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Even her thin yellow shirt felt heavy on the shoulder blades, plastered as it was with disturbingly warm sweat.
'Isn't the purpose of sweat to cool us down?'
Aiko tried not to wheeze, feeling a painful dryness in her throat. She just wasn't used to the dry, hot air in Suna. Now that they were within sight of Suna, she and Kakashi were walking together at the end of the group. There was no point in trying to rush ahead of the civilians they were escorting.
Said civilians were currently talking with two nin who were probably the equivalent of Konoha's Chuunin gate guards- a gangly teenage boy who didn't yet have the muscle for his broad shoulders and a woman who was probably in her early to mid twenties.
With their paperwork verifying they had contracts to sell in Sand, the merchant wagons would get in with only a brief but incredibly invasive search of their goods and persons. The two Konoha ninja, on the other hand, would not exactly be welcomed, and not just because they were more likely to be dangerous than civilians. Their contract was a two-way trip, which meant that not only was Suna having to accept multiple foreign ninja in their village, those foreign ninja were actually taking business that Suna should have had.
It was strange and shitty, but Suna had been performing very poorly lately and losing a lot of missions. Aiko wouldn't have known that without the pre-mission briefing. She was under strict orders that basically boiled down to not acting like a jackass and causing extra tension between their villages.
"Next," the thin stern-faced kunoichi conducting the searches gestured for the last wagon to pull up while the others happily escaped into the village, eager to get out of the midday sun. Aiko sighed, leaning her head against her teacher's side and nestling into his arm. He firmly but gently put his hand on her head and pushed her off.
"Personal space, Aiko-chan." He steered her away until his arm was fully outstretched in a phenomenal display of social awkwardness.
She scoffed. "Don't pretend you don't like it." Still, she didn't try to lean on him again. It was too hot to touch another living being anyway.
"Okay, Konoha shinobi. Papers?" Kakashi smoothly moved forward to deal with the Chuunin guard. Aiko involuntarily grimaced, eyes bulging when his voice dropped half an octave from its already low pitch to something incredibly smooth and sexy. He leaned forward, tilting his head suggestively and somehow looming. The Chuunin who had previously looked so aloof was biting at her lip and tucking a lock of spiky brown hair behind her ear.
'Oh, ewwww.' Aiko gagged, turning her face away. The Chuunin's coworker gave her a sympathetic look. "Yeah, that's pretty gross." He ran a hand through his short hair and made a face.
"Oh, your student is cleared." The woman handed back a sheaf of papers that she couldn't possibly have properly examined. Aiko and her new comrade-in-disgust snorted in unison.
"How nice," her teacher purred. Aiko felt her stomach turn. "Why don't you go check on our reservation at the inn?" Aiko eyed her teacher for just a second- she'd never seen him act like this. And it had been very sudden… 'He's up to something. I suppose I should play along.'
"What a coincidence," she said flatly, locking her face into an impassive expression. "I'm going to leave."
"You do that," he said distractedly. 'Definitely an act, he's always paying attention.' It seemed to fool the Suna nin, though. The kunoichi giggled, heavy lidded eyes blinking slowly while she preened under what appeared to be his undivided attention.
"You've scarred me for life," she said a little viciously. Her teacher merely crinkled his visible eye. Aiko snatched her papers in a fist and stomped off, practically fuming. She then proceeded to get completely, hopelessly lost. "All these buildings look alike," she said a little defensively to herself. 'I should probably go back and ask where the hotel is…' She curled her toes in her open-front sandals, wishing she could keep the sand out. She'd only been in the desert for a few days, and she was already ridiculously sick of it.
"Oh come on," she quietly cursed. "It's only been like six minutes since I walked in the gaaate," she whined under her breath.
Much like Konoha, Suna was arranged to be confusing to outsiders. Unfortunately, she wasn't familiar with Suna at all. The streets were nearly empty, which made some sense. It was the hottest part of the day. The few people she did see under shady outcroppings or by windows gave her strange looks. 'How is it obvious that I'm an outsider to absolutely everyone around?' She tried to compare her clothing to that of the civilians she'd seen. It didn't seem to be very different. A little brighter in color, maybe.
"What are you doing here."
