As it turned out, her partner was a little unnerving. How long did he spend painting his face like that? What an odd hobby. Maybe it was some sort of artistic statement about the dichotomy between oppositional energies like yin and yang?
'I wonder if he does that every morning, or just when he goes on missions? I bet it's an intimidation thing.'
Aiko gave Zetsu a queasy smile, hesitating a moment too long before she gave a polite bow. "Please take care of me," she mumbled, nearly stumbling over the platitude.
"A pleasure to meet you, Uzumaki-san," came the neutral reply. That would have been fine, if the sentence "Or something like that," hadn't tumbled out in a deep raspy voice on the heels of the first sentence.
Uncertain, Aiko glanced up at Obito. He was wearing his orange mask again, but he gave her a surreptitious thumbs-up sign in encouragement.
'I can do this. He's probably a really nice guy.'
She beamed at her new partner. This was an adventure, and nothing was going to bring her mood down. "So, what's the situation?"
"We should hurry," Zetsu said politely, sounding distantly pleasant. "Kakuzu-san has arranged for us to meet our prospective client a few hours from here. It would be unwise to be late."
"Impolite," he added a moment later, once again slipping into his lower register.
Ok -ay …
"Alrighty then." Aiko managed to straighten her face into something a little less confused. "Lead the way, then."
Traveling with Zetsu was an awkward proposition, in no small part because he chose to seep hip-deep in the ground. Aiko stared, thrown off-guard. He heaved a beleaguered sigh and wavered back up until all but his shins were above ground, giving her a pointed look.
She didn't know what that was supposed to mean.
"So, we aren't running?" she asked uncertainly. She'd thought…
"This is much faster," Zetsu said curtly. "Grab on. We risk being late."
"Have a good first day back at work!" Obito waved from the door, clearly amused in the moment before he whirled away in a smear of orange and black.
'G- grab on? I begin to suspect that I have questionable taste in friends and associates,' Aiko thought with the air of a shocking revelation. Gingerly, she walked up to Zetsu and hesitated a moment before shrugging and tossing her arms around his waist, hugging him from behind. "Like this?"
"Hold your breath," he ordered curtly.
There was barely time to obey before they were enveloped in the earth. It didn't feel like she was moving, so much as that the ground was moving around her. The feeling was strange and not entirely pleasant—there was pressure all around, but much more around her feet and legs than on her upper torso. Did that make sense? It didn't seem to, but it was still true, even when she anxiously tangled her legs around Zetsu's shins and tried not to cling too desperately.
'It's strangely cold. I would have thought it was stuffy in the dirt. That's good to know, I think?'
If today was at all indicative, that knowledge was going to come in handy. Next time, she would find a jacket. And layer socks, instead of just stuffing a rolled-up pair in the toes of her boots.
That decidedly banal thought was cut off by her body's increasing demand for oxygen. Eventually she was forced to gasp—and took in air, instead of dirt.
' He's maintaining an air pocket, ' Aiko realized. ' That's what is keeping us from being smothered. But that can't last long.'
A little frightened but certain that Obito hadn't rescued her just to have Zetsu suffocate her, Aiko stilled and tried to keep her heartrate and breathing low to save on oxygen. An approving rumble shook the bulky torso she was pressed up against.
Remaining calm had been the right decision. Zetsu seemed slightly less cool and disapproving when he popped up to the surface like a sprout, exposing both of them up to their waists. "Air," he commanded gently. Aiko tilted her neck back enough to pull her face out of her companion's black and red cloak and indulged her body's need for oxygen.
"I expect you to learn this jutsu as well," he remarked mildly, not struggling for breath at all. "I am currently shielding you from the negative effects of underground travel for the sake of presentation, but I do not intend to make that a habit."
Aiko opened her mouth, ready to respond when Zetsu sneered and growled out,
"It's a pain."
She blinked. It was probably better to ignore that. Still, he had a good point. She didn't have a latent yearning to get filthy, but it would be rude to depend on her partner to take care of everything. "Would you teach me?"
With her arms still wrapped around his torso, she couldn't see his face at all. That left her off-kilter when all he said was, "Hold your breath."
This time, Aiko sucked in a huge amount of air and immediately tucked her face into her companion's back.
"It can learn," Zetsu hissed, darkly amused. There was no time to respond- It? really, It ?- before they were suddenly surrounded by pressure and cold once more.
'At least I wasn't surprised this time. It's easier not to panic that way.'
They traveled that way for a what seemed to be a painfully long time, broken up as it was by trips back up to the surface when the air pocket that Zetsu held around them began to stale and thin.
In reality, it only took two hours and twelve minutes. By the end, Aiko had managed to fall into a nearly meditative state, carefully controlling her breathing and trying to enjoy the body heat that she could borrow off of her comrade.
"Thank you," Aiko mumbled when they finally stood on solid land again. She carefully unlaced her stiff fingers and disentangled her arms out of the folds of Zetsu's cloak. She hadn't even noticed that her arms had worked their way under the buttons in a sad search for warmth.
