DISCLAIMER & SUMMATION OF CHAPTER (thats new:) I don't own anything from the Naruto universe. This is my slightly unhinged Mito, though.

Especially in this chapter:

An exhausted Mito goes too far - even for her! Sooo…

Shock + Lack of Sleep for a WEEK + Misunderstanding + Guilt + Righteous Uzumaki COLD Anger + Unresolved Issues + a Hell of an Imagination & Fear = Minato Freaking Out More Than Even His Daughter

Thinking (+ flashbacks, "Mito speaking to Kurama in her mindscape," etc.)

Emphasis

Bijuu, etc. speaking

Bijuu, etc. thinking

Mito made it back to Konoha in the nick of the max time that she had been allowed to be away and dragged her ass back to her flat. She needed a shower and more than a nap. Unsealing her door, she felt that someone - nnrgh: my father - had tried to mess with the wards she'd put up and heaved out a sigh. Maybe he just needed something while I was gone.

On the other hand, he could've sent me a toad, requesting whatever it could be. She'd have to have a word with him. She also needed to minutely adjust her seals.

Her father thought that he was "all that" with fuuinjutsu - and Namikaze Minato was damn good - but he didn't have the Uzumaki Archives she did. Mito wondered if he realized that she would know that he had tried to enter her place. Maybe he just wanted me to know that he had tried to come to see me as soon as I got home. What a drag.

Even wondering what her father might be thinking was a drag.

Yugao heaved open her door, wide-eyed, and was right in Mito's face. "Mito-chan!"

"Yo," Mito greeted her next-door neighbor sleepily after a couple of surprised seconds. After Mito finished up her very worrisome work in Kiri, she knew that she needed to report in, desperately, but she was so freaking tired and yucky. She'd sent word (and data) via a clone off to Shikaku earlier but knew that he wanted to speak with her about everything, privately, as soon as she was back.

"Hey, Mito! You… want to come in for some tea?" Yugao uneasily asked.

"Can I get a raincheck, Yuge-chan? I'm exhausted."

Yugao pulled a face. "Yeah. You don't look so good." Mito had dark circles under her sleepy eyes and her chakra was screaming "S-T-R-E-S-S-E-D! " That was NOT GOOD for what she needed to talk to her friend about, asap, before she left for her scheduled squad training.

"Ha." Mito unlocked her door which was right next to the door to Yugao's flat. Their apartments shared a wall that went through one entire side of their places. "I've been up for days." Nearly a week!

"I thought you were doing diplomatic work in Kiri?" Yugao followed Mito into her flat, noticing (very much) how annoyed Mito was trying not to be.

"Yep. We exchanged some stuff and I wanted to oversee the whole thing." –Meaning data that took a ridiculously long time to analyze.

"Ah," Yugao said knowingly and rocked back and forth on her feet. She put her hands together and rubbed them anxiously while Mito cocked her head, waiting for her to say more. Her friend and neighbor went to make some tea but then picked up her old-fashioned percolator and stared at it as if it were a particularly disobedient cat that she'd given up disciplining. Yugao spoke just as Mito had almost fallen asleep on her feet. "Need some help with that?"

"I need coffee but this thing's possessed. It hates me."

Yugao softly snickered and told Mito to wait for a second while she went back to her place and brought her coffee machine over. Mito insisted on making the coffee herself, saying that she saw Momochi Zabuza - of all people - do it. But had Yugao left Mito to her own devices, they would have wound up with a coffee pot full of VERY dark coffee with plenty of grounds in it. She explained how to use her machine and measure the coffee - the two kunoichis agreeing to soon purchase a relatively fireproof modern coffee maker that wouldn't "try to fool or bewitch" Mito - before Mito asked her what was up.

"So um… Why don't we sit down?"

Mito balked, her formerly tightly wound chakra rising like a particularly heady ocean wave. "Something's happened."

"NO! No, no, no," Yugao said defensively. "Um… someone came by to see me and um… Bah! I don't know how to talk to you about this, so I'm just going to plow through it, okay?"

"Everything's okay?" Mito asked warily.

"Of course!"

"If you say so," Mito almost whispered. Everything was clearly not okay and the way Yugao talked had caused her to get really anxious again. "No attacks or anything?"

"No! Of course not." Yugao went through what Mito thought was a bewildering series of hand crosses over her chest and then head - and then her knees - as if she were praying the idea of an attack away. "You would've gotten a pulse through your ANBU seal had something like that happened, ne?"

