Electra Rose
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AIC 37
🕑 Added 2018-09-25 10:59:53 +0000 UTCGradually, he realized that something wasn't right. It was about the time that Tsunade sobered up enough to push him away. Jiraiya frowned, feeling unease in his stomach. He leaned over to check the sun to gauge the time. First half of the afternoon, still.
He didn't actually know what time it had been when Aiko had left him- and now he felt guilty about that, shit- but it had probably been at least two hours. Had something gone wrong in Kirigakure? Why wouldn't she have come back by now?
Shizune was watching him now. Her eyes were rimmed with red, but she was remarkably composed.
'Of course she is', he thought. And it hurt. 'She's seen this before. The only reason it's worse is that it was public this time.'
Tsunade silently put down her water. She couldn't meet either of them in the eye.
Jiraiya felt so hopelessly, blackly lost. He didn't know how to help her. He didn't know if anyone could. She was going to kill herself in her grief, and drag Shizune down with her.
He sighed and forced himself to stand up. Triage. He needed to help Minato's kid. Aiko was clearly in way over her head, and she had asked for his help. She was far too thin and stressed.
For such a powerful shinobi, Aiko seemed remarkably brittle. Breakable. Worn down, years ahead of her time. She wasn't even 30 yet. When he was her age, his team had been on top of the world, drunk on their own success, full of bright predictions for their futures. And Aiko made a lot of jokes about wishing that she was dead, so she probably should not be left unsupervised.
He could never forgive himself if his wayward teammate ended up killing his student's daughter.
“Wait.” Tsunade's voice came out hoarse. Her hand curled into a fist on the sheet. “Do you think that Uzumaki was telling the truth?”
It took a moment to remember- ah, yes. Aiko had apparently known a lot of shady shit in Konoha's underbelly.
“Yes,” Jiraiya admitted. And that, too, was a bitter pill. Damn him, but he absolutely believed that the Sandaime had failed to keep Danzo in check, and even leaned on his brutality. It fit. “I trust her on that, absolutely. She would know, and she wouldn't lie.”
“Why?” Shizune cut in. She cocked her head. “Why would you trust her?”
Ah, hell. Jiraiya rubbed at the back of his neck to save time. It wasn't really his secret to tell, but. He didn't think that Aiko would care. And these two were basically out of contact with the world. It wasn't going to get around to anyone else. “Did you think that maybe she looks kind of familiar?” he hedged.
Tsunade looked up at that. Her eyes were sharp- and that was a goddamn relief to see. She had noticed, then. How could she not? Anyone who knew Kushina and Minato should have a niggling feeling of familiarity.
He waited hopefully, but she wasn't willing to speak.
After a moment, Shizune shook her head. “I didn't notice anything,” she said cautiously.
Well. “You wouldn't,” Jiraiya sighed. “Too young, probably. You weren't around the right circles.”
“You can't be serious.” Tsunade actually sat up. “She's far too old. She's twenty, at least. That would have been-” she paused, clearly doing some math. “When they were 20?”
“If we were following a straight line of chronology,” Jiraiya said. He was begrudgingly impressed that this was a thing that had to be said. Aiko really was a chip off the old block, distilled down to an intensity even her lunatic parents had never managed.
The two women in the room were silent and unimpressed. He realized that he was going to have to be more explicit.
“Look, uh.” He wished he had a beer- shit, that was an inappropriate thought. “Hiraishin is a space-time manipulation, and it turns out that multidimension theory is right. Minato corroborated her story- he's not the Minato that we knew,” he said. He still couldn't quite believe it. “The divergent point was that Kushina and Minato had one more kid. Who proceeded to screw around a lot with Hiraishin. I think it might have been stress relief.” His tone was dry. “She says that she lost rock-paper-scissors and had to become the Hokage.”
“And you believe that?” Shizune asked dubiously.
Tsunade was still staring, silent and contemplative.
