"I don't really see the problem either," Sakura admitted. She hated to agree with Naruto, but… "If the Hokage let Haku in to the village, he might admit Hikari-san as well." She splayed her fingers out. "Probably with similar restrictions and screenings. If she's not a missing nin, I mean."
'Would she want to come here? Haku is still in the security building, and it's been days.'
"Of course she's not a missing nin," Naruto said. He kicked at the legs of his chair and leaned back, letting it balance on two legs. "She didn't look like a criminal."
Privately, Sakura thought that he might be trying to convince himself more than anyone else.
Sasuke-kun huffed. "Don't get cocky, idiot." His arms were folded on the ramen counter, arm protectors pushed up to his elbows. He had nice forearms.
Naruto turned pink, all the way to his ears. "You shut up, teme. You're just mad because you were wrong."
"You weren't right either, Naruto," Sakura pointed out. She sniffed. "Come on, boys. Let's not do this. We have work to do."
Naruto groaned and let his face fall to the counter, even as Sasuke looked away. But Sasuke opened the folder he'd been entrusted with.
Well. Actually, he'd picked that one and left Sakura with the other. She didn't mind. It was more interesting to read about Hikari-san's encounter with another team.
"Did you find anything out from reading all of our notes together, Sasuke-kun?" Sakura consciously worked not to nibble on her lip. "Kakashi-sensei said some things that made me wonder."
Sasuke moved sharply, like he'd been about to shrug and thought better of it. "Taijutsu specialist." He gave the folder a dark look. "According to Kakashi, anyway. He didn't write much about the attack he recognized her by, or the person she supposedly looks like." Something in his jaw twitched. "Useless."
"Oh." Sakura coughed into her fist. "I see. I do have some new information!"
She sounded stupid. Of course she had new information, she had the folder no one else had read. She looked down at the counter to hide the flush on her cheeks. "The team she met was another genin team, led by a jounin taijutsu specialist. The team encountered Hikari-san and her partner after they had finished some kind of retrieval mission, illegally operating within Fire Country's borders."
She cleared her throat, a little confused by the next part. But when she glanced over at her teammates, they both looked interested. She swallowed.
"The report gets really excitable after this, but I think Hikari-san challenged the jounin to a footrace?" Sakura shrugged one shoulder helplessly. "The reasoning isn't explained, but the jounin accepted. Hikari-san sped away, possibly cheating."
Naruto snickered.
Sakura shot him a stern look, even though it was kind of funny. "She reappeared about an hour later, apologized to the group at large, and disappeared with her partner, who the team had been transporting back to Konoha for processing." She tapped a finger to her lips. "Oddly, the other nin didn't fight them. Unless 'being overcome by youth' is some kind of euphemism that I'm not familiar with."
Sasuke-kun raised his eyebrows at that.
"It's not," Kakashi-sensei said dryly.
Naruto squawked and fell backwards. Kakashi-sensei stepped to the side to let him. Naruto hit the dirt with a pained oof and a dusty cloud.
Sakura covered her bowl with a hand and twisted to watch her teammate clutch at his head. She gave her sensei an unimpressed look.
He met her with one of his own as he sat in the seat Naruto had recently vacated. "What do you think is the most telling part of that report?" Kakashi-sensei asked in a bored tone. "Anyone?" His fingers tapped against the side of Naruto's empty bowl.
"She came back for her teammate." Naruto clambered back up onto a more distant seat, scowling at sensei. "She can't be that bad." He rubbed at his head.
Kakashi-sensei pulled out his book. "That's not it."
"Her partner didn't fight." Sasuke-kun laid his elbows on the counter, chin going the slightest bit up.
"What?" Naruto gave him a skeptical look. "That's stupid. What does that have to do with Hikari-san?"
"Sasuke's right, Naruto." Kakashi didn't look up from his book. "We don't know why Hikari-san returned for her partner. It could have been pragmatism, blackmail, anything. That doesn't tell us about her character."
Sakura smacked a fist into her palm. "But the fact that he didn't resist capture before she came back means that he trusts her. Right, sensei?"
