"Ah, shit," Aiko cursed under her breath, pulling her hand back from the angrily sparking seal she had set on a pebble.
The good news was that the explosion worked. The bad news was that she was prone to tugging on the wrong thread of chakra and letting it fizzle instead of instantly come apart. She wanted to be able to end the trapped seal two ways: safely, and destructively. After all, it might end up on people she liked. If she could manage to dissolve it safely, it would be on Gaara.
The door was flung open so violently that it knocked into the wall. That usually heralded that the boys were back. She'd been working the in-going screening when her shift had ended. Since that line closed before the replacements for her team would come on the clock, she'd beaten them all back. Aiko rolled her eyes and subconsciously covered the little black rock she'd been rolling around in a pocket since her shift had started. Unlike paper or people, she could re-use rock as a practice substance as long as she was careful. Her practice pebble was getting decidedly scorched, but there were worse things.
'At least it's an even scorching.'
Tightly secured armor jostled her chest uncomfortably when she gave an involuntary snort at her own questionable humor. The rock she'd found was just barely big enough that she could wrap her Hiraishin around it, even when she condensed it as much as she could bear without smudging. That in itself was a strain—it was most natural to make it at the same size she would have painted it, about a square inch. She could so far get it to a quarter of that size and wrap it around her pebble like a spiderweb of chakra, but it was a major pain.
At the sound of a zipper, she involuntarily glanced up to see that Boar was removing his armor and Fish was pulling open his bag. Aiko grimaced and turned her face away, sitting back onto her bunk and tucked her experiment away. Awkwardly, she concentrated on not letting her innate curiosity compel her to keep an eye on the people moving around in the same room. It was counter-intuitive to actually avoid paying attention to her surroundings, but half-naked men with porcelain masks were more creepy and off-putting than enticing. It might have been better if she'd known what was actually under those masks, but since she genuinely had no idea who they were, there was something really demented about ogling faceless bodies.
Besides, none of them were even that attractive to her. Boar was loaded with so much muscle that she couldn't help but think he just looked like an enormous slab of meat. Donkey might have been good eye-candy if he didn't creep her out, but he was also sort of spidery-looking and loomed over her by a foot and a half. It was a bit intimidating.
Despite being the least physically intimidating of her teammates, Fish was also somewhat intimidating, but that was largely on the basis that he was just so hard to get a read on. His skills were impressive, but that wasn't exactly the problem. Aiko routinely worked with people who were talented and dangerous—but she understood what made them tick. She didn't like not being able to understand her coworkers. How could she hope to control his behavior if she didn't understand him? When she couldn't predict, her next impulse was to avoid, but she couldn't do that either.
To a lesser extent, that was how she felt about the other two as well.
She looked up when the bathroom door shut, just in time to see Boat tilt his head in the same direction and Donkey toss a book at the door. His mask swiveled to look at her before he nudged Boar and hand-signed something she didn't entirely understand. The gist of it seemed to be mocking Fish for being …something… like the rookie.
Judging by the fact that Fish had just disappeared into the closed room with his clothes, it was probably a crack about his comparatively prudish behavior.
Underneath her mask, she bared her teeth at Donkey. 'Asshole.' It was probably meant to be teasing and not actually offensive, but she didn't like being played with.
"The fuck?"
Aiko jumped up from her bed and reached to re-clip her hip pouch, barely managing to hear the bathroom door bang open when Fish came back out. It was the first time she'd heard Donkey speak, but the novelty was overshadowed by the fact that it was also the first time she had heard the siren going off overhead. It sounded like nothing so much as 'zeeeeeer' being crooned again and again by someone with entirely too much fondness for synthesizers and pitch adjustments.
It probably was nothing so entertaining, seeing as they were currently assigned to the fourth level of the underground prison.
All three of them looked to Fish for orders, but they already knew what they were supposed to do. The siren went off in any type of security breach, and the policy was the same no matter if they were dealing with a break-out, problem with staff, or mysterious intruder.
"Containment procedure C," Fish said briskly. Aiko suppressed a cringe, but didn't protest.
Regardless of what was going on, they were assigned to an entire prison block and could not hope to guard the entire ream while the reserve went off to chase whatever the disturbance was. Hence why their assigned role was to make certain that there was no opportunity for the source of the alarm to achieve their objective or free prisoners for a distraction. If the intruder (or escapee, or discovered imposter) actually managed to evade the team chasing them, it would be a pyrrhic victory at best.