He nodded. “I do,” Jiraiya admitted. “She's undeniably a master of hiraishin, she knows things about Konoha's workings that no outsider could, and she has been able to predict what's going to happen because she already knows all the major players and their motivation.”
“And that's why she came out of nowhere and took over a country,” Tsunade said. She seemed to be at least considering the possibility. Her brow furrowed. “Why Kirigakure?”
Jiraiya grimaced and shrugged. “My guess is an over-developed sense of responsibility, matched with depression about being alone?” he ventured. “She doesn't seem willing to consider me like her version of Jiraiya, except when she became emotionally compromised. And she had to have been attached, I was clearly a significant factor in her education.”
“Damnit,” Tsunade said, under her breath. She ran her hands through her hair. “Damnit!” Her eyes were welling up. “This can't be right. I don't want any of this to be true.”
“I think it is,” Jiraiya said. And Aiko was late, why was she so late?
“Why did you come?” Shizune cut in. She fidgeted. “You two wanted an appointment with Tsunade, right?”
Tsunade furrowed her brow, clearly trying to remember what exactly had been said. “You said that you needed me.” There was a hint of shame in her voice. “What were you talking about? Is it about whatever Uzumaki is sick with?”
She's sick?
Jiraiya shook that off. “No, it's...”
Ah.
“Orochimaru,” he said slowly. “The Death God told Aiko that she had to kill Orochimaru, by tomorrow.”
She had come to him for help, because she thought that he was a more stable adult. She had been looking for a crutch. And she'd watched as her Godaime Hokage wretched and whined, pathetic and drunk. He hadn't made a particularly strong, reassuring showing either. How would someone under that much stress react as her teacher fell apart?
She wasn't going to come back for his help.
“I think that she's probably doing that right now.” He felt numb. That was what either of her parents would have done, after all. And she was backed into a corner. She'd been hesitant about every name they'd thought of as possible assistance.
Aiko was probably dead.
If he left right now, at top speed, he could be to Rice Country in a day. And at that point he'd have to find the secret base where Aiko said Orochimaru would be holed up. And the confrontation was probably already over.
It was far too late for him to do anything about it.
“Ah.” Shizune swallowed. She looked a little frightened for the other girl- and Jiraiya appreciated that, it was good that someone else would care about Aiko. Even if it was just in the abstract. “Then… it's too late to help her.”
“Too late for her,” Tsunade agreed foggily. She looked a little sick. “But...” She wavered. “If she was telling the truth… About my grandfather, and what Danzo has been doing….”
Jiraiya was holding his breath.
Tsunade looked up. “I need to go back,” she said. She sounded like she was in shock. “I can't leave this. I need… I need to talk to the Sandaime.”
“Oh. Right.” Jiraiya cleared his throat. “I was supposed to try to get you to come back for another reason, by the way. Little Kakashi is in the hospital and they can't do anything for him.” His tone soured. “Uchiha Itachi put him there.”
“Hatake? May as well add him to the list,” Tsunade said. She rubbed at her cheek. Then she frowned. “Isn't Uchiha dead?”
“And still a pain in the ass,” Jiriaya said, bitter.
Tsunade snorted. “That sounds about right.”
He eyed her. He considered it. “Aiko tells me that in her timeline you took the little Uchiha as your apprentice and that it's a good fit.”
X
The puppet bound forward. He had to tighten his grip on his avatar- the little spirit was trembling- and rush to meet it with a bright-shining blade. The clash against his energy sent the usurper’s slave backwards, thudding into the compacted soil that ringed the chamber.
With disgust, he freed his left arm and used the narrow fingers to draw in the air. There was a delightful lack of resistance he had never experienced while interacting with this world before. This vessel, at least, was highly suitable for his purposes. Perhaps she had been touched by the gods before.
The sigil hung in the air. He stepped back.
The puppet was already approaching again, bound inexorably by the foolish commands of that insolent human. At the right moment, Death pulled on the hanging seal and it darted to cover the wayward soul.