Mito nodded; she should've thought of that before she asked. "And you're good -and, um, Hayate's recovery is…"

"He's doing very well. Thank you! We sparred yesterday, in fact." She grinned when Mito looked all ticked off about that. "I'm a medic, too - and we kept it fairly low-key." Well, until it turned into one of our old-fashioned spars. Yugao still wasn't sure when exactly the real swordplay ended and the more fun "swordplay" began after she disarmed him.

"I'm glad." Mito poured two cups of black coffee and returned to her neighbor. "So what is it?"

Yugao tried to stop flushing and STILL didn't know how to bring up the information her captain had come to her with and keep his name out of it. This wasn't the kind of thing she did in ANBU and Mito could be temperamental. She had practiced this particular conversation, though, after speaking with her senior.

2 days prior -

Yugao was surprised and delighted when Kakashi-taicho knocked on her door. "Taicho!"
From what she'd heard, unless Hokage-sama was sitting on him, Kakashi had been going on back-to-back missions (most of them unsanctioned) to hunt for his missing Uchiha student as often as possible.

"Maa, I'm not your captain anymore, Yugao-chan."

"But you're here!" Her captain had never been to her home before so she grabbed his arm and dragged him inside before he could run or poof away, shutting the door behind her excitedly and replacing her seals so that he couldn't escape. "Welcome!"

Kakashi internally groaned. Why was he doing this with her? "Thank you," he replied softly.

The reason he was here was that Asuma had been freaking out, all riled up, and distracted over something - and then Kakashi realized that he didn't think two guys talking about Mito's business was any way to go about helping or insuring that she was alright at all. Shizune was a gossip; Kurenai was with Asuma. Similar to Asuma, there was Monkey (Mito's eldest "brother,") and Anko had just left on missions and… He didn't know where else to turn.

He allowed his kohai to nearly shove him onto her couch as she bounced off to make tea. Yugao always had too much energy.

"Not that I'm not glad to see you, Captain, but what brings you by this evening?"

Kakashi didn't know how to begin. He trusted Yugao to keep her mouth shut but he never would've opened his mouth about something like this, to begin with, if he weren't so concerned. "Hayate here?"

"You know he's not," Yugao nearly deadpanned with a hint of sass. She had sensed Kakashi's chakra nearby and had THOUGHT that he might be waiting for Hayate - not for Hayate to leave. "So… Need more help?" she asked with a big wink.

Kakashi grimaced overly hard, making sure that his distaste was clearly shown despite his mask. For months now, Yugao had been steering Mito toward guys she deemed "losers" to prove to her what a catch he supposedly was. Where she got the idea that she needed to do something like that was beyond him. –Or it had been, before… recently.
No, it was more like Kakashi thought he was far harder to read than that.

Yugao also openly believed that it was "absolutely hilarious" that the biggest rival her former captain had was Tenzo, of all people. Oh, and "Gai and his amazing ass muscles."

That was her opinion but didn't make any of that stuff true.
Hopefully.
For the longest time, her devotion to getting him a partner had also been more than a little annoying to the Copy Ninja.

Now, he found it kind of… sweet.
Really, something was very wrong with him.

He swallowed down the lump in his throat, unconvinced that he was doing the right thing. "I was recently tasked with a mission that I somewhat completed."

"Somewhat?"

Kakashi bobbed his head.

"Go on, captain," Yugao said, more concerned as the seconds passed. If anyone completed his missions as successfully as humanly possible - often putting his life and health on the line to do it - it was the shinobi sitting beside her. "You have my word that what you say here won't leave this space."

Kakashi laughed. "Please. Yet, that's the thing. I'm worried about someone but it - it could be none of my business." He sighed and sipped some of his tea, glad for the warmth it provided his cold hands. "It's certainly none of my business," he said, hoping not to sound bitter about that.

Yugao frowned as she thought about his words. Kakashi-taicho wasn't much of a talker so what words he put out there usually meant something one should think about. "It's only natural to worry about your friends and comrades." She sniffed when her former captain didn't move or look at her; he was only staring into his tea. "What can I do for you?"

Yugao steeled herself, only wanting to help and not make things worse. She was a medic: this could be considered one area of her expertise. "We're kunoichis. Things come with this job that are known to be bad and um… Well, it's the same for men as it is for women - no matter what kind of work we're in." Mito slowly nodded; she didn't seem to know where Yugao was going with this for a few seconds. "It's just that for us, the probability is much higher that something could um…"

"You mean the potentiality for sexual assault being highest among kunoichis?" Mito asked before her conscience caught up with her big mouth. She was just So. Freaking. Tired. "Oh, God. Please forgive me. Are you alright?"