He deigned to look at her over his book, eye-smiling. "Yes, but more specifically?"
"He trusted her to return, and he trusted that she would be strong enough to extract him," Sakura realized. "I mean- either she came back because they have a good relationship, or she came back because she needed him safe. But in either case, it would make sense for him to be nervous. If he liked her, he would be nervous that she could get hurt, and probably try to escape on his own. If he didn't like his partner, he would at least be worried about the possibility that he might not get away."
"And when would he get a better chance?" Sasuke commented. "Hikari-san drew off the jounin." His eyes were glittering. "If he didn't run them, he wasn't going to."
Sasuke-kun had always liked thought exercises in the academy.
"So, they're either really strong, or really cocky?" Naruto asked. He scratched at the back of his neck.. "That's what you mean. Right?"
"Partially." Kakashi-sensei shrugged. "Hikari-san more specifically. We already know that Utakata-san is dangerous. He's one of a very small group of shinobi who are uniquely powerful." He gave Naruto a strange look, like he thought Naruto might bound off to fight this Utakata-san. Naruto made a face in return, but it wasn't as light-hearted as she would have predicted.
Sakura tried not to contemplate that scenario too deeply. Naruto probably would go after a really strong ninja unless someone told him not to. Maybe even then.
Sensei was still talking. "If he'd fought, Gai would have had to withdraw to keep his team safe. But we're not talking about that! So. What do we know about Hikari-san from that incident?"
Sakura bit her lip, searching for the right words. "She's the kind of person that her partners trust?" It didn't sound right. Didn't everyone trust their partners? She felt stupid, and in front of her whole team, too. "Ano… I mean…" She fidgeted.
"No, you're right." Kakashi-sensei smooshed his hand down on her head, ruffling her hair.
Sakura squawked under the sudden heat of his palm and the darkness of her bangs over her face. She squirmed out of the way, flailing at his arm. "Sensei!" She pushed his arm away and scowled up at him.
"So!" Kakashi-sensei clapped his hands together, looking perfectly innocent. His book was nowhere to be seen. "We need to know one thing to continue this thought experiment. What data do we need, to make reasonably accurate conjecture about this aspect of Hikari-san's personality?"
Um.
Sakura met Naruto's eyes. He shrugged. She looked at Sasuke. He was staring determinedly off into the middle distance.
Um.
Sensei sighed. "We need to know how long ago they met. If Utakata-san and Hikari-san go way back, that trust is unremarkable." He pulled a folder out of his flak jacket. "If they are only recently, acquainted, on the other hand, something more is going on." The folder made a satisfying slap when he let it fall to the countertop. "If that's true, either they've bonded through extraordinary circumstances, or they simply identify with the other very well. I'll leave it to you to figure out what they might have in common-" His gray eyes flicked over the team theatrically. "-Naruto! That's your job, since your teammates had more input today."
Sakura turned to her blonde teammate, already expecting a groan that didn't come. Naruto hated being assigned schoolwork. But he was narrowing his eyes at sensei, clearly working over something that she'd missed. After a long moment, Naruto looked away. "Whatever you say, old man."
'What? Naruto doesn't give up that easily.'
The interaction was strange enough that Sakura filed it away for a time when Kakashi-sensei wasn't around. Naruto would probably tell her if she asked, wouldn't he?
~~~
"I believe our companion think that you could stand to take this a little more seriously." Utakata's chin was propped on laced fingers, dark eyes fixed on Aiko's fingers. She was fiddling with the set menu, internally debating the pros and cons of having a drink before they left. Was there even time? Zabuza had been gone for at least an hour. Surely he'd be back any minute.
She shrugged, kicking her heels against the chair legs. "What do you think?"
The ghost of a smile washed over his face. "I would hate to inflate your head. It is already of unflattering proportions."
Aiko batted her eyes. "You almost said something nice, didn't you? Don't be coy."
"No flirting." Zabuza blocked out the light, arms crossed. "Are you princesses ready to go?"
