Come morning, Aiko had managed to steady herself… as well as make plans to draw up some serious improvements to her home security. Root wanted to make the point that she wasn't safe within her own home? Fine then, she'd crisp their fucking fingers off if they so much as touched her property.
Of course, she would need a way to do that without endangering anyone who she wanted there… but she also couldn't give overrides into her security that would allow anyone to come back after they'd been tagged in. Aiko made a rather pathetic pout, since no one was there to judge her for it at the moment.
'I think I'm going to ask Yamato if we could move dinners to his place,' she mused. 'It would cut down on people needing access to my apartment.'
Was it odd to feel pain under your eyes when you were sleep-deprived? She felt like she was walking around with two black eyes (and couldn't stop rubbing at them), but a check in the mirror revealed nothing there. It was lucky that she'd had that sudden bout of vanity, because otherwise she wouldn't have known about the ugly hand-shaped bruise around her neck. Even better, she didn't think she had anything that could fix it. Aiko had exactly zero healing abilities, and she appeared to be out of the chakra-infused creams that could encourage minor surface injuries like that to heal.
"Jeeze, thanks a lot, Boar," she muttered sullenly, slamming the medicine cabinet with enough force to make the bottles inside rattle. "You make it so fucking easy to hide that I've been hanging out with your sissy club."
It obviously wasn't the type of bruise she would acquire during sparring, and it also wouldn't be easy to hide. The mark was positioned high enough that the natural movement of even her highest collars would give peeks of it as she moved. That would draw more attention than anything. She could slather makeup over it, but that would only lighten it and make it less obvious… and the smell would probably be like a flashing neon sign to Kakashi. She was severely tempted to just go to bed—there hadn't been any point in going back to sleep after being released from Danzo when she had to go to training in a few hours—but it was starting to look like going would raise questions.
Still, she had to face the music at some point. It would be too unusual to miss the scheduled practice this morning after Naruto had made such a big deal about her attending.
'I suppose I could claim I've been off having violent sex,' she thought with some amusement. That would probably get any concerned on-looker to drop the conversation.
Then again, Naruto might actually have cardiac arrest. That plan was a no-go.
"I'll wing it," she sighed, smearing on the makeup anyway and setting it with some powder. She covered her face as well. It didn't really look any different than it had before, but it would be less odd to have blended face makeup into her neck than just put makeup on her neck. "Maybe I could get Sasuke alone and ask him to take care of it before anyone else sees so I only have to lie to one person." Or just stay away from Kakashi, actually. Naruto and Sasuke were just not that observant about things like the scent of supposedly scentless makeup. Or hell, she could just claim that she woke up and wanted to look nice today. This was a stupid thing to worry about.
Of course, now that the idea of skipping practice to nap had been planted, it was hard to get out of her head. Somewhat resentfully, Aiko didn't delay heading out the door into what looked to be a balmy morning.
She had considered waiting until about the time that Kakashi would actually show up so that she didn't have to wait too long while self-consciously ducking her chin into her neck like a turtle, but that plan would out her little shadow when he inevitably had to trail in after her. That would be suspicious, but he couldn't leave her alone either. Poor silly Sai hadn't slept a wink all night, which made her certain that he was tailing her to be sure that she didn't do anything against Danzo. It made sense that they wouldn't want her to have much information at all before they judged her loyalty. It had been a stroke of good luck that she had tagged Sai last night—it was the only way that she could sense him. He was really fucking good at his job. That probably meant that if her tail had been someone else, she wouldn't even know that she was being watching.
For all she knew, she had more than one tail. If Danzo was thorough, he wouldn't count entirely on Sai. He almost certainly had at least one backup plan.
No matter what else she did, it was far too dangerous to report to Tsunade. The Hokage would not be happy about that delay when she did eventually debrief, but it wasn't like she really had any information of use yet anyhow. There was nothing to do but wait. Eventually, when she could be sure that she was alone, she could break off to make her report.
That plan would have been a better one if she know how to be totally certain that no one was watching. Aiko knew many tricks for hiding, but countering her own arsenal's weaknesses didn't seem to be enough to flush out Sai.
