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electrasev5nwrites · 7 months

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Ninja Daily: AIC 39

It was very quiet inside the shrine. She sat down at a long table in a stiff silence. The younger priest left through a door to the left and came back with a bleak-smelling tea balanced on a humble tray. She took a cup and wondered if shrines were on the list of things she was meant to be funding.

"You seem to have a particular connection to death," the senior priest said. There were stress lines pressed into his forehead that didn't ease up when he looked at her. "Seeing and interacting with the dead… You can do this?"

Aiko took a sip of her bitter tea and nodded. "Yes," she said. "A while after I began summoning the god of death."

The old man flinched. "Pardon?"

She repeated herself.

The priest closed his eyes. He seemed to be chewing that concept over. "Why would you summon the God of Death?" His voice was faint.

Aiko thought about it. "It's cool," she said honestly. "And it was a very effective psychological tool against Orochimaru."

"It's ...cool," he repeated, lost.

"I also use it to revive people who I killed by accident," Aiko added guiltily. She squirmed on her cushion. "A lot of people in Kirigakure, actually."

He made a sound of comprehension, as if something he'd heard years ago was finally resolved. "You are the Mizukage," he said. He looked at her again, cataloguing her face and clothes. "I see." He said that, but his brow furrowed even further in confusion. "How do you summon a God?"

She grimaced. "I…" Aiko tilted her head to the side, trying to find a way to describe it that didn't sound insane. "I use my eyes. I have a set of eyes which let me do a lot of things, actually. I can use every chakra type that I know about and some really weird things that don't truly make sense, like summoning unaffiliated animals."

"And also a literal God?" His question came out bemused. "Why that God- as opposed to any other God, I mean. Did you worship the God of Death?"

She thought about it. "I kill a lot of people," Aiko said fairly. "Could that be connected?"

The elderly priest looked up through the open door to the garden behind her. "No," he said. "I do not think so." He tapped his fingers against his tea cup. "It seems that you have somehow affiliated yourself with a God."

"Like you?" Aiko asked. She gestured at the shrine around them. "You worship Izanami no Mikoto, right?"

He eyed her sideways. "This is a shrine to Amaterasu. There are no shrines for Izanami no Mikoto in operation these days."

Aiko felt herself frowning. "Isn't she the god who made everything?" she ventured. "My religious education was spotty, but I thought that was her."

"Izanami no Mikoto and Izanagi no Mikoto created the world and most of the beings in it," the junior priest agreed. "Izanagi no Mikoto sleeps, but he is worshipped. However, Izanami no Mikoto passed into the land of the dead in the early days of the world."

Aiko made a sound of polite comprehension.

'That seems like a raw deal. She's dead but not in the way we think of it, right? She's still a God.'

"I have to conduct diplomatic business inside of a shrine." Aiko laid her cards out on the table. "I am...concerned about complications stemming from my… association with the God of Death and my lack of general knowledge about religion."

"I don't think that you should have particular trouble." The younger priest was the one who answered yet again, while the old man looked out into the garden. "It is ..extremely unusual that you might have such a connection to a God. However, there are no wicked Gods. They are merely different."

"So no one has any kind of grudge against the God of Death?"

The priest opened his mouth and then closed it.

"We are not spokespeople for the Gods," the head priest said, dryly amused. "No one hears the voice of the Gods and transcribes their interpersonal grievances."

Aiko blinked. She eyed the two men uncertainly. "I hear his voice…" She trailed off.

They were looking at her incredulously.

"He doesn't like Orochimaru," she added helplessly. She shrugged and then frowned as she remembered. "He didn't like Orochimaru, rather," Aiko corrected herself. "He's dead now. Anyway, I think that Death doesn't like anyone who cheats Death… I wonder if he has feelings about Hidan," she mused.

"I think that we ought to start from the beginning," the priest said. He gestured to his subordinate. "While I take care of our duties, please speak with the Mizukage about the Gods and the earth."

…

Aiko left the shrine feeling unsettled. There wasn't any known precedent for what was going on with her. Chewing over the upcoming meeting had mostly led her to more questions.

Thankfully, however, some of the questions had been productive.

She breezed into her office and sent off an officer worker for information about their contacts in foreign countries. Kirigakure had nothing like Konoha's sophisticated spy network, but they were not totally hopeless. When she had the information in hand she chewed it over for a few hours and then wrote up 3 missions. She passed them off to the assignment desk, so that the next qualified personnel to show up for missions would get shuttled off to ask questions.

