Tsunade rubbed at her eyes, trying to make sense of her unusually messy report. The codes were all right, but it didn't look like Jiraiya's handwriting or sentence structure at all. She flipped the missive over, scanning to confirm her suspicion—and snorted in amusement.
"What's so funny?" Sasuke cut in, perched on her couch like a particularly awkward bird in the middle of a growth spurt. He'd been hovering lately. As soon as Jiraiya deigned to give an opinion on the seal she'd commissioned from Aiko, they would be calling in the root member Danzo had so foolishly introduced into her active forces under the guise of a mission assignment. Even if he fought to escape once he realized what was happening, with Kakashi and Tenzou in the room posing as his tentative team for a theoretical mission, Tsunade was certain the boy wouldn't have a chance to make a break for it and squeal to Danzo before they'd squeezed him for everything he had.
Of course, they were a bit reluctant to try, because if the seal didn't work, they would either have to kill this 'Sai' to hide their tracks or let him go tell Danzo they were trying to defeat his seal.
Either way, the old fart would know the game was up and make a move against her. They were currently in a stand-still, where he didn't want to act against her because he didn't know that she knew as much as she knew. So all she had to do was pretend to know less than she knew but let him know she knew enough that he didn't think she was an idiot and work to depose her to avoid being ruled by an incompetent.
It was all needlessly complicated, and Sasuke hated it. The poor boy would rather make a one-man assault on a well-respected geriatric. That would win him no political good will, to say the least. At least he understood the necessity for the deception, despite his strong desire to make a move already. That showed some self-restraint.
She considered her youngest apprentice for a moment, and then shrugged. 'He may as well make himself useful since he's lurking here.' With a flourish, she passed him the paper. His brow furrowed.
"I can't read this," he deadpanned as if he thought she was an idiot. Tsunade let her lips curl into a smirk. It wasn't really that amusing, but the expression sent his hackles up every single time. With clockwork predictability, he stiffened.
"Oh, really?" she drawled. "That was written by your old teammate, you know. Do you mean to say that you are less capable of memorizing code than Naruto?"
The boy froze. She had him cornered. His pride wouldn't let him concede intellectual defeat to Naruto, but he doubtlessly already knew that if he claimed to be just as capable, she would copy Jiraiya's lead and pass off responsibility for the reports onto her apprentice. Occasionally, the pervert had good ideas.
The amused expression plastered on her face seemed to make the decision for him. "Where's the key?" he demanded, a little crossly.
Stifling giggles, Tsunade held up a hand to signal him to wait a moment, and then scribbled out the cipher for that code on another piece of paper. She didn't have to tell him to destroy it once he'd memorized it—he had the common sense for that.
'If nothing else, I'll have adequately prepared Naruto an excellent assistant.' She glanced over at her crabby apprentice, and then had to amend, 'Though Sasuke wouldn't be half-bad at the job himself, to be honest…'
He'd have to pick up either a charismatic assistant or some social skills, but other than that, Sasuke was pretty well qualified as a baby Kage in the making. He was getting downright frighteningly good at her lightning-based techniques for scrambling nerve signals, and it was a bit hard to keep up with new and intriguing jutsu to keep him preoccupied. The boy was a hell of a worker, and refused to let his combat efficiency stagnate. It was quite impressive…
Those were thoughts for another time. She wasn't ready to retire just yet. But it was nice to know that Konoha would be well prepared, between Sasuke, Shizune, Naruto, and the ludicrously-vexing-but-qualified Hatake who would (grudgingly) step in if something were to happen to her suddenly. Hell, if push came to shove, Jiraiya would take the hat before Danzo could (but all the aforementioned people would probably have to be dead to make him admit he was absolutely needed in the office, so she secretly hoped he was never Hokage).
'Suddenly' was how ninja politics tended to go, after all. She didn't know if she wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness or cry with relief at the current situation. It was baffling that despite all the grand-standing and shoring up of resources that had been going on since it looked like the Sound village was going to push them all into the fourth great ninja war, tensions had been suddenly cut by a sheepish call for aid from one of the most hostile great powers.
Of course, some of her council had been ranting and raving about the wisdom of strengthening a nation that hated them. Tsunade understood their concerns, and might have thought it stupid herself from another perspective. It was beyond foolish to trust that a gesture of good will might soften the hearts of their old enemies and lead to reciprocation.
But she also understood that if they ever wanted to have real, lasting peace, someone had to take the leap of faith first.