Aiko shrieked, stepping back and bringing one hand up to her throat. "Kami, you startled me," she breathed. A boy about her own age was giving her a stink-eye through messy bangs. He was another example of the exotic hair colors in this world. It looked like it came out of a box. She would have thought it was brown if it weren't for the red glinting in the sunlight and nearly blinding her.
Judging by the way he'd snuck up on her, he was a shinobi. She probably would have guessed that from the bandages holding down the edges of his pants anyways.
"You don't belong here."
"Well, sorr-yyy," she grumbled. "Looking for the Two Flowers hotel. Wanna help me so I don't spend all night wandering around your town?"
He blinked slowly, mouth twisting into a sneer. "Foreign moron. You're going the wrong way. The blue building over there," he pointed out.
"Uh, thanks Sunshine." She gave a loose salute and set off in the direction he indicated, but was cut off by a mean-faced teen with the wildest blonde hair she'd ever seen.
"You didn't explain why you're wandering around where you don't belong, brat."
"Making friends, Aiko-chan?" Her personal savior and teacher was suddenly there, looking very tall and serious. The kunoichi exchanged glances with her comrade, less sure about harassing an adult.
"Something like that, sensei." Aiko wound her arm through her teacher's elbow. "I thought I was going to be lost forever. Shinobi-san over there pointed me in the direction of our hotel. Kunoichi-san was just talking about how much she likes my hair. I like hers too."
"I'm sure," he said dryly. "Is there a problem here?"
The older girl narrowed her eyes at the two foreign nin. "I suppose not. Come on, otouto." The two sand nin left in a blur. Despite the theatrics, they weren't actually far above her level, if at all. She caught sight of them tapping away on the rooftops. 'A poor shunshin.'
Aiko turned her full attention to her sensei. "Thanks. I take it you actually know where to go?"
"Of course." He started walking, presence diminished once again to his normal slumping 'harmless and barely awake' look. There was something incredibly disturbing about just how convincing that act was, even when she damn well knew better. "I wasn't expecting you to go very far. Most of Suna's citizens aren't overly enthused about outsiders."
"I wasn't expecting you to ditch me in a foreign power for a pretty face," Aiko grumbled, kicking up a small cloud of dust. Her teacher gave her a mildly amused look.
"Maa, so uncute. You don't have any faith in me, do you?" He sighed quietly. "Would it restore your respect in me if I told you that I was both speeding us into the village by easing possible tensions over our presence and distracting her from realizing that I was gauging the political climate?" His voice was completely bland.
'The worst part is that I believe him. If he was really trying to get laid, he wouldn't do it on a mission around his 11 year old subordinate.'
Aiko rolled her eyes fondly. "Don't worry, I'll respect you in the morning." Her sensei eyed her at the slight innuendo, clearly trying to gauge if it was intentional. She kept a straight face. Possibly the best thing about her situation was that she constantly got to mess with people who were unnerved by a pre-teen girl making dirty jokes. She was milking it for all she was worth- Kakashi-sensei would figure out pretty soon that she was aware of what she was saying. The game was only fun when people were kept off-balance, trying to figure out if they were perverts for hearing innuendo from a child's lips.
She carefully didn't cackle or even smile on the walk to their hotel.
"One room please, two beds."
The tall woman behind the counter gave her teacher an unimpressed once-over, then a pointed look at the pre-teen girl he was asking to share a room with. Aiko blushed at the implication, but her teacher didn't react in the slightest. He merely waited for the room key, locked into pleasant detachment until the wrinkled crab behind the counter gave up and forked it over, giving him the evil eye all the while.
"Is it really so strange to share a room with your teacher?" she asked in an undertone while they took the stairs.
"No," he said shortly. He pulled out his book and lovingly opened it for the first time in quite a while, now that there was no risk of getting sand in it. He gently ran a finger down the spine, expression softening for the first time she'd ever seen. "That woman was just a pervert."
Aiko twitched. 'I wish I could tell whether or not he's intentionally using irony.'
~~~
Waiting for their clients to unload all of their merchandise in exchange for a whole lot of money was pretty boring. When she was lying awake in bed the first night, Aiko wondered if the blonde kunoichi she'd met had been Temari- which would make the boy either Kankuro or Gaara. Much more likely Kankuro, as Temari probably wouldn't spend her free time with Gaara.
