"And here I was thinking that we were never going to get along," Aiko chirped without looking up from the blade she was sharpening. "Yet here we are, spending time together socially. Tomorrow, I expect we'll be braiding each other's hair. The day after, we'll get friendship bracelets. I want blue and yellow on mine."
Kakuzu shot her a withering look, but didn't respond. They had been sitting in somewhat pointed silence ever since Obito left on his super-secret-not-telling-Aiko-mission.
'Peachy. Just peachy keen. Getting stuck with this guy is exactly what I wanted.' Resentfully, she scraped her whetstone with just a little more force than was habitual. 'What's Obito's deal lately, anyway? I'd rather work with Zetsu than Kakuzu. He's suddenly acting like Zetsu's going to eat me whole if he leaves us alone for ten minutes.'
Lately, Obito had been just plain fucking weird. He was terribly jumpy.
'And dramatic,' she reminded herself. 'I need to talk to you when I return from this mission,' Aiko mocked internally. 'Why not talk to me now? I don't know what he's so nervous about. Obito's been acting like he's nervous about something.'
Poor love. It'd been three days since his little fit, and he didn't seem much more stable. She didn't really want to leave him alone. He was quite possibly a danger to himself.
But telling him that she was worried about him hadn't stopped him from setting off on whatever job he had in mind. If anything, Obito had just seemed oddly guilty. The next day, Kakuzu had showed up in the safehouse with a disgruntled look, apparently under the impression that he was to babysit her while Obito was gone.
Which was just silly. It was called a 'safe' house for a reason. The only people who even knew where it was were her, Obito, Kakuzu, and Zetsu.
In other words, Obito was being really weird for no apparent reason.
'It probably wouldn't hurt to humor him by keeping Kakuzu around,' she tried to convince herself. It was annoying, sure, but not harmful.
"I need to go into town," Aiko spoke up, narrowing her eyes at her finished product as she held it up to the light. She tilted it slightly, letting reflections flash. "I'd planned on going alone to pick up some product for the next trip, but I suppose I'll have to ask you to come with."
Kakuzu offered an unenthusiastic grunt in response. She didn't mind or press. He eventually spoke up unprompted.
"When?"
"Day after tomorrow," she shared idly. She tested the sharpness of her blade on a fingertip—blood welled up instantly. Aiko made a sound of satisfaction and slipped it away, reaching for another dull kunai.
"Acceptable. Your initiative does you credit," Kakuzu admitted gruffly.
'Is he… being nice to me?'
She stilled, but didn't offer a smile or turn to look at him. Aiko was gathering the impression that Kakuzu didn't like being nice. Or at least, he didn't want to think he was kind. Calling excess attention to his statement would be unnecessarily disruptive.
"Thank you," she said carelessly. "I've been trying. There's not much challenge in the legal operations that Ando-san runs. She hasn't yet summoned up the courage to talk to me about using her organization as a cover for moving narcotics."
Aiko rather doubted that the civilian would mention a damn thing, assuming she knew. Ando-san was so twitchy. And thorough about keeping Aiko away from her son, actually. Hmm. What was that about? Aiko'd never threatened her even a little. That was all Kakuzu and that was like, forever ago. Weeks. Months, actually. Silly Ando-san.
"Narcotics are profitable," Kakuzu said approvingly. "How do you acquire your stock?"
She shrugged distractedly, working on her second blade. "I've made friends with a bartender who has a lot of contacts. We have a nice thing going on where I make troublemakers disappear, and her herbalist friend in Grass hooks me up."
There was a great deal of money to be made moving illegal substances into shinobi nations, which had a lot more restrictions and border surveillance than the other countries. Military states were just so silly about little things like recreational drugs, or medicines that hadn't been made in certified facilities, or odds and ends of counter-culture. They could afford to be selective like that, because the shinobi villages were fucking loaded (and needed to be intellectually controlled in order to maintain the hegemonic status quo). The quality of living and health care for a resident of a ninja village was so far above that of the people in outlying areas that it wasn't even funny.
