Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or Highschool DxD. I make no profits writing about them.
(AN): tfw so bored you start reading your own fanfics
Sasuke woke to a pitch-black room with small fingers slowly combing through his hair, nails pleasantly dragging along his scalp. Physically it felt almost too good, warm tingles trailing after those nails and making his entire body buzz contently.
At least it was too dark for him to actually see anything without his Sharingan, otherwise he'd be forced to confront just how out and out awkward it was to be touched so intimately. His entire life since the Uchiha massacre had been an exercise in physical isolation and standoffishness. Breaking into the bubble was definitely something unusual that he would normally challenge.
But as long as he couldn't see anything, Sasuke could pretend that everything was perfectly normal and continue to enjoy it. "How long has it been?"
The combing halted in surprise for a heartbeat, then resumed its steady rhythm. "A day and a half." Koneko responded neutrally, shifting on the bed to perch cross-legged. "Nothing significant happened." She continued to run her fingers through Sasuke's hair for another minute before silently withdrawing.
Sasuke ruthlessly repressed the pang of disappoint that rippled through his stomach. He was hardly a child who needed a woman petting him while he laid around trying to sleep. It was best just to focus on what actually mattered rather than a weak craving for comfort. "I assume Naruto is busy playing dictator while Valerie is off stalking him."
A low chuckle of confirmation escaped the Rook, and Sasuke found his lips curling up. Naruto might practically be his brother, but that man's insistence on always doing the moral thing was fondly exasperating. As for Valerie, stalker was increasingly becoming an appropriate label for the girl.
There'd been an odd light in the dhampir's face lately, and Sasuke wondered if he'd have to be concerned about it further down the line. But for now at least it wasn't an issue, so he put it out of his mind to concentrate on the now.
"Can I at least get up?" Sasuke prodded, trailing his fingers over the hyper-soft sheets and pushing back the faint nausea the overpowering smell of lemon laundry detergent gave him. It was enough to give him a bit of a headache, but he didn't feel like he was going to pass out by any means. He was stronger than that.
The bed shifted again, and then like stars winking into existence the bright yellow irises of Koneko's eyes burned in the shadows. The nekomata must have been lazing around in the state between sleep and awareness herself, Sasuke realized, for him not to see her gaze before now.
"If you want." The dark rims of Koneko's pupils contracted slightly, and then she was moving without bothering to wait for his demand. Her small hands forcefully rolling Sasuke upright so that he stood swaying in the darkness. "The Hokage didn't order any bedrest."
Sasuke rolled his shoulders, searching for any kinks left behind by his day unconscious. "Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission?" He cracked his knuckles, watching as Koneko's sunlight stare floated back into his line of sight. "I had no idea you were such a rebel, Kitty Cat-chan."
"I just told you the truth. Your own delinquency or lack-thereof is on your shoulders." Koneko's gaze narrowed into impish yellow slits. "And considering your history as a felon, I would say there is nothing someone like me could do to restrain your sense of utter degeneracy."
Half-heartedly swiping through the darkness at her eyes, Sasuke smirked as Koneko's only visible feature retreated warily. "Be careful what you say, or it might come true."
"Resorting to violence against women?"
"You do realize that I'll repay every insult with interest?" Sasuke drawled, letting thin trickles of chakra flow back into his eyes now that he was satisfied he wasn't about to fall to pieces. The crimson of the Sharingan blazed, and his headache redoubled, but he could finally see with his own true eyes.
Quirking an eyebrow at the activation of his bloodline limit, Koneko shrugged and motioned towards the door with her chin. It was a soundless invitation to finally step out of the confines of his bedroom, even if they were both sporting pajamas and sleep-tousled hair. Without explanation she understood exactly what he wanted, and offered it without reservation.
The hunger to explore the world in a living body - finally feeling with all his senses after a month of deprivation - struck Sasuke, and without a word he slipped around the short form of his friend to pad towards the door. She followed close behind him, but Sasuke knew that she would.
