AIC finale 2 of 2

It felt like a gut punch. She grunted and went down to a knee. 

The air began to seethe with bijuu chakra. It seeped out of her in a furious, hurting mist. 

She cut another lock, opening the floodgates. It was excruciating. That was all she could do. Aiko went down to both hands and panted through the pain.

Sanbi seeped and billowed out into the forest. Formless and icy, he hissed as he went into material reality for the first time in at least a decade. 

Claws formed in the fallen pine leaves. His knuckles built themselves up and around that.

Her vision glazed over. She shuddered. It was so cold. 

She fell. She had no idea how much time passed. The poison in the air left her unharmed when it would have left chemical burns on a normal person, but she had just dissolved a spiritual tie between her and a much more powerful being. 

She was cradled in a giant paw. Claw? She wasn’t sure, head lolling. Sanbi’s high-pitched voice was all around her in the air. “Watch your head,” he said. Yeah. Sure. Whatever. There was a tremendous crash and clatter. Aiko struggled to peel her eyes open to see that Sanbi had taken it upon himself to smash the rock that marked the underworld. He cleared it out with his tails, pulling and scooping rubble carelessly out into the forest. His head ducked in close to her, so close that he was breathing his stank breath on her. 

“Why does your breath stink?” Aiko grunted. She twitched her nose. “What have you been eating? I thought you didn’t eat.”

“I’m saving your life,” Sanbi said, high and aggrieved. He deliberately breathed on her harder. Her hair blew back from her face. The world swayed around her as Sanbi took the first careful steps into the cavern behind the stone.

She felt when they crossed the barrier. “Oh.” Startled, she sat up. Her hands flew to her stomach– unharmed. She blinked. 

“...I think you were right.” Sanbi sat down with a thud. The color was draining from his face. 

“Fuck.” Aiko rolled to the ground and popped to her feet. She flung her chakra chains out and blunted the ends with a curve backwards before she used them to push him ass-first out of the cave. 

They stared at each other across the distance. 

“You’re smaller than I remember,” Sanbi said. “How disappointing.”

“You smell like rotten fish, that’s it,” Aiko rejoined. She bit her lip. She sort of wanted to cry. “Take care. If someone else catches you…”

Sanbi snorted. He shook his head. He was rapidly regaining his regular color, a healthy burgundy under the grey of his armor. “You would eventually notice and help me. But I’m going to help you.”

She cocked her head to the side. 

“I’m going to go back to that temple and finish your negotiations,” Sanbi said. “I think the Hokage might shit himself.” He sounded cheerful about it. “Then I’ll go back to Kirigakure. I’m a citizen, after all. Maybe I’ll be the Mizukage if you don’t come back. Take care.”

“I love you,” Aiko told him. “I really want to see the reaction. Please tell me how it goes.” She scuffed her foot against the stone path. There was nothing living in here, not a drop of moving water or a mushroom or bit of moss. “But… If I don’t see you again.” She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “You were an excellent partner, and I am lucky to have known you.” 

Isobu snorted. “Yes, well.” He squirmed his toes into the soil. “You yourself are not so terrible.”

It felt like the moment was at an end. Aiko gave in to sentiment and put her hands on her thighs to bend over and give him a true, deep, bow like she should have given to the Hokage. Then she turned and left. She didn’t hear anything behind her.

It was dark. But she could always see. There was no source of ambient light, but she saw the path in the darkness. It split. She kept to the left without thinking about it. Only in retrospect did she realize that the left path was concealed under a genjutsu. The sound of rushing water came from ahead. She turned to see a giant river winding towards the path that she had not taken. She could see the faint outlines of two tall trees, one of which was full of white banners. Once she saw them, she heard the sounds of screaming. Fear and pain cast themselves into the air.

…The first trial of the dead was the other way, crossing the river. She kept her steps steady. That was not her path now. The shrieking of gleeful demons and the occasional splash of a giant monster in the water faded behind her. 

The bare rock under her feet began to be more purposeful. Then it became pavement. There were small statues and walls lining the road now. They grew taller and more elegant as she walked. 