It stopped, pale skin and hair contrasted with black ink crawling inside its orifices. It shuddered, caught between his will and that of the human who had raised it.
He won.
The puppet stilled and fell to land limply on the chamber floor. The last character, that of ‘rest’, was holding its lips shut.
There was a cry from the usurper. He smiled at the indignation and raised his blade to meet the human. Good. Before the end, this insolent human would repent. The human’s sword caught his eye.
“Kusanagi?” his own voice came out with a rasp. The vessels’ throat was too narrow and feminine. The sound ripped vocal cords on the way out.
The human laughed, high and smug. “You know this blade?” They fought. Curious, he allowed the human to put him in the reactive position. His steps moved backwards, his blade only blocked the other’s attacks. Each time the metal clashed, he had an opportunity to look at the blade that had been wrested from the tail of a monstrous serpent by a minor god.
It was remarkable. From the way it sang when it connected with his rather pathetic sword, he could see that the metal was sweet and perfect, melded with energy and venom from the environs where it had been made. It still bore faint traces of Susanoo’s hand- had anyone wielded it since, other than this human? Susanoo must have cast it down after his human bride had died. Or no- he had given it to his sister, hadn’t he?
How had it ended up here? What a waste. It was nothing to his true form, of course, but Kusanagi cried out for a worthier hand than a mortal’s.
“I will take that, when you are dead,” he decided. He felt his borrowed lips stretch in a smile. “Such an artifact is more suited to the servant of a god than a writhing defiler.”
“You think highly of yourself, Mizukage-sama,” the human sneered. His next swing was designed to conceal a malevolent energy in its wake. Death laughed and let it come, curious to see what this worm thought it could do to him.
It was a binding. The body began to seize. It was quite interesting, to feel the sudden resistance to his commands. The human took the opportunity to strike Kusanagi against his servant, cutting through her clothing to bite into the soft meat of her shoulder.
Pain instantly followed, but it was a distant thing. Death watched as the human stepped backwards and slid Kusanagi into a sheath. Arrogance.
“Such a shame.” The man’s voice was silky. “I thought I might sell you to Akatsuki, to recover some of my losses. They would pay a tidy sum for the jinchuuriki of the Ichibi. But I think it’s better for you to simply die.”
Die? His servant, brought down by wounds like a human? Death laughed and broke the binding.
The human’s expression went blank.
“You look to me to solve your problems,” he mocked. “What right have you to ask for favors from death?” He cocked the vessel’s head. “You have conducted no rites, consulted no texts, given me no offerings.” He felt his smile turn bloody. “I will rectify this.”
The girl was coming to the surface again, her thoughts urgent. He read the topmost- ah, fear, pain, anger. She wanted her body back. He stilled for a moment, frowning in concentration.
The human took the chance to attack. Death let it come, preoccupied by a worthier opponent. The girl had once had the will to control him, before he had crept into the soft spaces of her mind. Yes, there was definitely something godly in her blood. No wonder that the possession had not ruined her flesh.
She fought him now. Absently, he noted that serpents were winding around the body. Futile.
There was a disconnection, a sense of wrongness. Two shocks came in quick succession. And-
Aiko shuddered, caught in a writhing mass of snakes. Horror and pain almost paralyzed her. But her instinct was, as always, hiraishin. It took her away- and not an instant too soon. Tobirama came crashing through where she had been, sending blood and scales flying.
She took a breath and wheezed. Her head spun. She felt blood bubble on her lips when she breathed out. It was boiling in her veins, set on fucking fire by Orochimaru’s poison and she knew that she should be dying. Sanbi was a cleansing wave throughout her body, neutralizing the venom. But he wasn’t fast enough. She could feel her organs failing.
She kept moving. Just hiraishin, three times, standing still. And then she found the will to force her limbs to move. Her fingers clenched, stiff. She put her sword away because the death god liked to fight like that and it might make it easier for him to resurface. She flexed her fingers out.