Not being an idiot, she had not used that argument with the conservative faction. Instead, she had taken the pragmatic approach of pointing out that Lightning's request had been very public, in large part an attempt to strong-arm Konoha into agreeing. Refusing to give aid when they had more food than they could eat or sell to Suna would have led to immense resentment, and made it much easier for Rock and Lightning to justify a war to their populace and daimyo.
They didn't need that support to start war, of course, but it made things much easier. Resentful civilians and soldiers fighting what they viewed as someone else's war did not fight nearly as hard as a united, impassioned populace.
By the end of that point, several of her detractors had been convinced. The idea of a philosophically united populace was one of the guiding principles behind Konoha's education of their children. They couldn't very well claim both that Konoha gained immense strength from their united sensibility and that it was no cause for worry if others united against Konoha. The logic was just unsound.
"Are you entirely certain that this was written by Naruto and not a six year old?"
Her apprentice was practically moping, but she didn't feel guilty. Naruto had a very odd way of arranging his sentences—almost as if he thought they had to be arranged in a certain predictable order to have meaning. Aiko did something similar, though less pronounced, when her reports got long and she seemed to lack focus. It began with the subject, moved to the action of the sentence, and then transitioned to the object that received action, every single time, despite that it was often unnecessary or there was a colloquialism made the same point more succinctly. It was bizarre, to be sure, but at least it wasn't her problem right now.
"I am entirely certain, unless the six-year old is also more intelligent than you," she droned, turning her attention back to her work— reading a dreadfully dull and polite letter from the Daimyo reserving seats for the next Chuunin exams. They hadn't even been arranged yet. It was just idiotic to make reservations so early, though she wasn't going to say a damn thing to the Daimyo about it.
Actually, delegating information work to Sasuke gave her an idea. It had been almost two years since the last Chuunin exam in Konoha. As one of the major villages involved in their alliance (and with Grass unable to host) their turn was coming up again soon, and it had to be a big affair, co-hosted with their closest ally as a show of strength. Since the last few rounds had been in overly hostile countries, they hadn't dared to send any clan affiliated genin. That meant they had lost out on opportunities to show their abilities and powerful shinobi off to clients. The fall in public sight would have to be taken care of this time around.
Never having designed a Chuunin exam before, the idea of having to orchestrate an especially extravagant one was spectacularly unappealing. Tsunade was not looking forward to that administrative headache at all.
She could… she could just make it Sasuke's problem.
'Hell, he might even like a chance to get out of the village for a change,' Tsunade thought generously. He'd been stuck in-village for a very long time. The confinement had certainly accelerated his training, but it probably hadn't done his wanderlust any favors.
Really, it would only be kind of her to push that minor headache off onto him. She could call it a test of his diplomatic abilities. It wouldn't even be a particularly hard one—the Kazekage was barely older than Sasuke, so it wasn't like he would be matching wits with a far more experienced opponent.
Of course, she could throw the Kazekage a lot further than she trusted him with her adorable little apprentice, so he would need at least two bodyguards, and at least one of them had to be scary enough to frighten off all but the most determined of attackers. That was probably going to have to be Sharingan No Kakashi (who was admittedly intimidating if you'd never met the man in person and found out just how undignified he was). That team could easily be filled out with Hatake's little apprentice—it would keep them from whining about the separation and also let them easily reproduce their old team dynamics. Those three should work together well. Despite not being in the business of putting friends together, Tsunade often found it made sense to form teams of people who knew each other well as often as possible. There was less jockeying for position and awkwardness caused by not knowing how to work as a unit that way.
Tsunade made a mental note to try putting Naruto back on that same team whenever he finally returned to Konoha. Two Uzumaki and two Sharingan users could be downright terrifying team, if they had any chemistry at all.
But that was a concern for a later time.
At times like this, it was hard not to face-palm. Aiko exchanged a pained look with Tenten, who gave an apologetic shrug, looking mildly amused instead of slightly miserable as Aiko felt. The juxtaposition didn't give her a lot of hope that they should be spending more time together.
'To be fair, she couldn't have known that Gai would decide we needed to be chaperoned if we were working out together,' she tried to convince herself. After all, it was a weird idea. What did he think they were going to get up to on a training field?
Maybe it wasn't really about chaperoning them. He seemed genuinely excited for Tenten… So it could be that he didn't want to miss a vital stage in one of his student's lives and didn't know how to express that without Youth and Training.
When she considered what she knew of Gai's personality, it almost made a sick sort of sense that he'd decided to make their training dates into 'Team Training Plus Aiko'. He was attempting to promote togetherness. Really, he was a great guy.