'Don't be stupid.' She rolled over onto her tummy, sliding both arms around her pillow, trying to burrow even further under the hotel-provided covers. Suna was kind of a shithole- she cooked alive during the day and shivered all night. 'You can't assume that the first two shinobi you meet in Suna just happen to be the older two Sand Siblings. Blonde and reddish hair must just not be that rare in sand.'
Still, the thought lingered. She kept an eye out over the next few days, but didn't see either of them.
Her teacher amused himself with books and using their mission budget in teahouses, but Aiko was bored out of her skull and anxious to get back to training. Kakashi made it clear, however, that practicing ninja skills within the borders of a foreign power was actually considered provocative and possibly hostile. For some strange reason, it made people nervous to see foreign military powering up jutsu, sprinting around or looking too interested in the environment.
After some consideration, she decided that being the cause of a diplomatic incident was slightly worse than missing out on training. Because she couldn't stand sitting around all day, she walked. Aiko wandered the streets from sun up until it was time to have a light meal, went to sleep, and woke up again after the worst of the heat had passed. She washed and re-wore her warmest clothes (and the light clothes layered under) and went out for the first few hours after dark, when the village lit up for a short time with music floating out from open doors and candy cooking. Apparently, it was customary to do socializing right after dark. It was very strange to a Konoha-raised girl. In her experience, the nightlife was for adults- definitely not a family affair like it was here. It wasn't raucous where the adults were drinking, either. Apparently Suna natives were relatively reserved even when partying it up.
It took a while, but Aiko managed to join in on the third night, slipping around the desert like a native. Her training in attention to detail helped- she learned how to wear her scarf like a native (her previous arrangement was apparently just Not Done for some reason) and switched out her standard issue blues for closed shoes she found in the market.
The group she had joined all seemed to be a little older than her- a group of civilians who were probably thirteen or so. Either they didn't mind her age or she could pass for a short teen, because she had no shortage of partners to laughingly help her through the steps of a dance she'd never seen before.
Instead of the partnered dances she was used to, it was apparently vogue in Sand to form concentric circles. The movements involved a motion like they were passing something around from hand to hand, circling partners, and rapid swirling. Aiko laughed, giddy. She wasn't the best dancer there, but the advantage of several years' worth of taijutsu training was enough that she could do a decent job of remembering the movements.
"Now turn!" listening to her new friend, a slim girl with black hair and teal eyes, Aiko spun quickly and crossed her arms at the wrists above her hand, then brought them apart to interlock her fingers with the girls on either side. The group quick-stepped inward and twisted, creating a tangle of arms above their heads.
Then the screaming started. It didn't last long, which was almost more disturbing than anything, as it choked off very suddenly. Aiko immediately freed her hands and turned in the direction it was coming from, but her civilian companions wasted a few long moments in confusion, as did the musicians. Whoever had made the sound had only been a few blocks away. The flutes and stringed instruments trickled to a stop, and the crowds began to move and murmur uneasily. The teal-eyed girl laid a hand on Aiko's shoulder. "You should go back to your room," she said quietly. "Come on."
Sure enough, the crowd was dispersing- swiftly, but in an orderly way she wouldn't have expected. The people were more nervous and annoyed than panicked- almost as if this was a routine occurrence.
"Why?" she hissed. "Do you know what's going on?"
"I have a pretty good idea," the older girl said grimly, steering her down the street. "But they won't give us the details. Any minute now they'll be sending out the order to clear the streets." An older boy with coloring similar to her new friend pushed out of the crowd and gave the two girl a tight smile.
"Alright there, Chiye?"
"Maa, maa," Chiye mumbled to the boy who almost had to be her brother. "Did you hear anything?"
"They think that freak killed someone," he said quietly. His eyes flickered over to the west. "Quieted down real fast, didn't it?"
"Quiet, you want to get taken away?" Chiye hissed. "Bishamon, this is Aiko. Can you take her back to her hotel?" The older boy barely looked at her before he agreed.
"That really won't be necessary," Aiko waved her hands. "I'll find it."
