"Nii, stop!"
For one bizarre moment, she thought that the redheaded man was calling the blonde woman his brother. That didn't make much sense, so she was actually slightly relieved to realize it must be her name instead.
Then she had the 'oh shit' realization that she really should have already put together.
' That's Yugito Nii . Cloud's other jinchuuriki. The one who completely mastered her own bijuu.'
Aiko gave serious consideration to whimpering, maybe covering her face like Mitsuo did when there was something scary around.
It was hard to tell if Yugito was clearing her throat or preparing a painful hairball. Either way, she made an ugly raspy sound before she managed to force out human words. "It's our duty not to come back empty handed. She's not what we wanted, but the jinchuuriki's sister would almost be more fitting than the boy himself, considering Konoha's crime."
'Would this be a bad time to mention that Naruto isn't even in Konoha?' some dazed part of her brain wondered. Yes. Yes it would be, because he was probably more vulnerable wherever he was than within Konoha's walls. She couldn't have them chasing him down when he only had three others for support.
That was about when her mind caught up to the implication that they had been planning to kidnap Naruto in payback for B's death. It probably wasn't to sit down for tea and cuddles with him either, since they thought Konoha responsible for a brutal and ignominious death. She couldn't have that: anyone who tried to harm Naruto deserved a painful death.
Of course, she didn't exactly want them after her, either.
"If that's what's going on, I'm afraid I will have to take off the kid gloves, kitty-cat," Aiko grit out between her teeth with a strained smile and eyes that were probably a bit too wild to pass as sane. "Pity. I wasn't going to kill any of you, since it was much funnier to ditch your little friends in hostile territory across the continent."
The jinchuuriki inhaled, and then was overcome with a virtual pillar of hot blue light. Aiko blinked just in time to see the manifestation of sheer power split into two, wavering and crackling. "Good," Yugito breathed, fanged and clawed and thoroughly dangerous. "I wouldn't want to beat you when you weren't taking me seriously, Uzumaki."
Her lips thinned. "You couldn't beat me even then."
Even as the words left her lips, Aiko wondered why the hell she'd said that. It was a cocky lie. Yugito would chew her up and spit her out if she wasn't at her best.
' Time for that later. Wait. Oh my god, I just realized that Cloud's jinchuuriki recognized me on sight. Just because they were briefed on Naruto, or on my own merits?'
Unsettling.
The look in Yugito's eyes was hard to read, but she breathed in deeply through her nose—and exhaled a blast of fire worthy of an Uchiha from her mouth that must have burnt up her own lips.
Aiko easily dodged, taking to a tree with a quick flip –and a wince at the lingering pain in her knees. She couldn't let Yugito touch her again unless she was getting something truly good in return. The risk was only worth it in return for a finishing blow.
She could run away from this fight without a problem… if she was willing to leave a partially transformed jinchuuriki an hour's sprint from the village. How much damage could Yugito do?
'An unacceptable amount,' she grimly judged.
But if Yugito was so powerful, why would she waste her time with an attack that followed a straight trajectory like that at a relatively low speed? If she'd trapped Aiko first, sure, it could have torn the flesh from her bones in an instant. But Yugito had to know by now that Aiko was fast enough to dodge that.
'Ah. That's why.'
The instant that her feet connected with the tree she'd leapt to, Yugito's attack (shaped suspiciously like an animal) broke apart into hundreds of tiny pieces—and the burning wreckage of the first attack proceeded to demonstrate an alarming disregard for laws of physics like 'a body in motion will stay in the same path of motion' for no apparent reason and zoom around to chase her.
She bit down a shriek when her first dodge didn't steer her totally clear of the barrage and a little spark that stank like burning hair caught her neck. Her next Hiraishin was reflexive, and gave her just enough distance to see that some of the floating bits of fire had been unable to stop before they wasted themselves on the trees behind her first position, but others were already re-orienting towards her.
The solution was obvious: dodge them in such a way that forced them to collide with something other than her.
It would have been a great solution if Yugito wasn't giving an inhuman roar and a chakra flare that seemed to gift her a burst of speed, forcing Aiko to dodge two separate sets of attacks.