It was just a little harder to remember that when she found herself tripping over Lee while he zoomed around making declarations and cartwheels (no lie, he was a hell of an acrobat), Gai egged him on and gave Tenten 'quiet' advice in a booming voice under a goddamn rainbow (it was scarring for all) and Neji glared at her with his creepy eyes. There was still no love lost there—he had been a total jerk to her in years past, and they'd never mended bridges. What's more, he seemed totally uninterested in making friends.
In short, Aiko hated working out with their entire team. It was far too crowded and noisy and hectic and she started to feel claustrophobic because she couldn't leave early—it would be rude.
She moped a little. 'Maybe that's why Gai is doing this?' Her gaze flickered to the man in question, who appeared deceptively clueless as always. Aiko would not be surprised if he was making the point that Tenten came as a unit with her team, and if Aiko couldn't handle that, the relationship would fail. It was a good lesson, but not one that she particularly appreciated since the girls had basically decided they wanted to be make-out friends. They didn't know each other well enough to commit to anything serious yet, but they had both really liked that part. For Aiko's part, making out like silly teens (which they were, she had to remind herself) had been an excellent remedy to suddenly having the biological drive to match the sexual maturity her mind had already possessed. She'd been much more relaxed in the days since and would definitely not turn down a repeat if offered.
'But imagine explaining that to Gai?'
Aiko shuddered. No, she couldn't blame Tenten for avoiding that conversation, (if she'd even come to the same conclusion Aiko had).
To be fair, he had an excellent point, if he really was trying to illustrate that Tenten might not be a good match for her if she didn't like having to deal with the team dynamics all the time. Tenten's attention had wavered to her teammates the moment they had showed up, and barely flickered back to Aiko since. They were a tightly-knit group.
She was a little jealous, to be frank. Back when she had first graduated, Aiko had thoroughly expected to have that kind of team bond for herself. She didn't regret becoming Kakashi's apprentice instead, but it had sort of cheated her of that experience. Lately, she was finally getting something similar with Kakashi and Yamato, but she hadn't deluded herself into thinking they were really equals for any reason other than that Kakashi acted as though they were, taking input from his team and letting them lead at times. Come crunch time, she was the baby of the team and she knew it.
'Don't whine,' she chided herself. 'And let's be honest: I don't think this is going to work out.'
The idea of having to fight for Tenten's attention was not remotely appealing. Aiko didn't want to begrudge the other girl those close bonds, of course, but she also thought that she deserved to come first in someone's priorities. (Or at least rate higher than 'fourth, possibly lower depending on her other friends and family').
No matter how much she admired Gai-senpai as a master of her profession and interesting human being, she didn't want to spend that much time with him. The whole affair was a major turn-off.
Tenten looked a little crushed when she escaped in a shunshin with a faux-cheerful wave as soon as practice was done, but she just couldn't handle the noise anymore. As if to get the stink of human socialization off her person, she immediately walked to the shower, holding a hand up rudely to cut off whatever Karin tried to talk about. Her cousin raised a skeptical eyebrow, but shrugged and continued walking into her room.
Karin had probably been trying to tell Aiko that she was going out, because the door slammed about four minutes after Aiko barricaded herself in the bathroom and took a long shower. "Oh well," she breathed, barely hearing her own voice over the muffle of falling water. "I'm sure it wasn't important." Before washing, she took the time to stretch, rolling her ankles one at a time, clasping her hands behind her back, and then just barely managing to brush her fingertips against the ceiling. She held the pose along with her breath— and then collapsed into a relaxed posture with a whoosh. Almost absentmindedly, she reached for one of the really nice scented shampoos. Then she frowned and put it back, picking up one of her own.
"That's got to be the weirdest nervous habit ever," she muttered to herself, tersely massaging the plainer stuff into her hair.
It made some small amount of sense—she was trained as a tracker, and it was harder to work and hide if her own scent was overpowering the trail. Therefore, being able to smell like apple or passionfruit or whatever she stole from Karin subconsciously reassured her mind that she was off the clock, so to speak. So, whenever she was feeling nervous, she subconsciously acted as though the main source of her stress (work) wasn't a problem.
In theory, she didn't mind the habit. But it didn't do to get too predictable. That was one of the hardest ninja guidelines for her to follow. Aiko liked habit and procedure (even if those habits were lazy, unconventional ones, they were still habits).
"What the-"
Aiko cursed under her breath resentfully, holding a hand to her head. She'd startled and jumped when she felt the bizarre sensation of one of her active seals moving quickly without her consent.
That was the worst drawback of the training session she'd had yesterday with her team. At the time, she had thought it very practical and intelligent for Kakashi to tell her to give one to him and Yamato for safekeeping. In theory, it would allow her to meet either of them at a moment's notice, essentially providing her with an instant escape from any trouble she got into without them.
