aiko wip (after meeting tobirama)

It took about a day for Aiko to regret what she’d done. It hadn’t even been like her. Why had she been so- so imperious and offended?

(She knew. She knew the answer, and it scared her.)

But there was nothing to do about it now. The only thing she could do was decided if she wanted to involve herself.

Objectively speaking, the Senju were the aggressors in this situation. The Uchiha were defending themselves against a spurious accusation.

‘But I really only know that two of the Senju were shitheads,’ Aiko thought, guilty at the idea of letting this go on. ‘The rest are probably just getting dragged along into the conflict.’

That was how being in the military worked. She didn’t normally feel much sympathy. You can’t, not if you want to do your job and come home. But a clan felt different. You didn’t sign up for that. You were just born there and shuffled down the path your parents picked for you.

‘Is that really that different from what happened in Konoha?’ Aiko huffed a dry laugh to herself. ‘I was such a little child when I joined the Academy. I don’t remember why, but I wasn’t old enough for it to be an informed choice. Probably the Sandaime told us that it would be really cool.’

In his defense, it was really cool. Chalk one point up for the Sandaime.

‘That aside, maybe this is an important lesson learned at the low low cost of one pair of self-made straw sandals.’ Aiko was making a new pair at the moment. She’d had a spare, but living without an extra pair of shoes was too risky even for her. ‘Now I know that my tolerance for disrespect is suboptimal. I did kind of draw a hard line about killing Tobirama if he talks to me like that again and… You know, I think Izanami-no-Mikoto might enforce that.’

She contemplated that for a moment. It was almost funny to imagine that she might kill her country’s second king if he was mean to her. It was too ridiculous to be true.

‘Maybe he won’t be rude,’ Aiko told herself. ‘It’s in god’s hands now.’

She washed her hands of responsibility for that. He might take her a lot more seriously after seeing her disappear via Hiraishin. That wasn’t at all a holy ability but, uh, how would he know that?

…He might already be developing it. But her version benefitted from decades of refinement at the hands of Tobirama and her father, as well her own advances. What he was inventing wasn’t really that similar to what she’d done.

The real root of what bothered her was the suspicion that she might fuck up her timeline if the Senju and Uchiha got into a new fight because of her presence. But did she actually care? Did it actually matter?

Aiko wasn’t a philospher. Aiko was a warrior, and a leader, and a scholar, and she was also definitely an undermonitored serial criminal.

So the conclusion that she came to might have been less than sound. But honestly? She’d come to this time period explicitly to change it. So why not change it? When she was in her own timeline she wasn’t twisting herself into knots thinking that her actions might have devastating impact for the future. She looked at the information that she had and used her best judgment to make decisions for the betterment of the people she was trying to protect.

“This is all a very nice way to say that the Senju can suck and die,” Aiko said contemplatively. She said it as light steps came down the entryway to where she was sitting on the edge of the walkway around the shrine. Little Aiko, the child one, gave her a wild-eyed look and went right back inside.