If Konoha wasn't talking out of their ass, they would have had to have already consulted with at least two other foreign nations. Otherwise, they would have no standing to threaten that there could be serious diplomatic repercussions for annexing Wave. Aiko put her feet up on her desk and stared at the ceiling, considering different angles. Who would the Sandaime go to? She didn't know him the way she knew Tsunade.

'He could even make it into an opportunity to improve his international standing,' Aiko realized. She twisted her lips into a scowl. 'I annex one little country and suddenly I am the villain.'

'I think that Kirigakure has long been considered the villain,' Sanbi pointed out. 'No one likes us.'

She paused for a moment, touched that Sanbi considered them in the same category.

'I misspoke,' he deadpanned. 'The important concept is that it is easy to dislike you.' He paused for a beat. 'Of course, I mean Kirigakure.'

She pouted, but accepted his point. They were an easy scapegoat.

'I am not a goat,' Sanbi snapped.

"It's just a saying." She sighed heavily and rolled her eyes.

Suna was the obvious answer. Konoha would turn to their longest ally for support in this. Kiri also had a decent hand in relations with Sunagakure for the time, given that she had custody of Gaara, but they would be wary about the possibility that she was a warmonger.

She considered it for a while. Would the Hokage have turned to the smaller villages for this?

She decided that yes, probably, he had. Konoha had solid relationships with a fair few of the less powerful countries, and it would have legitimized his claims of international consensus. She noted it and tabled it for later thought. Any one of the minor countries wasn't a huge issue. As a group it could become a problem, but some kind of holistic solution could address multiple problems in one stroke.

That left Iwa and Lightning. Would either of have possibly agreed to cooperate with Konoha to censure her?

She twisted her lips, not liking the conclusion she came to. She didn't have to worry about Iwa. Iwa hated Konoha far more than they cared about Kiri, and they were too far away to do more than laugh about chaos on the eastern side of the continent. Lightning, on the other hand, was fairly close.

Lightning wasn't as insular as Iwa. Lightning had always been involved in the affairs of other countries.

Aiko sighed and put her chin on her palm.

Lightning was probably willing to sign a notice advising Kiri to cease expansionist policies or face military consequences. They probably wouldn't initiate it on their own— sabotage would be much more their speed— but they would probably lend their weight to Konoha's protests.

The obvious solution, of course, was to get Lightning so pissed off at Konoha that any cooperation would go straight out the window. Aiko frowned at her window, turning over the possibilities. Konoha wouldn't do anything to endanger a deal they wanted to propose, so she'd have to frame them. Frame... impersonate?

She chewed it over along with a pastry and coffee. She knew Konoha and she knew their codes, she knew their paperwork specifications and communication habits. She could falsify incriminating documents. It would be convincing. It would require her to think up terrible things for Konoha to supposedly be doing, things that would leave a paper trail... and then she'd need a way for them to fall into Lightning's hands that wouldn't look obviously contrived.

It was a tall order.

And then she had an idea.

"Oh," Aiko marveled, "that would be bad."

Sanbi stirred, a silent question.

"I could just impersonate Konoha ninja," Aiko said. She leaned back in her chair. "I know a lot of them and their habits well, and I know distinctive Konoha techniques and jutsu. If I wander around where Konoha shouldn't be, start a distinctive fight, and escape, I can let Lightning come up with their own guesses as to what Konoha was doing."

Sanbi let out a laugh. "That is terrible," he said approvingly. "Who could you impersonate convincingly?"

She hummed, considering it. "It's only worth considering jounin, I think," she mused. "People who would be recognized. Kakashi for sure. Sen Tsurara is going to look exactly like his signature murder technique, as like as I siphon up the water afterward. Kurenai... I can do genjutsu on that level and I know her habits. Genma... he's a basic bitch and I'm mad at him, so I've gotta frame him for something... oh, Yamato." She giggled. "The world doesn't know about him, but if they see Mokuton, everyone will look at Konoha."

"That is a fairly conclusive list," Sanbi said. "However, it would constitute two teams at best. If you wish to spread havoc, perhaps more fake missions would be preferable. How about the turtle man?"

Aiko opened her mouth and then closed it. "No," she demurred. "I'm not going to mess with Gai. But.." she thought about her creepy, creepy eyes. "I have a perfectly good Sharingan. I could make it look like there's an extant Uchiha running around. And..." she trailed off and leaned back in her seat.