There were sixteen cells in their block, all occupied. That left eight cells for each team. All but three of the inhabits were marked as possibly dangerous prisoners or flight risks. Those three would need to be incapacitated to ensure they didn't cause a fuss, either drugged or put into unconsciousness through a genjutsu or pressure point.
As the rookie, she took the western walls with her captain and the other two took the other direction. It was impossible to tell if anyone else was bothered by what they had to do, masked and stiff as they were.
The prisoners didn't share the ANBU team's emotional reserve, but that was understandable. With the open visibility and open halls, it only took a few moments for the alarmed shouting to start. It was distorted under that godawful siren, but it was enough to get those few who hadn't been waiting at the bars for a glimpse of what was happening up off their feet.
Aiko knew these people were criminals and enemies of her country. But going to cell after cell and methodically opening the door and securing the inhabitant around the torso while Fish took their head in his hands and twisted was entirely different. Dully, she supported each body's weight while Fish did a standard check for a lack of pulse, and lowered them to the ground while he literally checked their names off a list before re-locking the cell and opening the next.
Killing someone who would have killed her in a fight if she'd been slower was one thing. She could rationalize that and justify it as necessary for self-preservation, as well as let the adrenaline rush dull the flood of guilt and finger-twitching anxiety.
But this was harder, not made any easier by even her best attempts to ignore struggles, cursing, or hysterical protests.
It wasn't much easier to leave the two non-threats on their side of the wall untouched. That meant they were staring. Luckily, Donkey came along and put them out in a genjutsu, giving her the novel experience of actually being glad he was there for once.
The cell block could never be called silent, not with that horrible shrill siren. But it seemed strangely quiet without human noises. Aiko backed up against a wall to wait for further orders. The gate to their section clanked open and all of them jumped to attention. It only turned out to be the other team that had been missing from the block when the siren went off.
"The situation is resolved," the purple-haired woman heading the other team informed them dully. "Your team is no longer needed."
"Understood." Fish nodded civilly and gestured for his team to follow him back to retrieve their belongings. The siren turned off while they were gathering their minimal supplies, leaving an echoing ring in her ears and a faint headache.
She wasn't the only one, apparently.
"Damn, I could use a drink," Donkey muttered bitterly.
The whole team perked up at one. "Not a bad idea," Fish agreed wryly, resting a hand on his hip. "Anyone who doesn't mind letting me see their face is welcome to join me at the bar."
'Well, here's my chance to get a read on my coworkers,' Aiko thought dryly, unconsciously mimicking her captain's movement (though with sassier hip placement).
"Which one?" Boar rumbled, tapping at his mask thoughtfully.
Fish shrugged. "I don't care. Covert Schnapps?"
There was an awkward silence, until Donkey managed to get his thoughts into words. "Captain, your drinks all come with pink umbrellas, don't they?"
"If I collect enough, they'll keep me dry all spring," he shot back without appearing to think about it. "In any case, we could change into civilian gear here or meet up. Opinions?"
Boar gave a snort and wordlessly began to peel off his armor and gloves, leaving him only in non-descript black gear. His mask was the first to come off, revealing that he seemed to be in his thirties… and Aiko was glad for a moment that her mask was still on, because she otherwise might have offended him by staring at the massive acid scars painted across his cheek and into his hairline.
Before she took anything off, Aiko opened her bag and pushed the clothes within down as far as possible, pulling out her wallet and sticking it under her waistband. Her shin guards were slipped in along the sides, and her chest plate barely fit even when tilted carefully. She tugged up a black shirt to wrap her mask in and finally unpinned her wig and slipped it between a shin guard and her chest plate. The gloves weren't really that distinctive and she liked them, so they stayed on. She bit her lower lip in concentration, somehow managing to work the zipper closed. Then she looked up-
And blinked. "What's everyone staring for?"
"Holy shit, you're a chick?" The tan, lanky man with just a hint of wrinkles around his eyes who huffed that out could only be Donkey. 'Someone has a sick sense of humor', she noted while looking at large front teeth that made Aiko wince at how cruelly apt his codename was. It wasn't the first time she'd thought he'd seem more attractive if he kept his mouth shut, but usually she was thinking about the awful things that came out of his mouth.
