Chapter Text
Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give. ― Eleanor Roosevelt
Shisui was in a hurry. Sort of. He’d finished his mission without any real complications, but had stumbled across some information the Hokage would want right away. The information isn't that time-sensitive, though. It's not an emergency, and it doesn't concern village security. So he has a little time to take a detour through the local carnival, if he's quick about it. And then, he sees it. The perfect gift, tucked away among the other prizes at a game stand. Even if it takes him a few tries to figure out how the stand is rigged--even if he needs to ignore a few side-long glances from the carnival staff--he must have this souvenir.
“Are you certain, sir, that I can’t convince you to take one of our more popular prizes? I’m sure your girlfriend would enjoy one of our, ah, dragons, maybe? Or one of the dogs, perhaps?”
“No, no, this is perfect,” Shisui insisted, holding his prize aloft with pride. “I’m gonna go get this to her right away. And she’s not my girlfriend!”
Tucking his prize under an arm, Shisui hurried to the edge of the fairgrounds with a skip in his step, overjoyed that he’d managed to find the perfect present on the whim of curiosity. Then, he paused. With a groan of annoyance, he looked around at the mob of festival workers in bright uniforms and garish make-up that had surrounded him in a clearing at the edge of the fairgrounds.
“Ah. I was hoping all this wasn’t for me. Can I help you?”
The crowd roared and surged forward, each trying to tackle him or box him in so one of their fellows could shove him down. They had no real chance of victory, being a mob of untrained civilians lacking even the most rudimentary of military training.
Shisui danced his way around the first few lunges, and then up one particularly brightly-colored adversary until he was hopping from shoulder to shoulder and head to head. Leaping off the last of his assailants with a relatively gentle shove, Shisui paused on a low-hanging bough in the forest bordering the festival.
Looking back over his shoulder, Shisui scoffed, “You’re all lucky I don’t really have time to sort you out properly. I’ve got important, urgent business to attend to—a pity. I might stay and play, otherwise.”
Then, he was gone with not even a swirl of leaves to mark his passage.
“Sandaime-sama!” Shisui popped through the window of the Hokage’s Office. Normally, he’d go through the front doors, and the secretary, even with semi-time-sensitive information. But he could hear what was going on in the office, which meant that there wasn’t anything classified happening. It also meant he knew the Hokage would probably appreciate his interruption.
So, rightfully ignoring the petty bickering of Inuzuka Tsume and Tamashiro Jun as completely unimportant, he reported in, “Ready Rho Squad[1] for deployment, I have vital, time-sensitive intel!”
Shisui slammed down three storage scrolls with victorious glee, “There was infestation at Long Leaf Farms, they’re selling their entire harvest at once, at a huge discount.” Slipping a fourth scroll onto the pile with sheepish sleight of hand, Shisui continued “I had to dump all my luggage to grab as much as I could, but there’s still bushels left over. More than a warehouse’s worth!” Shisui paused, and added,“I’d appreciate it if you’d ask Rho Squad to pick up my stuff while they’re deployed.”
Hiruzen took a puff from his pipe (filled with Long Leaf Select Harvest), then pointed his pipe stem at Tsume, “Get Shinsuke-san orders to mobilize his squad,” then at Tamashiro, “and make sure they’ve got a full complement of the new NaraTen seals. I want them fully equipped to get it all. Dismissed.”
Once the door had closed behind his departing, squabbling subordinates, Hiruzen took another puff, and turned back to Shisui, “Well done. How was the rest of your mission?”
“No problems. The client seemed unsatisfied, but everything was done according to the mission parameters, and they wouldn’t actually tell me what they were disappointed about, so.”
“And are you carrying that stuffed animal around because you had to ditch your luggage?”
“… yes.”
“Ah, it must be a gift for your fianceé!”
“We’re not courting!”
Shikako blinked a moment as she stepped out of the precinct building and into the sun, then smiled at Shisui, who was leaning against a nearby wall waiting for her. He beamed back, and hustled over to greet her with a cheerful, “Happy Birthday!”
Surprised, she checked the date against her mental calendar, and realized he was right, “How’d you know? I had completely forgotten about it!”
“I found out your birthday was in September a while ago—still don’t know the exact date, but I figure with missions and everything, this would be close enough, right?”
“Actually, it’s today. Congrats, you managed to get it dead on,” and if that inspired memories of a girl hitting targets she didn’t even know existed … they were fond memories, and a smile was appropriate to the siutation.
Shisui grinned, and then held out, “Your present!”
In his hands sat an attempt at a stuffed animal. The seams were uneven, the cloth bunched, and the features were far from symmetrical. It could have been a deer, but was so misshapen it could have easily been a dog instead, even with the mis-matched antlers poking out of its head. Its little black beads for eyes were even different shades of black.
Shikako laughed with startled delight, snorting a little as she caught her breath. She took her new friend in her hands and held him up to the sun to admire every detail.
“He’s perfect!” She grinned so broadly her cheeks started to hurt, and asked, “Where on earth did you find him?”
“I was passing through a festival on my way home from a mission, and I knew he belonged with you the moment I saw him,” Shisui matched her grin as they started walking … somewhere. They didn’t have plans, so they could end up anywhere.
He held up a finger and winked, “And I did a lot of research since last time on ways to propose, so I know giving someone a stuffed animal isn’t one of them.”
Giggling, Shikako teased, “You were still worried you were wrong, weren’t you.”
“Oh, terrified!”
Their conversation meandered as they did, wandering from the Uchiha district and through the market. A few stalls welcomed them as they passed, with cheery waves and enticements to try a new tart or skewer or to admire some trinket. Shisui obliged with a raspberry tart, and Shikako found herself laden down with a whole basket of dumplings from a grateful civillian.
