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Chapter Text

Chapter 1

Madara first heard about the woman who would ruin his life from his terrible little brother, of all the sources.

"A priestess," Izuna yawned. He flicked a kunai at the ceiling with one hand and deflected it with a shuriken from the other. He caught both and then idly tossed them again.

"Stop that," Madara hissed. Peeved, he elbowed his brother. "And focus. You claim that you couldn't finish your mission because of a priestess?" His tone clearly illustrated what he thought of that concept.

Izuna made a rude noise. "I finished my mission," he said. He shoved Madara with his shoulder. "The mission didn't achieve the desired goal, but that doesn't mean I messed up." He raised his eyebrows at Madara. "I am certainly not responsible for ensuring that mission intelligence is accurate and up to date."

Madara scowled. "Are you blaming me?"

His terrible little brother shrugged as he got up from the zabuton. "Obviously? You thought that was a sad little village with no Shinobi affiliation that would provide us with rice for protection. They're clearly under new management."

"They are a desolate hamlet with no clan connections," Madara hissed. They should have been excited by the offer of patronage. And then he should have been able to mark off one concern regarding the upcoming winters. Five babies born, just that month! If things continued at that rate, they'd need much more food.

Izuna didn't look back. "Well, they think they don't need us because God will protect them from the evils of humanity and ravages of nature, so they won't give us rice. Better find another farming community to talk to, or start a field yourself."

An extremely unwanted vision of life as a farmer-clan head floated across Madara's mind. "I cannot balance two full time careers!" He roared, furious at the thought of working out a budget out loud to someone taking notes while he splashed in a rice field with water up to his shins.

"Better convince the priestess that her wide spot in the road needs our protection, then," Izuna said practically. "I didn't see her, the locals were cagey about a man with a sword meeting their holy woman and I didn't want to provoke them unnecessarily. But if you authorize a diplomatic mission, I'll go find her."

He was sorely tempted to go find this airhead personally and shake some sense into her about how safe, exactly, the gods would keep her from an even mildly annoyed Shinobi.

That flash of temper was why he took a deep breath and nodded. He wasn't going to lead through fear and brutality. It only begat more hatred. "Yes. Go back, find her, and convince her that we would keep her village safe."

When his brother had gone, Madara let out a deep breath. 'Temper,' he reminded himself. 'My anger does not rule me.'

That statement would have been news to Izuna, who sighed openly as he slouched his way back to the gate house. "What a pain," he mused, rubbing at the back of his neck. "It doesn't make much sense. There wasn't a shrine there last year, much less one so important that it would deter aggression."

Maybe the people were just delusional. Maybe something else was going on and their confidence had teeth behind it.

No matter what was going on, he'd need a gift to offer. Something nice, too. He stopped by his grandmother's house on the way out of the compound.

Several months prior:

Aiko found herself walking down a mountain path into what was clearly some type of farming community. A few family houses were scattered between glittering fields. Short stalks of rice swayed hopefully above water that rippled in a morning breeze.

She tried to match it to one of the modern-day villages. Tanzaku? The village where she had her first courier mission?

She had to give that up. There really wasn't anything in the geography to particularly identify the area, and all the landmarks that she knew didn't exist yet. She pursed her lips and looked down at the village, wondering if one village was really as good as any other for her purpose.

Probably.

In the distance, she heard someone calling good morning. She pinpointed them and waved back, smiling ruefully. It wasn't fraud because she had literally and specifically been sent here by an actual goddess. But she still felt extremely scummy as she made her way down the mountain path wearing the traditional red and white clothes of a priestess.

The outfit went a long way towards smoothing her entrance into the village, so she couldn't regret it. The first three men that she was introduced to were named Ichirou, aka someone's first son.

She was starting to get a really weird vibe from that. The first time someone was introduced with a personal name, she thought that it was just a polite attempt to match her introduction as only Aiko. But 3 in a row? It meant something else.

"I am Jiro," said a balding man in a leaf-patterned yukata. "It is a pleasure to meet you."

Ah. A third son this time. That probably said something about the population replacement rate.

"The pleasure is mine," said Aiko, who had literally just remembered that peasants did not have family names at this point in time. She blinked quickly, assimilating that once-read fact into her worldview. It was probably very good that she hadn't introduced herself as an Uzumaki. It would have alienated her. They had been confused enough by her introduction as a devoté of Izanami no Mikoto, the goddess from the creation story who had no shrines at all.

Speaking of. "Is there a shrine?"

The men exchanged glances. "Nothing that is staffed," Ichirou the wholly bald said apologetically. "I'll show you. It's over here."

They chatted as they went on, crossing narrow raised paths along rice paddies and working their way over a stream and to a mountain incline. Aiko clicked her tongue and looked at what she had to work with, tilting her head as she imagined what she could do with it. There was a very modest clearing, a large rock with a weathered talisman rope around it, and a tiny stone shrine with aged offerings. A few yellow flowers appeared to have been planted deliberately.

Poppies? Poppies, she decided. If she reached back into her vague memory of school, she thought they symbolized success. That was positive, at least.

"You can stay with my family until you move on," Jiro said cheerfully. "We would love to have you."

Aiko hummed and graced him with a non-committal smile. "I'd like to help with the work today," she said, side stepping the invitation. "What needs doing?"

She spent a day picking weeds and gradually inserting herself into the community. A young woman named Hana became her guide. Aiko let the pleasant chatter wash over her and tried to put together the words she didn't know from context. Was that an archaic verb for pulling, or was it just a specific farming term that she'd never learned?

Come afternoon, most of the fields gradually emptied as the sun became oppressively hot. Aiko got the feeling that Hana was deliberately lingering. Her suspicions were confirmed the instant they were alone. "Priestess, I'd like a blessing before you go," Hana said. Her big dark eyes darted towards the closest house.

'Fraud intensifies.'

"For luck?" Aiko asked mildly. "For love, for travel?"

Hana flushed. It traveled down her face and into the collar of her yukata. "Fertility," she near-whispered. "We haven't- not yet-"

Aiko cut her off when it was obvious the other woman was struggling for words. "A very appropriate blessing to ask of Izanami no Mikoto," she said, keeping her tone blandly pleasant. "Tomorrow morning, early. Meet me at the shrine before your work begins."

'Izanami-sama will help with that one, if she can.' Aiko thought it over, wondering how much worship Izanami needed to put her hand into human affairs. Prayer during the blessing itself might be enough, but with how weakened Izanami was by death, a miracle might help.

The most reasonable solution was to make a miracle.

She ate dinner with Jiro's family, which consisted of two sets of grandparents, a cousin and her husband, Jiro's wife Chiyo, and their 4 children whose names Aiko instantly forgot. Aiko visually tallied the economic resources in the house -fur, salt, stored rice- against the gorgeous meal served and silently realized that her hosts were extremely generous with their limited resources.

"I will prepare your futon after dinner," Chiyo said, flashing Aiko a stunning smile that showed she had blackened her teeth with charcoal.

'I totally forgot that was a beauty standard. Do they think my teeth are gauche?'

Amused, Aiko bowed in thanks. "That won't be necessary. I plan to spend the night in meditation at the shrine. I need to commune with Izanami-sama."

There was an extremely awkward silence.

No one was comfortable enough to outright argue with her across the social divide of the status her clothes implied. 

So at dusk, she headed out across the fields and over the river. She pretended not to hear that her hosts were frantically discussing how long it had been since a bear came down into town.

Aiko shrank down into a pious seated position, bowing her head and pretending to pray until the sunlight was gone. She was well-aware that people were poking their heads out of their doors to look at her and gossip.

When she finally stood, it was with a wobble. Her legs had gone to sleep and were full of pins and needles. She pushed past that and moved towards the trees she remembered from the daylight hours. When she laid a hand on one, she closed her eyes out of habit to focus, even though it was already dark.

She breathed in deeply, feeling her way into the tree with gentle chakra. She hadn't done anything with Mokuton for months so she was cautious as she began spidering barkless branches out from the tree to form the frame of a building. It was extremely slow going, given that she was trying not to wake anyone up.

"Don't be ugly," Aiko muttered, willing the wood to come out smoothly and to meet in elegant curves. "I am not a witch in the woods. I am an elegant and mysterious lady starting a cult to revive a dead Goddess. So you cannot be a shack. I will get fired if I make people think Izanami gives scary cannibalism shacks to her devotees."

She made a simple building- one room, an entry, and a slightly lowered walkway that ran around 3 sides of the new shrine. It was extremely difficult not to laugh whenever she remembered how impossible this would seem to the farmers, who definitely would have no understanding of chakra, much less its utility in the field of construction for literally 3 people in human history, two of whom (including herself)  were not born yet.

The shrine took about an hour to build inch by excruciating inch, by which time she had a tension headache. She laid down on the wood floor and closed her eyes for a bit, willing away the human indignity.

"I'm a minor goddess," she muttered rebelliously. She kicked her heels against the floor. "Why do I have headaches?"

It was bullshit, but it was apparently her lot in life. When she was finished sulking she went back outside and flicked on her Rinnegan again to build a stone wall around her shrine. She was careful to include the historical shrine in the boundaries. She finished it with two tall edifices to hint at a gate, though there was nothing at all to block the path inside.

On a whim, she felt around for the yellow flowers she'd seen during the day. Once she found one she focused on it so hard she bit her tongue in her concentration. Once it was memorized, she dropped her hand to the dirt and made a thick carpet of flowers surrounding her little shrine.

Flowers, she hoped, would make things look more dreamy and less demonic.

The night stretched on a very long time. She walked around the village by moonlight, wondering what else she should do. Would it be helpful to accelerate the growth of the rice plants, or terrible? She didn't know, so she left it alone.

It was almost a relief to bleed off some of her energy into mokuton's hungry demand, so she indulged herself by feeding flowers wherever she found them. It got easier with each type that she memorized.

Her eyes were getting very tired and she felt like she could sleep for a week. It was impossible to know how far away dawn was. She made her way back to the old shrine and knelt into seiza exactly where she had been at night, when the villagers had last seen her.

It was excruciating to wait like that. Hard-won discipline and her love of drama were the only things that helped Aiko get through the pain of sitting in seiza for hours.

It paid off. She was sitting there with her hands demurely on her lap when the sun rose and the first villagers ventured out of their homes. She didn't look, but she heard the excited chattering.

Those sounds got closer and doors slammed across the village as the news spread. Aiko remained seated just as she was, with her eyes closed, until she felt the susurrus of whispers was close enough.

She opened her eyes. "I will stay here for a time," Aiko said calmly. She stood. It took every ounce of discipline in her body to make the movement smooth despite the way her limbs had locked through inaction. "Hana-san, would you come inside with me? I'd like to give you a blessing."

She was only worried for a moment at the moment of truth as the crowd gawked and moved away from her. Aiko was professional enough to keep her nerves hidden as she glided into the new shrine.

Hana stumbled in her excitement and then followed at Aiko's heels.

A warm feeling rose inside Aiko's chest. Instinctively she knew it was Izanami's power, given strength by a sudden upswell in religious fervor.

And just like that, Aiko knew these people would believe she was heaven-sent.

Chapter Text

The first test of Aiko's self-assigned status as the protector of a tiny mountain village came in the form of hoofbeats.

She held a hand to shade her eyes as she came out of her shrine to see the visitor. A heavily armored man alighted from his horse and looked around before heading to the village community center. He walked with one hand on his sword hilt and the other guiding his horse.

Aiko followed, frowning slightly.

'A samurai? Why is he here?'

From the resignation on the faces of the villagers, she was the only one who didn't know.

"The Daimyo requires 38 koku of rice; to be delivered in 4 weeks' time," the samurai announced.

A chorus of teeth-sucking sounds passed around the crowd as they internalized that number.

"This is your duty," the samurai said firmly. He looked at all of them. Aiko raised her chin and met his eyes when his gaze passed over her.

He barely seemed to notice her. They were just an anonymous crowd of peasants to him, she realized.

She folded her arms and watched as he left. Apparently, there was no discussion. Just an announcement.

"What will we do?" Chiyo murmured, eyebrows furrowed. She bounced the baby in her arms. "If we don't have a good crop, we can't do that, can we?"

An Ichirou rubbed at his chin. "That's nearly half of what we have planted," he said darkly. "We- it's too late to plant more, even if we had the labor."

Aiko frowned.

'That's going to end in starvation. And for what? So that some useless insect can sit on a pile of resources?'

"Why is it so much worse than last year?" Hana asked. Her voice was very small.

No one had an answer for her.

When Aiko took a step forward, all eyes were on her. "I think we should not provide this absurd tribute," she said.

Someone clicked their tongue. "We must pay it," Jiro said. His tone was uncharacteristically dark. "The Daimyo has a lot more samurai than we do, you see." He spread his arms to display the zero samurai employed by their village.

That got a laugh, even from Aiko.

She shook her head and smiled at them. "None of you will come to any harm," she said firmly. "If you will let me intercede, I will ensure that you do not have to pay this."

She could see the uncertainty in their eyes. Faces glanced between her and the road the samurai had disappeared down, clearly weighing them against each other and finding her wanting.

Despite their obvious concern that heaven's generousity might not be super effective against swords, Aiko's mind was made up. She watched the people toil and she worked with them, at day and during the night when she coaxed any plants on the verge of death back to perfect health. She led the people in prayers for good weather and good harvests and health. She grinned when Hana's stomach grew so round she needed to borrow a new yukata for her pregnancy. The warm regard of Izanami's power surged and crackled again in Aiko's chest, reminding her of why she was here.

At night, she stoked the coals in the central pit in her shrine and slept alone, marveling that she'd gone from the mansion in Kirigakure to a hut that she'd built.

And she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she wasn't going to let some petty dickwad steal the fruit of a whole village's labor. How would she ever grow the flock if she couldn't take care of these people?

The rice grew and the gardens flourished, then harvesting began in earnest. Aiko found herself treating injuries- cuts to the hands, bites from snakes in the fields, and twisted ankles. She gritted her teeth and did what she could, feeling the long-forgotten ache of self-loathing for only having the talent to kill. Sasuke, Hinata, Ino, Karin, Shino- so many of her peers had been able to heal.

The elderly woman who had been bitten by the mamushi died. Aiko spent a long time looking at her useless hands and avoiding the eyes of her congregation. She felt their regard wane, just a bit.

She did what she could. The rhythm of life was seductive in a way she wouldn't have anticipated. She missed technology and convenience, but the lack of information was absolutely healing. In Kirigakure and Konohagakure, she'd had dozens of reports every day that needed her attention. There was always death and hunger and suffering.

But this village was small enough that she could hold them in her hand and keep them safe, she felt. Safe from most things.

"How certain are you?" Jiro asked her one day. His eyes were hard and the line of his usually cheerful mouth was serious. "If I tell them that we will not give the tribute, how certain are you that no harm will come here?"

Aiko felt relief uncoil in her chest. "I am absolutely certain," she replied. "Any hand that is raised against you will drop to the earth."

Jiro's eyebrows shot up. He ducked his head and looked away, chuckling uncomfortably. "That sounds a bit bloody."

She blinked at him. "None of your blood," she reiterated. "Only enemies."

He stared at her for a second as if she was speaking a foreign language. Then he shook his head, ran a hand through his hair, and left without another word.

The day approached. The rice was harvested, dried, and gradually stored. And then there were hoofbeats on the same path.

