DISCLAIMER: I don't own anything from the Naruto universe. This is my Mito, though.
Thinking (+ flashbacks, "Mito speaking to Kurama in her mindscape," etc.)
Emphasis
Bijuu, etc. speaking
Bijuu, etc. thinking
Her father didn't have to say anything to let Mito know how disappointed he was in her. She was disappointed in herself. The whole thing sucked even more because when the Hokage had first gone looking for her in Konoha, he realized that the few things of hers that she allowed to remain "safely" in their home were gone. Nothing that said "Mito" was in her apartment on the upper floor of The Residence.
- He said that he'd known she'd moved out when he saw that her pictures of her brother, mother, and team were missing.
Mito could tell that he was hurt and Tsunade was giving her a look of utter disbelief as she ran all kinds of tests on her.
The village was too busy for this shit - they had too many needs, especially right now after having suffered an attack, for Mito to be consuming resources as she had: Mito knew it. No one needed to say it but she almost wished that she'd be scolded or punished for what she'd pulled. Anyone else would be.
Once she was eventually alone with Shizune (who was still supposedly stuck in a hospital bed part-time,) Tsunade, and her father, Mito told them the truth that she could. "I was retrieving a dangerous scroll." That took the terrible trio's thunder and wind right out of their sails. –Or at least they became willing to listen to her bullshit.
Her father put down a security seal and Tsunade shut the curtain between her and Shizune so that they could have some real privacy. Both of them almost dreaded it - although Minato was grateful that his daughter was alive and back in Konoha. "What kind of scroll?"
Mito licked her lips and waited for Kurama to stop cursing her up and down so loudly. Considering that he wasn't doing anything to help her heal and still went on asshole tangents now and then, why the hell should she keep helping him even more? Wasn't eventually giving her life up to free him enough? –That was something to be done after she was able to keep her promise to her mother to finally look after Naruto; when he was grown and strong enough to stand on his own she'd give up her life.
And now that she was back, couldn't she "enjoy" a little of what life could offer someone like her?
- Not that Mito felt she deserved it. Shut up, idiot, she said to herself. Stop being such a moody bitch.
"A summoning scroll: one that's not meant to be in human hands. Something else extremely worrisome and strange came up, too."
Minato would press that more in a minute. "Why didn't you tell us first? And how did you know about this dangerous summoning scroll?"
Mito inhaled sharply but was honest about it. "The fox told me."
Minato closed his eyes. "You have GOT to stop listening to that fox!"
"That's a terrible attitude," Mito didn't mean to scold. "And I saw the scroll: he was telling the truth." Kurama just didn't tell her what it was ahead of time. "There was other stuff there, too, but it was destroyed, I would imagine."
"What kind of animal was the scroll associated with?"
"A fox," Mito said somewhat honestly.
"That's odd," Minato said, rubbing his fingers over his jaw and realizing that he needed to shave again. Mizukage-sama had talked him into going out to sample more of Konoha and its restaurants this evening. Mei-sama relished Ichirakus as anyone sane would but he'd heard grumbling from her entourage that he wasn't treating her with as much respect as he should be. Tonight they'd be going to a five-star steakhouse. He had wanted to take Mito, too, since Tsunade swore to him that Mito was in good health (but quite low on chakra, weak, and should remain guarded.)
Those Mist shinobis had seemed way too eager to see his beautiful daughter, however, plus she had gone off and disappeared on him again. "There's no recorded history of a fox summons; only legends." He looked at her more closely. Foxes were seen as too tricky and conniving to ally with.
Mito figured that he was trying to see whether or not she was being entirely truthful. "I'm destroying it."
That shut Kurama up.
"I thought you collected those things."
"I don't COLLECT them, I just happen to have a bunch I found in Uzushio." And a few others from elsewhere. He nodded, seeming to accept what she'd said, or he was doing so for now. "The other thing I mentioned was that I ran into a… person." That was not the right word for that thing, though.
"Who?"
"I have no idea. Humanoid, half-black, half-white; one gold eye and um… That's pretty much all I caught."
Minato couldn't help but begin to grin although he mostly suppressed it. "Did you say 'humanoid?'"