'Getting hit by tiny fires will hurt. Getting hit by her will be the end of the fight,' she assessed, evaluating Yugito herself as the larger threat by far. That was why she flickered to a position that put the flying fire between her and Yugito. Perhaps she could be tricked into running through her own attack in her enraged state.
In the next instant, Yugito slashed through her old position, the tips of her foot-long claws catching bark and cutting through it like it was ice cream. Her booted feet hit the wood on either side of her hands in an impressive display of flexibility and she launched herself bodily across the clearing before Aiko even had to think about dodging the tiny fires.
Aiko actually felt a bit of a chill, despite the crackling heat all around. She'd lost track of the remaining enemy nin sometime in the last few seconds.
' Let's hope he's either a coward who ran or the gentlemanly type who plans to let the ladies fight it out.'
She flitted to another position high above Yugito's head, working her hands through a series of seals she didn't often use. Cold pressure began to build in her stomach almost immediately. Without the seals, she was adept enough to perform a smaller version of this technique, commanding a couple bathtubs worth of water from sheer affinity. Aiko had used it not too long ago on that creepy puppet fucker. But Yugito was the type of opponent who merited the real deal.
' And the dramatics of shouting out technique names, since this is hardly a stealthy ninja fight anyways.'
The thought might have been slightly hysterical. Still, she readied herself on the second to last seal- and had to Hiraishin again, having misjudged just how speedily Yugito could whip around and the fact that the other woman would fucking cut down the tree with her claws like the world's cutest lumberjack. The scent of burning hair was heavily flavored now with grass, leaves, and even a bit of scorched wood from Yugito's initial attack. She couldn't afford to fight the environment as well as a jinchuuriki.
"Exploding water: Colliding Wave!"
Lucky it was at least a good elemental match-up for her. Thank kami for small favors.
Aiko dropped her jaw immediately as she finished the final seal and poured a truly horrific amount of chakra into the technique, expelling the contents of a respectable swimming pool in an arc over the clearing, soaking Yugito (and sending her flying backwards like a thrown doll for a moment) as well as the grass and flying projectiles. To recover, Aiko immediately took a deep breath to fight off the sudden bout of lightheadedness from burning off a quarter of her chakra reserves in one move and made a fist with her left.
The fist wasn't necessary, exactly, but it kept her hand from shaking when she snaked the largest chakra chain she could manage on an instant's preparation down it.
' I wish I was more like Kushina. Her chakra chains were so far superior to mine that it isn't even funny.'
She'd never seen them herself, but she didn't have to have witness Kushina to interpret the underwhelmed expressions of everyone who'd seen her mother's weapons as confirmation that they weren't even in the same ballpark. A woman who had restrained the fully transformed Kyuubi on her deathbed wouldn't have had to blink at a partially transformed jinchuuriki of a lesser demon.
But she would be a pretty poor kunoichi if her response to a dangerous situation was wishing someone else was around to save her. Her skill-set could have been designed specifically for the purpose of restraining jinchuuriki, for kami's sake. She had the speed to avoid devastating attacks and the ability to contain even poisonous chakra from a safe distance.
Yugito was still caught up in the gushing water when Aiko jumped down to ride the wave. It carried the blonde kunoichi backwards a good five meters before she regained her feet and struggled wildly to climb to the top of the current. Aiko caught Yugito around the gut with an intentionally dull chain before she could ready herself to dodge and immediately wrapped it as many times as she could, constricting Yugito's ribs. The older kunoichi, looking bedraggled and pissed with her hair plastered to her face, ('Haha, wet cat', Aiko thought hysterically,) immediately started testing the restraints and flailing. Yugito tossed her head back and yowled, curling her augmented claws around to tear at what she could reach of the chains. Aiko was forced to keep feeding more and more chains to keep the woman restrained, feeling stress build in her aching muscles from trying to hold a rampaging jinchuuriki.
"Stop. Moving." She gritted out from between clenched teeth, bending the arm that her largest chain was wrapped around slightly to give her a better angle and then used the physical strength she could muster in conjunction with her own control of her chains in order to fling Yugito bodily across the clearing and slam her face-first into the ground in a skid, twisting and spinning to lift her immediately again and send her crashing through a tree at an angle that might have broken a hip.