Not that she wanted to flush him out of hiding, exactly. If she knew where her tail was, she was safer than she would be while ignorant. And whatever problems her team might have with him, she was at least relatively certain that Sai didn't want to hurt her. He was developing an attachment. It was easy to see that the older boy had come to rely on her as a guide in social situations. She couldn't blame him—if he actually didn't understand that he was insulting people, it must be baffling to have such a hard time making polite conversation. His attempts to relate to other people's perspectives and fit in didn't even bear thinking about: she was probably the only person he knew outside of root who had any reason to pretend that his behavior wasn't off-putting.
Frankly, she was glad she'd chosen that route. Sai was more likely to make her laugh than make her angry lately.
It had been an enormous mistake on Danzo's part to ever let Sai leave the hidden program. It was one thing to be a loner or to display social ineptitude. Aiko was hardly the life of the party herself. She could plausibly see many ninja fitting that description managing to fulfill their missions. But Sai had no defense against the one major danger of infiltration missions: when a person wore a mask for long enough, it became their face. He had been wiped to such a blank slate that in an attempt to pretend to be functional, he was accidentally becoming somewhat human. If he had no identity to counter the façade he was learning, then he could hardly help but become the person he was impersonating.
She had already been seeing the signs: he displayed interest in other human beings in non-professional situations, started conversations unprompted, and occasionally something distinctly real flickered behind his mask, as if he was about to say something or react genuinely.
It wouldn't be hard to subvert him. He didn't have the skills to know when he was being manipulated with kindness, having been manipulated with cruelty all his life.
Perhaps that should be her next move. Gaining Sai on her side… that would be valuable. The fact that he was her tail implied that Danzo trusted him to be predictable and controllable. Danzo made the mistake of assessing him in a vacuum—as if his conditions hadn't changed so that something other than Sai's actions could become a factor. Most people were relatively consistent, so he could hardly be blamed.
"Hi, boys."
The three bickering teens gave her varying levels of disgruntled expressions. Inwardly, she applauded Sai for thinking to go slightly ahead of her. It introduced a small level of risk that she would change destinations mid-route, leaving her unobserved until he could correct his error, but it was worth it in order to give the impression that if anything, she was following him.
'He's a good tail. I wonder if he often has those sorts of missions?'
Outwardly, she scowled. "Oh, cheer up, you three. It's not that early."
"It's too early to deal with that jackass," Naruto mumbled. Of course, 'mumbling' for Naruto was something like regular talking for other people (only pitched lower than usual) so the sound carried just fine.
Sai tilted his head but said nothing.
'Thank you, Naruto. I can't imagine a way for you to be more helpful with my resolution to socialize Sai.'
"Naruto, that was rude." She frowned at him. "Does he really deserve to be called names?" It was an effort not to let her amusement show: Aiko was well aware of the irony in her words.
Sasuke wasn't even trying to hide his thoughts. She could tell. They were, 'She's finally cracked.' The sheer hypocrisy seemed to have momentarily broken him. Aiko narrowed her eyes at him, just daring the boy to say anything.
"Fancy seeing you here," Kakashi cut in dryly. As one, the group turned their heads up to see him sitting on a tree branch. He gave a heavy sigh, as if it really was an incredible bother to have to be present. Naruto was making a face that indicated he was having a hard time comprehending what he was seeing, and kept making quick glances at the sun as if to gauge the time. It was about ten minutes until they had agreed to meet. Which meant…
'I've never really noticed just how horribly contrary Kakashi is,' Aiko mused silently. Kakashi was either on time or using their training as an excuse to put off another engagement. It was hard to tell with him. He just looked disinterested and a bit sleepy, but for all she knew he was hiding glee at messing with their heads yet again. The man did have a strange fondness for playing with people in ways that left them unsure whether or not he'd done anything intentional. Generally, the best strategy was not to give him an entertaining reaction.
Then again, he really could just want to get the session over with. The way that he rattled off half-hearted orders seemed to corroborate that theory.
"Naruto, stop antagonizing Sai. Sasuke, wipe that smirk off your face. In fact, since Aiko showed up for once, why don't we switch things up?" He bent slightly, pushing off his branch and landing on the grass in a slight crouch. Then he yawned. "Instead of sparring, let's do a simulation. Naruto, you'll be leading Sasuke and I as a team in defense of a secured location. Sai and Aiko will be the enemy force. Your objective is to uproot us and secure the territory. Any techniques are permissible. Do you understand?" At the nods, he sighed and shifted his hips, looking bored to tears. "Alright. You two can re-enter the clearing in fifteen minutes."