"When I sensed it, I thought it was an animal. Ah, and it was able to use Mokuton."
Minato's eyes bugged out of his head. "Another Mokuton user?! And you - you saw it as well as you did but it felt as if it were an animal? You didn't sense his or her chakra?" –That was a first, as far as he knew.
Mito tapped her lips, trying to remember exactly what she saw, but she knew exactly what she felt or did NOT feel, rather. "I did not. And I don't think the humanoid had genitals."
"Oh," Minato replied lamely as he tried to imagine what she might have seen. "It was naked?!"
"Um, no. It was wearing a plant." She rubbed her forehead, knowing that sounded idiotic.
"Like an… herbal loincloth?" Mito started laughing despite herself but he really didn't understand. "Please explain."
"I felt creeped out by the space I was in and there were seals here and there so that only made sense. This guy started talking after the Mokuton erupted from the floor, right? I thought it was Obito since it was obviously an attack but there was NOTHING - aside from the guy who completely startled me when he spoke. He was tarry-black on one side; white, very much like that material Obito's prosthetics are made up of on the other side: almost like reverse images and he had really eerie eyes. He - or it, rather - felt… menacing. Otherwise, he didn't feel like anything. It was wearing a big plant-like, stylized, or skirted aloe-vera thing over its ass. I could still see its asscrack."
Minato shook his head. Mito's reports could be entertaining despite how upset he was with her. "Can you draw me a picture? I'll look into it."
Mito nodded and got right to work, grabbing a pencil and pad of paper that was available in every hospital room. "Do you know anything about the spiders?"
"I don't like spiders."
Mito tried to cover her abrupt snicker with a cough - which wasn't that hard although it was painful. Her lungs, ribs, and muscles hurt - hell, her everything hurt and after cleaning up, (she had needed help simply to do that,) she felt like she had the muscle tone of a limp noodle. She had also forgotten that her mother had been the one to deal with spiders and bugs so long ago. "I haven't had a chance to give Shino a proper gift for making Chunin and was thinking the spider summoning scroll could be right up his wheel shed."
"Ah! Maybe," Minato replied. Looking over her shoulder, he watched, knowing he had certainly never seen the "humanoid" Mito was sketching before. "The spiders are said to be dangerous and can be used over vast distances. At the very least, they shouldn't hurt his kikachu, in theory."
"I'm more worried about a test any summons could have for him. If it's anything like what the cats ran with me…" She tapped her pencil as she leaned her head back and closed her eyes, trying to remember exactly what that black and white "man" had looked like; if there were details about the plant thing it was wearing that she could make note of.
Minato got up and stretched when Mito seemed lost in her own thoughts. "Warn him; maybe give the contract to Shino-kun in front of his father along with sharing your own experiences. Shibi or one of the Aburame elders may know more about the spiders. A summoning contract is a remarkable, precious, usually once-in-a-lifetime gift and if he chooses not to use it or to wait before he does, he can always pass it on." He stretched and couldn't help but smile softly when he soon realized his daughter was out cold.
He brought down the seals. "Tsunade?" The woman he'd requested whipped the privacy curtain open again. "Mito's out. You want to go to dinner with me and the Mist nins?" Tsunade wrinkled her nose. "It's free food? Excellent food!"
"I guess I can get behind that."
.
Mito could get behind free food, too - especially since her Genins were out on a mission with Shino leading this time.
How scary was that?
- Very scary.
She approached the steak house Shizune had told her about and immediately realized she was underdressed. Mito flashed back to her apartment so that she could change clothes and put on a little bit of makeup. She made clones, startled when only two of them popped up to give her a hand with her hair. And now what little energy and chakra she had were zapped again.
"It's so damn short, you could do it yourself," one of the clones complained about what the hospital had lopped off of her head. Mito bitterly agreed and didn't pay much attention to them because she was hurting. Konoha had a large hyperbaric chamber to deal with some of the symptoms she had but it was being used by a team who hadn't put themselves in a shitty position and instead had been defending the village. She was taking some stuff for whatever else she'd inhaled and been exposed to underground but it made her feel sluggish and out of it.
