WAP chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

"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.



STORY ANNOUNCEMENT

I am not saying that the main characters of my new story 'Swordpoint Diplomacy' are Naruto and Aiko, because they aren't. But the story is adapted from a scenario I thought about doing with the two of them. To accomplish what I wanted, characters and the world had to become so different that I felt there was no point in making it a fanfic, especially given that the plot had zero correlation to Naruto's plot. However, I strongly suspect that when you read it, that original inspiration and character parallels will come through. Please give it a try, and let me know your guesses for parallel characters!