Aiko hummed to herself. She tucked her hands inside the large white sleeves of her hakama as a small group of samurai approached. There were 4 samurai, and a few men dragging a two-wheeled cart on foot.  "Most people should go inside," she said. She narrowed her eyes at the incoming group. "It's getting hot anyways. Jiro-san, walk with me to greet our guests?"

"You're not going to do this," Ichirou the bald said, aghast. He dropped his scythe as Aiko and the village head began to walk away. "They'll kill us all-at least all the men!"

Aiko turned back enough to give him a reassuring smile. "That will not happen," she promised, willing everyone listening to believe it. I will kill them all myself if they choose violence."

She walked away.

After a few seconds, there was a small, confused, "Priestess?" She didn't turn to see who it was.

Jiro was trembling. She glanced down and noted how his hands shook. "Things will be fine," she reassured him. "They're only human." He gave her a wild-eyed look, but swallowed.

"Stop! Are you leaving?" The first samurai put a hand out. His horse danced backwards a bit to protest the sudden stop.

Aiko craned her neck to look up. "Good afternoon," she said mildly. "How might we help you?"

"We have only come to collect the tribute," the first samurai said stiffly.

Aiko glanced beyond the samurai at the cart, made by some optimistic thief. She hummed. Then she reached out and directed her chakra into the cart.

It broke cleanly in two.

"Oh no," she purred. She put a hand to her face. "Your cart."

"What happened?" The loud samurai shouted, anger in his voice already. "How did that happen?"

Aiko folded her arms again and watched the flustered anger and confusion.

"It will be extremely difficult to transport rice in that," Jiro said. He managed to sound politely concerned.

The samurai wasn't dim enough to miss that this was convenient for them. He wasn't rude or temperamental enough to level accusations of something that seemed impossible, either. He took deep breaths, jaw clenching. There was a long silence. "We must make a new one or repair it here," he decided.

Jiro grimaced.

The samurai clearly noticed. One of the silent ones jerked on his horse's reins. "You may go," the leader said. "Someone in town will assist us."

"Ah…" Jiro's mouth dropped open helplessly as the leader began to steer his horse past them. "You see, I'm the village head."

"Then you can come with us. Move."

Aiko channeled chakra into her hand and placed that hand on the horse's chest. It halted abruptly.

"What?" The samurai made a disgusted noise in his throat and kicked at the horse again. It walked, but it didn't move forward.

"You're not coming into town," Aiko said calmly. She waved a hand at Jiro, indicating he should take a few steps away. "The tribute is ridiculous and you will not get it. You can leave now in peace or you can leave in a worse way."

"Girl, shut up," he snapped. "Are you even a priestess, using those words? You can't make such a decision. The tribute will be delivered to the Daimyo. The only question is how peacefully this will happen."

Aiko let go of her hold on the horse and grabbed at his ankle, far too quickly for him to do anything. She pulled with vicious force.

There was a faint pop which probably came from his hip joint as he fell off of his horse and landed hard. She pressed a single toe to his armor. "I said no," she repeated. She glanced at the other 3 samurai.  Belatedly, one of them began to unsheath a sword.

She scoffed. "What are you going to do with that?" Aiko mocked. "Even if you're feckless enough to kill holy women, you don't have the reflexes for it. Better practice on some dilapidated old priests first. You should try the over-80 age group judging by how slowly you move."

There was a thump as the three laborers decided now was a good time to drop the cart and run away.

The man she was addressing looked uncertainly at his colleagues. The man on the ground gritted his teeth and reached for his own weapon. Aiko stepped on his hand and kicked the sword out of the sheath. It shot out and all the way off of the path.

"Want that?" She asked Jiro. "Not to use, I mean, but it might melt down into something useful."

There was a roar of incandescent fury. The man on the ground leveraged his considerable weight to rip his hand away and stand. She didn't let it happen. The force he used popped his wrist clean out of the socket. He howled again, but this time it was in pain.

She tapped her fingers against her hip. "This is embarrassing," Aiko muttered. It was like an Academy combat exercise, except that they were so serious about it. One of the men on horses finally swung at her. She sidestepped it and used a twisting motion to break his wrist. She tore the sword out of his grip and twirled it into her hand so that she was in a waiting position. "I feel like a bully, " Aiko lamented. "You can just go. I don't particularly want you dead."

The samurai with a broken wrist kicked at her. She swung at the offending limb. Muscles in her back that hadn't been used properly for weeks purred at the motion. Aiko felt herself smile at the familiar feeling of cutting through resistance. The shin armor parted easily, folding inward. But her swing stopped abruptly at the metal covering his kneecap. Jarred, Aiko leapt back and to the side in time to dodge the spray of blood.

The sword stayed stuck, hanging limply from the man's knee. He screamed high and horribly, wrenching forward to clutch at his ruined leg.

The other two were moving forward, one of them yanking on his horse as if he wanted it to trample her.

The next couple of seconds were a cacophony of screaming and metal clanging. She rolled underneath that horse and popped up on the other side. She stepped into the man's guard, grabbed hold of his ankle, and dragged him off of his horse as well.

But this one she didn't let go.

Some latent memory of Tsunade with a tree sparked in her subconscious. She spun and swung the bastard at his remaining uninjured colleague. He collided with a very satisfying collection of clanks and grunts. He flew off, along with the friend she'd hit him with.

Aiko grabbed the horse's reins, turned it around, and slapped it on the flank. It took one uncertain step and then stopped.

Ah. Too well-trained for that.

Her first thought was that Ki would make them scatter. But that would affect poor Jiro.

She used doton to upset the ground underfoot. The horses scattered, 3 with empty saddles and one carrying a screaming man who was gripping his gushing leg. His voice hit a crescendo as the horse bounced over uneven ground. The blood sprayed out in huge fans when the horse hit the ground.

"He's probably not gonna live," Aiko muttered to herself. She looked at the downed samurai captain, who had by now struggled to his knees and was giving wide eyed glances between his opponent and his routed men. "Let's go for a walk," she decided. "We're going to explain to the Daimyo that his request is an undue burden."

He stuck a knife in her ankle.

She clenched her jaw and ran through the hand seals for her dear old friend Sen Tsurara. She took his head off with it.

As the dust cleared, Aiko shook her ankle and let out a hiss between her teeth. She lifted the foot off of the ground and examined the wound. It was already closing. That was… well. She'd already had accelerated healing as a result of her Uzumaki blood, but this was faster than usual.

"P-Priestess!" Jiro's face was very white. "Are you- you're injured."

She sent him a reassuring smile and patted down her clothes. She'd managed to keep the blood off of her white shirt, although her red hakama pants had not been as lucky. "It's fine. I'll heal in a few minutes." Aiko ran a hand through her hair and watched the two unhorsed samurai scramble away. "Look at that, a tax break!"

In the distance, from the village behind her, there was a confused cheer.

"You picked that man up," Jiro said blankly. "You… You swung him like a grass cutter."

'More like a golf club', Aiko thought. "Aa," she said.

"How did you-" Jiro ran his hands over his hair and clutched at the back of his head. "How did you do that? The strongest man couldn't do that."

She stared at him, not sure where to begin. She wasn't going to identify herself as a ninja in this context. They'd just be afraid of her. "Well." Aiko flexed her rapidly healing ankle. "Of course you can't. You're human."

She meant something about how the baseline human body had limits without the use of chakra. The instant the words were out of her mouth, Aiko had to hide a grimace.

Jiro stared at her, mouth slightly open. "You're not?" He asked, very quietly. "You're not human, priestess?"

What an awkward question.

Aiko avoided his eyes. "I am only a devoté of the mother," she said. She began walking back to the village.

"The mother, or your mother?" The village head asked in an undertone.

'...he thinks I am Izanami's child.'

Well. In a religious sense-

"We are all the children of Izanami no Mikoto," Aiko said firmly. She looked back enough to give Jiro a smile. "And she protects us."

The swell of faith that surged in her chest was so intense that it nearly hurt.

Chapter Text

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.)

Chapter Text

"Woodworking or stone carving?" Ichirou the bald sucked in a deep breath. "No, I don't know of anyone with those skills. I could give carving a try, if you like…" He trailed off uncertainly.

Aiko gave him a smile. "I would appreciate that." She smoothed down the front of her red miko pants. "I was hoping to visit neighboring villages and offer them talismans, perhaps to confirm that they do not struggle unduly."

The middle-aged man gave her a look that said he was pretty sure she was planning to fistfight more samurai.

Her smile became a little smug.

He didn't call her on it. Ichirou ducked his head and looked away, fighting down a smile of his own. "It's a good cause. I would be honored to help spread the word of Izanami no Mikoto."

She bowed in thanks, and then went on with her morning tasks.

They were re-tiling the roofs before snowfall. This was done twice a year- before snow and before the rainy season. Aiko hiked up her sleeves and tied them in place with ribbon, not thinking about much of anything. She joined the crowd, expecting to dig up clay or haul it to be fired in kilns.

It was a mild surprise to realize that Hana and a couple others were giving her uncomfortable looks.

She had a moment of fear that she'd gone too far yesterday- the people were afraid of her.

And then Hana ducked her head. "Priestess, we appreciate the help you've tendered since you joined us."

"But?" Aiko asked, narrowing her eyes.

Hana's cousin Fumiko broke in. "Please let us do this. Your hands are suited to different work."

She stared.

'Do they think I don't know how to dig holes? I know I don't have the skill to do the baking, but I can dig holes.'

Bewildered, Aiko just blinked at them.

"Your work is holy," Hana said, barely above a whisper. "Priestess…"

…They were obviously uncomfortable with her doing manual labor. This was such a shift from her "genin drudgery time, let's get it done" mindset that she went into autopilot.

She bowed and backed away. "Thank you. I'll attend to the shrine."

As soon as she turned away, Aiko felt her face scrunch up in confusion. It was- they thought this was beneath her? She was pretending to be a regular member of their community. No one had said a thing about her doing manual labor in Kirigakure.

She blinked. She thought that one over a little more.

…Maybe people had also thought that was undignified for her position but just hadn't felt comfortable criticizing her.

"Am I not warm and approachable?" Aiko asked under her breath. "Do- Did people think I wouldn't take feedback?" A little offended, she slammed the shrine door shut and sulked in the darkness.

Sure, she killed people to become the Mizukage and to take control of Wave. And she maimed some people. And she had used experimental Rinnegan mind sculpting on political dissidents. But did that make her unapproachable? How could she be both unapproachable and too dignified to do manual labor? She was very good at manual labor!

Aiko drummed her fingers on the floor and scowled. She really, really did not like being told what to do.

…Which was probably an indication that she might be a bit resistant to feedback.

She scowled harder.

"I'm going to have a bad attitude about this anyway," she promised the room.

It was stupid, yeah, but she enjoyed having the work. She'd been busy all her life. The idea of not participating while everyone else worked on the same project felt very wrong. It would be fine, for example, if she was coordinating shipments of materials and overseeing teams and directing building plans. But they already knew what to do. They didn't need more leadership, and certainly nothing on the scale she had done in Konohagakure or Kirigakure. Nothing on that scale even existed yet, if she thought about it. The population boom was two generations away.

Unsettled, she looked for a good way to use her time. She could…. Not work ahead on the talisman project, because she needed the materials and didn't have the skill to make them. Maybe Yamato could have, but she didn't have anywhere near his experience and expertise with detail work.

Well. Would it be useful to expand her shrine? To make more buildings? She could do that.

She tabled the idea as worth consideration, if there was a need for more grandeur or a reason the villagers needed another building.

…They might need more space to store rice.

Aiko let out a chuckle that came out just a bit too villainous. "Daimyo are just rice kings," she mumbled to herself. "We have the rice. We are the rice kings now, asshole."

She wasn't naive enough to think that the issue was settled but she was confident that she could back up her position. The Daimyo did not have a big enough army to steal from her.

The surviving samurai still hadn't made it back to the palace, no way.

She pursed her lips and considered getting there before the samurai did. She could demand an audience and make her position clear.

"…I'm really not sure what's best." She sighed and rolled over onto her stomach. She gave a big, catlike stretch.

She tried to take things back to basics- her biggest goal was to create a cult following. For that, she needed numbers. She could go to them or they could come to her, but she needed a lot more people than this village had.

"Eventually I'll want people coming to me," Aiko mused. "But at this point, no one would know to come here. I'd just get the odd traveler and they wouldn't stay long enough to convert."

So. What were the benefits to being in her cult?

"I probably can't fight everyone's enemies," she admitted to the empty shrine. "I can't be everywhere, and I need to assume I'll be busier in the future than I am now."

That got her thinking about what exactly it was that she could do for her followers. her mind drifted back to what she'd done for her villages- hospitals, public works, education. Trade, alliances, and infrastructure.

The idea of infrastructure was very, very tempting. Aiko would very much like to have plumbing and electricity. But even if she was prepared to pretend she'd had divine inspiration to improve the toilets, she didn't have the skills to make the materials. She knew a fair bit on the topic from overseeing work and a bit from being manual labor as a genin, but that didn't mean she had any idea how to start.

Well, fuck.

Aiko grimly resigned herself to a long future of peeing over a hole, illuminated by the moon.

Trade was possible but not in the near future, as the village was basically subsistence farming. They'd have to have something to sell for trade to be a significant factor.

Establishing a hospital was…an interesting idea. Her kneejerk reaction was to dismiss it because she was unqualified. But when she really thought about it...

"Field medicine and sanitation practices would make a big impact," Aiko mused to herself. She tapped her fingers against Orochimaru's plush carpet. "I… I'll make a clinic, I guess, and train at least one or two people to run it."

That tied in neatly to education in general.

"Holy shit," Aiko marveled, face still pressed into the carpet. "I knew most people here aren't literate, but I still sort of forgot. There's no formal education at all. Nobles and samurai are the only literate people at this point."

Well, that had to change. It was hardly her calling, but Aiko could teach. She could at least teach the very basics, until a proper teacher could be hired. It would be a good way to jumpstart medical education, but it also would elevate social class. It would be destabilizing and very offensive to the upper classes.

"The Daimyo will not like that," Aiko sing-sang in a low voice. "But we are the rice kings now."

More cheerful, Aiko hoisted herself up to sketch up plans for more civil disobedience. She lost track of time sketching, thinking about the clinics and schools she'd been in and trying to place them within the little farming hamlet. Wistfully, she also drew a fountain. It would help a lot with the heat and with sanitation.

She looked at that sketch for a long time.

"One engineer," Aiko said mournfully. "I'd only need one engineer to make this happen. I wish I'd kidnapped Tazuna."

It took a minute of reflection to find a bright side-

His family would probably appreciate having him around, or whatever.

…No, optimism wasn't her strong suit. That wasn't very comforting at all.

Aiko let out a self pitying sigh and tried to tuck the dream away.

"I have enough to do for today," Aiko told herself firmly. She fiddled with the end of her sleeve, which was still tied up. "For a school- places to sit and write, writing utensils, and any educational materials. A map would be very good, and I'll definitely need a lot of paper."

All of that… She had her personal supplies, but it wasn't the kind of scale she would need. She didn't know how to make paper, ink, or brushes, and learning seemed a bit tedious. She wasn't interested in self improvement at this juncture in her life.

Aiko wrinkled her nose in concentration, trying to remember historical geography. There had to be someone she could steal from.