That meant there were a lot of people desperate to get their hands on contraband for half the price of heavily taxed goods imported from the capitals. And Grass was a rich resource without years of infrastructure that she'd have to muscle aside to make space for herself: it hadn't been that long ago that Grass had been subject to restrictive policies itself. There was a lot of money to be made and only small fry like herself jostling for it.
"How is your accounting?"
She actually paused at that and looked over. "I don't keep hard records," Aiko admitted sheepishly.
Kakuzu looked downright appalled at that. "How do you know how much money you are making? You cannot devise strategies to improve profit and productivity without data."
"I don't really know how to go about compiling that sort of information," she had to confess. If she'd ever learned, it wasn't something that had come back to her yet. She expected it would eventually, though. She was remembering a lot of things.
The man at her side was still. Dangerously still. His voice was gruffer than usual when he managed to unhinge his jaw long enough to order, "Come. I have spare accounting books. You can have a set for two Ryo."
'That is ridiculously expensive. Like, three new outfits expensive. Twenty times what the cost should be, easily.'
Aiko gaped.
"I would suggest that you acquire your own materials upon the next time that you enter a place of business," Kakuzu said archly with an expression that was almost a smile.
"We could bump our trip up to tomorrow," she said a bit weakly.
He shook his head. "No. If I am going to get any information through that skull of yours, I must begin immediately. I have time now." He started off for the house without saying a word. "This project of yours is a superior beginning to anything that the other cretins have endeavored to undertake. Failure to improve upon it through record-keeping would be a pity."
"Oh." Aiko stood and followed, a little perplexed by Kakuzu's sudden interest and helpfulness. "So," she ventured as he extracted two small blue books from a drawer in his room. "Has no one else in Akatsuki ever-"
"Taken it upon themselves to pursue a useful endeavor? No," he said shortly. "Our previous associates were all addled simpletons."
At that point, he began muttering something angry about art and hobbies that she thought it would probably be best to pretend she didn't hear.
"What's your hobby?" she prodded. "I mean, I assume smuggling is a little pedestrian for your tastes."
Kakuzu made a noncommittal sound. "I hunt bountied shinobi. When someone else has gone to the trouble of compiling convenient lists of people whose heads they would pay for, it is a simple matter to memorize their faces and keep an eye out."
Wait. People would pay for-
"That's kinda cool," Aiko noted, morbidly interested. "Do I have a bounty?"
Her companion grunted, extracting a cheap pen and stalking out to the kitchen table. "You should. You had an unofficial one when you were a member of Konoha's military. Put out by Kumo, I believe. Or perhaps Iwa. In any case, now that you've defected, it should be replaced by an official one from your country of home origin."
'I wonder how much Konoha is willing to pay for my head…'
Well. There was a way to check that.
"Those bounties… how do you get a hold of them?"
"Your information broker would probably have a copy," he said shortly. "Now, pay attention."
~~~
Talking to Sayu was a mistake. Or at least, adding the new topic was a mistake. An unsettling one that brought up things she'd really rather not consider.
'That doesn't make any sense.'
"That can't be right," Aiko said slowly, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear.
The short woman shrugged. A streak of something suspiciously like mud moved on her cheek when she made a face. "That's what I have, kid. Your bounty hasn't been updated in years. It's still in the sketchy book, too." She waved said volume about pointedly. It was indeed not the official copy that Aiko had spent the last few minutes rifling through unsuccessfully. "It's not a bad number," she admitted grudgingly. A speculative look crossed her face. "Maybe I should turn you in and pay off my debtors, eh princess?"
"Very funny," Aiko grunted. She was too preoccupied to really enjoy banter at the moment, grabbing at Sayu's wrist to hold the book still so she could read it. The information was interesting. Seal master? Since when was she a seal master? And—she already had the chakra chains? That was a laugh. She thought that she would know if she'd activated a bloodline that made her eyes get all weird and purple. Clearly, these books weren't that accurate. And huh. She trained under Hatake Kakashi? That name was awfully familiar.