Mito entered the restaurant and was escorted to her father's table. She bowed to him (clearly, he was surprised to see her) and the Mizukage.
Mito was very happy to see Lady Mei. "Mizukage-sama," she grinned broadly, happy for the people she fought beside.
"There she is," Mei said fondly. "Look how beautiful you are: what a shame it was to hide behind your mask for so long!"
Minato spent the next two hours unsure of whether he was comfortable with the attention the two paid to each other. He certainly didn't care for how the other Mist nins were ogling his daughter and/or whispering things to her that made her laugh.
Mei and Mito together made him miss Kushina again, somehow even more. Sometimes it was hard to imagine what his life would be like if Kushina was still with him - they'd been apart almost as long as they'd been together now - but tonight? Tonight he could easily imagine his wife, the same age as him, being beside him. He was seeing something too similar to what Kushina and Mito's relationship could have been as one between a parent and child as adults: it brought a bitter taste to his mouth.
.
On the way back to her flat, Mito rested but heard a click and was immediately on her feet, pressing her "assailant" into the nearest tree, her dangerous and ridiculously powerful finger against his sternum. This one's got lots of muscle. "What do you think you're doing?"
"Ha. Forgive me. I was only taking a picture!"
Mito glared up into the shinobi's eyes, not remembering having seen him around. "I don't like having my picture taken."
"Sorry about that," the shinobi said lightly but almost too perceptibly (and falsely,) Mito thought. The way he was observing her - a soft near-smirk of a smile on his face or not - reflected an intelligence that she'd only seen in a handful of people in Konoha. Then again, there were a lot of people she hadn't yet met.
He put his hands in his trench coat pockets after tucking his bulky but small camera into a chest pocket. "Are you hurt?"
Mito blinked and stepped away from him, her fingers positioned to summon a kunai from her palm. "Why would you think that?" she asked quietly - a threat lacing every word.
Because I'm not wearing a chakra suppression or alteration seal and disguised or not, you know me fairly well. Plus word has it you managed to recently sandwich yourself within a ton or more of rock. "Your reaction: your body language…"
"Is something you get off to?"
The man blushed and denied it. "No, no! It's just something I noticed after the fact."
"And it made you want to take my picture?" Mito narrowed her eyes at him when he looked away and blushed even more. Or maybe he was flushing: it was the color in his neck, especially, that really gave either away. He awkwardly laughed, shifting his stance and hiding a grin - although his eyes remained averted.
"No… That was your hair." When he got the nerve up to look into her eyes again, he didn't really like the way the kunoichi looked so uncomfortable - as if she didn't believe him. That along with her being hurt was just too much. "Your hair reminds me of the sunset - and in this light was particularly… pretty."
Mito tried not to gawk at him. She'd only ever received a few, select compliments on her hair that she could recall, in her entire life, and those hadn't come very frequently at all:
* It was soft
* She had a lot of it
* It was healthy - surely someone said that, right?
* The red in it was the same shade as her mother's
Other than that, the next best thing she'd ever heard was when it was commonly called "weird," which is what the color combination certainly was. "You're a shinobi?"
"Ah; retired, you might say."
"Really?" Mito asked, looking him over enough to make him shift again. "Forgive me for asking but was your retirement due to a problem with your eyesight?" Surely that was the reason for the near-compliment regarding her weird hair.
"Hm?" he vocalized, not understanding. "I probably wouldn't be a very good photographer if that were the case," he mumbled. "Maybe I'm just old," he added teasingly.
Obviously, he wasn't, though; Mito could see that. Whether or not he was dying his hair wasn't any of her business but the man didn't have wrinkles and only had a few smile and frown lines around his eyes. He also stood up tall - with broad shoulders - in a way that seemed to indicate that he was a current one rather than a retired ninja. He was about Asuma or Tenzo's size altogether, she figured. She swallowed, hoping he wouldn't notice when a strong pain hit her coils again.
"Would you like to sit down?" he asked in worry that he tried to play off. "I can show you the picture I took of you?"
Mito couldn't help but be curious, and they were on the main drag in town; there was little chance that this guy was waiting to attack her presently. And hurt or not, it wasn't like she couldn't either flash away and/or take her with him screaming for one of a variety of reasons. "So it's an instant? I guess I wouldn't mind seeing it. –I've never seen one of those instant pictures before."
