Aiko WAP ch 34 preview

CHAPTER 34

The next few days were wasted in politicking. Aiko visited the Uchiha twice more and stopped by the Senju to drop off a message, unwilling to get stuck talking to the rat bastards if she didn’t have to. Luckily, Hashirama was still acting cagey about being in close proximity to her, ever since the whole “but that's treason” hand wringing bit. 

Things continued on the microseasonal schedule in her little village. Aiko managed to show up for the firefly viewing event and sit on her porch with her acolytes and Kakuzu, talking shit and watching the kids chase insects. Kakuzu and Fukiko dangled their legs off the edge and shot down sake while Hana scowled and tried to get comfortable around her enormous pregnant stomach.

She came home late one night to the message that “the nice lady came by and wished to see you.” 

‘I don't know any nice women, do I?’

Aiko frowned at small Aiko, who had delivered this message with hands covered in charcoal for mysterious reasons. The little girl blinked up at her guilelessly. She obviously did not know the visitor’s name.

Alright. Time for some detective work. She squatted to get her face on a level with the little girl. “What did she look like?”

Small Aiko hummed and twisted her fingers around. “She was tall. Like you. And she had a lot of hair.” 

That was not a very good description. Aiko had been short in her time but was now the average height for a woman. This description only really ruled out children and bald women.

Tall Aiko thought that children were not very good receptionists. She did not sigh. It would be rude. “What did her eyes look like?” Aiko tried. 

“Um… I don't remember. Brown?” little Aiko guessed. 

“Fair enough, that's on me,” Aiko said to herself. Almost everyone in the area had black hair and dark brown eyes. Nothing distinctive, really, unless someone was waving their Sharingan around to make a point. She tried again. “Were her clothes pretty?” 

If this was a visiting Senju, Uchiha, or civilian noble representative, they would be fancy. If it was an Inuzuka, they'd look like they'd been dragged backwards through a brush.

Small Aiko shrugged. 

For fucks sake. “Thank you, sweetheart,” Aiko said, giving up on the mystery. Whoever it was would come back if it was important. She made a mental note to teach the children basic secretarial skills later.

She went to the Uchiha stronghold the day before the shitstorm. Everything seemed fine. The angry-eyed Uchiha relative who seemed to try to wrangle Izuna turned out to be Hikaku Uchiha, and he seemed exhausted and resentful of Aiko’s presence. But he led her to the main house room where Izuna was assembling his Daimyo preparations. This meant studying current poetry, fashion, and dossiers of international civilian politicians. Izuna waved cheerfully at her when she arrived and indicated for her to sit.

Aiko did so. She gave Hikaku a nod as he backed away. 

His face was pinched. He shut the shoji door without a proper goodbye.

She and Izuna snorted at the same time.

“He’s crabby,” Izuna said. He pulled his sleeve back gracefully to keep it from the ink he was writing with. “Aiko-sama, how is your calligraphy?”

“Passable,” Aiko admitted. She got a little higher on her knees to see his work. “Oh, that’s lovely.”

Izuna looked displeased. “Yes, but I am copying someone else’s work,” he admitted. “I thought that I would replicate a master and integrate someone else’s stylistic choices, but they are not meshing as I would have hoped. I am concerned about demonstrating appropriate refinement.”

Aiko hummed. “That’s hard,” she admitted. “Why don’t you simply poison anyone who criticizes you? That’s pretty traditional.”

His lips thinned and he made a noncommittal gesture. “Yes, but it’s the easy way out, isn’t it. They’ll stop talking, but they will look down on my refinement.”

‘Well yeah, then if you really care you simply kill the people who snigger behind your back until you have a good working environment.’ 

She shrugged. This wasn't really her area of expertise. When she had been the Mizukage she had flouted tradition and built an empire on the back of pencil manufacturing. No one who did traditional art had really liked her. Personally, Aiko had enjoyed the constant outrage and wounded dignity. But if it had bothered her, she wouldn’t have wasted her personal time improving her poetry composition skills. Why bother, when she was already quite good with senbon?

‘Actually, I think the easiest and funniest solution would be to genjutsu the loudest naysayers into genuinely believing I’m an artistic great,’ Aiko realized. 

She watched Izuna work for a while, brown furrowed prettily as he wrestled with a new skillset. Self-improvement was a shinobi’s watchword, but this seemed a bit backwards to her.

‘It’s not really my problem if he’s inefficient,’ Aiko decided. She settled back to watch him work while Madara was dragged back from wherever he’d gotten to this morning. If he’d been helping in the fields, she would probably wait a while so that he could bathe and style his hair. 

“We saw that the Senju sent out the proclamation our Elders asked for,” Izuna said. He said it idly, as if it was a polite afterthought that he ought to make conversation. “I did not see it myself, of course. But we have heard word.”

“That’s what I came to inform Madara of.” Aiko subtly rolled her shoulders. “Will he be here soon? Perhaps I need not inform him personally,” she teased. 

Izuna raised his head to give her a flat look. “Shall I escort you out? If you do not care to see him, that is of course acceptable.”

She blew out her lips in a pout and pretended not to hear him calling her bluff. Aiko had been coming out of a horrified fascination to see how exactly Madara was going to escalate day by day. She’d spotted his collarbone two days ago and her mouth had gone a little dry.