"Be prepared to eat dirt!" Naruto hollered, hands held up around his mouth.
"And be prepared to eat dirt," the Jounin agreed docilely.
"Pfft, whatever," Aiko dismissed rudely, ruffling the back of her hair and turning away. "That's adorable, seriously. We'll play gently with you, but I'm not about to let you win."
It was a check she wasn't entirely sure she could cash, but she could hardly let the trash-talking pass without comment. Theoretically, Kakashi would only be interfering at such a capacity as to even the odds, and not actually trying to win. Hopefully. If not, they were totally boned.
"You want to be team leader?" she asked casually, cracking her neck and settling with her back against a tree several hundred meters away from where they'd left the others.
Sai deigned to glance at her. "That would be acceptable. Do you have any insight into the strategy that Ugly Girlfriend might employ?"
Aiko snorted. "He's going to trap the clearing and have Kakashi hunker down in their base while he and Sasuke engage us," she declared easily. Naruto would never miss out on the opportunity to spar. He had far too much energy. And Sasuke wanted to bash Sai's face in so much that it was just unhealthy. That boy was in desperate need of a chill pill. Why did he care if a male peer thought he wasn't especially virile? Shouldn't he only care about how people that he was attracted to rated his appeal? Unless he was put-out because he found Sai attractive…
A faint smile crept across her features.
'Oooh, good thoughts. Good thoughts suddenly occurred.'
Those were some pretty boys, after all.
"I see. Our real dilemma will be drawing out Kakashi-san, then." Sai let that statement hang in the air. The pause for an answer caught her wandering attention and drew her back to the real world.
"Which he probably has no intention of doing unless something goes horribly wrong," Aiko continued wryly, as if her focus had always been on Sai. She pursed her lips contemplatively. "You know, he didn't forbid that we seek out back-up. That might be our winning scenario. Other than that, we could force him to come out by getting a near-fatal injury, but it might not be worth it in a mock combat scenario."
"Yes," Sai agreed placidly, apparently unaware that she hadn't considered getting a near-fatal injury a viable strategy in the first place.
She made a mental note to stop expecting him to react to jokes. Despite knowing better, she had still somehow expected he would catch on.
'I spent too much time with witty people. The fact that Sai is generally intelligent doesn't seem to really affect his verbal intelligence.'
"I think that you assume that we cannot mitigate the disadvantage of our numbers prematurely, however. We both have clone capabilities and you have your hound."
"Kakashi is not going to fall for a clone," she pointed out with a little scorn.
"Ugly Girlfriend might, especially if he is distracted and separated from Dickless. To my knowledge, he does not have any extrasensory training that would allow him to discern that the technique was a distraction. In any case, both of them are head-on fighters and prefer to work in teams. It may not even occur to them that one of us would fail to be available to the other as backup when the mission did not explicitly require us to separate."
Aiko chewed on that thought for a moment. "As captain, do you want to engage their captain or their most powerful member?"
There were a couple ways that they could play this, depending on who was sent to flush out Kakashi. The most obvious would be to hide a clone (or group of clones) that would engage Kakashi after they had drawn away his reinforcements. That plan was just somehow lacking, though, even if he would likely be fighting on the lowest level to avoid hurting anyone.
Naruto could practically feel Sasuke's tenseness, despite the inches separating them. At least the bastard was interested—Kakashi-sensei was all but asleep on his feet. He spared a moment to glare at the older man. He could at least pretend to be interested in this exercise.
It was really weird to give Kakashi orders, though, even if it was just in training. He'd never led any sort of team before. Jiraiya had given him plenty of freedom and agency, but that just wasn't the same thing even if it did mean he was comfortable coming up with and enacting a plan.
Suddenly, the real world called in the form of a none-too-subtle rustle from the brush, as if someone was actually trying to draw his attention. Naruto had to roll his eyes. He wasn't so clueless that he needed her to make her presence that obvious. Still, his sister stood there, looking uncommonly smug. She had probably been pissed off by his claim that her team didn't stand a chance, but, you know, the truth is hard sometimes. All she had on her side was that dork in Ino's cut off shirt. Sai was probably going to be more of a handicap than a help. When he'd sparred with the pale jerk, all he'd used was ink beast after ink beast with a little bit of taijutsu. Bo-ring.