The Byakugan and Sharingan were supposedly related. Her Rinnegan allowed her to use any type of chakra, so they were clearly flexible... Given that her Rinnegan came with a Sharingan, was there a chance of using a Byakugan or something similar to imitate a genetic Hyuuga?

"Do I get a vote?" Sanbi asked, interested. "There's someone in Konoha that I hate."

She blinked, distracted. "You do?" She shrugged. "Yeah, sure. Who is it?"

"The frog man," Sanbi hissed.

"Frog... Toads?" Aiko checked. "Do you mean Jiraiya?"

The answer was a blank silence.

"The man with messy white hair who dances when he introduces himself?" She corrected.

"Yes, that's the one," Sanbi confirmed. "He has an extremely displeasing aura and crass mannerisms. We should punish him."

"You know what, that's fair," Aiko agreed. "He's my godfather."

"He is my enemy for life," Sanbi said. "And I will live forever, so good luck to the frog man."

"...did something specific prompt this?" Aiko asked.

"I find the way he giggles extremely distasteful," Sanbi said darkly. "He is a rude little man who puts his dirty feet on furniture. He must be made to face consequences."

...she had forgotten about that.

"Okay," Aiko hummed. She thought about how to do it. The toads were the most distinctive and damning identifier for Jiraiya. Sealing was fairly distinctive as well, but harder to have a reason to show off. "I don't have access to his summons contract, but I have his speeches and some of the dances memorized. I can just go be a loud idiot in front of a beautiful woman and it'll get back to Lightning somehow."

"He is a national disgrace," Sanbi murmured.

"No, he's an international disgrace," Aiko corrected. "He makes us all look bad, in one way or another."

...she had a sudden recollection. "I left him with Tsunade before I went off to fight Orochimaru last week," Aiko remembered. "They probably think I'm dead, huh?"

"All the more reason he will not understand it is you who has imitated his shameful mannerisms." Sanbi let out a pleased hiss, curling his tails in.

That wasn't what she meant, but it was probably true to some extent.

"I should go check on that." She made a mental note. Given that she had kind of exploded information all over Tsunade, she was pretty optimistic that there was a non-zero chance the princess was going to storm home and throw Danzo off a tower.

With that decided, she sent off a note requisitioning any authentic weaponry and armor confiscated from fire country in the last few years. When it was laid out on her desk, she picked through it for the bits that were authentic and fit at least one of her characters. There weren't any senbon in the pile, but Genma wasn't likely to let one of those drop for an enemy to find anyway. She could use any generic one, she decided.

Because she hated his stupid ass, Aiko decided to impersonate him first. She split off into a clone, which she disguised as Kurenai. She made her true body into an imitation of the assassin, and pushed past her cringe to hold a needle in her teeth.

"Interesting," said her secretary, who was still standing there. "Are you going out on errands?"

"Yes," Aiko agreed. "You can expect me back in a couple of hours. I'm going to go ruin someone's life."

Nishikawa grimaced just a bit. " Have a safe trip." He bowed.

"It will be safe for me," Aiko said absentmindedly, as she was immortal so far as she could tell. There was no response from Nishikawa because she was already on the outskirts of a border town in Frost Country. She shivered and threw up a genjutsu hood. It didn't help her with the cold, but it made it look like she was trying. The Kurenai clone to her left did the same, tucking pale hands inside a fluffy white coat.

'Can't stay here long, it's awful,' she thought. 'If I ever annex this country, I am going to light it on fire.' Aiko resisted the urge to let her shoulders hunch up, because it definitely didn't look like Genma's body language. She and her clone walked into town as if they belonged. They went to a hotel and got a room on a reasonable budget. They went to a ludicrously expensive bar where Aiko proceeded to rack up the kind of bill that would turn heads, paid, and then walked out leaving most of the food on the table.

That did the trick. She felt two notable chakra signatures approaching before a voice called out to her.

"Excuse me."

She turned to see not two but three people in the grey and purple of Shimogakure. When her eyebrows went up, it was a legitimate surprise at that show of competency. "Saa," she stalled, using her tongue to move the stupid senbon to the side of her mouth. She caught one of the shinobi follow the motion with his dark, suspicious eyes.