Wood scraped against the soles of his bare feet and the palms of his hands as he shoved through the door and stumbled out into the hallway, but Sasuke didn't care. Even that faint irritation was its own form of pleasure, and he silently promised never to take his sense of touch for granted again.
Squinting down the empty corridor, Sasuke hummed. "What time is it?" Compared to Naruto he had a much less significant role in directing the functions of government, but he could still be accosted by some idiot bureaucrat if he wandered aimlessly. At that moment he just wanted some time to himself, perhaps out in the garden where he could breath in the rich scents of a dozen different species of flowers.
"Quarter to ten at night." Her answer was cool and smooth, but Koneko stared at Sasuke's back with heated sharp focus. It was an expression that spoke of her quiet regard, the unyielding kinship that lay beneath her undemonstrative façade. If Sasuke showed any signs of being overwhelmed, he had no doubt she'd try to muscle him back to his convalescence.
Pleased that the halls would be mostly empty, Sasuke made a direct beeline towards the nearest empty bedroom with a balcony. There were no pampered civilians around to titter at the barbarity of shinobi, and the Uchiha fully intended to take advantage of it.
Treading through a painfully bland room with a tan and white color scheme, Sasuke threw open the patio doors and vaulted over the railing. He landed in the grass two stories below with a rustle, and a silent thump let him know Koneko had followed him.
Cool grass slipped up between Sasuke's toes, slightly damp with moisture, and it was glorious.
"I didn't take you for a flower girl." Sasuke pointed out snidely, following the garden path and inhaling the slightly spicy aroma of a brace of Stargazer lilies. His headache intensified, and Sasuke knew he was pushing the boundaries of what he might be psychologically prepared to handle after a month of living in deprivation, but he pushed on. "But maybe you're less of a masculine tomboy than I thought."
Koneko lightly punched Sasuke in the lower back, and then shoved him to the side so she could walk alongside him. "There's nothing wrong with a woman enjoying flowers. However, it brings into question a man's sexuality when he does." She shot back cuttingly.
"Alright, you got me. My entire life has just been a Freudian attempt to repress my crazed cock lust and incestuous obsession with Naruto. I come out to the gardens to water them with my tears and moan in misery."
The amused splutter Koneko made prompted Sasuke to choke out his own laugh, and before he knew it they were howling with mirth. In fact, with more humor than the joke really called for. But Sasuke supposed they couldn't help it after a month of blood and iron. It was good just to unwind a little.
"Well in that case I'm sorry to say I'm going to have to break your heart again." Koneko sighed with mock sympathy after her laughter stopped. She pointed vaguely up towards the galleries that were lined around the eastern wall of the former daimyo's garden.
Following her motion with his eyes, Sasuke blinked once before shaking his head in disgust.
Standing in plain sight and totally absorbed with one another were Naruto and Valerie. In fact, they were dancing some half-assed waltz with enough enthusiasm that Sasuke wondered if they were even still sober.
Koneko tilted her head and regarded her friend with the blandest look she could muster. "Woe unto Uchiha Sasuke." Then she lay her hand across her forehead and mimed fainting with despair.
Clicking his tongue at the mockery, Sasuke tore a handful of sunflower petals off the nearest bush and threw them in Koneko's face. "At least they're not parking the beef bus in tuna town." He deadpanned, turning to a tactlessness that would have his mother in tears if she were still alive.
A look of absolute revulsion rippled across Koneko's face, and Sasuke smirked in victory. "I'm sorry, did I taint your poor virgin ears? It's okay, I suppose you had to find out sometime. You see Koneko, when a man and a woman love each other very much…"
Koneko just punched him in the kidney.
In the end, Naruto's cautious desire to remain in the shinobi world for another month proved prophetic.
Two and a half weeks after the bijuu had been hidden away in one of Kagura's dimensions, Naruto found that his days were growing less busy. Sasuke had forced the fealty of the major and minor powers for him. He was done haggling over the details of a twenty year plan to annex the various protectorates to Hi no Kuni with Shikamaru. And having set up circle after circle of curse mark bound underlings, he was reduced mostly to waiting and watching.
