WAP Chapter 3

She rested that afternoon, idly dragging her fingers through the plush fibers of a rug that Orochimaru had once purchased for his bedroom. Aiko was lying on her back with her arms sprawled above her head. She straightened her arms and stretched, feeling it lengthen her back.

Her ankle was totally fine by that point. The bigger concern was bloodstains. She'd stripped out of that set of clothing and had set it to soak in two separate buckets.

"The Daimyo is probably not going to be cool about this," she decided. Aiko deepened her stretch and then rolled over to her stomach. Her bare skin felt great against the soft carpet fibers. She let her face rest on the floor. She let out a discontented hum.

"Maybe this is my chance to expand the faithful," she mused. "The Daimyo probably didn't decide to fuck over this hamlet in particular. He got greedy, or he needed more to show off. Lots of villages will be feeling a pinch."

She had only managed to beg two miko outfits off of the shrine in Kirigakure before she left. They were both dirty, so Aiko pulled out a summer-patterned kimono from seal storage. Putting it on took a solid 20 minutes, and she probably didn't do a very good job of it. But she had clothes on and her hair tied up when she stepped outside.

It was early evening. Some people were inside preparing food, but quite a few were lounging with drinks and chatting in the relief of relatively cool air.

Her villagers eyed the clothes that she had not been visibly carrying when she arrived, and did not comment.

"Good evening, Priestess," Hana chirped. A few strands of hair had escaped from their tie. She used the back of her sleeve to push her hair back from her face. "What should we do with the horse?"

Aiko blinked.

It took a minute to remember that one of the samurai's horses had run into town. "Well." She mused. "We could consider it spoils, or we could go and return it."

There was hemming and hawing.

She looked around. "... It's our horse now," she decided, since she didn't care and no one seemed to want to return it. "Which might come in handy. Do you think other villages might also be burdened by this year's tax?"

That set off a hasty and impassioned discussion about where might have already been visited and where would still be glumly waiting. It was barely the end of the harvest, so probably most rice had yet to be collected.

'I can be anywhere I'm needed,' Aiko mused. 'As long as I have a hiraishin seal planted, and a way for it to be activated in times of need. No one here can consciously use chakra. But I wonder if prayer would work?'

"There is a possibility," Aiko mused aloud. She was nearly surprised by the respectful hush that fell upon the conversation. "If someone might pray with me tonight, I may have a solution."

She had her pick of volunteers, and her pick was a young man named Shinji, who had another thrilling variation on the name "third son." Shinji followed her with a poorly concealed grin and sparkling eyes.

Aiko was a little embarrassed to realize that she had picked him because he was hot.

"Whatever,' she thought. 'It doesn't hurt anything for me to look at someone with broad shoulders.'

She wasn't exactly enjoying being alone every night, but it seemed like a very bad idea to date within her congregation. It would humanize her too much.

'I'm not going to be here forever. It'll be what, a couple of years? It can't take that long to start a thriving religion.'

Aiko frowned.

The confidence on poor Shinji's face slipped drastically.

She did not notice. Aiko was shucking her sandals in the genkan. She stepped up into the shrine and absently invited Shinji inside. It was the first time he'd been inside, and he wasn't subtle about gawking.

Her little shrine was small, by modern standards. But she'd made it fairly comfortable. Her camp sleeping bag was put away, so all that he saw was plush carpet over the wooden floor. She had a constellation of candles on a long table, which she knew would be incomprehensibly luxurious to his eyes. They cast wavering light onto the smooth glass of her ink bottles. She could see Shinji's eyes widen and focus on the glass.

Hm.

She laid down a piece of paper and pulled a brush out of her bag. "Have a seat on the floor." Aiko drew up a hiraishin seal and blew gently on the ink to see if it would run. When it didn't budge, she laid the paper on the floor in front of her guest.

Shinji put both hands on the floor and leaned forward cautiously. His brow furrowed.

"Think on Izanami-sama," Aiko instructed. When he glanced up at her she gestured for him to touch the paper. "First, think of her, and ask for her attention."

He closed his eyes.

She had to assume that he was doing what she asked, but she felt nothing reacting with her seal.

"Pray to the mother," Aiko said softly. Hey voice came out unintentionally hypnotic. "Ask for guidance, for protection."

She waited. And waited.

"... Think of me," Aiko said, unsettled. "Think of asking for my attention."

There was a tug on her awareness. Pinpricks of warmth bloomed in her mind, manifesting as serenity and satisfaction.

She plastered a smile on. "Thank you, Shinji-kun." When he opened his eyes and looked up at her, she knelt and took the seal. He flushed red and moved away from her.

"That's all," Aiko said kindly. "It worked. I will explain later. I must think about this first."

She saw him out. Only then did she put her face in her hands. "Praying to me works?" Aiko said to herself incredulously. "Not to Izanami-sama? Is it because my seal is attuned to my energy and not hers?"

