The light of day didn't make Konoha feel much safer, even as the streets began to teem with early risers. Aiko hurried home, avoiding stares as best as she could, and found her apartment provided little sense of relief. Normally, after a night spent crusted in someone else's blood, she would have scrubbed her flesh clean for at least half an hour. This time, she felt distinctly uneasy standing naked in her own shower… which definitely did have hot water.
Did that mean Tobi had arranged that encounter from the start? He'd engineered events so that he could corner her weaponless and alone after she'd gone ba- had he watched her bathe?
Aiko shivered, feeling distinctly ill, and turned the water off before she'd even gotten all the shampoo out of her hair.
She didn't stay in her apartment longer than it took to pull on a sweater and secure a thigh holster over her standard issue pants.
It had been foolish to be comfortable enough in her home village to go without weapons… though, they wouldn't have done her any good in that encounter, so that wasn't what she was really upset about. Aiko chewed on her lower lip and just walked up and down the busiest streets as she tried to get her thoughts in order.
It didn't take a genius to recognize that she was feeling vulnerable. And that she had a good reason for that feeling, unfortunately. Tobi had played her for a fool. He had watched her for kami knows how long without her noticing. He had batted her around like she had absolutely no chance against him, and then he'd gone and proved that he could back that check up by… by…
She had no idea what he'd done, actually.
'But I know I didn't like it.'
Aiko wrapped her arms around her waist and gave a distracted smile to a woman who offered her a sample of some sort of fresh smelling bread without actually remembering to demur.
'I probably should have told Tsunade that he'd done something to my Hiraishin,' Aiko thought guiltily. But what would she have even said? She didn't understand what had happened herself. It had almost seemed like he had taken her to another dimensional space or something. It hadn't been anything like her experience with inter-dimensional interaction, but she surely hadn't been in Konoha.
If that was what he had done, how long had she been there? Her own perception had been confused, to say the least.
'That's a stupid question.' Aiko belatedly realized that she'd left the apartment in her house slippers. She took a moment to frown down at them, but at least they were just plain sandals. 'I should be more concerned with how he did that. Was it necessary to touch me? It'd be nice to know I could prevent that from ever happening again by not letting him touch me. If I knew what he was using that allowed him to travel that way, I might be able to form a hypothesis. The obvious answer is that since this is Tobi, it was somehow related to his Sharingan.'
That conclusion made more sense than assuming he had other kekkai genkai, right? She'd never even heard of a learned technique that would do anything like what he had played with, so it must be rare for a reason. A bloodline was generally the best explanation for abilities that were supposedly impossible or implausible.
Of course, to the best of her knowledge, the Sharingan did nothing so fanciful. But it made more sense to think of what she knew rather than to speculate that he must possess another kekkai genkai. However spectacular it seemed, sometimes the simplest explanation was best.
Granted, there was no rule saying that whatever he had done could only be attributed to a bloodline ability. But because it had been nothing like her experience with…
Well, that was stupid, Aiko realized with a sigh. There was no logical cause to assume that all fuinjutsu-based space time interaction was similar. Still, she had no reason to believe Tobi had any experience with sealing, so she was going to hold onto the Sharingan as her best clue.
And if Madara was wearing Obito's body, his Sharingan should be the same as the one that Kakashi had. That presented some intriguing possibilities for investigation and testing, if he would indulge her curiosity. If he already knew what she was talking about, that would be a good sign…
'Well, I can hardly up and ask him directly, can I?' She could have hit herself, if that wouldn't be redundant with her already bad mood. 'I'm not supposed to know that Tobi is really Obito's body, or even where Kakashi got his eye. It would be more than a bit suspicious. Maybe I could pretend I saw some marvelous similarity that made me think Tobi was really an Uchiha, but that's a large stretch.'
No matter. There had to be some way to direct a conversation to such a point. If Kakashi were feeling indulgent at all, he would volunteer the information. Especially if he knew what a ninny she was being.
Almost instantly, Aiko felt even worse. She wasn't supposed to be scared of anything. The idea of sharing her weakness was intolerable, and the prospect of using it as collateral to weasel help out of someone she respected was even worse.
She'd still do it, of course. Her pride was less important than her life.
'That's a good long-term plan, but it doesn't do me any good while he's out of the village.' Distractedly, Aiko ducked out of the path of some enthusiastic genin doing a morning run. 'It can't be a coincidence that all my new seals are gone, and the old ones are left.'
The thought didn't seem quite right. After a moment, she realized why. The seal in Kumo was one of her newest ones. What that had in common with the ones that Kakashi and Yamato carried was that it had been painted with sealing ink and her blood.
The vast majority of her seals had been made solely with a little bit of chakra and affixed to whatever she touched. Did… did that make them less stable than the more labor intensive kind?