She still had that seal on Yugito's gut, but it was her safeguard. Without any idea of where Yugito's demon seal was, doing anything that might shred it or interfere would be reckless unless she had no other option. So she shouldn't put any more seals near Yugito's major chakra gates. Besides, with the way that jinchuuriki regenerated, having a Hiraishin to exploit later might be more valuable than a one-time explosion that would destroy her seal.
Super-enhanced jinchuuriki healing and strength or not, blunt force trauma was still enough to stun the jinchuuriki of the two-tailed cat.
'Now I see why people thought these chains were so good for restraining bijuu.'
"Dayyyummm," Aiko huffed, a grin tugging up one side of her mouth despite herself, smashing Yugito face-up into the ground with force that created a small crater before heaving her up again to smack against an outcropping of stone that audibly cracked one of the jinchuuriki's bones. Which one, she couldn't be bothered to guess. "Even my third-rate jutsu is enough to hold a lame-ass like you."
Yugito just yowled through what had to be a broken jaw, bloody spit flying from her bared teeth.
Aiko almost felt bad, but kept the older woman in motion, hoping that she would just stop regenerating. The chakra cloak Yugito wore was flickering after each impact. With any luck, that meant it was on the verge of failing. 'Unconscious' would be a huge step-up for Yugito, as far as Aiko was concerned. She didn't want to bring a dangerous enemy to anyone else and risk other lives, but she would be remiss to let a hostile of Yugito's caliber go in search of another target either. It was starting to seem that she had the situation pretty well under control. A third chakra chain had snaked around the larger mass to pin Yugito's arms, so there would be no jutsu she could use to free herself.
Just two more hits caused the faltering chakra cloak to fall entirely. Aiko kept her chakra chains intact and tight as she cautiously picked her way over to the fallen jinchuuriki, conscious that it might be a feint. She didn't react when Aiko tugged off her cloud headband, which pretty well settled for Aiko that she was well and truly out of it. Losing the public declaration of your loyalty… that was awful, a symbol of total defeat. No one with any self respect would allow their headband to be taken without a struggle. Her pulse was still going strong, though, which left Aiko in the unpleasant position of having to come to a decision on what to do with her.
Anyone highly placed in the chain of command would dictate that she took Yugito back to the village like she had that blond sensor. She would be an incredibly valuable commodity for trade with Lightning. They couldn't just let her be lost.
But taking her… that would seem to prove every negative claim that the Raikage was making about them. It might well push other countries into believing his fear-mongering talk that Konoha was out to steal their jinchuuriki. Konoha would be beset by far too many enemies.
War would be stupid, even more so than usual. They just couldn't afford it when the Akatsuki were the real threat. It would be far worse if they were fighting more than just Lightning.
Killing Yugito… That would technically be absolvable, since she had been intruding in their country and engaged in combat with a marked Konoha soldier. No one would contest that she'd had to kill Yugito to control her. Cloud would be furious, but no one would honestly take them seriously if they tried to complain about one of their soldiers being killed in combat. It was a risk of being a shinobi. It wouldn't dissolve the tensions with Cloud, but it would undermine their main defamatory claim as well as setting back Akatsuki's goals.
If Yugito was killed while her demon was dormant, it would perish with her. Sure, it would probably re-form, but not for an extended period of time.
Her fingers ran gently along Yugito's face, positioning on either side of her jaw. One good twist would end all this stupidity. There were some things even a bijuu couldn't fix, and this would be instant. Painless.
Squelch.
' I forgot about her backup. I can't believe I forgot about him.'
Aiko's heart fell to her gut even as she twisted her head to see the man who had just touched down in the scorched swampland that the clearing had become. He was sprinting towards her, holding a blade in each hand.
She jerked her hands down to break the connection to the chakra chains, letting them dissolve on their own and dropped down below her opponent's guard to give him a punch to the junk just to share how she felt about him.
At least, that was the plan. Aiko blinked stupidly as her fists passed through the man that she only belatedly realized was a genjutsu.
"You tricked me," dropped from her lips. She felt strangely cheated.
The slim man who gathered Yugito up in his arms and took off for the safety of the border didn't even give her a backwards glance. He'd come out of hiding to retrieve his comrade.
' What was the point of that? He knows he can't possibly out-run me. I'll just Hiraishin. I can kill him from behind without any opposition, and then take Yugito to do as I will.'