Then she caught up with what he'd actually said. "Wait, you- you thought I was a man?" Her jaw dropped. Self-consciously, a hand wandered up to pull at the secured braid keeping her long hair flat against her skull and she extracted the pins, finger-combing the braid out.
"A boy, actually," Boar agreed docilely.
Aiko slumped slightly, shoulder curling inward. 'I wrap my chest because it's practical,' she reminded herself sternly. 'It's not worth bouncing around just to soothe my pride.'
There was a snort. "How clueless could you two be? It was obvious that Butterfly was a woman," Fish added calmly.
"Thank you," she started, turning to look at him for the first time. Aiko didn't allow herself to do more than blink in reaction to what she saw. 'Fuck, there's one in every bunch,' she realized darkly, trying not to let her expression waver. 'Pretty boys everywhere I fucking go.' Fish was young-looking and had dark brown hair that bordered on black like the other two men did, but that was where the similarities ended. He had no scarring, no unusual features (unless one counted cheekbones any supermodel might kill for) and rather sleepy-looking green eyes set into a long, lean face. Instead of continuing what she'd meant to say after what had been just a slight pause, Aiko turned and slung her bag over her shoulder. "Are we ditching these in the equipment room for now, or what?"
Donkey gave her a mildly piteous look, as if she'd asked something phenomenally obvious. She didn't know why, but she felt chagrinned and had to force down a blush.
"Nah, it's got chakra-secured lockers," Fish kindly explained. "Patrons aren't allowed to bring equipment in."
"Right."
There was an awkward pause. Boar managed to break it. "You're all socially retarded geniuses, aren't you?" he asked dryly, running a hand through his short hair. "Here, let me help. My native people deal with new people by pretending to care about them. My name is Shou. What are your names?"
"Er, Yukimasa," their team leader filled in with- was that a blush on his pale cheeks? What the hell did he have to be embarrassed about?
She shook his apparent weirdness out of mind and idly supplied, "Aiko, very nice to meet you."
"Charmed, I'm sure." The only man who had yet to introduce himself gave them all an unimpressed look. "I agreed to go out for drinks with you pussies, not talk about our feelings. If you must, you girls can call me Aoto."
'He's still an asshole,' Aiko noted with a twitch under her right eye. 'I'm always going to hate working with him, aren't I?'
"I love you guyssss," Aiko sniffled with mostly-affected-incoherence, rubbing her nose against something chilly and sour that Aoto had recommended called a 'Slicked Tit'. It was her fourth drink of the night in the smoky bar she'd been dragged to, and all of them had been new to her. Of course, they were all mixed drinks and nothing too hard, so far. She'd liked some of them a lot more than others, but it was really strangely fun to keep trying different combinations. She was definitely not drunk yet, but she was feeling pretty fucking good and unusually fond of her drinking companions as they took turns sharing implausible battle stories. If sober, she might not have shared the mildly embarrassing story about thoughtlessly using a family technique in front of hostiles, but it had gotten a pretty good giggle and a round of stories about rookie mistakes.
"Holy shiiit, the rookie has no alcohol tolerance," Aoto chuckled with just a little too much glee, leaning in with a smirk. "Hey kid, want to try 'sex on the beach' next?" He was practically purring, voice dropping down to a sexy bass. She shivered involuntarily, suddenly confused by her own reactions.
"Please stop plying her with alcohol," Yukimasa scolded mildly, still nursing his third drink. "It's unprofessional. Let her drink at her own pace."
"Pfft." Aoto made a rude sound, tilting his hip up and digging out his wallet. "You're fucking boring even off the clock, fish-face. I've gotta split." Aiko blearily looked up at the sound of paper rustling and became transfixed by the fast movement as her peer counted out his part of the check.
"Night," Yukimasa yawned, blinking doe eyes up as the other man moved to leave. The opened door sent an angry breeze that rustled their table cloth and carried in a lightning bug. It darted up to the ceiling as the door swung shut. "Actually, I'm going to go on a bathroom run. Be right back." He fixed Shou with a surprisingly stern look, communicating something Aiko completely missed before pushing his chair back to stand up.
"We'll be fine," Shou waved him off. The table was silent for a few moments while their team leader walked out of hearing distance. The bulky man only took his peripheral vision off the hall that led to the bathroom when Yukimasa was out of sight. "So, Aiko." Shou rested his elbows on the table and pinned her with an inscrutable look.