It was lucky that he was such a nice guy. She rather imagined that not everyone would tolerate their coworker inadvertently feeling them up for hours at a time.
"Don't mention it." He hesitated, and this time she noted that his eyes glazed over slightly before he added, " Please ."
'Does he not even know when he's being mean? ' Aiko wondered, pretending not to notice the second statement. That seemed like a solid working policy.
"You will approach the client alone," Zetsu muttered, shaking his head and dislodging a bit of dirt that she hadn't noticed. Wondering if her hair was dirty as well, Aiko swept her hand over the top of her head and shook out her ponytail before she realized that her companion was giving her an impatient look.
"Why?" Aiko tilted her head slightly to the side, watching him a little warily. She liked the idea of being in control, but on the first job she remembered doing?
Nerves bubbled up in her gut, and she chewed on a nail. Until she realized that Zetsu looked like he was considering cutting off her hand. Aiko moved to meekly move her hand down, realized what she was doing, and took one last defiant nibble while maintaining eye contact. As if to say that she didn't take orders from him, thank you very much. Then she shoved that hand in the pocket of her skirt.
"I have a memorable face," Zetsu bit out.
Aiko took a moment to wonder if it was really his face that lingered in one's mind, or the enormous green fronds curling around his head. Either way, the point was fairly valid.
So she shrugged. "Alright by me."
"So you are the nuke-nin that I've agreed to hire? You do realize that I require the utmost discretion and speed. You must have completed this mission and meet me at the Nakamura waterfall by that evening at the latest."
The tall, thin man seemed a bit skeptical, frankly, at the disheveled and slightly muddy teenage girl that had shown up in his sitting room.
Aiko beamed up at him, radiating friendliness. She didn't want him to regret his decision.
"Yepp! I'm happy to work with you, Atsushi. You can call me- Masashi," she hastily decided. Damnit Obito , he totally sucked for putting that stupid boy's name in her head. It was somehow his fault that she blanked out at the last moment.
Her prospective employer cringed. His mouth dropped open in what was probably shocked outrage, but his brushy mustache partially disguised the motion.
'Did I say something? Was I not polite enough?'
"I mean, really happy," she over-corrected, widening her smile to contain an obscene amount of teeth. "I bet this is going to be very profitable for both of us."
Shimizu Atsushi, the third-richest man in Grass Country, wondered if this woman was balls-out crazy or actually so dangerous that she didn't see a problem in referring to her social superior in an incredibly inappropriate, familiar manner. He considered being offended, and thought better of it. It would be best to just get her out of his home.
He'd already fronted half of the payment to the intermediary, and getting it back would be difficult. If she failed and died, at least it wouldn't be in his front room.
(His prospective employee had genuinely forgotten about the polite convention of using honorifics. Obito hadn't cared or used them.)
"You will be helping me regain property that was stolen by a former retainer," Atsushi said sternly, shaking away the oddity in favor of professionalism. "The scoundrel has fled with my daughter."
"Alright," Aiko nodded slowly. "What's the missing property?"
Atsushi gave her a look that implied she was a moron. "My daughter Koto," he repeated slowly. With a sigh, he turned away. "Most importantly, of course. They also took a great deal of money and some heirloom jewelry, including my mother's wedding ring. I suspect that they will sell as much of it as possible. Recover both of them and what you can. If I know her…" the man sneered. "They will be headed for the coast."
'So… his daughter eloped, and stole a bunch of his stuff?' Aiko furrowed her brow, but took the information she was provided and left the manor to meet with Zetsu.
'I guess that makes sense. Even if she was his daughter, it was wrong for her to steal from him. I'll recover that and ask her to come home and apologize. And bring back the real thief, of course.'
She shook off the unsettling implication that Atsushi had referred to his daughter as property—he had probably just misspoken—in order to set off on her very first mission.
Well, sort of. She was counting this as mission number one.
At least the little brat was fast. Zetsu might have lost his temper and eaten her if she were completely incapable of keeping up.
He was sullen about his assignment, but maintained focus and contained his temper. This mission was more important than the brat realized, after all. If she were more aware, she might have wondered why such an apparently straightforward mission had been contracted out through a missing-nin instead of a proper village.
Missing nin were often used and discarded by employers because they had no village backing to protect them. That strategy made sense when the mission contracted out was prohibitively expensive or so blatantly dangerous or amoral that the proper village wouldn't take it.
Nuke-nin with any sense for self-preservation would be wary of a mission that seemed neither illegal or excessively easy. There weren't many reasons for a client to prefer to contract out a missing nin over someone from a ninja village.
It could always be that the customer was a criminal too wary of drawing attention to engage in legal business. Zetsu was unfamiliar with the client on a personal level, but most rich men were criminals in some way. Of course, that didn't mean they wouldn't risk going through legal channels if the job itself seemed legitimate.