Maybe he was in the book too.
Sayu pursed her lips and flipped the book around to investigate it. "It's a seriously old picture, too. Look at the geeky smile. What are you, twelve?"
"No," Aiko muttered resentfully. Still, she had to squint at the date on the edition and count under her breath to put it together. "Fourteen? That can't be right. That's not a picture of me at fourteen."
God, she hoped not, at least.
The older woman snorted. "Shouldn't you remember? This looks like an official picture."
She knew perfectly well that grinding her teeth together was a terrible habit. It took conscious effort to unglue her jaw. There was no way she was going to admit that no, she didn't remember the picture, or in fact much of anything.
Who cared? It didn't matter anyway. She knew all she needed to know.
'Yeah, just keep telling yourself that,' Aiko thought bitterly. 'That'll make the weirdness here go away.'
"Thanks." Aiko bent, using her legs to lift the box of goods she'd come to pick up. "I'll see you in a few weeks, hotstuff."
"Am I going to get my book back?" Sayu asked, bemused. "I kind of need that, for that job that I do. You know, people pay me for information and I hook them up, pass over IOU's and verify kills. It's not fancy, but it pays. We can't all be in a super-special club that buys the dango, princess."
Aiko paused for a moment, before realizing that she'd tucked the little hitlist under her belt. "Oh, sorry. Can I-can I pay you for it? I'd like to keep that."
Sayu sighed. "Two ryo," she listed unenthusiastically.
Aiko's eyebrows shot up. "Why don't you just hit me over the head and rifle through my pockets? Jeeze, I thought we were friends."
"We're not that good of friends." The older woman cracked a wry grin, tucking the cash away. "Those are hard to get a hold of, if you're a civilian."
That actually made some sense.
"You took long enough," Kakuzu said gruffly, walking as soon as she exited the dank little building.
"Sorry," she apologized absently. "I got caught u-"
"I don't care," Kakuzu sighed.
Aiko pressed her lips together, trying not to let her eyebrows shoot straight up on her brow. 'At least he can be counted on. He's predictable.'
She'd thought that Obito was predictable too. But this put a wrench in her perception. She wasn't stupid. What he'd told her… well, now it didn't add up.
'If Konoha knew I was a traitor, they would have put out a bounty for me.'
Ergo, Konoha didn't know she was a traitor. Either they were spectacularly ignorant, or they knew something she didn't. That didn't fit with what Obito had said.
Wait. Don't get emotional. Don't be hasty. Think it through. Aiko licked her lips, attempting to consider every angle.
'I don't have all the information,' Aiko knew. 'I can't rule out either extreme: that Obito was telling the complete truth, or that he was completely lying. Not without more information. I can't think of a reason that Konoha wouldn't have put out a bounty on a missing nin, but that doesn't mean there isn't one. I need more data.'
Of course, getting the needed data would be very difficult while she was being watched (and how did it just now seem suspicious that Obito hardly ever left her out of sight, and needed to know where she was, and checked up on her? For all she knew, he or Zetsu kept an eye on her whenever she went off 'alone')
'I'm an idiot. I wouldn't know. They're both much better at hiding than I am at detection, and I haven't even been looking for watchers of their caliber. And now I can't check. If they have been watching me and I just now start looking, they'll want to know what's changed. That'll lead them to Sayu.'
"Hurry up," Kakuzu graveled out. "You're falling behind."
'It'd be a little faster if you helped carry. This is what, thirty pounds? That'd be nothing to a big guy like you,' Aiko thought resentfully, her bad mood spilling over to her current companion.
She didn't bother to apologize, focusing on moving and pushing her pace a little. Her arms were shaking and in outright muscle pain by the time they returned to the safehouse. She really should take the time to catalogue what she'd just brought and store it safely.