"I guess that's my signal." He crouched, ready to leap across the clearing and engage his target.
"What the…" Sasuke frowned, activating his Sharingan. Naruto jerked, turning to see the bit of forest that his teammate had been surveying. Then he blinked. Aiko was standing there, too.
'Of course,' he sighed. What a pain. The other two must have known that they had planned their strategy around who should engage whom. Sasuke had been chomping at the bit to get another chance to beat up the asshole, which had left Naruto with Aiko. He was more than prepared for that: the last time they had sparred, she had been miles ahead of him. But he'd spent two years training with the toad sage. If his sister thought she could beat him that easily -even with tricks- she was in for a surprise.
"Sasuke, which one is the real one?"
His forehead looked stupid when he crinkled it up like that. "They both seem to have Aiko's chakra signature. I can't tell. Is Sai a sensor type?"
"Ugh, figures," Naruto muttered darkly. Sasuke grunted in agreement. "Just pick one, then. Fifty percent chance that we'll get the right match-up, and we can switch if we guess wrong. They don't fight the same way at all. It won't take long to figure it out."
"Yeah, what a stupid ploy," Sasuke said, pitching his voice to carry. That taunt might have been enough to fake them out—but whoever the real Aiko was, she'd predicted Sai's reaction well enough to mimic it speedily enough that he didn't see which girl reacted first. Pity. "I'll just take that one, then."
It wouldn't matter. Naruto had been pre-warned, so he wouldn't resist if Sasuke needed to use the switching technique with him. Sasuke might have been able to do it even if Naruto was unwilling anyway, but that would be pretty poor teamwork.
"Hmm." Kakashi pried his eye a little further open, scanning both hostile figures, but didn't say anything before Naruto leapt to engage his target first. Shame. If Sasuke had trusted in his own senses and not what he thought he knew about the other team's strategy, they would have won easily. Sai was still hiding, after all. He pursed his lips into a pout under his mask. He had been sort of hoping to get a nap in.
About five minutes later, Aiko was all but cackling at two utterly filthy and disgruntled boys. Naruto had made the tactical error of using one of his pre-planted explosion tags just as she was powering a water jutsu. The resultant mess had created a seriously nasty wave of mud that had smacked into her clone with enough force to cancel it (surprising Sasuke, who had apparently determined that it was Sai). She was a muddy mess too, but she was having more fun than anything else. The mud wave had knocked her completely over and lost her the match, when Naruto had reflexively moved to pin her, but she couldn't bring herself to regret seeing the look on Sasuke's face when the two techniques had combined. The fact that her water clone had smacked into him and broke didn't make things any better.
At least it had washed off most of his mud. He didn't seem in a mood to appreciate that, though.
"Not cool," Naruto grumped, picking up a handful of sludge and flinging it at her. Aiko didn't even attempt to dodge, though she did protect her eyes from debris with a raised arm, one eye peeking open as she moved to speak.
"That's really mature," she began to tease-
Splat.
And was cut off by another mudball impacting the side of her head, courtesy of Sasuke this time. Slowly, her head swiveled to get him into her full field of vision. He looked awfully petulant, but that was sort of normal. The 'wet cat' impression wasn't, but it was a good look on him anyways.
In lieu of words or grabbing her own mud, she launched herself bodily at Sasuke and dragged him down into the sludge onto his back with a hilarious squelch. It was uncomfortable, not least because she still had her arms latched around his ribs and they ended up mildly squished by both their body weight. Without pause, Sasuke made an odd contortion that allowed him to tear her grip off his torso and heaved her up by her waist, pushing her ten feet directly into the air with a startling ease that suddenly made her remember he'd never used his Tsunade-esque super strength on her. She was still blinking in shock and adjusting herself to make a safe landing when Naruto barreled into her from the side and knocked her clean out of the air.
Their observers kept a safe distance. Sai looked bewildered.
'I'm not touching that situation for love or money,' Kakashi snorted fondly, shaking his head.
He didn't know quite what to think of this outcome. It was mildly embarrassing to see his soldiers brawling in the mud. Well… technically their team had won, if only because Sai had accidentally set off one of Sasuke's shuriken traps. He hadn't gotten caught in it, but even the Chuunin version of himself that Kakashi was portraying would have known he was there then. Sasuke would probably fume that it was one of Naruto's traps that got Sai, but he wasn't a miracle worker.