As far as Zetsu could tell, there was no particular reason that the requested job would have been rejected by a shinobi village. That implied that the choice to hire a missing nin might be based on the fact that it was easier to get out of paying missing nin, or avoid the full price.
Kakuzu didn't have the ability to negotiate anything other than the highest price, even if the intent was to teach Aiko a lesson about nuke-nin getting fleeced. So there was no probability that the promised payment for this mission was low.
With that possible explanation out of the way, Obito had discerned that the client would probably try to have his hired thug killed after she had completed her mission. There was no reason for him to think the plan wouldn't work: that sort of thing happened all the time. Aiko hadn't laid claim to any frightening reputation, and the client hadn't been informed that he was hiring Akatsuki.
Aiko's job was to complete the mission, and discover that the world was shitty and people were cruel and stupid. As much as it rankled to play the hero, Zetsu would save her at the last moment, take her straight to Obito, and let him use the experience as an example as to why change was needed. When he then offered a potential cure for humanity's corrupt nature, Aiko would be ready to hear it.
"Hey, Zetsu? Are we going to stop somewhere for the night?"
'Already? She wants to rest so soon?'
Zetsu scowled. What spoiled, lazy shinobi Konoha turned out. It was no wonder that Madara-sama had attempted to fight the regime that led to such weakness.
"No," White Zetsu responded shortly. "We will press on and overtake them in the night. Once they are in our control, I will watch as you rest a short while before we return. Civilians are slow and not hardy. They cannot have gotten far in the course of two days."
'Obito coddled her by putting her in a house and buying her fancy equipment ,' Black Zetsu scoffed. ' He should have let her walk about in the hospital garb and sleep on the cold ground a few nights, until she realized she could take what she wanted from those weaker.'
No, no, that wasn't how Obito wanted this to go. In order to ensure that she would be a suitable carrier for the Rinnegan, the child must be slowly acclimated to share their vision. That began with showing her that humanity and the current order was flawed and amoral, and then having Obito present the solution. It would be highly foolish to make the same mistake that Madara-sama had made in giving the Rinnegan to an unpredictable pawn. She wasn't particularly powerful as she was, but the Rinnegan could turn almost anyone into a respectable opponent. They did not have time to waste bullying a recalcitrant dojutsu user. She had to be molded properly before she was honed into a sharp tool.
They traveled running aboveground, despite the fact that traveling underground was faster. The head-hunter jutsu was very useful, but it did not enable tracking. Luckily, civilians left obvious trails. Not for the first time, Zetsu noted that his traveling companion was almost twitchy in the brush and copses of trees that they traveled through. Her head was constantly swiveling towards the smallest sounds, although she eventually began to be able to control the urge to look.
'She was a jinchuuriki's child,' Zetsu remembered idly from old conversations with Obito. ' I had forgotten that. Her senses are likely heightened due to fetal exposure to such a powerful source of animalistic chakra. The Nine-Tails is a fox, so her hearing and sense of smell are likely the most affected.'
Foxes weren't known for their vision—in fact, her eyesight probably was not augmented at all. But now that he knew what to look for, Zetsu was positive that the brat's senses surpassed what she should possess without conscious memory of training in chakra augmentation.
"What's this?" The brat stopped suddenly. Zetsu shot ahead of her several feet before he managed to stop, turning to glare at the waste of time.
It was wasted. She was on her knees, examining markings in the dirt with a little frown of concentration.
"I should know what this is."
"Yes, you should," White Zetsu agreed.
"This was where they camped last night," Black Zetsu cut in derisively. "Baka. You waste time."
The brat blinked at him. Zetsu suppressed a sigh of irritation. "Come," he bit out tonelessly, turning to move again. "They will be bedding down soon."
It took another four hours to cross the distance that their prey had managed in twelve or fourteen hours of daylight. The brat was flagging but focused through the minute trembles of her ill-used muscles.
It didn't matter that she was in excellent condition for a village shinobi. Missing nin lived much harder lives, and the organization formerly known as Akatsuki was composed of only the best. The brat would need to toughen up.
The camp was small and dark. Their client's former retainer was no slouch as a woodsman—their fire had been expertly covered, and they had been eating off of the land.
Yellow eyes glinted with the pale moonlight that provided the only visibility available. He shifted to check his companion: from her line of sight, he supposed that she could clearly see the slowly breathing figures curled together under a single blanket. The blue fabric had been pushed down far enough that the man was exposed head and shoulders. Only the woman's face was showing, curled as she was with her face on her partner's chest.
Neither was particularly interesting to Zetsu. Both were rather fit for civilians, but they were otherwise unremarkable. Human faces all looked so much alike.
"Immobilize them," Zetsu ordered in a low mutter. They were being paid to return the two alive, after all. If they woke and ran, the brat might get sloppy. She wasn't used to adjusting her force to cope with civilians after having trained with Obito.
The brat stiffened a little at being given orders but pulled a brace of glittering senbon out from her hip pouch.
He silently approved: it was difficult to kill someone with a senbon even if one's aim was poor. Even if she failed, her target would likely survive.
