It would have been really fucking cool to use Hiraishin seals to bring objects to her instead of traveling to objects. Aiko kept that thought in mind, and not how phenomenally the experiment had failed.
'Fuck if I know why I ended up where I did. Fucking random. Shouldn't I have ended up near a seal?'
There was exactly no chance that Aiko had ever left a seal in Mizugakure.
"Bloodline user!"
Especially not, you know, in the reign of Yagura. Who was giving her an unpleasant look, and leaping backwards as his guards moved forward with blood in their eyes.
At least it wasn't her first time travel mishap. She quickly focused on the important part.
"I was not!" Aiko retorted, ducking under a machete that should have taken off her head. It made a slicing sound when it passed over.
Unfair. What kind of idiot assumed a bloodline was responsible when someone appeared out of the shadows-
Oh. Shit.
She cheesed it, sprinting past the surprised shouts and reflexive projectiles. Aiko went up a building face, scorching the stone facing and accidentally blowing chips off with too much chakra. At least three Mist-nin followed with more grace.
'Did I just start the Bloodline Purge?' she wondered in the part of her head that wasn't going 'oh shit oh shit oh shit when the hell am I?' because history had never been her strong suit.
That would be embarrassing. But at least it wasn't boring…
Luckily or not, a few days later Aiko managed to track down a newspaper that confirmed she should find a textbook when she went home.
'So how long do I have to wait until Mei-nee-chan kills Yagura and I can have a friend with an important hat?'
Ugh. Aiko turned the newspaper to the front page to glare accusatively at the date again. The man selling the papers cleared his throat.
"Have a cold?" she asked, not really caring.
'I'm eleven at this point. Or…' Aiko looked down to confirm that her body was very much that of an adult, as it should be. 'Well. One of me is eleven.'
It'd be a while until that shitty situation was resolved in Mizu. Not that it was like, Aiko's problem or anything. She didn't care.
Aiko scowled, crumpling the newspaper in disgust and stomping off.
Even in her short-circuited confusion, Aiko had had enough sense to travel west. She'd lost her pursuers when she'd vaulted over the village wall and blown up a cart full of goji berries. She had only felt a little sorry for the tradesperson she'd probably bankrupted, because it had been pretty funny.
She'd had to switch to traveling over the water after only an hour of running after losing her pursuers, at which point she'd relaxed the pace down to a ground-eating lope. Island nations were funny that way. Nothing like Konoha.
'Is that where I should be going?'
Aiko sighed and ran her hands through her hair, fingers catching first on a knot and then the tangled mess that had been a braid.
First of all, she should find somewhere to stay for the night and get cleaned up. She was attracting sideways looks. But she didn't have a change of clothes, damnit, and what she was wearing would not last well through repeated wear.
But come on, it was normal to do things like seal experimentation in one's pajamas. If it had worked, she would probably have at most endured the awkwardness of bringing Yamato to her kitchen along with the kunai in his possession. Instead, it had been like… like her sense of her seals had caught, stuttered, and then re-focused on nothing that she recognized. Like she was suddenly on the wrong radio frequency, tuning into someone else's conversation.
Instead, Aiko was wandering the business district of a smallish city two islands away from the capital of Mizugakure at twilight in puppy-patterned shorts and a wide-strapped tank top. At least she had real sandals on; through they were leather-bottomed strappy affairs and not shinobi grade equipment. She started to keep an eye out for a hotel to spend the night.
Wait. She didn't have any money with her.
Well, she could just go home and-
She couldn't. Not really. Her gut churned. At eleven, she was an unfriendly Chuunin with more arrogance than experience. Okay, even if she got past village security, and the Hokage believed her (okay, he probably would, since they had gone through this time travel thing before), what was she expecting? Who was going to leap to help her? Jiraiya could probably help her figure out what she'd done, but he wasn't in Konoha.
Figuring out what she'd done wouldn't get her back home, though. It might not even be possible. She couldn't sense her seals at all. Was she going to have to live out the next nine years until she was back where she was supposed to be?
That didn't quite make sense. She couldn't resume her own life, because she would already be living it.
'So… do I need to find a new life and live it?' Aiko wondered. 'Just… do whatever feels right and will keep me amused?'
Terrifying. Annoying. Also interesting.
The worst part was that no one knew who she was, and her hard-earned reputation was gone. The best part was that no one knew who she was, and she could do whatever the hell she wanted with no consequences whatsoever. Who was going to stop her, Tsunade?
She stopped smiling, because the expression had grown so wide that all her teeth were showing and a woman had just jerked her child out of Aiko's path with wide, appalled eyes.
