Aiko WAP 34 total

CHAPTER 34

The next few days were wasted in politicking. Aiko visited the Uchiha twice more and stopped by the Senju to drop off a message, unwilling to get stuck talking to the rat bastards if she didn’t have to. Luckily, Hashirama was still acting cagey about being in close proximity to her, ever since the whole “but that's treason” hand wringing bit. 

Things continued on the microseasonal schedule in her little village. Aiko managed to show up for the firefly viewing event and sit on her porch with her acolytes and Kakuzu, talking shit and watching the kids chase insects. Kakuzu and Fukiko dangled their legs off the edge and shot down sake while Hana scowled and tried to get comfortable around her enormous pregnant stomach.

She came home late one night to the message that “the nice lady came by and wished to see you.” 

‘I don't know any nice women, do I?’

Aiko frowned at small Aiko, who had delivered this message with hands covered in charcoal for mysterious reasons. The little girl blinked up at her guilelessly. She obviously did not know the visitor’s name.

Alright. Time for some detective work. She squatted to get her face on a level with the little girl. “What did she look like?”

Small Aiko hummed and twisted her fingers around. “She was tall. Like you. And she had a lot of hair.” She cast a wistful glance over her shoulder to where Hanako and Momoko were still playing on the grass. 

That was not a very good description. Aiko had been short in her time but was now the average height for a woman. This description only really ruled out children and bald women.

Tall Aiko thought that children were not very good receptionists. She did not sigh. It would be rude. “What did her eyes look like?” Aiko tried. 

“Um… I don't remember. Brown?” little Aiko guessed. 

“Fair enough, that's on me,” Aiko said to herself. Almost everyone in the area had black hair and dark brown eyes. Nothing distinctive, really, unless someone was waving their Sharingan around to make a point. She tried again. “Were her clothes pretty?” 

If this was a visiting Senju, Uchiha, or civilian noble representative, they would be fancy. If it was an Inuzuka, they'd look like they'd been dragged backwards through a brush.

Small Aiko shrugged. 

For fucks sake. “Thank you, sweetheart,” Aiko said, giving up on the mystery. Whoever it was would come back if it was important. She made a mental note to teach the children basic secretarial skills later.

She went to the Uchiha stronghold the day before the shitstorm. Everything seemed fine. The angry-eyed Uchiha relative who seemed to try to wrangle Izuna turned out to be Hikaku Uchiha, and he seemed exhausted and resentful of Aiko’s presence. But he led her to the main house room where Izuna was assembling his Daimyo preparations. This meant studying current poetry, fashion, and dossiers of international civilian politicians. Izuna waved cheerfully at her when she arrived and indicated for her to sit.

Aiko did so. She gave Hikaku a nod as he backed away. 

His face was pinched. He shut the shoji door without a proper goodbye.

She and Izuna snorted at the same time.

“He’s crabby,” Izuna said. He pulled his sleeve back gracefully to keep it from the ink he was writing with. “Aiko-sama, how is your calligraphy?”

“Passable,” Aiko admitted. She got a little higher on her knees to see his work. “Oh, that’s lovely.”

Izuna looked displeased. “Yes, but I am copying someone else’s work,” he admitted. “I thought that I would replicate a master and integrate someone else’s stylistic choices, but they are not meshing as I would have hoped. I am concerned about demonstrating appropriate refinement.”

Aiko hummed. “That’s hard,” she admitted. “Why don’t you simply poison anyone who criticizes you? That’s pretty traditional.”

His lips thinned and he made a noncommittal gesture. “Yes, but it’s the easy way out, isn’t it. They’ll stop talking, but they will look down on my refinement.”

‘Well yeah, then if you really care you simply kill the people who snigger behind your back until you have a good working environment.’ 

She shrugged. This wasn't really her area of expertise. When she had been the Mizukage she had flouted tradition and built an empire on the back of pencil manufacturing. No one who did traditional art had really liked her. Personally, Aiko had enjoyed the constant outrage and wounded dignity. But if it had bothered her, she wouldn’t have wasted her personal time improving her poetry composition skills. Why bother, when she was already quite good with senbon?