When realization struck, Aiko nearly stopped in the middle of the street. Minato's notebooks had implied that the connection Hiraishin seals maintained through a constant feed off their user meant that they wouldn't be available for anyone else to use after the user died. She had thought that meant they would all be destroyed—that the seals themselves would unravel. But maybe, just maybe, a seal that had been well made enough would merely deactivate, in a way, since it wasn't feeding off its user's chakra.
In practice, it was the same thing, since a deactivated seal was nearly untraceable and the dead didn't come back to life to use their seals again. But in the odd circumstance that the chakra source that had left could be returned, it certainly made a difference. It was the difference between disconnecting a tv and dropping it off the balcony when you were done with it. The tv that had been disconnected would fizzle with static and search out the old connection once it was turned back on. The one dropped off the balcony was just gone. While the first device was off, it wasn't really present in a more significant way than the ruined device, but there was still the potential for re-use.
A seal wasn't an electrical device, of course, and disconnecting from her seal meant that the connection to the seal had been turned off from her end, not on the seal. She had obviously left Konoha for another plane of existence, but if it had been hers, she would have been able to feel her seals from there. Coming back had been uncomfortable and weakening, but the real shocking pain of loss had occurred in those moments when she was totally cut off.
Tobi had taken her to a dimension that wasn't hers.
'I think Tobi just disproved the theory that there's only one inter-dimensional space,' Aiko thought numbly.
If the space Tobi had taken her to had been the same one she used as a midpoint between herself and seals, then nothing should have happened to her seals. The space-time fold was what allowed her to step to seals miles away—the space she slipped into was equidistant to any of her seals. But her seals had either failed completely or temporarily deactivated while she was in Tobi's personal dimension, just as they would if she had been dead.
It was the first bit of good news she'd had all day. She wasn't completely crippled. If she improved her regular seals, she could retain those even if Tobi dragged her through a private dimension again. Granted, she wouldn't be able to escape from his dimension, but for all she knew he hadn't spent any more time there than she spent in hers. Maybe he couldn't just leave her there. She could only hope, and make sure that she didn't let him know exactly what had happened, if he didn't know already.
'Of course, I probably shouldn't count on improving my ephemeral seals to counter Tobi. For now, I'll count on the ones that I know work.'
Which meant she needed to make more seals and distribute them as soon as possible to restore something of her continental map.
That was easier said than done, when Tsunade didn't plan to send her out on missions any time soon, as far as she knew. Tsunade had pointed out that there was a very good possibility that if Tobi really had approached her on his own initiative instead of for Akatsuki, he might have been trying to do her a favor in his own twisted way. Aiko hadn't appreciated that theory much, especially since it implied that he had been jarred into action because of her last mission. If Tsunade was right, her retrieval of Utakata might have been the last straw that made Akatsuki want her out of the way. That would most generally be interpreted as 'dead', of course, but Tobi seemed to have come to another conclusion.
'Making Tobi my hero,' Aiko thought with more than a hint of bitter irony. That idea wasn't really much more comforting than that he'd been acting on Akatsuki's initiative. Either way, he had proved he could get at her. Did it really matter if it was for Akatsuki's benefit or his own, if the end result was the same? He'd have to get either violent or creative if he really intended to keep her from snatching back any jinchuuriki Akatsuki got their paws on.
And Tsunade's theory also meant that he might be provoked into trying again if she interfered in their attempts to collect jinchuuriki again. That made keeping her in the village an obvious way to mitigate the possibility that he would bother her again.
Aiko didn't put much stock into that idea. He had promised he would be back. Unless something changed, she hadn't seen the last of him. For all she knew he hadn't left Konoha.
She veered into the next open shop door she passed, and spent an inordinate amount of time staring blankly at the wares before she realized she had ducked into an equipment supplier.
'No one ever had too many kunai. Since I'm here, I may as well stock up.'
Besides, the proprietor was beginning to look irritated by her browsing.
It might not be a bad idea to start taking a page out of Minato's book by passing out kunai with her seal painted on them to comrades. He had used them cooperatively by having his subordinates throw dozens and hundreds of them at once and fluttering between them before they could hit the ground. That wasn't exactly her style, but it wouldn't hurt as an addition to her arsenal.
That led to another idea—even if she wasn't particularly invested in having her seals used as weapons that way, there was still merit to asking her comrades for help distributing them. She couldn't leave the village? Fine. Others were. She was sure that if she asked, at least some of the people she knew would be willing to drop a rock with Hiraishin painted on it in whatever country they traveled to for their missions. At this point, it was more important to have a map again than it was to protect against others getting her seals. She could always blow the damn things up in a pinch, if someone put their grubby little paws on something that didn't belong to them.
Didn't have to be rocks, of course. But it would be less conspicuous than kunai, and no one would know to look for them. Actually… maybe Minato had been onto something by using distinctive kunai for his Hiraishin? They weren't just blades: they were a method of making his handiwork instantly recognizable and sowing fear. Intimidation could win half the battle.