'You know what would be really funny?'
Yes. Yes, she really did. Aiko took a moment to think it through, coming up with the vague notion of baffling and tormenting people she didn't like. If she went cross-continental and set up a skeleton of Hiraishin tags, it'd be a lot safer. She plotted out the easiest route to cover absentmindedly, jiggling open a third-floor hotel window and hoisting herself in. She showered first, using all the complimentary shampoo and conditioner. Aiko wrinkled her nose, but laid out the same outfit for the next day, and crawled into bed.
'Now that I know my tags are at risk if Obito grabs me through kamui, I just won't let that happen. If he moves toward me, I'll just up and go. It's not like he'll know who I am, or have the same interest in me.'
Aiko woke up in the dead of the night to go shopping. Whatever city she was in had a vibrant nightlife, but she actually seemed less out of place than she had during the day. Smiling, Aiko nodded at a group of drunks stumbling down the street.
'I should get more changes than I think I'll need. Nothing I can buy here will be the industrial, reinforced materials that I'm used to in Konoha.'
That didn't bother her, to be honest. That was what she'd made do with when she was running with Obito, and it wasn't like armor was integral to her fighting style.
When she found a likely looking boutique, Aiko slipped around to the alley and forced the back door open. The clothes she found were a little off-putting, truth be told. Civilian fashion in Mist nine years back had apparently tended toward pastels and very low necklines, cut in dramatic vees. They would look a lot better on soft, curvy civilian women than they would on her. She frowned at them. After a little digging, she found a less unnlikely blue top with a silvery modesty panel, and paired it with a green knee-length skirt. She changed right there on the sales floor, eagerly dropping her day-old pajamas. Aiko walked away from the dirty clothes, keeping an eye out for the next item on her list. She found a reasonably secure and chic pink backpack- a tiny purse sized thing with spindly straps, but at least it wouldn't flap around like a purse would when she ran.
At the counter, she found a pad of stationary and a pen. She took the whole thing, scribbling storage seals on the first pages and picking out spare outfits to tuck away. Her pajamas went in too, as did all but one of a packet of headbands and some scrunchies. Aiko took a moment to make a pouty face at her reflection on a mirror, taking care to make sure her hair fell nicely around her new accessory.
There was absolutely nothing useful in terms of footwear, unfortunately. Her sandals were drastically out of place, so she packed up and went on search of another, more promising store.
When she thought she had enough equipment (and it was a damn shame that she didn't have a single weapon of any sort, how annoying) Aiko hefted her little bag and the notepad inside. She set out, taking care to brush not one but three seals into the coastal city she'd ended up in. It seemed like a pretty safe little hideout, truth be told. Then she left over the water, headed for the mainland. She came ashore in Wave Country.
'Isn't this nostalgic?' Aiko tilted her head, slowing to a walk as she crossed a bridge. She was pulling her hair up into something neater to cope with the humidity and heat when she noticed the first thin, hungry-eyed civilian.
That was what she remembered. Hmm. Yes, she was only about a year away from when her team would swing by and kill Gato, wasn't she? He must be in his heyday. Curious, Aiko made a detour for the little town she remembered, bending to scoop up a rock, plant a seal on it, and then toss it into the underbrush.
The civilians were already starving, thin and desperate under the despotic reign of someone with no concept of ensuring a capable workforce. Aiko frowned, wondering why Gato was so incompetent. There wasn't really any point to brow-beating the civilians like this. If he was greedy, why wasn't he attempting to profit off of this? He was already the only game in town. He could offer jobs with low pay, stifle the competition, especially since there was currently no easy connection to the mainland, and make a helluva lot of money. He didn't even have to be hated to do it.
'I'll never understand some people.' Contemplative, Aiko perched on a tree and swung her legs. The town woke sluggishly. A few people kept chickens, and they were up at a decent time to take care of the poultry. Fishermen and women headed out next, craggy and sun-burnt people with scarred hands. And… that was it? She frowned. There should be kids heading to school, businesses opening, that kind of thing. But there just wasn't.
Boo. Maybe she should do something.
On the other hand, she wasn't interested in heroics, and they'd be saved in a year anyway. But jeeze, it seemed kind of bitchy to leave them to suffer for so long. Aiko frowned, trying to pick out why she was so reluctant to interfere. It wasn't like she cared about making sure the mission went as planned when her team came out, so that wasn't it. Was it? Not exactly.
'That's the first time they're really out of Konoha- the only location I can reasonably confirm. If I leave this situation fundamentally unchanged, that'll be my first opportunity to see familiar faces from Konoha.'
