WAP 53

Hana was happy to see her. Aiko dumped her unconscious prisoner on the floor with a thump and stretched her arms out for a hug. “You look so good,” Aiko crooned, gathering up her mouthiest acolyte. “Look at you, and oh- your little man.” She rocked Hana to the side and peered at the baby. The baby was asleep.

She had an eerie, out of body experience. For a millisecond, Aiko remembered how Senhime had embraced Narahime. Her hands flinched on Hana’s back.

“I’m well, I am fine.” Hana held her back at arm’s length and beamed. The moment ended. “Thank you for sending Senju-sensei. He has been very helpful.” 

Aiko looked around for the medic.

“He is helping replace the roof,” Hana explained serenely. “As I said, very helpful.” A sly smile played around the side of her mouth. “He has also been enlisted to help with literacy classes.”

“You’re keeping him busy.” Aiko snickered. “Alright. I was mostly just checking in.” She jerked her head at the unconscious Hyuuga assassin. “I’m meant to drop her off.” 

Hana craned her head over to look. “Huh,” she said, obviously disinterested. “Not my business.”

‘She should have been a mercenary. I can’t believe she’s a priestess and mother. Fantastic.’

Aiko cackled. “Do you need anything?” She checked. “Do you have anything to tell me?”

Hana cleared her throat and started ticking things off on her fingers. “Jyaa, Mayumi-san wants to talk with you. Kakuzu received a visitor from his old village and told them he would not return, he said they may come again to force the issue. Momoko wants to stay at the Senju compound shrine overnight to play with the other shrine maiden candidates.”

“The whomst?” Aiko said, and Hana bulldozed past the question and the concept of other small children trying to join her cult.

“Our summer festival is on track. Shinji-san and Fumiko-san have both been receiving civilian visitors at the shrines. We’ve received some offerings, including, um, a horse.” Hana’s nose wrinkled. “We… I don’t know what to do with that. We are accumulating a lot of horses.”

It took a few seconds of staring dumbly to understand that. “Right, that’s… that is a traditional offering,” Aiko remembered. By her day that had been replaced with drawings meant to represent horses, as live animals were expensive to keep and kept bankrupting poor shrines. Rich people were ridiculous. “Ah, we can… get a riding instructor?” Her voice went up and she frowned. “I’ll think about it. There’s gotta be a good use for a horse. They’re not the kind of horse that you can use on a farm, right?” Her tone turned to wheedling by the end, hopeful that there was an easy solution.

Hana was unamused. “No,” she said flatly. “They are not useful on a farm.”

Aiko nodded. “Fantastic,” she muttered to herself. She ran a hand through her hair. “Alright, thank you. Is there anything else I need to know about?”

Hana looked up for a moment in thought. Then she lied, “No.”

Aiko looked at her. “You’re a bad liar,” she reminded her acolyte.

Hana shrugged unrepentantly. 

Aiko gave it up as a bad job. “I’m going to drop her off, then, and then go and check in on the shrines. I’ll ask Shinji if he can mind the girls full time- wait, do the other girls want to stay with the Senju? Oh. Just Momoko.” Aiko felt a little pained. “And her older sisters… Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter what they want, but I still don’t want to separate them. I’ll look into a schedule or something, split custody.”

She thought through a few angles as she went about her errands. It didn’t take long to leave the Hyuuga at the Uchiha clan compound and entrust her to a scary-looking elder. Good luck to her. “Maybe brace her wrists,” Aiko suggested vaguely, because it was possible that the girl would be useful as a hostage back to the Hyuuga and it would be nicer if she could use her hands. It might not matter, but the elder didn’t seem to mind. He read the letter from Madara without any change in his expression.

“Would you stay for tea?” he offered courteously.

That sounded awful.

Aiko gave him a nice bow in return. “Your kindness warms my heart,” she said. “However, I must attend to my followers.”

“Very well.” He raised the letter slightly. “Would you return this evening? I would like to give my reply to Madara-sama.”

“Of course,” she agreed. Damn. She was not going to escape tea with that old man.

After she had been thanked appropriately and passed on enough information about how things were going at the manor (bad), Aiko went to start the process of checking in on her priests and priestesses scattered across Fire Country. 

Out of a desire to get it out of the way, the first place she went was into the heart of Hyuuga territory to meet with the village headman who had recruited her, Ohama-san, and the sour-faced Priest Hokotaro. Hokotaro was not happy that she had come, but he was polite enough and thanked her for the talismans and funding she had provided.

