Unexpected Reunions [Tsurude, Hiashiko, Hizashiko]
The Hokage had sent her a note saying that he'd like to meet with her during the week and that it would take a few hours. He hadn't indicated that there was any urgency to the request, and the note had lacked both the form and tone of a command. Nevertheless, Hiashiko thought it prudent to go to the Hokage Tower at the earliest opportunity afforded to her (and once a bit of schedule juggling had been done to her satisfaction).
She would not admit to being curious about the meeting request, even though it had been some time since he had last asked to meet with her. While Hiashiko and Tsurude were often in agreement about the village's best interests, they were often in disagreement about the methods needed to achieve those interests. Yuuhi's situation was just one of the latest manifestations. Hiashiko had not been pleased to learn the man had been reinstated to his former position--far from it. Sometimes, examples were needed, and the fact that the Hokage had retracted a highly public punishment for mission abandonment and endangering comrades was never going to sit well with her. Had she been consulted, she would have voiced her opinion in no uncertain terms. But she hadn't been consulted, and Hiashiko had to remind herself that she had no right to think she would be. She had only been serving in the Hokage's place when the treason occurred, and responsibility returned to the Hokage when he returned.
No matter how much she silently disagreed.
Hiashiko sent a Branch runner in the morning, carrying a letter to the Hokage letting him know the times during the week where she was free for more than two hours at a time. She didn't expect a prompt reply--Hokage or not, Tsurude's sleeping habits were infamous--so she was surprised to receive a response before noon. She was further surprised to see that he wanted to see her that very day.
And that was how Hiashiko found herself being escorted to the Hokage's office by an ANBU squad.
Notorious sleeping habits or not, Tsurude couldn't possibly be asleep today. He's specifically asked Kotetsu to make expresso for the whole day, and was currently too wired to even consider sleeping. Part of that was because of the encounter he was anticipating with Hiashiko, partially because of all the paperwork that needed to be caught up on, and mostly because he was still working off an hangover from the night before.
When Hiashiko was offered entrance to his office, he was, surprise of all surprises, actually bent over paperwork, furiously scribbling on the margins of some stupid legal documents that he was planning on stuffing down the throat of the first Council member that walked into his office. Preferably Dai. Stupid idiots trying to slip stupid legislation into stupid laws as if he wouldn't notice their stupid schemes -
The ANBU who held the door open for the Hyuuga head cleared her throat quietly. Tsurude blinked up from his paperwork, stared blankly for a half-second, then straightened and flash his guest a smile.
"Hiashiko-sama," he said warmly, far more so than he usually did. The expresso had him in a good mood. "Right on time, as always. Care to go for a walk?"
A walk?
Although she kept her expression neutral, Hiashiko was surprised at the question--and the way the question had been asked. Normally, her and Tsurude's relationship was characterized by extreme politeness and an avoidance of any familiarity. They respected one another, but they were not friendly. But the Hokage had actually greeted her warmly and smiled to her as well.
He wasn't drunk, though the possibility had flashed briefly across her mind. She had seen him inebriated once before, and it was something difficult to forget. "As you wish, Tsurude-sama." And besides, if he were drunk, he would not be so absorbed in paperwork. He would be trying to peer into the women's baths.
"Excellent." The blond stood with a swish of his robes, abandoning his paperwork where it lay even though he was still in the middle of a sentence (though not abandoning his coffee - that he drained before he stepped away from the desk), and stepped forward to join Hiashiko. "Shall we?"
His typical ANBU guard joined them as they made their way through the offices and back down stairs, padding along silent as cats. Outside it was still a nice, balmy day, one of the last few before fall would start setting in, as the leaves on the trees were slowly starting to display. The Hokage ambled along with the hands clasped behind his back, as if he didn't have a care in the world and didn't have any particular destination in mind. For a long time he said nothing, just wandering down the streets with the guard ranged around them at a discreet distance, Hiashiko at his side.
"So how have you been?" he asked after a time, polite small talk that did hold a note of curiosity. "Kids doing well? Hanabi hasn't blown anything up recently, has he?"