In true cooperative spirit, he'd herded the Root ANBU into a paralysis seal instead of subduing him physically before meandering over to see how on earth Aiko had managed to detain both boys for well over three minutes. They'd apparently managed to subdue her and technically win that fight, although he would have preferred that they figure out that they were fighting a clone and not a disguised Sai. It was an amateur mistake—Aiko tended to keep her wrist turned three degrees further inward than Sai did when blocking kicks, and if Sai had been transformed into Aiko there should have been sloppiness in his taijutsu when he overestimated his reach. Of course, if Aiko had let Sasuke take the offensive, that wouldn't have been readily apparent. So perhaps he couldn't give an accurate assessment without having seen most of the fight.
Eh. There would be other opportunities to get the full gauge of the boys' abilities. They tended to fall into rather repetitive patterns when sparring each other, but both were competitive enough that they also wanted to impress.
Naruto finally noticed his presence, homing in with a frightening intensity for an instant- and then pretended to be distracted by his sister.
'Nice try, Naruto.'
He'd never been particularly subtle, so that wasn't a bad attempt. Still, Kakashi called on a swathe of chakra and shunshined away. A clump of mud sailed elegantly through the air his chest had occupied only milliseconds before. Naruto scowled. His distraction cost him—Sasuke had turned on his ally and shoved a handful of filth inside his open mouth.
Sai just stared, feeling completely lost while Washboard laughed so hard that she fell over, bent up on her side.
Aiko tossed the grungy, mud-flecked towel into her laundry basket, mentally determining to camp out in the laundry room with a book and get everything washed when she had the time. That towel alone would probably require a couple of washes.
More pressing, however, was the ever-present whisper of the trapped seal she had placed on Sai's spine from somewhere nearby. It was hard to pinpoint his exact location without looking (and therefore giving away that she was aware he was observing her).
Aiko was both pleased and unnerved to note that there was a notable difference between the sensation of her regular seals and her trapped seals. It hadn't been designed with any such thing in mind—she hadn't even known it was possible for Hiraishin to sing at varied frequency. She would never mistake Sai's seal for Kakashi's or Naruto's, even though she couldn't tell apart the kunai seal that Kakashi carried from the one she had interlaced with the seal on Naruto's gut. It was a good thing she had a mark on Naruto himself—he seemed to forget to carry the kunai seal with him. Silly thing.
In any case, it was getting difficult not to react to the fact that Sai was still watching her. Idly, she began to pull her damp hair into two braids as she walked through the apartment and carefully scanned for the signs of his surveillance.
'He must be flagging by now,' she thought doubtfully. Sai hadn't appeared fatigued at all when she'd seen him, but she knew for a fact that he had been up as long as she had. Actually, he probably had less sleep than she did. Aiko had been in bed for several hours before Boar had come to drag her to Danzo, and Sai had probably just never gone to sleep yesterday. If she had to, she could stay up for quite a while longer, but it was an unavoidable fact that both her mental processes and physical reactions would suffer. She had to sleep, because she had to be at her peak condition when she was dealing with anyone as dangerous as Danzo.
It was hard to want to sleep when she knew she was being watched, by some creeptastic ink cockroaches no less.
Aiko outright grimaced and used the arm that she lifted to pin her braids to hide the expression from Sai's view. How insulting was it that he thought she wouldn't notice? Cognitively, she knew they were just ink, but it was still shitty that he was sending something so icky into her home. She had to tolerate being in close vicinity to nasty shit like that while she was sleeping or hiding in the woods (ew, nature) but she shouldn't have to her in her own damn bedroom. Ugh. She'd rather that he came in himself.
There wasn't a good way to make that happen without letting on that she knew she was being observed. In order for the fact that she had made no move to tell anyone about her late-night summoning and odd-but-not-criminally-incriminating conversation to count in her favor, they had to think that she thought it was an option in the first place.
That had never been an option, despite what Tsunade seemed to have thought. There was a very good possibility that Tsunade's office wasn't a secure enough location for that conversation. Either it was literally insecure in that there was a way for Danzo to gather information about conversations held there, like hidden listening devices, or it may as well have been bugged because she couldn't slip away to Hokage tower without being seen, even in ANBU gear.