The first senbon flew true, four more flickering on its heels into the meat of the man's neck. He stiffened momentarily before going completely limp. For a moment, Zetsu was reluctantly impressed. And then the sleeping woman moved in her sleep, caressing up her lover's chest. The Brat didn't adjust her sixth needle in time, accidentally pinning the woman's hand to her lover's chest.
She woke up with a scream. It died in her throat an instant later when Zetsu shot a cloud of paralytic gas to mist over the two. He sneered at his companion, noting the frustration on her features.
"Incompetent," White Zetsu muttered. Black Zetsu just hissed.
The large pack the man had been carrying was indeed full of pilfered goods. Unzipping it revealed a careless tangle of necklace chains and bracelets, with rings clanging around the bottom among a pretty set of jade statuettes and an engraved puzzle box of some sort. Only one piece really caught Aiko's eye.
'Oh wow, that is pretty. ' A bit guiltily, Aiko held up a jeweled hairpin so she could examine it better by the moonlight. ' I really like this.'
The hairpin wasn't even especially valuable or beautiful for the large collection. But something about the little blue dragonfly sparked at her memory and made her feel happy. Not just happy, but… safe.
She wished she could keep it, but dutifully put it away and zipped up the bag.
It was hard to feel satisfied about that even as she re-packed the stolen paraphernalia (she would be the one carrying it from now on) and settled down in their targets' camp. Failure was sour and hot on Aiko's tongue. She had a hard time getting to sleep, kicking her feet against the hard ground and shifting around in a half-assed attempt at comfort.
Sourly, she tossed a glance over at the tangle of unconscious civilians. They both looked spectacularly uncomfortable, faces locked into grimaces. She couldn't bring herself to pity them, pathetic as they were. How could she? They were barely even the same species. They weren't anything like her. She was a monster, and had been long before she was an undead monster. The brief flashes of memory she retained were all of death and violence, a good deal of which she dealt out. If violence was what she had to offer Obito, she could at least have the decency to be good at it.
'I can't believe I messed that up.'
Sleep didn't come. Eventually, she gave up and turned to find her disgruntled partner. Zetsu's mood had become even blacker after her failure. He had left her sight, but she didn't think he would have gone far.
Surely enough, Zetsu slunk into visibility when she craned her head to observe the clearing.
"We should just go. There's no point in staying here if you don't intend to sleep and I can't."
For the first time, it seemed she had said something vaguely agreeable to her companion. Zetsu nodded. "You will run," he rumbled. "I will transport them with my digging technique. I cannot transport three dead weights."
Aiko winced at the truth in that. "Of course," she agreed. At least she could run without messing anything up.
She was starting to change her mind on Zetsu. He was a genuinely unhappy individual, and not friendly in the least. At least he was competent and efficient. He wouldn't be a terrible long-term partner.
'and I won't be either, ' Aiko promised internally. ' I'll keep working and get better.'
It had been such a rookie mistake to let her needle loose. She had even seen the muscles tense before the woman move. Aiko just hadn't put that observation together with her chosen action in time to adjust her motions. The problem had been her perception and reaction time.
Experience would make that better, but so would practicing.
She forced away the temptation to mope and instead tried to encourage determination to do better. As soon as this mission was over, she was going to work her tail off. A good shinobi was efficient, quick-witted, tough, and endured all sorts of uncomfortable things like sleeping in the dirt and... and…
'Alright. I'm amending my resolution to be a better shinobi. That's going to be without the outside bits. I don't like sleeping outside and I'm not doing that.'
Aiko ran as hard as she could, until sweat dripped down into her eyes and mouth and she thought she was going to taste salt forever. She had to stop at one point to throw up. Unfortunately, that was several miles before she came to a fast-running river where she could rinse her mouth until her teeth were painfully cold. She made a sad attempt to clean off her face, but gave it up as a bad job. Soap would be required before she was anything approaching clean.
(At the time, she had not gracefully accepted that reality. Aiko cursed like a sailor when she remembered that the soap was in Zetsu's pack).
Despite pushing herself past what she thought was reasonable, Zetsu still beat her to the rendezvous point. Aiko slumped, mildly disappointed. She missed the appraisal her companion gave her.
"We will have to wait to return them," Zetsu said simply. "You are not expected until the next evening at the earliest."
Aiko looked at him for a long moment. Then she looked at the sad, filthy civilians awkwardly sprawled on the ground where they had been dropped. She wasn't an expert, but she began to suspect that Zetsu had drugged them enough to keep them unconscious and immobile for days.
"I'm going to get a hotel room," she said flatly. "Come or don't, I don't care."
He didn't. In the morning she checked out of her room with clean hair and a still-damp outfit that she had washed in the tub by hand. She found that Zetsu hadn't moved an inch, as far as she could tell.
Aiko got his attention by clapping her hands, though he undoubtedly already knew she was there. "How are we doing this, then?" she asked briskly, nodding towards the chumps they'd gone after. "If you can't be seen, this is slightly complicated. I don't think I can carry both of them."