And maybe, if she were totally honest, she was a little interested in being scouted by Konoha. She wasn't a missing nin on anyone's books, so she wasn't a criminal. Her stomach rumbled, but she ignored it. She'd stolen from other towns, but she wouldn't take from already starving mouths here.
She could just be a wandering shinobi- someone who'd picked up their trade from a village outsider. It was no crime to be taught by a missing nin, or a parent.
'And Konoha likes Uzumaki. I mean. The Sandaime just scooped Karin up like she was an extra tomato at the market or something.'
She felt cheered, for a moment. Then she realized-
'I don't actually have the traditional Uzumaki looks.'
Okay. When she stood between Naruto and Karin, it was obvious that she belonged. But on her own? Uzumaki wouldn't be the first thought.
Her hair was red, but not the iconic shade. Her face was too pointy to be the feminine ideal, yeah, but her features tended more toward the sharp eyes, brows, and thin lips of her dad and not the wide cheeks, pointed chin, and sharp-tipped nose of her mom.
'Well. I'm close enough. I have chakra chains and I know a lot of fuinjutsu. Anyone who's familiar with Uzumaki traits would put that together.'
That sounded like another reason to wait for team seven. Uzushiogakure had fallen long enough ago that there weren't many active ninja left from its heyday. Like, Tsunade was a bit young to have had much interaction, and that was a bad sign. But Kakashi had known Kushina. He'd clue in, if she was obvious enough.
'I don't know if it's a reason or a pretense, but that's what I'm going with.'
That did leave Aiko with plenty of time to kill. Sort of.
'How do I know when we're about to come? I'm not going to hang out and wait for a year.'
Not in this dingy little backwater, anyway. Besides, she had plans. She had people to pretend to meet for the first time, people to kill, and, uh, people to confuse. She was starting to notice a theme. Hmm.
'Is it possible that I'm just a really rude person?'
Maybe. Oh well. She dismissed the thought for more important matters.
'Zabuza. He's a big enough name that word gets around. If I keep my ear to the ground and pay attention to what he's doing, I can be reasonably certain of the timing. I'll just wait for him to move into Wave to work for Gato.'
Feeling cheered, Aiko added several stops to her cross-continental tour to check for information. She stopped in disreputable bars, a harbor with a significant smuggling presence, and one opium den that she was familiar with from her time running illicit materials.
It turned out that it was hard to coast on the reputation of her dangerous terrorist organization whilst
A. the terrorist organization was currently obscure to the point of irrelevance B. she was not a member of the terrorist organization anyway
"Please let me see your books?" Aiko tried, tilting her head to the side.
The information broker looked unimpressed, crossing enormous tattooed arms. "Smiling isn't going to work. Flirting isn't going to work. Violence isn't going to work. If you don't have the cash, you'd better either leave or just kill me now." His expression dared her to try.
Sullen, Aiko held up a finger to indicate one moment. "I'll be back."
"Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out." He picked his romance novel back up.
'Information extracted through torture is the least reliable,' Aiko reminded herself. Her hand curled into a fist. Instead of leaving, she exited the sideroom into the bar area, taking a moment to primp. She pinched her cheeks and lips. She took down her ponytail and ran her hands through her hair. Then she plastered a glassy, half-drunk-and-happy-about-it expression on her face and sauntered into the bar.
She scanned the room. Forty-two people, one drug deal, seven couples, one group of three who weren't friends, and-
One man eying her up from behind a nearly empty glass with some dark liquid nestled in ice.
Aiko made direct eye contact, raised an eyebrow, and indicated the bathroom with about the level of subtlety one might expect from drunks.
There was a moment of, 'Cool, really?' before the dark-haired stranger excused himself from his friends and started towards the restrooms, glancing at her questioningly. Aiko gave a huge, visible sigh, and walked into the men's restroom, fully expecting him to follow. She closed her eyes, focusing just enough to force her eyes to filter to the Rinnegan.
When her new friend opened the door, Aiko immediately whammied him with what was probably an unsafe amount of chakra and the compulsion to sleep. He dropped like a fish. Like, physically dropped.
'I always forget that part.'
Aiko lunged to break his fall, and wished she'd waited a second longer to jump the guy, because the door caught on the poor chump's foot. She wheezed, painstakingly dragging her victim out of the way. The door shut sheepishly, cutting off the ambient noise of conversation and distant radio programming.
His wallet was in his back pocket. Aiko picked out what she needed and fished the pen out of her bag to scribble an apologetic face on the back of a receipt. Before leaving, she propped the poor civilian up against a clean-ish wall and hid his wallet in his shoe. Getting robbed once was probably enough.