She didn't want to use the three-pronged blades that Minato had made famous. That would be too obvious, even as an attempt to coast off his fearsome reputation. Changing the shape of the blade would negatively impact her ability to wield it. So what else could she do to make her kunai completely distinctive?
"Ah, shop-keep-san?" Aiko ducked into a quick bow and then indicated the rather standard kunai she had been looking at. "What would it cost to have the handles lacquered on some of these?"
He seemed to think she was joking. After a few minutes of assuring him, he seemed to change to hoping that she was joking, but he took her bank information gamely and made one last attempt to persuade her into making his job easier by picking a color that he would have readily in stock.
She turned him down, but paid him extra to rush on getting the paint from his supplier. Yes, she was absolutely certain that she wanted orange.
No one in their right mind other than Naruto would think to get such a thing without a good cause. If she wanted distinctive weaponry, she was going to have to go off the beaten track for sensible equipment in good taste.
It took near superhuman effort to force herself to go pick Fukiko up from the Academy and take her out to practice. If Tobi was still hanging around, he might recognize her as an Uchiha. That risk made her want to stay as far away as possible from her student. But on the other hand, for all she knew he was half a country away by now. She couldn't let fear keep her from doing her job without something more solid to go on other than that she was scared.
'Besides, if I don't work with her, she'll never get strong enough to take care of herself.' Aiko somehow gritted her jaw and kept a smile plastered on her face. There was no point in letting Fukiko know something was wrong. She'd be a pretty poor Jounin if she couldn't hide her nervousness from a pre-genin.
"Aiko."
Fukiko stopped the clumsy sequence of hand signs she had been demonstrating to blink up at the man standing beside her teacher. Aiko merely raised an eyebrow and turned her head slightly. That was enough to send the girl flushing.
Only once Fukiko had gone back to pretending to be so absorbed in her practice that she didn't notice the adults talking, did Aiko turn to acknowledge Sai.
"Long time no see."
Almost twenty-four hours, which wasn't really that long. But seeing him wasn't everything. It had been so long since they'd really talked that she strangely felt distanced.
"Not really." His eyes slid away from hers almost dismissively, and he gave Fukiko a curious look. "I saw you last night."
Aiko twitched. "Ah," she replied rather unhelpfully.
It didn't take a genius to realize that he meant he'd been assigned to Tsunade's personal guard last night and had been creeping about while she had debriefed, or seen her in passing under the anonymity of an ANBU mask. Without the seal she'd planted on his back or his sword, she might not know Sai was about unless she was paying close attention. It was amazing just how reliant she had been on her seal sense, and she hadn't even realized until most of them were gone.
Either way, she probably hadn't been at her best when he'd seen her.
"May we talk?"
'Am I going to get scolded again for not caring enough about ROOT?' she thought but didn't say. Rather ungracefully, she nodded. "Alright. Fukiko-chan, pack up. We're going to walk you home." As the brunette hurriedly slipped on a backpack and fell in line, Aiko blandly narrated. "The gentleman escorting us is one of my teammates, Sai."
'And why did I say teammate instead of boyfriend? He is my boyfriend, right? I mean, we've never used those terms. What does that mean? Is that part of what's so weird with us? We never set any boundaries?'
Fukiko's "It's very nice to meet you, Sai-san," was almost inaudible, in part because she was looking at the ground when she said it.
Still, Sai replied gamely enough. But he seemed to consider that enough contribution to friendly conversation. Aiko ignored him and instead prodded the pre-genin into conversation by asking her about her academic classes until she had turned the child over to her aunt.
"So…" she began awkwardly, flexing the foot she wasn't putting her weight on and clasping her hands behind her back. "What did you want to talk about?"
He considered her for a second, and then began walking. After a moment, she jolted into movement behind him and caught up to walk at his side. "Is there cause for concern?"
It took a moment to parse that. "You mean, about what happened last night?" Her stomach roiled, and she thoughtlessly put a hand over it. At the dark-eyed glance the movement garnered, she purposefully didn't pull her hand back. That would look as if she was unable to control herself emotionally, even more so than the display of weakness in the first place. "Probably," Aiko admitted honestly. "He made a point of saying that he would be back."
"Is there nothing you can do?" Sai's lips pressed down ever so slightly, and he crossed the road to get away from the crowds.
"Not that I can think of." Aiko suppressed a sigh. "Can't hide or run. I'll just have to see what happens and be as prepared as possible." She lowered her voice, and grumped, "I can't keep ROOT out of my fucking apartment, so I hardly expect I can keep Akatsuki out."
And wasn't that galling?
Granted, after a point, traps and seals could only go so far to assure security. If they were infallible, no one would use shinobi guards. The problem was of course that the types of people who could threaten her (and therefore she wanted to be safe from) were the ones who were experienced and clever enough that her home security wasn't an insurmountable obstacle.
"Would you like me to stay with you?"
