Aiko WAP 25

CHAPTER 25

“Priestess,” Hana said slowly, “He cannot be that frightening.”

“You have described a strange person, but not a dangerous person,” Fumiko added. She looked up from her needlework project for a moment to cast a tired look at all the people gathered in the shrine.

“I could kill him if it makes you feel better.”

Aiko pointed at Kakuzu with her hand. “There’s something to that idea,” she said. Although something about the idea of sending Kakuzu to assassinate Hashirama tickled at her hindbrain.

‘Oh, right. That’s why he got thrown out of Taki- they sent him to kill Hashirama and it didn’t work, so they disowned him to avoid responsibility for accepting the hit.’

“That won’t work,” she said sadly. Unfortunate. Very sad. They needed a new idea.

Kakuzu grunted.

“Thank you for choosing sense,” Fumiko said in a tight voice. The three little girls started off on a round of giggles at her voice. They had been watching the adults talk and whispering amongst themselves.

“So it’s decided,” Hana said cheerfully. “The seven of us will go to watch the Senju and Uchiha fight to the death. I will pack a lunch.”

'What kind of picnic lunch suits that occasion? Is it a fried chicken kind of event?'

Hanako raised her hand. Aiko nodded at her in permission. “I don’t want to see people fight to the death,” the 10 year old said slowly. Tiny Momoko giggled again nervously. Little Aiko just stared at the adults with her big dark eyes, drinking in the conversation with her characteristic reserve.

“Then we could kill them first,” Kakuzu suggested, because he aimed high. Incredible thought process, thank you so much. Killing Hashirama was too hard? Why not simply kill literally everyone, wouldn’t that be simpler?

“I love your initiative,” Aiko complimented. He smiled at her. It just looked wrong on his face. “But again, we are trying to stop them from killing each other.” He looked at her blankly. “So if we kill them, that’s not any better, actually,” she clarified.

Kakuzu grunted. This time it sounded disappointed. “As you say.”

“I know,” Aiko agreed, quietly enough for her acolytes to hopefully not hear. “That would be simpler.”

“No.” Hana said, shaking her finger in the air. She was just barely respectful enough to not shake it in Aiko’s face. “I think that Senju-sama was right. I think that if you show up with a flock of miko, it is going to put so much shame in those brutes that they’ll go home for the day.”

“The girls are not coming,” Fumiko said, talking to her cousin and not Aiko. “They’re too young to choose to get involved.”

“Kakuzu-san can keep the girls safe,” Hana pointed out. “If they want to come. This is a historical event,” she argued. “And if the point was to shame them into stopping…” she trailed off, but everyone heard the point.

Momoko looked bored. There was no way that a kid who couldn’t focus on this kind of conversation belonged at a battle. Aiko looked at the older two. Hanako was the boldest by far, and timid Aiko the eldest at 12.  They were all kinda young, to be honest. Younger than genin should be. And they certainly hadn’t been trained in self defense.

Aiko-chan looked between the adults and bit her lip. “I will go with Kakuzu-san,” she offered in her tiny voice. “To the battle.”

The enormous nuke-nin gave her an approving look. She did not seem remotely pleased by it. Her returning smile was queasy. “You’re certain that they won’t fight if we go?”

“Almost certain,” Aiko said, because she wasn’t about to lie to the kid. “If they do, Kakuzu-san will take you away. Right?” She directed her question to him.

He looked increasingly mutinous. But he nodded.

“That’s settled, then,” Aiko decided. She didn’t love the plan, but it was okay. “Tomorrow we get up early and make a nice lunch and meet them there. Oh, wait. Should we do something?” She put her fingers on her bottom lip in thought. “We could serve refreshments. Shrines sometimes serve amazake or tea or something. I imagine it would be socially difficult to start killing people who have been drinking with you.”

“They will manage,” Kakuzu snorted.

“If they accept drinks in the first place,” Hana said dubiously. “Why would they?”

“No, no.” Fumiko put down her needlework. “That’s a good idea. They’ll accept because of social obligation and conditioning.” She was getting excited now. “We can socially entrap them. We need old people. No, we need old women.” She grinned at all of them, showing her blackened teeth. “If you were minding your business and Grandmother Kasumi emerged from a bush and told you to take a cup of tea, you would take a cup of tea.”

… “That’s true,” Kakuzu agreed, twin lines forming between his eyebrows. “I would take the cup. That does not mean that I would drink it, or that I would not later fight an enemy."