"No - er, yes: that's exactly what I mean. And I'm fine. I'm also really sorry to ask you about something so personal like this when you're so clearly tired." She took a sip of her coffee but knew that it would only make her nerves worse. Plus the coffee was terrible. In the back of her mind, Yugao wondered if Mito really was cursed in the kitchen or if her coffee was 100 years old. "Mito… You're a VIP and you're often watched or tracked."

Mito scoffed. "That's a waste of village resources." Mito's eyebrows suddenly shot into her hair. "Not you, of course, Yugao-chan! You did a great job tailing me back in Kiri! I didn't know it was you at all!"

Yugao huffed; she didn't know where Mito was off to most of the time they were both in Kiri. It had been maddening! More importantly now, either Mito was doing a magnificent job of covering what had possibly happened to her or she had no idea of what she was talking about. "That's because you didn't know who I was."

"That's true! You shoulda told me."

"I almost did or rather, I wanted to: several times." They'd talked about this before. "I really did want to tell you but it was a secret mission." Even from you.

"Yeah, well the secrecy of it's dumb –I mean, keeping it a secret from ME was dumb. We were in the middle of their civil war and Fuck… I'm really tired: gah! I'm not saying anything right. -What I'm saying is that you weren't dumb, Yuge! Hokage-sama's dumb. –Oh, man; I don't mean that!" Mito covered her face and almost laughed at herself; she really needed to shut her big, fat mouth.

Yugao patted Mito's shoulder, giving it a light squeeze. In a very quiet voice, she told Mito the truth. "Right before you went to Kiri, you were tracked to your family's temple and… beyond it." Mito froze and the whole room began to cool. Uh-oh.

"Oh?" Mito benignly asked, getting up to get some more coffee. She loaded it up with sugar and cream to better tolerate the taste. "And who did that?"

"I can't say."

"Hokage's orders?"

Mito still hadn't turned around to look at her but Yugao noticed that Mito's hair was still flowing down past her waist, at least. Mito's rising hair was usually the first indicator of an impending explosion. Right now the very ends were only crackling with a little bit of chakra. "I don't know."

"I see." Yugao didn't say anything, so Mito finally felt compelled to turn around and almost felt like flashing forward and putting one of those Yamanaka rip-off jutsu seals on her. Yugao was her friend, though - and then her brain re-engaged and Yugao's earlier words caught up with her. "Why did you mention assault?"

"We were worried that you were assaulted. –Me and the person who told me. I don't think anyone else knows."

"Oh. –No." Mito frowned as Yugao didn't seem to know what to do with herself now. No one can find out about Chiriku. Those Elders that he'd mentioned: if someone killed a monk without orders from the daimyo, they could be beheaded or hung. That was the law. Hell, if you were in ANY way associated with such a crime, you could be put to death.

She had worried that SORA-kun would be charged after he lost control of the Kyuubi's chakra his father had stuck in him and had actively campaigned for him not to be for a day or so. (Until I found out that he'd been pardoned.)

Mito - in her delusional state after being kidnapped all those years ago, she guessed - had totally lost her fucking mind after coming back from her cell. "I was not. What else do you know about the whole thing; what I did, what my tracker found? Any of it."

"Umm… Only that you were with somebody that wasn't named and… the person that spoke to me about it was worried about your wellbeing." God, this was uncomfortable to talk about!

"Ah," Mito said, trying to wrap her head around this and be okay with it. She was not okay with it!

Mito had also thought she'd been careful. Chiriku was the one who'd left the hotel room without putting on his henge at first. Mito had kept hers on all the way back to Konoha before she dropped the henge at the gate to sign in. She was pretty sure that she'd quickly put up another partial henge - or used a genjutsu to cover herself up immediately after, but couldn't really remember.

That was probably unnecessary, though, she remembered. Mito had put on a fresh uniform, she was sure, although she'd desperately needed a shower. Just another regret in a drunken night/morning full of them. Mito rubbed the bridge of her nose trying to remember if she'd fucked up somewhere.

Obviously, she had. Duh.

"So, you're seeing someone?" Yugao asked uncomfortably. She hoped that she sounded a little cheeky, though.