While the weather was a pleasant change from the unrelenting heat of Konoha's summer, Hiashiko had not anticipated spending most of her day in it. She walked by the Hokage's side, silent, trying to guess their destination as they wove through the village streets.
They must be going somewhere, and wherever they were going must be important, because otherwise they could talk in his office while he did his paperwork, or they could have exchanged correspondence. There was no reason for them to be outside of his office unless the conversation they were going to have needed to be held elsewhere and in person. There were very few places within the village more secure than the Hokage Tower, and yet Tsurude had abandoned that and his work with ease.
Why?
She hadn't heard of anything as of late that would require this change of routine, nor did she believe he was trying to become familiar with her. "Both of my sons are doing well," she responded automatically. Tsurude rarely asked her about her family; she rarely had reason to speak of them to him. She volunteered no information on Nejiko because Nejiko wasn't her child, and Tsurude had been the one to release her niece from the hospital. As Nejiko needed to pass Tsurude's benchmarks before being reinstated to duty, he likely knew more about how she was faring than Hiashiko did.
"Good to hear," he replied, as easily as if she'd said something far more specific and less non-committal. "They're good kids, Hanabi's obsession with explosions aside. He did very well at the gala, I hear. You must be proud that he was so swift in action, even without the mission training Hinaji's gone through."
They passed a vender hawking his wares for drinks and snack food. Tsurude paused and turned to Hiashiko, changing the subject without waiting for a response. "Bubble tea sounds good. Want some? My treat."
She had been about to give a response--she was very pleased with Hanabi, and Hinaji's, performance at the gala debacle--when Tsurude suddenly changed the subject unexpectedly. He was offering to buy her bubble tea?
Maybe he was drunk and had simply become better at hiding it.
"No thank you, Hokage-sama." It took effort to keep her annoyance from flashing across her face. "I'm not fond of bubble tea." She was also not fond of feeling as if her time was being wasted.
Tsurude gave her a vaguely sad look - or maybe a pitying one - before turning to approach the vendor.
"Too bad," the words floated back over his shoulder, "you don't know what you're missing. How about some takoyaki? It's perfect on days like this, perfectly little pick me up when you've got a long day ahead of you."
And then he proceeded to order some ginger bubble tea and two orders of takoyaki without even waiting for a response.
Hiashiko didn't reply. Tsurude may have been both a drunkard and a gambler, but he was not a stupid man. He would not drag her through the streets of Konoha without purpose, nor did she think he would call her out for anything so unimportant as an informal chitchat about her children and street food.
He would not be above using this as a delaying tactic. But why would he delay her? What would he need to get her out of the compound for and then keep her out? Had something gone wrong with one of the clan? She would not have denied him or his guard entrance to the compound, no matter how much it would have galled for that to have passed by her unnoticed.
Usually it took longer for her to gain a headache from being in Tsurude's presence, but today he seemed to be trying to set a new record.
With almost childish glee Tsurude waited while the takoyaki was swiftly fried up, clutching his tea in both hands and watching the vendor at his work, not at all perturbed that Hiashiko was a looming, annoyed presence at his back. His ANBU ranged around him, masked faces somehow managing to look bored, as if this was something they did all the time. There was a very good possibility it was.
Once the takoyaki were served, piping hot in their little paper trays, he finally turned back, juggling two items with one hand and offering the third to Hiashiko. "Shall we go?"
She accepted in stony silence, and they moved along. If he was annoyed at her refusal to talk - or to eat the food he'd paid for her - he showed no signs of it, instead discussing Hanabi and Hinaji's actions during the gala, his approval in Suzumo as a personal mentor for Hanabi, the weather, all polite small talk (between sips of tea and bites of food) that didn't really require much conversation on Hiashiko's part. He didn't even seem particularly interested in if she responded or not, though he did listen attentively enough to the few things she did say.
Eventually they reached the door of a nondescript convenience shop. One of the ANBU bounded ahead to open the door, and Tsurude grandly gestured for Hiashiko to precede him. "After you."