She definitely couldn't carry both of them, although she could probably drag either one a fair distance by pulling on their ankles. That would have to be her backup plan.
Zetsu made a strange crackling sound that Aiko had no idea how to interpret. After a moment, he sullenly added, "I have little skill with genjutsu. I will wake one of them and it will be your job to convince them to return with you."
Aiko pursed her lips and looked down at the couple collapsed on the ground. She was tempted to wake the man, but he seemed highly competent. The woman was a cloistered noblewoman. She would be more susceptible to persuasions.
"Wake the woman."
Zetsu raised the smooth skin where another man might have had an eyebrow, but obligingly smeared something sharp-smelling over the woman's lips.
"Meet me two kilometers north of here when you are done," he instructed harshly before sinking down into the earth.
Fair enough. Aiko took a deep breath, tapping her fingers rapidly against the beautiful curved kunai that Obito had gifted her with, considering her strategy. By the time the woman groaned, her long, pale face contorting in discomfort, Aiko was ready.
"Wake up." Aiko bent and slapped the woman, and stared into startled green eyes for just a moment before fear filled them. She might have forced a thin smile over her face if she thought she could manage it convincingly—but she knew she couldn't it. If she moved her face from the impassive mask she was wearing now, she wouldn't be able to hide her own nerves.
All she had to do was out-bluff a civilian girl. A non-violent offender, one who had committed a crime but didn't deserve harm. Aiko carefully avoided looking at the bruise on the girl's left hand with a perfect dot of dried blood in the middle.
It wasn't anywhere near the brutality that she saw in her dreams or that she was capable of, but it was proof of the first time she remembered harming another human being.
She didn't need to hurt the girl, but the civilian needed to think that violence was a possibility to scare her into compliance.
"What's going on?" Consciousness didn't really improve the sour look of Koto's face. She was closer to handsome than pretty, with a long face, pointy chin, and slight bags under her squinting eyes.
'Wow, her voice is an annoyingly high pitch. That's positively grating.'
"Who are you?" Koto demanded, shaking her hair and struggling to her feet. She glanced down, noticed her lover, and turned white with what might have been rage or fear.
The silence didn't last long. It turned to shouted recriminations, insults based on Aiko's appearance, and threats that the other teenager had no chance of carrying out.
"-at bitch! What did you do to him? I'll-"
'If she were my daughter, I might have let her go. Jewelry or not,' Aiko mused impassively. Was this really what civilians were like? No wonder that Obito didn't let her mingle with them long than she had to.
"Ugly cunt!" Koto outright screamed in Aiko's face, her unimpressive chest heaving and eyes wide. She was shaking violently and apparently thought that getting louder would force Aiko to react. It didn't. "Fix him, or I promise I will cut you! I have friends who will come after you!"
Aiko watched Koto boredly. The taller girl fell silent once her voice went raspy, chest heaving with the effort of her vitriol.
"Are you quite done, Koto?" She guessed that the outrage and confused fear in other girl's face was a victory. Aiko capitalized on that momentum, keeping her voice a steady, inflectionless drone that all but screamed disinterest. It claimed she did this every day. "You're almost home."
She was surprised by the choking sob the other teenager let out, but didn't let that show.
"You really shouldn't have stolen from your father," Aiko mildly scolded, letting just a bit of disapproval color her tone. "I'm taking you home, and you're going to tell your father that you are very sorry."
"W-what? Apologize- what are you, my grandmother?" The other teen seemed flabbergasted. Kami only knew why. Surely she expected that her father would want her back? Granted, he'd chosen a strange messenger considering he was wealthy enough to have his own staff. But whatever, if he felt like throwing money at Aiko, that was just fine. "There's no need for that," Koto tried slowly. "I can pay you."
Aiko raised an eyebrow. "With the things you stole from your father?" she asked dryly, pointedly lifting her shoulder so that the pack on her back was more obvious. It was the one that Koto's little boy toy had been carting. "What kind of girl do you think I am?"
Koto opened her mouth, furrowed her brow, and then shut her mouth. She appeared to be momentarily broken.
Absolutely no sympathy stirred in Aiko's chest. The girl shouldn't have stolen: she'd written a check that she couldn't cash. Koto didn't even seem regretful. She just wanted to avoid the consequences of her actions. What a brat. She was far too old for that sort of behavior. If she had any dignity at all, she would accept responsibility and go home, now that she'd been caught.
"Please," Koto said, very quietly.
'Little weasel.'
Aiko felt her lip curl in revulsion despite her resolution to remain impassive and detached. "You're annoying." Against her will, her fingers curled around the one kunai in her weapon pouch. The other girl's wide eyes clearly caught the motion.
'I'm getting overly involved. I need to stay detached. This is just a job. It's not my problem that she totally sucks.'