"No. Abso-LUTELY not."

Yugao frowned. "Mito. –That doesn't sound good."

"Yeah… It - ha. It definitely wasn't."

"Oh," Yugao blanched, not sure if she was getting it but thought Mito meant that the sex or whatever she'd been up to was "bad." It's not like her former captain had fully explained himself, although Yugao guessed that he'd been the one tracking her. Kakashi did ask her to keep his name out of it.

Whether his mission to follow Mito was sanctioned or not - or who Mito had ultimately been with? Who knew?

Mito looked embarrassed, however: she always blushed like this, but her friend's expression was set in what she'd guess was regret or almost nausea. "Shit. I'm sorry, Mito!"

"I'm sorrier than you can imagine. And speaking of sorry - I really need to clean up and still have to report in."

"Oh! I'm sorry; I'll get out of here!" Now that she knew Mito hadn't been hurt, she felt compelled to give her a break.

"We can um…grab something to eat sometime or something?" Mito asked. She just wanted to be alone right now but she needed to find out who all knew about this. What can I do about it, though?

Nothing. I can't do shit about it.

"I'd like that. I'm glad you're okay - and I'll see ya later."

"Yugao," Mito said, catching her on the way out the door. "Thank you for caring. Please don't tell anyone about this, though. Anyone, okay? It's um… Please?" How could she admit that she could be put to death for what she'd done?

Should I turn myself in?

She deserved it, right?

You still have things to do, a voice in her head - that wasn't Kurama's - said creepily.

Yugao nodded and left but felt terribly worried. Something about the whole thing with Mito and whoever this guy was just felt "wrong."

The incredibly hot water from her shower had long since gone quite cold before Mito realized that she hadn't washed up. She'd been so deep in thought about what Yugao said, although what little Yugao knew - what someone else knew about her - had certainly been enough to keep her worried and distracted for a lot longer. Quickly, she lathered up her hair and body, forgoing conditioner and everything else because of the cold.

She still didn't know what to do, so she did what she normally did when she was all freaked out about something: train or in this case, work until she dropped.

Shikaku was once again at home when she went to see him. Everyone in the house was up although it was late.

"You don't look good," he said frankly.

"Agreed. And thanks!" Mito waved at Asuma who was on the back engawa with Shikamarau playing shogi, getting his attention and snorting when his cigarette dropped into his lap at seeing her. Asuma jumped up and began batting away the ashes and searching for his lost cig. "That'll teach that idiot to smoke. And he should've sensed me!"

"Smoking is a nasty habit," Shikaku said as he led her to his home office.

Mito bit the inside of her cheek as she followed him, in disbelief that Shikaku didn't realize how much HE smelled like cigarettes, too. Mito knew that he smoked whenever he was out with his buddies - and probably at other times, as well.

"So. Was Kiri really that bad?" Shikaku asked. Yoshino had just brought cookies and tea. His lovely but too-excitable wife was also good enough to offer to bring some in for Mito, too. Mito-chan, of course, said yes to that.

"Nah, I didn't get to have much FUN-fun but Kiri was Kiri. Things are going well there, reconstruction-wise, and… Thank you, Yoshino-san."

Yoshino pinched both of Mito's cheeks, pulling her face back and forth, and then wandered off saying "so cute, so cute, so cute" which was very perplexing to the younger kunoichi. The Nara matriarch shut the door behind her and Shikaku put up his security array, rolling his eyes and apologizing for his "troublesome wife."

"It's fine." Mito rubbed her cheeks. They had far more important things to discuss. "Naturally, Kiri's incredibly unhappy that Konoha may have taken their missing citizens."

"Troublesome."

"It sure is. You're going over the data?" Mito asked unnecessarily. The huge stack of reports with the partial code Shikaku had originally given her on paper was on his desk and it looked like he was about three-quarters of the way through it. "Wouldn't this be easier to go through by looking at it on a spreadsheet? That's what we did with the full cipher."

"It's not a full cipher," Shikaku grunted, turning the shorter stack of paper around. "And we have a problem." He pulled up a file on his phone and pointed to some numbers, laying his phone down on them. Mito stared at them blankly. "Troublesome. You need to sleep."

Mito blinked and blinked before her eyes went wide. "I may have just fallen asleep for a second; I am so sorry!" Shikaku chuckled at her but Mito decided to keep pinching herself to keep herself awake.

"How 'bout I just tell you what I'm seeing?" He dealt with dead-on-their-feet ninjas often enough.