Oh.  Actually, that made sense. It didn't explain why she was… apparently feeding off of human worship or whatever. But of course the hearth of godly power resting in Aiko's chest didn't match with a seal designed to mimic her own energies.

It felt vaguely sacrilegious to have people pray to her. Worse than that, it seemed counterproductive. She needed Izanami to be happy and powerful so that she'd fulfill her end and help Aiko get back home.

'Maybe… I can misdirect. Have them pray to Izanami and ask her to send her servant to intercede. If they always start by praying to her, the association should stay strong.'

Paper wouldn't do, though. It really wouldn't. It was too fragile.

Aiko bit her lip and let it go when she realized what she was doing.

"Talismans," she said to herself. "And I don't want to make them. Someone will agree to carve them for me, and then I can put a seal on them. Chakra or ink?" She rubbed at the back of her neck. "Chakra," Aiko decided."I'll use ink for something else, but keep my seal hidden. Maybe the ink should be some kind of icon that can symbolize both Izanami no Mikoto and myself." She flipped through her papers, looking for some scrap. "I can just stylize a woman… Probably in kimono," Aiko muttered.

She went through several sketches before she had something she didn't hate and could replicate with reasonable accuracy. She put the kanji for the goddess at the bottom.

"So, I need someone who can carve wood or stone." Aiko cleaned her brush and put it away. "Someone has to have those skills, right?" She stood for a moment and stretched, scowling at the way her muscles felt.

Discomfort had been creeping up on her all day. The light exercise she'd gotten tossing around samurai had just reminded her to take care of her body.

There were so many things to do, but the experience from Aiko's years of active service was telling her that the time spent quietly was tilting towards dangerous and not restorative.

'I should do my conditioning. I don't want to lose muscle or slow down.'

She crept out, knowing that none of the villagers would notice her leaving the shrine. They didn't need to know anything about her that she hadn't considered revealing.

There were a few places that she'd used for training in the months she'd been living in the pre-village era. The one she picked at dusk was a narrow riverside clearing.

Aiko came to it and went through a warmup and stretch routine, and then transitioned to agility drills and maintenance on her finger dexterity. When her body was warmed and purring, she switched to doing taijutsu drills on the river while maintaining water jutsu. She lifted a mist first, letting it creep further and further out. Within the mist she opened pockets of air, closed them, and spat water bullets at imaginary opponents. She ended her sequence with a water dragon, which was enough chakra usage for her natural reserves to start to notice the depletion.

She switched to handstand pushups, luxuriating in the muscle activation in her back and pectorals. Those were some of her weakest muscle groups, always had been.

Aiko ran her tongue along the inside of her teeth in concentration. She didn't move off the river or disrupt her rhythm, but she reached out to the soil on the bank and began manipulating it. Doing that without direct contact was genuinely difficult, and her focus narrowed to a very small segment of soil.

She felt the movement in it- ants walking on top, a beetle burrowing, and the faint pounding of …animal or human footsteps. Seemed human from the rhythm.

Ah.

Aiko tilted back down to her feet and shook her head, focusing to find whoever was nearby.

It took a minute to puzzle out the sensory input. She turned her face in the direction of the interlopers. There were 3 pairs of feet coming in her direction. They were definitely headed directly to her, and at a pace that told her they were not civilians out for an evening sprint.

Hmm.

She might have been too hasty in saying it was human steps. Something wasn't right.

Aiko frowned and reached out her chakra sense, wishing Karin was here. The footfall pattern was weird. But it was also familiar.

'One human, one canid.' Aiko felt her heart thump hard, homesick. It wasn't going to be Kakashi, it wasn't even going to be Kiba or Hana. The thought of Kakashi got her heart rate up for a moment– it wouldn't be him, but a clan member?

Her heart fell as fast as it had risen.

'His family were samurai. In the Land of Iron, until sometime after Konoha was established. They're nowhere near here. Which is good, since if they were in the area they'd be working for the Daimyo and we would not be friendly.'

She had her face arranged into pleasant placidity by the time the other shinobi had slowed down to creep upon her cautiously.

They didn't seem aggressive. But she had no interest in drawing this out, so Aiko looked in their direction and raised a hand in greeting. "Good evening, friends." Her voice broke the ambient noise of the forest. "Can I help you? Have I intruded?"

There was a quick exhalation. The man that stepped out into view wasn't a big surprise. His hair was dark brown and so long that he had to be a good shinobi. That seemed about right, given that he looked like a hard-lived early 30s, with faint sunburn on his cheekbones and lines around his eyes and mouth that tattled on his good nature.

That habitual smile was nowhere to be seen as he stepped closer to get a good look at her.

She should have held his gaze longer but Aiko noted that in an instant before his partner drew her attention.

A soft "Oh" left her mouth involuntarily. The dog was a dead ringer for Akamaru, if Akamaru had bulked up and gotten some metal armor to match the shinobi's.