Which was pretty fucking monotonous, if he were entirely honest.
Sighing explosively, Naruto scratched his chest before popping the nearest sealed scroll open with a flick of his thumb. "Getting' pretty good at this one-hand thing." he muttered to himself, more to break the silence than anything. "Is it too much to ask that I get a damn radio or something in here?"
Brush strokes on rice paper were revealed to his eyes, and Naruto found himself squinting at the page with suspicion. Apparently the number of bandits roaming the countryside of Yuki no Kuni had exploded once he declared a hard limit for the number of troops each protectorate could maintain. Koyuki had decided to write him an overly friendly personal appeal to double her country's limit.
Pursing his lips, Naruto began to fumble around his desk for a calligraphy brush. "Thanks, but no thanks." He'd placed those limits in the puppet states for a reason – namely, to prevent any of them from being able to fight back against the Kage junta. True, the disarmament was only beginning, but the end result would leave all the other militaries on the continent pretty pathetic.
Besides, he hadn't heard any reports from his own sources that crime was actually increasing because of his new policies, so it was probably just a lie to delay the disarmament. Naruto wouldn't be surprised if Koyuki just thought he was that same naïve kid she knew thirty years ago. No doubt if he'd agreed he'd be getting all sorts of follow up letters from every halfwit from Suna to Kumo telling him all about the newest crime wave.
Naruto finally managed to find an ink-brush, and clicking in thought he wondered just how he could say he wasn't swallowing Koyuki's bullshit in a relatively polite way. In the end, before he could even set ink to paper, the blond was interrupted by a heavy knock at the door.
"It's open!"
The door handle rattled a few times before Shikamaru managed to get it open, slipping in sideways with both hands carrying trays of sandwiches. "Yo." He greeted, kicking the door back closed with a heel and then sauntering over towards Naruto. "I got a message you probably should take a look at, and I figured it was time for a break anyway."
"Well that sounds ominous." Naruto rolled his eyes and pushing Koyuki's letter away so he could take a bite of his ham and cheese sandwich without getting crumbs all in everything. "You make this?"
Wrinkling his nose at the unchewed food he could see, Shikamaru shook his head. "Don't talk with your mouth open. I'd rather not throw up all over the paperwork and have to do it over. And no, Chojuro did."
That made Naruto stop short, and his eyebrows climbed towards his hairline. "Chojuro did?" The dictator eyed the sandwich clutched in his hand suspiciously, as if it would sprout cockroach legs and start scuttling away. "And it's safe to eat?" It wasn't that Naruto thought Chojuro was a bad guy, but the clumsy goofball of his memories didn't exactly give the impression of culinary genius.
"It's a sandwich dumbass, not a five-course meal. And even if it was, Chojuro got pretty famous in the last couple of years for his cooking skills. So yes, it's fine to stuff down your gullet."
Naruto made a soft noise of comprehension. "Huh. The more you know." Then he shrugged and took another bite, making sure to swallow before speaking again. "Anyway, so what shitstorm came in today? I doubt you just decided to bring me a snack out of the goodness of your heart."
It was a bit callous to say, but true. They weren't friends anymore that would just do nice things for that reason alone, and the Naruto that Shikamaru knew from their boyhood was the kind of man that could be buttered up with good food.
Shikamaru didn't even bat an eyelash at the roundabout coldness, just wiping the strawberry jam away from his lips with a thumb. "Right well, the exact list of details is in here." He patted a thin scroll poking out from his vest pocket. "But the long and short of it is that a few of the old daimyo and the samurai have been putting feelers out for an assassination plot."
"Well it's about damn time." Naruto barked a laugh and held out his hand for the scroll. Everything had been shaping up so smoothly for him that it was almost unnerving. Any attempts at rebellion wouldn't go anywhere with both Naruto and Sasuke ready to crush them, but he'd still expected at least someone to try.
Yanking the scroll open with a yank, Naruto winced at the ripping sound the fragile paper made. "Whoops." He mumbled, folding back the tear and carefully smoothing it back into place. Once all the kanji were properly lined up, they spelt out a list of names and dates.
