When she showed up at her normal training ground, Yamato gave her a mildly unhappy expression.
"You could have told me." He somehow managed to pout without letting his face display anything other than big, brown-eyed sorrow.
"Wait. What?" Aiko drew her head back a little. "I have no idea what you're talking about, crazypants."
Yamato raised an eyebrow. "That you have other plans for training today?" he half-asked.
Uh… what now?
Her expression must have clued him in. "Ah. I see." Yamato turned ever so slightly pink under his tan. "I assumed- that is to say," he fumbled, scratching at his leg. "I thought that-"
"Please stop," Aiko ordered authoritatively. She didn't notice raising her hands so much as that they were suddenly held high enough to push back the onslaught of embarrassed babble. "What are you talking about?"
He straightened, and hooked a thumb over his shoulder. "Senpai and… Jiraiya-sama," he said with a faintly displeased expression, "asked me to convey that practice has been scheduled in-"
"Thank you, we'll take over from here."
Yamato yelped and bristled like a cat, leaping away from the oversized hand that had clapped down on his shoulder.
Jiraiya-sama grinned widely. Hatake slouched into visibility behind him, appearing completely unimpressed.
'Actually, he might be asleep.'
Ugh on both counts. Jiraiya-sama was a warrior poet and had been her personal idol for a very long time, but she was currently pretty disillusioned with him after the Obito vs Madara debate. Her idol had no faith in her. Either he thought she would lie about something pointless, was delusionally ignoring the truth, or that she was such an idiot that she could fail to properly identify someone that she had lived and worked with for a year. None of the options appealed to her.
Reminded of her beef, she gave Jiraiya-sama a glower that he completely failed to notice.
"Come on, Yamato-kun." The Sannin leered. "You need to pay more attention. It's like you were completely distracted. What could do that, I wonder." He stroked at non-existent chin hair.
Yamato sniffed, looking faintly injured. "I have no idea what you might be referring to."
"Riiiight," Jiraiya-sama dragged out mockingly.
Aiko stole another glance at Hatake, who had leaned against a tree and slid down slightly. There was bark on his shoulders. Maybe he was dead? That'd be pretty okay.
That sounded a little cold, but in her defense- he also held one of the three unflattering opinions of her that Jiraiya-sama must proscribe to. In addition to that (which was reason enough to put red ants in his underwear), she also had reason to suspect that he was cold enough to kill his genin teammates. Not someone she wanted to spend much time with.
"Come, children!" Jiraiya-sama held his right fist high and began marching to some inaudible music. It might have been a waltz.
She winced, but reluctantly fell in line behind the one person there that she actually wanted to spend time with.
"Not you, faceplate," Jiraiya-sama scoffed. "Go whittle or something."
Yamato stopped in his tracks and gave Hatake a pleading look. Hatake pushed himself upright, eyed the group, and flapped a hand.
"Go on, run and play," he said mildly.
The hope for inclusion fled from Yamato's eyes and he huffed. "Fine," he sulked. "I understand when I'm not wanted."
"Sure, but only when it was explicitly pointed out by two people," Jiraiya-sama called over his shoulder in a tone of contemplation and not the cruelty that the insult seemed to merit.
Aiko gave the light-haired men a dirty look. "I'm sure you can do better with your day," she informed Yamato haughtily. "If I had a choice, I wouldn't be going with those scruffy reprobates."
"Ouch," Hatake said, sounding not the least bit hurt. He began walking, clearly expecting her to catch up.
But the ploy did the trick- Yamato gave her a hint of a smile and a joking salute before he split off in a different direction. Jiraiya-sama led the remainders out of the training field, but through a second entrance that Aiko hadn't even known existed.
"Is there any particular reason that field is unsuitable?" Aiko asked after a few minutes of walking.
Jiraiya-sama snorted, but didn't turn around. "You don't think that all the broken timber just laying around might be an impediment to a safe learning atmosphere?" he asked rhetorically. "You're better off with a flatter, more regular terrain to practice something like this on." He flung open the back gate and strutted out onto what appeared to be an ill-used street on Konoha's residential outskirts.
Jiraiya-sama, she couldn't help but notice, spent an improbable amount of energy smiling and waving at the people that they passed.
She might have dismissed it as mere friendliness, but a pattern was beginning to appear. Aiko glanced in the direction Jiraiya-sama was looking just in time to see a young woman spot him in the crowd. The girl turned red with fury, and tightened her fingers on her floral handbag. Even from a distance, Aiko could read the tension in her arm as the potential for violence. So did her companion- an older man who narrowed his eyes and placed a calming hand on the woman's arm.