Koto considered her chances for a long moment, staring at Aiko's face. Awkwardly, Aiko forced the tiniest smile onto her face, because the alternative was letting her resolve waver. She'd been trusted with a straight-forward mission. She could do this, even without Zetsu's help on this last part.
Koto crumbled. "Alright," she said quietly. "I'll come."
"That's good," Aiko chirped, turning away and giving a stretch. "You'll be dragging lover-boy here home. I certainly couldn't do it, I might break a nail." She rolled her neck, yawning. After a moment, she added in an undertone as if it as unimportant and not another threat, "If I'd had to carry you, I don't know how he was going to get to come with us."
The implication being, of course, that she would kill him.
The other girl wasn't strong, even for a teenager. Aiko would have done a much better job at pulling the unconscious lump of quietly drooling young man the mile or so to the isolated meeting point not far from the client's manor. But she much preferred to have her hands free. Sweating and huffing would have undermined the image she needed to portray. If she were in Koto's position, she would be looking for an opportunity to attack the bullying ninja and make free.
That wouldn't work, of course, Zetsu was probably somewhere nearby. He was a few miles at the absolute most, and would notice if Koto tried to make a break for it. Aiko still wasn't going to let it get to that point.
She mercilessly pushed Koto on, even after her pointy and not entirely pretty face was red as a cherry and her breathing had turned to harsh gasps.
"Maa, Koto," she drawled, not knowing why the taunt sounded so right, "Are you tired already? Do you want a break already?"
Aiko was pretty sure that Koto hated her, but they were making pretty good time, all things considered. She hadn't been to the meeting spot, but it was easy enough to recognize from the description that she'd been given.
There couldn't possibly be that many waterfalls around.
"Just drop him," Aiko advised carelessly, waving a nonchalant hand behind her and hopping up onto a large rock in the middle of the angrily bubbling stream fleeing the short waterfall. Well. She thought of it as short, but it was a good twenty feel from top to bottom.
If she wanted, she could probably run right up it, although it would be much easier to take the rocks.
(She privately resolved to do that once the exchange was over. It would probably be really fun to leap off the edge into the deeper pool collected at the bottom).
The sound of Koto's breathing became muffled—she put her hand over her mouth, Aiko decided—and footsteps that the civilian probably thought were quiet sounded out behind her.
'I'm surprised it took this long.'
Aiko turned lazily, her right hand whipping up to grab Koto's wrist. She twisted, letting the momentum force the girl to drop the jagged rock she had picked up. Aiko gave a not entirely pleasant smile.
"At least you're not entirely gutless," she remarked, watching the determination in Koto's eyes turn back to hopelessness. When the other teen wrenched her arm away, Aiko let her. "But you're going to have to do much better than that. Try not to embarrass yourself next time you try to kill someone who kills for a living, yes? Or just be smarter."
Wow, this was kind of fun. It was all bluffing, but Koto didn't have to know that.
(it wasn't exactly bluffing. She knew that she could snap a man's neck with her bare hands if she had to, and that wasn't the only way she had seen her dream-self brutalize another human being. If she had to, she could do things Koto couldn't imagine with just one little blade. It only took one).
Koto whimpered, spineless again.
Disgusted, Aiko gently pushed the girl backwards until Koto stumbled out of the river, falling to her bum on the mud.
"Stay there," she sighed. "Or come up with a better plan. It'd be better than glaring at each other for another hour," Aiko mumbled under her breath.
Koto's hostility simmered like a physical thing, leaving her practically generating a stormcloud over her head.
It didn't exactly enhance the wait.
When Shimizu Atsushi strolled into sight, it was with two men at each shoulder. To be more specific, they were burly men, carrying unconcealed weapons. They looked like hired muscle.
Aiko frowned, unease stirring. She hadn't seen anyone like that on the premises when she had met with Atsushi before.
Koto gave a strangled sob, climbing to her feet and brushing a bit of hair off of her face.
"Masashi, I didn't expect you to beat me here," Atsushi remarked, turning curiously calm eyes on his distraught daughter and the limp form of her lover on the ground. "You do good work. Koto-chan, I'm glad to see you unharmed. I was so very worried."
Oddly, she glared at him.
Atsushi's face twisted in concern. "Kinji-kun, would you please secure Aki-san here? I feel nervous knowing that a dangerous thief is unsecured."
The man furthest from Atsushi's right shoulder nodded, muscling his way past them. His thick geta sank slightly into the soft turf and his tan pants and shirt fluttered in the wind. Aiko caught the motion out of the corner of her eye, but didn't turn around enough to keep her focus on 'Kinji-kun'.
Something wasn't right. Aiko moved slightly, opening up her chest and shoulders so that she could keep an eye on the entire clearing.
Strangely, Koto was the only other person who really seemed tense and alert like that. Atsushi and his four staff members were all relaxed looking.
And then 'Kinji-kun' picked up Koto's lover like he was a doll, easy as you please. He gave one last glance at Atsushi before he grabbed the unconscious man's lolling chin with one enormous hand and twisted, bracing the handsome and suddenly very dead thief against his chest.