Aiko didn't care about that at the moment, so she dropped the box on the kitchen table and went to her room, barely hearing Kakuzu mutter about moody teenagers.
She locked the door and settled on her bed, desperate to put together a picture. All the time that Obito spent training her took a somewhat sinister cast when she wondered if he intended to use her rather than use her skills. Perhaps it was pathetic, but the nuance mattered a lot to her.
Shinobi were tools, in a way, yes. Aiko didn't mind being a valuable resource for reasons other than her intrinsic value as a person. That was different from just her skills being useful.
Then again, if what he was looking for was just a useful tool, it would have been stupid to pick her. There had to be people out there who would require less investment—she'd had to be retrained in her apparent specialties of mid-range weaponry, for kami's sake. No. It wasn't just her skills Obito was interested in. It was her; it had to be her.
'I don't want to believe that Obito lied to me.' Aiko rolled over onto her side and hugged a pillow to her chest. 'Or at least, not about the important stuff. I… I don't think he did. He really does like me. We're friends. He didn't lie about that. I can't totally distrust my own perception. He definitely does enjoy spending time with me, and he wouldn't spend so much time with me if he didn't care. He'd pass me off on someone else.'
So if she kept the assumption that Obito wasn't lying about feeling friendship with her, that left her with two options to extrapolate from. A. He had formed those feelings recently, after she had joined him in recent memory. B. They had been friends before what she remembered.
'Think it through, girl,' Aiko told herself, tugging on a bit of hair. 'Does it matter which of those two things is true? If so, why, and what difference would it make to my prospective course of action.'
Her intellect told her that it mattered. If he had only come to care about her in recent months, then that meant that he hadn't cared about her at the time that she remembered 'meeting' him in the hospital. That meant that whatever he had wanted from her at that time had not been coming from a place of concern for her best interest. If he had just been tricking a sick, confused girl into coming with him, then Aiko should be frightened, or at least interested in what he wanted from her.
Whereas if he had been emotionally attached to her before she remembered meeting him, that possibility seemed much less likely.
'Is friendship the only way to look at it, when the issue is better summed as emotional attachment?' She rolled over onto her back and dug her heels into the bed, pouting unconsciously. 'He would already have been emotionally compromised if he's telling the truth about being my dad's student. That would be much easier to verify than whether or not I really was secretly meeting Obito and narking on Konoha.'
How hard would it be to figure out who Obito's sensei was? He might fork over the information, and she could cross-verify it. Student-teacher relationships were probably well-documented somewhere, and someone somewhere would be willing to accept money for handing over information that seemed innocuous enough.
She felt a little better, having decided what she would accept as evidence that Obito had been emotionally compromised before eight months ago. Assuming that panned out, she could be reasonably certain that he wouldn't hurt her and hadn't planned to.
Of course, Obito could thwart that plan by refusing to tell her about his sensei, but she doubted that. He'd had much looser lips lately, though that might be due to his instability and emotionally compromised state than trust.
Those loose lips presented another plan: he'd let the name of his teammates slip. Assuming 'Kakashi' was still alive: well, that name couldn't be common. She could look up his sensei and teammates and verify Obito's story that way.
Actually… She twisted just enough to tug the book out of her waistband and rolled onto her stomach to flip through it. Obito hadn't said anything to make her think that his old teammate had defected, so he should be in the Konoha section if he was still active. She frowned when she didn't find anything under 'Kakashi', but some bit of stubbornness caused her to keep looking until she ran into 'Sharingan no Kakashi.' She huffed.
'That sounds about right, actually. Lines up with what Obito said and collaborates why Obito isn't with Konoha anymore, in a way. He's gotten famous off of Obito's eye? That's a little depressing.'
Really famous, apparently. He looked like that actor- no, that was backwards. The cute extra in that Princess Fuin movie had definitely been modeled off of him. That kind of resemblance was not an accident.
