correction before they print the real edition for sale. But if you send something similar, they're just going to use their artist's stuff."
"Ugh, yuck." Aiko frowned at it. It was garish, with thick lines and overly complicated shading. My Neighbor Totoro just belonged with a subdued spring palette.
'Of course, I do know someone with a more traditional set of artistic sensibilities… Sai could sketch something that would come closer to suiting everyone. And it would provide me with an excuse to spend time with him. That'd please Tsunade…'
That decided, she felt a bit more cheerful. "I'm sorry I made you copy that one out," she apologized as they walked back down the hall. "I guess you were right when you said it wouldn't be a big deal to send off the original copy. You can just pick one off the shelf next time."
"Does that mean I'm your manager?" Ino teased, looking thoroughly pleased with herself, even sandy and disheveled as she was.
Aiko gave a huff of amusement. "Sure, I guess. What's your going rate?"
"Fifty percent of the profits," Ino joked, opening the front door politely.
"Okay."
"Wait, what?" Ino stared dumbly, mouth hanging open. She looked so baffled that Aiko had to stifle a laugh. The blonde scowled. "That's not funny, you jerk."
"I'm not joking. I would never have gotten around to it on my own. Either they won't make anything and so there's no point in being greedy, or there's enough of them to publish that there'll be plenty to go around." Aiko shrugged. "Makes sense to me."
"Er." She fiddled nervously with her hair. "Okay, I guess?" Ino asked uncertainly. "I mean, thank you," she corrected.
"Actually, we should each take 45 %," Aiko amended. "So that we can pay an artist. I have someone in mind."
When she got home, Aiko was immediately distracted by the alarming realization that someone had actually managed to start the rice on fire. She tossed the book down and completely forgot about the errands she'd planned to run that night, so the borrowed clothes lay forgotten in her room even after she'd salvaged dinner and crawled under her covers.
The warmth of sunlight on her bare shoulders prodded Aiko awake. She blearily forced one eye open to glare at the stupid window and wish she had pulled the curtain shut before she had gone to bed. That brought the unusual realization that she'd slept an entire night.
"Weird," she muttered, before pulling her arms over her head and stretching out every muscle she could feel. Aiko smacked her lips and collapsed back into the covers for another few minutes. Drowsy as she was, it took a good half hour to pry her body out of bed. "I think someone turned up the gravityyy," she moaned to the ceiling. Resentfully, she pulled a peach sun-dress on over her head and stuffed her feet in the white cat-faced shoes Naruto had sent her so long ago.
Hey, she was off the clock. She didn't have to figure out real clothes.
Aiko turned a white knapsack completely over on her bed and let the assorted papers and little things like chapstick and-were those socks?- fall out. 'I'll take care of it later.' She slipped both copies of the Totoro book in along with her sealing notebook and pulled the bag over her shoulders.
Unsurprisingly, Jiraiya was easier to find than Sai. His distinctive back was hunched over in front of a very familiar fence. Granted, it was one she usually saw from the other side... She politely tapped his shoulder from behind and then backed up when he swiveled to turn and stand. He blinked confusedly for a moment, and then readjusted to look down. "Oh. It's you," he said flatly. "I don't come here to look at teenaged girls, you know."
She gave an apologetic smile. "I don't mean to distract you from your research for long. I just wanted you to look over a modification I wanted to add to that seal we were working on."
He heaved a put-upon sigh and held out one of his massive, meaty paws. "Hand it over, then."
Aiko flipped the notebook to the right page, smoothed the paper down, and let him tug it out of her grip. The older man kept a poker face as he looked over what was there, mind clearly preoccupied- and then he tilted his head down and gave her a dry look. "That's just mean, girlie."
His voice didn't actually sound disapproving, so she just shrugged. "I don't like the idea of letting anyone get an extended look at my seal," she demurred innocently.
The rude snort almost made her jump. "I don't think that's going to be a big problem. Still… I wouldn't bother with it, but this should work just fine. You're a paranoid little bastard, aren't you?"
"It has other uses," she weakly argued, feeling a flush steal over her cheeks. "Like-"
"Blowing people up?" At her sheepish look, Jiraiya ruffled her hair. "I wasn't born yesterday, you know. I can tell that this seal is weaponized. The only thing I'd have to say is that you should watch the thickness of this line here," he indicated. "Otherwise, this is solid work."
The notebook nearly hit her in the nose when he tossed it back at her. She caught it just in time, cringing at the way the pages rustled and bent.
"Now go away or be quiet. I have research to do." Jiraiya blushed, a silly grin flooding across his features and wrinkling lines all the way up to his eyes. "Heh heh heh…"
Aiko chose both- she quietly wandered away, hands fiddling with the straps at her shoulders and looking at the dirt she was kicking up.
'How on earth am I going to find Sai? What does he even do, besides missions? He probably doesn't spent a lot of time outside wherever he lives or training.'
Well. The first step would be to ascertain whether or not he was working, wouldn't it? It would be so wasteful to spend all day checking unlikely locations if he was out of the village.