The plan was simple, obvious, and all but fool proof. The jinchuuriki of the two-tails was broken and within her grasp. All she had to do was reach out and take it.
But she didn't. Aiko straightened, and watched the loyal Cloud-nin flee thoughtfully. That was one brave mother-fucker. He really should have just run away and left Yugito to her fate. It would have been the intelligent action. But… She was a lot more impressed by this, to be honest.
'I suppose my time might be better used if I went to check on the outpost and saw what was going on than if I beat down one brave idiot and a woman I've already smashed up and down five ways to Tuesday.' She frowned. 'Still. Even if I do let them live, I can't leave them unsupervised within Fire Country. I have to chase them all the way out. Or take them myself.'
She took off at a run behind the fleeing nin, pushing just until she had them fully in her sight and zinged forward with a rush of Hiraishin power, barely stopping in the real world before she slipped back into the flat dimensional space and deposited the man she was gripping by the knot of his headband onto the soil of Grass country. Immediately, she leapt backwards as he awkwardly swept around to try to hit her, eyes wild.
The look in his face when he saw that she'd backed off was baffled. The line of blood from the scrape his headband had left as she'd torn it off only enhanced the expression. (Hey, she had a pattern going. Consistency was important).
"Hurry home now," Aiko said quietly, letting the glee of her earlier fight fade. "Don't come back to Konoha, or I will have to kill you next time."
' I might get in trouble for this. But my original reasoning still stands. And kidnapping a jinchuuriki would only enflame things at this point. Killing her… there's no longer any point, since she's been defeated.'
To hell with the potential consequences. There was a more immediate concern, in the form of the outpost that this group had crept past.
"I think you owe me the favor of a question." Intentionally, she let a twig crunch under her foot when she pressed forward.
The conscious cloud shinobi didn't so much as flinch at her approach, eying her calmly. Yugito hung limply over her comrade's shoulder, blood dripping slowly from her mouth. If the man in front of her was intimidated, he was too good to show it.
"The outpost. Did you sneak past, or are they dead?"
Aiko could see the pulse jump in his neck. She found herself perversely interested in how he would respond. Would his pride forbid he share information, even though he suspected she could kill him? He wouldn't have run if he trusted that he could win a fight against her.
A surprisingly melodic voice gave her answer, though he didn't seem happy about it. "No one is dead. We were intended to take the first two high-value targets available. If we got lucky, the Senju woman would be choking on her own blood now."
"And my little brother?" Aiko prodded sternly, letting a hint of cruelty creep into her eyes. "Was that the plan for him too?" He had to see the irony in killing someone's little brother to revenge the Raikage's, even if that had been a source of black amusement before encountering someone who actually cared about the boy in question.
Her opponent was honorable enough to look a little shamed at being called out like that, but firmly stood his ground. "No. Konoha owes us a bijuu. We were going to take him so that a seal master could get us what you took. His death would be a side effect, not the aim."
She'd thought as much.
Quietly, she shook her head and let a bit of sorrow cross her face. "We didn't do it, you know. I hate Akatsuki as much as the Raikage should, and I don't even blame him for lashing out in his pain." Her expression firmed. Maybe she was better at intimidation than she'd thought, because whatever he saw in her eyes made the shinobi shift backwards. "But anyone who so much as touches Naruto is going to live just long enough to wish that they hadn't."
It was a promise, not an idle boast.
She didn't let him respond, flickering back to the closest seal to the yellow-painted outpost. (The paint was inside, not outside. Yellow was poor camouflage in a forest). He probably hadn't lied to her, but it would be negligent not to check for herself. A few minutes of running brought her within sight of friendly shinobi. Aiko intentionally slowed, both out of politeness and a sense of the pragmatic. Hands raised, she moved to call attention. "Hello!"
"Halt!"
' I'm not moving, dumbass.'
Aiko instinctively raised her arm guard to deflect the shuriken that came swinging her way… and only belatedly realized that she wasn't wearing arm guards. She was wearing a kimono. A kimono that now had a shuriken sticking to it. She stupidly blinked at the blade puncturing her flesh for a moment.
"Shinobi-san?"