Inwardly, Hiashiko fumed. It was better to stay silent, though she did respond to his less frivolous questions, than to risk giving in to the temptation to let the man know what she thought of his childish actions today. She didn't want to eat the takoyaki he had purchased, but since he'd given it to her in public, she couldn't just toss it in the next trash can she saw. So she hung onto it, letting it go lukewarm in its tray, waiting to "accidentally" leave it wherever their final destination happened to be. It was either that or chuck it at the back of his head.
The man was obviously needling her, and it irritated Hiashiko to no end. She hadn't given him any reason to begin doing so--the last time they hard parted it had been on amicable terms, they hadn't even argued--but she wasn't going to sink to his level of childishness and do the same thing without reason. Though she briefly considered it when they arrived at what appeared to be a convenience shop. If he were stopping for more food...
Hiashiko nodded to Tsurude shortly and strode inside.
Inside the shop was nothing better than anyone might expect from a standard convenience shop, though there were a surprising number of people clad in ANBU black without their masks, or sporting the ANBU tattoo on their arms. Each nodded to the Hokage as he passed, the store clerk briefly apologizing to the customer he was ringing up to slip away and open a door in the back for them. Tsurude dumped his empty containers in a waste receptacle, clapped the man in a friendly manner on the shoulder, and passed into the backrooms, Hiashiko and his ANBU trailing behind.
The back was a narrow hallway with two doors obviously devoted to the clerks office and to a break room. The third door, at the very end of the hall, opened to a set of flight of stairs. A very long flight of stairs, with nothing but a bare, dangling light bulb far overhead.
The door at the bottom was reinforced and looked to have no place being so easily accessible from a convenience store. Tsurude pulled a set of keys from on his person and raised a brow at the takoyaki Hiashiko was still holding.
"You gonna eat that?" he asked as he unlocked the door.
Hiashiko had meant to throw it away upstairs, but someone had crossed between her and the trashcan before she could get rid of it, and in order to keep up with Tsurude, she had been forced to bypass the opportunity. "No, Hokage-sama." There still wasn't a place for her to get rid of it, and she wasn't about to give it back to Tsurude or one of the ANBU guards.
Why would Tsurude bring her to a place like this? The more she thought about it, the more two possibilities sprung to mind: either there was something important in this place, or Tsurude could not talk in his office. Of the two, Hiashiko preferred the first, as the second implied that there was something gravely wrong--perhaps even treasonous--in the Hokage Tower. But wild speculation would do her no good--had done no good--and she forced her mind to quiet.
"Well, then, hand it over. No use letting good food go to waste." He accepted the takoyaki from her as he ushered her and his ANBU through the door, and then swiftly locked it back up behind them.
The hallway they entered was cold, gray, sterile, and vaguely damp. And quiet - almost quiet enough to hear each other's breathing, if not their heartbeats. It was a stern environment, that didn't seem to approve of any company, not even the Hokage's.
One the door was locked and the keys tucked back away, Tsurude took the lead down the hallway, his steps now brisk and his manner matter-of-fact and business-like. "I apologize for the deception," he said as he navigated down through the hallways, occasionally marked by doors as reinforced as the once they'd just passed through. "I need you to do an identification for me, and it's a sensitive enough matter that I don't want you to be seen entering the ANBU headquarters, with or without me. I trust you'll keep this matter between us and ANBU until I give you leave to discuss it elsewhere."
An identification?
Hiashiko hated feeling out of control, hated knowing she was out of control and floundering. She had never been this deep inside ANBU headquarters, certainly not escorted by the Hokage and his personal guard. Tsurude's words made the annoyance she had been feeling turn too close to dread for her taste. "Of course, Hokage-sama."
His only response was a single, simple nod. And then silence for the rest of the trip.
Eventually they reached one of many, identical doors that lined the hallways, the group coming to a stop before it. "Wait out here for a moment, would you?" he asked Hiashiko, and placed his palm upon a metal plate. A gentle touch of chakra later, metal tumblers within the lock turned, and he slipped inside without allowing much of the inside to be visible to those without. And once the door was closed, the conversation inside was completely muted to any who might wish to listen in.