'This would be easier if I could go talk to Tsunade herself,' Aiko pouted. Still… she did know an intermediary.
It was probably a good thing that it was Sunday, then. Now that she finally had a destination in mind, Aiko cut across the outskirts of town to a place she'd never actually ventured inside. At the little red gate that partitioned off the Uchiha district, she paused uncomfortably for a minute. It didn't seem right to just walk in. But Sasuke wouldn't mind, would he?
'Plus I don't even know where his house is.'
She face-palmed.
'It'll be the one in the best state of repair, probably. Duh, the other houses have been unoccupied for a decade.'
Walking through the district didn't help her find any obvious candidates. Sasuke either worked his ass off with solid clones to keep the place neat or paid a fortune in D-class missions. The grass was neatly kept, not a roof-tile out of place on a single traditionally styled home, and the stone-paved paths were in immaculate condition and so clean that she almost considered taking off her shoes.
"Oh my god, these gardens must cost a fortune to maintain," she mumbled, kneeling to peer into a reflecting pool. An orange koi liberally splotched with black mouthed at her hand on the other side of the glass-clear water, sending little ripples across the surface.
"That's a rather rude comment to make," Sasuke pointed out, coming to stand by her side.
Aiko flushed. "Ah, yes. I'm sorry, I was just thinking aloud."
"You do that sometimes." She stood, brushing lightly against his side. Just because she could, she tilted her head to lean against his shoulder.
"Eh. I was hoping to ask you for a favor."
She could practically feel him rolling his eyes. "You are the worst guest. You're supposed to let me offer tea and glare at each other over it for half an hour while we silently decide how best to outmaneuver the other before you even hint at a weakness like that. How am I supposed to exploit it and tear at your soft rhetorical underbelly with so little time to plan?"
Aiko tilted her head slightly to give him a skeptical look, so close she could see the little irregularities in his dark eyes that showed differentiation between the actual black pupils and the surrounding coloration. "You've been spending too much time with Tsunade."
"I learned that from my mother, actually," he added dryly.
Awkward.
"Oh." Mildly chastened, she dropped her head to nose into his shoulder instead of replying. He squirmed away.
"Your nose is cold."
It was amazing just how much disapproval that boy could put into such an inane statement.
Aiko rolled her eyes and retreated. "I know, I was pirating your body heat. Anyway…" She gave him a wary look. "Don't act like I'm crazy, but I need to get a hold of Sai."
Sasuke maintained a poker face, but 'what the hell are you thinking' couldn't have been more plainly expressed if he'd said it aloud.
Helplessly, she shrugged. "It's a long story."
The sigh that followed was impressively grumpy for a voiceless exhalation. "I'll find out where you can meet him and get back to you on that tomorrow."
Of course, as it turned out he was wrong. He may well have found out how she could contact Sai, but it didn't do her any good because she had new orders the hour after her medical restriction expired.
'I almost wish I'd spent longer on restricted duty,' Aiko sighed lightly so as not to heat up her mask more than she had to.
The day after she was cleared for full duty, she had been ordered to report for a rotation in Konoha's prison facility. It was depressing, frankly. For once she was actually uninterested in learning more about her job. The minutia of policies for securing and containment procedures were mind numbingly dull whenever they weren't horrifying. She had been forced to bring poor Mitsuo in to help sniff incoming and departing staff for contraband. It was a surprising level of paranoia—not only were prisoners examined daily, but every member of staff was searched every day physically and by whatever methods the available squad was capable of. Aiko had the unfortunate distinction of being the only member of her team with a specialized technique or ability that could be useful in that capacity.
"Sorry, sorry," she soothed her ninken as soon as they were alone, dropping to her knees to wrap her arms around his thick neck. "Poor love, I bet it smells awful in here."
Mitsuo gave a sad whuff and a soft, low bark that she recognized as confirmation.
He padded silently along her side, returning to her team. She'd been called away to do screening, but they were normally posted along cell block intervals to maintain order, especially during times prisoners were moved.
She'd never known Konoha kept so many prisoners. Traitors, spies, dissidents, and foreign prisoners (some of whom who had been long forgotten by their countries of origin) all uneasily broke bread together in an underground facility.
The prison was a legacy of Konoha's half-assed humanist ideology: they didn't often execute prisoners. This wasn't entirely out of kindness. Prisoners could find use years down the line, like be wrung for more information, provide learning dummies for medic nin, or possibly even be traded back to their countries of origin. It cost Konoha almost nothing to maintain the facilities and it was no hardship to feed them in the land of eternal summer.
Regardless of whatever practical value keeping prisoners had, the partial motivation to keep their own hands clean by not just killing them like everyone else seemed to appeared self-serving and unethical to her. What kindness was it really, to keep war prisoners from thirty years ago interred? There were white-haired shinobi in the prison. If they were never going to free them, it seemed crueler to keep them around and let them suffer than it would be to just end it as painlessly as possible.