Ugh. Now that she was paying attention, even from behind, Jiraiya-sama appeared to be leering at nubile young women and even some sleek, pretty young men.
'And so my literary hero turns out to be an overly dramatic, disrespectful loser. I can't believe he's staring like that.'
She crossed her arms over her torso and dug her fingers into her side with nearly painful force, but didn't slow down. If she did, the people with longer legs would leave her in the dust.
She didn't want to believe it. But young women, as a general demographic, were giving their group a suspiciously wide berth.
'And so I must pull down the golden statues of my idol. The innocence of childhood is gone, and my vision is clear. It turns out that Jiraiya-sama is in fact disrespectful and kinda gross.'
It pained her to demote one of her longtime idols, but- well. No one who had given that many people reason to skitter away from him –with expressions ranging from rage to panic- deserved to be her hero. His books could be great, but he clearly had odious habits.
"You know," she ventured with a noncommittal tone to hide her bitter disappointment. The two walking in front of her didn't turn back, but they were clearly both listening. "You're not subtle, Jiraiya-sama." His back stiffened, like an offended cat.
"What?"
"Your leering," she clarified with an edge in her tone. "It's rude."
The silence that followed was terribly awkward. Hatake coughed, shoulders shaking.
She looked away, hearing nothing but the soft sounds of two sets of sandals and a pair of geta on the dirt road. Apparently she wasn't going to get a response.
The route that he led them was intermittently occupied by small crowds around vendors and –was that a bathhouse? Aiko made a note to return at some point. It was miserably hot out. A nice soak would grant relief.
They finally pressed out of the residential districts and down a route to a set of training grounds that Aiko hadn't been taken to before.
"Here we are!" Jiraiya declared, far too jovial for the emotion to be genuine. "My favorite training ground."
Hatake mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like, "For reasons that are entirely innocent, I'm certain." She was fairly certain that she wasn't meant to hear that, guessing by Jiraiya's guilty chuckle and backwards glance at her.
'Ugh. Stupid boys.'
"So." Aiko rallied herself, pulsing her chakra to check that they really were alone. Hatake pushed open the gate and let the others enter ahead of him. "You said I need to work on the Hiraishin?" She pulled her hair up absently as she went.
If her tone was a little disbelieving, surely no one could blame her. It was… difficult, to come to terms with the idea that it had once been the technique she was most known for. It put Fuu's commentary in a strange new light.
Still, this had definitely not been what she had in mind when she had attempted to find a way to prove herself useful.
'Duly noted: If you offer a centimeter, Konoha will take a league.'
The pervert gave her an amused look. It felt disconcertingly like he knew what she was thinking. Aiko consciously avoided stepping back and breaking eye contact.
'Don't be stupid. You're just paranoid because of Yamanaka-baka. He can't read your mind.'
The old man scanned the area. She thought it was for observers- but then he alighted onto the top of a comfortable looking stump, and she realized that he had been picking out seating. He did cut an imposing figure in the midday sun. The white of his hair was all but blinding when he tilted his head down to give her a serious expression. "If you don't know this when we travel to Iwa and anyone asks for a demonstration or favor, everyone will think we've sent an imposter to testify in your place."
'So, like, no pressure or anything.'
"Kakashi. Would you- Yes, thanks," Jiraiya mumbled when Hatake stepped far too close and handed her a little notebook.
Slowly, she unfolded her arms to take the offered book and ran fingertips over the paper. She breathed in crackling ink and tried not to think too hard about why Hatake would have had what appeared to be one of her sealing notebooks.
Talk about high stakes. This scenario was absurd. Why had she learned such an infuriatingly distinctive technique in the first place? 'I suppose I couldn't have known how much trouble this would turn out to be later. Still, what a pain.'
Completely unaware of her thoughts, Jiraiya went on talking. She flipped open the book- and her eyebrows rose. This wasn't her work, she was sure of it. Her handwriting was tighter than this, and whoever had written this had a heavy hand. She frowned, disliking the deep indentations in paper. She didn't write like this at all. Surely that hadn't changed.
'What ugly writing. I want to cry, just looking at it. This can't be Hatake's writing, can it? He's supposed to be a genius.'
"As an advanced fuinjutsu masterwork, very few shinobi have been known to use Hiraishin. It was developed in Konoha. You use it a little differently than your father did."