Chapter Text

It took a few days to tiptoe towards making something that might put her village on the map as a religious site of importance. While her little flock was doing their regular seasonal work, Aiko put up another building to serve as a clinic, and then one for a school. She gradually outfitted them both with the materials that she could manage. When no one was looking, she dug out a hole to make a lake. It would look nice, but it would also be a source of water to use in sanitation efforts.

Then she realized that that still water would be a huge musty home for disease ridden mosquitoes.

Her next effort was to do a ridiculous amount of math in order to use the natural curvature of the land to make a wandering circle that should keep the water continuously moving.

She was almost surprised by how patiently the villagers accepted all these things appearing. They seemed to actually enjoy having a great ugly pit that changed size and shape over the course of several days of tearful, half-remembered math. At the end, Aiko had black circles around her eyes and a head full of any semi relevant information about working with water from her time overseeing canal lock construction.

All of this did require her to push the village boundaries a little, and to level some of the ground. It was a very satisfying use of her chakra, and an interesting set of exercises in control. Every night she went to bed tired in a way that helped her sleep deeply.

She was entirely on task, focused on her mission. She needed to make the worship of Izanami such a cultural phenomena that the mother goddess could claw her way back from the land of the dead. As soon as that happened, she could go home. She'd see Naruto again, her Naruto, not the bleak vision into how unloved he'd have been without her. She missed Karin's sly commentary and subtle concern, Kakashi's sideways affection, Hinata's steadfast kindness.

But mostly, she missed her dogs.

'They must think I'm dead by now. Someone else will have replaced me at my job. I… I'm pretty late for that meeting with Gaara. Are they even waiting for me?'

The thought that they might have given up made her feel a bit sick. The thought that they were looking for her somewhere they'd never find her made her feel guilty.

In a very real sense, the situation was her fault. She hadn't done it deliberately, but she had been the one to leave.

The return of anxiety and loneliness was actually a huge relief. In Kirigakure, it felt like there was nothing to live for. She hadn't had hope, and then she didn't even have the promise of an eventual end. She felt terrible, but feeling anything was better than the grey reality she'd been stuck in before.

She was in the middle of filling her new water feature when she realized there was a visitor approaching the village. Aiko dropped the water jutsu and headed to meet them.

"Hellooo," came a… an obnoxiously cheerful greeting. Aiko blinked as a stranger waved enthusiastically from the mountain path. "It's your favorite neighbor!"

"I've never seen you in my life," Aiko said. She frowned slightly at what absolutely had to be an Izunuka woman. Even without her canine partner, there was no mistaking it. "You're therefore my third favorite neighbor at best." She pushed down her desire to find community and connection in someone familiar. This wasn't one of her peers.

"I'll claw my way up the list," the other woman said cheerfully. She grinned at Aiko. "Aiko-san, right? Ude told me he met you."

"...Aa," said Aiko, who had just realized she'd never actually gotten that man's name. "We had a chat," she said evasively.

"I'm his boss," the woman said cheerfully. "The glittering light of his life, in fact."

"... His wife?" Aiko said, wondering if the Inuzuka had actually become less eccentric since the village founding. She would not have predicted that.

"Inuzuka Mayumi," the kunoichi introduced herself. The muscles in her bare arms flexed when she put her hands on her hips. "You're doing a lot out here." Hey gaze very pointedly tracked over Aiko's pristine shrine maiden outfit. "My man didn't mention that you're a priestess."

"I was dressed more casually at the time that we met," Aiko said, well aware that it was unhinged to claim that wearing a silk kimono was casual in any context.

Mayumi nodded sensibly. "I've been to this village before, you know." She tilted her head to look at the half full lazy river and the wooden clinic behind it. "It's changed a little."

"I'm sure I wouldn't know," Aiko demurred.

The two women held eye contact for a moment. Mayumi had definitely been close enough to sense, maybe even see Aiko using water jutsu to condense the humidity into water.

"The world is mysterious," Mayumi said gravely. "And rapid, improbable change is the way of life."

Fully against her will, Aiko began to like this woman. She kept any hint of that off of her face. "Izanami no Mikoto provides," Aiko granted, leaning into her role.

Mayumi's eyebrows shot up. "Izanami sama, huh?"

She winced at the slightly too informal phrasing. She might have once thought that was sufficiently respectful, but meeting the goddess had taught her otherwise.

The Inuzuka woman clearly caught the discomfort. Her eyes narrowed slightly, but her tone stayed light as she continued her train of thought. "I've never been to one of her shrines before."

'You still haven't.'

Well.

"Join me inside," Aiko said, wondering if Mayumi was susceptible to cult influence. She seemed to have a strong sense of personality but who knows, she could lack purpose. "Then you can say you've been to her shrine." She gave a winning smile.

'Join my cult. Bring your dog.'

Mayumi hesitated for a long moment. It wasn't good policy to follow an unknown shinobi into an unknown building. It was in fact a very efficient way to get murdered. So Aiko was a little surprised when the other woman accepted her invitation.

In short order, Aiko was heating water for tea. Mayumi was very obvious about exploring the shrine, nearly putting her nose up against the carpet, the collection of bottled ink, the calligraphy on the walls that Aiko had painted and hung. Her gaze lingered a long time on the characters for "peace" and the names of the seasons.

Aiko welcomed the scrutiny. This wasn't just her temporary home. It was a set for the character she was playing. She knew what kind of inferences Mayumi would be drawing.

The calligraphy, for example, showed that she had a level of education and refinement that was basically unheard of in women for all but actual princesses at this point in time. The village residents didn't know enough to pick up on more than that Aiko was literate. But Mayumi was clearly someone relatively important in a big clan. She would be literate, and she had probably studied the block writing forms.

She would have enough education to know that Aiko was proficient in the Gyosho semi cursive style. It wasn't the height of artistic refinement, but mastery of the cursive style was the kind of thing Aiko was decades too young to have yet.

The rug was literally 8 decades and the industrial revolution in the future, in terms of technology. It would look absurdly foreign and luxurious. Orochimaru had spent serious money on it.

'Incomprehensible luxury is a good note to hit. If the villagers have decided I'm Izanami's daughter, it might be worth using that background. I'm not going to claim it, but I'm not going to build a fake history here.'

She just couldn't pass herself off as a real resident of this point in time. She didn't have any accomplices to vouch for her, a fake home to claim, or even the correct accent. No one living would have heard someone who spoke the way that Aiko spoke. Judging by how odd and antiquated everyone else sounded to her, Aiko must sound bizarre to the locals.

So. She wasn't going to answer, she was just going to be foreign and impressive and let them fill in the blanks.

"Thank you," Mayumi accepted her cup and melted into the body language of a different woman. She sat in perfect seiza, with her back straight and her neck somehow held to be elegant.

Aiko smiled back, recognizing that Mayumi was signaling she could use the same register.

'A kunoichi in the traditional sense, after all. I wonder if she has any herbal knowledge. We need those for the clinic and I know I'm deficient there.'

She tabled the thought.

"This is a lovely shrine," Mayumi said. There was a question underneath the statement.

"Thank you," Aiko demurred. "You're very kind. I hear that your home is nearby?"

Mayumi accepted the deflection with good grace. "About 20 minutes, as I run." She very deliberately looked Aiko over. "Perhaps about the same for you?"

'I would be very surprised if you're anywhere near as fast as I am.'

"Perhaps," Aiko offered. She didn't have her reputation for being fast and deadly yet. Mayumi was just establishing that she knew Aiko was some kind of shinobi. "I am not unaccustomed to travel."

"Are you from far away?" Mayumi dug. Her eyes sparkled in the light coming in the window.

Aiko let her genuine, bleak humor come through in her answer. "Incomprehensibly far away."

She had expected Mayumi to parry that, to assume it was a joke. But calculation passed over the other woman's face instead. There was a moment of silence. "I believe that," Mayumi said, and then she tried her tea. "How long have you been here?"

Aiko had to think that one over. "I came to this place at rice planting time," she offered.

Mayumi's gaze drifted around the shrine. "So, Izanami no Mikoto moved in all these mysterious ways in a few scant months, then." It wasn't a question. "Tell me about your enemies." Her brown eyes focused on Aiko, and they were hard this time. "You have them."

She took a quick sip of tea to avoid laughing.

'Not really, not here. Unless you count the god of death. No one knows me enough to want me dead.'

Oh, wait. There was the one person.

"Probably the Daimyo," Aiko mused, setting her tea back down silently. "I don't think he has a very good sense of humor."

The Inuzuka's expression was surprisingly scandalized.

'Oh. Fuck. Do they respect the Daimyo now?'

Aiko smiled weakly.

"The Daimyo," Mayumi repeated slowly. She looked as if she wanted Aiko to claim that had been an unfunny joke. "Why might he be your enemy?"

She lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "We have disagreed about the rice tribute from this village," Aiko prevaricated. "I sent his retainers away somewhat sternly with less than they requested."

Mayumi closed her eyes for a moment. Her hand twitched, as if she wanted to lift it. "I noticed that you have a lovely horse in one of the fields."

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," Aiko said calmly, very aware that normal people did not own horses at this point in time. The average subsistence farmer hamlet certainly did not have a confused war-bred stallion in a pasture.

There was a sigh. "The Daimyo has a lot of samurai, you know."

'I'm not that worried.'

Aiko made a polite sound of acknowledgement.

Mayumi opened one eye to peek at her. "And money to hire shinobi. He could hire the whole Uchiha clan and send them to claim the rice."

'I could win that.'

"I'm sure we'd manage to talk it out," Aiko lied baldly, using her mildest voice.

The look she got back was sheer disbelief. "You're serious," Mayumi marveled. She put one elbow on the table and rested her chin on her hand. "You're the real deal, huh."

Aiko took another sip of tea in lieu of answering that.

"I think I'm going to be busy writing letters," Mayumi said mournfully. She tilted her face up. "I'll need to tell anyone I like not to accept any request from the Daimyo anytime soon."

She hid a smirk behind her tea. "You'll tell the Uchiha that?"

Mayumi snorted. "I'll tell the Daimyo that they want work. Then we can loot that steel off their bodies and let our ancestors rest easily."

Aiko pushed down her reflexive shudder. Uchiha didn't always inspire positive feelings in her, but she liked Sasuke and Fukiko a little too much to shrug off the morbid thought of looting their corpses.

'Oh, fuck. There's a reason why you'd loot them in particular.'

Aiko had the sudden recollection that the Uchiha were known for the quality of their weapons. That meant they had good craftsmen.

'If I kill them, they for certain won't join my cult and make me talismans.'

She made a mental note that it would definitely be better not to murder the Uchiha clan if they did come stomping in demanding rice for a rich man. And that reminded her to try-

"You're the Inuzuka clan head, aren't you?" Aiko checked. "Or close to it, if you'd have the authority to make those recommendations. Do you have anyone who, like, works with wood or stone?"

Mayumi blinked. "Ah. No, that's not really what we do."

Goddamnit.

Chapter Text

That week, she started her school. Aiko began gathering the children too young to work and teaching them hiragana in the mornings. Their minders were obviously interested as well.

She started holding classes in the evenings for adults. One night a week was open for anyone to learn the first syllabary. Two nights were reserved for Hana, Fumiko, and Shinji. She needed someone to staff the clinic and teach eventually.

It felt a little wrong to assign them a career path. But she wanted to invest time in the young adults of the village. She wasn't going to stay forever. Aiko needed to train them and then pass things off to long-term custodians of institutions.

So, the eager-to-please Shinji, reserved Fumiko, and heavily pregnant Hana had 6 hours of study per week. She started them off with the first phonetic writing system as well, and then interspersed sprinkles of kanji in with geography and lectures about hygiene.

It was relatively slow going. They didn't need to be scholars in comparison to the educated elite of Aiko's time. But it was rather like trying to impart the non-martial parts of an Academy education in a quarter of the time.

One night, Hana hung back after class while Aiko painstakingly cared for the brushes. Out of the corner of her eye, Aiko caught the motion of Hana wringing her hands.

'She's going to ask me something.'

"Yes, Hana-san?" Aiko asked, before Hana could work up the courage to ask for her attention. "Is there something I can do for you?" She turned to make eye contact.

Hana laughed weakly. She ran her hands over her hair, tied back and up in a demure knot. "You always know," she bemoaned. "Ah, it's just. If it's not too much trouble - it's about the horse."

"Ah," Aiko nodded. "Onigiri chan."

"Yes, Oni- what?"

"The horse's name," Aiko explained patiently. "What about him?"

Hana eyed her. "Right…" She seemed to rally her boldness. "I think he needs a better place to live," she said. "He's always indoors. I think it's sad for him."

Aiko blinked. She tried to remember about animal care.

That seemed… correct, Aiko decided. The horse needed a paddock to cavort in.

"I see," she said slowly. "I agree with you. Do you know where it should be?"

Hana wrung her hands again. "That's the problem," she said apologetically. "We don't have enough suitably flat space. And it would take so much time to accomplish with shovels and axes. Onigiri chan would have to wait months." Her big brown eyes were distressed.

'I made a good choice,' Aiko thought. 'Healer or teacher, either way. Hana is a good choice.'

Well. It was important to reward initiative and kindness. So she nodded briskly and abandoned her clean up efforts. "Let's go for a walk." Aiko smoothed a hand over her clothing, checking that it was in place. "Shall we?"

They emerged into the fading light of the village at dusk.

The oldest, most rickety old people in the white village were sitting outside with fruit and drinks. Aiko waved and felt them watch.

"I wonder if making a higher level is safer," Aiko mused, squinting at the mountainside that seemed most plausible. "If we cut too much at this level, the ground could be too unstable. We could have a rockslide."

Hana gave her a mildly distressed look.

Aiko shrugged. It was a real concern to address honestly. No point in coddling. "What do you think about that spot?" Aiko pointed. "I'd leave a smaller clearing of trees, so their roots will keep the soil stable. I'd cut a curved pathway there, maybe, leading up another level."

Hana hesitated. "It needs to be visible from the village, right? What if something happens to the horse?"

'Anything that could happen to a warhorse is over your pay grade.'

"I can make that happen," Aiko said instead. "I'll take down some trees."

"You will?" Hana eyed her. " You personally, priestess?"

'I probably shouldn't have thrown that samurai. They're getting all kinds of ideas about what I can do. It's not good for the cult.'

Aiko gave Hana her most beatific smile. "Izanami no Mikoto will work through me as she wills."

Hana pursed her lips, but she respected Aiko enough not to sigh audibly.

"Tell the Headman what we talked about," Aiko said. She flipped her hair over her shoulder as she went back to her shrine. If Ichirou San approves, I would be pleased."

Ichirou the bald did approve, and therefore the next day Aiko tied up her sleeves and did a rather spectacular bit of landscaping.

It wasn't difficult for her, but it did use a lot of chakra. Aiko was relaxing with a drink when Hana's 7 year old brother came running to her.

"Priestess, priestess!" The boy bounced on his heels. "A new lady came down the mountain!"

She wasn't surprised to get a visit after all that unsubtle chakra expenditure.

"Thank you, Tanjiro," Aiko said. She finished her sake and stood. "I'll go and welcome her."

Mayumi whistled when she saw the changes. The Inuzuka put her hands on her hips and craned her head back to look at the new pavilion. Onigiri was already there, spectacularly out of place.