Her voice was curiously flat, but the man who had leapt out to meet her seemed to have registered her affiliation. "Yes, Uzumaki-san?" he asked meekly, seeming to stare at her arm.
And he knew her too. Glorious.
"You can damage my dress, but you incompetent twats couldn't manage to notice eight Kumo-nin pass your stretch of the border?"
Maybe it was unnecessary to raise her voice, but she was just at the end of her goddamn rope. And one jumped-up border guard dope had just managed to do more visible damage to her as any one of the foreign shinobi she'd just fought. A Chuunin. A shuriken-happy Chuunin.
Kami. How embarrassing.
She'd chalk it up to fatigue and the fact that she'd trusted her allies not to act like jackasses if anyone asked.
~~~
"-reckless, idiotic, short-sighted-"
Aiko did her very best not to betray that she was struggling to stay awake. Tsunade was doing an excellent job of scolding her, she really was. It was just that the mixture of light bloodloss and the fading adrenaline high had her feeling something like a dirty sock. Limp and in need of a wash. Failing that opportunity, she would settle for collapsing on the floor. It was starting to look pretty appealing. What pretty carpet Tsunade had.
' I shouldn't have come back here. I could have crashed in the outpost and dealt with this later.'
Who would have been cruel enough to drag her out of bed, after all? Maybe Karin… Tsunade… Yamato… Hmm.
' I need nicer friends.'
"-should hit you until you start learning how to wait for orders-"
She winced a little. There was a point there. She'd even been in Tsunade's office. Another second or two to be told to take another person for back-up or even just get the okay to go back out wouldn't have killed her. It wasn't like there had really been a possibility that Tsunade would have let the intruders go uncontested.
"-have any idea how risky-"
Yes, yes, it had been risky, but it had been a controlled risk. Tsunade was starting to sound like a broken record. Being a shinobi always meant putting yourself in dangerous positions. The difference between fighting foreigners on orders and fighting them without it was a stupid one. Yugito probably would have stomped the collection of Chuunin in the outpost if they had bothered to be competent enough to notice her. Why shouldn't she engage in a fight she was much more suited to than those who had orders for it?
(The criticism definitely wasn't fair. Once they'd left her sight, she hadn't been able to sense the intruders either. They'd had an amazing chakra specialist and had all been high-level enough to move silently and speedily even while evading patrols.)
"I know that it looks like I didn't think things through at all."
Tsunade blinked, apparently not expecting the quiet interruption.
"But I didn't want to kill any of them, and I thought that anyone else might not understand my reasoning on short notice. In addition, I am uniquely suited to removing threats non-lethally."
"Translation, with the stick pulled out of your ass?" Tsunade asked dryly, twisting a pencil around her fingers.
"I can Hiraishin them out of our borders so that they can't do any damage without actually having to fight them and risk getting hurt or hurting them."
The muscle under one of Tsunade's eyes twitched. "You do realize that this put you in danger, even if I do concede that it was less danger than it would be for anyone else? And that hardly explains why you chose not to kill any of them. I never took you as a soft touch."
"Akatsuki is our biggest threat, not Cloud," Aiko bit out crisply. She didn't seem to react to the way that Tsunade face-faulted at that blasé dismissal of a country on the verge of declaring open war against them. Even if they weren't, sending a raiding party meant that Konoha was going to be pushed towards declaring war themselves.
Then again, Aiko might have been onto something. If she'd let that task force gain entry and harm Fire Country citizens, Tsunade would be compelled as Hokage to force war. But as it was, all Lightning had committed was unlawful entry into the country. That was an offense worth sanctions and fines, but not a call to war. Cloud had been humiliated, but the diplomatic situation hadn't been worsened, since there were no casualties on their side either. They would be furious about both the snub and the hostage, but they would either have to abandon C to Konoha's tender mercies (giving them plenty of time to wring him for information) or agree to treat with them. If nothing else, it would delay the grind towards war while the Raikage figured out what he wanted to do.
"And you didn't want to be the impetus for a war?" Tsunade finished dryly, looking up to scan Aiko's face and realizing that the Jounin had just about fallen asleep on her feet while she'd been thinking.
Tsunade heaved a sigh. The next thing Aiko realized was that she was stepping back from an invasion of her personal space, and a warm hand was tilting her chin up so that her turquoise eyes met with Tsunade's honey colored ones.