She had to stop for a moment and attempt to gauge his seriousness. It was a hell of an offer. On one hand, it might work to keep Tobi away. He had indicated that he wanted to come back when she was alone by saying he didn't want to have any more ANBU interfere. But would that really work long-term? If he saw that she wasn't going to be alone, his options would be to give up or to make himself known anyways.
Aiko might have taken his offer in an instant if she really thought it would put Tobi off. But why would it? If she gambled on that and was wrong… well, it wouldn't be that hard for a man who could spy on them unseen to forcibly ensure she was alone. She didn't want Sai to get hurt for such a stupid reason.
What good would it really do to hide behind Sai like a scared child? He couldn't keep her safe from Madara. Even the two of them together weren't a sure thing against an opponent of that caliber, especially when the encounter would be pre-determined by their opponent's whim. If they were the one attacking from shadows, it would be different. But the whole set up was that Tobi was lurking whenever and wherever he pleased…
No, it would be a significant risk to Sai with very little possibility of doing anything other than making her feel safer.
The offer did lift her mood, though. Aiko gave him a real smile, and moved to bump her shoulder against his arm. "I'll have to turn you down. But thank you, Sai." She laced her fingers behind her head and looked up, spotting a cloud that looked like a rabbit. Granted, most clouds looked like rabbits to her.
"Are you sure there is nothing that can be done?" He gave her a disapproving frown. "If you will not let me stay with you, there must be some way to ensure your safety, or at least to be sure someone will know if something is wrong within a reasonable time period."
That... was a good point, actually. One of her first fears when she'd seen Tobi in that park had been that he would whisk her away and that no one would know what had happened to her.
"I'll meet you for tea everyday or tell you why I can't?" Aiko suggested warmly.
The faint hint of approval in his eyes was enough to tell her she hadn't been too presumptuous with his time.
"Thank you," she said quietly, leaning over to wrap her arm around his torso and pressed a closed kiss against his neck. "You're the smart one, I suppose. What would I do without you?"
Sai gave her the oddest look. "I suspect you would be fine," he said after a moment. His right arm gave her the briefest of squeezes before he withdrew. "If you will excuse me, I need to report."
"Have a good night!" she called, holding an arm up to protect her eyes from the leaves his departure stirred.
'Huh. Was I imagining things there, or was he a little distant?' Aiko caught a single pine-green leaf between her thumb and forefinger and idly examined the way light moved across the waxy surface. 'I must have been imagining things,' she decided. 'He would tell me if something was wrong, right?'
Almost immediately, she felt a flutter of unease. He probably wouldn't. It wasn't like she talked to him about her problems. Not that her problems were that important, she rejected. She was overreacting. It was irrational to see Shou's face when she closed her eyes at night. She was just having a hard time forgetting the way it had been the moment trust turned to horror. That would fade. It had to. It was just a phase. And Aoto wouldn't have blamed her, would he? It wasn't her fault. It wasn't. ANBU died in the line of duty all the time. She probably would too. She only hoped that when that happened, she might be doing some good.
She managed to forget that bleak line of thought when she went home to find a vase sitting outside her apartment. She had no idea what the flowers were or what they meant, but since there was one red flower and one white flower, it was probably something simple and profound.
Pity that it was almost certainly from Tobi. Tremblingly, she picked the small piece of paper out from under the vase and read the single kanji on it. It was an apology. Aiko almost ripped it in half as a reflexive rejection of the sentiment, but stopped herself long enough to scoop the crumpled piece of paper sitting at the bottom of her kitchen garbage and compare the two.
'I'm almost certain these were written by the same person.'
She stared glumly at the apology and the note she had thought was from a landlord, as if hoping that the broad, slightly tilted handwriting would change on one of them. What were the odds that her landlord had sent her flowers?
Not good, she surmised. A little vindictively, she fed the flowers to her garbage disposal.
'He's still in Konoha.' Aiko sat the vase on her kitchen table, sat down, and buried her face in her palms. 'He didn't leave. For all I know he's watching me right now. Hope he wasn't too attached to those plants.'
She half-wished that she'd asked Sai to walk her home, but that would help nothing but her nerves. Still, she couldn't help but feel that there had to be some way to benefit from assistance in this. There was almost no one that she would trust to help keep her safe from Tobi, but wouldn't she be much better off if he could at least be stopped from surprising her?
That led to two different trails of thought. She happened to be acquainted with a lovely, fluffy canine with a nose twice as good at Kakashi's, who might be able to verify whether or not anyone was lurking about. The other idea that occurred was that it would be greatly helpful to have some sort of intelligence about whatever it was that Tobi had done to her.
'And I know several individuals who wouldn't ask me questions if I brought strange inquiries to them,' Aiko mused. She agreed with Sai that it would be wrong to put ROOT through more hell than they had already been through, but would a research project really strain those boundaries? She did have that convenient list of identities that Tsunade had squirreled out of Danzo's home… Aiko was under too much scrutiny to be caught snooping old records about the Uchiha (her most likely bet as to the source of Tobi's strange kickassery), not least because if Tobi saw, he might react violently to the hint that she knew more than she should. But a third party could accomplish that with no difficulties.