"Hmm?" She managed, suppressing the urge to fidget. Someone had started karaoke, and it sounded like a fantastic idea. She should totally go on the stage next.
"Bad night, huh?"
Aiko crinkled her brow, not really seeing the point in that question. "Yes," she agreed. "Not the best." It had been painfully dull, up until the depressing part.
"Doesn't it seem so stupid and inefficient?" Shou pried seriously. "I mean, if things had been done properly in the first place, the security breach wouldn't have even been an issue. That prison complex is bloated. If the Hokage's office had made the right call, we wouldn't be keeping hundreds of possible threats within the village."
Something about the conversation tugged at her awareness, but she couldn't help but nod in agreement. "I agree," she admitted, leaning over and supporting herself with an arm on the chair Yukimasa had recently vacated.
It did seem phenomenally idiotic to tie up elite resources keeping hostiles pinned up in close vicinity to their most vulnerable citizens and resources, as well as their center of command. Why not kill them once they'd been interrogated, or trade them back to their countries of origin for diplomatic concessions? Holding out because they might get a better deal in the future was optimistic and wasteful.
But Shou looked more pleased than that apparently simple statement warranted, and something clicked nervously in her brain. Aiko kept her expression locked in mimicry of alcoholic stupidity, with lips slightly parted, eyes lidded, and the rest of her face slack, but her mind was working as fast as it could in her slightly impaired state. It only took a minute to figure out what had been so outstanding about what she'd agreed to- Shou had disrespected the current military leader, and she hadn't blinked. Why would that have pleased him?
'Not that I give a rats' ass about respecting the hierarchy, but I probably would if I wasn't such an anomaly…'
That was practically intellectual treason, after all. Konoha actively nurtured a self-sacrificial, collectivist outlook that privileged one position above all others- the office of the Hokage. Very few people raised in that environment would feel comfortable disrespecting the person they had been raised to believe was a hero from the time they read their very first picture books.
Shou had been probing to try to ascertain her genuine attitudes about either Tsunade or Sarutobi. He'd gotten her alone, and he'd only asked her when her mental facilities appeared to be severely affected. That was pretty shifty.
"If they were taken care of in the first place, we wouldn't waste resources on them," Aiko tried, just to see if he was eager to continue the conversation or if it had just been a bizarre coincidence that she'd happened to get a teammate with subversive attitudes.
The gleam in his eyes indicated that was not the case. "I agree. ANBU could be put to much better use, under someone who knew how to allocate resources."
"That'd be nice," she agreed dreamily, intentionally letting her focus wander above his shoulder.
Bingo. There was her way into root. If Boar was trying to recruit her… Well, she'd just have to let him. It was an effort not to let a Cheshire cat-like grin across her features. Ninja cool. She had to keep her ninja cool.
A shadow fell over the table. "What'd I miss?" Yukimasa asked with a cheery tone and just a little too much attention on Shou, who had leaned across the table into Aiko's personal space during their conversation.
Brown eyes flickered away from her, avoiding their team leader entirely. "Not much. I'll see you two later, I'm beat." The hulking ANBU pushed his chair out and stood to his full height, dwarfing the other man who had not yet sat. He left to a chorus of 'goodnights' from the two remaining.
Scrape.
Aiko turned a little to keep Yukimasa in her peripheral while he sat to her right at the circular table, drumming his fingers against the blue cloth and giving her a contemplative look. "He wasn't bothering you, was he?" the man asked lightly.
She made an incredulous sound into her drink and gave him a wicked smile, a little high on a combination of being tipsy and discovering that she had found her root contact. "No. What if he was?" she challenged, before tossing down the rest of her drink.
"Well, I suppose I would provide moral support while you beat him up, because I wouldn't dare to presume you'd need assistance." He gave her a lazy smile with thin, pale lips.
'Damn, he's pretty smooth.'
"Good answer," she allowed. He made a noncommittal sound. "Hey, waiter! Can I have… have…" she turned to Yukimasa. "Suggestions?" Idly, she kept an eye on the light-haired teen approaching them with a slightly sullen expression and a hand in the pocket of his blue apron.
Her captain actually chuckled, apparently more affected by his hard liquor than she'd realized. "Try a hurricane."