The quiet pop was almost shocking.
Aiko's mouth dropped open in shock.
'Well, I honestly did not expect that.'
In the moment of quiet, Koto's voice was very clear. "Ninja-san, they'll kill the two of us as well. That's the kind of man my father is. Fight for me."
That wasn't a half-bad argument. She palmed her kunai warily, taking a step backwards.
Atsushi left out a barking laugh. "Koto-chan, you're not supposed to share family secrets. You see, this is why we have problems." He took a casual step forwards, rolling his shoulders. "Yes, ninja-san, I'm afraid that I don't intend to pay you. No one would disbelieve me when told that a violent nuke-nin attacked my family and attempted to rob me blind. It's just business, I assure you."
'I can't believe this crap.' Aiko gritted her teeth, deeply unhappy with the change in situation. 'He asked me to come here with the intention of killing me once I did what he asked to save a couple bucks? What an unmitigated buttmunch.'
That wasn't the kind of dickery she could overlook. True, she could easily run away. There were problems with that. First of all, it would feel like letting Atsushi win, and her pride couldn't tolerate that thought. Secondly… she maybe owed Koto an apology, because apparently there was a good reason not to want to spend time around her dillweed father.
The decision she was about to make was a terrible one, frankly. The first time that she picked a fight probably shouldn't be when she was tired from running over ten hours yesterday and outnumbered. But apparently, she wasn't a practical kind of girl. That was good to know.
' Well, shit. Now would be an awesome time to have backup. Where the hell is Zetsu when I need him?' Stubbornly, Aiko took a deep breath and decided that now would be an excellent time to switch loyalties.
"Koto?" She prompted, widening her stance. "Suggestions?"
The relief that washed over the other teen's face told her that she'd made the right decision. "Stop them before they stop you."
Well gee, you think?
Apparently Koto wasn't going to be much help. Ah well. It had been a long shot anyway. She could probably do this.
Atsushi didn't seem like a combatant to her, but Aiko was reluctant to rule him out. His daughter was scrappy enough that she was wary of him—it had to come from somewhere. That meant she had at least four opponents, possibly five. Four opponents of unknown skill was a poor match-up for her first real fight. They wouldn't be gentle with her like Obito was. In other words…
'I don't think I can afford to let them make the first move.'
She assessed the situation with a blink. Kinji was still away from his fellows, ten feet separating him and backup. She stood roughly equidistant from him and his peers.
That was why Aiko swiveled on the balls of her feet and took a running leap at the loner, counting on the comforting weight of the blade in her right palm. He dodged to her left—
Which was perfect. She side-stepped behind him with a swivel and cut his throat from behind. He dropped to her feet with a gurgle.
(She winced, but pushed the regret and disgust away. She couldn't be bothered by this, this was what she was supposed to do it was who she was it was what she'd been training for).
Someone screamed, but she didn't know who. Blood was pounding in her ears and she had to move, had to move, she'd seen this a dozen times in her sleep if she didn't move fast enough they would get her and she would be dead for real this time.
Aiko ignored the hot blood making her grip slippery and took a step backwards, forcing the fastest bodyguard to make the choice between jumping over his dead fellow or lose momentum by stepping around him. The dark-eyed man chose to take a graceful leap over Shinji, moving to bring his blade out to meet her.
It was the wrong decision. He couldn't dodge while in the air, and his hand couldn't move rapidly enough while weighed down by his sword.
Her target was fairly obvious. The simplest, most direct solution was the best.
She let her kunai slide into his right wrist and jerked it haphazardly up into the meat of his arm, intentionally brutalizing the hand holding the short sword in his grip.
He screamed like a stuck pig and stumbled when his feet hit the ground, sending his weight crashing down. The downed man was struggling and moaning, clutching at his wrist with his free hand, but Aiko didn't have time for pity. Unless he was ambidextrous and realllly determined, that should be good enough. She probably didn't need to have killed the first one either, but in her defense, she'd just watched him kill a man.
' They're so slow,' she noted in mild surprise, comparing her opponents to Obito, her only other sparring partner.
Perhaps it had been premature to jump straight towards so much force. They were… they were just civilians, apparently. Hired tough guys who basically amounted to genin level fighters. With that in mind, she adjusted her grip on the kunai to leave the blunt head uncovered. The weight was a comfort in her hand as she danced around the second man who had attempted to rush her. The last was standing in front of his nervous-looking employer, attempting to look menacing.
Her heartbeat slowed to manageable levels. It was hard to believe she had been so nervous about the thought of a real fight. She'd seen this a dozen times and her body knew the motions like it knew how to walk. It was piteously easy to give the man she'd stepped behind (a scarred bear of a man with a blonde ponytail) a good, hard whack on just the right spot on the back of his head with the blunt end of her blade.
He dropped like a rock.
Aiko sighed, shaking her hair back as she turned to look at the two threats left. Judging by the way they were gaping at her, she looked pretty badass at the moment.
