Konoha is in shambles.
Leah doesn't bother trying to see how badly everything has been affected. That isn't her job, or her interest. It's been long enough that the village has somewhat recovered, but not long enough for everything to run smoothly again. She doesn't think there's going to be any dancing for her tonight.
But she might be able to find a milkshake.
"Excuse me," She flags down a young shinobi that passes her by, smiling. "Could you perhaps direct me towards Michiko's Café?"
"Yosh!" The teenager says, pumping a fist. He looks exhausted, but he's still exuding an absurd amount of energy. "I shall lead you there!"
"That's very kind of you." Leah doesn't know who this child is. She doesn't quite care, either, beyond finding him slightly irritating already.
"I am Maito Gai," The boy tells her as they walk along. "What is your name, most beautiful flower?"
Alright, so he's maybe a little charming. "I am Leah of Hel."
The word means nothing to them, of course. Hel is a proper name, and the Allspeak does not translate it to anything. For all the boy knows, it's simply an oddly named village that is too small for him to have heard of before.
"That is not a common name, Leah-san." The boy tells her, as though importing some great secret. "Are you from very far away?"
"You could say that." In more ways than one, really. She doesn't offer any more information, though partway through the town, she does pause.
"Leah-san?"
"Is there anywhere I might exchange gold for money?" She asks. She'd rather not use magic to get what she wants in places she intends to return to. She does, however, have quite a lot of gold and other tradeable goods. The land that Hel is built on is rich with resources, gold among them. It's not quite as much as she would have had in the Hel of her home, but she hasn't had thousands of years to build up her wealth here.
(There are a handful of countries here that bury their dead with coins in the mouth as the Greeks had. She collects those, but the practice is a rare thing.)
(She supposes she could go about directly collecting souls and looting their corpses. It did sound rather fun.)
"Ano…" Gai rolls his eyes heavenwards and puts a finger to his chin. "There is a jewelry store in a few blocks that might buy it?"
"That will do. I have none of the local currency, but gold tends to keep its value from one country to the next." Not every country, of course, but it is a decent standard on the whole.
"Yosh! Follow me!"
Exchanging the gold she's brought is enough for a sizable wad of bills (Ryo, apparently), and she lets Gai cheerily lead her away to the small café where she can finally get a milkshake again.
It tastes very, very good.
(Gai leaves, because he does have his duties. He promises to help her should she need him again, though he offers no way to contact him.)
(It's a nice thought, anyway.)
It takes maybe fifteen minutes after she's sat down for Mikoto to find her. She isn't sure if she should be impressed or not. On the one hand, she doesn't have a massively terrifying reputation and they don't have mobile phones, so of course they wouldn't react to her as quickly as the people of Midgard.
On the other hand, they are supposed to be ninjas.
"Leah-san." The woman says. There are deep circles under her eyes.
"Mikoto, right?" Leah tilts her head, and swirls the contents of her half-empty glass with her straw. "Take a seat."
She does, if stiffly. "The Hokage is interested in you, now. We've no records of anyone fitting your profile."
"I'm not surprised." Leah takes a sip of her milkshake and doesn't continue.
"You aren't going to elaborate?" Mikoto doesn't seem surprised.
"Ask your questions. I'll answer if I feel like it." Playing about with the humans might be interesting for a while.
Mikoto leans forward to prop herself up on the table. "What were you doing the night of the Kyuubi attack?"
"Watching."
"Why?"
"There were rather a lot of people dying. I was intrigued."
"Some chuunin tried to get you away from the destruction, but you refused. Why?"
"I wanted to keep watching."
"You weren't afraid of being hurt?"
"Not at all."
"Why?"
Leah smiles and goes back to her milkshake without answering.
Mikoto leans back in her seat, arms crossed. After about thirty seconds of Leah's amused smile and her own frustration, Mikoto flags down a waiter and orders her own milkshake.
Leah's smile brightens. Good, time to have more milkshakes. Well, no, one is enough for her for now, but she is a god and they do tend to eat a lot. Also, if Mikoto buys a milkshake, then that means more revenue for the stand, which makes it likelier to stay open for the long-term, which means a dependable source of milkshakes in the future.
"You're dangerous." Mikoto observes.
"You could say that." Leah shrugs. She does have a lot of power, but she's not doing anything she shouldn't be with it.
"Do you have any plans that might damage Konoha?"
"No." Nothing she plans should affect the living.
"Might you damage it without planning to?" Oh, she is good. Very thorough.
"There's always a chance. That chance is very low for anything large, though. There are some interesting people here, and I'd hate to see them die before they came into their own." She isn't lying. She has enough power that, should something force her hand or irritate her enough, she might do something to hurt this village. If she spends enough time here, it's inevitable that she'll probably be responsible for a broken wall or ten, but she isn't planning it, and she doesn't really count that as a particularly large thing anyway.
Mikoto raises an eyebrow. "Really."
"Really truly." Leah gives her a solemn nod, just as Mikoto's milkshake arrives.
They sit in silence for a few more minutes, and Mikoto keeps giving Leah considering looks. Leah… well, it's a little annoying, but nothing she can't handle.