"They're fun," he said with a shrug, pulling out the photograph he'd pocketed. "They're more fun when you watch them develop."
"I suppose that must be true." Mito hummed; her hair looked pretty much the same way it always did, she felt, as far as the color went, anyway. It wasn't a terrible picture by any stretch of the imagination but it didn't quite look like how she thought of herself as appearing. "I thought maybe you'd been blinded by the light behind me or something. …Aside from one, I don't think I've had a picture taken in many years."
"I see. I guess you really don't like to be photographed," he smiled. And I doubt I'll ever show you the dozens I've taken of you in the past several months.
Maybe someday.
That was one reason he was here, right?
Not that it had been intentional when he'd left his apartment.
"Occupational hazard," Mito explained.
"I understand - and I am sorry that I made you so uncomfortable. Although I suppose for some well-known ninjas, a photograph here or there wouldn't make much of a difference." Mito glared at him, making him want to laugh. Little did she know, he was talking more about himself. "Are you perhaps playing hooky, Mito-hime?"
"Don't call me that - please," she said, trying to sound a little nicer about it. "I am absolutely not. And you know: a good shinobi could always cover their tracks with a good henge." She tapped her lips, looking at him a little more closely as she thought it a little fun - right NOW - that she couldn't sense who this person was. She ducked a little closer and back, checking out the shinobi's sharp jaw as he simply raised an amused eyebrow at her. She was fairly sure that he wasn't Asuma or Hideki. They were always trying to fuck with her but their henges were normally variations on a theme and somehow they always managed to still look like monkeys and smell like cigarettes. Smell! –Boy, I must be tired not to have thought of smelling this guy.
He jumped up and away right at that moment, however. "You didn't tell me your name," she hollered at him, a little ticked that Gai had just come rolling in with Lee-kun, nearly barrelling her off the bench she'd been sitting on with Stranger-san. –Who likes my hair!
"Next time," the guy waved before disappearing.
Gai glared at where the unknown shinobi had sunshinned away from. Oh yes: Gai may have seen him around before but he'd admit that he didn't always have the best memory when it came to faces. "OHHo! Mito! I believe this is yours!" He handed a partially folded-up origami fox that had her name on the outside that was sitting beside her.
Mito opened it up.
Dinner on Thursday night? 1900?
Mito nearly squealed. Oh god, how embarrassing: she had squealed! The squeal turned to grumbling and attempts at throttling her friend who'd stolen her little fox when she was folding it back together. "Give that back, Gai!"
Gai's curiosity turned to horror when he read what the note said. "THIS WILL NOT DO!" he took off, kicking up a dust trail behind him.
"Come back here with that!" It SUCKED that Mito didn't have the energy to take on or chase Gai right now. That guy really needed an immediate ass-kicking.
"What was that about, Mito-sensei?"
"Lee, this is a priority mission: I need that little origami creature back!"
"But… But - I'm sure Gai-sensei had a reason for taking it!"
"Yeah but it's mine! " Mito wondered what Gai's reason was, though. Oh no; surely he wouldn't take it to her father, would he? "LEE! This is a matter of life or um, youth!"
"You mean youth or death?"
"Yes?" Mito said after a beat, guessing that for Lee and Gai life meant youth. It seemed to mean a lot of things, however. "YES! Youth or death! I MUST have that note back!"
"A note?" Lee asked, way too interested for Mito to be comfortable. And he was also entirely too close to her face now.
Big round eyes being too sparkly to be normal. "Stop genjutsu-ing me, kid!"
"What KIND of note?" the teen asked, the genjutsu only spinning more out of control. Lee never realized he was doing it without his sensei's aid.
"Just a message by way of origami. I thought it was cool," she half-lied as she nonchalantly crossed her arms over her chest and closed her eyes when she was blasted by green hearts that were flexing their muscular arms.
"Was it a… a ~LOVE~ note?"
A couple of ANBUs chose that moment to be waltzing by so although Mito couldn't take down Gai, she definitely had a few years before Lee could take her - and he'd also been recently injured. She dragged him off and told him the truth. "Maybe."