'Maybe we should have riding lessons. It would be cool for some of the villagers to know how to do that. We could communicate with other villages much faster.'

"You did this in the morning?" She asked casually. It didn't really seem like a question. "Princess priestess, you're really stressing out my sensors."

"My apologies," Aiko said. She didn't put any effort into sounding apologetic. "I'm having sake now. Join me?"

Mayumi dropped her hands from her hips and straightened. "Yes," she agreed immediately. "Thank you." She started walking towards the shrine before Aiko could. "Maa, you're alright."

Aiko hummed an agreement and followed sedately. She tucked her hands away inside her sleeves.

With that clearly telegraphed relaxation, the curious eyes on them became a bit less intense. If Mayumi was at all bothered by the village scrutiny she didn't let on. She sprawled on Aiko's floor pillows and watched lazily as Aiko fetched more seating from inside for herself. Aiko grabbed another cup while she was at it.

"Thank you," Mayumi said gleefully, accepting the cup. "I'll pour."

Aiko made polite noises, but she didn't actually care to fight for hostess rights. So she accepted her glass and sank down to relax.

It was hot as fuck, even though it had to be September by now. Aiko breathed slow and moved the absolute bare minimum. Even in the shade, the heat pressed in against her from all angles.

"So." Mayumi threw her hair, and sweat glistened on her bare forehead. "I thought it would be nice to come and subtly probe you for information."

"It's only neighborly," Aiko agreed readily. Shouts from children playing in the streets cut the air. She didn't look, knowing the elderly sitting outside were keeping an eye out. "How long have you been head of your clan?"

Mayumi snorted. "Straight for the throat," she said approvingly. "3 years, now. How long have you been in this village?"

"6 months," Aiko batted back without thought. "What clans are active nearby other than the Inuzuka?"

She got a dry look. "I never gave you that name."

Aiko shrugged.

Mayumi made a tch sound. "The Uchiha are closer than I'd like," she said. "But don't worry over much, their shared border with the Hyuuga is the other way."

Aiko made an mm sound, wondering what that meant. Had the Hyuuga been the Senju's traditional ally and the connection point for their conflict?

"Are you related to any clans in the area?'

At the steel in Mayumi's voice, Aiko sighed. "No," she said honestly. "But I'm related to a moderately powerful clan on the other side of the continent. Have you told anyone outside of your clan about me?"

"The Aburame," Mayumi said easily. "Do you now or have you in past had any contract or conflict with a clan on this side of the continent?"

"No," Aiko said, lips curling into a smile. The thought was kind of funny. "Can I meet your ninken the next time you come?"

Mayumi gave her a look that was impossible to decipher. "I will think about it," she said. Her tone was closed off. "What is your goal here?"

Aiko downed her sake and went to pour another immediately. When Mayumi raised hers, Aiko poured that as well. "I want to found a cult to Izanami no Mikoto," she said easily.

Mayumi stared. She looked pained. After a moment, she cursed under her breath and shook her head. "Fair enough," she said wryly. She gestured at Aiko's clothing. "Fair enough."

Something prickled on the edge of Aiko's awareness. She didn't know what it was, so she just smiled at the other kunoichi placidly. "I don't suppose that you're interested?" She tried.

The other woman let out a long sigh, exasperated. "I can't help but think of a cult I heard about sometime ago, she said dryly. "The Ootsuki clan wanted us all to worship the rabbit goddess."

Aiko didn't see how that was relevant. They were obviously kooky. But -

'I know that from history class. That happened 8 years before the founding.'

She hummed, aiming for politely interested. "Oh?" She said. "How long ago was that?"

Either she wasn't quite subtle enough, or the other woman was just very good. Because there was something questioning in Mayumi's eyes when she answered. "More than 2 years ago, but I don't think it was three," she said thoughtfully. "Yes, I think I heard about that in the winter."

That was good information. That meant she was misplaced five or sixish years before the village founding. That was right about the time that the previous Clan heads of the Uchiha and Senju had passed away, one of whom under seriously suspicious circumstances.

If you read between the lines of the historical record, it seemed that the Senju clan head had probably been assassinated by one of his sons. That was less than a year before his warmongering counterpart had died on Tobirama's sword in the spring. If she knew who the current leaders were, she could pinpoint the month in relation to village history.

'I have to find out another way, or at least ask at a different time. I don't want her to have any hints about what I'm figuring out.'

It seems very unlikely that she would figure out that Aiko was from the future, but it was stupid to be careless about gathering information.

Her ears perked.

She saw Mayumi tense as well.

'I'm not imagining things, then.'

"Is that metal?" Aiko asked. "Metal jostling, like heavy armor in motion?"

The Inuzuka shot her a wry look. "Good ears," she commented. "Yeah." Her lips twisted sourly. "I think so. I think the Daimyo is unhappy with you."

'I have to get up to deal with this. It's gonna be so sweaty.'

"Fuck," Aiko said with feeling. She looked up at the horrendously sunny sky. "I better go and meet them outside of town. Will you join me?"

"I would love to watch," Mayumi said regretfully. She watched as Aiko stood and brushed off her pants. "I can't be seen with you, unfortunately. The Daimyo would be angry if I didn't interfere on his behalf." She followed Aiko at a distance. "I can tell your villagers to evacuate." Her tone was a little more serious than Aiko thought the situation warranted.

Aiko resisted the urge to snort. She was a little too dignified for that. She inclined her head politely at the crowd of elderly people they passed on their way out of town. "That won't be necessary," she said dryly. "I'm sure we can talk this out."

"Aiko-san." Mayumi's voice was hard. "That's what, twenty samurai? The Daimyo sent them to make an example against rebellion. That's a tenth of his retainers. They're not planning to leave survivors, unless it's to spread the word of why everyone else was killed."

'As long as they're not near the civilians, I can handle them. I'm immortal and I'm a kage. This is not a big deal for me.'

Of course, she'd sound delusional if she said any of that. Aiko sighed. "I'm not worried," she settled on.

She could feel Mayumi's bafflement. "I see…." There was a rustle of clothes as Mayumi rushed past her and into the treeline. "Good luck on your negotiations," she called quietly, doubtfully.

So Mayumi would watch from the trees. She'd probably run back to town if she felt that they needed an evacuation. Aiko felt her lips twist wryly.

An evacuation wouldn't be necessary.

She tucked her hands into her sleeves, ambling along at a steady clip. She probably wasn't going to be able to convince Mayumi that she was relatively harmless, then.

'Maybe I should carry a blade again. But it's just so dissonant with my image here. A holy woman can't carry iron.'

She crested the first hill and caught her first glance of the visitors. Mayumi's guess had been good- she counted 22 mounted men. They were kicking up a cloud of dust despite traveling at an easy walk.

'They probably think the horses will need their energy for chasing down screaming villagers.'

Aiko hardened her heart. She couldn't let any of them get past her. It would become a mess that she couldn't control, and her days of reviving the dead were behind her. As far as she could tell, Death hadn't noticed her here yet.

She caught movement as they neared. She frowned and narrowed her eyes, trying to figure out what was catching her eye.

"Ah," she said, when she saw it. One of them had hefted a bow and was drawing on her.

Aiko kept walking, waiting lazily. She'd jump to the side if the arrow was aimed well at her.

Two things happened at once.

The bowman drew his arm back.

And she heard the scuff of a foot on the path behind her. Aiko twisted her head to see that little Tanjiro was tripping up the path, grinning at her. He opened his mouth, probably to chirp "Priestess!" at her.

She heard the whine of something sharp cutting through the air.

As always, this chapter is way behind what you can find via my Tumblr.

Chapter Text

There was really only one option, and she was fast enough to take it. Dirt swirled around from the force of how fast she'd moved to be in front of Tanjiro. Aiko smiled directly into the child's face, hands cupped on both sides of his cheeks to block his peripheral vision. Even on her knees, her body was big enough to block him fully.

Thud.

The force shook her chest and made her jolt forward. A rain of blood plinked down in a staccato behind her. Her expression didn't change. She leaned in close, like she was telling a secret. "Tanjiro kun, there's candy in my kitchen," she said confidentially. "Grandma Kasumi is outside, right? Please ask her for help finding it and sharing it with everyone." She swallowed hard.

He gasped. "I can? Candy?" He bounced on his heels, thoroughly distracted from whatever had made him follow her. "What kind of candy? Is there a lot?"

"Go ask Grandma Kasumi," Aiko repeated. She took a shallow breath. "Thank you. You're such a good boy."

He crowed "yes!" and tore away from her.

For a few heartbeats, Aiko didn't move. Her body would still be protecting the child until he got a little further away, and she needed a moment to breathe. Then her hand curled around a stone. With an ugly snarl, Aiko stood and wheeled around.

Her eyes found the archer instantly. She remembered where he'd been, she just needed to put her eye on him to aim for his forehead. She put a little more force than was truly necessary into her throw, fucking furious.

There was a thunk she heard even thirty yards away. The man she'd hit slid bonelessly off his horse, graceless as he suddenly lost balance.

She didn't wait to see the aftermath.

'If any of them get past me, they're going to run down that little boy.'

Aiko moved, blazing with chakra under tight control. The next moments were a blur even for her. She landed on a horse and slapped his rider with uncharacteristic viciousness, then vaulted over his head to push another in the small of his back. She slapped an angry hand on every man present in a matter of seconds. She was standing behind the ground before they'd managed to do anything more than shout in surprise.

"Die," she said, cold. And she tugged on the explosive seals she'd just planted.

Screams tore the air. But only a few.

She dug her footing into the ground, connecting with the soil. She felt the warmth of the Rinnegan as she raised the earth into a bowl around her prey. She could hardly call them opponents, pathetic as they were.

Now the horses screamed too, kicking and bucking in their panic. Aiko watched darkly from the lip of her cage as one horse unseated his dying rider and another trampled his head.

'I'd like to just leave them. It won't take that long.'

Unfortunately, this mess would be audible from the village. Aiko mastered herself. She cast out a genjutsu, ordering for calm.

As always, it was a brute force effort that shouldn't be used on anyone she loved. But it worked on the horses. They stood docile.

The samurai calmed as well, but that didn't stop the moaning. Humans weren't designed to cope with the level of pain involved in a surprise amputation.

'If I had a sword, mercy killing would be easier.'

Aiko spared a thought for what Mayumi must be thinking. But she didn't let it stop her from jumping down into the little pen of horses and soon to be corpses. Efficiently, she pulled off helmets, put her palms to either side of a man's temples, and twisted to break his neck.

The man who'd shot her still had one foot in a stirrup.

There was a whistle. Aiko didn't look up at Mayumi.

"That went straight through." The kunoichi sounded impressed.

Was she talking about the rock Aiko had thrown?

Dispassionately, Aiko nudged at the man's head with her foot. When it lolled to the side, yes, she could see grass through his forehead.

She went back to her work. There were two more to finish off.

"You gonna be fine?" Mayumi was following her. "We should probably do something about that arrow." She sounded impressed. "I can't believe you're still standing. I'm a little warmer on your cult than I was ten minutes ago, gotta say."

'I wish Sasuke was here. Getting this out is going to suck.'

Aiko contorted to get her hand around the arrow stuck in her back. She gave an experimental tug.

It pulled cruelly at something in her chest and sent white hot pain to her brain.

Okay then.

She changed tactics. She shoved. There was a sick scraping feeling as the arrow head caught on a rib, but it came out her front. Colors danced in her eyes. She carefully stopped pushing before it could puncture her clothes.

Mayumi let out a horrible wounded sound. When Aiko glanced over, Mayumi's eyes were wide and disbelieving.

Well. Too bad for her.

She focused on her own problems again, pulling on her front to open the collar wide. When her skin was bare, she pushed the arrow through just enough to break off the head. She let the arrowhead drop to the ground.

Mayumi cursed. "Please stop, this is disturbing." She alighted behind Aiko. "Let me."

Aiko dropped her head and grimaced. The feeling of the arrow shaft being pulled out of her back made her head spin. She gritted her teeth and dug her fingers into her face, trying to focus on breathing.

The worst of the pain passed. She swallowed hard. When she breathed, the smell turned her stomach. It stunk like a slaughterhouse.

Mayumi cleared her throat.

"I'll walk it off," Aiko said. She swiped blood off her chest onto her forearm, scowling at the mess. There was no saving this shirt from another bleach. "I'm so tired of doing laundry. I didn't think this life path would involve all this laundry."

Maybe she'd gotten just a little bit spoiled being Kage.

There was an awkward silence from Mayumi.

"Really, it's fine," Aiko insisted. She tugged her top closed again, giving up on reducing the blood. "I just need to drink some water and relax for a while."

Mayumi kicked at the dirt. "What are you going to do with… all of this?" She gestured vaguely at the corpses, warhorses, and the big earthen trap they were all in. "I think the next visitors will find it somewhat inhospitable."

'I don't really care.'

Aiko shrugged. "I'll put the horses with the other one," she said grudgingly. She'd probably need to expand that clearing. "Might take metal off the bodies, I miss having a sword. This armor is trash, though." She nudged at a helmet with her foot. "If a rock can go through one of these, I'm not impressed."

Mayumi gave her a pained look. "I think that had more to do with you than with the armor," she said bluntly. The Inuzuka scratched her head. "Saa, maybe you should take the bow. Fits your image better. I've never heard of a holy woman with a sword."

Aiko sighed heavily, but she didn't disagree. "People won't expect to be stabbed if they see a bow," she agreed wearily. "And I do like loot." She frowned down at the bodies. "I'll bury them when I move this soil. I'm going to go sit down for a bit. Come finish our drinks?"

"Yes, of course," Mayumi said politely. She jumped back up, onto the ridge of dirt that shielded the bloodbath from sight. "Do you need a hand?"

'I got better after a vivisection. I think I'll survive one arrow.'

Aiko tried not to scoff. "I'm fine," she managed. "Let's see if they found the candy in my house yet."

"Ah…." Mayumi looked her over. "I think you should avoid people until you clean up."

She sighed. But she didn't argue, because she really might scare the kids. Aiko crept into her own home and stripped down. She carefully cleaned up excess blood by splashing water from a bucket and then wiping. Then she wrapped up with long strips of bandages and put on her spare shirt.

'I need more clothes that aren't kimono.'

Mayumi was waiting on the veranda for her. Aiko noted that the sake supply had taken a very sharp downturn.

…Fair enough, honestly.

"Thank you for waiting," she murmured. Aiko sank down into seiza and clutched at her teacup.

She'd hit the point in dehydration that meant a pounding headache. If she'd known she was going to lose so much blood, she wouldn't have been drinking alcohol.

Grandma Kasumi saw her from down the street. The old woman stood up and began hobbling her way over.

"I feel a little bad about not going to her," Aiko said quietly. She pretended not to watch the 80 something year old lady approach.

Mayumi hummed. "I think she'd be disappointed if you did. She wants to know who I am."

"Grandmother Kasumi," Aiko greeted. "How are you?"

"I am well, Priestess. You're out of ame candy now." There were brown patches on the whites of her eyes and a milky patch over one pupil, but Kasumi-san had clever, alert eyes. They drifted over to Mayumi. "A friend, Priestess?"

Aiko nodded. "Yes. This is Mayumi-san. She helped me with our visitors."

"Oh?" Kasumi asked sharply. "We thought we heard some unusual sounds. Did something happen?"