"Ready if you are." Aiko stood and stretched, smiling as she followed her companions out of the cafe. A fight would be good. Zabuza wanted to kill the Mizukage himself, but-
'I half expect him to need help. That's fine by me. I haven't had a challenge in a while.'
and anyway, what would it really matter if she poached a kill from Zabuza? No one would know. And even if they did, she'd just defer to Zabuza.
She valiantly ignored the small voice of reason that asked if she was hoping to impress Obito. That was ridiculous. He didn't even know her.
'Which would make it even easier to impress him. I know how he thinks, how he fights. If I wanted to… It'd be a bad idea, but I could throw him off.'
Aiko took a moment to imagine waving at the Mizukage and chirping, 'Yo, Obito!' He'd probably wet his pants. She wanted to. It would probably cause trouble down the line, though. He wouldn't be able to let that go.
'Ha. It'd be fun to shock him like that, but nope. I need to be serious. Gonna kick some ass today.'
She was all but humming as the three did final checks of their equipment and ran through optimal objectives.
"The Mizukage is mine." Zabuza looked sternly over at the two of them. "He'll probably have guards. Uzumaki, you-"
"Uzumaki-san," Utakata corrected. He didn't raise his voice, but Zabuza gave him a wary look.
"Uzumaki-san." Zabuza narrowed his eyes. "Will take us directly to the Mizukage. He will almost certainly be in his office. He doesn't spend a shit ton of time out with the people. We'll only have minutes before people in the lower levels realize that this isn't the Mizukage throwing another fit and act. Keep 'em out until I'm done." He unsheathed his sword, hefting it over his right shoulder. "It shouldn't take long, either way."
'He's not wrong.'
Aiko shrugged, mind wandering to the seal in Mist. It hadn't moved- at all, actually. Did Obito just have the Mizukage sitting at his desk all day? That didn't seem very interesting. "Alright. Are you both ready?"
Instead of answering, Utakata heaved a put-upon sigh and held his arm out. Bemused, Aiko hesitated a moment before slipping hers on top delicately.
'We all need to touch, but that's kind of a weird way to do it.'
Zabuza snorted. He might have been smiling under the bandages. He mimicked Utakata's gesture with exaggerated gentleness, cruelly intent eye contact with the other man the whole time. When no one moved, he fluttered his fingers and made a motion that might have been a hair flip.
Aiko pretended not to notice that Utakata's face was darkening in a scowl. She pressed her lips together to hide her own snicker as she put her right arm on Zabuza's with equal flourish.
He was kind of right. The body language was dead-on. But they didn't really have time to bicker- there was a murder scheduled for the middle of the midday break, when most of the Mist administration building would be emptied.
She took all three of them directly to the seal she felt. Zabuza tore out of her grip as soon as he saw the office, striding forward. Maybe he didn't want to be seen holding her arm.
The Mizukage stood smoothly, pushing away his desk. The expected bodyguard melted out of genjutsu against the wall. Just one? Piece of cake. She'd let Utakata have him, and play second for Zabuza. That way, she'd be ready to interfere if he struggled.
"Stand down!" Zabuza snarled, not bothering to really look at the masked operative. "This fight is between me and the Mizukage."
The Mizukage blinked. His pale, childish face did not otherwise react.
'Creepy, dude.'
"That is acceptable."
Aiko froze.
That low rumble was very familiar. And it wasn't coming from the Mizukage's closed lips.
"I am not interested in a fight, Zabuza-san. I was waiting for someone to show up."
Aiko didn't breathe.
Utakata moved ever so slightly in front of her, sliding his right foot between her body and Obito. Like, Obito. Who was here in person. Himself. Not really far away where he couldn't hurt anything. Not that distance really meant anything when it came to Obito. But it sure seemed a lot safer.
'Fuuuuck. Fuck, alright. I didn't expect him to actually be here. That doesn't have to ruin anything. Keep calm. I can do this.'
And then he looked right at her. "Yo, Aiko."
'He stole my joke,' she thought in disbelief, before it really sunk in.