‘Half expected an ambush,’ Aiko thought, and gave him a real smile before she left. It was fine that he didn’t like working with her. In fact that sort of made it more touching that he hadn’t sold her out. She felt him out to see if he would be interested in help at his shrine. The answer was yes, but he did not want to train anyone himself. She avoided rolling her eyes and made a mental note about it. 

Priest Tarako had three different acolytes at his shrine, two young men and one young woman. They had all been there for about two months at this point and had apparently settled in well. She gave them all positive reinforcement and then went on to visit the only elderly priestess she had managed to coax cooperation from. Priestess Yuki lived by herself halfway up a mountain, sustained on supplies that locals carried up for her. Aiko gave her the sales pitch on a potential trainee, thinking of some nice Uchiha with strong backs to carry rice and water. She was hard to read.

“Only girls,” Yuki said, at the end of a long silence. “I will not live with men. I will train good girls. Nice girls.” Her hands shook on her lap. 

Well, that eliminated Hana and Fumiko, but they were already established in the valley village anyway.

“My home is rather small.” Aiko glanced around the 1 room building involuntarily. It was an understatement. It was about the size of two futon laid next to each other. She could lean over and touch two walls without standing, if she wanted to. “If you build me a larger one, I will host more. In this building, I can take one girl.”

Well. Aiko nodded and finished her tea. She was exceptionally hydrated on any day that she went out visiting. “Is there a place I can build you one now?” she asked as she stood up. “I am getting rather practiced at this.”

Priestess Yuki gestured to the north. “Out there, thirty paces distant. It was a field in past years, so it is rather flat.”

She remembered seeing that, yeah. “You won’t need the field again?” Aiko checked. “There’s a garden, but if you have more girls to tend to it….”

The elderly priestess sniffled. “No, we can easily grow enough vegetables here,” she dismissed, “and rice is far too much trouble at this distance from the river.”

Aiko took her at her word and went outside to put together a less conservative shack. She had learnt a bit. This time she started by digging out a hole that would be a central fireplace, and then placed a wooden frame around it. She built a platform floor only a few centimeters above the ground, thinking of how painful it might be for someone frail to step up into a home. The old rice field had been a standard size, which meant she could easily plot enough space for 6 futon on the floor plan, closets to store them, and extra space for a table and cooking accoutrement.

She stopped when it was a frame. “You’ll need someone to install the track for sliding doors, make the doors, ah, we need paper for these frames,” Aiko thought aloud, checking off a list. “Is there a paper maker at the bottom of the mountain?”

Yuki folded her hands on the top of her walking stick. “Yes, and glue as well. As for the shoji and tatami…” Her face wrinkled deeply in thought. “I do not know if we can find them easily. We may have to wait until the rice is threshed to bind new tatami.”

Aiko nodded in thought. “I’ll see if I can source some,” she promised. She looked at her creation one more time with a slight frown. Until the doors and windows were on it, it would just be another task to upkeep. What if monkeys climbed inside and made a mess? Bugs and snakes, birds? She couldn’t make life harder for the elderly lady.

‘I need to send an assistant immediately,’ Aiko diagnosed. ‘When I go back to the Uchiha I will ask if I can borrow someone.’

No, wait. 

Aiko went back to the valley village and stepped into her home shrine, calling for Fumiko as she went. The woman hurried into sight from the back, wiping her hands on an apron.

“Priestess, you are well,” she said, clearly cataloguing everything about her appearance. “Are negotiations concluded?”

“No, and they keep trying to poison me.” Aiko kicked her shoes off and went up into the shrine proper. There was a new room now, courtesy of Hashirama, built to store the obnoxious golden tribute that rich civilians kept bringing by. She gave it a contemptuous look as she passed. 

Fumiko hummed. “That is ill-mannered.” She followed Aiko in. “Priestess, I am concerned for Kakuzu-san.”

Aiko cast her a sideways glance. “I heard,” she agreed. “His clan head sent for him?”

“Clan head- I suppose so.” Fumiko’s nose wrinkled. “I think they were threatening him.” 

“I want to ask him to go help somewhere else for a few days,” Aiko said vaguely. He was more than strong enough to help Priestess Yuki and he would do a very good job of evangelizing for Aiko around town. People were easy to persuade on the merits of a religion that manifested strong men to do manual labor for believers. 