The moment was ruined by a piteous whimper from behind her.
'I completely forgot about him. That's…embarrassing. What if he'd gotten back up and rushed me from behind?'
Her face went red as a tomato. "Oops?" she half-asked, rubbing at her head until she realized she was smearing blood over her hair. Atsushi turned a remarkable shade of purple.
"Stop her!" he snapped, shoving weakly at the bulky guard in front of him.
The remaining bodyguard looked a bit conflicted. His clear blue eyes looked at Aiko. Then he glanced at the man crying –something about his mother?—and shaking his mangled wrist. Then he looked back at Aiko with a question written on rugged features.
"I don't have a problem with you," she offered, shrugging.
He smiled, tense shoulders relaxing visibly. "Good to know, shinobi-san. I think that it is time for me to look for a new job."
"Probably," Aiko agreed, watching Atsushi shake with impotent rage. "You won't be getting a letter of recommendation from that one, I think."
He paused, giving a deep sigh that loosened the tight material of the red yukata across his chest. "…I don't suppose you might be looking for a hired thug? Or that you won't mind if I don't change my sinful ways?"
"Thug away," Aiko instructed, a smile tugging at one side of her mouth despite herself. "But I'm afraid I don't need any assistance today, kind gentleman. We should part ways. If I see you again, I'd love to work with you."
"Excellent. My name is Akemi, shinobi-san. Please take care of me."
Aiko paused, frowning. She was pretty sure that was an alias. "That's a girls' name."
Akemi (and he was such a large person for someone named 'beautiful brightness') raised an eyebrow. "Coming from you, Masashi-san, that rings a bit hypocritical."
Fair enough. She didn't say another thing as Akemi reached out and thumped Atsushi on the head impersonally with a meaty fist, idly catching the bony man before he fell and tucking the now-captive under a well-muscled arm.
That might have been the end of it. She had nearly forgotten that Koto was still there, until the other teenager stood, brushed off her clothes, and said in a very dry tone, "You do realize that they weren't the people my father was intending on betraying you to. He didn't expect you to defend me. You're a terrible missing nin, by the way. Utter shit at your job. And this is coming from someone raised in the yakuza, so I know what I'm talking about."
Aiko frowned at that, not sure if she should be insulted. "Then who was he planning on selling me out to?"
Koto sighed, rubbing at her face tiredly. She looked like she'd had a hell of a week. "If I know him, he's contacted a village. They'd reward him half of whatever bounty you have, which would mean you'd dragged me back nearly for free. You got cheated, moron."
Oh. Other shinobi were coming. Probably a whole team of them, too. Hmm.
Yeah, she wasn't sticking around for that.
"I should go," Aiko mumbled, wiping her blade off on her shirt and tucking it back away. Then she aimed a beaming smile at the other two, hands clasped in front of her torso. "It was very nice meeting you all! I'm sorry about that misunderstanding Koto, if I'd known he was going to kill your boyfriend I wouldn't have brought you back. I'll just take this bag as payment."
Something twitched in Koto's eye. She conspicuously said nothing.
"I should go too," Akemi said awkwardly. "I'm a deserter and all. I suppose you should tell whoever shows up that you were attacked by rogue ninja who robbed your father or something so that you don't get arrested."
"I will try to remember that," Koto all but hissed, before turning a sneer at her very unconscious father. "Although it won't matter what I say, once father wakes up."
Akemi looked down at his burden, and then nodded. "Ah. I see." He hit Atsushi again, much harder this time. That was satisfying, actually. Aiko smothered a rather vicious smile. She really shouldn't mix business and pleasure, but the man had tried to have her killed for doing the job he hired her for.
Koto blinked. "That'll work."
Aiko was already halfway out of sight.
"Uzumaki," Zetsu hissed like a curse, sliding out of the ground. That had not gone as planned.
The idiot civilian girl that he had dragged across the countryside shrieked when she saw him for the first time. It took only a moment to shut her up, and not much longer to tip her unresisting corpse up into the hungry plant material around his chest and store the nutritious meat for later. He killed the two thugs that the brat had left unconscious (one was nearly bleeding out anyways) and hunted down the runner to do the same.
It was positively infuriating; he wallowed bitterly as he ripped the last witness to Aiko's face apart. No one had done what they were meant to. Atsushi had improperly timed the ambush and then shown his hand too quickly, robbing Zetsu of the opportunity for his scripted 'rescue' of the brat, who would then feel loyalty. The brat had erred just as badly by forgetting herself and making friends with people that she should have been killing. When he returned to the rendezvous spot (after a short break to begin digesting in peace) Zetsu aimed a baleful glare at the redhead. She didn't even seem to notice. Moron.
Fuck it, Obito could sort this out. And come up with a less convoluted plan with reduced risk for error next time.
The very lucky and very late Kumo nin who responded to honored tradesperson Shimizu Atsushi's call for assistance were baffled when they arrived seventeen minutes after Zetsu left.