The path began to lilt upwards. She took it easily. Greenery appeared around her. It was sparse at first, and then it coated the ground. Sharp stones rose up in eerie markers all around, not centered on the path but scattered through the distance. Dry, spiky trees began to sprout out of the murkiness.

“It’s looking more homey,” Aiko muttered. She kept at it, expecting more gradual transitions. Instead, she walked and walked until she stopped dead in her tracks and stared in confusion at the gate in front of her that had appeared out of nowhere. 

“Traveler.” She looked up, and up, to make eye contact with the cow-headed gatekeeper, Gozu. Her horse-headed peer, Mezu, leered from the other side. Aiko was too busy counting the human skulls on the cow’s necklace to respond on time. “You’ve come to enter heaven or hell?”

“Hell, please,” Aiko said mildly. The background behind them seemed to blink and blur. The white pillars had each had a large blue eyeball on them at head height– they now had chains wrapped around them. 

“She’s been summoned.” Mezu cocked her head to the side to watch Aiko better with red-lined eyes. “To Izanami-no-mikoto.”

That was news to Aiko. She mostly stifled her surprise.

“You’re…” Gozu leaned down to sniff Aiko and then breathed a huff of hot hair on her face. “Boring. A new hell-beast,” she told her companion. She straightened back up and leaned her weight on her spear again. “Enter. The palace is unmistakable, baby demon.” 

‘...I don’t know if I should be insulted or relieved that they aren’t perceiving me as human. I really fucked up with all that playing around with the borders of death, I guess. This is totally fine.’

Both guardians banged the floor with their spears to mark the judgment. Aiko bowed, because she wasn’t a total idiot, and walked through.

Immediately, she was no longer alone. The streets were crowded with people and demons in old-fashioned clothing, bristling with wounds and weaponry. A woman with snakes coiling up out of her obi was walking in the opposite direction down a paved street. Lanterns swayed in the air to make up for the lack of sunlight and the air was hot with the smell of oil and smoke. Aiko paused only for a moment before walking forward as if she belonged here.

The gate guardians were not wrong. It was easy to find the palace. It was a tremendously old-fashioned building, entirely hewn from wood with a straw roof. That did not make it any less grand than a modern palace.

She introduced herself at the entryway to a slip of a girl with an odd, foreign hairstyle, and got ushered to a waiting room. After a while she was told to follow and she went up and up a precariously narrow wooden staircase with uneven and ungenerous footing. Every time she put a foot down, she had the unsettling feeling that she was about to slip and fall down. She went up 8 floors that way. Did Izanami-no-mikoto have a better staircase?

“Wait here. Do not look at her,” instructed the maid. The odd loops of her hairstyle jiggled as she moved around. “Do not speak unless ordered. Do you understand?”

“I understand.” Peeved, Aiko gritted her teeth and waited with her head down. 

“Insolent,” said a new voice.

Aiko almost raised her head to see who it was before she caught a clue. She did not budge.

“You possess some sense of self-preservation,” continued Izanami-no-Mikoto. Silk swished across the floor. “But you are seething in your heart.” Something scraped gently against the tatami. Aiko had the sudden premonition that it was bone. “You have made yourself a vessel and a priestess for the god of Death, out of sheer disrespect. Most unwise, child.”

Aiko lowered her face even further. It was something of a nod. The Goddess was right. But what else could Aiko have done?

“Arrogance,” Izanami mused. “It is not for humans to control death and prevent it, no matter how great you are among the living.” She seemed amused. “I am.”

Aiko’s blood ran cold. Not even her thoughts were private.

“I can use you, and I would use you more kindly than my companion plans to.” An icy hand raked through Aiko’s hair. She restrained any reaction. It was bone. Izanami’s fingers were just bone. “Yes, I am greatly diminished.” Her courtly tones hinted at displeasure. “My husband sleeps at the grandest of mortal world temples, yet I have no worship to tie me to life. Is that just? Was I not present at the beginning of the world? Am I not the mother of life?”

The skeleton fingers in Aiko’s hair tightened.

“I know what you desire. I cannot unmake you from what you have become, and I would not wish to. You have earned this damnation.” Izanami lifted her hand and stepped away. No, she sat down, terrifyingly close in front of Aiko. She swallowed, hard, as fabric-covered knees appeared in her line of sight. “But I will pull the thread of your existence to your origin, if you please me. You can go home to watch your mortal family go old and die. You would like this.”