Lifting the paper plate of takoyaki in one hand, Tsurude adopted a vaguely woeful look as he addressed the inhabitant of the cell. "Sorry it's a bit luke-warm now. Bit of a trip between here and the vendor. I could get it reheated if you like."
She would not admit to being curious about the meeting request, even though it had been some time since he had last asked to meet with her. While Hiashiko and Tsurude were often in agreement about the village's best interests, they were often in disagreement about the methods needed to achieve those interests. Yuuhi's situation was just one of the latest manifestations. Hiashiko had not been pleased to learn the man had been reinstated to his former position--far from it. Sometimes, examples were needed, and the fact that the Hokage had retracted a highly public punishment for mission abandonment and endangering comrades was never going to sit well with her. Had she been consulted, she would have voiced her opinion in no uncertain terms. But she hadn't been consulted, and Hiashiko had to remind herself that she had no right to think she would be. She had only been serving in the Hokage's place when the treason occurred, and responsibility returned to the Hokage when he returned.
No matter how much she silently disagreed.
Hiashiko sent a Branch runner in the morning, carrying a letter to the Hokage letting him know the times during the week where she was free for more than two hours at a time. She didn't expect a prompt reply--Hokage or not, Tsurude's sleeping habits were infamous--so she was surprised to receive a response before noon. She was further surprised to see that he wanted to see her that very day.
And that was how Hiashiko found herself being escorted to the Hokage's office by an ANBU squad.
Notorious sleeping habits or not, Tsurude couldn't possibly be asleep today. He's specifically asked Kotetsu to make expresso for the whole day, and was currently too wired to even consider sleeping. Part of that was because of the encounter he was anticipating with Hiashiko, partially because of all the paperwork that needed to be caught up on, and mostly because he was still working off an hangover from the night before.
When Hiashiko was offered entrance to his office, he was, surprise of all surprises, actually bent over paperwork, furiously scribbling on the margins of some stupid legal documents that he was planning on stuffing down the throat of the first Council member that walked into his office. Preferably Dai. Stupid idiots trying to slip stupid legislation into stupid laws as if he wouldn't notice their stupid schemes -
The ANBU who held the door open for the Hyuuga head cleared her throat quietly. Tsurude blinked up from his paperwork, stared blankly for a half-second, then straightened and flash his guest a smile.
"Hiashiko-sama," he said warmly, far more so than he usually did. The expresso had him in a good mood. "Right on time, as always. Care to go for a walk?"
A walk?
Although she kept her expression neutral, Hiashiko was surprised at the question--and the way the question had been asked. Normally, her and Tsurude's relationship was characterized by extreme politeness and an avoidance of any familiarity. They respected one another, but they were not friendly. But the Hokage had actually greeted her warmly and smiled to her as well.
He wasn't drunk, though the possibility had flashed briefly across her mind. She had seen him inebriated once before, and it was something difficult to forget. "As you wish, Tsurude-sama." And besides, if he were drunk, he would not be so absorbed in paperwork. He would be trying to peer into the women's baths.
"Excellent." The blond stood with a swish of his robes, abandoning his paperwork where it lay even though he was still in the middle of a sentence (though not abandoning his coffee - that he drained before he stepped away from the desk), and stepped forward to join Hiashiko. "Shall we?"
His typical ANBU guard joined them as they made their way through the offices and back down stairs, padding along silent as cats. Outside it was still a nice, balmy day, one of the last few before fall would start setting in, as the leaves on the trees were slowly starting to display. The Hokage ambled along with the hands clasped behind his back, as if he didn't have a care in the world and didn't have any particular destination in mind. For a long time he said nothing, just wandering down the streets with the guard ranged around them at a discreet distance, Hiashiko at his side.
"So how have you been?" he asked after a time, polite small talk that did hold a note of curiosity. "Kids doing well? Hanabi hasn't blown anything up recently, has he?"
While the weather was a pleasant change from the unrelenting heat of Konoha's summer, Hiashiko had not anticipated spending most of her day in it. She walked by the Hokage's side, silent, trying to guess their destination as they wove through the village streets.