Ugh, busy busy.

“Kakuzi-san is with Mayumi-san,” Fumiko divulged. She started playing with a lock of her hair, stroking it compulsively. “She asked for his assistance with a matter that they would not discuss with me.”

Aiko honed in on the gesture. It was out of character. Fumiko didn’t have nervous tells like that. Aiko subtly dispelled for genjutsu– and the young woman remained. Incredible. “Did you know that Mayumi-san is her clan head?” Aiko asked casually. “She outranks her husband.” 

She watched with predatorial interest as Fumiko’s shoulders rose defensively– and then dropped in shock at the word husband. “Mayumi-san is married?” Fumiko said. It was not as casual as she clearly hoped it was. “How interesting. I have never met him, have I?”

“You have,” Aiko dismissed. “He was one of the Inuzuka who escorted us to the capital. They seem quite close.”

Fumiko was definitely cheered up. Aiko swallowed a cackle and kept out of her acolyte’s business. Only then did she spare a moment to think about what must be going on.

‘Mayumi-san mentioned that allying the Senju and Uchiha might cause bloodshed with nearby groups. Is she having trouble? Perhaps Kakuzu went as a representative of me to help her deal with some kind of dissent or violence.’

Aiko trusted Fumiko, personally, but she was thoroughly civilian. It made sense that Mayumi would not want to give her much information about shinobi power struggles. 

‘It’s probably safer for her not to know, as well.’

If Aiko had ever been invited to the Inuzuka clan compound, she might have stopped by to check in. The fact that Mayumi had never extended an invitation was indication that it was a bad idea. So instead, she asked Fumiko to pass along the message that she would like to speak with Kakuzu and Mayumi as soon as possible. 

‘I need to find someone else to spend the night with Priestess Yuki. What is left, who do I– ah, I need to see Shinji and give an update to the Senju.’

She didn’t really care if they knew what was going on, but Aiko had been burnt enough by the appearance of favoritism to the Uchiha. So she took the time to stop by and find out what Hana had meant.

“Ah, these shinobi have a lot of orphans,” Shinji said. He seemed a little more confident than she remembered. He kept his arms loosely folded as he watched children from a distance. “While we only have three official acolytes here, all 12 years of age, there are younger children who are left here to safely play. There have been some inquiries….” He trailed off pointedly.

Aiko nodded. “I would like to find 2 or 3 girls who are willing to go and live outside of the village soon,” she said, hoping she could get an even number of Senju and Uchiha girls to give to Priestess Yuki. Making children peers.. It was a lot like the strategy of putting them on genin teams together. Taking them out of the social environment where outside forces would pressure them to hate each other should make it easier to dilute the population pool of bigotry. “They should be mature enough to be helpful and not annoying to a cranky elderly priestess.”

Shinji hid a snort. “Some candidates come to mind,” he said mildly.

Aiko eyed him. “And so do some who are disqualified?”

He pressed his lips together and shook his head slightly, refusing to do more than smile faintly. “Some of them are quite excitable.”

Aiko patted him on the back. “It seems that you are doing an excellent job,” she told him. “I am happy to leave this in your hands. Would it be alright to bring Momoko here for a week’s stay, starting next week?”

After he had agreed, Aiko took a sigh of relief and ran through her priorities again. It was nearing dark. She wanted to get back to the estate and in bed fairly early, since she had promised to meet Senhime at dawn.

‘Oh. Shit. I should have asked Yuki what that might be about.’

It was a bit late now, so Aiko shrugged and decided to go in blind. She went back to the Uchiha compound and was absolutely unsurprised to find that the elder had sourced five people to wait for her. She eyed them on her way in– two adults and three children, maybe around the age of 10? All civilian, by the feeling of their chakra. “Good evening,” she said vaguely, and got greetings in response.

The elder said exactly what she expected him to– Shall we have tea? Here is my response to Madara-sama. Please take care. By the way, these people would like to enter your service, could the humble Uchiha be of assistance to you in this way? By the by, Hyuuga Kimiko has kindly provided very helpful information, which is in this separate letter for Madara-sama.

She found out which of the offered Uchiha tributes were hardy enough to camp outside (supposedly all of them) and asked them to pack for two nights away before dropping them off on a bemused Priestess Yuki. 

Aiko was back at the luxurious country estate of former Minister Tani in time to meet Madara when he returned from dinner.