Fuinjutsu was her best bet. Watching him use her body to draw a seal had made her realize that something similar was connecting them- there was no physical seal, but… the power had binding similarities. When she’d unraveled his seal on Tobirama, she had understood enough to copy the technique to the seal on her.
It wouldn’t last. She could feel him laughing below her skin. He was amused, and that scared the absolute fucking shit out of her. She barely had a thought to spare for Orochimaru, who was white-faced and running through hand seals.
Tobirama came at her again, relentless and grim. But he was just a shade, the shadow of a long-dead man who she would not cower from.
Some wild instinct took over. She stood her ground and screamed at him, feeling blood fly out of her mouth. Something crackled in the air around her. The dead man nearly hesitated. Some caution brought him to exchange his sword for a smaller blade-had Orochimaru noticed what she had, about the Death god’s preference for swordplay? At the last millisecond she lunged and grabbed at him. He body-checked her and jammed a knife into her ribcage but her hands connected with him three times in the scuffle. Left arm, right pectoral, right hip.
She pulled on the explosive hiraishin within the second that she placed them. The destruction cut into her own flesh and she didn’t care, beyond the point where she was even capable of reacting to pain as a deterrent.
Tobirama fell, mangled. She went down to one knee and then regained her feet. She wheeled on Orochimaru.
A silver cage was surrounding them. It hummed with power.
A cage? Seriously? Oh no, if only she could do something that would help her leave the cage.
“And what is that supposed to do?” Aiko asked. Between the annoyance and the wet rasp of blood in her throat, her voice came out ugly and mean. “Have you paid attention, like, at all?”
Orochimaru licked his lips. There was something wild and excited in his eyes.
The world lit up. The air was white-hot. She had no idea what was happening, all she knew that she was in so much more pain than she’d ever felt before.
She couldn’t see. She realized that she was laying on the ground. Her body was so, so heavy. There was something missing.
She tried to breathe. It was faint.
Oh, Aiko realized, distantly surprised. Her heart wasn’t beating.
Pressure was buzzing against her brain. She tried to move her hands, even just her fingers. But she was so heavy. She was meat, just so much meat. Buzzing with excess electricity from whatever Orochimaru had electrocuted her with.
The sound was muffled, but she distinctly heard footsteps approaching her.
And that was it. Her vision was gone. All she had was a bone-deep tiredness and the sensation of all the muscle tension releasing throughout her body.
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She sat up and swallowed. The blood in her throat had crusted dry and it didn’t go down easily. Aiko swayed, disoriented by the darkness and the stiffness of her body. Slowly and painfully, she hacked up the dried blood that was blocking part of her windpipe.
“You’re back,” Sanbi said. The desperate relief in his voice lifted the hairs on the back of her neck. “Where you went, I couldn’t follow. What happened?”
Aiko spat. She tried to work up a little moisture in her mouth. ‘I don’t know,’ she thought in response. ‘I don’t know anything. Where did Orochimaru go?’
Sanbi’s silence did not bode well.
Orochimaru. She needed to find him. She moved around in the darkness and her legs dropped off of a ledge. No- a table, she realized. Aiko had been laying on a table. Her toes found the floor and she slid off. She swayed for a moment, head adjusting to being fully upright. She gave a good stretch, trying to release the tension in her shoulders and lactic acid buildup in her legs.
“You don’t know what happened?” Sanbi asked.
‘I already said that.’
Her stomach hurt like hell, actually. She didn’t remember getting injured there. Aiko grimaced and considered her options- she was likely alone in a prison cell somewhere in Orochimaru’s base.
Well. Light was the first thing.
She pushed her tired fingers through two simple handsigns and threw out sparks. The fire illuminated enough of the room for her to get her general bearings before it went dark again- she got the sense of a medium-sized room, full of tables. Two walls were lined with glass cabinets that caught the light and reflected it back at her, so she started feeling her way along the other two walls, searching for a light switch. It was on the second wall. She flipped it on and then reflexively closed her eyes against the shock- her pupils had fully expanded in the dark, and the light was painful.