Mito nodded. "I would really appreciate that."

He pointed to a line of numbers that were on the paper. "Beginning a page or so back, these numbers are not the same ones that are on the digital file."

Mito's mind rushed through what he could mean. "What? This data wasn't vetted?" Why would she be given official data to take back to Kiri that was wrong?

"It was."

Mito frowned, her red eyebrows dipping more and more as she focused. Finally, she pulled out her phone to see if her data was the same as what was on Shikaku's phone. It took a little while to get through but her numbers looked exactly the same as Shikaku's numbers from the top of the page they were on.

Not all of the pages in the documents were full of only numbers, so this particular page was a bitch to go through, just trying to eye the discrepancies. "So… I could be off here but you think someone may have purposely changed the code from what we were originally given, entering it into the digital file for us so that we'd misinterpret what we've found?"

"I do."

"No way. Maybe these numbers were just entered wrong," Mito began before her brain woke up more and got it together. "But then why would the numbers make sense when added to Kiri's half of the cipher? Someone had to have Kiri's part of the data for it to have wound up making sense! Wait! Has Konoha's encryption team had a chance to vet all of this: the final product? Maybe Kiri's team was wrong - although it seemed like they were right on when I was watching them go through it. No, wait!"

"NO! Stop right there: you're right; at least from what I could tell." And how do you go from sleeping standing up to incredibly hyper? What a drag. It was exhausting for Shikaku to even consider. Thank God he wasn't part-Uzumaki.

"Kiri thinks they have evidence that Konoha took their people. Evidence that I gave them!" Or at least I gave them part of it!

Shikaku sighed and raised his eyebrows. "I still have to enter the Kiri code: something I'm terrible at, by the way, but we don't have Kiri kids."

Mito knocked on his desk a few times, carefully keeping her chakra and strength out of her taps. "What about Danzo's forces that were buried in that mass grave after the attack on Daimyo-sama and the Temple?"

Shikaku grimaced and sank down into his chair. "Well, shit. That's a pretty fucking reasonable thing to wonder about."

"Yeah. I suppose it is," Mito agreed sadly. "Asuma also thought that our missing kids might be SOMEWHERE in Konoha still."

Shikaku let out a long yawn, stretching. "He may be right, or someone may want us to believe that. –Can you get him for me?"

"Sure." Mito got up to go outside but found her older brother leaning on the door jam next to Shikaku's office door. "Hey, aniki!" Asuma growled - all disgruntled-like - so Mito called him an asshole.

"Sit down, you two. This is going to be a long night."

.

Mito walked alongside her brother, wondering who the mole could be - or if they hadn't considered another possibility. Shikaku seemed pretty damn sure that there was one, though, and had told both of them to keep their mouths shut about everything. However, Mito was going to have to try to convince Kiri that Konoha's new part of the cipher (which was their original data) wasn't an attempt on her part to simply shift the blame away from Konoha.

- Aaaaand yet not let anyone in Konoha know that they'd detected the issue.

What a drag, for sure.

Asuma still suspected someone here of taking off with kids: that Konoha's missing kids weren't K/MIA as had been listed in many cases. Troublesome, troublesome, troublesome; just like Commander-sama said. Asuma had never talked in detail about what he'd found in Tokyo but whatever he found wasn't good.

"We need to talk," Asuma finally said.

"Yeah, we do," Mito agreed. "You've been chain-smoking like a factory. Did your prescription for nicotine gum run out?" She'd have to check her records; if she left it up to Asuma, he'd either run himself out or use the gum up early. "You need to get in a clinical trial or something to get off that crap."

"Not about that. And… not here."

Asuma walked Mito back to her flat and asked her to put up seal after seal after seal. "What the hell's going on? I PROMISE no one can hear us!"

What to discuss first? Asuma sat down and figured he'd go over the "easiest" thing first - although it wasn't easy at all. "I'm going to tell you something I shouldn't; something I'm, technically, not allowed to." Then maybe you'll share with me, hm, Mito-chan? But geez: please don't share too much.

"Are you sure you should?" Mito asked quietly.

"I think I'd rather tell you than Hideki and it's… It's really weighing on me!" He threw his lighter in the air before harshly tossing it into Mito's new chair. "I can't think straight when I'm all bottled up with this," he mumbled.

"Okay," Mito nodded. "I'm here for you, As." Asuma grumbled a lot of curses under his breath, which Mito didn't get. She was trying to be supportive. "You know I won't tell anybody."