The one addressing her gave no reaction. "Sorry to trouble you," He said pleasantly. "Can I see your visa, please?" A passing civilian looked over with wide eyes and seemed to consider stopping to watch the interaction. A stern look from one of the Shimogakure patrol team had him moving on with the rest of the midday foot traffic.

She cocked her head to the side and deliberately did not make eye contact with her Kurenai clone. "Visa?" She repeated, as if she was unfamiliar with the concept.

"Yes, your papers and the designation given when you entered the border," he said.

She let her eyes slide shut in a smile. "Of course, of course." And then she flicked on the Rinnegan and thought about a flowering tree. In her mind's eye, she coaxed it gently out of the ground. Dark brown vines delicately wound up around three sets of legs and grew to the size of modest branches that hugged all the way up to her victims' chests. Someone gasped.

Aiko made a shhh sound, and had the branches blossom. The fragrance of ume blossoms spilled into the air with a soporific effect.

She opened her eyes just a little and stepped back, admiring her work.

Kurenai would have been proud of this illusion. Two of the three shinobi were limp, hanging up only because they believed that the trees were supporting them. The last was blinking furiously as he tried to stay awake. Aiko propped a hand up under her chin and waited a moment until the last chuunin was overwhelmed. His eyes slid shut and his head hung peacefully. It looked a bit like he had fallen asleep standing up.

They were in a little private oasis on the busy road. Pedestrians gave her a wide berth without knowing that they were doing it or that there was anything to avoid.

She lazily reached out to touch her Kurenai clone and brought them both to the opposite end of the country.

Frost Country was small enough that it was entirely plausible that jounin could cross it in a matter of hours. So she dismissed the clone, threw on a genuinely good henge, had dinner, and then put back on Genma's face to make an appearance in a bank teller line. She had picked the building at random, and it turned out to be far above the real Genma's budget. She took a deep breath of mercifully warm and fresh-tasting air while she waited in line. Her footsteps made a pleasing sound against the marble flooring by the door and then disappeared into luxurious, thick carpeting that she kind of wanted for her office. The counter was immaculate green marble. A black pen was attached to a white fitting on the counter via a silver chain. She pursed her lips. She wanted that too, just for the hell of it.

"You want to open an account?" The middle aged woman confirmed, checking a box. She had a black uniform and a green scarf neatly tied around her neck.

While the teller was looking down, Aiko took the chance to swiftly break the chain connecting the pen to the counter. "No, no," she demurred, "I want to ask about the process for opening an account."

The teller paused. "It is quite simple," she offered. "It usually takes about 15 minutes."

"What paperwork do I need?" She asked, not glancing up at the security camera. Casually, she put the bank pen into her back pocket, dangling chain and all.

"You're eligible if you have an address within the country. You'll need to show proof of residence. As for ID, either a copy of your family register or a government issued form will work." The teller recited it with a practiced cadence and a friendly smile.

Aiko smiled back, and then remembered that she was probably being a bit friendly for Genma. "Thank you for the information. I don't have my ID on me at the moment, so another time."

"Have a nice day, thank you for your patronage." The teller quietly scribbled something out on her notepad and gave a polite little bow goodbye. Aiko heard the sound of paper tearing as she turned and left the bank. She slipped into an alley as soon as she could leave the main road.

'I wonder if they'll bill Konoha for the pen. It looks expensive.' She rubbed her icy fingers at the back of her neck, frowning at the grey sky. 'Is this enough? An intrusion has definitely been reported by now. If they are competent, they'll have found me here. But if they're not, I'll have wasted my time. Should I put in another appearance? Stand on a tower and wave my arms a bit?'

It would be better to be thorough. But after a few hours in character, Aiko couldn't really ignore the fact that she was not doing a stellar impersonation of Genma. Her body language probably came off noticeably odd in a big man's body. The longer she imitated him, the more likely it was that discrepancies would pile up.

She shifted into Kurenai, opting for a red dress that looked more civilian 'date night' and less weird than the jounin's habitual bandage dress. She left the alley onto a street that was well-lit with very expensive-looking neon and ran a hand casually through her long, soft hair. This body was a lot more fun to wear.

For a moment, she thought that she had already been found. She caught people looking at her in her peripheral multiple times when she walked down the block.

'Oh, wait,' she realized. 'Kurenai is just really hot. This is so disappointing. Why don't they know that I'm a dangerous criminal interloper?' She glowered at the next person who looked at her too long. The middle aged man smiled back.