No. Danzo would not risk letting her report to her scheduled shift two days from now without either sealing her or making sure she didn't remember anything sensitive. The short time frame was no doubt to pressure her into making a decision quickly, if he did indeed anticipate that she was alert enough to feel the noose tightening around her neck.
'That was a dramatic metaphor,' she snickered. 'A better one would be that the branding iron approaches, with little old me wide-eyed and not sure if I'm strong enough to make a break for it through the barbed wire. Does that make me a wild horse?'
Root wasn't a matter of life and death, after all. At least not directly, although it could very well put her on the mission that got her killed.
Disappointingly, it did look like she wouldn't be able to avoid it. As troublesome as it would be to get involved in real black operations work as opposed to the softer sides of ANBU assignments, the idea of intentionally failing to meet Danzo's criteria was unpalatable. Not when it meant that he would make sure she couldn't breathe a word anyways. She wasn't so loyal to Tsunade that she would bolt to give her the little useless information she now had, and she wasn't stupid enough to think that she could tell Danzo 'no' either. Aiko liked her mind the way it was—her own and not meddled with. Discretion was the better part of valor in this case.
Really, the success of her mission depended on whether or not she really was smarter and luckier in her circumstances than Danzo had taken into account. Even if that tongue-seal prevented her from designing a counter seal herself… well. She already had one. In the absolute worst situation, where it became clear that her counter seal was a failure and she couldn't make another one, she'd just find Jiraiya.
She was at least certain that the physical paralysis didn't activate from mere from seditious thoughts. It could only respond to attempted action that would demonstrate an actual attempt to sell Root out. It was either intent-based or specifically tailored to prevent the sealed party from writing or speaking certain combinations of words. So, cumulative action that alone wasn't seditious but could be combined to ask for help from a better seal master like Jiraiya wouldn't trigger the seals (until it was too late, if at all). Like holding up a copy of the counterseal she'd already made, looking sad, and sticking out her tongue, for instance. He was bright enough to figure that out.
Granted, that would mean publically associating herself with a splinter cell, but Tsunade had probably kept him in the loop. Even if he hadn't, Jiraiya was emotionally compromised when it came to her and Naruto. He would probably be disappointed, but justify it away unless she presented an actual threat to Konoha's interests.
Besides… she really would like to see how that seal went on. It probably wouldn't be pleasant, but it would no doubt be enlightening. Unless she was unconscious when it went on, then she would be able to gather some information about it.
She didn't bother to restrain her laugh at the conclusion that thought led her to. 'If curiosity like mine really killed the cat, it's a good thing that this isn't Yamato's mission. I think I'll be fine, though. Maybe I'm just arrogant.'
There wasn't any point in fighting her fatigue any longer, so she padded to her room and burrowed under the covers and intentionally relaxing her muscles. If she was getting off on tangents and speculations like that, it was probably time to get to bed. Anyone who came by to see her sleeping in the early afternoon would probably be horrified at her laziness or assume she was ill, but it was hard to care.
Hell, maybe Sai would come in when it became obvious that she was going to be too unconscious to note his presence. The boy would never complain, but he was probably roasting out there in the direct sunlight in his black outfit.
She woke up on her own when Sai actually ventured into her bedroom in ANBU gear, probably intending to wake her up. He still reeked of ink: if it mattered, she would now be able to admit to having recognized her guide for the night.
"Is it that time already?" The question was intentionally cheeky. Maybe he'd tell her not to take this so lightly. Boar had been full of cautions yesterday... But that might have been his own initiative, a subtle way of helping the rookie by letting her know what was expected of her. Whether it was an attempt of secrecy or because he saw no point in helping her, Sai said nothing at all.
He seemed to stare blankly behind his unpainted mask which could be construed as intimidating, but Aiko was unimpressed. Sai probably wasn't going to say anything, so she took his lack of badgering as permission to take her own sweet time to pull on the unflattering pants she only wore as an ANBU and the silly sleeveless shirt that she didn't actually mind. Aiko probably wouldn't have rushed as much as she had the first night with Boar, either, if he'd shown up again. She had let her nervousness overwhelm her, and that wasn't fitting at all. She had to portray calm and collected reserve.
But thinking of her sometimes-teammate's baffling behavior yesterday brought another memory to the forefront. Perhaps he had been genuinely concerned that she might harm Sai, but Boar had still been unnecessarily rough with her. She narrowed her eyes, glaring down at her hands while she pulled on the long gloves that went with her outfit.