"Better safe than sorry. Relax, this is my cousin, he lives in that direction and he'll get you there safely. It would be pretty poor hospitality for you to walk alone across town. I'm going to catch up with my mom. Be safe, you too." She hastily hugged the older teen and pushed her way towards the other side of the street, quickly disappearing into the crowd.
"Let's go." The streets were quickly clearing as people filed into houses. Before too long they were almost alone. A siren of some sort went off. Aiko turned to look, but Bishamon indicated that she shouldn't look around. He stared straight forward, businesslike and as impassive as he could manage. "It's coming from the central tower, telling us to go inside. It's the same alarm that indicates a sandstorm, but in this case it just generally means the village is going into lockdown and that the streets are unsafe."
Conversation ended after that. He left her in the lobby and took off at a run, clearly anxious to get home. Aiko walked slowly through the halls, marveling at how strangely empty it was. The hotel's public areas weren't usually this empty unless it was the middle of the night, when it got cold enough to force even her inside.
Her teacher stopped his pacing and eyed her when she came in. He didn't make any obvious changes in expression or body language, but she got the sense that he was relieved. In response to her unasked question, he shrugged. "Whatever is going on here was apparently something they didn't want me seeing. When the siren started I went to look for you, but a helpful group of Jounin escorted me back to the room." His attention flickered to the window. They'd been given a room without glass or curtains, only a thin screen to keep out sand. Most windows in Suna were like that, but… 'We're being monitored,' she realized. That made some sense- they'd have to be really stupid to let foreigners wander around unobserved. She subtly flashed her next question through handsigns.
Do you think they can hear us?
"No," he said easily, "but they can probably read your lips." He didn't have to explain that his mask made that impossible for anyone to do to him. Aiko scowled and considered the benefits of a mask for the first time.
She went and sat on her bed, turning her back to the window. "I got the impression that the civilians I was with knew what happened," she confided quietly. "One of them said something that implied a well-known figure had killed someone and that this was unsurprising. They were worried about being overheard, which hints that whoever this is, they're protected by someone powerful." She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. Now that she wasn't moving, she was starting to feel cold.
'Is Gaara the 'freak' they mentioned? It seems likely. Not many domestic issues would send a village into lockdown like this.' Her heart pounded at the notion. 'At this point, he's really dangerous. I don't want to mess with whatever is going on here.'
Her teacher absorbed the information silently before giving a slight nod. "I see. Well, it's beyond our mission parameters, so we're not doing anything unless we're attacked."
"Hai, sensei," she agreed, slipping into formality as a source of comfort from the strange situation.
They weren't allowed to leave their room for twenty four hours. Their food was delivered directly to their door- an assortment of plain brown rice and vegetables. Aiko found herself incredibly grateful to be with a professional- Kakashi checked all the food for poisons easily and quickly. Her academy-trained mind was more than a bit uncomfortable eating food that she hadn't seen prepared.
"One of the few medical jutsu I know," he commented when he caught her staring as his hand lit up with green. "I'll teach you eventually, if your control is good enough."
Overnight they received a message from one of their clients- the group was ready to go back home, and were being pressured to get out. They didn't say that, exactly, but the two could read between the lines. They packed up their meager supplies and met with their clients at the same gate they'd entered, followed the entire way by less-than-inconspicuous Suna nin, as if to make a point.
Kakashi sighed. "Well, off on another adventure." Aiko stared up at her teacher for a long moment, and then shook her head as if to ward off his weirdness. It was safer not to reply to that.
The first four days of their trip back to where they'd met the caravan passed in bland monotony, where the only excitement was the first time that someone spotted greenery. Well. Other than the occasional "Eek! Look, there's a scorpion/snake/poisonous rabbit, kill it with fire!" (everything in this desert was poisonous, from the animals to the cacti to even the rocks). Only a few hours of walking after that exciting discovery got them out of the desert proper and into a sort of scrubland with bushes and ratty grass that was slightly less fiendishly hot. After almost two weeks in the desert, it was a welcome change in scenery and temperature.
Aiko was still incredibly frustrated by the pace- if they had traveled at ninja speeds, even a genin like her could have made the trip from Konoha to Suna in less than four days. It apparently took civilians something like eleventy billion years. She half expected to evolve spurs or poison sacs like a desert creature before she ever made it home.