‘Actually, I think the easiest and funniest solution would be to genjutsu the loudest naysayers into genuinely believing I’m an artistic great,’ Aiko realized. 

She watched Izuna work for a while, brown furrowed prettily as he wrestled with a new skillset. Self-improvement was a shinobi’s watchword, but this seemed a bit backwards to her.

‘It’s not really my problem if he’s inefficient,’ Aiko decided. She settled back to watch him work while Madara was dragged back from wherever he’d gotten to this morning. If he’d been helping in the fields, she would probably wait a while so that he could bathe and style his hair. 

“We saw that the Senju sent out the proclamation our Elders asked for,” Izuna said. He said it idly, as if it was a polite afterthought that he ought to make conversation. “I did not see it myself, of course. But we have heard word.”

“That’s what I came to inform Madara of.” Aiko subtly rolled her shoulders. “Will he be here soon? Perhaps I need not inform him personally,” she teased. 

Izuna raised his head to give her a flat look. “Shall I escort you out? If you do not care to see him, that is of course acceptable.”

She blew out her lips in a pout and pretended not to hear him calling her bluff. Aiko had been coming out of a horrified fascination to see how exactly Madara was going to escalate day by day. She’d spotted his collarbone two days ago and her mouth had gone a little dry.

The bastard himself showed up a full hour later, and she must have been correct about him helping in the fields. He had the faintest hint of sunburn redness across his nose and the back of his neck. His clothing was normal today, a sober and dignified clan head at home. She was a little surprised that he hadn’t decided to push the limits of how much chest he could get away with showing off. It seemed the natural escalation.

‘What’s that tactic?’ she wondered. ‘Or did he not know I was coming when he picked his outfit?’ If she was disappointed, she wouldn’t admit it to a soul.

“Madara-san,” Aiko greeted him. She was by now laying on her side across three cushions, ankles crossed as she and Izuna made idle conversation. It was incredibly indecent of her. It was obvious that the Uchiha did not mind. With the way they acted, she was fairly confident that if she started coming with her kimono half-off her shoulders, they would consider it a personal victory and start designing the wedding menu.

“Aiko-sama.” Madara prowled into the room on the balls of his feet, silent and wholly focused on her. “I am glad to see you.”  He had the kind of intensity that made a person memorable. If he’d been born in her time, he probably would have been a celebrity. He didn’t have confidence so much as he had single-minded determination.

She sort of got why Hashirama was so weird about this man. Aiko cupped her chin on her palm and gave him her faintest smile.  

“Welcome back, brother,” Izuna said in a mocking tone. “We have not been waiting for you or anything such as that. Please, take all the time that you would like.”

He punctured the mood in the room as if he was a needle in a balloon. Both Aiko and Madara gave him dirty looks that he pretended not to see, chin loftily high as he painted some kind of black bird.

Izuna had such shitty little brother energy sometimes. He was less and less hot every time he demonstrated this. It was nearly tragic for him.

“Little brother,” Madara said, in a snide tone that said he was rearing up to be bitchy. “I observe that you are still questing for refinement. How admirable is your diligence. There is such a long way to go.”

Aiko covered a snort with her hand. Izuna finally looked over, nose scrunched up. He apparently decided he was too dignified to respond emotionally. He sniffed and tossed his hair. “And you have wisely given up on intellectual pursuits for manual labor. It is well that you know how best to use your time and energy. Did you trod on a viper today as well?”

Wait, what? 

“Did you step on a mamushi?” she asked incredulously. He was a shinobi. It was one thing for a civilian to miss a serpent sleeping in the fields, but for one of the most powerful shinobi of his age to trudge along without spotting a living form? What if it had been a summons? What if the Uchiha did not have access to a healer who could draw the venom out? Hadn’t he been drilled in attentiveness and pattern recognition? That would be such an embarrassing way to die. Aiko looked at his obvious discomfort in delight. Holy shit, that was so embarrassing for him.