'Fuck, I don't have all night for this. What to do... Steal something? Break and enter? Get too close to somebody politically important?'

"Miss," a man's voice called out as she passed a bar. A few other men broke out in "ooohs". "Hey, miss, over here."

Aiko turned to face the speaker, lifting an eyebrow.

A group of young men were smoking against a wall. The one who had called out to her had a cocky expression and the optimistic start of what would hopefully become a beard one day.

She flattened her expression and tone to be utterly unfriendly. "What do you want?"

Mr. Whiskers showed he had very little sense of self preservation by kicking off the wall and taking a few steps toward her. "Come have a drink?" His peers made a truly obnoxious chorus of sound in either encouragement or mockery.

Aiko eyed the cigarette in his left hand and the beer can in his right hand. That was just sloppy behavior.

'Why get so close to a stranger when your hands are full?' she wondered. Instead of answering him, she reached out and took his wallet out of his pants pocket and immediately began walking away. Blithely, she flipped it open and removed all the cash. She heard a yelp behind her and a momentary scuffle as he probably tried to get someone to take his beer can. She shut the wallet and tucked the cash into her bra. "Hey, bitch! Hey!" He was closer now.

Aiko tossed the wallet to the side in a nice clean arc that even a drunk man couldn't miss. She heard him go after it.

"That'll get reported," she said to herself. She made a sharp turn into a side street and then scaled the wall. Someone caught the motion and looked up, but she was already halfway across the building by that point. She dropped down onto another street and walked into a building. It turned out to be a restaurant. No one was at the host stand to say anything when she walked directly into the restroom, shut the door, and used hiraishin to go back to her office.

After a few seconds, there was a knock on her door. Aiko looked up from where she was re-homing her new and expensive pen in a prideful place at the exact center of her desk. "Yes?" she called.

Nishikawa's voice answered. "Did you have a good trip, Mizukage-sama?"

"I robbed a teenager," she yelled back. She dug the money out of her bra and counted it for the first time. "He had… Wow, this is more than I expected. Come here, I've replenished the office coffee fund."

#vapors #uzumaki aiko #electrasev5n #ninja daily #fanfiction #naruto fanfiction #clarity #AIC #Aiko in Canon

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electrasev5nwrites · 7 months

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Ninja Daily: AIC 38

"Konoha is whining again," Mei said. She dropped a letter on Aiko's desk. "Something about 'please stop making positive diplomatic connections with Wave, it makes us feel sad and like we might not be your best friends."

"Did they really say that," Aiko said absently. She initialed a section she had just finished reading, deep into a report regarding the upcoming budget proposal. "That sounds just like them. Except I think there should be something to prompt our action in there."

"Yes." Mei took a moment to think. "I believe they said that if we play nicely with Wave, it will make them so upset that they will have to do absolutely nothing about it, because they have so little international influence and everyone thinks they're pompous. That also makes them sad, by the way."

Aiko hummed and picked up the letter. It was still sealed in the envelope. She glanced up at Mei.

"I know them very well," Mei said smoothly. She flicked her long hair back. "I can sense it." She nodded at the envelope, urging her to go ahead and open it now and prove Mei right.

With a repressed snort, Aiko broke the seal and pulled out the missive. It was fairly brief and uncomplicated. Konoha was expressing their concern, as representative of the other 4 Great Nations, about Kirigakure's apparent expansionist plans.

"On behalf of the other 4 Great Nations, they say," Aiko said absently.

Mei gave a disdainful little laugh.

"Yes, I'm sure they spent long hours in intimate conference with Lightning and Stone," Aiko mused. She kicked back in her chair a bit and read on. "They don't mention their enduring sadness here."

"It's subtext." Mei's sneer came across in her tone.

"Do you find this at all insulting?" Sanbi asked. "As a former Konoha shinobi yourself, this is not the flattering international image one would hope to convey."

'Nah, it's par for the course. Sandaime did bluster and have a surprising reputation for softness, so far as shinobi go. We definitely stagnated during his second term and lost international relevance. Tsunade rehabilitated our image a bit.'

"I'm invited to an idyllic retreat," Aiko said. She put the letter down. "We're going to have a chat about our feelings, leader to leader, and see if we can express mutual concerns and come to agreement." Her tone was bland.

"Better you than me," Mei said, despite that very clearly being a lie.