"You're not really listening, are you?" She sounded a bit exasperated, but not really angry. A self-effacing sigh escaped, and she let Aiko's chin drop. "I suppose that serves me right for keeping you here instead of sending you off to the hospital. I'll lecture you again later, little idiot. For now…" Tsunade seemed to consider her next words carefully. "Good job. I don't like the way you took everything upon yourself, but you still saved Konoha some trouble. I think it might be time to go public about your parents."
Aiko blinked at the apparent non sequitur, wondering if she'd fallen asleep without realizing it.
Thankfully, an explanation was forth-coming. "That information was suppressed to keep you two safe from your parents' enemies," Tsunade pointed out clinically. "You and Naruto are both large enough targets that I think we can safely count the blissful period of your political invisibility to be over. At this point, you could benefit more by riding on your parents' reputation. It could very well make enemies less willing to tangle with you two. Yes, the more I think about it, the more I like it…"
Uncertainly, she offered up a shrug. Then she wished she hadn't, because her head spun a bit. Even stupid little wounds from nasty toenail claws, minor burns, and shuriken stab wounds would apparently bleed enough to be a bother if left untreated for long enough. Though maybe the problem was from getting hit over the head, now that she thought about it. "Whatever you say, Hokage-sama."
It wasn't like Aiko wanted to argue.
"Ask someone in the waiting room to walk you to the hospital, kitten." Tsunade –shock of all shocks- gave Aiko a brief hug and then a poke to the tip of her nose. "Since there's no need to send out the second team, I think that makes the most sense. Thank you for reporting on the outpost, by the way." She reached into a jacket pocket and withdrew the two headbands from earlier to tuck into Aiko's hand, patting it closed around the fabric. "And take your crap with you. I don't want to get involved in your weird trophy-taking."
"It made sense at the time," Aiko muttered resentfully, making a move to pocket them and then aborting it to stick under her obi instead when she realized she had no pockets. "And I don't plan on doing anything weird with them. What are you thinking, that I'll decorate my apartment with them?"
She stopped with her hand around the doorknob. 'That actually sounds kind of hilarious, now that I think about it. I'll need a lot more than this…'
"Out!"
Aiko went.
The group she saw when she pushed open the office door and half-stumbled out (mostly kept standing by sheer stubbornness, now that no adrenaline was hiding the pain in her knees from that insanely strong woman's kick) didn't exactly light her heart afire with joy.
' Tsunade was going to send Gai's team as the reinforcements?'
Her initial reaction was skepticism, but she pushed that down. They were a goofy looking bunch, but very powerful in their own way. They probably would have done much better in that fight than her biases wanted to think.
Tsunade's voice carried out from the office before she could open her mouth to ask for help. "You aren't needed after all, since miss independent here decided she'd rather fight eight cloud-nin on her own. Someone take her to the hospital."
Aiko felt strangely indignant about that summation. It wasn't inaccurate, perse, but…
"I would be honored to assist a fair maiden!" Lee leapt to his feet, not appearing even momentarily depressed by the false alarm call to a mission or remotely interested in Tsunade's claim that she'd taken on eight enemies at a time (not exactly accurate, as what she'd done had been one-on-one and like half of them had run off anyways). He gave her a painfully bright grin, paired with a thumbs-up pose. "Let us go to the hospital!"
' Never .'
That was far too much cheerfulness for her to be saddled with right now. No way, no how. Aiko ignored him completely and begin to drag her aching carcass across the outer office herself.
No one seemed to notice her slow escape.
"An excellent suggestion, my handsome young apprentice!" Gai chuckled with obnoxious volume, apparently not noticing that the middle-aged secretary appeared to be considering leaping across her desk to strangle him. "You are a true gentleman!"
"Gai-sensei!" Lee grinned, twitching to face his mentor and opening his arms up for a hug. "Your praise honors me!"
A warm hand grabbed hold of her elbow, and she smelled pine. "Come on," Hyuuga Neji sighed, not sounding particularly enthusiastic. "I assume that you do not wish to wait for them to be finished."
Aiko managed to squint at him. It wasn't quite a glare, but it was the best she could do at the moment. He appeared to be immune, however.