Her soul leapt out of her feet, leaving them heavy and wooden on the ground. At least, that was what it felt like. She couldn't move. She couldn't pretend not to understand.
'I can't. Even. What?'
Aiko shook her head, disbelieving. "That doesn't make any sense." But in a way, it felt like she'd been expecting this. Of course he was here. Obito was preternaturally good at being where he had no business being. That was, like, his thing.
'It's really him. The same him. The him that shouldn't be here. Why? Why is this?'
Her head was full of question marks and incoherent sputtering. She opened her mouth to ask a question. She had a dozen. She couldn't think of one. She left her mouth open.
Classic Obito. Not being dead when he should be and wandering in and out of secured villages and god, Obito, what was even happening? Okay, she was kind of a jerk sometimes, but did she really deserve this?
He seemed to shrug. "I was rather disoriented to find myself in Mizugakure some time earlier than I recalled. When I saw you set explosives on that fruit cart and run off, I assumed it was somehow your fault," Obito mused. She didn't see red glinting in the eyeholes of his mask, but that didn't mean anything. "Was I correct?"
'Yes.'
Aiko shut her mouth and resisted the impulse to cross her arms and look away. "No," she lied sullenly.
'Well. I was trying to bring a seal to me in the original experiment. I just also did another thing. As a bonus. I brought Obito to me at the same time that I brought me to a different Obito with a similar mark. A rousing technical success.'
Being right wasn't bringing her the warm fuzzies that it usually did, for some reason. Maybe it was because she was about to have to fight one of the few people who could really hand her ass to her. The last time they'd fought, she'd betrayed him, dug out his eyes with her thumbs, and forcibly incarcerated him in a mental health facility where he couldn't hurt anyone. He'd been there for… kind of a long time. He probably hadn't appreciated that.
Aiko's mouth was dry. She licked her lips, but it didn't help.
'He's going to kill me.'
Wait.
'Is he still blind? I can probably win that fight.'
She'd found that her situation was different in this world. Either she hadn't been born here, or she was…uh, probably dead, to be honest. Was the same true for Obito? If so, she could reasonably assume that he'd come exactly as he was. That would mean blind.
But he couldn't control the Mizukage without his sharingan. So either the Mizukage was acting of his own volition, or Obito somehow had his eyes again. Or still. It was a little confusing. She needed more information.
"I don't suppose you feel like taking off your mask so we can have a heart-to-heart?" Aiko tried, cocking her head to the side. Her heart was pounding. It needed to calm down. It was going to give away that she was panicking.
"Not really," Obito said flatly. He crossed his arms. "I'd say nice try, but that was actually pretty pathetic."
"Uzumaki?" Zabuza's eyes tracked between Obito and the Mizukage, not letting either of them out of his sight. "The hell are you on about?"
She'd forgotten there were other people in the room.
Maybe Obito had, too. His head turned slightly, mask pointing towards the head of the room.
The Mizukage leapt at Zabuza. Zabuza cursed, barely swinging to the side in time. Foul, furious chakra burst into the air with enough force to rattle Aiko's teeth and sting like acid in her gums.
'Time to not be in this room.'
Aiko lunged at Utakata, grasping his robes. He threw his arms out in reflex, but restrained from attacking her at the last moment.
The three-tailed bijuu roared, swinging a tail downward. It connected with the floor, tearing away wood and evaporating the goddamn carpet, leaving only a broken rafter separating them from the room below. The spiked trail of chakra behind the tail gouged a line in the ceiling and left plaster drifting. The beast was still growing, swelling grotesque bubbles of flesh up on the Mizukage's face and out in lumps from his limbs, while the chakra flooded out of his mouth and eyes.
Someone shouted below.
She moved, dragging Utakata out of the building with her, concentrating more on 'up' than 'away'. They landed on the roof. Obito was already dissolving into place, arms still crossed. He seemed politely interested in the goings-on.
'He's just going to watch?'
Glass shattered. The window? The window and the wall, apparently. Zabuza came swinging up, Yagura's bijuu ridden body right behind him. It brought with it a hot wave of the smell of bloated corpses rotting in a river. Also, a fishy scent.