“You’ve been busy while I’ve been gone,” Shisui observed as they waved their appreciation and departed. “Police work for her?”
“Mmphm,” Shikako confirmed around a bite a little too large for her mouth. “Her daughter had wandered off and I was tapped to find her—we had to do a little inter-departmental cooperation when it turned out she’d wandered through a hole in the walls. That was a real mess, but at least I made a new friend.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Awkward, though. Kakashi-senpai doesn’t seem … well-liked.”
Shisui only paused a moment to take that in, but Shikako still caught it.
“I asked around a bit, after. Nobody seems to want to talk about it much, but I gather … the Uchiha are certain that his teammate wanted him to…”
“Yeah. Positive,” Shisui chewed on his lip. “We figured he’d approach the family for training with it, but he completely avoids us. It’d be insulting if he weren’t … you know, still obviously broken up over everything.”
“You know,” Shikako held up her new prize to admire, and Shisui found himself doing a double-take, given the entire basket of dumplings seemed to have vanished, “I bet he’d love my new friend. I should take it over and show off a bit.”
“You think I could come with?”
“You want to talk with him?”
“If he won’t talk with us.”
Shikako thought for a long moment. “He’s pretty skittish. I’ll mention you want to talk and … see where we go from there, yeah?”
“How’d you even manage to befriend that guy, anyway? He’s so standoffish.”
“Well, you can take Gai’s strategy and just refuse to be anything but friends. But in my case, he seems more comfortable with the fiction that we’re not friends.”
“If you’re not friends, how do you justify seeking him out?”
“Kakashi-senpai, how are my favorite dogs doing?” Shikako bust the door open wide after making sure it wasn’t latched. No reason to cause property damage, after all.
“I’m not your senpai. We had one mission together,” Kakashi replied in exactly the same tone she had once claimed she wasn’t a genin. It warmed the dark cockles of her heart.
“I have brought someone I wanted to introduce to the pack! It’s vitally important that they be introduced at once!”
Kakashi rolled his eye but still waved a hand to summon his dogs without moving from where he was sprawled on the couch, upside-down, reading. They greeted her with happy yips and barks, crowding around her while she passed out treats and pets, then falling back to take up more comfortable positions around the room. That these positions happened to be guard positions to protect and aid Kakashi at need was surely a coincidence. Nevertheless, Kakashi seemed less tense with them in place.
“Pakkun-san,” Shikako began with solemn gravitas. “I present to you my new friend and partner,” Shikako held out her stuffed deer for his inspection, “Joe.”
One of the other dogs wheezed out a snicker, but Pakkun replied with aplomb, greeting and sniffing her new toy. After a first sniff, he paused and began a more thorough inspection, poking and prodding and smelling more deeply.
“Hrm,” Pakkun rubbed his chin with a paw, his voice gravelly and far, far too deep to be coming out of a pug his size, “it’s certainly a pleasure to meet a new friend, but I feel like I must ask.”
Shikako carefully relaxed and readied herself to show no surprise at whatever Pakkun was about to say.
“Why does Joe-san smell like he’s full of tobacco?”
Well, that was not even remotely close to what she had been expecting him to ask. She turned Joe to look him in his bead-y eyes. “Joe, have you been smoking? You know that’s bad for your health.” She filled her palm with medical chakra and ran it through him—since he’s not biological it’s not like she could do anything with it, really, but a diagnostic jutsu still gave her information about his internal structure.
He was full of small bags of organic material wrapped in plastic. Huh.
Carefully, Shikako split open his side and retrieved one of the packets. Tobacco leaves, carefully rolled and packaged in small tubes.
“Pakkun-san, would you mind joining me at the Hokage’s office? It seems Joe has been the victim of some sort of unsavory characters.”
The rest of the dogs dispersed themselves, and Kakashi rolled into an upright position before lifting Pakkun and placing him atop his own head. Then, they made their way to the Hokage’s office.
“Heads up, Kakashi-senpai,” Shikako murmured quietly, “we’ll probably have to work with Shisui on this one—he mentioned wanting to meet you before. I think he just wants to talk.”
Kakashi said nothing, but she didn’t need him to.
Shisui arrived while they were waiting outside the Hokage’s office (Pakkun shamelessly being scritched in Shikako’s lap), and joined them waiting.
It didn’t take very long before they were let inside and Shikako presented the capsules of tobacco for inspection while Shisui answered questions about the circumstances where he found the toy.
“Well, I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but the guy running the booth was pretty reluctant to give it to me? Insisted I should take one of the nicer prizes. I guess I should have thought it was suspicious he didn’t want this off his hands?”
“Anything else?”
“Uh, well. I was attacked by a group of guys in the make-up and costumes they use. I didn’t really bother figuring out why, ‘cause I wanted to get you the information about the Long Leaf stuff, and it’s not like they were a threat, or even really trying to hurt me.”
The Hokage split open a capsule and inspected the tobacco inside, going so far as to smoke a sample.
“This is a very fine sample. Top shelf. I’m assigning you three a mission to investigate why it’s being smuggled in this manner, and by whom. Nara-san, I’ll contact Fugaku and Shikaku about having drafted you for this mission; I’d rather have a police investigator on hand than pass this to someone else. B-rank mission for now, focus on investigation rather than disruption. And make sure to see if anything else is being smuggled or passed across our borders.
“Dismissed.”
Shikako, Shisui, and Kakashi give a brief salute, and head for the gates by different routes to take care of last-minute business before departing.
[1] Usually pronounced a bit like “Ryo Squad”, this collection of Chunin and Genin act as short-notice gofers for Konoha, heading out to buy, retrieve, or deliver items not sensitive enough for Jounin or regular enough for scheduled caravans and missions.