"Can I have a hurricane," she finished smoothly. The waiter made a sound to indicate he'd heard and wove away through the crowd to the bar—less than ten feet away.
"Jeeze, how many are you planning on having?"
She gave that serious consideration. "I want to get shitfaced," Aiko eventually settled on. This was the first time she'd gone out to an actual bar. It wasn't like this was something she could do with Naruto, Ino, or (god forbid) Kakashi. She didn't have any friends who would like this sort of thing. She couldn't even imagine Kakashi going out and drinking in public.
Wait. Yes, she could. Aiko giggled, feeling her cheeks go a little numb with the force of her grin. He would be so grumpy.
Wordlessly, her captain just shook his head and ruefully smiled.
"Your wish is my command," the waiter said dryly as he handed over her new drink. "You want me to just keep them coming?"
"Ah, lemme try it first." Aiko eyed her new drink skeptically, experimentally licking at the top of the pinkish-orange drink and sucking on her cold tongue. Her eyes widened, and she ran her tongue over her lower lip to get the last bit of sweet taste.
At her affirmative nod to the waiter, Yukimasa heaved a sigh. "Me as well," he added, swirling his nearly empty glass. "Can't let a lady drink alone, can I?"
She gave an ugly snort and drained her entire drink in two pulls, smacking chilly lips and practically breathing a misty fog when she was done. Her companion's eyebrows had gone up almost a full inch on his brow.
"Wow, you were serious about getting drunk," he commented, blinking tiredly at her. Or maybe that was just how he always looked? Aiko leaned over, staring closely at his face in an attempt to figure it out.
"Stop moving so much," she ordered, whapping at his shoulder and using her left hand as a brace against the table. "S'your face always like that?"
He scrunched up his nose and retracted slightly from the short finger that then prodded at his cheek. When it followed him back and he couldn't lean further into his chair, her captain captured her wrist and gave her an indulgent look. "What is that supposed to mean? You're going to hurt my feelings."
"You look like you're about to fall asleep," Aiko explained, letting her arm go limp, only supported by the loose grip around her wrist.
"Ah. Yes, that's just my face." Yukimasa gently put her hand down on the table and reached out to take one of the drinks their waiter had brought out. He'd apparently chosen to cut out a trip and brought them two drinks each in one trip. "Thanks." He nodded at the departing teen, wrapping long fingers around his blue-tinted glass.
It turned out that just three hurricanes were enough to blur her vision and make sitting up straight significantly harder than it had been. Aiko wobbled on her chair, trying not to giggle.
"A-and when we found the targe…" Yukimasa trailed off, frowning slightly. "What you staring fo'?"
"Your face," she explained vaguely, waving her hand at him. "is pink. Pink."
"Shut up," he countered deliberately, crinkling up his forehead.
Aiko overreacted, making an offended face and lurching backwards. The theatrical movement lost its intended effect when the movement propelled her completely off her chair and onto the sticky floor. Her ankle caught around a table leg, clonking painfully.
"Ow," she said stupidly, blinking up at the underside of the table.
Her captain leaned over with a giggle and a sideways little grin, swaying slightly. "I think you're drunk," he pointed out unnecessarily. "You should go home. We should go home." He frowned slightly. "Not the same home," he clarified after a moment.
"No," she protested weakly. "We should do something else."
Yukimasa made a bizarre face, drawing his eyebrows down, scrunching his nose, and letting his mouth hang slightly open. "Like what?"
"Something…. Stupid," she decided.
"Oh, I feel like shit," Aiko moaned, curling up and covering her face. It was no use. The sunlight on her face just refused to fuck off, even when she nudged her nose into her pillow and put her arms over her head. The movement pulled painfully at her right shoulder blade, which brought her up short in surprise.
"What?"
She pushed herself up and twisted in an attempt to see the burning skin. 'I definitely do not remember getting injured last night.' Of course, that didn't mean much. She didn't really remember much about last night after Donkey and Boar left the bar. It was no good- she couldn't see a damn thing. Awkwardly, she wrestled her way out of her tangled covers (crankily shaking her heel to escape her green sheets) and stumbled across the bare wooden floor to her bathroom to use that mirror.
Her jaw dropped, neck craning to spot her right shoulder blade. The girl in the mirror was looking like a bit of a dope with her under-eye circles and parted mouth, but it was hard to care about that bit.
"When the fuck did I get another tattoo?"