But not really: don't get your hopes up for some weirdo, Mito.
"OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH," he gasped, twirling away from her and around in a long, drawn-out pirouette. "I shall retrieve it at once! Perhaps you can one day repay me in kind by delivering messages between me and the youthful Sakura-chan!"
"Sakura?" Mito asked with incredible distaste as he ran off.
Lee was way too good for that banshee!
Lee located his youthful sensei at a dango stand. He gasped and hid when he saw that not only had Gai-sensei read Mito-hime's private message but he was showing it to a table of Jonins! How could you, Gai-sensei? Unable to imagine his mentor stooping so low as to commonly gossip, he realized at once what was really going on here: a test and meaningful exchange of information among comrades, most likely to protect.
"...bet he finally pulled his head out."
Lee peeked from around the corner when a huge, cracking sound emitted from the only table at the small restaurant to currently have patrons. Sure enough, he saw that his sensei was the one who had smacked his hand down on it. The other five ninjas were holding their trays up in the air and looked put out with him.
"For the love of Youth! Which One?" his sensei was shouting.
"Either way, it's impossible or at least highly unlikely. I mean, seriously: whatever could push the one YOU'RE concerned about, Gai, to finally find his balls? Genius or not, everyone knows the man's as sexual as a purposely obtuse fern."
"He's surprisingly more tolerable now that he has students. –Or maybe he's just more open."
"...And the other one is too terrified of her AND Kakashi - and he may be part-fern."
"Hey! Be nice!"
"She certainly has a type," a kunoichi laughed awkwardly.
"Meh, I don't think so," the other kunoichi said. "Other than 'breathing' and not being petrified of her."
"Maybe one of those morons did finally make a move but it was probably some other guy. I heard she got herself into a situation."
"That woman lives to be in a situation."
"What situation?" the second kunoichi at the table asked: the one with the purple hair. Lee peeked around the corner again, cursing his luck that both kunoichis had purple hair!
"Asuma just got back before he was sent out again. He said she was caught in a landslide," the male with the sword said before Lee hid again.
"LANDSLIDE? What kind of teleporting… turd gets stuck in a landslide? But she's okay, right?"
"Yes, yes," Gai-sensei was waving off with a wild gesture. "She did not appear particularly bruised or flattened."
The other kunoichi began snickering after ensuring the kunoichi in question wasn't hurt. "I thought she was working at the hospital!"
"It won't be long until Hokage-sama marries her off just so he doesn't die from worry."
"That man will NEVER do that," the one with the senbon said. Genma winked at Lee when he saw him peek out again, mortifying the young Genin.
"Hokage-sama's such a nice man."
"Stop being hot for Hokage-sama in front of me, Yuges."
"Married or not, Mito's worried about remaining a virgin until her dying day."
"Too much information, Anko!"
Lee gasped when the senbon enthusiast was suddenly standing over him.
"I think you've heard too much, kid," Genma said, rolling the weapon to the other side of his mouth before he turned back to glare at the group he'd just left. "I think we all have! But I know you'll keep your mouth shut. Right?"
Lee didn't answer. He sped forward so that he could retrieve Mito-hime's love note and return it to her, grabbing it and recognizing the hand seals for a genjutsu one of the shinobis was putting up. His sensei turned, wide-eyed, toward him but Lee was moving much faster than he'd anticipated considering his recent surgery.
Mito wasn't sure what to think when Gai Junior excitedly handed her the stolen note: the origami little fox had been flattened; damnit. "Thank you so much, Lee!" Lee began rapidly cycling through a series of bright red or paling expressions as his mouth opened and closed in time with it, staring up at her. And then he ran away again even faster! "SLOW DOWN!"
She carefully sealed away her first-ever note of this kind before looking back up in the direction the kid had disappeared in. "What did I miss?"
"I don't know," came an amused voice. "What did you miss, Foxy Lady? Or should I call you 'Princess?'"
All thoughts of that earlier guy flew out a non-existent window as a reluctant smile grew and grew on Mito's face. "Ah, fuck off, Zabby-kun: don't call me that!"