She shrugged off the tangent about his apparent presence in pop culture for more productive lines of contemplation. There was nothing listed about Sharingan no Kakashi's teammates, but his sensei had been—Namikaze Minato, the fourth Hokage? Aiko let out a low whistle. Nice. That was her dad? Hopefully, she bent the corner and went looking, but of course there wasn't still a page for the Yondaime. He was long dead.
'That's another thing I could check,' she decided. 'If I see a picture of him, I might be able to see any family resemblance. If I look enough like him, then Obito's been telling the truth.' Aiko paused thoughtfully, biting on her lip. 'Well, at least some of it.'
Aiko felt a little better as she calmed and worked through the logic, probably more content than she should feel. She now had an idea of what she wanted to investigate and several plans for how to get that information. Finding out whether or not she'd been lied to for over half a year wouldn't be impossible. She could do it.
But… god forgive her: despite what her brain told her, she had a hard time really believing that it made a difference if Obito had kidnapped and tricked her as opposed to being her friend rescuing her from Konoha's clutches.
It might be different if she had any reason to viscerally feel the betrayal. But she didn't. Aiko remembered bits and pieces from before Obito, but that was it. She didn't feel an emotional connection. So he just seemed more real to her than people she might have known in Konoha. Who cared if there were people out there missing her, if she didn't miss them?
That sounded awful, even in her head. But what would happen if she decided that Obito had kidnapped her and ran to Konoha? Even if she made it—and what were the chances of making that long trip, when she was watched— what would it be like to find herself in a place she didn't really remember, with people who had expectations and fond memories of her? What would they want from her—was she even the same person, in an appreciable sense, and would she measure up to what they wanted? Would they hold any changes against her?
'I'm getting overly defensive about the imagined reactions of people I don't remember.' Aiko huffed a little laugh, bringing the pillow on her chest up to cover her mouth. 'I'm ridiculous. I'm emotionally compromised, aren't I? Still. I feel like my life is here. I have hobbies, I have a friend, I have a job, and I have a- what the hell is Kakuzu, anyway? Is he friend number two?'
He probably wouldn't agree, but she thought that he was. So, yes. Friend number two.
That had a good ring to it. She grinned into her pillow. 'So, that's an emotional reason to stay. This is terrible form to come up with logical reasoning after I'm leaning towards a decision, but I still think my logic is sound in that I couldn't leave anyways. Obito checks up on me if I'm so much as a day late, which could indicate concern for my well-being just as much as it could be an attempt to keep me from running off. I wouldn't get very far if I tried to leave—not without help, which I appear to have no way of obtaining. So, following through that I have no apparent pressing need to escape… that seems like a lot of risk for low potential benefit. I can re-examine the issue if it seems that I am in danger or if additional resources present themselves, but as of now I seem to be both stuck and unmotivated to change my position.'
In other words, she'd pretty well concluded that without any game-changing information, she wasn't going to do anything drastic.
There was really only one question left, but Aiko had no idea to answer it. She couldn't help but feel that… Well. Now that she'd basically decided that Obito had probably lied to her in some capacity, shouldn't she resent him? Resentment would be one reason to leave, if only to spite him.
She couldn't muster up the emotion, however. It seemed dishonest to get huffy and indignant. If it suited her purposes, she'd do worse than convince an amnesiac that they were friends. Aiko had done worse. On her very first mission, she'd inadvertently led a man to his death and not lost a night of sleep over it.
(That would have been impossible. The nightmares already kept her up, or at least they had at that point. They were losing their effect now that their brutality was a bit passé.)
Aiko and Obito were shinobi, and that meant they were hired killers (and therefore not the greatest people already). Whining about a lie seemed a bit petty at that point. Although that didn't mean she had no sense of morality or things she wouldn't do. There had to be a line somewhere, of course, or else they'd just be gibbering loonies. No- not loonies. They'd be like wild dogs that needed to be put down, and not really people. Something separated even shinobi from mindless animals.
That line seemed like loyalty—to her chosen companion, at least, if not a cause or ideology.
