AN: New chapters.
From the shadows in Minato's office, Jade emerged. She came bearing gifts.
"Hey." She lifted up his lunch (something closer to his dinner by now with how late it had gotten). "Forget something today boss?"
Instead of his normal comeback, Minato only gave a grunt from his desk. He seemed utterly swamped in all the work being Hokage brought on and whatever crisis he was dealing with at the moment. Jade was tempted to end all of this and just take all his paperwork to the Shadow Realm but Kushina had outlawed that little strategy. And all because she had sent one to many treaties into the dark world, never to return.
Well, turned it into an emergency measure.
If Kushina didn't order it, she wasn't allowed to do it.
And, since her contractor was currently out of the village, of the Land of Fire entirely, for the foreseeable future, there was little chance of that happening.
"You're no fun today." She dropped his lunch/dinner next to him, took a seat on his desk. Thanks to the general weirdness of her transformation and the Shadowkhan-ness of her, she didn't so much as disturb the ocean of papers spread across the desk. "So, mind telling me what's got you so busy the past few days, making you work late again? I'm not saying I'm getting worried but when you only have a kid as company, you get bored pretty quick. And that means I'm getting more than a little pranky."
She had been a terror at Kushina's beck and call when she was younger. Anyone who had messed with her over her hair, who upset her because of the big fuzzball, had learned just how frightening she could be when she wanted to be.
She was pretty sure at least a few of them still woke up screaming.
From his seat, Minato only dragged his hand over his face.
"Just…nonsense spreading to make more nonsense. An avalanche of political issues snowballing into…all of this…" Minato took a moment to gesture to the mess around him, the fact that he had not only his desk covered in papers but two other tables he had brought into his office as well. Loose papers, binders, folders, maps, and a few notebooks were spread everywhere. "I'll get done with all of this by the end of the week." He cast a doubtful eye over one of the bigger stacks of folders off to the side on the floor, a stack that had risen higher than his desk. "…Hopefully."
At this point, he was thinking this was going to become a long two weeks of endless work.
"Anything I can do?" Jade asked the obvious question. "You're not my contractor but…I think I can make an exception for her husband. You know, degree of separation, happy contractor means happy contractee." She smiled, her red eyes and gleaming fangs a strange combination of unnerving to those who didn't know her and reassuring to those that did.
The fact that Minato looked to be seriously considering it made her smile drop.
"Alright, now I know it's bad." Jade hopped off the desk, a Shadowkhan delivering her mask to her hand before her feet touched the ground. "Alright, I'm pretty sure we worked in a few freebie commands when we were rehashing our deal. So, what do you need me to do?"
It was a loaded question.
There wasn't a lot she couldn't do, something they both knew.
If he needed this problem solved, she could solve it by tonight.
And no one would even know it was her.
"I don't think you'll be helpful with this unless you know how to deal with…all this." Minato threw his hand out, tried to encapsulate everything going on. "To be honest, ever since that mess we had a few days ago…things have just gotten worse and worse." With no one else around, the blonde could let himself fall back in his chair, cover his face with his hands. "I don't even know if things can get better."
"Mess? A few days ago?" Jade hadn't been out the village in the last few weeks but she had also been busy with watching Naruto, occupying his time with Kushina still gone and Minato so busy, and so hadn't kept her ear to the ground, had focused more on the kid than anything else. "What happened?" Even with her mask on, it wasn't hard to see that there was a frown on her face, Minato looking up to her in disbelief before it was gone.
"You didn't know? I thought you sent the Shadowkhan that stopped those two." Minato was quick to dig through the papers around him, drag out a few sheets. "The Hyuga Clan was involved. Your Shadowkhan stopped the daughter of the Clan Head from being kidnapped by the Hidden Cloud. And stopped her father from killing the two. I've got them in custody now because your Shadowkhan dumped them at my feet."
Jade had the papers in her hand, suddenly standing next to Minato instead of on the other side of the desk. A combination and exhaustion and stress made him barely react to her sudden disappearance and reappearance.
His blue eyes narrowed at the clear signs of frustration in her body, how quickly she forced herself to calm down, mask what she was feeling behind the literal mask she wore.
"What. The. F-" She stopped herself out of habit, from spending hours with a child every day for so long.
Jade dropped the papers, her red eyes glowing, darkness gathering around her to blanket the room, shadows coming to life and crashing against her feet like waves against the hull of a boat.
"I'll be right back." She didn't wait for a response, plummeted into the sea of shadows that had been drawn to her, had reacted to her.
She had a mystery to uncover.
The Shadowkhan were supposed to be under her control, weren't supposed to act without her ordering it, without Kushina ordering it.
That was the way their contract worked, how her powers worked. But Shadow Magic had a way of twisting things, of changing things without one knowing until it was too late.
Shadowkhan didn't do anything without being told, without having someone give them orders.
That was the way they worked. She knew it since she was a kid.
But if it was changing…
If she was the one losing control…
She didn't want to think about any of that right now.
Regardless, she had a long overdue trip to the Shadow Realm.
AN: Multiple chapters posted this time. Continue reading.