Well, it looked like they had some busy bees buzzing about. Most of the seventeen names were unfamiliar, but he recognized the family name of the old Hi no Kuni daimyo; and Koyuki had already been working her way up his shit list. "Where'd you get the info?"
Shikamaru slipped a cigarette between his lips and lit up, sucking a lungful of acrid smoke as his de facto boss scanned over the list. "A few different sources. The usual ANBU spies, some undercover double agents, that sort of thing. It's legitimate, if that's what you're worried about." The jounin answered, looking like some absurd dragon with white streamers puffing from his nostrils.
"Nah, I was just curious." While it was possible that Shikamaru was ballsy enough to try and trick Naruto with fake conspiracies, Naruto didn't really see the point of it. Shikamaru was also one of his curse seal branded bureaucrats, so it was against the man's own best interests to sabotage the next order. Destabilizing the new regime and causing a war would get the Nara killed off pretty quickly.
"So how do you want to handle it?"
Cocking an eyebrow at the other man, Naruto leaned back in his leather armchair and gave him a piercing look. "While I could figure something out, aren't you the strategist? If you didn't walk in here with at least ten different ways to deal with this, I'd eat my own socks."
Shikamaru snorted a chuckle, avoiding choking on his cigarette with the ease that came from long years of practice at the addicting habit. "Fair enough. I just didn't want you to feel like I was trying to pull your strings by speaking first."
The way his former friend spoke so plainly was refreshing compared to all the other simpering idiots that walked around on eggshells, and with a grin Naruto motioned for him to go on.
"Strategically, I believe the best choice would be to play a bit of a long game. Let these guys keep meeting up, gathering allies, et cetera. In half a year or so they'll have tempted the rats out of the woodwork, and we can just swoop in at the point and get them all in one sweep."
It was a good plan, Naruto had to admit. Very tactical. Just let the entire opposition gather themselves and then crush them all at once. There was just one fatal flaw, and that was that Naruto didn't plan to still be in this world in six months.
Give it another two weeks or so and he'd be gone. He'd already made the appropriate noises about not wanting to actually run anything, so it shouldn't be a shock once he stepped down with a vague promise of living out of the public eye while keeping an quiet eye on things.
So what to do? Naruto supposed that he could just tell Shikamaru to think up something else, or even send someone to find Sasuke so he could get his best friend's input. But that wasn't right – he couldn't just keep running to other people to make up for his weaknesses.
No, Naruto had to solve this on his own.
Silence hung in the office as Naruto stared off into the distance, deep in thought as he tried to look back on all the lessons he'd gotten from his new mother and new grandfather. Grayfia and Zeoticus had practically crammed politics down his throat in his second childhood.
"You should decide how much cruelty will be necessary and get it all over with at once."
"What?"
Clenching his jaw, Naruto hardened his heart. And when he refocused on his advisor his eyes were burning with a pitiless blue flame. "Round them all up. Then root through the prisons and find maybe forty or fifty of the worst scum you can get. Kid rapists or whatever. Once you get them all together we'll declare them as guilty of conspiracy to assassinate the Kage, and then publicly burn them alive."
(AN): 3100 here. Rolling through the 'last month' and tying up all the lose ends.
WTF Naruto – Kek, I'm not just making him pointlessly edgelord here. Just intensifying the pragmatism. He paraphrases Machiavelli's The Prince, which for those unfamiliar is one of the most influential works of political philosophy.
Machiavelli suggests it's better if a ruler performs one enormous act of cruelty than to perform a bunch of little ones. This secures an unsteady rule via fear before giving people time to forget the monstrosity and be won back through generosity, but not being decisive enough means having to constantly crack the whip - thus creating hatred and rebellion throughout the whole reign.
Technically the best choice (in realpolitik) would be to follow Shikamaru's plan (then execute brutally). Second best would be to arrest the current conspirators and their entire families (then execute brutally). But Naruto isn't willing to kill innocent children, so he substitutes with the scum of the earth and hopes people won't catch on to the ruse.