She snuck a glance at Jiraiya. The quiet wistfulness in his tone made him seem very old and tired.
The Sannin smiled, lost in memories. "He tended to use the seal cooperatively by giving marked blades to his allies. Minato-kun could fell a dozen men before the first blade landed. In your hands, Hiraishin ended up largely used as a diplomatic tool." His voice shifted from admiration to a quiet pride as he talked, but Aiko was barely paying attention. "You have seals on quite a few internationally important people. The Kazekage, the Mizukage, a few jinchuuriki…"
'Diplomatic tool? That's a little underwhelming. I can see why instantaneous communication or transport would be revolutionary, but what a disappointing use for a fuinjutsu masterwork. Not very glamorous.'
And what she was seeing deserved to strut. Even in that ugly handwriting, the seals she was seeing boasted hard, clean lines combined for surprisingly efficient and complex effect. If she'd been asked to invent a seal that did what Hiraishin was purported to do… Well. It probably would have collapsed under its own weight as she added and added and added.
'Whoever designed this was a genius.'
Frowning slightly, she traced the symbols with a fingertip. The bizarre thing was that the symbols were all familiar, although she wouldn't have thought to arrange them like that. Something just wasn't right. Some thought kept trying to occur, an undercurrent to her admiration for the original fuinjutsu master.
Oh, that thought was almost right. It was something about the original fuinjutsu master in contrast or comparison to herself. She didn't realize that she was all but scowling at this point, forehead deeply creased.
"How did you say this worked again?" The much-abused paper crinkled under her caress.
Hatake shot Jiraiya-baka a quick glance, and then spoke up only when it was clear the sannin had no intention of speaking. "The Hiraishin is a space-time manipulation technique that relies on a connection between the seal and the user." The hair on the back of her neck pricked up as she considered that. His voice went on, a soothing drone reciting information that was probably meant to jar her memory. "The user can travel to any seal with no lag in time. It demands heightened perception and a fast reaction. As far as I know, there is no limitation in distance and the only chakra cost is the effort expended to create the tag-"
"Please stop talking." Aiko scowled at the stubbornly silent paper, feeling a crease form in her forehead. Something really obvious was bugging her. The last parts of Hatake's recitation just hadn't seemed right.
'Whatever this is, I know it.'
Something about the design was pulling at her memory. But what was it? The gates of the eight tips on the seal indicated maneuverability and a sense of outward direction; that fit with what they were saying. Agh, it was something about limits that was trying to occur to her. Something about the limits that Hatake had described sounded like what she had heard about the Hiraishin but didn't line up with how she wanted to think about it.
"You said there's no limit on distance?"
"None," Jiraiya confirmed. "A user can travel to any seal."
That was the phrase that was ringing false. Something sparked, a match rasping against the edges of her memory to illuminate an old sense of accomplishment.
"You said my dad used these on airborne weapons?" She didn't even have to wait for the reply. Suddenly, it was obvious.
"That's not what I did." Aiko snapped her fingers, cutting Jiraiya-sama off carelessly. "That's not how I would use this seal at all. Traveling to a seal is the most basic application. It's level one." She straightened her back and talked with her hands, gaining enthusiasm and momentum as she went. She could see that neither of her listeners seemed convinced, and picked up the pace.
"That principle is the meat of the technique, of course, and it's the most efficient application of the seal in terms of focus and intellectual effort in the moment of travel. Hiraishin behaves like a body-switch technique, wherein the appropriate amount of force, for lack of a better word, is applied to one seal as a- as a- signpost for the destination instead of a physical object within view," she improvised, struggling for a word for the concept. That wasn't exactly right, but it got the point across.
Both men were staring at her with mildly perplexed expressions, but she didn't care. Oh, it was brilliant, didn't they see that?
"That basic Hiraishin concept (Jiraiya-baka flinched) is incredibly accurate because it relies on orientation around a very specific point in space at a very specific point in time. You don't even have to think about it, you just pull on that seal and then you're displaced. But you're thinking about it all wrong, you're talking like displacement is a constant with no variation or personalization."
Jiraiya opened his mouth, unfolding his legs and taking a step towards her. "Buh-"
She shook her head in emphatic denial before he got out a word, ponytail whipping around to smack her in the face. The short, loose hairs below it clung to her neck, plastered with sweat.
"It's not. If it was, there would be no control for the way the user appeared in relation to the seal. Clearly, the user's chakra system isn't actually centered on the seal for arrival, or I would have a lot of paper in my gut. I'm glad that's not how it works, of course, but that would have been the most logical probability with the theory that the Hiraishin allows for no variability."