'The stealing is getting old. Besides, it's sloppy procedure to leave a constant trail like that. People talk.'
With that in mind, Aiko left a meeting with the now pliant-if-not-pleasant information broker with the knowledge that Zabuza had last been seen in Grass and the additional tidbit rumor of a nearby client who could use a hand with something he'd rather not approach a shinobi village for. She felt better with some good, honest work on the radar.
Well. You know. As honest as she felt like being. Aiko didn't give it too much thought, because serving as some rich bratling's inconspicuous guard paid pretty well and she only had to step in occasionally when her employer's drunk kid insulted someone bigger. Besides, the gig came with all the knives she could pocket from the jumpy genin washout who was working as the partygirl's other escort. Aiko needed them more than he did anyway. He was a genin working outside the village system, for crap's sake. He wasn't going to last the year.
'Maybe that means he needs the weapons more than I do?'
Well. She could use them better, anyway. Aiko ended the mission with money in her pocket, four kunai and an increasingly paranoid, twitchy coworker.
He stayed.
Aiko considered leaving without saying anything. It wasn't really her business. But they hadn't been a bad team- he looked like hired muscle and drew the attention, while she looked like another vapid rich kid slumming and hit the people who were still looking suspiciously at the genin. It wasn't a bad system, although it was one in which he was tragically disposable if his partner didn't care to watch his back.
'It is not going to be long before he runs into someone he can't handle. He looks big and scary, but he's just a baby, really.'
"You should probably get out while you're ahead," Aiko commented as she counted up her pay notes. "You're not cut out for this." The genin stood abruptly and walked out without comment.
'Fine. I tried.'
The next jobs she picked up were head-hunting gigs. They paid without any questions and she didn't risk making any friends.
Months passed in that way. Aiko slipped around the cracks of human refuse, slumming at the bottom of the barrel and taking missions that were advertised as better for a team. There was increased risk and hard nights without sleep, but she made bank by pocketing pay meant for more people. She saved up a fair bit of money.
It was… Thrilling and satisfying, actually. But lonely, yeah. She tried summoning her dogs- it didn't work. She could summon other animals, but not the ones she knew and cared about it. That was a harder blow than the loss of her Konoha citizenship, truth be told. She could probably go back if she really wanted to, and worm her way into the lives of people she might eventually miss. But if Mitsuo and Hōseki weren't answering her call, it meant that they were unable to.
They were never going to be able to.
Melancholy, Aiko spent far too much money in a bar that night. Nothing cheered her up- not the alcohol, not fleecing civilians at dart games, and not throwing an offended patron through a window when she became increasingly buzzed and forget to downplay her aim.
'I haven't heard anything about Zabuza in a while,' Aiko mused. 'I'll treat myself. Do something fun. Just be a real shithead. Then I'll check in on him.'
Still tipsy, she checked into a dive hotel for the night and tried to judge her location on the decent map of Hiraishin tags she'd made in the time she'd been stranded.
She determined that her geographical abilities were lacking enough that she would not attempt to relocate herself to a safehouse she hadn't been to in years while buzzed.
Sober, the next morning, on the other hand, Aiko seamlessly tugged on reality. It deposited her in the attic of the Akatsuki safehouse she'd been aiming for.
Aiko shrugged. Close enough. She jogged down the stairs and idly held up a hand in greeting when she passed by an open bedroom door. "Yo."
Iwa no Deidara grunted in response. By the time he'd jerked his head back up with a, "Wait, what?" Aiko was stepping into the kitchen in search of liquids that would chase off her hangover.
"Morning." Aiko nodded, keeping her tone bored.
Kisame opened his mouth and let coffee splash onto the table. He gave her a bewildered look.
'More cautious than I thought. He's probably wondering who brought me, and if Pein will kill him for attacking me. For all he knows, I'm a new hire, or someone from management.'
"Need a rag?" Still pretending that she belonged there, Aiko pulled open the top drawer, rolled her eyes at the measuring cups inside, and then tried another drawer down. The ex-Mist nin accepted the cloth she tossed.
'Don't smile. Don't. It'll undermine what I have going on here.'
She could feel her lips twitch. It was okay. She was turned away enough that he couldn't see it. Aiko controlled her expression and pulled down a teacup and saucer. When she turned around, she was all business. "Is there anything half-decent?"
The Mist Nuke-nin nodded cautiously, jerking his shoulder toward a cupboard. "I'd avoid the ocha. It's old. The rest is fine."