"Definitely," Aiko said. She gave her employee a skeptical look. "God only knows you'd show up looking like that and undermine our reputation."

Mei, who was wearing a perfectly pressed uniform and a full face of makeup, narrowed her eyes. Her waterfall of riotous hair seemed to puff out slightly, like a serpent's hood foreshadowing danger. She looked powerful, competent, and dangerous.

Aiko pretended not to notice this thoroughly reasonable outrage. She was experimenting today with a yukata, loosely closed with a jeweled pin. It was gaping open artfully to show one shoulder and a tight purple top. She tapped at the missive thoughtfully with an index finger. "I suppose I should go. The host is some priest, though. I don't know the etiquette for being hosted at a temple. I assume it's different than staying with nobility."

"As our resident expert in everything, I have every confidence you will succeed," Mei said in a silky tone that meant 'I hope you choke.' "If you have a moment, I meant to ask about the escorts we are sending to Wave to bring our honored noble guests."

Aiko glanced up expectantly.

"We have adequate shinobi guards," Mei allowed. "However, I think we need at least one figure of significant political importance, to improve the optics. Someone who is a noble in their own right, to act as welcome and guide. We don't want to look like hired thugs forcibly removing disfavored nobility to aid a coup."

"That's a bad look, yes," Aiko agreed. She sighed. "Hozuki-san is going to welcome them to their accommodations, isn't she?" Aiko said idly. She frowned. "I see your point, however. I don't really have time to address it personally. Make a recommendation, explain why, I'll approve."

Mei swept into a bow. "By your leave," she said, and glided out.

Aiko sighed. She put the letter aside for now, since it didn't require immediate action, and went back to the paperwork that had been priorized. Once the budget was on track and she'd ordered an audit of those suspicious fuckers down in accounting (oh! The tables turn!), she deposited the completed stack on Nishikawa's desk. He was nowhere to be seen. The woman sitting in his desk looked up briefly to make eye contact, nodded, and went back to her project. At first glance, it did not look work-related.

...Aiko leaned over to look more closely. "Rats?" She gave the temp an uncertain look. "Why are you making rats?"

The other woman didn't look up again. "It's the year of the rat." Her tone strongly implied the conversation was over. She was drawing shut a bunched bit of fabric that, judging by the squadron of completed rats overseeing, would become a little rat butt and get a string tail later.

She felt her brow furrow. But she didn't have any specific objections to rat arts and crafts. And presumably they were all adults here and whoever this person was had finished their work, so… "Carry on, then. I'll need the blue-marked folders-"

"To Amae-san when pickup comes, and the green go with the general outflow?"

Reassured all was well, Aiko nodded. "Thank you, I'm out for lunch now."

"Bring me back a coffee, please. Two cream and three sugars."

Aiko stopped at the door and squinted back. The temp didn't seem to be joking. Aiko didn't have a frame of reference for whatever this interaction was. She furrowed her eyebrows again. "Okay," she said. And she promptly resolved to not spend any time thinking about whatever was going on, because it was clearly not her business and she trusted her office's staffing decisions.

She went out for lunch at a tonkatsu place, asked them to make breakfast for her instead, and felt a little bit guilty about it. She avoided looking directly at the sign proclaiming that breakfast ended at 11. It was past 1 by the time she got her toast, eggs, and salad. The coffee and fruit came a few moments later.

While eating the ill-gotten gains of her reign, Aiko mulled over the invitation to meet with Konoha. She didn't care that much what they thought, and she severely doubted that they would be willing to object strongly enough to force her to let go of Wave.

She was doing a good thing, and she didn't intend to back down on it. That stubborn determination made her give serious thought to telling them that she was too busy and just weathering their disapproval. Tazuna's little island had a budding local defence force of locals that her chuunin were giving basic training to. The island was beginning to bustle with tourism over their bridge, drawn to stay at the appropriated mansion Gato had abandoned, eat the exceptionally fresh seafood, and buy the pearls that local women were beginning to dive for again. As for the more cental area of Wave- they were doing well, too. The Daimyo had been prodded into paying attention to his country, the worst of the leeches were being pulled away from influence, and Aiko expected better things were going to come.

She was relatively certain that Konoha was not willing to use enough muscle to forcibly extract her from influence in Wave. That would mean a protracted cross-continental military campaign.