"Good evening," the Inuzuka stiffly responded. "You know where you are?"

Aiko regretfully tore her gaze away from the ninken. "Relatively close to the village where I live," she told him. "I don't know anything about the Shinobi clan territory layout.

His eyebrows shot up. That drew her attention to the thick scar tissue that cut through his left eyebrow. Someone had tried to gouge that eye out, messily.

"You live in a civilian village?" He cocked his head at her. "You look Clan."

Aiko paused, not sure of what to say. Technically yes, she was. But she hadn't been raised like one. "I've never lived in a Clan compound," she settled for. "And there's no one living who would invite me into theirs."

"But someone dead would have, got it," the Inuzuka summarized easily. He let a hand fall on his ninken's back. "Bastard?"

"No," Aiko snapped. And then it occurred to her that she might be- no one had ever actually told her that her parents got married.

Either way, it was a rude word.

He put his hand up in faux defense and showed overlarge incisors when he grinned.

Aiko kept her face still.

'I forgot, I have large canine teeth as well. If he sees that, he might have questions. And I can't explain what ninken I had a contract with.'

"You're not quite on our doorstep, but you're close enough that I wanted to know who was burning chakra out here." He looked her up and down. "You don't look like you were fighting for your life."

"Light evening exercise," Aiko said dryly. "No danger."

He let out a whistling breath. "That's Senju level chakra, princess."

Aiko let her expression fall flat.

'Senju? God, I can't get mistaken for one of them. I'd have no peace.'

He laughed at the face she made. "That's a no, then?" The Inuzuka kept talking, probably to distract from the purposeful way the ninken was taking in Aiko's scent.

Aiko was and always had been a little shit, so- "I'm sure that your partner can confirm," she indicated the dog. "I don't smell like a Senju, dog-san."

Granted, she didn't know what the Senju would have smelled like. But it wouldn't be like her, a recent emigre from Kirigakure several hundred years in the future, who had spent the last couple of months sleeping in a pine building and helping in rice fields.

"Dog-san?" the Inuzuka repeated, faintly smiling still. The warmth had gone out of his eyes, though. "What do you mean?"

Aiko frowned at him. "You can't tell me that's just a dog. That's your partner. You didn't bring a pet to come investigate a suspicious person. If you did, I would confiscate your dog. That would be wildly irresponsible."

His eyebrows shot up again. "You're right, of course," he agreed mildly. His brown eyes had a hint of orange that caught the light as he followed her movements. "There are dangerous people in the world. What if I brought my dog to encounter a strange woman who kidnapped dogs?"

"Very irresponsible," Aiko repeated, ignoring his point. "Therefore, you are here with someone who you're working with, as opposed to a ward in your custody."

"Ward- in my custody?" Amused, he smiled at her. Inuzuka ruffled his own hair, and then patted his partner. Fur floated away on the breeze. "Well. Is she from the Senju?"

The question was directed to his ninken. The dog slipped forward, focused on her.

She let the dog approach. His head came up to her ribs, which was very obvious when he sniffed into her personal space.

His answer came in conversational growls, punctuated by a bark.

Either way, it was obvious from the tone that the dog wasn't calling her a liar.

The man hmmed. "Not a Senju," he agreed hoarsely. He sniffed. "What are you doing? In that village," he corrected.

"Simply living," Aiko ad-libbed, because her miko outfits were in the wash and she felt like a fraud already. "I do as my mother asks me to."

There, that sounded innocuous and also didn't contradict her role. If he poked around, he'd assume she meant Izanami was her metaphorical mother.

Realizing that she wasn't in her usual clothes made something else make sense.

'That's why he called me princess.'

The kimono was extravagant. Aiko wouldn't deny that. It definitely stood out in the area. She'd picked out clothes that she thought were particularly beautiful, from an era in which high quality materials were more readily available and fabric dyes were more vibrant.

He sniffed again. There was a long pause. "I'll tell my clan," he said. He took a step back. "If you're living peacefully in a civilian village, they should know, so they don't startle when they sense chakra in use. What's your name?"

"Aiko."

The Inuzuka looked her up and down. "Alright then, Aiko clanless. You're living in the Inuzuka clan genkan. Bark if you need us, but it's better if you don't need usl." He raised a hand lazily and turned away. "Goodnight."

She returned the greeting and watched him leave. The ninken gave her a long look before following into the night.

(Ude wasted no time getting to the clan compound. No matter how sweet her face had been, that woman was trouble. The chakra that she'd been throwing around should have had her visibly tired, at least, and she'd been fresh. Ude didn't necessarily think she was a danger or needed to leave, but the clan needed to know she was on their doorstep.

If nothing else, he thought, conflict would come to her. Whatever Clan she was avoiding would eventually figure out there was a rogue to collect. Someone should find out enough that the clan knew whether to keep out of it or look out for a neighbor.)