Mayumi took over. "The Daimyo sent someone to discuss the situation," she said smoothly. "We have worked it out, I believe."

A whinny cut through the air, and then another.

Kasumi looked between Aiko and Mayumi slowly. She seemed spectacularly unimpressed.

"They gave us more horses," Aiko lied unrepentantly. "I'll bring them into town later. I'm just resting now." She smiled at the old woman, who was undoubtedly one of the most influential people in town. "Thank you for helping Tanjiro-kun and the others."

"He's a good child," Kasumi said noncommittally. She sighed and seemed to deflate, her thin shoulders drooping. "I see. Yes, I certainly could not have heard the sounds of a fight."

"Violence is never the solution," Aiko agreed piously. She ignored whatever look Mayumi gave her.

"We could never condone it," Kasumi said gravely. She nodded to each kunoichi in turn. "Lovely to meet you, Mayumi-san."

"And the same to you," the Inuzuka woman said. She seemed bemused as the old woman walked away. She raised an eyebrow at Aiko.

"They're good citizens," Aiko explained. She kept her tone light. "Loyal to the Daimyo, despite our ongoing and very civil disagreement."

"...ahuh." Mayumi put a hand to her head. "You know, I thought you picked a very weird hill to die on. Disagreeing with a Daimyo historically does not end well."

Aiko shrugged. "And now?"

"Now I think you picked a weird hill to kill on," Mayumi mused. "But the king will not be able to take your rice."

"It's kind of you to say so," Aiko said mildly. She hid her smile behind her cup.

"Uzumaki."

Aiko jumped when she startled. Mayumi met her stare with a calm expression. There was a hint of a smirk in those dark brown eyes.

"I'm just thinking aloud," Mayumi said. She put a hand on her chin. "The Uzumaki are a clan that lives off the continent, known for their red hair." She pointedly gave Aiko a look up and down. "I wonder if seals could somehow kill people on contact."

'Is this plausible deniability or just some sick power play?'

Aiko gave a non-committal hum because she wasn't sure where this was going. "Yes, they do live on an island," she agreed vaguely.

"They're known eccentrics," Mayumi added helpfully. "Very strange, bombastic people."

'Is she implying I'm eccentric or straight out saying it?'

Something twitched in Aiko's forehead. "Sounds delightful."

"They're supposed to have long lives and heal better than other people."

'That one isn't fair. Being an Uzumaki doesn't give me healing powers anything like this.'

"Good for them," Aiko said tersely. She tapped the table. "Go talk to them if you like them so much."

Mayumi barked out a laugh and shook her head. "You're not bad," she said fondly. "If you don't like that conclusion, you should probably be more subtle around shinobi."

"I will get skewered as often as I want to," Aiko snipped. She wrinkled up her nose. "Go ask the Uzumaki if they know me, if any of them have abilities like I do. I guarantee they do not."

"Of course not," Mayumi indulged. She stood and set down her cup. "I learned a lot today, Aiko-san. Please let me know about the process for joining your cult. I'm tentatively interested in seeing where this goes."

Tumblr is here go read infinite Aiko via links bless you 

Chapter Text

The sun was beating down on her neck. Hana felt sweat begin to trail down from her hairline onto her brows. She grimaced and heaved her weight into her work again. Her arms were shaking with the strain of grinding.

"Good morning," called out a cheerful, male, and unfamiliar voice.

She flinched and looked up with wide eyes. How-

A young man was standing far too close for comfort. She stared up at his grin, confident and calm despite his status as an intruder in her village.

"Good morning," she said cautiously. Hana took her hand towel and wiped at her face. "Are you here for the shrine?" Now that harvest was done, there was more leisure time to travel and visit family in other villages. Surely some of the people who heard about their shrine would come to see it.

He blinked. "Ah, no. Shrine?"

Oh. Disappointed, she slumped a little. It had seemed a little early for anyone to come from other villages, but why else would someone new come here?

"The shrine to Izanami-no-Mikoto." Hana glanced down the road, but the man seemed to have come alone. "The Priestess welcomes visitors and students."

"Perhaps I should visit." He gave her a smooth, practiced smile. He was very handsome and diplomatic.

She didn't like him at all.

'He's humoring or mocking me. He isn't a believer.'

Hana felt her expression turn tight. "Perhaps," she repeated. "Have a good day."

She turned back to her work, deliberately ignoring him. Now that she knew he was there, she could see his shadow. He wasn't moving.

"Ano…"

Hana ignored him even harder.

"I was sent to talk to your village leader."

Hana looked up at him sharply. "Why?" She narrowed her eyes. "Who are you? You're younger than me. You can't be anyone important."

The stranger reeled back at that gem of country honesty. His mouth dropped open and his cheeks flushed red. "I'm 24!" He blustered. "I'm plenty old to be important."

He was 24 and he was running errands?

"I'm not impressed," Hana said in her flattest voice. She crossed her arms over her stomach, which was still so odd to feel round. "I'm 22 and I'm apprenticed to the Priestess."

"You're a miko?" The man's gaze wandered over her pregnant stomach.

'I wish.'

Her face was hot. "No," she snapped, offended by the rude scrutiny of her body. She did not elaborate. "Is anyone expecting you?"

He tilted his face and looked at her as if she was a new species. "No," he said slowly. Some kind of tension left his body. She hadn't noticed he was tense, but she saw the way his hand moved down, away from… away from…

'He's armed.'

Her breath caught. She couldn't actually see a weapon, but the cloth bundle hanging from his obi didn't look like any farm tool she'd ever seen. And wasn't that the flat line of a knife hidden in the obi itself?

'Another one to attack the Priestess? Did the Daimyo give up on samurai and send some- some ronin?' Heart beating fast, she really looked him over for the first time.

He was handsome in a way that put her hackles up. His skin was as clear as the Priestess', and his build was strong and lean. He just looked different. His hands had thin scarring and there was something brown dried under the nails on his left hand. It made her think of old blood.

'Shinobi,' Hana realized. The shock curdled to anger in her gut. 'The Daimyo hired burakumin to come and kill the Priestess.'

The audacity.

"You should go."

His eyebrows flew up.

"We don't want you here." Hana scowled at him. Her fingers clenched around her tool handle. "The Priestess won't see you."

He cocked his head to the side. "The Priestess?" He repeated dumbly. "Is that your village leader?"

Hana scoffed in disbelief. As if he didn't know.

Well, he wasn't getting any information from her. She stood up to turn her back to him.

"Hana-chan."

She jumped.

Slow footsteps scuffed in the dirt quietly as Grandma Kasumi made her way over. Hana turned back around.

The interloper dropped into a deep bow.

Bemused, Grandma Kasumi squinted down at him.

"You must be the Priestess," he said to his knees. "May I trouble you for some conversation? I've come on behalf of the Uchiha clan."

Uchiha. Hana had heard that name. They were one of the two rival warlords.

Grandma Kasumi made a small, confused sound in the back of her throat. As she began to speak, Hana lifted her face and saw the Priestess.

She was staring at the Uchiha in profile and her face was white. She stumbled a step backwards.

'I need to keep him away from her.'

"Yes," Hana interrupted, making sure to sound as grudging as possible. "As I said, the Priestess doesn't have time for a shiftless 24 year old with dirty nails."

He puffed up, clearly on the edge of snipping back at her. From the glare he sent, she knew he'd have said something rude if there wasn't an elder right there.

"Hmmm." Grandma Kasumi gave Hana a sideways look. "I have time to listen. Don't be rude, darling. Uchiha-san, you're a tall boy, aren't you?" She squinted at him until her eyes nearly disappeared.

The idiot looked stunned.

"Come," Grandma Kasumi said imperiously. She began shuffling away from town at her highest speed. It was still painfully slow. The man struggled to keep pace without overtaking her.

Hana looked back at where the Priestess had been standing. She was gone.

'She looked like she'd seen a ghost.'

Grandma Kasumi would keep him busy. As soon as they were far enough away, heading towards the orchard, she lifted her yukata hem and ran into town.

"Hana!"

She didn't slow at the disapproving shout. Her eyes were open wide, darting from side to side, looking for either the Priestess or for the headman.

She found the headman first. Ichirou shaded his eyes against the sun and let out a confused "huh," when she came skidding to a halt.

"There's a shinobi," she panted.

"The woman the Priestess drinks with?" He sounded bemused. Shinji jumped down from the ledge above, obviously listening.

"Not her," Hana dismissed. Her heart was thudding after her run. "A man, and I think he has a big knife."

"A sword?" Shinji asked very quietly.

"How do you know he's a shinobi? Did he say so?" Ichirou looked around as if the scoundrel might be on a roof. Of course he wasn't. Grandma Kasumi probably had him up a tree picking persimmon.

"He said he's an Uchiha messenger boy," Hana reported. "We have to keep him away from the Priestess!"

The village headman opened his mouth and wrinkled his brow. "It seems like she can take good care of herself," he said doubtfully.

"He's filthy," Hana hissed. "It would shame us all if we let him near the holy woman."

Shinji nodded his head.

She felt relief that someone else understood. Of course the Priestess could dispatch this boy if she had to. That didn't mean that he should have a chance to attack her.

"I'll go, I'll go." Ichirou dusted his hands on his legs. Dirt flaked off. "You want me to tell him we'd like him to leave?"

"Yes, please." Hana straightened. He hadn't listened to her.

Ichirou sighed and started down the road. "He's this way?"

"With Grandma Kasumi," Hana confirmed. "He thinks she's the Priestess."

Ichirou snorted.

She scowled at him.

The middle aged man put his hands up defensively. "Not very bright, is he?" His eyes crinkled in a smile. "She's not dressed like a priestess." He walked a little faster.

"I think he mistakes age for importance," Hana said sagely.

She broke off, making meaningful eye contact with her fellow apprentice. Shinji  nodded back, a silent promise to try to run off the intruder. She felt lighter when she doubled back to the shrine.

"Pr- Aiko," she called with a wince. It felt wrong, even with permission. But it seemed like bad luck to call out her title now with a dangerous man in town.

"I'm back here."

The Priestess's voice floated over from the garden. Hana shoved her feet back in her shoes and walked around the outside of the building. She had to hug very close to avoid the thorny brush.

The Priestess was seated on a rock, facing away.

"Hello, Hana."

There was something terribly vulnerable in her voice. Hana stopped in her tracks. "Priestess," she said uncertainly. "Is everything alright?"

The Priestess ran a hand through her lovely, foreign hair. "...Sit with me."

Hana sat on the edge of the engawa. She swallowed.

"That man was an Uchiha?" It was a tone that she'd never heard before.

"Yes." Hana nodded slowly. "He didn't say his personal name. He's 24 and he's rude."

The sound that resulted would have been called a snort, if someone less elegant had made it. "That sounds like an Uchiha." Her voice was dry.

"Ichirou is telling him to leave," Hana said fiercely. "He won't bother you."

The Priestess turned her face to look at Hana. She tilted her head to the side. "That's sweet. Maybe he'll leave."

Chapter Text

Aiko was still shaken the next morning. She laid in bed and watched her ceiling, aching for home.

It couldn’t have been. People who weren’t born yet didn’t have ghosts. But she could have sworn that the man who Hana had run off was Sasuke. Sasuke dressed like a painting, Sasuke with his cockiness and ability to change roles along with his clothing.

‘Had to have been some kind of ancestor. Not just a relative, not with that resemblance. That man was Sasuke’s great-great grandfather or something like that.’

It hurt a lot more than she could have expected it to. It wasn’t really him. It wasn’t anyone that she knew.

But it was a reminder.

She made herself get up and fold her futon. Aiko opened the closet with a foot and tossed the mattress on the upper shelf.  She tossed the blanket on top, hesitated, and then took it down to properly fold it before putting it away a second time. She slid the closet door shut with a firm clack, closing the door on the sleepless night and unpleasant thoughts.

“It’s a new day,” she said, injecting some cheer into her voice. She stripped out of her sleeping clothes and put on her white hakui and red hakama. Her hair was last. It was getting long again. There were some odd short bits where pieces had gotten burnt off here and there, but the ragged ends were past her shoulders now.

‘Maybe I should cut it to that length, so it’s all even.’

Another day. Aiko bound her hair back into a low ponytail and nimbly wrapped washi string around it. By now she was well-practiced at the traditional hairstyles for miko.

‘If I had senbon, they would fit in there so well.’

Aiko pouted. She wasn’t even the type of kunoichi who used senbon. It just felt wrong to pass up a chance to pack away something sharp. It had never been her habit before, but she also hadn’t really styled her hair. She’d had it short as a genin, then in a simple braid as a chunin, and then she was skilled and obnoxious enough to wear it loose.

‘Mayumi would laugh at me if she knew I didn't have any weapons in my hair. What kind of bargain bin kunoichi passes up storage space?’

“I am the discount kunoichi,” Aiko mumbled to herself. “I’m leaning into it. So low quality.” She flung open the door and blinked into the cool morning air. Crickets and frogs were chirping and singing somewhere in the mist. The sun was halfway up already.

‘Come to think of being a disappointment for my role, I should shore up my miko skills and equipment before I get any little apprentices. I have a fan and a lantern, but I don’t know any kagura dances.  And I don’t have any of the other traditional accessories. Well.’ She snorted in amusement and stepped off the engawa onto the grass. ‘I have a bow now. But I could have a sword as well, as well as the rest. I should go to a bigger shrine and train.’

That would be something interesting to do with the day.  But first things had to come first. Aiko waved, smiled, and greeted the people that she saw out and about. People were already cutting grass, watering crops for the next harvest, and otherwise working outside. She passed through the biggest group of fields, carefully stepping on stones to dodge the mud on the raised walkway. She went up the mountainside, passed a house, and then went to the front door. She rapped on the wood frame with her knuckles. “Good morning,” Aiko called, deliberately loud.

She shucked her shoes as she waited. She knocked and called out again, even louder.

This time, she heard a thunk from somewhere in the house. About 10 seconds later, she heard the soft rumble of a door sliding open and the swish of bare feet on tatami.

Grandfather Kazuya beamed at her. He reached a shaky hand out to usher her in. Aiko smiled back and bowed her head as she stepped past. “Good morning,” she said again.

“Wonderful to see you.” There was a soft rasp of skin on fabric behind her, and then his shuffling footsteps started. Aiko led them into the kitchen. “Tanjiro-kun is outside,” Grandfather Kazuya informed her. She could hear the smile in his voice. “I don’t know what he will bring in for us this morning.”

“I love a surprise,” Aiko said blithely. “How is your back this morning?”

“Good, good,” he dismissed. “I got up easily.”

“I am happy to hear that,” Aiko said sincerely. The rice pot was where she’d left it yesterday. Aiko had to get on her toes to pull the thick cloth bag of rice down. “Is there water?” she asked.

“Oh, no. I will go and get some from the well.” He took a step toward the pail, which would be quite heavy when full.

‘Absolutely not while I’m here.’

“No, no,” Aiko brushed her hands on the front of her pants. “Could you measure out the rice, please? I’ll be right back.” She bustled out the door and grabbed the big water pail on the way to the back yard. Tanjiro popped his head up and grinned at her. He waved with a muddy hand. He was crouched like a frog over a patch of green. “Good morning,” she said cheerfully. “What’s that in your hand?”

“Sunny lettuce,” he bellowed with all the force a 7-year old could expel from their lungs. “And two tomatoes!”