"Do you know how Konoha spies on other countries? Outside of the continent?"

Mito took in a slow, big breath and nodded a bit. "I've heard some things," she said, thinking of her great aunt Momo's father, her earlier unknown great-grandfather. "My understanding is that espionage over there is often taught and handed down through the generations. Or that, I guess, spies die, and then - I don't know. I don't know how our people got over there in the first place, either."

"Summoning," Asuma said simply.

"Seriously?"

"Yep. There are a certain handful of well-sealed sights that allow a ninja and a summons to safely transport overseas but it's usually a lifetime job once they get there."

Mito hummed. "I know it's S-ranked. And it makes sense that our people can use summons to transmit if there are safe sites to do it from." From what Momo and her father said, Konoha had far more spies in the rest of the world than all of the other Elemental Countries, combined. Or at least, that's what Konoha thought.

"They use birds for a lot of stuff, I think. Anyway," Asuma breathed out, really wanting another smoke, "I was talking about spies who go over there for the long haul."

Mito waited for him to go on but Asuma seemed deep in thought. He eventually let out a chuckle and Mito got up to get them some water. "What's this about?"

"Nica-nee-chan's in Japan." Mito dropped the glasses she was bringing over; they shattered on the floor.

"No." Sarutobi Nica died along with her sister and parents in the Kyuubi attack. She and Asuma had grieved for her! She was sure Hideki had, too: greatly. They'd never talked about it but Hideki was especially close to his sisters, who were quite a bit older than she and Asuma. "That's not possible."

"She took the mission; it happened to coincide with the time of the Nine-tails attack. She recovered from her injuries in an underground facility and left immediately afterward." Asuma chuckled sarcastically. "I guess they do this a lot with shinobis thought to be dead."

Mito wasn't sure how long they sat there in silence - or when she'd sat down - before she asked a question she already knew the answer to. She felt absolutely sick! "Did my father know?"

"Hai."

"I see."

"I don't think I can tell Hideki." For a variety of reasons. "I had to talk to somebody."

"You saw her?"

"Yeah. She's got an undercover job and travels a lot. She says she really likes it. -Ha. She's even in a band."

"I bet she misses her drums." Mito still had her drum set in a scroll. "I don't know what to say." I don't know what to think! Asuma didn't say anything for the longest time and Mito just felt numb. Then another painfully longing thought came up in her mind. "Asuma. Do you think my mother could be out there somewhere? Like, she's in Latin America or somewhere, still alive?"

Did she leave us?

Did Tou-san send her away, too?

Asuma let out a shocked breath. "Oh, Mito: no! No… I… I saw Kushina-oba after that night." He got to say goodbye to the woman, although she'd been on life-support - but poor Mito hadn't. "No. I'm sorry, imouto."

"It's okay." Asuma had never told her that he saw her mother before she died. "I'm sorry I brought her up. We're talking about Nica-nee."

"It's not okay, with Nica, I mean. –And it's not completely your father's doing. Nica signed up before the Kyuubi attack and was going to go over there… Well, you know she didn't get along with Kaa-chan very well."

Mito hid how she nearly rolled her eyes. None of the Sarutobi kids got along well with their mother except for maybe Hideki at one point - and he moved out VERY young. Sarutobi Biwako was a thankfully often absent and mean old… person who somehow gave birth to some of Mito's very favorite people of all time. "Yeah."

"Whoever was in Japan before her passed and Nica sought out the position."

"Hmm." She decided to leave. How could she just decide to leave them, forever? Maybe Ojii-san planned to tell them - to tell us - but then he died?

"Anyway… Do you remember Daiki-kun?"

Mito thought about it - as much as she could. Asuma had just pretty much blown her mind. "Who?"

Asuma sighed. "Sarutobi Daiki-kun; he's a Chunin, often on patrol or gate duty? He's like my… I don't know. He's like my sixth-off, half-cousin or almost-unrelated, distant nephew of some sort or something."

"Um… Okay. For a second, I was thinking of the Daiki kid that works at the prison." Did this Chunin, Sarutobi Daiki, go overseas, too? I thought with an S-rank, an espionage specialist would be a Jonin going over there.

"No." Asuma got up and began to pace. "Anyway," he said again, his throat closing up. This was no big deal, though, right? He just wanted to warn Mito to not do it again, and to… Tell her to never do it again - which was unfair for the bigger thing.