Uchiha Itachi wandered into the kitchen, made himself a bowl of green tea ice cream, and left without acknowledging her presence. It took half an hour for Pein to notice the intrusion, or to decide to deal with it. When the most familiar Path strode into the kitchen, Aiko was in the middle of checking the math in Kisame's checkbook.
"Kunoichi."
Aiko waved him off. "Just a minute," she said distractedly. "Thanks."
Inconspicuously, Kisame pushed his chair away from hers. He didn't reach out to pull away his checks, though.
"I do not repeat myself." Pein intoned darkly.
'Oh god, this is too easy.'
She cupped a hand to her ear. "Sorry, what?" Aiko mimed confusion. "I didn't hear that."
"I do not-" Pein cut his automatic response off, giving her a downright vicious glare.
'Moron.'
Aiko leapt across the table and tackled Pein to the ground.
Or, like, that was the idea. Instead she smacked into him with about the result she'd expect from charging a wall. The teacup in her hand even shattered from the collision, leaving her holding onto a curved shard the length of her bent finger. Because she was in fact a kunoichi and not a professional wrestler, Aiko flipped away and flung her kunai. They tik-tik-tik-tikt into the walls as he dodged them, moving all the way around her.
Which was, you know, fine. Because she now had two kunai embedded in the east wall, one in the south, and one in the west wall, and they were all Hiraishin.
Pein really literally did not see her coming. She appeared behind him, already jabbing her piece of broken glass forward and up through his brain stem.
'It's not really him anyway.' Aiko stepped back hastily to avoid the falling body; because Pein's favorite corpse to puppet around was super heavy with metal and what was probably ten years of slow rot.
The actual Pein was probably blinking somewhere from the sudden loss of sight and kicking at his wheelchair.
'I bet he's so confused.'
She cackled, tossing her head back and letting her blood-stained china fall from her hand.
"Serves you right, asshole," Aiko wheezed. "With your creepy jutsu and shit." She controlled herself enough to bend and wiggle out one of the metal piercings powering the corpse. She was kinda curious about how that worked. It wasn't really her style to be so far removed from a fight (that seemed like it would take the fun out of things) but it never hurt to pick up a technique.
Kisame cleared his throat just as she tucked the jewelry into her bra for safekeeping. Aiko turned around to see that he was holding out a clean teacup with a suspiciously neutral expression.
"Thank you." She took it. She let him pour her a new cup.
'Well, he did come from Mist. I think succession does traditionally go that way.'
"What now?" Hoshigaki Kisame was completely unfazed. Perhaps he could be described as politely interested, but that would be a stretch.
Aiko shrugged. The answer was obvious. 'Pein will regroup and come charging in here, a lot more prepared this time, at which point I will get the hell out of town.'
Of course, she knew that, and Konan would know that, but no one else would. It wasn't like Pein went around explaining the fundaments of his techniques and letting the implied weaknesses hang in the air.
"I'm taking command of this boyband," Aiko decided, spinning her now empty cup around the table with a finger. "You will be the cool one. Kakuzu-kun can be the one with a beard; Deidara-san is the eye candy, and Konan-chan is our manager. Oro- is Orochimaru here? If so, he's our androgynous, hypnotically dangerous backup singer." She pretended to think, tapping at her chin. "And Itachi-kun can just go home and think about his life choices."
Kisame eyed her up for a long moment. He shrugged without offering comment.
There was a snigger. "I am the cute one," Iwa no Deidara agreed from the door, delighted. He stepped over Pein's feet and pulled out a chair with an obnoxious scraping sound. "So who the hell are you, yeah?"
"Aiko, pleased to meet you." She favored him with a nod. Both men stiffened a little when she clapped her hands as loudly as possible. She injected seriousness into her tone. "Okay! So. The actual plan." They waited. She noted that Uchiha Itachi and Akasuna no Sasori were listening from another room. "You will play the biwa," Aiko decided, pointing at Kisame with her whole hand. He lifted an eyebrow. "Deidara-san, you're on percussion. I'm talking controlled explosions, in the crowd, laying down the beat."
The blonde leaned forward, enraptured. Someone, probably Sasori, made a disgusted sound from the back of their throat. Kisame just shrugged, not protesting or agreeing.
And Pein was moving toward her position fast, angry and covering a lot of ground. Aiko made one last brilliant attempt to baffle them with bullshit, forcing her body language to remain loose and untroubled as she got up to rinse out her cup. "Anyway, eat your vegetables and look both ways before you cross the street. Tell Konan that I'm sorry about her shoes when you see her." She probably cut off her last word, using Hiraishin to flee the country when Pein blew through the front wall.