“This late in the year? That’s wonderful,” Aiko praised. She started pulling on the rope to lift the bucket. There was a pleasant strain in her arms and upper back as the water fought her. “Come here and wash your hands.” She poured most of the bucket into the pail to go inside and then splashed the remainder over the vegetables and Tanjiro’s hands. “Thank you, your grandfather will be happy to see that.”

“I’m going to make salad,” he shouted. He shook his hands like a dog would shake off water.

Bemused, Aiko watched him sprint back to the house. “Alright then.” She dropped the bucket back into the well to let it refill and headed back inside at a more relaxed pace.

Grandfather Kazuya had set the rice on the workbench inside the pot. As she stepped into the kitchen, he dropped the measuring cup back into the basket with a thunk. She glanced to the hearth in the center of the room, judging how high the fire was.

“Just embers,” she murmured. She left the water and went to feed the fire so that it would be ready. “Tanjiro-kun, can you cut the lettuce for me?” She made eye contact and a gesture. “You can tear it, like this. To this size. How about it?”

He nodded. “Un.” His face screwed up in concentration. He barely seemed to notice his grandfather set down a bowl for the lettuce.

Aiko exchanged a smile with Grandfather Kazuya.

Tanjiro was the only other person in the house at the moment. His parents had gone off to the next town to meet relatives and to try to recruit a miko for her shrine. Tanjiro’s mother, Furi, was one of 6 siblings, and one of her sisters had been blessed with 5 daughters. 5 daughters was widely agreed to be a difficult number of daughters to feed.

‘I’d have to be able to feed them if they came to me.’

The idea of being responsible for someone else in that way made her feel a little sick. Aiko didn’t exactly have the resources of the Mizukage anymore. She focused on rinsing the rice, using her fingers to agitate the water until starch turned it white. She carefully drained it and set it aside to water the garden later. The second rinse water would be used for cleaning and to wash their faces at night. She filled the rice pot, checked the water level with her index finger, and then went to look for something else to fill out the meal.

She picked up the stored tsukemono to sniff at them. “Miso or rice bran pickles?” Aiko asked out loud.

“Let’s have the rice bran,” Grandfather Kazuya said amiably. As Tanjiro groaned, he nodded. “I’ll return in a moment.”

“Take your time,” Aiko called. She bit her lip and judged how long the rice would take to cook, given that the fire was a bit low. “Protein,” she mumbled to herself. “Eggs?” No, no, they did that yesterday. “Fish,” she decided. She glanced over at Tanjiro, who was shaking the last shreds of lettuce off of his hands. Before he could get any ideas about the knife and his precious tomatoes, she cleared her throat. “Could you go to the river and ask Kadoya-san for a big fish?”

Tanjiro lost all interest in vegetables. “Yes, priestess,” he chirped. “Now?”

“Yes, please,” she said absently. “Take the…” she trailed off as he crammed his feet into his shoes and ran off without the basket. “Okay, carry a live fish here in your hands. Whatever.”

Poor fish.

This was the third day in a row that she’d had breakfast with this family. It was nice, she thought later when they were sitting down together over the meal. It felt good to have something to do in a borrowed family unit. After breakfast, Grandfather Kazuya took Tanjiro further into the village center, where he and some other elders would watch the smallest children and supervise the other ones doing little tasks in between playing.

Aiko walked a more circuitous route back to the shrine, exchanging greetings and peering at the things that other women were bringing back from the mountainside. It was prime foraging time for burdock root and ginger, as well as plenty of other good things that would be good for pickling to eat or drying for medicine. She was still floating on her triumph of realizing she had a piece of useful plant knowledge that the locals didn’t– the foraging baskets were now coming back with kudzu to treat colds later in the year.

The intrusive thoughts came back as soon as she slid the door shut behind her. She fought it with busywork, using the morning’s rice water to wipe the entry floor.

‘Is that Uchiha going to come back? Do I know his name?’

She might. She had gone through genealogy materials with Sasuke years ago.

‘Maybe he’s the guy I drew a mustache on.’

No one was around to hear her snort.

Aiko surveyed her very clean flooring, hands on her hips. She glanced around the shrine for something else to do. Disappointingly, it was in perfect order.

“Okay,” she said, feeling a bit lost. She rallied. “I need to do something, something productive. I can…” Aiko trailed off as she remembered her train of thought that morning. “I can go and become a better Priestess,” she decided. “I should have had miko training. If I’m going to train a miko, I need to actually know what they’re supposed to learn.” She grimaced at the thought of making it all up from barely remembered rituals she’d seen years ago. That seemed profoundly awkward. It would inevitably become embarrassing.

“Fraud,” she said under her breath. “Where to? Where would there be a big shrine with senior miko who I can talk to…”

Oh, no.

She grimaced again.

Somewhere else. There had to be somewhere else. Aiko cast about her memory, trying to find a place where she knew she’d be able to solicit training that was near enough to reach in a day and was not right outside the Daimyo’s palace.

…Nothing came to mind. If she’d still had seals all over the continent she could have gone somewhere else and asked around. But she didn’t have that network.

“...It seems a bit sacrilegious to disguise myself in a shrine,” Aiko said unhappily.

It was, in a very literal sense. Aiko was hardly an expert but she knew it was prohibited to dye your hair color if you were a miko. It was supposed to be the beautiful, natural black shade, to lower your chances of adverse possession.

That meant that henge of black hair would help her fit in as an ideal miko. She felt only a little guilty as she applied it. She softened her face as well to make her look like she was in her early teens. A miko of Aiko’s actual age would be way too old to get training. She was basically at miko retirement age.

‘Oof. I do not like that thought. Bad thought.’

That age limit didn’t apply to Priestesses anyway. A priestess was the next level in religion, really.

She closed her eyes, concentrated on her few existent seals, and tried to puzzle out where in relation to them the Daimyo’s palace would be. Assuming it hadn’t moved… She came into a new spot at a brisk walk, acting like she had always been in the busy street. Someone dodged out of her way without looking at her.

Just like that, she was in the crowd. She cast her face about, looking for shrine gates. Valiantly, she ignored the ostentatious height of the palace. It didn’t take long to find the red gates and climb the stairs to the shrine halfway up the mountainside. She walked around the grounds, bowing politely to bald Priests and the few guests until she saw a female figure walking the other direction. They had on the same white hakui as Aiko, but her hakama pants were blue.

“Bingo,” she murmured. She followed. When no one was looking, she caught up. “Excuse me,” Aiko said, pitching her voice to be high and soft. When the other woman looked at her, Aiko flicked on her Rinnegan. “Do you have time to help me?” Aiko asked softly. A Priest passed nearby without giving them a glance. “I want to practice the fan dance.”

Trainee miko definitely did not set practice times, but the lightest touch of genjutsu Aiko could apply made this lady forget that. Aiko had her lead them to an empty tatami room and show Aiko the movements. It was honestly simple enough that Aiko had her demonstrate a few more, and then she shoved down the weird bubbling of guilt and asked for presents from the storeroom. She left the shrine with every traditional piece of miko equipment. It was a lot harder to blend into the crowd when her hands were so full but she managed to slip away to a dark corner and hirashin back to her little farm village.

Mayumi was waiting on the engawa when she got back.

Chapter Text

The priestess was distracted lately. Hana glanced up through her lashes to steal another glimpse of her face. It was serene. Her hands were neatly folded on her legs. She still looked- she looked a step above human, with her perfect stillness and flawless skin. Hana didn’t reach out to touch the scars on her face from old sores, but it was a close thing.

‘I want to know where she went yesterday.’

She pushed the wistfulness down. She wasn’t going to get to know. Hana played with a loose string on her sleeve and ran her tongue along her teeth.

“Shinji. What is the reading for this character?”

Hana listed to the side, watching the priestess carve a 10 stroke kanji into the dirt with a finger. Sunlight dappled onto her face from above, casting shadows.

“The first radical is person…” Shinji’s voice trailed off, thinking. He bit his lower lip and furrowed his brow. “Sha? And shaku?”

“And the last reading?” Her voice was like the wind, soft and unhurried.

The moment trailed on. “I don’t remember, Priestess.”

She merely nodded.

Hana shook her head, but Fumiko bent her face down to the kanji with confidence. “It’s kari,” she said. “As in ‘borrow’.”

The Priestess gave her a fond look. “That’s right.” And then her head fell off her body.

Hot blood hit Hana’s face. She blinked and choked in a confused breath, accidentally inhaling- inhaling-

Fumiko screamed, before Hana really even understood what she was looking at. The Priestess’s head rolled. Her body collapsed forward. Her knees were still folded in seiza, so she was neatly packaged up.

She didn’t understand.

“Fuck off.”

A man’s voice, low and unfamiliar, twisted with contempt. Hana stumbled to her feet with difficulty. She kept a hand on her stomach, a comfort mechanism by this point.

‘Shinobi. Like the man last week.’

It wasn’t the same man. That man had been slimmer, handsome and young. He had laughed and smiled and worn clothing that looked local, if rich.

‘Where did he come from?’

He was simply there one moment. Her brain screamed in panic.

“You killed her,” Hana said dumbly. She didn’t understand. “Why?”

The look he gave her filled her with a cold terror. She was drowning in it. She was breathing so fast that she felt dizzy. She nearly stumbled over the Priestess’s body and had to put a hand on that small back in order to balance. She was still warm, through her clothes. A muscle twitched under Hana’s hand even as the neck hemorrhaged blood. The horror of it shook her.

The man shoved her carelessly. The force of it sent Hana flying. She hit the dirt with a cry.

Fumiko rushed over to her and helped her stand with shaking hands. Hana looked up at her cousin’s face to see it bone-white with terror. Fumiko bowed her head in respect that that man didn’t deserve and began dragging Hana backwards out of the clearing where they had been studying. “Let’s go.” Her voice was high and tight.

Shinji was standing stock still, frozen. He was staring at the Priestess’s face. Hana couldn’t see it from this angle. Wildly she wondered what it looked like. Was she still serene? Had it been too fast to hurt?

Fumiko cried his name and Shinji jerked to attention. He nodded and began to run as well, crowding Hana along with Fumiko.

Supported by the two of them, Hana craned her neck back to see the murderer pick the Priestess’s head up by her lovely hair. She cried out in shock but the others wouldn’t let her stop running.

They ran back to the village and stood in the street, trembling. Hana felt her chest hurt- her whole abdomen hurt. She was shaking.

“She’s not dead.”

It took a moment to understand Shinji’s rough whisper. He held her hand in one hand and pressed the other against Fumiko’s back. The blood on Hana’s face felt cold now, thicker. It had stopped running into her eyes.

“I saw,” Shinji said. He swallowed and glanced back in the direction that they had come from. “She mouthed at me. Told me to run. She said.” He let out a gasping sob. “She said it was fine, that she knew who he was and she would come back.”

It should have sounded ridiculous. It should have. But.. the priestess wasn’t human like them. There were whispers that she was a god herself. No human could have done what she did, with the miracles of the shrine and the flowers and their perfect harvest, much less do whatever she’d done to all those samurai.

“Come back?” Fumiko said, voice barely audible.

Hana grimaced. “Hurts,” she managed. Her knees were so weak. “I need to lie down.” They let her down onto the dirt. Fumiko checked the temperature at her forehead and then stroked through her hair. “I believe her,” Hana said, gritting her jaw. What was this? Had the shinobi done something to her when she’d felt afraid? Was it from the shock of seeing the Priestess- not die, but be hurt?

No one was around. At this time of the morning, everyone was working. They milled around in shock. Eventually, Hana felt recovered enough to go back. They clutched at each other for bravery as they went back into the forest. The clearing wasn’t so far from the village. They’d been going there most mornings each week, where there was shadow to shield them from the sun but space to let the air move and cool them.

The man was gone, she noted with relief.

But so was the Priestess’s head.

Fumiko let out a choked cry and broke away from Hana and Shinji to kneel at the Priestess’s poor abused body. The blood was horrible. It seemed impossible that so much blood had ever been in one body. Fumiko ran her hand down the back of Aiko-sama’s shoulders and then down her arm. And she shrieked when the hand moved.

“Fumiko,” Hana said slowly. “You’re the best writer.”

Fumiko looked up at her in confusion.

“She can’t hear us,” Hana explained hurriedly. She knelt to wipe away the kanji ‘borrow’ and then grimaced at all the blood. “Over here.  Take her by the hand and- yes.” Shinji strode over and encouraged the Priestess’s body to stand. The sight of it sent shivers down her neck but Hana grabbed hold of her courage. She beckoned Shinji over. The Priestess wasn’t a large woman, but she looked like a child now, tucked against Shinji without her head. Fumiko wailed again, involuntary pain bleeding out.

The Priestess knelt again, hands patting down at the dirt. Hana held one, interlacing her fingers. This was still her master, she reminded herself.

Unprompted, the story of the creation goddess Izanami no mikoto floated to her mind. The Goddess was the first to die. Izanagi promised that he would rescue her from death, but when he saw her body and understood what death meant, he turned away in revulsion and trapped her in hell.

Never.

Hana felt her lips thin. “Ask her what we should do,” she said.

It took a moment for Fumiko to understand. Her face was red now from tears but she was full of determination as she knelt. It must have been muscle memory for her to gracefully lift one sleeve back, just as Aiko-sama had taught them to do to keep their clothes clean from ink. She wrote the sentence in the dirt and dug it in deep.

Then lovingly, gently, Hana guided the Priestess’s hands on top of the words.

Pressed together as they were, she could feel the moment that the Priestess understood she was feeling words and began to decipher them. After a few scant seconds she used her own hand to wipe away the words and began to write.

I need to go to my head.

The words sat for a full minute before Aiko-sama erased them herself.

I am sorry to ask. I cannot go alone.

“Fucking hells.”

All three of the villagers with heads in the clearing spun to look at the interloper.

“Mayumi-san,” Shinji said tersely. He took a step between them. “I- the Priestess is-”

“I can see her,” the shinobi cut him off. She brushed past him without effort, confusion and wonder warring with horror in her features. Her lips curled in disgust but her eyes were empathetic. “Priestess…” She touched the Priestess on the back, where Hana had.

The Priestess flinched.

Then she relaxed. She tapped the ground where the last sentences were still waiting.

“Go where?” the shinobi woman asked sharply. “What happened here?”

“I don’t know,” Fumiko said. She was shaking her head. “It was so fast. We were- it was as usual, and a man attacked her. I didn’t even see him until after.” Her voice broke.

“He took her head,” Shinji cut in. He sounded fierce, for the first time in his life. “He was a shinobi. Not like you.” Mayumi looked at him sharply but he was undeterred. “You’re dressed like a normal person. He wasn’t. He had a bag- I think he was going to take the- take her head from the start.”

There was a pause while Mayumi-san contemplated this. “A bounty hunter,” she said after a moment. She put a hand to her chest. It looked surprisingly delicate, Hana thought, despite how horrible shinobi could be. “He would take her head to the Daimyo.” Her voice was flat. “This is how he decided to solve his problem.”

“Who is he?” Hana shot to her feet. “You know him?”

The older woman gave her a flat look. “I speak of the Daimyo,” she clarified. “He realized that samurai were not sufficient.” She ran her hand down Aiko-sama’s back in an absent way that seemed maternal. The emotion of seconds before was gone, replaced by cold calculation.

Hana zeroed in on the movement and licked her lips.