In the brief moment when she paused to take a breath, the men exchanged a helpless glance. Hatake's fingers were twitching, as if he wanted to do something but had no idea what would make the babble cease.
Aiko grinned, making a slashing motion with one hand. "Eliminating that possibility leaves only appearing in close proximity to the seal, which would either be randomized or the exact same every way upon every utilization. Neither of those options could possibly be true unless my dad only threw kunai from one direction, which would be pretty much useless. If he couldn't control his landing with that randomized location, so to speak, then he would have ended up skewered on his own weapons and wow, that would be embarrassing."
She paused to suck in a breath, heart pounding. "That didn't happen of course, which proves that even if it was only unconscious, he could-"
"Aiko," Jiraiya interrupted weakly, shaking his head. "Get to the point."
She blinked, belatedly realizing that her audience still seemed less enthusiastic than she felt. Jiraiya-sama looked a little green about the recitation of ways Minato could have killed himself with the technique, truth be told.
"Oh, fine." Aiko deflated a bit. "Dull. I was getting around to saying that I didn't travel to seals, or at least I didn't only travel to seals. It takes the same amount of energy to displace the matter of my body regardless of destination, but it takes a lot more concentration and even math to move the landing point away from a seal."
"Move away from the seal," Jiraiya-baka repeated, professional curiosity piqued. His pale lashes stuck together when he blinked. "How?"
The sun burning down into her scalp was probably going to give her a burn. She gave another futile head toss. "By selecting multiple seals and varying the tension applied to each connection when I slipped dimensions, I could orient to any space between three or more seals. Although it'd be a really good idea to keep them at the same altitude and as close together as possible."
"Just, saying," she cleared her throat and let her voice trickle to a meek mutter, finally feeling self-conscious about her enthusiastic outburst. Was it weird to be excited about re-discovering something you already did?
'This could be the trump I need against Obito. If I have Hiraishin, we'd be on much more even footing.'
A hand rose up to rub at the back of her neck, and she looked down at her toes. "It opens up a lot more maneuverability, since you're not stuck with only the locations of seals that you manage to hide or whatever." Aiko shrugged, glancing up through her lashes to glean their reactions.
Jiraiya-baka's eye twitched. "Did she ever mention this to you?"
Hatake shook his head ever so slightly, eye fixed on Aiko as if he was trying to puzzle something out. "No. But that does explain some things."
"Why wouldn't she mention this?" Jiraiya-baka asked himself in an undertone, running a hand through his hair. Then he blinked and re-focused on Aiko with a slight frown. "Why wouldn't you mention this?"
'I never told them about how I used Hiraishin?'
The sun jolted from position over head to sinking in the west, welcome warmth dappling her skin through trees. Her body was sore from collisions, riddled with what would be bruises and goosebumps from the chill fall air. Kakashi looked much like he always did, but she knew he was amused. Dangerously close on her left side, Yamato, that pointy-kneed bastard, had a surprised expression frozen onto his features. They were alone in the training field- sheltered by tall, broad trees that only let in spots of sunlight.
"Well, that's one way to do it." Kakashi's attention slipped off of her and the man at her side, apparently bored.
Asshat. Like he would do any better with Hiraishin.
And then it was noon again, a stifling heat that made her chest feel tight.
'What the actual fuck.'
How long had she drifted off? Had that been a memory, or just a heat-stroke inspired hallucination?
Jiraiya and Hatake were still waiting for an answer. Shit. Shitshitshit.
'What was the question?'
She had to shrug to buy time, digging a toe into the ground while she improvised. They'd been talking about the Hiraishin still, right? "I probably just thought it was funny to spread misinformation."
Her heartbeat was pounding, and her gut was doing something acrobatic. It was hard not to stare at Hatake. She'd been training with him in that… whatever it was. If that hadn't been a hallucination, she had once trusted him enough to practice Hiraishin on him and Yamato, even if she hadn't told them what she was doing.
'There's something about Yamato and Hatake- I definitely associate them with each other. It has to have a basis in the past. Maybe it's connected to why they have such odd chakra readings. I'm no sensor. I shouldn't be able to detect them from the distances that I do.'
Hatake leaned his face down into a palm and was very still for a moment.
'It's hard to believe I was ever so close to Hatake. Yamato, sure. Yamato just seems trustworthy.' She swallowed. 'Maybe I thought so back then too. We were standing awfully close to each other.'