They must be going somewhere, and wherever they were going must be important, because otherwise they could talk in his office while he did his paperwork, or they could have exchanged correspondence. There was no reason for them to be outside of his office unless the conversation they were going to have needed to be held elsewhere and in person. There were very few places within the village more secure than the Hokage Tower, and yet Tsurude had abandoned that and his work with ease.
Why?
She hadn't heard of anything as of late that would require this change of routine, nor did she believe he was trying to become familiar with her. "Both of my sons are doing well," she responded automatically. Tsurude rarely asked her about her family; she rarely had reason to speak of them to him. She volunteered no information on Nejiko because Nejiko wasn't her child, and Tsurude had been the one to release her niece from the hospital. As Nejiko needed to pass Tsurude's benchmarks before being reinstated to duty, he likely knew more about how she was faring than Hiashiko did.
"Good to hear," he replied, as easily as if she'd said something far more specific and less non-committal. "They're good kids, Hanabi's obsession with explosions aside. He did very well at the gala, I hear. You must be proud that he was so swift in action, even without the mission training Hinaji's gone through."
They passed a vender hawking his wares for drinks and snack food. Tsurude paused and turned to Hiashiko, changing the subject without waiting for a response. "Bubble tea sounds good. Want some? My treat."
She had been about to give a response--she was very pleased with Hanabi, and Hinaji's, performance at the gala debacle--when Tsurude suddenly changed the subject unexpectedly. He was offering to buy her bubble tea?
Maybe he was drunk and had simply become better at hiding it.
"No thank you, Hokage-sama." It took effort to keep her annoyance from flashing across her face. "I'm not fond of bubble tea." She was also not fond of feeling as if her time was being wasted.
Tsurude gave her a vaguely sad look - or maybe a pitying one - before turning to approach the vendor.
"Too bad," the words floated back over his shoulder, "you don't know what you're missing. How about some takoyaki? It's perfect on days like this, perfectly little pick me up when you've got a long day ahead of you."
And then he proceeded to order some ginger bubble tea and two orders of takoyaki without even waiting for a response.
Hiashiko didn't reply. Tsurude may have been both a drunkard and a gambler, but he was not a stupid man. He would not drag her through the streets of Konoha without purpose, nor did she think he would call her out for anything so unimportant as an informal chitchat about her children and street food.
He would not be above using this as a delaying tactic. But why would he delay her? What would he need to get her out of the compound for and then keep her out? Had something gone wrong with one of the clan? She would not have denied him or his guard entrance to the compound, no matter how much it would have galled for that to have passed by her unnoticed.
Usually it took longer for her to gain a headache from being in Tsurude's presence, but today he seemed to be trying to set a new record.
With almost childish glee Tsurude waited while the takoyaki was swiftly fried up, clutching his tea in both hands and watching the vendor at his work, not at all perturbed that Hiashiko was a looming, annoyed presence at his back. His ANBU ranged around him, masked faces somehow managing to look bored, as if this was something they did all the time. There was a very good possibility it was.
Once the takoyaki were served, piping hot in their little paper trays, he finally turned back, juggling two items with one hand and offering the third to Hiashiko. "Shall we go?"
She accepted in stony silence, and they moved along. If he was annoyed at her refusal to talk - or to eat the food he'd paid for her - he showed no signs of it, instead discussing Hanabi and Hinaji's actions during the gala, his approval in Suzumo as a personal mentor for Hanabi, the weather, all polite small talk (between sips of tea and bites of food) that didn't really require much conversation on Hiashiko's part. He didn't even seem particularly interested in if she responded or not, though he did listen attentively enough to the few things she did say.
Eventually they reached the door of a nondescript convenience shop. One of the ANBU bounded ahead to open the door, and Tsurude grandly gestured for Hiashiko to precede him. "After you."
Inwardly, Hiashiko fumed. It was better to stay silent, though she did respond to his less frivolous questions, than to risk giving in to the temptation to let the man know what she thought of his childish actions today. She didn't want to eat the takoyaki he had purchased, but since he'd given it to her in public, she couldn't just toss it in the next trash can she saw. So she hung onto it, letting it go lukewarm in its tray, waiting to "accidentally" leave it wherever their final destination happened to be. It was either that or chuck it at the back of his head.