For one strange, delirious moment, Aiko remembered that she'd felt sorry for the three-tailed bijuu when she'd sealed it.
That had been a bad decision. Nope, squishy feelings rescinded. It could suffer in a box forever. Who had a box?
Aiko halted. She forgot how to breathe.
'I don't know how to put it in a box.'
She didn't know how to seal a bijuu in anything other than a person. The seal she'd learned had relied on an active chakra system.
'That was a really big problem to forget about.'
She didn't know who had sealed the beast after Yagura's defeat. She'd known that he was a jinchuuriki, and she'd known that his bijuu had been imprisoned after his death. But she hadn't quite made the connection there.
Those two facts didn't make sense together. When a jinchuuriki was killed, their bijuu was supposed to go with them, at least temporarily. How would you even begin to design a seal that released a bijuu when the jinchuuriki died? What kind of jackass would do th-
'Obito. God, does anyone else ever do anything? It's always Obito.'
"Don't kill him!" Aiko struggled to be heard over roaring, eventually pitching her voice into a shrill scream. "Don't kill Yagura!"
Zabuza gave her an incredulous look. That was all he had time for before Yagura-bijuu tore across the roof at him, pulling up tile and shedding sharp slivers of shells, white and iridescent on one side. He was getting bigger. A lot bigger. Yagura's body was mostly obscured by a cloud of solid chakra, dotted with shells and sand and ominous red bits that looked suspiciously like innards where they glinted soggily in the light. And the cloud was growing thicker.
'It might not matter if we don't kill Yagura. The bijuu is on the verge of taking over his body.'
She'd come prepared to fight a jinchuuriki. A jinchuuriki could be neutralized by killing them. A bijuu couldn't be killed. It could only be reasoned with -unlikely- physically moved -it'd just kill other people where she left it- or sealed.
The nay-saying voice in her head was silent at that option. Which sucked, because she really did not want to do that, it was unethical and horrible and difficult and it didn't really matter what she wanted, did it?
It needed to be sealed, or a lot of people were going to die. She needed to do something. She needed-
"Ink."
And she didn't know where to get it.
Utakata didn't look at her, so she pulled on his arm urgently.
"What?" His voice was low and sharp. He still didn't look at her.
A horrible feeling rolled in her gut. She leaned forward. Her partner's pupils were blown wide open. He was inhumanly pale and beginning to sweat.
'His bijuu is very interested in this.'
"Oh, hell." Aiko physically shook her partner as hard as she could, fisting her hands in his robes and rocking with her whole body weight. "Snap out of it!"
He shook her off, letting her fall back and rip his outer robe. He didn't even react to the damage, which was not like him at all. Shit, he was far gone. She dropped the fabric and lunged back at him, desperate to shake the person back to the surface.
It was not a wise decision. The only thing she really saw was distended, swollen knuckles steaming with demonic energy as he backhanded her away. She was too shocked to evade the blow. She was aware of a horrible crack in her cheekbone and white flashing across her vision and then she was tumbling, streaks of bloody pain down her arms and legs where she hadn't broken her fall against the tile roof and she was tumbling down the side, how tall was the building again-
She pulled away, reluctant to leave Mist but needing some amount of space from danger. She wasn't exactly sure where she was. Probably still in city limits. She was aware of screaming in the distance and the crash of debris. A roar tore out of a throat as wide as a full-grown man's waist. The sound shook the ground. But it was nothing compared to the thunder of two bijuu meeting. Her head echoed with the sound, around and around.
'Zabuza's probably dead. Yagura is definitely dead. The plan is shot.'
Aiko forced her body up. She opened her eyes. It hurt like utter hell, but other than that, she seemed alright. Her vision wasn't any worse than it had been for the last week, at least. She swallowed.
'I need ink. A brush. And a sacrifice.'
The two bijuu in the distance were enormous. If she squinted, she saw a lump that might have been Utakata's body melding into his bijuu's bulk. A small group of Mist-nin were already attacking the two bijuu. Was that lava? Mei?