For the first time, she was the creepy bastard showing up at someone else's apartment after twilight. In her defense, Akahiso Yarou happened to live in her apartment complex. Aiko had the sinking suspicion that she knew how at least one of her ROOT compatriots had been so familiar with her home security, and the familiarity of his body build only furthered that assumption. While Mitsuo waited boredly in the entry way, she took the liberty of actually painting a Hiraishin seal on his arm.
Well, it felt like a liberty, even though she asked for permission. Aiko didn't get the feeling that the hollow-cheeked brunet had considered he could tell her no. But adding to her vastly depleted sealing network was too important to pass up, especially since she might want to be able to track him down later to see what he had found. He seemed a bit scandalized that she gave him names of a few other ROOT members and orders to figure out how to contact them, but didn't protest. ANBU level shinobi were more likely to be able to leave the country at the moment and really spread her seals. She could return the next day and hand over however many she managed to get painted during the day for him to pass on.
Mitsuo ponderously rose to his feet to follow, tail wagging ever so slightly as she passed out of Akahiso's doorway and trotted down the stairs to her own apartment. At least he hadn't smelled anyone lurking about. That might have just sent her into a fit of paranoia about whether or not Tobi was capable of hiding from Mitsuo's senses, except he'd picked out a stale scent on Tobi's notes that he identified as 'faintly cat-ish'.
Made sense. Is Uchiha.
So she was grateful for that confirmation of her memories, even if they did spell out bad news. The fact that Mitsuo wasn't familiar with Obito's original scent limited her ability to use Mitsuo's comment as evidence on its own, however. Whatever the hell Madara had done to that body had probably changed his scent, even if puberty and two decades away from the Uchiha complex hadn't.
Aiko was flagging at that point—she hadn't slept yesterday and the last streaks of sunlight were fading away. Having Mitsuo there (and then Hōseki, after a moment's contemplation) made her feel a bit better, but her sleep was still uneasy and frequently interrupted.
"This isn't going to work," she mumbled the third time she woke up sweating, staring irritably at her ceiling. It was a stupid ceiling. She had never noticed before, but she hated that ceiling.
Neither dog followed when she trailed out to her kitchen. Hōseki did trot in by the time the smell of bacon became evident. Aiko tossed a strip to the little dog—and then flushed at the glare she received for treating her friend like an animal.
"Sorry," she apologized sheepishly, before setting out two plates for the dogs and carting the rest off for herself on top of her scrambled eggs. Aiko couldn't help but notice that Hōseki hadn't been too proud to eat the meat off the floor, however.
She didn't want to stay at her apartment. At least not at night, while she was so vulnerable. But going to anyone else's home would unnecessarily endanger them, and anyways she didn't like to impose.
Aiko heaved a rather theatrical sigh that puffed her chest out to ridiculous proportions before sulkily pushing half of her food away uneaten. Mitsuo immediately stuck his face in her bowl and started making snarfling sounds. "This is going to be stupidly expensive," she moaned, cupping his cheeks and dragging his face up to make eye contact. A bit of egg dropped from Mitsuo's mildly surprised mug and plopped to the floor, and he blinked big sad brown eyes up at her. Hōseki clacked over to snap up the lost food.
"What's expensive?" she asked after she swallowed, not sounding as if she was particularly interested. She hadn't liked anything Aiko spent money on, except for fancy shampoos. Pakkun had probably corrupted her, or else she was in a competition to see who could get more spoiled by their respective partners.
"Renting a second apartment under a fake name," Aiko said blankly, already tabulating exactly what strain that would put on her finances. Sure, she had stupid amounts of money sitting around from her books, but she hated to dig into that. On the other hand that account was already under a fake name, and she couldn't put a price on her peace of mind.
The two dogs exchanged a look, and then Mitsuo seemed to shrug. He immediately went back to lapping up breakfast. Hōseki seemed to roll her eyes, backing up so that her little rear was in the air and laying her chin on her paws. "You have strange problems, boss."
She didn't bother arguing with the dog. Aiko mostly agreed, but didn't say anything. Instead, she killed time until sunrise by painting seals, on her apartment and on odds and ends like kunai.
'Do I owe Kakashi a thank-you for teaching me Kage bunshin?' Aiko wondered idly as a clone left with the two dogs to meet Ino for a pre-arranged spar.
Water clones were about as sturdy as the shadow clones, but they couldn't be stuffed into her actual clothes nearly as easily so that they would leave her real scent. Nor could they be maintained after she stopped consciously paying attention to them. Kage bunshin, on the other hand, could take orders and last until the chakra ran out or the construction was disrupted. That would take a while, and Ino would think it was just a prank when Aiko dissolved on the off chance that the clone let her get in a good physical blow. Hopefully that wouldn't happen, though, because it would be weird to just have her shorts sitting in the middle of a training field.