Madara cast a dark look at his little brother, who had definitely won the bout. Izuna looked smug about it. “Of course not,” he lied. He settled on a cushion with perfect elegance and then collapsed into an outright insouciant slouch.

Aiko made a humming sound that could have been interpreted as believing him.

Sulking would have reduced the appeal of most men. Aiko liked it on Madara. She did a very poor job of hiding her smirk behind splayed fingers and stared at him with an intensity that would make most people uncomfortable. He smoldered back at her, unrepentant and characteristically intense. 

“You look well,” Madara said, when he'd apparently determined that it was time to turn on the charm. “The turquoise sets off your hair and matches your eyes. I would pair it with gold. Perhaps kanzashi for your hair, and a necklace.” 

“Not a ring?” Aiko teased. She batted her eyes at him. 

He smoldered harder. “Impossible to overstate how it would flatter your delicate hand.” 

Izuna sighed pointedly. 

They both ignored him. 

There was a knock from outside. Aiko and Madara both sat up and reached for a scroll to pretend to be occupied with. Izuna was always sitting primly, so he didn’t have to move.

“Enter,” Madara called carelessly. Aiko unspooled her scroll a little more so that the angle of her wrist was more elegant. She caught Madara stealing a glance at the exposed skin when her sleeve slipped down. She shot him a conspiratorial glance.

The door slid open soundlessly on its track. Hikaku was there with a stranger at his side. Aiko took an instant to size them up.

She wasn’t sure if they were leaning masculine or feminine in presentation. They had a neutral-colored yukata with a few pieces of perfunctory armor clipped on over. Their hair was tied back neatly and they had dark kohl ringing their eyes. To her eye, this was a member of a clan that was in Grass country in the modern era. What were they called? Kiroyama?

…Yellow mountain didn’t sound like a clan name that originated in Grass, come to think of it.

Hikaku’s voice rang out without inflection. “Uchiha Madara-sama. Aiko-Miko-sama. Uchiha Izuna-sama.” 

Both Hikaku and the stranger bowed after the formal introduction. Aiko ever-so-slightly craned her neck at the appropriate time. “Our ally has come to confirm receipt of this edict and its accuracy before they return,” Hikaku introduced in a formal register. He bowed at the end of his statement, both hands modestly to the floor with thumbs and forefingers in a perfect diamond. His hair brushed his hands with the motion.

The Kiroyama shinobi had their gaze fixed on Madara, but it flickered over Aiko and Izuna in turn. 

“Allow me.” Madara took the scroll and opened it. He spent a full minute looking at it. The room was silent except for their breaths and the whisper of Izuna’s brush on paper. “This is correct and accurate to my will,” he declared. He kept a stern, straight expression. Aiko felt a little mesmerized by the sternness. She liked it. She wanted to see what it would take to make him break his discipline. She licked the inside of her lips.

The envoy stole a longer look at Aiko, really looking over her face and clothing. She quirked an eyebrow at them but did not deign to speak. If they were meant to talk, Madara would have introduced them and elaborated on her origin.

It didn’t really matter. They probably knew who she was. She didn’t have a conventional Fire Country look about her.

‘They wanted this.’ Aiko didn’t have to look back at Madara to re-contextualize his choice of formal, modest clothing. ‘Somehow, my being present for this is beneficial to them.’

Well. If Aiko was really planning to settle here, she might be angry about that and want to know the play. As it was, she had to hide her amusement that the Uchiha wanted to be seen with her. It was kind of cute, if she was honest.

The envoy left. Another one came half an hour later. Aiko found that was the end of her patience for being a prop and excused herself. She came home to the shrine to find that her ‘nice lady visitor’ had returned to stare daggers into her. Aiko paused mid step before adjusting. “Hello, Mayumi-san,” she said.

Mayumi Izuzuka crossed her arms, showing off bulging arm muscles. “You seem to have fallen into poor company.” She was supremely unamused.

Aiko shrugged off the insult. “Yes, but it’s my role in society to uplift the pathetic,” she shot back airily. She took a moment to enjoy how Madara would react to that characterization of his clan. “Come in, then, if you’re here to caution me.”