This woman cared for the Priestess. She was- she was burakumin, yes, but she understood. And if the Priestess would share sake with her, who was Hana to turn up her nose? “Mayumi-san,” she said. She made audacious eye contact. “Will you help?”

“Let me think,” the woman said, which was not an answer.

Hana began to pace, taking care to avoid stepping on the waiting message. “She doesn’t hear us,” she pointed out. “Can someone write to her again?” Her voice broke. “It must be terrible.”

Mayumi-san’s careful control over her face broke a little, showing a grimace.

“Fumiko?” Hana entreated.

Her cousin nodded and wiped away the words. She hesitated and looked at the shinobi, clearly unsure of what to write. She settled for “Mayumi is here. We ask help.”

She was the only one to see the older woman wince.

“You forgot the particle,” Shinji said automatically. He seemed to have turned off his emotions somehow. Hana envied it.

‘Mayumi can’t bear to leave Aiko-sama with hope and say no,’ Hana felt. She had to believe that Mayumi would help. They could lead her to the Daimyo’s palace if they needed to, but she needed help. That horrible man had hurt her.

“Preposition,” Fumiko corrected with a thick voice. She began to write it in and then shook her head. She led the Priestess’s hand to the new sentence. Even without eyes, the Priestess read it so quickly. She was so clever and good. She absolutely must be healed.

Hana closed her eyes and sunk to her knees. She didn’t care that she was kneeling in Aiko-sama’s blood and the mud it had turned into. She clasped her hands together and leaned forward until her forehead brushed the filth. ‘Izanami-sama, turn your eyes to your loyal servant,’ she prayed. ‘Help her. Give us courage to save her as you should have been saved.’

Mayumi-san made a very strange sound.

Hana didn’t care why. She didn’t look up. She kept praying with all the fervor she could muster. She was a true believer, she really was. Her prayers to the gods had been answered by the Priestess’s arrival and then she had seen miracles, seen power and glory and riches that could have suited no one else she had ever seen in her life.

“She wants clothes?” Fumiko said, uncertain.

Hana stopped praying and looked over. Blood dripped off of her face onto her lap.

The others were looking down at the dirt where Aiko-sama had written something else. The shinobi wiped it away and wrote a quick answer. Fumiko scrunched up her face but clearly wasn’t able to read it before the Priestess read it, wiped it away, and wrote something new.

“We have a plan.” Mayumi-san looked at them like she wasn’t sure how she had arrived in this clearing. Her eyes were a little lost but her fingers were curled around one of the talismans that the Priestess had been praying over and painting. “I’ll need to get something from my clan, for travel. First we will go to the shrine and help her dress.” Her mouth stretched into a smile that looked… too toothy. Hana didn’t pull back but it was a close thing. “One can’t go to the Daimyo’s court in anything but one’s finest, of course.”

Chapter Text

I must have lost my mind.’ She should have felt panicked, or been in disbelief that the Priestess could survive a beheading. Instead all Mayumi felt was fierce determination and a cruel amusement.

The Daimyo had chosen very poorly.

‘There is no way for this to end that does not involve the Daimyo’s death. She won’t suffer this insult.’

It had been a very long time since Mayumi had followed someone else’s orders, but there was no other way to describe what she did. She helped the female acolyte who was not heavily pregnant back to the shrine and searched out the seals that the Priestess described. Mayumi began unsealing them. The opulence took her breath away. Seal after seal revealed yards of gleaming silk, of fine cotton, of jewelry and bells and finery that the Daimyo’s wife didn’t own. She ran a hand over the exorbitant display in disbelief. The making was so fine. It had been made by human hands?

In the small quiet part of her heart, Mayumi felt something shift. The ridiculous question that she’d been weighing was answered. Was Aiko-sama a shinobi or a goddess? Both, she felt. No human had belongings like this. It was unthinkable. Perhaps the goddess was a rejected patron of the Uzumaki, cast from the ocean upwind and inland. It would explain her fine, foreign features, the way she spoke, and the eerie perfection of her work in contrast with the heat of her personality. She had snarled when Mayumi had hinted at an association with that clan, but her seals had that characteristic look.

“What’s this?” the acolyte sounded overwhelmed at the items that Mayumi was sorting and collecting into a pile.

Mayumi glanced down at the accessory. “A hiōgi,” she explained without feeling. “A large fan, used for hiding one’s face. Court ladies are not allowed to look at men.”

The girl made a strange expression and carefully opened it, comparing the size to her head.

Mayumi selected an outfit, choosing 10 layers for junihitoe that matched the season. The girl ran off with her burden. Dressing the Priestess in the woods.. It seemed like something from a tale.

‘Will anyone believe me?’

She went to her clan compound quickly, full of determination.

It would be hard to explain. It would be difficult to believe if you had not seen the Priestess. Mayumi had told people, of course, but it was different to see her.

She blew through the gates, ignoring the curiosity on her guards’ faces. Marumaru raised his great shaggy head to watch her pass and blinked away the sleep in the elder’s eyes. She gave him a respectful nod but kept moving, to the shed where her clan stored something they needed only rarely for travel to the Capital and when they wed someone of high status outside of the clan.

Mayumi threw open the door and blew away dust, letting the daylight shine fiercely on the wooden box that laid on two long, thick poles.

Her husband sidled up to her shoulder and laid a chin on her shoulder. “Are you making a trip?” He asked, amused. He nipped at her ear before she could answer.

She swatted him away with a hand. “I’m not going to be the one riding in it,” she said. “I’m lending it out.” She looked at her husband and wondered if she should try to prepare him. “To the Priestess.”

Ude blew air at her. “You need people to carry? Is she going to apologize to the Daimyo?”

His voice was much more serious than she usually liked. He liked the priestess too. She never would have gone to meet Aiko-sama if her husband hadn’t told her that she was interesting.

Mayumi nodded. And then she laughed at the second part of the question. “She won’t be apologizing.” There was no way to adequately explain the dark amusement in her voice. She rolled the door the rest of the way open and then gestured to the clan members who had come to put their noses into her affairs. “I’ll need help, but only to the downstream village. You can decide to come home or continue on from there.”

It would be a lot faster to go with 4 shinobi attendants than with her and the 3 acolytes, but there was only so much that Mayumi could ask of her people.

Her husband nodded his agreement, solid as ever. He barely glanced at the nosy bastards as he placed himself at one of the four ends of the carrying poles. “Kibana, Tsume, Hira,” he barked out. “You have free time.”

Mayumi had intended to carry a corner herself, however… She nodded and tapped her fingers against his shoulder in thanks. If 4 came with, there were better odds of enough clansmen agreeing to go on the Capital. She knew she could count on her husband. So she only needed two of the other three to hold their steel when they saw the Priestess’s state.

The travel to the bloody clearing was quick. She could tell when her clansmen caught wind of the blood. Mayumi met their eyes steadily and continued on. It stank. It was a body’s lifeblood. Never mind that that she didn’t have her head, it was a miracle that the Priestess could move after losing all of that. The male acolyte had been tasked with winding clean bandages around the stump of her neck to stem the loss, but it was still horrific.

She held up a hand to order her people to stop. “Wait,” Mayumi ordered. “I need to check if she’s decent.” She strode ahead to see how well peasants had done with dressing a Priestess in the robes of a princess.

The fundamentals were fine. Mayumi used her hands to smooth the back to fall more elegantly over the thin cord of an obi that this fashion called for. Aiko-sama truly looked like a spirit.

“You can come,” she called out.

It took mere seconds for her nosy bastards to trip into the clearing and lay eyes on the Priestess.

Mayumi knew her face was hard as she made the introductions.

Hira’s honest face dropped in shock. Kibana raised her hands to dispel a genjutsu, eyes wide in wonder. Tsume cursed, which rather ruined the dignity. Mayumi knew she scowled terribly at them. At least the Priestess couldn't hear it.

Ude’s face was impassive. Even she couldn’t read it.

“Will they help?” The pregnant acolyte asked, face guarded. She had gone to clean her face and hands in the river, but her clothes were ruined with blood.

Mayumi raised a hand palm upwards in a silent question. “If they do not, we four will carry her.”

All four of her people zeroed in on the enormous belly of the girl who’d asked and then to Mayumi’s face in exasperated disbelief.

She didn’t back down. It would be terrible to bring these civilians to the capital, of course. Aiko-sama undoubtedly had bloody intentions. But she didn’t serve their innocence. “You don’t have to help,” Mayumi repeated. She took the Priestess by the hand and led her to the transport box. The elegance with which she managed to walk without a head was truly otherworldly. She folded herself in, which was a difficult test of agility for anyone wearing so many layers.

“I don’t want to waste much time. I’m fairly certain that if you go, you’ll get to see a goddess strike down the Daimyo.” Mayumi raised an eyebrow and laid her hand on the door. “Will you come?”

There was a weighty silence as her clansmen considered what they had seen. Mayumi cleared her voice. “Will you come?” she repeated. She didn’t turn to see what they felt. She was afraid of what they would think.

“Where are we going?” said a new voice.

Mayumi went still. Carefully, controlled, she reached inside and urgently tapped on the Priestess’s hand, leading it to open the fan. It snapped open and the Priestess lifted it to cover where her face should be. Only then did Mayumi turn to see the interloper.

Her lips opened to snarl, and then she straightened them to a smile as she pretended not to recognize that the young man in front of her with a large bottle of alcohol was a godsdamned Uchiha. “We are taking the Priestess to the Daimyo,” she said, thinking furiously.

‘He’s distinctive. Memorable. More memorable than my people.’

It might not hurt to have another clan to blame for what may happen at that Daimyo’s court.

He made a polite sound and looked at the assembled group. 3 civilians and 5 shinobi. The calculation happened quickly in his dark eyes. His horrible little face smoothed out into a polite facade that she knew and hated. “What a coincidence,” he said mildly. “I came to speak with her.”

The heavily pregnant acolyte turned red with fury.

“She will not speak with anyone else until after she has spoken with the Daimyo,” Mayumi said. She slid the door shut, protecting the Priestess from being seen. She made it sound a little mystical and less factual. “Carry her and she might see you in good favor.”

The bastard eyed all of them, false cheer still on his face like an idiot. “I would be delighted to,” he said. The lie couldn’t be heard. He offered his sake to the woman who seemed to somehow hate him on a personal level. “Would you take my present to the Priestess’s home?”

She stepped forward stiffly and accepted it. No one mentioned the blood on her front.

“Are we all going?” the Uchiha asked, no doubt wanting better odds in case it came to a fight.

“We only need four,” Mayumi said mildly. “Myself, of course.”

“And myself,” her husband stepped in quickly.

Hira and Kibana opened their mouths, but Tsume beat them to claiming the last spot.

“Lovely,” said the Uchiha, either not noticing or not commenting on a whole human’s lifeblood on the ground of the clearing. “Shall we be off, then?”

Chapter Text

Man, Madara was gonna owe him for this one.

Izuna readjusted the wooden bar over his shoulder and fought the urge to sneeze the stink of iron out of his nose. That clearing had been rank. This was already a weird diplomatic outreach and he had no way to report that actually, he was making a fun little detour to the capital. So he was also going to get yelled at.

‘Come to think of it, a bloody clearing is kind of an odd place to put a priestess in a travel box and start a trip to visit the Daimyo. Was it from some kind of human sacrifice to ensure good luck on her trip? Was her house too dirty for guests?’

He flipped through increasingly silly explanations to keep himself entertained. Perhaps the Priestess was actually dead, and this was an elaborate cover up. Perhaps the woman in the box was an imposter, and that was why she wouldn’t speak.

He probably could have said he’d wait for her to come back. Izuna spent a few kilometers running wishing that he had.

‘But I’d have to wait with that frowny girl.’

Well, to hell with that. She could take her weird attitude and non sequiturs about age and- and become a productive member of society, since she was such an adult that she was going to have a real human baby to be an example for.

‘What would I do with a human baby?’

Huh. He didn’t know. Izuna frowned. Wow, he wasn’t ready for a baby at all. Who would watch it when he was busy? Madara? Toka? HA! Unlikely. They were always busy at the same time.

..He was starting to get a bit worried.

“You alright there?”

Izuna startled back to the real world when the officious lady called out to him from the front of the carry box. He blinked at her. “Yes, thank you,” he said. “I’m doing well.”

She gave him a look, her mouth slightly twisted down. “If you say so.” One of her companions let out a sigh that she ignored. “Let us do the talking when we get to the capital.”

He blinked at her. He had never considered that he might take the lead. “Of course,” he agreed. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

The other two people carrying the box snickered. Izuna wondered why, but he didn’t waste too much effort on it.

‘I still have the gift in my bag,’ he remembered. Izuna shifted his weight. It was heavy, now that he was thinking about it. Grandmother had sent him off with 2 liters of sake that she’d made herself, which was a rather kingly gift. It sloshed a little with his movements, but it was so full that there wasn’t much room for the liquid to go.

‘I wonder who these ninja are. It feels so gauche not doing introductions, but we’d probably have to fight each other if we exchanged names,’ Izune mused morosely. His well-honed sense of politesse was nagging at his hindbrain.

But the other three people carrying the box were obviously also shinobi. And he didn’t recognize them as Uchiha allies, so they were probably as good as enemies.

If he’d been any other clan member, he probably would have turned back around for the village. But Izuna was the second-strongest shinobi in his clan. He could probably kill everyone here, if they turned on him. If they recognized him, they would know it too. The list of people on the continent that could meet him in outright battle had less than 10 people on it, probably.

‘And whoever they are, they’re not that important.’

So he easily ignored the very weird undertones of whatever super subtle conversation the other three shinobi were having. It wasn’t his business! His business was making the weird priestess like him, giving her alcohol, and convincing her that her whole home would probably be burnt to the ground if she didn’t make friends with the Uchiha.

“Let’s take a break,” the boss lady said.

Izuna was glad to set down the load and stretch. He glanced up at the sky and did some math to guess at how long they’d been traveling. They were making good time, at least. Izuna rolled his neck and stole a glance at the woman who was obviously in charge. She looked …normal.

He would admit that he was a little disappointed by that.

Her clothes were modest and practical, and she wasn’t especially pretty or noble looking. The only way to tell that she was in charge was that she actually told people what to do.

‘Definitely not one of the noble families, then, even though they’re obviously a clan.’

“Smarten up,” she barked at her people. Izuna jumped to obey before he realized what he was doing. He found himself moving to smooth his clothes as well, brushing off dust from the road and doing what he could to clean his shoes. “I don’t want to embarrass the priestess.”

Izuna pursed his lips and glanced at the travel box.

The priestess had been utterly silent. The only proof that a person was in the box was the weight and the occasional sound of silk rustling.

‘She must be very disciplined,’ he had to admit. ‘I hope she’s more exciting than this other lady.’ He stole another glance, as if hoping that she would be more exotic or scary at a second look. She still looked normal. She could have been from any farm town, with her round face and dark brown hair. ‘Maybe the priestess is really pretty. The boss is definitely acting as if the priestess is a grand lady.’

…Oh, he realized. That wasn’t normal at all. A priestess of a shrine in the middle of a 15 hut hamlet should not have business with the Daimyo. Had she actually secured an invitation? That would be notable. There would have to be a really compelling reason. Even the Uchiha only got one invitation per year.

Fishy! Izuna perked up. Something interesting was going to happen. He knew it. He crossed his fingers.