"Wait for me!" Lee called good naturedly, rushing to open the door. Something in Aiko's eye twitched. He was acting like she was dying or something. Hogwash. She had minor injuries and a need for a nap. This parade was ridiculous.
"Oh, don't be like that." Tenten swung an arm around her waist and began steering her down the hall against her will, chattering inanely all the while. She was freakishly strong as well. "Was Tsunade-sama joking? I mean, I think we would have heard, but then I guess we did if that's why we were called out here."
' Oh god. Stop talking.'
She managed to give the room at large a piteous expression, hoping someone would come save her from being sandwiched between far too much cheer and doom 'n gloom Neji.
No one did, but thankfully the nurse chased Lee and Tenten off. Neji had disappeared almost as soon as they'd passed through the hospital doors, like he was some sort of vampire who needed an invitation to go further or something. Still, she'd grudgingly admit that he was a bit less of an ass than she remembered.
'Not like that's high praise. He was a total jerk when I had class with him… six… years… ago.' Aiko winced, letting a young iryo-nin clean out her minor wounds. 'I'm being a hypocrite. How petty is it to hold a grudge about how he hurt my feelings in elementary school by being better than me?'
Pretty insufferably petty. She couldn't very well hate him for something like that if she wanted to convince even herself that she'd matured.
Maybe she could still despise him for his insufferably pretty hair, though. It had brushed against her shoulder when he'd helped her down the stairs (even though she totally didn't need the assistance). It was as soft as it looked, regrettably.
She sort of wanted to yank on it, hard.
"Uzumaki-san? Are you with us? Your eyes are unfocused."
"I'm here, I'm here." Aiko blinked rapidly in an attempt to stave off tiredness. "Do I have a concussion?"
The medic paused for a moment. "You didn't report a head injury." When directed, she tilted her face down and warm fingers combed through her hair, trailing minty chakra.
~~~
Aiko woke up to a warm mass on her feet. That was unusual (not least because she didn't remember going to sleep), so she cracked an eye open and sat up.
' I only recognize one of those dogs.'
She closed one eye, squinted, tilted her head, and even tried blinking rapidly. Nope. There were still two dogs sleeping on her lower legs.
That was hardly out of character for Mitsuo, but she'd thought he had the manners not to invite a stranger into her home. Or hospital bed, as the case appeared to be.
"That's Hōseki," a familiar voice blandly informed.
"That's nice," Aiko stalled, still a bit confused. "Why is a dog named Jewel sleeping on my feet?"
"Because you need sensible supervision, apparently." There was a slight edge in Kakashi's voice at that point. She winced away from it.
' Is he… is he mad at me?'
Aiko didn't notice that she slumped into a slightly defensive posture, curling her shoulders inward, but he did. "Kakashi?"
The meek little peep of his name deflated the majority of his irritation. But still, some things had to be said. "You nearly got yourself killed." She looked like she'd been hit, cringing inwards and drawing her knees up to her chest. He didn't allow the steel to fade from his tone. "You could have had backup in an instant, and you didn't bother. I'm disappointed that you didn't even tell the Hokage except as an afterthought. Why? Do you think you're invincible? Or do you just not trust any of your comrades?"
At this point, Kakashi actually felt a little guilty for berating a girl in a hospital gown. But if he let this go, her behavior would only get worse. She was capable, but taking on eight opponents at a time when she'd had the ability to instantly travel to back-up was insane and spoke either to a dangerously stubborn one-mindedness or a far too developed sense of independence.
'Well, at least she still respects me.' It was mildly bitter comfort, since his proof was that she looked devastated to receive the harshest criticism he'd ever given her.
"I…." She cleared her throat quietly, tangling her fingers into the fabric of the sheets. "It's not anything like that. I made a tactical decision based on my analysis that I was best suited to the situation and didn't want to involve someone and get them hurt. I didn't want the Cloud shinobi killed either. It would have made tensions even worse."
"Not good enough." He averted his eyes, because watching her shrink away from his words actually made him uncomfortable. "You're a Jounin now, and people depend on you to make responsible decisions, even when it's hard and it means that you will have to worry about others getting harmed. That's their job, and they have the right to do it. You can't afford to play the lone hero, no matter how good you are at it. Everything worked out this time, but it could have easily ended with you dead and eight shinobi infiltrating. Do you understand me?"