It took a while, but she blinked away sparks and dark spots. And she saw that she wasn’t in a prison cell at all. The room had 4 high, narrow tables. Each of the tables had a gleaming silver metal bedside table with a tray of instruments. 3 of the tables had bodies on them.
She frowned, trying to process her situation. And her legs brushed against each other, which was how she realized that she was, in fact, naked.
Wow. Apparently, it was possible to feel more creeped out. ‘Orochimaru’, she thought, ‘has outdone himself. This is some intense psychological warfare. Why do any of this? It would have been so much smarter to kill me. Unless he really does want to sell me to Akatsuki.’
She padded across the room to look down at one of the bodies- yes, that person was very definitely dead. They were naked as well, with black ink marking what Aiko suspected would be future incisions. The corpse glowed faintly blue underneath some type of preservation seal. She turned to look at the others, which were similarly prepared. One of them had the chest cut open to reveal the heart and lungs. The skin was pinned back neatly.
‘He’s such a creepy motherfucker.’
Her body was waking up, at least. The stiffness was rapidly fading. She moved more easily now- and goddamn, her stomach was bothering her. She bent her neck to look down.
It was hard to process what she was seeing
There was a shimmer of a blue seal, airtight around her torso. That was alright. What was less okay was the expanse of wet, red flesh she could see. The itching sensation at her sides was the pins keeping her skin tucked out of the way.
That was her. She was looking at herself. She was looking at her insides.
Aiko closed her eyes and swayed. Her hands began to shake.
She was not prepared to look at her own organs. She deliberately did not think about what it was that she had seen, because panic was shrieking in the back of her mind. It would not be soothed by facts about what exactly was coiled where and what had black ink on it for further cuts.
“Please remain calm,” Sanbi said. He did not seem that calm himself. “Wash your hands in that sink.”
Why?
He repeated himself. And the order was easy to follow, so she did it.
“Remove the pins,” Sanbi said. “But lay down first, because the seal will break when you do.”
She looked at the table where she had woken up. Her body was shuddering beyond her control. She could not lay down there. She was terrified that she knew why Sanbi wanted her to lay down before removing the pins. She laid down on the floor. Her hands were shaking, but she remembered what she had seen.
“That’s it,” Sanbi muttered soothingly, as her fingers worked their way up the neat row on her left side. “Now the other side, bottom to top. You’re doing well.”
She finished. She held all the pins in her left hand because she didn’t know what to do with them.
Chakra surged. It hurt- oh shit, it fucking hurt. It felt like fire was being forced through her veins. But she was already in a lot of pain and, she suspected, shock. She waited. It became more manageable. She licked her lips.
“You can get up now,” Sanbi said. His tone was a little nervous. “Someone may have noticed that. We should go.”
Go? The thought rang in her head. No, she couldn’t go. She had to find Orochimaru.
“What?” Sanbi asked incredulously. She realized that she must have been talking aloud. “You cannot! He had already killed you once!”
Impossible. She rejected it. He had not. She was standing here, in an examination room full of corpses. The key word was ‘standing’. Corpses didn’t do that.
Her mind reminded her, rather unpleasantly, that Tobirama had done that.
She didn’t feel like she had been animated by anyone looking for a fight, though. Who would summon a corpse soldier into a dark room alone? Ridiculous. Nothing was odd here.
All she needed to do was find Orochimaru and kill him.
“Can you hear yourself?” Sanbi’s voice was high and nervous. “Does that seem like your thought? Really and truly?”
Well, yes. She wanted to find Orochimaru. Aiko licked her lips and glanced around the room. Her clothes and weapons were nowhere to be seen.
She opened her hand. All the pins fell to the floor with a gentle clatter. She decided not to take anything from the room.
The hallway was dark as well.