The man was obviously needling her, and it irritated Hiashiko to no end. She hadn't given him any reason to begin doing so--the last time they hard parted it had been on amicable terms, they hadn't even argued--but she wasn't going to sink to his level of childishness and do the same thing without reason. Though she briefly considered it when they arrived at what appeared to be a convenience shop. If he were stopping for more food...
Hiashiko nodded to Tsurude shortly and strode inside.
Inside the shop was nothing better than anyone might expect from a standard convenience shop, though there were a surprising number of people clad in ANBU black without their masks, or sporting the ANBU tattoo on their arms. Each nodded to the Hokage as he passed, the store clerk briefly apologizing to the customer he was ringing up to slip away and open a door in the back for them. Tsurude dumped his empty containers in a waste receptacle, clapped the man in a friendly manner on the shoulder, and passed into the backrooms, Hiashiko and his ANBU trailing behind.
The back was a narrow hallway with two doors obviously devoted to the clerks office and to a break room. The third door, at the very end of the hall, opened to a set of flight of stairs. A very long flight of stairs, with nothing but a bare, dangling light bulb far overhead.
The door at the bottom was reinforced and looked to have no place being so easily accessible from a convenience store. Tsurude pulled a set of keys from on his person and raised a brow at the takoyaki Hiashiko was still holding.
"You gonna eat that?" he asked as he unlocked the door.
Hiashiko had meant to throw it away upstairs, but someone had crossed between her and the trashcan before she could get rid of it, and in order to keep up with Tsurude, she had been forced to bypass the opportunity. "No, Hokage-sama." There still wasn't a place for her to get rid of it, and she wasn't about to give it back to Tsurude or one of the ANBU guards.
Why would Tsurude bring her to a place like this? The more she thought about it, the more two possibilities sprung to mind: either there was something important in this place, or Tsurude could not talk in his office. Of the two, Hiashiko preferred the first, as the second implied that there was something gravely wrong--perhaps even treasonous--in the Hokage Tower. But wild speculation would do her no good--had done no good--and she forced her mind to quiet.
"Well, then, hand it over. No use letting good food go to waste." He accepted the takoyaki from her as he ushered her and his ANBU through the door, and then swiftly locked it back up behind them.
The hallway they entered was cold, gray, sterile, and vaguely damp. And quiet - almost quiet enough to hear each other's breathing, if not their heartbeats. It was a stern environment, that didn't seem to approve of any company, not even the Hokage's.
One the door was locked and the keys tucked back away, Tsurude took the lead down the hallway, his steps now brisk and his manner matter-of-fact and business-like. "I apologize for the deception," he said as he navigated down through the hallways, occasionally marked by doors as reinforced as the once they'd just passed through. "I need you to do an identification for me, and it's a sensitive enough matter that I don't want you to be seen entering the ANBU headquarters, with or without me. I trust you'll keep this matter between us and ANBU until I give you leave to discuss it elsewhere."
An identification?
Hiashiko hated feeling out of control, hated knowing she was out of control and floundering. She had never been this deep inside ANBU headquarters, certainly not escorted by the Hokage and his personal guard. Tsurude's words made the annoyance she had been feeling turn too close to dread for her taste. "Of course, Hokage-sama."
His only response was a single, simple nod. And then silence for the rest of the trip.
Eventually they reached one of many, identical doors that lined the hallways, the group coming to a stop before it. "Wait out here for a moment, would you?" he asked Hiashiko, and placed his palm upon a metal plate. A gentle touch of chakra later, metal tumblers within the lock turned, and he slipped inside without allowing much of the inside to be visible to those without. And once the door was closed, the conversation inside was completely muted to any who might wish to listen in.
Lifting the paper plate of takoyaki in one hand, Tsurude adopted a vaguely woeful look as he addressed the inhabitant of the cell. "Sorry it's a bit luke-warm now. Bit of a trip between here and the vendor. I could get it reheated if you like."