Mei didn't look like she had things under control, if Aiko were to be brutally honest.
Aiko took a moment to pray that the seven-tails would release Utakata once it realized it wasn't in mortal danger from the three-tails, because she didn't know how to seal that one.
Some coward sprinted past her, running for the mainland. They hit the harbor with a splash and kept going for safety.
"Wait!"
They didn't. She couldn't blame them.
'How am I going to do this?'
She needed to calm down. She had to think. Aiko swallowed. What exactly did she need?
'Time to make the seal, without getting attacked while I work. To get close enough to force it into the seal. Ink. Brush. Sacrifice.'
Hiraishin. She'd make the seal while she was at a distance, and then hiraishin close enough to pull the beast in. Of course, she'd need to not get killed while doing that. Chakra chains would hopefully hold one bijuu and keep it immobilized while she dealt with it, but she definitely couldn't handle two at once. So she'd have to grab the three-tailed beast, hiraishin away with it and her jinchuuriki, and hope to god that Utakata didn't kill too many people while she was busy.
She ran down a street that looked like a business area, desperately checking over every building that she passed for something remotely likely. Homes would have ink, offices would too, but she might waste precious minutes searching. A store- she crashed in through the large window, barely avoiding knocking over a shelving unit. She found what she needed and ripped open packages with her teeth. Her hands were shaking too much for anything else.
That, too, was unacceptable. The realization hit her with a shock.
Something rocked the village. No- it rocked the island. There was an impossible boom, and then the ocean spilled over the island, a wave that crested in the distance and swept through. Aiko leapt to a high spot before the wave reached her. She closed her ears to the screaming. She closed her eyes to the sight of a dog pulled away into the ocean, yipping piteously and struggling for life. She breathed. Slowly. In. Out. Someone screamed nearby and her heart jumped again. She forced it to calm. In. Out. She centered herself.
When she opened her eyes, her hands didn't shake. She wasn't thinking about people dying around her. She was only thinking about what she should do next. Her eyes tracked impassively over the village. She saw plenty of people now, clinging to rubble or running away into an ocean that they couldn't cross now, or trying to attack the bijuu. None of them stood out as likely candidates.
'A suitable host will have compatible chakra or be able to accommodate the influx.'
She didn't have time to go run tests on chakra to determine compatability. That left her with the second option. That left her with the option of finding an infant, the younger the better, or-
an Uzumaki. Aiko breathed out. You don't exactly find those under every rock. Not many options. She did not let her fingers tremble, with fear or anything else. She drew a kunai down the front of her shirt to cut it in half, baring her canvas. It had to be her. The alternative was too ghoulish. She could do it, she could find an infant, but she wouldn't.
It required concentration. Her angle was different than she remembered. She struggled to keep her lines perfect. Since she wasn't laying down, the drip pattern would be different. She compensated by keeping her brush as dry as possible, not allowing any extra ink to pool or slip. Circle. Whorl. Twist. Gate here. Whorl. Anchor it. Anchor. Gate. Flick.
She had absolutely no idea how long it took. She kept her torso perfectly straight, because bending would ruin everything. She turned away from the fighting and let the wind dry her paint, flapping her hands at her gut like she was trying to dry nail polish. She waited. It had to dry. People were dying behind her, and she had to wait.
It dried.
Aiko looked over to the bijuu. The three-tailed bijuu was flailing, venting fury on the other bijuu. The seven-tail might have just been defending herself.
Good. She was taking the more aggressive one away. Where to? Far away would be good. But away from people.
'Sorry, Suna. You're probably not going to appreciate this, but it worked out okay last time. As far as these things go, anyway.'
