wap outtake

Rejected chapter 10 concept

it was originally going to be from aiko's perspective but it just didn't have the OOMPH that way.

“You want to give me a puppy.”

Aiko turned her teacup in her hands. The feeling of heat against her fingertips was oppressive. It grounded her.

Mayumi hummed. “You seemed interested.”

She didn’t see the trap. It had to be about to close on her leg.

A puppy. Someone warm and sweet, who would love her unconditionally. Someone who would be at her back in any situation, someone to lie with when the emptiness of being in this false life pressed in on her. It would be real and tangible.

In this world, there were very few things that Aiko wanted more than she wanted her dogs back. She loved dogs in general, of course, but… ‘Would it be a betrayal?’ She exhaled, feeling the air pass her lips with a tingle. ‘I intend to go home. How would Hoseki and Mitsui feel if I came with another ninken?’

Hoseki was possessive. She hadn’t even liked Iruka-sensei talking to her.

‘But she loves me,’ Aiko thought, a bit desperately. ‘She’d understand, right? And she’s never shown jealousy of another dog.’

“I don’t think that I can.” The words were hard to choke out.

Mayumi-san didn’t outwardly react. “I understand,” she said easily. “Thank you for your hospitality. You can change your mind at any time, of course. Or perhaps you would prefer to meet my dog?”

That she could do. “I would like that,” Aiko latched on. She suppressed a shudder. She gave Mayumi a strained smile. It was impossible not to remember the feelings of pained paralysis that the Sasuke-lookalike had given her. The ghosts of her real life were pressing in on her.

Mayumi left not long after. As far as Aiko could tell, she hadn’t noticed anything odd during the conversation. It was probably just politeness. Aiko’s distress had not been subtle.

‘I made the right decision,’ Aiko told herself. She pulled her futon out and dropped her pillow on top of it with a soft whumpf. ‘I won't be here for much longer, if I do this right. What’s a year in the grand scheme of life? I spent longer away from home with fucking Obito. That was much worse. I didn’t even know, then.’

The night passed. The sun rose. She felt fine the next day. She went about her duties as usual, mind churning away at how to best accelerate her task timeline. Things went off the rails in the late morning, when she was lecturing Hana, Fumiko, and Shinji about literature.

The air was hot inside, so the lessons with her three trainees were being conducted under the shade granted by the nearby forest. She never felt any presence or foreboding that she was being watched. One moment, she was talking. In the next,  Aiko felt a prick across her neck and then the world whirled around her in a dizzying rush of sky and grass. And then she was laying on the ground, looking to the side.

Wait. She blinked. This was hard to process. From this angle, she could see blood seeping into the white of her hakui top. She splayed her hands out, digging her fingers into the dirt. It was beyond bizarre to see them from this angle.

Fumiko screamed. It was the loudest noise that she had ever heard coming from the reserved girl. Hana grabbed onto her cousin, face bone white. The breath she sucked in was an ugly, jagged sob.

“I’m fine,” Aiko said, blinking. “I understand that this looks bad. You should probably leave.”

Experimentally, she tried to sit up.

Whoa. She could feel that she was moving. Sensation was the same- the slight tension of muscle exertion, the feel of hot blood pressing her cotton clothes to her body. It was disorienting. Her head spun.

‘Maybe it would be less bad if I closed my eyes and didn’t have competing stimula.’

“Priestess,” Shinji said faintly. He looked like he might be ill.

“I think this is an assassination attempt,” Aiko said thoughtfully. Wow, it was hard to speak loudly without lungs to pull air through her throat.

Well. Technically speaking, she did have lungs. Aiko eyed her headless body, a few feet away on the grass. When she was limp and arranged like a rag doll, she looked a lot smaller and more delicate than she usually felt. “A pretty good assassination attempt,” she mused. “You should go, right now.” She put that last bit into the tone of an order. She did not want to watch them get caught up in this.

A curious chakra signature unveiled itself. It began to approach at a leisurely pace. Aiko squinted. She couldn’t see him yet, but this was… familiar.

She let her body flop down limply. ‘Maybe he didn’t see me move,’ Aiko thought optimistically. Fumiko was screaming again, but Hana was dragging her away with white fingers clenched around her arm. ‘This makes a lot of sense. He was like, really famous as an assassin. And the Daimyo doesn’t have infinite samurai to throw at me.’

She had the bizarre and hilarious sense of irony that she was now the headless immortal Kakuzu had come to fetch. A bit belated, Shinji stumbled to his feet and began to run as well.

‘I… I’m impressed,’ she allowed. She let her signature go so still and small that he hopefully wouldn’t see it. She had no reason to believe he was a sensor. ‘He wouldn’t have been sent to assassinate the Shodaime if he hadn’t been very impressive, of course.’

Kakuzu emerged from the same direction that Shinji had fled in. She couldn’t turn to see more, but he was in her peripheral vision. He watched impassively as the poor civilian boy swerved to avoid him. Then he continued his leisurely stroll to Aiko.

‘Should I fight him?’ Aiko wondered. ‘I’m not at my best. And he’s going to bring me to the Daimyo as proof of the kill. I think I need to deal with this more decisively.’

Her fingers twitched. This time was wholly involuntary- muscle contractions stemming from catastrophic injury. She, uh. She really did not feel her best. Goosebumps prickled at her flesh.

‘This is massive blood loss,’ Aiko registered. She felt so cold and faint. Her heartrate picked up in her distress, despite that being the absolute worst thing for a huge injury. ‘I… I am going to play dead. I always recover. I am going to wait.’

She should have closed her eyes, but she couldn’t stand not seeing the assassin approach. It turned out not to matter. She didn’t feel an urge to blink. She just stared, feeling extremely divorced from reality.

‘Holy shit, I am a monster.’

Yeah. Just gonna be still and quiet and wait for this to blow over. She watched impassively, waiting for Kakuzu to pull out a body collection scroll. He walked past her body and was respectful enough not to kick it, at least, so that was nice. And then he was at the top of her head and she couldn’t see him at all, and-

‘Ow.’

He was pulling her- no, he was picking her up by her hair, and-

By the time she registered the indignity, she- the head- had been placed inside of a burlap sack that smelled like onions. Her vision was drastically reduced. She blinked furiously, trying to focus through the haze of confusion and the white cloth. She could see shapes and light. That was something.

Her stomach lurched.

She felt Kakuzu come to an abrupt start.

‘Did I just move my body?’ Aiko wondered. This could get much worse. She could easily think of ways to make it much more difficult for her to heal. He could burn her body, or bury it, or hack it into more pieces.

He did nothing. The sack she was in ended up lowered a few feet and tied, probably to hang from his belt. Then he began to run.

Aiko hissed, she couldn’t help it. Her face was being bounced against hard muscle as Kakuzu ran- his ass? Was her face bouncing off of his ass?