"It's worth the attempt." Hana leaned back on her hands. "However, it seems somewhat degrading for the Priestess to transport that much tea. A holy woman is not a beast of burden."

Everyone looked at Aiko. Aiko shrugged. She thought but did not say that she actually had extensive experience as a drug mule.

"I think her dignity can manage it," said Fumiko, which was honestly fair and kinder than she needed to be.

"Thank you." Aiko stood up. "I'll go speak with Grandmother Kasumi."

"No, no." Fumiko put a hand up. "Please wait. I'll handle it. In the meantime, why don't you consider what you'll say when we have trapped them all in a web of social obligation." She matter of factly rolled up her sewing project and tucked it into the drape of her sleeve. "Please consider if we still need to endanger Aiko-chan."

Aiko watched her go. "That seems pointed," she said.

"Excuse me, Aiko-sama," Fumiko said instead of answering, and left the shrine.

"You're staying here, don't worry about it," Aiko told small Aiko. She was probably wondering at this point and Fumiko wasn't wrong about the danger. "Kakuzu, you're…" she trailed off. "Should he really come?" She wondered aloud. "It might work against us, if we are trying to look so harmless and out of place that it makes it impossible for them to fight."

"I very much wish to go." He narrowed his eyes at her in a way that reminded her he had once been very frightening to her. It was kinda cute now.

"I'd feel a lot safer with him there," Hana said, which was kind of wild considering he'd decapitated Aiko and threatened her the first time that she'd met him. "I think he should dress like a priest, though."

"That seems extremely sacrilegious," Kakuzu observed blandly. He didn't seem offended by it.

Aiko suppressed the urge to laugh. "If I can wear these clothes, I think you can," she reassured. She noticed but did not think about the incredulous looks the other two adults exchanged. Her long hair swung behind her as she stood. "It's a good idea."

She was halfway trying to convince herself. The situation was surreal. It was very far out of her comfort zone.

If she was honest with herself, her first thoughts, despite what Hashirama had said about leveraging social shame, had been along the lines of "if I break one kneecap on every man who comes, there will be no battle. Except for the short one they'll have against me, of course."

Well, it was a back up plan, Aiko reassured herself. Besides, it was probably better for her cult's growth not to make enemies out of both of the major shinobi coalitions in the area.

'Or kill them. If I end up killing half or more of them, that's a huge reduction in potential converts.'

Well.

'If I kill all the Senju I might have to put up a fence if I wanted to to keep the Uchiha out. That's the backup plan for my backup plan.'

It would be a lie to say that the shrine got up early. Most of them didn't really sleep. Aiko took a two hour shift sleeping and was woken up in time to stir …whatever the fermented predecessor to amazake was called at this stage.

The girls took a cold bath once the sweatiest part of the process was over and helped each other with their hair. Aiko took more care than usual with her image. She'd grown her hair out to the kind of lengths that the nobility dreamed about, constantly in danger of dragging on the floor behind her. Today they actually wound the white fabric around it like a peasant would, low and modest. She did the same for Hana and Fumiko, and they all got dressed in red and white.

The next stage was the arduous process of lugging kettles, water, tea leaves, and the hot kettles with amazake to the clearing where the battle was supposed to be. Aiko left Hana and Fumiko there to start putting together a fire pit as she went back and forth with the load.

By the time the sun came up, the three young women were at least lightly sweaty again from exertion. The clearing was hot and sweet with the scents of sweet fermented sake and bancha tea leaves. Kakuzu and Grandmother Kasumi came on the last trips, along with Kasumi's gap-toothed sister Michiko. They were all dressed as normal peasants. Kakuzu looked hilariously out of place stuffed into a farmer's yukata that had obviously been borrowed from someone with more delicate shoulders. The normal half length left his long legs bare dangerously high up the thigh. Anyone who got in a fight with him would be getting more skin than they bargained for, that was for sure.

'They're going to know he's a shinobi on sight,' Aiko thought with a wince.

Whatever. So far as she knew, Kakuzu hadn't committed any crimes by leaving his clan to follow her shrine. It wasn't like….

No, okay, that was probably a big taboo, now that she thought about it. It was likely analogous to how leaving a village would be seen as treason in a couple decades.

"Kakuzu-san," Aiko said. "If anyone asks, you're my brother."

That would be a pretty good reason for him to be at her side. She patted herself on the back for the save.

He scrunched his face up in the first show of unrestrained confusion she'd ever seen from him.

It was Hana who actually said it. "No one is going to believe that."

Aiko waved the thought away. "Of course they will."