'And I suppose I've chosen my side. Obito's been good to me. I want to stay with him.'
The thought of leaving him alone… Well, it made her sad.
He wasn't well, after all. Kakuzu was surprisingly decent, but there was no chance in hell that he would look out for 'Obi if Aiko took off. He just wasn't the touchy feely type.
Besides, if he had tricked her… He'd done a damn good job, actually, and she could appreciate the artistry there. From a professional standpoint, if nothing else.
'So,' Aiko decided firmly. 'If I find out that Obito was telling the truth, and I am therefore in little danger from him, I'm staying.'
The corollary being, of course, that if he didn't have her best interest in mind, she was going to run screaming in the opposite direction.
It was good to have that all figured out. Especially since it was Wednesday, Obito should be coming back soon for the weekly accounting paperwork party. (Obito called it a 'meeting', but Kakuzu had approved the name change). Anyway, she was just going to act normally.
~~~
His cycas revoluta were hardy and lush this year. Zetsu fancied that he could smell hints of the toxic sap as a break of new leaves was beginning to erupt from the base of the plant, but it was his imagination. They were beautiful, though, and this specimen was a fine plant that had been flourishing for hundreds of years. Convincing bees to pollinate had been a fuss that required other, more traditionally decorative plants to be relocated nearby, so he was well invested in the project. He carefully removed a pup, ready to transfer it to soil of its own. Beautiful.
Zetsu stopped his work when he heard the crackle of Obito's holographic communication jutsu, swiveling out of the sand to face the much younger being.
Black Zetsu might have snarled if it had possessed features at the moment. The child was a necessary tool in order to revive his mother, but taking orders from one so transparent and short-sighted did grate occasionally.
White Zetsu had no such thoughts, nor was he aware of the reasoning behind his companion's derision. If he had, he probably would have gotten in the way.
"As it turns out, it's a good thing that you put those spores on the girl."
"Oh?" the wood-clones asked in unison. They had already known that: the point had been to force Obito to finally commit to a course of action. That was transparently a beneficial course of action.
The image of their supposed master flickered. "Yes. I'll contact you telepathically when Aiko uses her chakra chains. Use up the spores draining her chakra to about 10%, but do not allow her to realize that the drain is being caused by anything but the activation of her genetic birthright. Time it so that she loses consciousness as soon as possible, before she has a chance to realize that her eyes are not changing naturally. I will bring you to her and conduct the surgery at that point."
"There are worse plans," Black Zetsu acknowledged.
It was a neat solution. Almost suspiciously neat, coming from someone with such dramatic flair. If efficiency had been Obito's du jour tactic, then his chosen aliases would not have been so ridiculously flamboyant. There would also have been no superfluous waste of Amegakure, Otogakure, and Mizugakure, countries that had all been under his indirect control at one point. World domination had been in the grasp of one man, and he'd carelessly tossed it aside in favor of pursuing a dead man's ambition for a genjutsu that only Kaguya could truly master.
(It was mildly entertaining that one man who was dead to the world could have so much power and use it so poorly).
The projection nodded, shadows covering the curved mask. "Oh, and Zetsu? Don't undermine my decisions again."
With that, the Uchiha cut short the technique and flickered out of sight. White Zetsu huffed. "It wasn't me," he pouted.
Black Zetsu didn't bother to respond.
At least Obito was making progress towards the ultimate Tsukyomi, in the defective and faltering way that Obito accomplished anything. As soon as that was cast, Black Zetsu wouldn't need him any longer. Kaguya would be revived and the worlds made anew.
If there was a problem, Black Zetsu couldn't see it. He might have suspected Obito's stalling was a hint that he'd become attached to the sacrifice, but that didn't seem to be in Obito's character. If that was going to happen surely he would have shown signs of that weakness in relation to one of the Akatsuki members in the past years.
He unclenched his hand, letting the pup that he'd crushed fall to the ground. White Zetsu made a mournful sound, but no comment.