Talking about Nica-nee being alive was the really weird shit. Nope: talking to Mito about being with some unknown dude definitely feels just as weird right now that I've got that weight about Nica off my chest. "Daiki-kun was one of the gate guards you signed in with at the North Gate last time. Last week."

"The North Gate?" Mito used the South Gate to go back and forth, hopping to the coast, then to Uzushio, then into Water country, to get to Kiri. She felt her stomach turn over as she snapped back from discussing the supposedly dead living elsewhere, far away, to her unfortunate and very nearby and recent reality. "Oh."

Asuma might mean the time she came back from visiting the Uzushio Temple and… other unintended distractions, huh? Well this was an altogether shitty day, wasn't it?

It's called paying the piper, dumbass.

Mito looked up at him and - for some reason - was beginning to get really pissed off. "Something up with this Daiki-kun?"

Asuma nodded. "Daiki told Hideki that he saw you with some um… hickeys and… uh, yeah."

Mito couldn't believe it; she thought she'd been more careful! You were still hungover and half-drunk, you ass! "Good to know. I'm pretty tired, Asuma."

"Mito, I'm just worried about you!" Mito was getting up and looked way too calm to him.

"There's nothing to worry about. Really."

"Bullshit! I KNOW you, Mi-chan! I can FEEL your distress now! Who was it?!"

"Who the fuck cares, Asuma?!" Mito turned and snarled at the door when she sensed Tenzo's chakra outside. She unleashed her seals and threw open the door. "WHAT?" She swallowed hard; she needed to calm the fuck down. Tenzo was in his ANBU mask and uniform - and had almost imperceptibly flinched back. He's my friend. "Sorry, Cat. Asuma was just leaving."

"Mito, come on!" Asuma now KNEW he should've waited for Hideki to talk to Mito because this hadn't gone well at all. He was sure he could talk her down IF Tenzo would take a hike.

"Lord Hokage has requested your presence, Namikaze."

"Ah, that's just fucking great," Asuma snarked at the same time Mito spoke:
"Well, it's only 0240 in the morning, so why the fuck wouldn't he? It's a GREAT time for a fucking social call with my freaking father! JA, Asuma."

Asuma left and was at least good enough to leave leaves outside in the wake of his sunshin, rather than in her apartment. Mito couldn't look at him or Tenzo; she felt humiliated.

"Hickeys:" for fuck's sake, Mito.

She sealed up her place and let Tenzo take her back to her father's office. She was in no rush to see the man. "Let's just walk, please."

Nope. Apparently, Tenzo couldn't do that.

Fortunately, she had a couple of minutes to wait in the hallway before she was let into his office so that she could get herself together.

Calm Down, Mito!

Nope. Mito was righteously pissed.

Hide it, hide it, hide it.

"Hokage-sama."

"Mito-chan, I heard you were back!" Minato tried to sound more glad to see her - and he was glad to see her - but was also concerned about what he needed to discuss with her. He thought it was better to get it over with.

"So you've got people following me even now."

"No," he drawled in irritation. Mito was always losing her tails anyway and she could have at least greeted him a little more kindly. She'd been gone on an official mission for a week so when Hawk mentioned her strolling with Asuma at such a late hour, he'd asked to see her. "You're a pretty distinctive presence in the village, Mito; you can't deny that. How was Kiri?"

"Fine. –Can I please give my report tomorrow?" Oh God, Mito realized that she sounded like she was whining. She had been whining! "I haven't slept in days." Idly, Mito wondered if she'd be able to sleep after all the bullshit that had gone on. -After all of this Shitty New Knowledge of What People Knew.

Minato frowned and took a better look at his daughter. He didn't see any marks or signs of wounds but her eyes certainly did have dark circles under them. Mito shrunk away from his gaze, making him sigh. "We need to talk about what happened before you left for Kiri."

Mito threw back her hair and stood straighter, her hands tightening on her hips. "Do we? And to what are you referring?"

Minato steeled himself for the worst - or what he thought could be the worst. He would be a concerned adult, not an overprotective father about this and was sure that Mito would be one in return. "You were with someone during the time you were gone: when you signed out to go to the Uzumaki Temple," he said quietly.

"Hmm. What makes you think that?" Oh, Mito was getting REALLY pissed off. She swallowed it down, needing information before she lost it.

Losing it will only make things worse!