If he was actually watching, Tobi didn't have to believe that the clone was her all day. That just had to happen long enough for her to slip out under henge and head to the market district for a few essentials for a new apartment. Two hours later, a purple-haired woman in a lacey, conservative, and unspeakably voluminous white dress that Aiko wouldn't normally be caught dead in had withdrawn a completely horrifying amount of money from the bank Ino had set her account in.
She had spent a while thinking about the optimal location she would rent. Her initial thought had been that she should set herself up as far away as possible from her apartment to distance herself from Tobi. And then she had considered the fact that such an action was completely predictable. So she rented a tiny open flat in the building next door, where she could keep an eye on things. Metaphorically speaking of course, since the room was on the opposite side of the building, without a line of sight to her real apartment. If Tobi had any sense at all and knew what she had done, he would go to her windows and see which apartments had a view of hers and investigate those. That would be what she would do.
Aiko whiled away the time waiting for the building manager to file paperwork by internally debating whether her mind was too convoluted or just right. She ended up deciding that depending on whether or not Tobi was a similarly paranoid bastard.
It cost a sob story about an abusive ex boyfriend and an extra 25% of her rent to convince her elderly landlady to backdate the paperwork to indicate that Aiko had applied for the room two weeks prior and file it as such. She didn't want to find out that only one apartment in Konoha had been rented out the day after Tobi had sauntered into town. If he was half as sneaky as he seemed, he'd be able to piece that together.
She spent the time left until her clone failed painting her new apartment. Not in the conventional way, of course. Aiko had immediately pulled the full curtains she'd bought out of her satchel so that no one could see in and then covered the place in Hiraishin seals. If Tobi did track her here, she'd want to have a lot of mobility.
The influx of memories that hit her at that moment informed her that the clone had managed to make it through practice with Ino, but that Hōseki had bit it to end the chakra construct because it was time for Aiko to feed the dogs or they were going to go home. She snorted in amusement, but dropped the henge and siphoned chakra out of the seals on her gloves that quieted her chakra signature. Aiko took one last look around her new abode before she left via Hiraishin (she could hardly be tracked there if she never walked to the safehouse). It was quiet and decidedly unwelcoming. The floors were clean, but that was about the best thing that could be said about it.
'A safehouse isn't Barbie's dream mansion,' Aiko chided herself, turning on her heels away from the view even as she pulled herself back to her real apartment where the dogs were waiting. 'It doesn't have to be comfortable. It just has to do the job of giving me someplace Tobi won't look for me.'
Assuming he still wanted to get her alone, she was safer during the day than she was at night. Still, she didn't linger in her apartment. Mitsuo woofed happily when she nearly bolted for the door, and the trip downstairs inadvertently turned into a three-way run.
Hoseki won, so they scowled at her even as the three trekked to the market district. Unfortunately, she hadn't had time to buy food before Kotetsu found her. Aiko gave him a mournful stare, and tried not to stare too obviously at his meticulously groomed chin…beard… thing. He had to use a ruler to get it to look like that.
"Are you sure you can't tell Tsunade-sama that you didn't find me until after I'd had lunch?" she wheedled, employing puppy eyes to their best effect.
They were ineffective, though he did crack a smile. "I'm sure," he dryly retorted. "Why would I want to take a fall for you?"
She batted her eyes. "Because I'm adorable?" Aiko asked innocently.
Kotetsu rolled his eyes. "Not a chance," he replied flatly. "You can't trick me, short stuff. I've worked with Genma before. You're ten years too early to try to flirt your way out of having to report."
'What's that supposed to mean?'
Mildly bewildered by the reference to someone she didn't really know, she dismissed her hounds so they could go home to eat. There was no point in everyone being uncomfortable. Then she followed the Chuunin errand boy to Tsunade's office.
Apparently, Tsunade had wanted her to repeat her report to Konoha's spymaster. It was a bit tiresome, but Aiko understood the need. No matter how diligent Tsunade was, there was always the risk that a clue would be lost when a second person paraphrased a critical report. This was, she was available for questions.
For the first time, someone thought to ask what she had been able to see of the exposed eye through Tobi's mask to add something to their incredibly sparse physical description, which made her realize that she hadn't seen anything. Well, she had known that the eye was shadowed, but she hadn't thought about whether that was a consequence of the lighting and the way the mask blocked light or a genjutsu. Jiraiya seemed certain it was a genjutsu, and who was she to argue?
Now that she really considered it, it did seem positively bizarre that she hadn't been able to catch even a glint of red. Sharingan eyes were highly reflective, and would have caught the light at one point.
'On the other hand, Tobi would probably want to hide when he had that activated,' she thought self depreciatingly. She'd had other things on her mind, but still. She'd been staring at him so intently that she really should have wondered why all she saw was a black hole in his mask.
"I don't suppose you have anything else to add?" Jiraiya sighed.