It must be night, she realized. The base was dark because everyone was resting. Except sentries, she presumed. There had to be a few of them around. She kept her footsteps and breathing very quiet as she advanced. She chose directions blindly at first and then she realized that she could sense someone very powerful in one direction. She had never felt Orochimaru’s unmanaged chakra before, but it was likely him. She took the corridors that seemed to lead towards what she felt.
More than once, she made a mistake. The first time that a mistake let her into a bedroom, she was much faster than the person who had been sleeping inside. She considered turning on the light to ransack the room for supplies and clothes, but decided against it. The light might draw more attention. So she kept trying. There was no way to gauge how much time she spent, but everyone she passed was still sleeping or dead when she reached the hallway in front of Orochimaru’s room.
There were two shinobi standing alert in the darkness. But, honestly, they might as well have not been there. She broke one neck and choked the other to death with barely a scuffle.
The light switched on inside the room, however. She blinked. Even diffused by the closed door, the light took some adjusting to.
Aiko decided to count herself lucky that her pupils were adjusting in two parts, rather than by going from total darkness to total light. She waited patiently, focusing her gaze on the light that came through the crack in the door.
“Are you coming in?” Orochimaru lilted. He sounded as though he was not particularly fussed one way or the other. “It’s a little late for company, but today has been exciting.”
She licked the inside of her teeth. She pushed open the door. Orochimaru was sitting gracefully on the edge of his bed, pale feet barely brushing against a fluffy blue rug.
His face fell slack in shock.
“Hello,”’ Aiko said, since he apparently wasn’t going to say anything. “I’m here to kill you.”
“You were dead.” His voice was high and rather insistent. She wasn’t 100% certain if it was fear or excitement that colored his tone. Maybe it was both. “I was certain of that.”
Ah, she didn’t like that thought.
Aiko reminded herself that he was a murderous rogue and was probably a liar as well. She shook off the claim.
“Go,” Sanbi said. “If you’re going to attack him, go now!”
She realized that she didn’t have a plan, but it didn’t seem that important. Aiko blinked lazily, and her chakra obediently surged around her eyes. Ah, she thought. She hadn’t used that in a while.
Granted, she hadn’t used it because she hadn’t been able to do it well. That fact didn’t seem particularly relevant as she summoned Susanoo. The burning chakra flooded the room and she realized that, actually, somehow she knew that this was not literally Susanoo himself. It might be more accurately described as “Susanoo’s blessing”. She was channeling a small amount of his power. The distinction seemed obvious and important. And it was so easy to do. She wondered that it had ever been troublesome before.
Orochimaru screamed. His body was convulsing. The room was utterly full of a power that was wholly incompatible with a living, breathing human being.
Aiko didn’t feel anything in particular, physically or emotionally.
She watched the snake sannin boil alive in his own skin. When he fell still, she released her hold on the godly chakra.
The corpse fell off of the bed.
She crossed the room. She was slightly surprised by the physical pleasure when her feet sank into the plush rug around Orochimaru’s bed. He’d had a taste for fine things, she realized. Out of curiosity, she ran her hand down his bed. Silk sheets. Quite nice.
She took the sheets and pillow cases off the bed and folded them neatly. Then she set them on the rug. She ransacked the dresser and was slightly disappointed to find that his clothing was much more utilitarian. Still, she pulled on a tan shirt that reached to her knees and used one of his hair ties to secure a braid. She casually stole an interesting-looking knife by sliding it into her hair for later.
The body was waiting patiently for her. She considered it for a moment. Then she set the sheets on the stomach and pulled the rug out into the center of the room, out from underneath the bed. Then she rolled it up, encasing the body inside. She bent and hefted the whole thing over her shoulder.
“This seems like you, at least,” Sanbi said. He sounded somewhere between relieved and deeply resentful. She was not sure what he meant.
Comments
Orlong
I signed up for AIC, and damn was it worth it. This + the last chapter were a great read!
N991029
Aiko is having such a bad week...