Of course, there was the small but significant risk that Konoha was not totally exaggerating the extent of international concern. Aiko had made a very informed risk assessment that there was no appetite for international cooperation on that scale any time soon. But if she was wrong and Kiri was enough to bring Lightning and Konoha together despite their differences, it would be best to know that as soon as possible.

Fuck. She stared sourly into her empty cup. She was going to have to go hang out with the Sandaime and a bunch of other old men at a shrine.

"Then go," Sanbi offered lazily. His tails lashed as he stretched, like a sleepy cat. "Why is this so difficult?"

'I don't want to make any faux pas.' Aiko sighed and tried to catch someone's eye to ask for a refill. 'My religious education was lacking. There is always the chance that I unintentionally do something mortifying and we end up having to do penance, or pilgrimage, or issue apologies. I just don't want the international conversation about us to include that we're heathens.'

"Are you?"

She had to think about that one. 'Less than other people?' She finally got someone to take away her coffee cup. 'I used to be pretty certain that it was all bullshit. But now I know at least one of the gods is real, out there, and dislikes me on a personal level.'

"..." Sanbi paused a very long time in his answer. He stood up, turned in a circle, and then sat again. When he finally spoke, it was in a carefully diplomatic tone. "It seems possible that a faux pas in a religious context could have more serious impacts for you than bad publicity."

Aiko grimaced.

She was really tempted to say that it couldn't get any worse. She was an unpaid intern of the thoroughly unsympathetic god of death, who was either going to keep her undead as a servant in the living world or drag her to the land of the death whenever he remembered about her.

The thing was, she had a sinking feeling that it could, actually, get quite a bit worse than that. She didn't know how, but something about the tension on the back of her neck felt like a warning and validation that she still had a lot to lose, even if she didn't know what it was.

'Field trip it is,' Aiko decided. 'I'll have someone set up an interview with a religious teacher. A priest or priestess, I suppose. I have a month to read up before I need to go talk with Konoha. I can fit that in my schedule.'

She stopped at a cafe on her way back to the office and ordered two coffees to go, one for her and one for the stranger at Nishikawa's desk. The caffeine powered her through the rest of the work day.

At the earliest time that she could, she slipped away from her work and to the closest shrine from her office. She had no idea when it would be busy, but it was deserted at the moment. There was something reassuring about that. She didn't want to have a lot of people around while she tried to figure out how to not be blasphemous and damned.

There were two priests at the gate to the shrine. One was a fatherly-looking man, whose laugh lines implied he was nearing 50. He paused, broom in hand at the top of the stone stairs, and watched her approach. The other one was absolutely ancient-looking. He was so thin that she could see his wrist bones clearly when he raised his hands and gestured for her to shoo.

Affronted, Aiko frowned. "What's this about?" she asked.

The younger man answered. "Welcome, Mizukage-sama," he said. He bowed humbly. He did not seem to notice that his companion was making a face at her. "How can I help you today?"

She looked at the elderly priest again. "I've been invited to conference with the Hokage at a shrine and I want to talk with the head priest about any etiquette or background information that I should know."

"I understand." He bowed again. "I'll retrieve the senior priest." And then he went away, leaving her with the rude old man.

He frowned at her.

She frowned at him. "What?" Aiko asked again.

The younger priest turned around to give her an inquisitive look.

Aiko gave him a smile and gestured for him to go on. "Not you, sorry."

His untrimmed brows pressed together in what looked like confusion, but he nodded and continued on his way.

She waited until he was out of hearing range to try again. This time, she was calmer and carefully respectful, despite the old man's rudeness. "Good afternoon," Aiko said, because she had manners and she was hoping this could be smoothed out. "I'm Uzumaki Aiko, and you are…?"

He gave her a disdainful look. Then he very pointedly looked down at the ground.

Aiko felt a spark of irritation and then she realized there was nothing on the ground. As in, he wasn't casting a shadow. She felt her lips go open in an "oh" of recognition. Her mind stalled for a minute. It wasn't… It wasn't the first time that she had seen a ghost, but the others had been much less solid-looking. This man looked alive, aside from the fact that he looked like he should have died of natural causes 20 years ago.

"Never mind, then," Aiko said. She blinked quickly. "You're the first non-shinobi ghost I've seen."

He gave her a curious look, mouth twisting to the side. But he didn't open it and attempt to speak.

"I wonder if it's because you are a priest," Aiko mused. She couldn't help but glance around the shrine, as if she might see other ghosts. "It could be more common for people who are connected to the spiritual to stay. Do you know?" She addressed the last bit to him directly.