A thought for another time.
"Where did you even get an idea like that?" Jiraiya-baka frowned, interrupting her thoughts. "I'll bite and assume that you are correct and this modification works. But why would you think to improve on the Hiraishin? I've never thought about what you describe in terms of limitations." He cocked his head, tone turning philosophical. "Perhaps Minato would have known about the technique weaknesses that you're talking about because he used the Hiraishin for so long. But he didn't mention that in his notes, and you didn't even have the technique long enough to become bored with it. You had to have been thinking about the technique in non-traditional terms from almost the first times you used it. That doesn't make sense."
Obviously, she- she had thought- thought that-
Aiko consciously stopped herself from pressing a hand to her forehead to dull the headache. She didn't know. She knew that she should know but she didn't know. Nerves shot, she clenched her free hand into a fist to hide that her fingers were shaking.
'I can't deal with this right now. I just can't.'
"Does it matter?" She bluffed.
Currently, Jiraiya-baka's mouth was opening and she didn't think she could hold herself together long enough to continue this conversation.
"Can I take this?" She waved the notebook around to get attention, letting the pages flutter. "I'd like to copy this seal and play with it. This is the one that I used, right? Not made by me, of course," she muttered to herself, a statement and not a question, babbling to fill the air so that Jiraiya-sama couldn't. "This isn't mine at all." Someone else had recreated her seal from memory or notes. Jiraiya, probably. She didn't want to consider the fact that Hatake had been the one holding it.
Jiraiya made a small, frustrated sound and threw his hands up. "Take it." Then he gave her an odd look, eyes narrowing with a glint of hard intelligence.
'Fuck.'
She chose not to contemplate what her expression had given away about her mental state. Aiko fled before she could betray any more weakness. She made it to the gate before Hatake's voice rang out in falsely cheery tones.
"Just a minute."
She froze, neck stiff. Soft footsteps sounded behind her.
"I'll walk you home."
Her stomach sank down to rest between her hip bones.
'Open hostility would be a bad idea,' Aiko reminded herself. He didn't have to know exactly how uncomfortable she was. So she just nodded and let Hatake slouch along. Her pace picked up, but he managed to keep up while still ambling. Stupid jerk with his stupid long legs.
They passed most of the training grounds in a tense silence. At least, it was tense on her end. She couldn't read Hatake.
'And that's the problem, isn't it? I don't know what to think about him.'
She curled her tongue in her mouth, and then flattened it to rub against the hard ridges of her palette.
'I could ask him about Obito. Confirm Obito's story and then see how I can confirm his identity.'
Aiko opened her mouth- and then pretended to yawn, covering her mouth with a palm.
'This is stupid,' she criticized herself, making a fist. 'He's not that intimidating. He used to be my teacher and I clearly used to trust him to an extent. I can choose to disregard his perspective, but I have to hear it first. He probably isn't enough of a lunatic to attack me for asking questions. And if he is, I'll just kick his ass.'
She was hyperaware of his presence, despite the fact that she could barely see him out of the corner of her left eye.
'I could ask him about Naruto. If he was my teacher, he might have a different perspective than Sasuke.'
"Saa…" Hatake tilted his face up to the sky, drinking in sunlight.
Aiko waited. And waited. And- "What?" she asked, stopping for a moment so that their steps aligned.
He rubbed at the back of his neck with gloved fingers. "Oh, nothing. I was just thinking that it was a lovely day, that's all."
A lovely-
"We're broiling," Aiko said disbelievingly. "It is not a lovely day. I am cooking in my own skin like a potato."
Hatake winced. "That's… vivid." He actually sounded a little put-out. Which was ridiculous. He was a veteran-there was no way that she'd turned his stomach with that simile.
'He can't actually be that squeamish. Right?'
She felt the line form between her eyebrows, but couldn't muster up enough give-a-damn to wipe her face clear.
'He's trying to make me relax,' Aiko decided. 'Hatake plays the idiot to put others at ease.'
That had to be it.
She wouldn't let it work on her. How thick did he think she was? Hatake was an S-class shinobi; famous for his very public assassinations and double-duty as a tracker and assault specialist. There was literally no possibility that he was an idiot.
'He could, on the other hand, genuinely be socially incapable. That would explain the way he prompted me to start the conversation he wanted to have. And…' Her mind went back over their interactions, thinking of how quiet he had been in most of them-only piping up to offer facts or analysis. 'He doesn't know what to say, I think. He doesn't know how to have the conversations he wants to have.'
