"Is this seat taken?" Sasuke smirked coyly at the woman.
"It is now," She smirked back, motioning for him to sit down, brushing a blonde strand out of her eyes.
"I presume you have a name?" He raised his champagne glass, taking a sip. Honestly, Sasuke was just trying to look hot. That was apparently a great information-gathering tactic. She tilted her head and chuckled.
"Who's asking?" He suppressed his rising irritation. Evidently, she was a very cautious woman.
"Akio," he lied seamlessly, waiting for her name, which would no doubt also be a lie. The woman seemed amused, regarding him with lively brown eyes. She knew he lied.
"Kaede," an obvious lie as well, probably in response to his.
And Sasuke was impatient already. He could keep up the secrecy and the deceptive, elusive image, but he concluded that 'Kaede' was too sly to con for information anyway. He leant into her ear, which she surprisingly let him do, and whispered.
"Let's cut the crap." She kept up a taut smile.
"I'm here on a scouting mission. You?" Her intense eyes bore into his, scouring them for answers.
"Me too," he settled on. It wasn't a lie. He simply omitted one detail: that the mission was self-assigned.
"So, Akio," she emphasised his fake name, "I'd like to know why you approached me." 'Kaede' kept her relaxed, easygoing smile. It wasn't a question, but an implicit command.
"Well, your beauty caught my eye," he deflected it. Flattery was a powerful weapon. Sasuke had confidence that she wouldn't detect his lie, because it wasn't a total lie. She was stunning, which made him all the more suspicious.
Kaede's fingers drummed the wooden table rhythmically. Her rose pink nails were long in a charming way.
"Do you want to trade information?" She met his eyes. It was a genuine question. Sasuke didn't have to ponder. It would be stupid not to accept. Clearly, this woman acquired more information than he was bothered to. Plus, he had a rather enticing piece of information to offer.
"You first," he said. She shook her head.
"Janken?" He acquiesced, readying his clenched fist. Kaede's fist met his. They played. She won.
"Spill," She smiled victoriously, resting her head in her palm. Sasuke restrained a flurry of curse words.
"Alright," he begun, "I'm the one who killed the leaders of Ame." Her eyes hardened. She leant forward, reluctantly reaching two fingers towards his neck. Tensely, he let her. She felt his pulse.
"You're either an excellent liar or telling the truth," she muttered. Then she smiled again.
"Cool. My turn," she cleared her throat.
"Well, you fucked up. Ame is leaderless, probably about to fall into anarchy, if this is any implication," she gestured to their surroundings, "but this ninja organisation is looking to take over." Sasuke steeled his nerves.
He didn't care about Ame, but if it was taken over by another evil ninja organisation (how reminiscent), that would temporarily economically stunt the other villages that depended and traded with Ame. It wasn't a priority, but preventing the takeover could be useful. Since he was already here, he might as well.
"Is there anyone that could lead?" He inquired. Kaede shrugged.
"There probably is. I'm sure it's nobody competent." She rose gracefully from her seat, strutting off.
"Where are you going?" Sasuke yelled at her. She half turned around.
"To bash said organisation's heads in." She smirked, winking at him.
"Unless you wanna come along?" He stared at her, bit his lip in frustration, and hurried after her.
She led him somewhere. Perhaps he should've wondered whether this was a trap or not, but he sensed her genuinity, despite lying about something as basic as a name. He briefly decided against activating his Sharingan to find out for sure. It was too recognisable, marking him as a Konoha ninja, whereas he knew next to nothing about this woman except that she was a Jinchuuriki. Her eyes seemed too sharp to not catch the Sharingan this time. She couldn't be from Iwa, which had two male Jinchuuriki.
Kaede halted.
"It's underground," she whispered, barging into some store and heading for the stairway, closely followed by him. It was oddly like the Tsuchikage's underground office.
"How many ninja are there?" He asked. She chuckled, her brown eyes glimmering in amusement. Sasuke couldn't find the humour in the situation.
"A few hundred, give or take." The stairway stopped, and there was a gaping hole instead of stairs. She dove for it.
They snuck around the base, silently slitting some amateur ninja's throats, or decapitating them. Neither of them bothered with interrogation. All of the ninja were B-rank or higher. Some of the younger A-rank ones would've reached S-rank had Sasuke not snuffed their lives out. Every kill came with an abundance of guilt, which he quenched with the thought that these ninja chose to join an evil organisation and therefore wrote their own fate.