But in practice, it totally sucked. Feeling the chakra signals pinging at all hours of the day was incredibly distracting. (which was why she tended to destroy old ones instead of re-using them). It got a little more manageable proportional to how far away they were, but that also meant they would be harder to reach, so it was hard to feel pleased about that. To her knowledge, there was no limit to the distance she could use the Hiraishin as long as she had a seal, but there was apparently more of a physical toll on the user when they underwent a severe change in environment. It made sense, but it also made her wary of abruptly transitioning climates or elevations.
'At least it'll be much easier to play hide and seek with shishou,' she thought with black humor. She did feel like a gigantic creep for being able to reach his location at any time of the day, no matter where he was.
She momentarily entertained a horrific vision of accidentally coming to find him when he was in the shower or spending time with Gai or in a meeting above her clearance level. (They were varying levels of embarrassing and/or unpleasant, but all still valid scenarios she wanted to avoid).
And that was only if she guessed correctly and didn't end up invading Yamato's personal space instead. Last night, keeping them apart had been relatively simple.
When she couldn't stop noting their movements yesterday, it might have actually been more difficult to forget who was who. But after she went to sleep and discovered that they were both awake and outside before she was, telling them apart was much more difficult. For some reason, it really annoyed her to sense them moving around and not know who was who. It wouldn't be a big deal if she were Karin, for example, whose chakra sense was so refined that she used it to navigate almost as much as her sight. Karin would probably be able to tell not only who was who, but exactly where they were. Aiko just had a vague sense that they were moving closer and further to her.
'I suppose I could figure it out by following one around to find out where they live.'
It would set her mind at ease, but it was a silly idea. Such a thing would both be difficult and dangerously reinforce the impression that she was a stalker. Being able to get to her teammates at any time was a huge responsibility, and they were both somewhat private people who would resent her if she misused it.
No matter how much her shishou liked her, he wouldn't tolerate her hanging about at all hours, she was certain.
The next time they had team practice two days later was a bit weird—they didn't give her back her seals. Instead, they took turns being the enemy. While they sparred, she practiced using the seals on her ally's person to swoop in and offer assistance.
When the exercise was described, it sounded easy. The first round was her and Yamato against Kakashi. She managed to pull on the correct connection (an extra impediment that she would almost certainly not have to deal with in a real fight). The good news was that she materialized exactly where she had intended to.
The bad news was that she had moved in accordance with where he had been, and not anticipated where he was starting to move. She ended up directly in his path.
Aiko had just enough time to look to her left at his startled face, cringe, and realize, 'This isn't going to end well.'
Yamato's momentum knocked her clean over onto her hands and knees and sent him flipping over her back, inadvertently giving her a hard kick in the hip and side of her torso on the way. Involuntarily, she whimpered and dropped, turning the motion into a roll to the right and popping back up to her feet. Yamato had regained his balance just as quickly, but he still looked a bit startled.
"Well, that's one way to do it," drawled the enemy shinobi, who was as of yet completely unhit. They hadn't really menaced him enough to make him move yet, really.
"Oh, shut up, senpai." Yamato grumbled a bit, flushing.
The next few times weren't much better, but she eventually got the hang of it… and only occasionally got in her ally's way. It felt a bit like she imagined it would be to be a cat twining around someone's ankles—always underfoot.
She thought that Yamato was going to laugh himself sick when she finally managed to topple Kakashi the way that she'd knocked him over the first time. (Somewhat suspiciously, he had only agreed to be the ally when it seemed that she had improved her technique.) Aiko would have to belay the amusement until a time when she wasn't black and blue from inadvertent kicks and getting knocked around.
It only took a few hours for the undoubtedly useful but also embarrassing practice to be deemed sufficient progress. Yamato gratefully hobbled off when Kakashi released them (doubtlessly not excited about whatever sadistic idea he would dream up next).
Aiko, on the other hand, collapsed to the grass without even caring about the rocks digging into her legs and back. What was Yamato pouting about—he'd only been involved in about half of the collisions. She was just about grateful enough for a chance to stop pushing herself to use the Hiraishin again and again to want to cry. The slow, deliberate breathing that she had found minimized the discomfort and oxygen loss associated with the Hiraishin was much harder when her chest was aching (though she didn't even know what tumble in particular had led to that hurt).
The strain of her actual technique seemed even worse when she had to make such specific landings, half of which ended with her either colliding into a full-grown man (not a comfortable proposition) or getting bowled over by one moving quickly (significantly worse. Yamato had to be at least sixty percent elbows and knees, she'd swear it in court. And no matter how cute Kakashi-shishou was, Aiko wasn't exactly fond of smacking her head into his ribs or knocking his legs out from under him. At one point, he'd actually been forced to sit on her when she collided with his knees).