Oh, fuck it. They were never going to get anywhere at this rate. She was going to have to just fucking go for it.
Aiko pitched her voice into cheery conversational tones. "So, I hear you killed your genin teammates?"
Hatake stopped in his tracks. Aiko pretended not to notice, forcing him to collect himself and restart walking to catch up.
'The silence is not at all damning, darling.'
It was heavy, though. She shouldn't have asked. Sweat ran over her scalp to nestle in droplets at the base of her ponytail.
'dangerdangerohmyfuckinggoddanger.'
"Who told…" Hatake trailed off almost as soon as he had started, voice tight. "Ah. Your Uchiha."
"He's hardly mine," Aiko pointed out. If her tone was bitter, she ignored that.
Hatake was silent for a long moment, but it felt nothing like the quiet of earlier. Aiko kept her face angled forward and her posture relaxed. It took conscious effort. She counted her heartbeats, purposefully calming her body.
When she finally turned her head, he was gone. A moment's focus revealed that the unique song of his chakra was halfway across Konoha and still moving. She hadn't realized quite how tense she was until all the stiffness fled her body at once.
'So, that's a yes, then?'
She pursed her lips. Or more accurately, evidence that he thought he'd killed his genin teammates. Being incorrect about fifty percent of supposedly concerned kills in a sample was not impressive. …It was a pretty good demonstration of how reasonable-seeming guesswork could be far off the truth, however.
She gave a sigh, shaking her head. 'It seems likely that Obito was telling the truth about Hatake killing one teammate and leaving him for dead; but I shouldn't make any assumptions. I need details and real information.'
As soon as she reached the safety of Shizune's apartment, Aiko burrowed face-first into her futon and tried to calm down enough to sort through her new memory. Memory of using the Hiraishin with just a thought and the brief pull and of camaraderie with- with- Hatake, of all the fucking people. She shuddered.
'New plan. Make lunch, eat lunch, and do not contemplate confusing bullshit for at least a night.'
The first step was poking her head out reluctantly into the stale air. After she managed to get out of bed, it got a little easier.
Two hours later, Aiko had mostly tabled her failed conversation and the utter creepiness of her flashback to move on with her day. She felt a chill like fingers walking up her spine- which was the reason she jolted to attention and noticed Hatake's chakra signature approaching her side of town. Then her district. And then heading towards Shizune's apartment building.
Her toes curled inside her slippers and fingers tightened on the sealing notebook she'd been perusing.
'I wonder how pissed he is that I brought that teammate thing up?'
Upset enough to be coming up the stairs to Shizune's apartment, apparently. Aiko cast an uncertain look at the door to the balcony. She could slip outside, run up the building, and escape. It wouldn't be that hard to evade someone who she could sense.
However tempting, that course of action would be counterproductive. Perhaps he had an answer for her. Before he could knock, she composed herself with false confidence, adjusted the book on her folded legs, and lifted her head.
"Just come in, Hatake."
The door opened and shut with intentional noise- probably a polite gesture so that she could know he had entered. It was of course unnecessary. Aiko didn't bother to look up when he slouched into the room, busy hiding the tenseness in her hands behind the fuinjutsu notebook.
"You're supposed to tell me that I'm late," he informed her with a light tone she'd never heard before.
Okay… That was weird.
She looked up to deliver her line dispassionately. "You're late."
He beamed- or, at least, she thought he did. His eye creased in what looked like rapture. Was the pupil dilated? It was a little hard to tell, with his dark gray eye color. "Sorry about that! There was a cat up a tree that needed a double dose of anxiety medication."
'The eye is probably dilated,' Aiko decided. 'This man is a train wreck.'
"That story holds together," she played along with what he wanted. If he was going to pretend nothing was odd, so could she. She inhaled slowly through her nose, lifting one eyebrow. 'That was a weird story to tell. Why bother mixing in a lie with a probable truth? Why justify himself to me at all?'
His eye widened, innocent charm in every centimeter of his being. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean." He settled on Shizune's other couch.
'He's much wordier than usual. He definitely overcompensates when he pretends to be someone cheerier.'
It would have been cute, if she didn't suspect that it was a coping mechanism.