She considered sharing that theory with her teacher, but didn't want to risk it. He didn't seem like the kind of person who would allow whining on a mission.
Kakashi-sensei was a wall of professionalism and impassivity the entire trip back. It seemed a little strange for her giggly, porn-reading teacher, but Aiko eventually decided to think of it as his 'game face'. The only other option was some sort of dissociative personality disorder. She didn't want to think she'd been given to a teacher with such blatant issues, so 'game face' it was.
She was almost grateful when the bandits attacked.
Aiko sensed them long before they came out of cover and had a staccato conversation with her teacher in the Konoha equivalent of Morse code, casually drifting to more tactical positions.
Six civilians, her teacher tapped. Also one low genin/high academy level. Do not engage first.
Fatalities or subdue? She signed back, not knowing the tap code. He slowly blinked through a heavy-lidded gray eye, lowering his head very slightly into a nod.
Standard. Well, that answered that. No one wanted more bandits running around that would menace future genin teams.
It was an unfortunate fact of life for civilian soldiers/mercenaries that engaging in only the physical aspects of shinobi-like activity would give them very distinctive chakra signatures. Only shinobi learned how to hide their chakra signatures from sensing techniques, so even her tenuous grasp of sensory awareness was enough to make it impossible to surprise her when she was paying attention.
Her teacher took the rear, the most likely location for a good ambush to strike. Of course, if they weren't good, they would attack from the front. A middling attack would probably come from the side. With her position in the middle of the group, she was relatively ready to respond to any mediocre opponents.
And were they ever mediocre. Their ambush took place along a long stretch of straight road two lanes wide-plenty of room to move- with little cover. She sighed and tried not to face-palm in embarrassment that her first real combat experience was with a bunch of dorks hiding behind bushes. They attempted to stand up at once and menace the group, the leader growling out his terms (hand over your money and no one gets hurt, yadda yadda). Kakashi ended that quickly with a casually tossed kunai to the forehead. As the man stupidly fell over, cross eyed, his companions rushed the group.
It was very quick. Her teacher seemed to want it to be a learning experience- he kept his one visible eye on her fights while he half-heartedly kept four of the amateur bandits away from their clients. They didn't seem enthusiastic about fighting him- they doubtlessly hadn't expected shinobi. "None of these are going to have a bounty worth collecting," he called mildly. "Go on, that one looks easy." He gently batted a man holding a long, chipped blade in her direction. He looked a bit offended.
'It's like a mama cat teaching a kitten to hunt…'
Despite how ludicrous the situation seemed, the combination of rote taijutsu and the ingrained need to follow her sensei's orders got her through the fight. She easily crushed her first opponent's trachea, outright surprised when he didn't block the beginner's move and fell, dead. 'That was easy. Should it be this easy?' She turned at the sound of furious screaming and slipped under the sword that tried to gut her.
Aiko didn't have to think about the movements that had her plant a fist into his gut, swing him over her shoulder and then bring the man to the ground and force him into a submission hold in less than two seconds. She pushed his wrists all the way up to his shoulder blades held criss-cross and crouched with one foot firmly on his lower back. A moment later she realized her mistake- that gave her time to think, and she didn't know that she could finish him when he couldn't fight back. She sat frozen, holding his arms twisted up behind his back in a way that had to hurt for someone who didn't have the flexibility of a shinobi. If she'd been alone, one of the other seven original attackers might have finished her while she was stunned.
Kakashi, long since finished, crouched at her side. "All right there?"
"Hai, sensei. What… what should I do?" She jerked her head at the one survivor, who only now seemed to realize the sounds of fighting had died down. He began shrieking something incomprehensible, eyes wide with terror.
Kakashi didn't appear to have sympathy. "Why don't you go assure our clients that everything is fine? I'll finish up here." He firmly pressed a hand on the back of the restrained bandit's neck, forcing him into stillness. Aiko stumbled away, suddenly feeling sick. A horrible snapping sound filled the air behind her, but she didn't turn to look. All she wanted to look at was her hands. She stared with a terrible focus. They looked like they always did. Less than two minutes ago, she'd killed a man with them as easily as she used them to eat rice. She wasn't even sweating.