'For some reason, I didn't think Hiraishin would be this much of a pain.' Something twinged in her back, and she winced. 'If I'd known it was going to be like this, I'd…' she trailed off that train of thought, realizing that she would have learned it anyways. The Hiraishin had too much potential for even these inconveniences to outweigh the potential benefits.
'It would probably be for the best if we never spoke of this practice again,' Aiko mused. That was just plain undignified, is what it was.
"Ow!" She jerked away from the sandaled foot that lightly nudged her side, and then glared up at the man attached to it.
Of course, the practice wasn't really done until she'd escaped her taskmaster.
Kakashi knelt by her side, apparently torn between amusement and what little sympathy he could muster. "Come on, get up." A large, warm hand gently rested on her shoulder as if to shake her. "If you're that bad off, then you should get to the hospital."
She scrunched up her nose in disgust. The hospital was foul. It stank, the humming of machinery gave her a headache, and there was something very disturbing about not being allowed to leave a building. She was an adult—if she wanted to leave, she was going to, damnit, no matter what some stupid nurse said.
It wasn't an attitude that went over well with Konoha's fine medical professionals, although it was a pretty common one.
'How about I not go there ever again unless I'm about to bleed out?'
Instead of verbally replying, she stuck her tongue out at her shishou and made her way to her feet, determined not to sway or look like she needed medical attention. He seemed a bit long-suffering at her idiocy, but stuffed his hands into his pockets and lurked at her left shoulder.
"I think I'll just take a nap," she demurred, stiffly brushing off her clothes.
"Really." His voice was dry. It gave her a bad feeling, knowing his sense of humor as she did, but she still didn't manage to intercept the single extended finger that poked her in the ribs. She didn't bother to hide her cringe—he would know anyways. He always did. Instead, she hissed at him irritably and swiped at his hand, turning to stomp away. "Saa, don't be like that," he called from behind her, obviously amused by her irritability.
She rolled her eyes. "Fine, you're right, I'm going to go stop by and get my ribs looked at. Jerk." Aiko carefully enunciated with no hostility in her tone.
"Be sure you do. We have a mission tomorrow."
Surprised, she blinked up at him. "Did you already tell Yamato?" She hadn't heard them have the discussion (and because of her creepy new ability, she knew that they hadn't spoken before practice that day).
Kakashi shook his head, yawning idly. "No. He's not coming."
Aiko opened her mouth to respond—and then huffed irritably at the empty space where he'd been until a minute ago. Damn, that was annoying when other people did it.
The Hokage explained things in much more detail the following morning. They were going to Sand, escorting Sasuke. He was meant to be beginning the collaborative planning of the Chuunin exams next year.
That tugged at something in her memory, but Aiko just wasn't sure what. She had the uneasy feeling it had something to do with Akatsuki. Weren't they supposed to start acting up after Naruto came back to Konoha? Of course, that was assuming that he came back to Konoha at the right time. It could be that he would come back early, or come back late and be unable to go with team seven to provide backup to Suna.
That was, of course, contingent on whether or not the same thing happened… and whether team seven was the one selected to go at that time.
Since Naruto had left, Aiko had tried to remember exactly how they should know that Suna was in trouble, but it just wouldn't come to her. No matter how she thought of it, it seemed illogical that they would have any chance to get there in time to provide assistance. Even for upper level shinobi, the trip couldn't be made in a single day. How on earth would it be possible to know about Suna's problems in time to save Gaara? Aiko would really rather not leave it to chance and hope that Gaara would be saved even if the One-Tail was extracted.
No… she'd rather it didn't become an issue at all.
But that would require a nearly instantaneous way to 'find out' that Suna was in trouble.
If she could have, Aiko would have slapped her forehead. 'Now might be a good time to test how those seals work over long distances, or to weatherproof and stash a few on the way to Suna, just in case the entire distance is too much.'
If she gave someone in Suna a seal—Temari or Gaara, for instance – they could be instructed to cover it in a chakra flare if they needed help. According to what Minato had said, that would tug on her connection to the seal and let her know that someone wanted her attention. If that 'instantaneous warning' worked out, then she could get her team moving to Suna much faster than the canon version.
Rather pleased with herself for coming up with a potential solution to a half-remembered problem, Aiko took the opportunity Tsunade gave the team to pack appropriately for Suna and included a fair bit of blank paper and ink in her supplies. She had a feeling she'd been needing some of it.