He folded his arms into his sleeves, looked into the distance, and began drifting away.

"Rude," Aiko said under her breath.

The ghost swiveled around to give her an affronted look. He pulled one arm out of a sleeve to gesture at her, up and down, as if there was something visibly wrong with her.

"I'm not doing anything," she denied. Aiko was sorely tempted to roll her eyes. "I came here to learn, so that I don't make death any angrier or make any other enemies."

His eyes narrowed at her. The breeze picked up, and it brought a heavy, sickly stench. She had never actually smelled rotting meat, but Aiko instinctively knew that was what it was. She brought a hand up to cover her nose and sneezed.

It only took an instant to realize that had been a faux pas. The ghost was suddenly furious. His mouth opened for the first time, showing a blackened stump of a tongue and releasing grave breath. He spat something foul and incomprehensible at her and wheeled away. There was something wrong with him, on a level that unsettled her. Before he had seemed like a badly-tempered old man. He had disliked her on sight, but he hadn't seemed wicked or inhuman at all. Now, there was something actively malevolent in the air. There was something else that was making her uncomfortable, but it took a moment to pin down what it was. She saw it, when she looked at the ground beneath him.

He was more solid. He was casting a shadow.

That was concerning. She didn't know much about death, but she knew it was far too active and she didn't want to live in a world where the intangible could become tangible and kick her ass.

She had to know if he was truly solid.

As the ghost turned his back on her, she bent down to pick up a bit of gravel and lob it at him. If he was solid, it should have bounced off of his heel. If he was stil a regular harmless ghost, it should have gone through him.

It did exactly neither of those things. There was a surprisingly loud bang, and then gravel went flying. She put her arm up to protect her face, but she could still see that there was a circle of bare earth where the ghost had been standing.

But the ghost himself was gone.

"...Huh," Aiko said. She put her hand down. "That was interesting."

And she had learned at least one possibly useful fact: it made dead people very, very angry if you acknowledged that they were off-putting. That meant gritting her teeth through graveyard rot. It was gross, but she could do it now that she knew it would offend.

Someone cleared their throat. When she turned to face the sound, she saw yet another priest. The fatherly-looking man was hanging back behind him, so she expected this was the senior priest. She gave him a polite bow. And then she froze in her tracks as she saw that the ghost was manifesting slowly by his fellows. His face looked strained and thoroughly moody- but totally human again. He didn't seem.. Well, was demonic the right word for the ugliness that had twisted his eyes before?

"Mizukage-sama," the living priest said firmly. "I think that you need to leave now."

...What, like the problem had been her? She bristled, just a bit. But she looked at the bare earth, the pebbles embedded in a nearby tree, and backed down. It did look like she had been bizarre for no reason. "Goodnight," Aiko said resentfully. She made eye contact with the smug-looking ghost. "This isn't over," she told him.

"Go home," said the priest.

Aiko gave him a bow. "I wasn't talking to you, just to the dead man over there. I'll return to have our conversation tomorrow. I apologize for the trouble."

The ghost sneered at her and glided away.

"Wait!" The priest called out. "A dead man?"

She pursed her lips at him. "Yes," Aiko acknowledged. Her gaze darted over to the man in question. "A priest. He looks to be... senior in age. Green eyes, a wooden bracelet, a spot on his left cheek."

The living priest raised a hand to his own face, indicating the spot where the mole was. Aiko nodded in answer.

"I see," he said slowly. Then he nodded. "I suppose that you angered him?"

She had to nod. "Not sure why, but yes. He seemed to dislike me as soon as I walked in."

"Well, yes," the senior priest said frankly. The dead man gave him a satisfied look of approval. "This temple is dedicated to Izanami, lady of the land of the dead, and she has no love for the death god or his servants."

Aiko bit her lip. "I... I want to say I'm not his servant," she said, not sure if that was dangerous or not. "I did not deliberately choose the nature of our association."

There was a long silence, as the two elderly priests looked her up and down. The younger man was looking humbly at his own feet. The dead man's face twisted first. He seemed to huff a great sigh and then gestured at her to follow him.

"I think that you should come inside after all," the head of the shrine said. "Please follow me."

#vapors #uzumaki aiko #electrasev5n #ninja daily #fanfiction #naruto fanfiction #clarity #AIC #Aiko in Canon

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