‘I am definitely going to have something to report to aniki.’

He was much cheerier when they picked the travel box back up to make the last leg of the journey. The city came into view and with it came the sounds of people compressed into too little space.

Izuna sniffed at the air as they walked in. There was the unpleasant scent of sweat from too many bodies, yes, but there was also the smell of fried chicken and of open sake. They passed a group of workmen seated on a wall overlooking the road, obviously on their meal break. Conversation stopped as the small entourage walked by. Izuna nodded at the man who appeared to be the leader. The civilian frowned and looked away.

Weird!

Everywhere they went, conversation stopped and they got odd looks. Izuna was starting to get an uneasy feeling. He was pretty sure that something was wrong by the time that they reached the gates of the palace.

“What’s your business?”

Izuna expected the boss lady to speak, but she and the other woman kept their eyes cast down while the only other man present spoke. “The priestess of the valley town is here to see the Daimyo.”

His tone was perfectly bland. Izuna didn’t see what was so upsetting about it, but the civilian went stiff.

The guard seemed to stop breathing. He looked at the four shinobi, but he had open fear on his face when he looked at the box.

There was the soft sound of wood moving. A small hand draped in elegant layers slipped out to gesture them on. Wow, that was a lot of layers. Izuna squinted with the effort to count without using his sharingan. 10?

‘She is glamorous!’ he thought triumphantly.

The guard blanched. “Go on,” he said, taking three steps back rapidly. “Open the gate,” he called to his comrades.

That had been surprisingly easy. They always got stuck waiting for a retainer to escort them in when the Uchiha visited. ‘I wonder why? Maybe the Daimyo isn’t having a busy day.’ Izuna gave the man a cheerful nod as they went past.

They made it up the grand lawn, to the spot where they should stop and let the lady walk- and okay, they were carrying her all the way. Into the palace? Izuna bit his lower lip. He was beginning to wonder what was going on.

“What are you doing?” a female servant in very expensive robes cried. She gestured at them to stop. The three layers of her kimono flared in the air. “The Daimyo is busy. Why did they let you in? There are no further visitors today.”

The boss lady gave her an expression that stopped the woman in her silly tracks. “We’ve brought the priestess from the valley,” she said in a silken tone. “An expected arrival, yes?”

The servant looked at the box. The door opened again a sliver. This time, no hand poked out, but the servant must have seen the lady. Her mouth dropped open. The door shut decisively. “Oh,” the servant said, and fell to the ground in a dead faint.

…Huh.

They stepped around her and up into the entry. No one set down their burden, instead struggling through taking their shoes off without using their hands. It was a little undignified. Truth be told, Izuna was beginning to feel a little put out about how rude they were being. It was embarrassing.

‘I am leaving a lot of details out of what I tell aniki,” he decided grimly. ‘If he knows I carried this dusty box into the Daimyo’s home, he will scold me severely.’

Maybe he really should have gotten names. He stole increasingly desperate glances at the back of the boss lady’s head, wondering what was going on in there. Maybe he was involved in something that was not good?

He felt his shoulders hunch up before he hurriedly corrected his posture.

‘Act dignified,’ Izuna reminded himself. ‘If something goes wrong, I’ll just explain that I’m not really involved.’

There was an excited scuffle ahead of feet and fabric moving towards them, and people whispering. Try as he might, Izuna couldn’t see. His angle prevented him from seeing exactly who was outside the grand door.

“The Daimyo is in an audience,” someone hissed in a whisper. “You must stop!”

Izuna stopped obediently, and then the forward momentum of the carry box lurched him forward with a quiet ‘oof’. They weren’t stopping? Alright, Izuna thought hysterically, why not. He licked his lips and decided to just see what would happen. The boss lady shoved the doors open with one hand and they strode in without stopping.

Outrage erupted in the courtroom.

“What is this?” some old man cried.

Izuna ducked his head. ‘...If someone recognizes me, the Uchiha might get in trouble.’

He repressed the urge to laugh nervously. He was committed now, to whatever this is.

The Daimyo stood abruptly. “Who comes before this one?” He sounded furious. Oh, man, Izuna did not want to be recognized. He looked intently at his feet. That was why it took him a moment to notice the unleashed chakra signature of another shinobi.

Izuna jerked his face up and leaned over to see the formidable bulk of a bounty hunter. The man was half-facing them, but had obviously been in an audience with the Daimyo. He was the only other person on the floor. The surrounding courtiers were all on cushions on a raised dais around the room. He had a bloody burlap bag.

“Daimyo-sama,” the boss lady said demurely, as if she hadn’t just broken several rules that Izuna hadn’t even known existed. “This one believes that you desired the presence of the Priestess of the Valley.”

The Daimyo turned a truly concerning purple. “I desired her head!” he hissed.

…Izuna felt his heart sink into his stomach. He might be in with the wrong crowd. Oh, hell. Oh, shit.

“And you have it,” said the bounty hunter hurriedly. He gave them a nasty look and opened up his bloody bag. He withdrew a head by long, reddish blonde hair and held it up. “This is she.” It was an exotic face in general, Izuna thought, hair aside. She had been quite pale with slightly pointed features and bright blue-green eyes. He felt vindicated that the Priestess had been interesting.

“Thank you, Kakuzu-san,” the head said mildly.

The bounty hunter froze.

The Daimyo let out a little erp sound.

Izuna leaned further out to double check. Yes. The head slowly spinning in the bounty hunter’s hand was… was talking.

“Would you put me back on my body, please?” Her voice was very soft, but cultured and definitely foreign.

Izuna was so fascinated that he almost missed the box opening fully for the first time. When the other three shinobi knelt he hastily did so as well. They let the box down to the tatami, where it left a ring of dust. Probably no one noticed the mess as the graceful figure of a young woman emerged from the box. She had a very large fan held demurely up, but from behind Izuna could see that she had no head at all. She took careful steps forwards, pulling the full train of her ridiculously extravagant kimono behind her. Izuna felt his eyes bulge out. He had never seen any garment that expensive. The Daimyo’s wife didn’t look that rich.

Ah, wait. Body with no head, en route to the palace. Head with no body, in a bag in the palace.

Oh, he thought, putting one and one together to get one again. That explained a lot, actually.

“Kakuzu-san?” the head prompted sweetly. “If you don’t mind, it would be much more civilized to conduct this conversation from my own shoulders.”

“Kill it!” the Daimyo shrieked. He threw himself back. “Monster!”

The bounty hunter gave the Daimyo a look, but he obeyed the priestess instead. He seemed a bit thunderstruck.

The priestess used one hand to hold her head in place and then snapped the fan shut. “Thank you,” she said crisply. All hell promptly broke loose in the court.

Chapter Text

A door flew open and hit the wall with a thunk.

Nobility scattered like a flock of crows, shrieking away from the men in armor that poured into the chamber.  A woman fainted dramatically in the confusion and fell down the dais in a cloud of silks. Aiko counted six men who might be samurai or might just be some kind of bodyguards. Either way, she wasn’t that concerned.

Aiko stayed perfectly still. She pretty much had to. If she moved, her head was going to fall off. She blinked at them over the top of her fan. “Mayumi-san,” she murmured.

The Inuzuka took a step forward, bristling up protectively. The samurai spilling into the room gave a visible startle at the sight of four shinobi, but they were too loyal to do anything but attack.

Aiko felt warmth gathering in her fingertips and swelling in her chest. As subtly as she could, she laid the fingertips of her left hand against her neck to hold her head in place.

The other Inuzuka threw themselves into the chaos with whooping. She couldn’t help the smile that quirked her lips up.

‘Love their style. You can’t deny that the Inuzuka have a certain vivacity. Most people would not want to fist fight their Daimyo’s guards.’

Someone cleared their throat.

“Yes?”

An Uchiha who was a dead ringer for Sasuke sidled into her view. He had a single line of confusion pressed in between his brows. “Excuse me for the intrusion,” he said politely.

There was a crash as a burly Inuzuka liberated a man from his sword and then sent the poor bastard flying through a screen door.

The Uchiha didn’t even look. He was just staring down at her earnestly. “It’s no trouble,” Aiko said. She gifted him with a smile and repressed the internal scream that came from looking at him. He was a walking ghost of someone who wasn’t born yet. “Uchiha-san?” He was nearly as tall as Sasuke, even, which… didn’t make much sense. He was at least 170 cm, which she kind of hated, if she was being honest. She slowly lifted her heels off the ground in order to get that much taller.

‘He is surprisingly tall for this generation. The Uchiha clan must have a good handle on nutrition. We’re at least 30 years off of the post-founding increase in height.’

“I’m honored,” he said, and gave a bow. Someone shrieked behind them. There was no indication that he noticed. “I was sent to speak with you on behalf of my clan.” He blinked the most ridiculously long, sooty lashes at her. “Oh!” He startled as if he suddenly heard something, but it was apparently that he remembered what he’d come for. The next words out of his mouth were, “I have a gift.”

Aiko tried to tilt her head to the side in bemusement and had to catch it from falling off her neck. The Uchiha didn’t notice because he was too busy scrabbling to open his bag. Triumphantly, he withdrew a large bottle of sake.

“I brought this as a token,” he announced proudly.

‘Oh, he’s an idiot,’ Aiko thought. ‘I love him.’

That helped shift something into place in her mind. She lowered back down from her heels, the need to posture gone.  He wasn’t Sasuke. Sasuke would have asked her what the fuck she was doing and … he would probably be brawling, if she was honest. Hmm. Speaking of.

“Could you protect this one?” Aiko asked, affecting a courtly speech pattern. She ever so slightly tilted her face and widened her eyes in the way that she knew made her look even younger and more appealing. She knew the image that she made with her exotic looks and extravagant clothing. The only patch in the illusion was her hair, but she couldn’t do anything about it at the moment.

He melted. “Of course, priestess.” His voice got huskier and his back straightened. Wow, a total sucker.

‘Wish I had a brush,’ Aiko thought. She could feel that it had gotten loose and mussed, with flyaways around her face. And there was probably a lot of blood in it. And…

With sinking horror, Aiko realized that her hair was very light on her back. Of course it was. Kakuzu had cut her head off. He’d.. he’d cut her hair off at the same level. Betrayed, she shot him a wide-eyed look.

He was already staring at her.

“Kakuzu-san,” she said, and couldn’t quite keep the disapproval out of her voice.

He ducked his head but his eyes were wide.

Oh. His eyes. They weren’t what she remembered. They were a very normal-looking dark brown.

‘...He hasn’t stolen the kinjutsu from his village yet,’ she realized. ‘He hasn’t done anything to become immortal.’

How odd.

“Priestess,” he rasped. He seemed to be in some kind of shock.

‘...Baby’s first encounter with immortality,’ Aiko thought, and had to work to keep a giggle off of her face.

“Izanami-no-mikoto does not begrudge this trespass,” Aiko said soothingly. From the way he jerked, he hadn’t quite gotten around to that worry yet. “Repent, and there will be no retribution.”

She lowkey hoped he didn’t try anything. She didn’t want to fight without a head.

…She probably wouldn’t have to. The Uchiha took a protective step in front of her. “Priestess, this is the man who attacked you?”

Aiko hummed. “I think that he will not do it again,” she lied optimistically. She looked back to the head of the room, where the Daimyo was trying to leave. “Daimyo!” she raised her voice. He wheeled to stare at her.

The room went very still.

Wow, dramatic. Aiko sidestepped the Uchiha and Kakuzu to take slow and deliberate steps toward the Daimyo. He was staring at her now with a white face. She could see him trembling.

The other worldly feeling was building in her chest and spilling out. She could see the importance of the moment hanging like dust motes in the air. She didn’t quite realize that Izanami was in her body until her voice came out in two notes.

“You have committed sacrilege and shamed your family.”

She let her hand fall from her neck. She knew it had healed. There was no way that her body could be any less than a perfect vessel with this much holy power riding in it.

It felt very different from being possessed by the god of death. Aiko knew that she was the one choosing the words. She also felt an internal heat that rose as the room watched her with baited breath.

Aiko wasn’t a stranger to power. She was powerful, she had been since she was a teenager. This was different. There was something heady in the air, like breathing in scented smoke and swaying with the patterns it made.

He stared at her, mortal and pitiful.

“Your greed and perfidy are unworthy,” Aiko said, and she knew that her voice was ringing with assurance. She was a young god. She could not be wrong. “You sent your loyal subjects to die in a perverse attempt to undermine the authority of your betters. Your soul will have no solace.” She smiled at him, unkind. He took a step back. “Izanami-no-Mikoto, the mother Goddess of all and the ruler of the Land of the Dead has decreed it. You are damned,” she said crisply, and a hole opened up at his feet.

The room filled with screams. Black smoke billowed outward, and it stank of centuries of rot. It was a hateful smell that carried with it the wailing of the dead below.

Aiko caught one last look of the man’s fearful eyes. Then she raised a hand and pointed at him with the fan.

An Oni lunged upward to loom behind the poor doomed bastard. Her blue-tinted skin looked altogether unnatural in the light of day. She was clad only in fur.

The Daimyo started screaming for real now, high and fearful. He fell on his ass and began scrabbling. The Oni lazily reached out and grabbed his ankle. She lifted until he was hanging upside down, swaying violently. His robes flipped over his face and slightly muffled the sound.

The crowd was dead silent. If any guards were left to fight, there weren’t moving now. No one seemed to be breathing.

“Suffer,” Aiko said, and nodded goodbye.

The Oni leapt back down into Hell. The pit slammed shut again, leaving only ruined tatami and shattered wood that revealed the dirt below.

Satisfaction curled into her stomach.

Aiko smiled and looked around the room from under her lashes. “Kneel,” she said, and the nobility did it.

She was hit by an intoxicating wave of - of worship. That’s what it was, she realized. Her eyes slid closer to shut. She was drowning in the feeling. She could feel their faith. She had gone and brought religion to this crowd of grasping courtiers. This was the food and fuel that Izanami-no-Mikoto needed in order to climb out of the dead lands for good and take her revenge on her sleeping husband, the snake who had left her there.

…They would need a new Daimyo, wouldn’t they?

Aiko’s education vaguely resurfaced. The Daimyo she had just deposed was the grandfather of the one that she had known in her time. She knew a few of these people, by name if not by face. Some of them would be influential.

“I return to my shrine,” Aiko said into the quiet room. It was a deathly stillness. She cast a warm look around the room. “You will come to swear your piety and consult about how this institution might be reformed.”

She didn’t wait for a response.

“You may bow,” Mayumi said sharply.

Anyone who wasn’t already touching their forehead to the ground went there. She noted that at least a couple of the guards were still alive and felt a spark of approval.

She turned on her heel and gave a nod before stepping back into the carry box. She slid the little wooden door shut and was thoroughly unsurprised to feel it lift as her four attendants picked it up.

Aiko smirked in the darkness. She closed her eyes and reached out, taking all four of the shinobi into her awareness. There was a fifth hand on the box that she didn’t expect. For no particular reason, she reached out and included Kakuzu as well when she wrapped them up in her hiraishin and took the whole affair back to her shrine.

‘That one is going into the history book,’ Aiko thought, and felt quite pleased with herself.

housekeepinggggg

I'm doing a new participatory game for an Aiko story-- you can find it on my profile here, a new story that went up today. It's also on my Tumblr, obviously. Have a look!