Aiko bit her lip consideringly, and shrugged. Maybe he'd be able to make more sense of this, or point her in the right direction. Her mind was already racing ahead, trying to find a way to phrase what had happened without inserting her biases, so that Jiraiya could give an assessment that wasn't influenced by hers. "Did dad ever have a problem with his seals in a fight?" When all the man did was raise an eyebrow, she added, "Tobi did something really weird when he grabbed me."
A hard look shuttered over her godfather's eyes, and she wondered if it might have been a good idea to gloss over that part. Too late now.
Hurriedly, she continued, "It was- He took me…" Aiko frowned, and decided to just spit out her theory, since she couldn't think of a way to describe what had happened without tainting Jiraiya's impression. "It wasn't like using Hiraishin to slip between at all, but I think that's what it was." At his horror, she waved her hands. "Not Hiraishin!" she clarified, before dropping her hands and wringing her fingers together. "Another in-between space. A fourth dimension- or fifth, as it were," she added with dry humor. "It seemed like we were there much longer than I ever am in Hiraishin, so I could be wrong about it looking altogether different. But it was bizarre." She stopped to lick her lips, struggling for a way to describe what she'd seen. "I can't put it into words," Aiko settled lamely. "But anyway. When I was there, I couldn't feel my seals at all. And when we came back to Konoha, almost all of them were gone."
Tsunade went white.
"None of the ones on kage," Aiko reassured. "And I still have Naruto and Shinji tagged. The other jinchuuriki…" she made a face. "Might be a good idea to line them up and slap some paint on them, if they're willing. Probably won't be," she admitted honestly. "I don't think Fuu ever realized I'd tagged her. And Utakata probably won't want to see me again."
"Why didn't you tell me this before?" Tsunade snapped, looking more confused than actually angry.
"I was pretty disoriented," Aiko pointed out dryly. "I was in shock, and I'd just lost a sense. Not exactly my best moment. And you didn't give me much chance to offer information. You asked me the questions that were relevant to trying to catch Tobi, and then you sent me out, if you will recall."
Plus, she'd been feeling very vulnerable and not interested in sharing her weakness. Jiraiya looked at her in a way that implied he knew what she wasn't saying. He heaved a sigh and turned his chin up instead of confronting her, and put his hands on his hips. "Well," he mused, voice rumbling even lower than usual. "That is distressing. No, Minato never experienced anything like that. Why did you assume- oh, I see," he half-mumbled to himself. "It had to be a fifth dimension, counting yours as fourth, otherwise you would have been able to just Hiraishin out. Do you have any idea why he brought you back to Konoha?"
That had honestly never occurred to her. "Maybe he can't use it as a means of travel?" Aiko weakly suggested. "He seemed surprised that it hurt me. Maybe he just came back before he'd done whatever he intended to do." What the hell else would he use it for?
Jiraiya frowned. "Maybe, but I wouldn't count on it."
Tsunade had been looking a little lost, but at this point she scowled, having latching on to the last point. "I suppose that explains why we never caught him," she added grumpily.
The toad sannin just hummed in agreement, clearly not paying his old teammate much attention.
~~~
Naruto's eyes were all but closed, but he still noted a sense of warmth and presence approaching. He glanced over at the source as it knelt at his side. "I suppose you just happened to come help refill water?"
Sasuke gave him a withering glance before pulling the pack full of bottles off his back and beginning to pile them up. "Have you already checked the water composition?"
"I'm working on it," he replied shortly. It was necessary every single time they refilled water, despite being a massive pain in the ass. Once Karin had managed to stop twitching the first day they had arrived, she'd explained that the overwhelming chakra permeating the atmosphere suspiciously just inside the border indicated their opponent had control over the rain. That meant he had control over the water supply. So they had to be cautious.
'Not like Kakashi would have let us slack on securing the safety of the ration supply anyway.' Naruto had frankly been surprised to see that the older man could live up to his intimidating reputation when the time came. He had never been so stern and serious before. At least, not that Naruto had seen. Captain Yamato didn't seem surprised at all, so maybe he would have encountered this side of his old sensei if he had remained the man's student longer.
It reminded him a bit of Aiko's freaky personality change into sternness on their mission to hunt Mukade, actually. Terse and bossy and not doing a great job of hiding that they were hyper-alert and probably scared that something was going to happen to their subordin-
"Don't think so hard, you'll get a headache."
Naruto gave Sasuke a glare for that half-hearted gibe, but he couldn't really get behind the banter. The distracted and unhappy expression on the Uchiha's face indicated that he wasn't feeling it either.
It was the first time they'd had a chance to talk in anything resembling privacy since their early wakeup. Their superiors were distracted, not half-witted. If Yamato noticed them whispering a few hours after a report from home came, he would shut them down.
'If the pervert were here, I bet he'd be on our side.' Naruto rather violently shoved the next bottle under the water, half-wishing Jiraiya hadn't left with the toads' aid that morning. Jiraiya was technically the highest ranking person who had been out on the border, but he'd been there in an unofficial capacity. If he had been asked, he might have been willing to go against orders to go into Ame. The pervert had never cared much for orders. He was sort of awesome. Who else would go to work on their own initiative?