She opened her mouth to agree and shut it at the last moment.

“First, I will return you to your place on the mortal planes. Whether you please me or not, your family will eventually be born there.”

Dimensions. She was talking about putting Aiko back in her home dimension. Her heart started thudding loudly in her chest.

“Your task is to fix this disgrace.”

She had the sense that Izanami was gesturing at herself- at her state of total decay. 

“Yes, child, I require active worship from the living, not merely respect from the dead. If I am returned to my dignity, I will return you to your original life. I will leave you in the mortal lands to answer to me there, as my servant and representative. Do you understand?” Her voice went hard. “I will make you a minor goddess, not a petty demon to while away eternity dipping sinners in hot oil. I require your devotion for this salvation.”

…Yes. Aiko would take that deal. 

“Leave now. Back to the land of the living.” Izanami sighed. “You will remain there until the new moon. Use the time well. And do not disappoint me.” 

There was no sound to mark her passing. But as Aiko waited, it became clear that she was alone.

…She needed to get back and immediately confirm how many days she had until the new moon.

She didn’t bother to go back to the conference. Sanbi could handle Sarutobi, and, anyway, it would be a lot less awkward to avoid whatever supposed betrothal the priests thought was going on. 

She didn’t bother going back to Mist, either. Utakata was already in charge for the time being since she was scheduled to be out of the country.

She went to her bank in Tea country, where all her ill-gotten money was living happily and undetected by international banking regulations. Her Kirigakure accounts were for legitimate income. Karin and Gaara would need the bills paid from those accounts. She thought it over while looking at the calendar in line. It helpfully had the moon phase on it.

“I would like to empty my account. Yes, in gold, not bills. Thank you.” 

Her teller looked a little ill. “It might be a while, Mizukage-sama.” 

“I’ll come back later,” Aiko said graciously. She had a lot to do. She turned on her heel and made her way to the large shrine up the street. She had never been inside before, but it was an unmistakable feature in the landscape.

No one appeared to let her in, so she let herself on the premises. Aiko looked at it with a critical eye for the first time. Gardens, rocks, outbuilding and a traditional shrine. She knew there would be a room glistening with treasures: art and golden objects of devotion. 

‘I should just copy their schtick. Getting Izanami-no-mikoto a significant amount of human worship starts with a cult of personality. Funding would- well.’ She scowled to herself as a shrine maiden entered the room and visibly startled to see her. ‘If I was doing this now, here, where I am rich and socially significant, I would just commission a shrine. But I won’t be anyone important there.’

“Greetings. Sorry- can I provide any assistance?”

Aiko blinked and focused back on the real world. “Yes, thank you. Can I get five miko outfits?” She nodded at the girl’s own clothes. “Like yours.” Then she frowned a little. “Nicer than yours.”

The teenager looked down at her clothes. “Ah… Nicer?” 

“Material quality, embroidery, something like that.” Aiko shrugged.

“...Aren’t you attending a summit for peace?”

“Yes, with the Hokage. The clothes have become necessary,” Aiko said, not quite answering.

The child looked quite confused, but she ducked her head. “Ah. Well, we would be honored? Unfortunately, it will take some time to acquire– I must speak with-” 

“I have a week. Bless you, you’re saving the world.” Aiko gave one more look to the calligraphy scroll on the wall and then made a polite little bow. “Excuse me.”

What else? She would pop back into Kirigakure and tell Utakata goodbye, set up auto-pay for the bills… 

‘I want to see all the kids before I go,’ Aiko decided. ‘Maybe even Minato. Thank him for the advice.’

Gaara and Karin- obvious, and very achievable. But there was little Team 7, too, so conveniently unsupervised. If she just slipped on into Konoha and borrowed them for some bonding time… Yeah, that would be nice.

Plan set, Aiko went back into the bank to retrieve a scary amount of criminally-earned money. The bank manager looked at her with big, sad eyes as she entered, but she couldn’t be turned aside. She needed to pack away everything conceivable into scrolls and then move on with her life.

She was going home, after all.