Normally, he would've jumped at the opportunity to gauge Kaede's strength, but she didn't give him a single glimpse of what she could do. That was okay, because neither did he. Sasuke suppressed the urge to activate his Sharingan: a learned habit whenever he got into a fight. It was just taijutsu. The only thing he knew about her strength was that she was clearly on the S-rank spectrum, which made her respectable, and not at all trustworthy.
Neither of them trusted the other, but it was a fairly common practice to not kill an enemy on sight, sometimes even briefly coalescing with them, even being an entirely loyal ninja. The war was between villages, not the individuals. Engaging on sight only led to pointless casualties when both sides just wanted to escape with their lives.
Though, Kaede's loyalty to her village was questionable, given that she did temporarily team up with him, not to mention the usually tumultuous relationship Jinchuuriki had with their village. Meanwhile, Sasuke's loyalty was practically non-existent. If his clan wasn't there, he'd burn the whole place down for a few bucks.
As she so eloquently put it, the two of them 'bashed heads in'. Several hours passed, both of them sweaty, exhausted, but barely wounded, when they finally finished every single ninja off.
"Well, there goes the takeover," Kaede gulped down a bottle of water, offering it to Sasuke. He saw her open it, so it probably wasn't poisoned. He took a sip.
Their little mass murdering date was fun, if cruel and incredibly guilt-inducing. Killing people with a hot stranger wasn't entirely depressing. Kaede patted him on the back lightly, about to leave.
"Hang on," Sasuke spoke softly.
"I'll tell you my name if you tell me yours." She whistled, seeming to weigh the pros and cons.
"Yugito. Nii Yugito. I'm from Kumo." She smiled again, this time seeming a bit more genuine.
"Sasuke." He figured that she knew his allegiance and last name just going off his distinct, Uchiha-like appearance, hence her giving her full name and allegiance. That meant that she knew that he knew she was a Jinchuuriki.
Yugito seemed uneasy,
"We're technically enemies." She averted eye contact. Sasuke put his hands in his pockets coolly.
"And yet, you still decided to go off and kill people with me. That really screams loyalty." Yugito giggled, high-fiving him before Shunshining away.
Sasuke was being honest: she didn't seem too loyal. If Kumo treated their Jinchuuriki anything like how Konoha treated theirs, she'd be at the very least unwavering in her so-called loyalty. And he got this wonderful nagging feeling that Kumo was on the brink of losing their Jinchuuriki.
When he got back to Konoha, the first thing he did was take Obito out for dango and do some light training (though they disagreed on the definition of 'light'). Sasuke had to make sure that his little cousin wouldn't turn into a megalomaniac anytime soon.
It was only after that did Kushina approach him, beaming brightly. She had dragged him to a covert casino so they could discuss Danzo and his soon-to-be corpse.
"And I know I said I'd take care of it, but I figured you deserve your revenge." She gesticulated wildly all her possible plans, to which Sasuke paid rapt attention.
"Oh, and I invited someone." Sasuke's eyes widened. As if on cue, fucking Sayu sashays in and plops herself down, way too close to him.
"So, what'd I miss?" She flashed that psychotic grin of hers.
"You told her?!" He tried to restrain the shock and tightness in his voice.
"I figured it out, actually. Give me more credit than that," Sayu folded her arms, mock-pouting.
"Now, here's the plan," Sayu spoke. Sasuke buried his head in his hands. Now she was reciting the plan, and the worst thing was that it was actually an excellent plan.
She brandished a vial of some coloured substance.
"If it's poison, it's not going to work. The medical ninja will undoubtedly spot it and identify his death as murder." Sasuke narrowed his eyes, trying to find a way around it.
"Unless I'm the medical ninja," Sayu winked at him.
"Plus, it's indirect. It stops the heart beating, making it look like a heart attack. It's a modified version of what we used to kill the Daimyo back then, and it's very, very rare, because the poison dissolves when the victim is dead." She snapped her fingers in glee. His frustration with her lessened. She may be an annoying, frustrating, irritating nuisance, but she was also a bona fide genius.
"We commence the plan in a week," Kushina decided. Her grin was infectious.