"Yes." Her tone was a bit clipped now. Perhaps her temper was waking up.
"Good." That duty done, Kakashi allowed his spine to bend and he relaxed against the wall, watching the gentle rise and fall of two sleeping dogs breathing. He hadn't entirely been exaggerating about Hōseki- another one of Pakkun's recommendations. She was a bossy little thing, by all accounts. She and Aiko might do each other good. His tone softened on the next words. "Don't make your comrades worry unnecessarily, Aiko. Naruto rushes head-first into a fight too, but that's why he's still a genin. I know that you can control your impulses. Next time, get at least one of us. I promise to help you out, even if I'm really busy doing my hair."
A strange giggle-snort sound escaped from her general direction, but she didn't seem cheery.
It was a massive guilt trip, but he didn't regret it. If it would keep her from making the same stupid mistakes he had, he'd say harsh things.
Wanting to protect your comrades was noble, but going over their heads like that disrespected them more than anything else and displayed ether dangerous overconfidence or lack of regard for her own well-being. Either was a possibility, unfortunately. Both options were bad. Worse yet was the possible truth that she was just becoming used to working alone and it genuinely didn't occur to her to trust others to help her. That would be a dark road to walk.
But not an entirely unjustified conclusion, unfortunately. Kakashi grimaced because the words left a bad taste in his mouth, but forced himself to admit, "I know that your team has let you down lately, myself included."
Perhaps she hadn't known that, because her head immediately shot around to stare at him and Aiko looked frankly baffled.
"I never even tried to talk to you about what happened in Sand. That was wrong." Self-conscious, he scratched at the fabric of his pants with a nail. 'I'm a terrible captain. No wonder Tsunade is having Yamato lead team seven more often.'
"I don't want to talk about it," Aiko shut him down flatly. "So don't worry. It's fine."
"I can't force you," he admitted easily. His casual tone was at odds with the sweat on his palms. Kami, he hated having these sorts of conversations. But he wouldn't let himself be relieved that she didn't want to talk about her experience. "But I should have offered from the start. And I definitely should have made certain that the boys knew not to joke about the situation."
Aiko stiffened and he knew he'd hit a nerve. "K-…" Unsteadily, she took a breath and rubbed fiercely at the back of her neck with a thumb. "Kakashi, may I go to sleep now? I don't feel well."
It wasn't the most graceful avoidance of an uncomfortable topic he'd ever heard, but at least it was probably true. "Of course," he demurred, moving to stand and walk out of the room. "Take care of Hōseki, would you?"
He already knew she would. Pakkun had been the one to diagnose her problem, and Kakashi trusted the ninken's sense. According to Pakkun, Aiko was looking for more pack, trying to fulfill roles she hadn't known she needed. It was a natural part of the transition to adolescence to adulthood, apparently: redefining boundaries and relationships. Right or wrong, Aiko didn't see Naruto and Sasuke as equals as much as she did little brothers who needed to be protected. That was already clashing in some potentially ugly ways with their growing senses of independence, but the part that was currently relevant was the fact that she didn't really have many people she considered friends or peers on the same hierarchy level. If she couldn't allow herself to be vulnerable in front of Naruto and Sasuke (not an unwise decision, unfortunately, after the way they had unintentionally tugged at sore wounds by teasing her), then she had to have someone else for the role.
Pakkun's reasoning had also included an amusing character analysis that he was definitely not going to share with Aiko. Apparently, she was a Shiba Inu on the inside: Highly suspicious, destructive, aggressive, and likely to take off chasing after an interesting scent without care for the consequences.
Couldn't contest that. At least two of those tendencies were at play in this recent debacle. If taking off on a chase after eight opponents didn't expose an aggressive personality or that she had little care for consequences, he didn't know what would.
He learned more about what Pakkun thought of Shiba Inu than did about Aiko, frankly, but the character assessment seemed sound. Perhaps the ninken was also correct in that having a real Shiba Inu around would help channel Aiko's less positive tendencies in productive ways. Either they would get along like a house on fire or clash in ways that made them both see how silly they were being.
(Kakashi took a moment to wonder what character flaws his pack was meant to compensate for. Pakkun had introduced most of them to him as well).