"Why did you bring me Naruto?" Mikoto asks, looking likes this is the real question she's been holding back. "Why did you know to bring him? Why did you know to come to me? Why did you tell me to bring him to the Sandaime?"
Leah considers that. It's an important question, from their point of view, and there are many ways in which she could tell the truth without telling the whole truth. "Kushina told me."
"When?"
"Before I brought him?"
"Before she died?"
Leah sends a raised eyebrow in Mikoto's direction, as though questioning her intelligence for asking such a question. Mikoto blushes and looks down at her milkshake, which makes it easier for Leah to hide the fact that she's kind of impressed. Most people don't figure it out that quickly, intentionally or not. It's better for Mikoto to not realize that, though. Not for a while.
"Did you know her well?" Mikoto asks after some more silence.
"Not at all." She's grown to know Kushina a little since then, of course, but on that day, they were strangers.
"So why did you do as she asked?"
"Respecting the wishes of a dying woman and helping an infant out of the warmth of my own heart isn't enough?" Leah splays a hand against her chest, a look of complete innocence on her face.
Mikoto blinks, her own expression blank. "Forgive me, but you don't seem the type."
Leah actually laughs at that. It's a new sound, comparatively. She doesn't genuinely laugh very often. Chuckle, maybe. "You'd be surprised. You're not wrong, though. I think I told you that I was interested in seeing what became of him, yes?"
Mikoto nods. "It's part of why I'm not convinced that you haven't got any ulterior motives here."
Leah shrugs. "That was about the gist of it. That boy is going to go on to do amazing things one day. Good or bad, I don't know, but I would not be surprised if he changed the course of history just by existing."
"And he can't do that if he dies as an infant." Mikoto summarizes. "What makes you so sure?"
"Call it a feeling." Because there is absolutely no way she's going to explain what it is that she can see. Mikoto doesn't seem happy with the answer.
"You're confident."
"For good reason."
"And secretive."
"No more than I need to be."
"You need to hide the truth?"
"You wouldn't believe it anyway."
"Mm." Mikoto taps her fingers against the table, obviously gearing up to say something else.
"Your milkshake is going to melt if you leave it alone much longer," Leah points out, with a smile that says I'm helping you.
(Loki was always a good example of how to irritate those around him while seeming like he wasn't doing it on purpose.)
(Granted, that was because he usually wasn't, but he was nonetheless a good example.)
Mikoto took a long sip of her milkshake, as though in defiance, and then said, with no hint of brainfreeze, "You confound me."
"I'll take that as a compliment."
"I've been ordered to bring you in to see the Hokage."
"I'm afraid that won't be possible."
"I thought you'd say that." Mikoto says with a sigh, and Leah tenses up, just the slightest bit.
Mikoto seems amused.
"I confess," Leah says when it becomes apparent that no one is about to spring out of the shadows in an attempt to knock her out and drag her to the tower by force, "That line is usually where someone springs a trap."
"I know."
"You haven't sprung a trap."
"I know."
Leah tilts her head, wondering just how the conversation turned around like this. "Why?"
"You're of an unknown skill level, but given that you were cloaked in a genjutsu the Sharingan cannot pierce, even several pairs at once, and that you were completely unafraid of the Kyuubi, you've been presumed quite dangerous." Mikoto informs her, sounding almost bored. Certainly quite lazy. The woman stirs her milkshake much like Leah did earlier, staring at the drink as opposed to the woman across the table. "The Hokage hasn't ordered us to fight you or bring you in by force, so for now I can just say that I tried to talk you into it and you refused. I've gotten enough information for the afternoon to not be a total loss, and may have set up a rapport with you. The Hokage would still like to speak with you, but I'm allowed to lapse in that duty if it means keeping myself alive."
"Really, now? I thought shinobi were meant to risk their lives." Leah waves over the waiter to take her glass and ask for a check.
"On risks that have a chance of paying off, that we have actual information on." Mikoto looks up and shrugs. Her eyes are blank and bland. "I'm a Jounin and a Clan Head's wife. I'm too useful and too connected to risk like that."
"Full of yourself and rather talkative." Leah observes, raising one brow.
"Aware of my station and only giving you information that could be found in any Bingo Book." Mikoto counters.
"I suppose." Leah leafs through her wad of bills and takes out a few to pay. "I'll be taking my leave now, if you don't mind."
"Are you going to come back?" Nothing in Mikoto's voice or body betrays actual interest in the answer, but Leah's pretty sure a toddler could tell that she wanted that answer.
(That she wanted the answer to be yes, because there was still more information she needed.)
"Of course," Leah tilts her head and clasps her hands behind her back. "Where else would I find such good milkshakes?"
She turns and steps through a crack between one panel and the next, before Mikoto can utter a word.
o.o.o.o.o
Next Time: She really can't figure it out.
o.o.o.o.o
A/N: I have no idea where I'm going with his. Mikoto was not supposed to be a thing.
And yet.
ALSO, I feel like I should inform you all that Leah's thing for milkshakes is canon. She's rather fond of them.