That was the final containment procedure anyway- as Fish had explained, in case of a break-in or break-out, all potentially dangerous prisoners were to be eliminated. It was a nice euphemism that meant they would be going down the halls and slaughtering prisoners cowering at the back of their cells, many of whom had not held a weapon in over half their lives.
"So much better than a pill or a knife to the spinal column," Aiko muttered with all the contempt she could muster.
But she wasn't being paid to think. She was being paid to stand around and hopefully convince prisoners not to make an attempt by reminding them what would happen if they did.
It was a pretty miserable experience, made all the more so because she couldn't leave. Part of the requirement of this assignment was staying in the facility for the duration. They were on-call 24/7, which meant that she had the dubious pleasure of sleeping in her ANBU gear in a room with her team and only changing in the bathroom alone when she had her twenty minute liberty. Her inconsiderate team didn't always bother with that. The first time she'd walked in to see Donkey with his pants around his ankles and a clean pair in his hands, she'd turned right back around. Unfortunately, she'd seen a lot more skinny man legs and muscled torsos over the shift that she would have liked. ...And also knew more about how dismal they were at changing their underpants. It's not supposed to be optional, people. Pack better.
As odd as it seemed to her, the assignment lasted the apparently arbitrary period of 23 days. When it was over, she reluctantly struggled back home only to find Naruto was pouty about being abandoned without so much as a word.
Aiko genuinely didn't understand what he was upset about. He had to understand that she couldn't talk about her work. All of her peers had been given a chance to see her ANBU tattoos at the lake- did he not know what they represented?
'Actually, that wouldn't surprise me,' she realized dully. Naruto was a bit clueless, and no one had commented.
It would have been in very bad form to do so, if any of them had recognized the symbols. Most of their age group were clan-affiliated and would know well enough to keep their mouths shut.
ANBU wouldn't tattoo their members if mere membership was actually restricted information. No one would be stupid enough to choose such a policy.
'Except the Dark Lord,' she mentally excused. 'Voldemort would so totally do that.'
But Konoha didn't have anyone with cajones as large and illogical as the Dark Lord's, so the real restricted information was the actual content of ANBU training and work. She settled on a rhetorical strategy and plan for mitigating the problem in future.
"I'm doing work for Tsunade that I can't talk about," she'd excused. It wasn't really a lie, after all. Just not the whole truth. Naruto made an 'ohhhh' face of comprehension. "Keep it quiet, please." Her brother easily agreed. "And…" Here she hesitated. "I think I'm going to move out into an apartment of my own so I'm not coming and going from a shared house without telling anyone what's going on."
If she wasn't sharing a house, she would hardly have to make explanations of her whereabouts and weariness. At some point, she was going to come home more than a little battered and didn't much fancy having to hide it from any inquisitive housemates she couldn't tell a damn thing about what was going on.
Aiko had considered making Naruto her confidant to a limited amount of her ANBU activities: if she did, she would hardly have to lie to him and sneak around. But the idea was unpalatable, despite the appeal of having Naruto on her side. It would mean exposing him to things he didn't need to know. ANBU was depressing, brutal, and difficult. Why make him worry?
"I'm not planning on abandoning you. I just… I want the freedom of my own place, you know? You got to leave Konoha for two years, and I've been mostly stuck here with two roommates I didn't pick." She shrugged wryly.
Naruto frowned slightly, examining her face. "Is that really what this is about?"
'Perceptive little bastard,' Aiko thought fondly.
"There's more, but not that I can talk about," she added honestly. Lying to Naruto never worked. He'd just make himself insufferable and sneak around until he thought he had it figured out. He wasn't often right, but she didn't want him poking around this time.
"You're so antisocial and weird," Naruto grumped, stepping in to bend his head to clunk his forehead against hers. "I guess this shouldn't be that surprising. You have to start coming to all the team practices you can, then."
"Uh, I guess I could, but I'm not really on your team assignment right now," she pointed out cautiously. Naruto and Sasuke had been placed back under Kakashi, but her reassignment looked to be pretty solid. They were probably stuck with Yamato.
"Doesn't matter, you're still one of our team. S'not like Kakashi'll care," he shrugged irreverently. Aiko lightly punched his chest, playfully instead of with any actual intent to turn the move into wrestling or sparring.
"Stop talking like that, you know it drives me nuts," she groused, reverting to English. He merely stuck his tongue out at her. With their faces so close together, that meant it barely missed her nose. "Ew, when did you get so gross?"
"I've always been gross, but you're stuck with me," he bantered easily, leaning his head back to butt gently against her forehead. He was rather like a cat, nudging for a petting session. "So, what day of the week is team dinner, when I am invited over for sleepovers, and what day will you be coming over here to make dinner? I'd offer to host you, but you don't want to eat my cooking."
Aiko snorted. "It's far past when you should have learned to cook. And what are you talking about, you've always helped me out. I'm not your damn maid. I guess I'll come over whatever Saturdays I'm free to bully you into proving to me you can cook the other six days of the week."
"It's settled, then." Naruto furrowed his brow. "How the hell are we going to get Kakashi to show up for team dinner?"
"Fuck if I know," she giggled. He did what he wanted.