…Okay, it was still cute. How was a thirty-something man cute? Handsome or charming or whatever, sure. But cute was a diminutive compliment for a reason. It implied childishness, immaturity, the behavior of- Her tummy squeezed, unwelcome tension in her core. 'Fuck. Is this-'
And that was when she realized why she found the disarming smile and loose body posture appealing. Obito. Hatake was reminding her of Obito at the moment. Holy shit. He was moving and grinning like Obito at his most playful and light-hearted. Was that what Obito had been like as a child as well? It made some amount of sense.
'Am I seeing things? Or is he actually mimicking…'
"Konoha to Aiko-chan." Hatake waved a hand back and forth.
She wrinkled her nose, feeling nauseous. "Chan? That's familiar of you."
Inappropriately familiar, in fact. It was icky.
Hatake tilted his head to the side. "I think that after your earlier question, we may be past that sort of familiarity. This must mean we're friends." He practically beamed at her, grin almost visible through his thick mask.
Oh. So that was how this was. Pacified by the potential for more information, Aiko pressed her lips shut and nodded slowly. She could ignore the jab for data. "We must be. Friends do things like that and share secrets."
He might have grimaced, but her only clue was the changing wrinkles on his mask. That thing was an impediment to good information gathering.
So Aiko made a face and opined, "Good friends don't hide their faces from one another either. Not even Obi-Tobi did that," she wheedled. Perhaps it was a dirty trick to pretend she only remembered to use the diplomatic name at the last moment. But if her hunch meant anything at all, Hatake had a strong emotional attachment to Obito's memory. He did things that he thought Obito would have done. He was now doubtlessly going over his memories and weighing them against the potential value of the conversation he had intended to have.
'Which doesn't fit with the story that Obito told. Why would you leave someone to die and then mourn them for twenty years? Regret and guilt don't extend that far, do they?'
Slowly, three fingers reached up and curled around the curve where fabric stretched across his nose. Aiko wiped her face clean of any damning victorious thoughts. Hatake pulled the fabric down in one smooth motion, dark eye boring a hole into her face.
She didn't know what he was looking for in her expression, but he seemed dissatisfied.
'And strangely dramatic about such a small demonstration of trust.'
"We are good friends." Hatake said quietly, displaying just a flash of pointed teeth. "Although as you have noted, I have a history of failing my friends and teammates. I led one teammate into an ambush out of arrogance, and the other teammate leapt in front of one of my techniques."
'The first would be Obito, the second Rin? He's stressing the incidents in a different way than Obito.'
Still, sincerity was in every carefully selected syllable and the slight clench of his jaw. No wonder he wore a mask. His poker face needed wok.
'Unless that's acting to throw me off?'
No, Aiko chided herself. That way only led to madness. At some point she had to form an opinion. She focused her gaze on pale lips, dissociating the conversation from the person she was having it with.
"Bummer. But is two incidents really a pattern?"
On some level, she was genuinely curious.
Hatake swallowed. "I have not experienced great success with my students either," he allowed.
'Is he talking about me?'
Aiko tilted her head in silent invitation for him to continue. He did not. "Yes?" she prompted mercilessly.
She could see a muscle twitching in his neck above the line where the fabric of his mask was bunched. "Two of them found better sensei, one is dead, and one seems lost."
Her chest felt cold. Did he realize that she knew she was his former student? She'd thought she was his only student, actually. Who were the others?
"Am I the dead one or the lost one?" Aiko didn't consider the question before it meekly slipped out. She glanced down, focusing on the fascinating stitching on his vest. Someone had done home repairs on it- someone who wasn't a seamstress. Looked sturdy enough, though.
"What?" He sounded genuinely bewildered. "You're not dead."
She snorted. "Yes I am." A fist clenched. Deadthingdeadthingdeadthing. "Obito told me. Nagato. No, Pein," she corrected, using the name he would know. "Because of Pein."
"Aiko. You are very much alive."
Her hand was shaking. Imagine that, how funny.
"Aiko. Calm down."
"I am calm," she refuted, hyper aware of how her face moved and stretched.
"You're not dead," he tried again. Aiko distantly confirmed her hypothesis that Hatake was a very awkward man. Anyone else would have attempted to give some sort of physical reassurance at this point. He might as well have been sitting on his hands, for all that he knew to do with them. "You were revived. And- and you were only gone for an hour," Hatake continued, sounding very much as if he was repeating someone else's words.
She had just enough presence of mind to roll her eyes. "I understand that I was brought back; I'm not a complete moron. But I think I would know a little more about the ramifications of that than you would."