'It's not supposed to be that easy.' She pressed her hands to her chest, trying to stop the shaking. That had probably not even been twenty pounds of force. She'd gotten harder hits from Neji in the academy. How was a grown man so fragile?
'Don't be stupid,' she thought fiercely, suddenly angry with herself. 'You knew what you were getting into. Shinobi kill people. And they would have killed our clients if we weren't here.' She knew damn well that shinobi got some morally dubious orders, but this wasn't one of them. This was protecting people. That's different. While her teacher took care of the –mess, took care of the mess, she did her best to assure everyone that everything was under control and that they would be able to start moving again soon.
Somehow, it was hard to convince herself that everything was normal. None of the civilians seemed outraged or disgusted that she'd killed a man in front of them- a few of them nodded at her approvingly, and one woman even thanked her, the aunt escorting the group of teenagers who had shucked her veneer of respectability like a second skin when they left town. She seemed somehow diminished and paler without pins in her hair or slick red lipstain. Aiko nodded dully.
"It's nasty business," she rasped, fingers searching for one of the cigarettes she'd run out of days ago. "But you showed them, eh sweetheart?"
~~~
Aiko separated from her teacher at the village gates. He sent her home- they'd do the proper de-briefing sometime soon, after he'd had a chance to submit the mission report and it was filed with the mission desk.
She didn't go straight home. Aiko wandered the streets for a while, not really thinking until she realized she was outside the civilian petstore.
One slim hand with short fingers just losing their baby pudge patted the thin fold of bills she'd received as payment for her mission. She couldn't actually feel them through the fabric of her holster, but knowing they were there was enough. In relatively quick time, she found the most ridiculous, fluffy cat in the whole store- a confectionary affair of an animal with soft black fur, delicate paws, and unnerving green eyes. She probably looked absolutely strange walking down the street with dusty leggings, a bulging knapsack and an armful of protesting kitty, but she was feeling the need for a hug. She hadn't dared ask her teacher for one, she couldn't tell her baby brother she'd killed a man and she had no one else, so giving hugs was going to have to substitute getting them.
"Smaug," she said abruptly to a cat who didn't seem to care, doing his level best to escape with half the skin on her chest while she struggled with the doorknob of her apartment. "You're Smaug."
The dragon cat didn't care one way or another about his new name.
~~~
Naruto loved Smaug. Smaug didn't love Naruto. Smaug did his level best to assassinate both children until Naruto decided to win feline love with food. She let him feed the cat takeout ramen. Apparently Iruka had started taking him out to Ichiraku while she was gone. The babble washed over her like foamy sea water, a comforting undulation of white noise syllables without meaning. He'd beat Kiba in a spar. Sakura had snapped and challenged Ami to a spar and won, but got her very first detention. A girl had been dropped from the class. Sasuke was still a bastard. Mizuki-sensei was still a bastard. Neji was still a bastard but he hadn't been seen since graduation. He was going to be the Hokage one day.
Over the next few days, she patched together a new normal that started with three lunches instead of two- one for the spoiled cat, who had decided he would tolerate her as a live-in servant and followed her around town to her morning practice, getting dust on his coat. Every day she returned him to the apartment, picked up her lunch and opened his, met Kakashi for training, went home for a shower or went to the onsen to listen to the conversation of strangers, then went home for dinner or went out with Naruto and sometimes Ino and a couple of time Kiba joined the two of them, giving Aiko strange glances all the while.
After her second successful C-class mission, she didn't get D-class missions anymore. Technically she had a B-class on her record from tagging along when Kakashi caught that prospective missing nin, so she looked pretty good on paper.
To keep up with the fact that she'd be in more combat situations, her teacher drilled her mercilessly on taijutsu and forced her to perfect the water jutsu she knew, as well as some tactics for using them together. Once that was done, he taught her first real offensive water skill- something she likened to a spray of bullets. Depending on the speed and chakra she used, they could either punch holes in flesh or just knock someone over.
Her teacher had stared at her when she'd mastered it on the second try with something like nostalgia. He wasn't entirely surprised, however. It didn't require control or finesse so much as it did enthusiasm.
That she had in spades. Aiko had gotten her first real taste of shinobi life. If she was going to make anything better, she needed to work hard and fast.
Changing the course of a world (or at least a continent) wasn't work for amateurs.