Aiko took a deep breath. She let the ink bottle slip from her fingers, shattering into the rocky torrent working down the street. She bit her lip and readied her chakra, feeling her chakra chains shudder at the edge of being. Then she re-positioned herself behind the three-tailed beast, forcing the chains out at the same instant. They rocketed up and out, coiling and grabbing at the turtle before it knew to resist. It bellowed, rearing up. Utakata darted forward and scored a painful blow against its soft underside, but Aiko wasn't paying any attention to that. She was wrapping the beast as tightly as she could, trying to catch and trap every tail and she had two pinned but the last was evading her and the turtle demon was teetering on the edge of falling back onto her-
She screamed with the effort of moving all that chaotic, struggling chakra. It wasn't like slipping through dimensions to Suna. It was more like tearing through reality with her fingernails, ripping her fingers to the bone to do it. But it worked.
Sand flew, pelting her with a painful shards of heat, but at least she'd avoided the worst of the cascade resulting from the bijuu's fall. When it bellowed, it sounded more like a wounded cow than anything else.
Aiko chanced a glance and forced down the insane urge to sink into the burning sand and let hysteria take over. It was trapped on its back. Like a real turtle.
She was tempted- like, really tempted, to sit back and watch it struggle.
Instead, she made a seal. Just for focus. She closed her eyes. And she started to pull on the turtle's chakra. It went utterly silent. Shock? The first tendrils of chakra hit her skin, began to burn and sizzle, and resisted her pull. She forced the fire into her belly and groaned in pain. It felt like being bored open, like slowly pressing her body into an enormous blade.
All was still.
And then it wasn't. The seal hooked hungrily onto the chakra it had been fed, pulling on the source. The turtle bijuu shrieked, seagulls and crashing waves and something angry and incomprehensibly ancient in the deep. It thrashed, kicking up sand.
She didn't let go.
It began to convulse, leaking boiling water. Some caught Aiko, but most splashed harmlessly onto the sand, rolling away and beginning to seep into the desert.
She didn't let go.
The demon roared. The sky itself shook. It was raining- not just rain, but acid. It was raining acid. Aiko turned her face down and threw her free hand above her head. She felt the water run down her back, along with blood and oh god, was that clump of hair?
Somehow, that was the most disturbing part. Her hair. She could feel her hair pulling out of her scalp and falling down her back. She bent over further, forgetting the fear that covering the seal on her belly would prevent it from working. The seal didn't seem to care, tugging greedily on the bijuu. The bijuu was screaming now. Like a child. It sounded like a frightened child. One last claw struggled for purchase in the desert, losing grip and sending sand flying. It sucked into her skin just as the upset sand rattled her body and threw her to her back, partially submerged in a dune.
It wasn't even a pretty day. Aiko frowned up at the grey sky, feeling cheated. It wasn't even a blue sky.
That was the last thing she thought before darkness took her.
~~~
She woke up to a peeling sunburn from her neck to her hipbones and manacles around her wrists. Someone gasped. Heels clicked against linoleum.
Aiko peeled one eye open, noted the aghast Suna medic holding her clipboard up like a shield against her pale face, and groaned.
'I was captured? Of course I was. I gave off a ton of chakra and then passed out. I didn't even think to move. Embarrassing.'
She pulled herself far away. Like, really far away, where sand wouldn't get in the peeling burns on her chest. She sat up. Only then did she feel a spark of self-consciousness over her bared front. Where was her kit? Without her kit… she had no money. No medicine, or clothes, or weapons.
She didn't remember putting it down. It should have still been strapped to her back.
'They confiscated my things when they brought me in. It'll be long gone. Probably being processed.'
Aiko snorted. There was absolutely nothing useful or incriminating in her bags, with the exception of three stolen kunai and Jiraiya's complete works. Damnit. How many times was she going to have to replace that collection?
"Suna probably won't even enjoy it. Assholes." The raspy, ugly quality of her voice startled her for a moment. She sounded like she'd been screaming. Had she? She didn't remember that.
She leveraged her body up. Her muscles pulled and ached. The bones in her knees creaked. For a moment, Aiko stood still, trembling with effort. Then she put one foot in front of another.
'Sun is almost down.'
Maybe it was the same day. Maybe it wasn't. Did it really matter?
'Businesses will be closing soon.'
She'd find a place. Break in, get dressed. Then she'd see what, if anything, was left of Mizugakure.
Her hopes weren't high.