'I need to remember that I owe him an ass-kicking.'
Her fingers easily slipped through the routine of fastening her armor, leg plates secured tightly over her boots. It wasn't exactly standard issue, but the blue sandals that most shinobi wore were a visual affront against nature. Nothing short of a direct order from the Hokage or critical village shortage of other shoes would convince her to clamp one of those blue monstrosities on her poor feet.
As soon as she was ready, Sai gripped her upper arm with surprising force. Displeased, she moved to pry it off—and found that she couldn't. She might have panicked, if he didn't hold up his free hand in a seal that broadcasted his intentions.
"Blegh," she said unhappily, but made no move to protest being caught up in his shunshin, squeezing her eyes shut to avoid the dizzying affect of swirling stimuli that she couldn't quite process. Root probably didn't want any paranoid assholes to notice ANBU coming from one area two nights in a now. They had only traveled a few blocks north with his technique before they started to run, meaning that she was directionally aware enough to be sure that the entrance he led her to definitely wasn't the one Boar had used.
'Maybe they're making a point about just how pervasive Konoha's roots are?' she theorized. Impressing her wouldn't be a bad recruitment strategy. People liked to belong to prestigious designations as much as they liked to imagine that they were somehow doing good.
This time, Sai didn't hide in the room with them. She gave him a sideways glance, half-expecting that he would leave, but that didn't seem to be in the cards.
"Danzo-sama." Sai gave a full bow, nearly scraping the floor. She murmured the same greeting, but gave him the same bow as the day before. The old man didn't seem to care either way.
"Masks off."
It was a bit unnerving to see that she couldn't catch Danzo glancing at her even though she was one-hundred percent certain that he was watching her to see if she'd recognized Sai.
'Of course he's a damn good shinobi,' she reminded herself. 'Don't forget that. Old age may have deteriorated his combat skills, but he almost certainly hasn't lost out on perception and observation skills. Shinobi don't live to retire – the real kind of retirement, not getting forced out because of a career-ending injury— unless they are very. Very. Good.'
There was no knowing what conclusion he'd come to, but she hadn't bothered to fake surprise or even given Sai a cursory look as if to check a theory. Danzo's dark eyes appeared to be boring a hole through her very being. "You are familiar with your companion tonight, if I am not mistaken."
It was not a question.
"Hai, Danzo-sama," she agreed politely.
The old man coughed lightly into a fist, frail shoulders shaking slightly. "I am disappointed in you, Sai. You must have been sloppy to have given away your identity."
'Am I supposed to defend him or let him get chewed out?' Frankly, it was a bit puzzling. If Danzo really know that she had recognized him yesterday, then he should have known that assigning Sai to follow her had been his error in the first place. There was no way to ensure that Sai could get within arm's reach of her without giving away his scent unless an equally able scent tracker had checked him over. Obviously, Danzo had arranged no such thing
Danzo might also be operating under the assumption that she had only recognized Sai tonight, which didn't portray him in a better light. If that were true, then not only had he underestimated her, but he had intentionally put Sai in position to give her a chance to prove her worth by recognizing him and then blamed him for Aiko's relative skill level.
'He's a 'big picture' kind of guy, isn't he,' she thought dryly. 'Not a real social butterfly.' Otherwise, he would know that even that absent-minded scolding could drive Sai away. Perhaps he was testing Sai as well by seeing how he reacted to the extra pressure? Or perhaps he was just a sadist.
Aiko kept her mouth shut. If Danzo outright asked how she knew, she would tell him that she'd caught Sai's scent and let him draw his own conclusions.
As it turned out, he was more interested in blaming Sai for supposed ineptitude and then moving on than he was in inquiring after the minutia of her abilities. That fit well with her theory that he was better with large-scale plans than dealing with people on a micro level.
"I have asked you here because I have reason to believe that you would be a beneficial addition to an elite group within ANBU." His hand shook slightly, but Danzo slowly poured two cups of tea and offered one to Aiko. It was hard to note that Sai didn't seem to expect one, nor did he receive an offer. An intentional display of the supposed power differential there? Was he trying to assure her that she would be important, and not just a pawn? If that was the case, it was an obvious lie. Danzo would want to use the benefit her future council seat could give him, not empower and prop her up.