Although Fuu had seemed fine. Maybe it was because Fuu was a little odd. And Fuu didn't remember her death- no, strictly speaking Aiko didn't eith
Searing heat in her head flesh ripping and a bloody-minded dragon of satisfaction curled around her chest because that fucker looked so surprised
er. Anyway, Fuu was probably regretting being a zombie monster too. God, what kind of asshole was she? She'd done the same thing that had been done to her to another girl. And she'd genuinely thought she was doing a favor.
'How can I even consider doing that to another person, no matter what a bijuu thinks?'
"Aiko?" Hatake sounded a little distressed. She focused on him.
Whoa. He was suddenly in strange detail, the paleness she remembered overlaid with purple shadows. It was an interesting look. Had it gotten dark out? She cast a glance toward the window. Huh. Still sunny.
When she looked back, Hatake appeared to have stopped breathing and was outright staring.
"What?" She furrowed her brow.
He gathered himself and looked away casually. "Oh, nothing. Just wondering if your eyes are alright."
What? Oh dear.
'I seriously turned on the Rinnegan by… what, experiencing strong emotion? Panic?'
When she had a moment to let that sink in, her feelings plummeted past irritation. 'I'm a special kind of moron, aren't I? Aiko: Daddy's little blunt weapon. Fantastic.'
She gave a short laugh entirely devoid of humor.
Hatake leant back. "There goes my trump card." Aiko clenched her jaw, grinding teeth together. She had just given Hatake a significant hold over her. "Ugh." She closed her eyes and shut the chakra feed down. When she opened them, they were black again.
No reason to let him know that there were two other levels of freaky in her eyeballs, if he didn't already know that the Rinnegan and Sharingan were connected.
"Trump card?" He sounded a little strangled.
Strangled? Now, there was a thought. She lifted her eyebrows in consideration- and then deflated.
'There's no way I could keep the Rinnegan secret by killing him. I have nowhere to put a body. Could I threaten him into silence? Blackmail? Intimidation?'
"Yes, you twits appeared to have genuinely believed that Obito didn't teach me any jutsu in a year." She tossed her hair and kept her head up high. "I thought it was best to play everything down so that it would be easier to crush any who opposed me in an emergency."
Was that subtle enough? No? Well. Who knew if he would catch on to anything opaque.
"That's…" Hatake trailed off. "Honest of you."
"It's not like you couldn't put that together with the information you have now," Aiko dismissed. "Besides," she changed the subject. "I really did need to practice with chakra chains. Those will be an unpleasant surprise for Obito."
She hoped. She desperately needed a strategy to deal with his kamui. Kamui wasn't a perfect technique, but it was a very near thing.
There was a moment of quiet while he digested that. "I think," Hatake said slowly, "that we're better friends than I realized, if the metric is that friends share secrets."
'He's sentimental.'
She gave him a disbelieving look, despite her hope that he would keep his mouth shut. It just wasn't probable. "I know that you're not going to keep this secret. You're going to tell SexyKage. That's your job."
He made a face, pulling at the thin scar that disappeared over his jaw into his left ear. "I'll tell her that she's been taking the wrong track with your psych evaluation and treatment," he said dryly. "They missed some important things. "But… no. If you ask, I won't say anything about the Rinnegan."
No way. Would he? He could get in serious trouble if the Hokage found out that he'd kept something like that from her.
"Pinky promise?" She didn't let her tone hint at any hope, just mocking, because she was waiting for the other shoe to fall. But Hatake held up a pinky. Bemused, she unfolded her legs to stand and took a step closer. She reached out and linked her little finger with his. She hadn't actually intended- but whatever. Okay.
"Don't promise if you don't mean it," she warned, feeling reluctant admiration bubble up her chest. Not that he was that cool, of course. It was just sort of impressive to find a village-bound shinobi who put anything above kissing their kage's ass. Even if he was a socially incapable, damaged shitshow of a person.
Hatake's eye had pinpricks of a pretty, light gray shade in the light. It looked serious enough. "I think I've done enough talking for a while, don't you?" He bent the pinky around hers.
Good point. He had been chattier than she had anticipated. Aiko stood and brushed off the front of her pants. That was about as good as she was going to get. "Well. This was a lovely talk. Thank you for visiting, we should do this again."
He sat there for a moment, not taking her hint.
So Aiko put a hand on her hip and said in a stern tone, "I think you should go now."
"Aa." He stood, pulling up his mask almost as an afterthought.
After he left, she stood and just looked at the closed door for a moment, trying to wrap her head around how so much had changed in a few hours.
"That could have gone better."