'Come to think of it, the pervert's been really serious too,' Naruto mused. 'You'd think that he would enjoy this more, since he was doing it of his own volition.'
His teammate's voice brought him back to the real world. "They'll know as soon as we cross the border." Sasuke's expression was blank.
"Yeah," Naruto acknowledged with a scowl. There had to be some way around that. "Do you think the rain technique is sensitive enough to monitor things like summons? I know that Aiko's isn't."
"If it isn't, we could send one of your toads in and reverse summon to his position," Sasuke suggested, dropping water purifier pills into the bottles one by one and then fastening them shut. There wasn't really a question that they intended to go fight Akatsuki. If they didn't have that delusional jackass with the water to worry about, Ame would have already been routed. The four-country alliance had sent a lot of firepower.
Naruto bit his lower lip and kicked out his heels, lying back on his elbows. "It takes a relatively big, powerful toad to do that," he admitted. "Gamakichi is getting pretty strong… but then it seems less likely that he'll be able to slip in unnoticed."
Sasuke grunted in acknowledgement, leaning back a little himself. "We might need Karin," he mused. "Do you think she'll be amenable? It would be preferable to ensure that no one is going to herd us into a trap."
"Yeah," Naruto said, with a little more confidence than he felt. "She's getting sick of waiting here too. I bet she's anxious to do something. Besides,-"
"I can hardly leave you idiots to get yourselves killed alone," Karin dryly finished, giving them a dirty look as both boys spun around to see her. She heaved a sigh and pulled her heavy hair off her neck, making a face at the damp. "How did I know you were planning something stupid?" she asked conversationally, before snapping her fingers. "Oh wait! Could it be the significant glances you were exchanging all day? The way you not so subtly arranged to be alone? Or was it just that you're predictable?"
"To be fair, those same clues could have been used to derive any number of possibilities," Sasuke bantered, giving her that sideways half-smile that always sent a shiver up Naruto's spine and made him think of the moment before Baa-chan said something really off-putting.
"Like what, you two were running off for a romantic tryst?" Karin asked bluntly, folding her legs in front of her and using one hand as a brace. The other hand fidgeted with her glasses, revealing that she wasn't as unaffected as she was portraying. Naruto was transfixed. He was missing something. He knew he was, but he didn't know what it was.
"Why, are you jealous?" Sasuke asked smoothly, giving a languid stretch that did something funny to the graceful muscles of his neck. "You've caught us. We came out here, to this soggy paradise, to fu-"
"Bastard!" Naruto shrieked, leaping at him to cover his mouth and make him stop saying such weird things. Sasuke had been ready for that, however, and he found himself pinned on his stomach with his wrists caught in Sasuke's hand. Naruto was oddly relieved, even as he went through the obligatory wiggling and whining when his teammate unceremoniously sat on his back. Wrestling was familiar and safe.
There was an odd sound that might have been a giggle, if Karin weren't more likely to cackle. She cleared her throat, and Naruto heard her advise mock-seriously, "I think you're going to have to try a different position, but I'm not here to judge. Either way… What do you two have to say about this situation?"
"I think we're going to have to wait until Jiraiya returns," Naruto admitted grumpily, clawing at the ground and getting mud encrusted up to his second knuckles. "He's probably the only one who can fight with our mysterious kami." The way he pronounced the last word was rather close to the way Sasuke's persistently disgruntled great-aunt might say things like 'unicorn', 'fiscal responsibility,' and 'dog feces'.
Feeling charitable, Sasuke only gave Naruto a little kick in the ribs as he got up and began gathering the equipment to return to camp. "How long can that be?" he asked philosophically. "Jiraiya might be needed in the village, but that's probably for one very specific thing, and then he'll be out here again. Tsunade-sama has a hard time keeping him where he's supposed to be when he's not invested. Since he wants to be here, it's only a matter of time."
"Are we just going to hope that everyone capitulates, or should we start feeling out who else is restless enough to make our own plan?" Karin asked with a sigh, giving a stretch that cracked her back four times. "If we can figure out a way to communicate long distance, we could actually take advantage of our superior numbers."
Naruto gave a theatrical scoff and jumped up to his feet, snatching half of Sasuke's burden away and beginning to stride back to camp. "Tactics, Karin?" he tossed over his shoulder. "Don't you realize that's the refuge of people who can't just hit their problems in the face?"
"Oh no," she droned. "Do I ever feel embarrassed."
"Well, if it makes you feel better," Naruto mock-assured her. "I guess we can try it. But I reserve the right to fall back on using superior force and yelling a lot."
"As if anyone could stop you," Sasuke sighed, sharing a mildly piteous look with Karin behind Naruto's back.
The blond gave him a hurt expression, big blue eyes quavering. "Hey, are you calling me stupid?"
"If the geta fit…"