'And that phrasing was nice, too,' she thought with bleak amusement. 'Root sounds very legal in those terms. I suppose it makes sense. If I didn't already know from Tsunade, I would probably assume that this ANBU subset is completely legal. How would someone who wasn't sure ever check what powers the Hokage does and doesn't allow Danzo?'
That probably meant that many of the recruits didn't understand what they were getting into was a criminal faction. Really, the job that Danzo took onto himself was a perfectly legitimate one. The other great powers all had elite forces that were closer to Root than to ANBU. Konoha's ANBU barely dabbled in the actual black operations that were other villages' bread and butter, and were often used as a sort of elite home guard. In Suna, for example, that would be done by Jounin. Konoha (and Fire Country in general) was wealthy and influential enough that there was hardly any need to scrabble out net village profits by taking work that the village had to deny responsibility for. It was part of why everyone else thought that Konoha was soft and insufferably smug.
"I am honored to have your consideration." Her tone was intentionally even, barely walking the line between 'professional' and 'brisk'. It was a rather infuriating obscuring tactic that she had picked up from Kakashi, in fact. He often used the technique to distract the listener from picking apart his actual words, or to elicit an emotional reaction where they might otherwise have been able to control themselves.
Danzo was highly self-contained. There was no indication that he had heard anything possibly insolent in her tone when he continued speaking. "As you should be." She lifted the cup, putting her lips to the cold rim and tipping it up as if to drink, but kept her mouth shut and subtly sniffed it instead. It really did seem to be just tea. There was no discernible benefit in poisoning her.
"If you accept, you will answer directly to me. Your normal duties will continue, but your specialized training will be supplemented by instruction from my agents once you are told to report for further ANBU training."
She allowed herself to look just a bit interested, carefully tilting a single fingertip to barely hover over the cup she was holding gingerly. It took concentration, but she slowly siphoned all the impurities out of the liquid below and gathered them into her hand as she would while preparing water for jutsu. Impure water like that in a lake or river could be used, but it meant fighting against the other elements washing around in the water. The flaky remnants of the tea stuck unpleasantly to her finger and her fist when she withdrew that hand and curled it up, but she didn't let on with her face that she was doing anything unusual.
But really, it would have been idiotic to drink anything he gave her. She didn't trust him. Aiko was polite enough to pretend to drink even if that meant drinking plain-but-scalding hot water, but not polite enough to risk ingesting a sedative or something of that ilk.
"As far as the outside world is concerned, Root does not exist." He leveled her with a stern glare. "The genin, Chuunin, and Jounin who operate in visibility are Konoha's leaves and trunk. But they cannot be strong without a foundation that supports them and allows them to avoid the dank unpleasantness that must be endured. Not all are suited for this role. Do not make your decision lightly… but make it now."
'I honestly did not expect him to frame this as my choice entirely. Pressure much?'
Aiko allowed just a hint of emotion to reach her face. Intentionally, she widened her eyes as if in surprise or dismay, but with a slightly unfocused gaze as though she was caught up in the picture he had been making for her.
The reaction seemed to satisfy Danzo. He gently set down his tea and rose to a standing position, tapping his cane deliberately as he crossed the room contemplatively. It simply had to be an affectation, but it was a convincing display of a man so caught up in his own story that he became restless and had to pace.
It was another pressuring tactic. The toc-toc-toc sound of his wooden cane rhythmically hitting the floor was meant to divide her attention between the real world and her thoughts, imparting a subtle hint of anxiety and need for haste as he moved ever-so-slightly faster.
The first time she opened her jaw, she kept her lips closed and silently put her teeth back together to give the impression that she had thought better of saying something. Danzo wasn't physically watching, but he had eyes on her. Either through Sai or some mechanism she was unaware of, he would be paying attention to her and note that 'slip'. She couldn't seem too eager to choose one option or the other, but now could she hesitate for long. That spiel had been intended to see if she was ideologically aligned with his goals: if she wasn't, she was of no use to him. Of course, neither was an idealistic idiot who said the first thing that came to mind.
"I would like nothing more than to serve Konoha at your discretion in whatever capacity I can, Danzo-sama." This time, her bow was in mimicry of Sai's full bow earlier.
It wasn't a lie. That was exactly what she wanted for her current mission… and in some small part, because she thought he was right. Konoha would be weaker without him, even if he was technically a dissenter.