Minato sat back in his chair. He kept his voice low to show his concern; to prove that he wasn't angry with her and only wanted to be supportive and discuss the things she needed to think about. "I saw… a mark on your um," he pointed to where he remembered the hickey being and forced himself to keep going.

Mito flushed, feeling sick, even more embarrassed, and angry.

"And… Frankly, I had someone track your prior movements after you left for Kiri." To Minato, Mito seemed calm and collected. Actually, she looked like she didn't care as she stared over his shoulder - and that just wouldn't do. She needed to be careful! "What I want to know is if the person you're seeing is from another village, I guess. Can you at least tell me that?"

The temperature in the room began to drastically drop. Oh, boy.

"What did your tracker tell you? Didn't they find out and report in - about whether or not I'm a traitor?"

"Now, I didn't accuse you of that."

You might as well have. I know the way you think. Frankly, I'm not sure I believe you're truly all that protective of my "virtue," Tou-san. Maybe you're a lying faker, letting me and Asuma grieve for Nica-nee! "What did they say? Shouldn't your tracker know and have reported back?"

Minato huffed, but was impressed that frost was beginning to film up on the glass of his windows. "My tracker told me that you were alone but we both know that you weren't Mito! I didn't tell him - the tracker - that I'd seen what I did, but I did. And I can't believe you'd be so reckless!"

"I'm. 23. Years. Old," she bit out. Fuck it if her hair was beginning to fly around, probably making her look like a monster. She was a monster!

And she was pissed! This was none of his fucking business!

Was the Hokage involving himself going to get her put to death?! Would that be something he'd like to do? Had he been waiting for a chance like this?!

"Don't get carried away, my little ocean!"

Wrong answer, Mom: I've had enough.

"You were with someone who could hide his presence from a master tracker when it should have been easy to find your… paramour, I guess you'd say. You can see how that is concerning. I didn't know if you were even aware!" What if Mito was with an enemy and she didn't even know it?!

Mito internally did a double-take. The tracker either couldn't find Chiriku or hadn't outed her? Why? Blackmail for later?

He said "master tracker."

Mito got an idea: another wild, RASH, highly-stupid hair - but maybe this way, her father would never bother her about this shit again. "Well, do you know why they couldn't find my 'paramour?'" Her idea was stupid and insane but… "It's because there wasn't anyone else. It was just me."

"Mito-chan." Her father said her name in a way that clearly indicated he didn't believe her - and as if she was a child!

"Clones are a marvelous thing, Tou-san." Yep: judging from his expression, it would take more than that to clue her father in. "Considering I'm cockblocked left and right in the village, I finally just decided to get it on with my clones." What am I: insane?!

Minato began turning green.

Hell, Mito may have been turning green! She and her clones didn't find her particularly attractive - the latter having firmly told her so the first time she talked them into helping her wash her formerly super-long hair one time. Plus, she was just… no. Mito had issues- and yet she kept talking: staying on this insane course, her scarred upper lip and brow twitching dangerously as she tried to keep from snarling.

"...I mean, I'm never going to get a man or have a relationship - and since having a family of my own is straight out because I'm not a reckless idiot who's willing to chance the big bad fox coming out to stomp the village; I had several of my clones henge as men and take me. As often as possible."

Oh, God, Mito: that is blegh and SO far over the top.

"Mito," Minato said shakily. He couldn't even bring himself to address the fact that she'd just implied that he and Kushina were reckless idiots: it was too painful and too possibly true! "That… That is not good! People have become addicted to that jutsu. The memory transference of such an intimate act…"

"That's bullshitty old wives' tales," Mito said, blowing him off and feeling crazily lightheaded and increasingly unhinged. She was really fucked in the head to be discussing such a thing with her father! "Anyway, with me clearly NOT being a traitor, am I free to go?"

"I didn't say you were a traitor!" Minato realized he was sweating and his heart was pounding painfully, despite how cold the room still was. "I would've never made you an ambassador had I questioned your loyalties."

"A lie."

Mito also KNEW it was a lie - just as much as she knew she had bright-ass-blonde and red hair. Kurama hadn't needed to tell her! She felt so sick; she couldn't even look at him now. She completely curled in on herself, psychologically and physically. "You haven't been comfortable with me being in this village since I came back."

"Go. Um… Leave," Minato choked out after several seconds. His daughter disappeared and he grabbed his chest. He hit the button under his desk and his ANBU came flying into his office.

"Hokage-sama?"

"I - I think I might be having a heart attack."