Hanabi started her shift immediately on the following day. Konohamaru had already given her notes on the events of every mission that had either ended or was in the process of going on and there weren’t that many on her hands. In fact, there seemed to be only one active mission she was in charge of, albeit a great one. Protection of the New Fire Daimyo. This was designated as an S-rank, however, so she decided not to deal with it for the time being until she got express permission from Shikamaru. Hanabi sat down and could finally exhale for the first time that day. There were so many new things she had to get used to that from what she heard from Hinata, her sister, she thought she probably wouldn’t make it the first day in.
Though the day ended up being a lot less tough than she first thought, being in the Hokage Office was overwhelming. There was this rich air of anxiety flowing around, the burden of not only Konoha but the Land of Fire at large and after the events of the war, even the world now leaned on the office for international affairs. She felt like if she dropped her cup of tea, a war would be declared immediately. She observed the office and noticed two things. One, that there was an interesting item on her desk. It was a transmitter but it resembled a giant water lily. The transmitter directly patched her on to Ino’s mind, provided she charged it with chakra and Ino would then transmit the information from her flower shop to everyone in Konoha who had a similar device. Only the Delegates were allowed to have one however, to prevent mass hysteria in a moment of panic. Hanabi was mesmerized by the petals, holding the petals, thinking about whether she could attempt to see how it worked.
Curiosity took over and she decided to go for it. She concentrated some chakra on her thumb and index and the moment she felt connected to the transmitter, the thing roared to life and she shrieked. The warm glow on her chakra sustained on the flower-like device and then slowly waned as she felt a voice in her mind.
“Hello, Hanabi. Are you having a great first day?” Ino spoke warmly on the other side.
“Aah, I’m sorry. I just wanted to know how it worked. I-uh” Hanabi heard a soft giggle on the other side and the feeling in the pit of her stomach loosened.
“You wouldn’t be the first. Konohamaru did the exact thing. I actually would have been more surprised if you weren’t curious. Now that you know how it works, you think you can hold off not using it unless it’s an emergency or maybe not this early in the morning?”
“Sure. I can do that. I’m sorry. I’ll hang up now.” Hanabi then realized that she did not know how to hang up telepathic calls.
“Don’t worry about it. I usually end the calls,” Ino said, laughing again and this time Hanabi joined along. Her mind suddenly felt lonely again, like the few seconds of Ino hanging around it was not foreign to her. There was something about that whole conversation that felt weirdly right. Hanabi had learnt that earlier on, when learning to get used to doing telepathic events outside of the war, Ino would occasionally either glitch out or temporarily use her Mind Switch instead. The Scientific Division made it so that she had the ability to use both abilities with the devices in the event an enemy tried to link with them, thus giving Ino the ability to immediately access their mind and temporarily have them in a bind. She would also use it on an ally in case of a situation where they were too anxious to report what was happening and she could see it for herself.
The second thing that she noticed were a couple of odd looking ants gathered in one area of the ceiling. She could detect faint chakra in them but they were not active. These belonged to Shino, who had placed them everywhere in the office and in the homes of the Delegates. She got a visit from him the day before to have that exact scenario play out.
It was evening and she was finally home and dressed in something more comfortable when she heard a knock. She was naturally shocked since there was rarely visitors on the Hyuga clan area. They were still for the most part treated like nobles, even when Hiashi went out of his way to say otherwise. People thus often avoided them if they could. Hanabi changed from her warm slippers to her regal ones and wore her brand-new Hyuga Clan Leader robe in case it was someone important. She opened the door and the glow of the fluorescent bulb struck Shino. He looked quite uneasy but from what Hanabi was told, it was mostly because he wasn’t too comfortable around anyone but Hinata, Kiba, Shikamaru and Naruto.
“Good evening, Lady Hanabi. I am here to install something for ANBU related security. I hope you do not mind.”
Hanabi simply nodded, took a step back and ushered Shino in with her arm. Shino nodded in reply, took his shoes off and then turned his gaze towards her roof. Hanabi adamantly refused to move into the small palace that was made after the war for the clan leader but Hiashi was persistent that she did so and after several disagreements, she relented. This place was too big for her and there was something about it that made her feel isolated. She wasn’t able to do much decorating given the house was decorated with the black and white primary colors of the clan. She didn’t like the colors and would have personally preferred to add cream and pink tones to the house, maybe a splash of yellow where it was needed. She thus couldn’t tell what drew Shino’s eyes towards the top because aesthetic wasn’t it.
“May I ask what you are trying to confirm?” Hanabi said, almost too quiet for Shino to pick up, but he did.
“Bugs.”
Hanabi was taken aback. “Excuse me?”
“Not that you have them. I want to install them. Bugs for surveillance.” Hanabi was flustered at the next words that would have come out of her mouth. Shino went back to being silent again for a solid minute. Then he spoke.
“Chair?”
Hanabi nodded and brought one before him, one tall enough to connect him to the unusually high ceiling.Shino worked in silence, gently lifting his arm and a few ants walked out in a single line formation. They concentrated in one corner as if led by something. Shino inspected the ants for a bit then stepped down, content with his work.
“Do I have to worry about feeding them anything? I know they are supposed to eat chakra on something.”
“Nature chakra fused bugs. They can make their own food. Quite amazing what Sakura is able to achieve in the Scientific Division.”
“What about you? Would you like a glass of water or something?”
“Running late on meeting with my staff. I will have to take you on your offer another time.” Shino didn’t wait for a reply, turned and walked towards the door. Hanabi considered stopping him but then decided against it. He wasn’t very comfortable in this scenario and she probably didn’t need to guest someone merely because it was right to do so.
Shikamaru finally arrived with the details needed for her active mission. It seemed he and Temari were not having a good day.
“You taught him how to do that, right? Shikaku now won’t stop doing it.”
Hanabi decided it was not proper to eavesdrop on their conversation. She didn’t really want to burden herself with the thoughts of marriage anyway. Even though she was 27 years old, a lot had changed since the era of peace began. There was a higher life expectancy overall and thus people did not feel the pressure to marry as young as they used to when they feared war would break out. She also was sure there wasn’t really anyone worth entertaining all that much. Shikamaru entered her office with a sigh. Temari on the other hand walked away, her head held up high.
“I’m sorry you had to hear that.”
“I actually didn’t. I guess I had a lot to think about.”
Shikamaru seemed relieved by that so Hanabi was happy she made the right choice. “Here are the details to the active mission. Konohamaru already deployed Team 7 for the mission yesterday so you don’t have to worry about that part. Since this mission is related to the office of the Daimyo, payment is also not going to be something you have to worry about getting details on. It seems Konohamaru really wanted a smooth transition to all this.”
Konohamaru really was a life saver, Hanabi concluded. “So where is he now? Given his new promotion to official candidate, shouldn’t he still be around the offices?”
“He’s going to be busy learning the entire Konoha network for the next two weeks. There’s a lot to learn if he’s going to be even a temporary Hokage. We wouldn’t want to have another Pain situation on our hands, you know.”
“But isn’t Naruto the strongest shinobi in the world? Could there ever be a threat that we couldn’t manage with him around?”
“If there’s anything the last war taught us, it is that we should never assume anything to be certain. Here’s the paperwork that Konohamaru left unfinished. You can start with that.” Shikamaru handed a large stack of documents and Hanabi, in horror, wondered if this was what Konohamaru wasn’t able to finish, then what a monstrous workload he had to begin with. “Shocking?”
“I’m not…I mean I love the job so far…um…”
“No need to be modest or anything like that. There’s a good reason Hokage rarely used to leave their offices back in the day. I’m just glad Naruto doesn’t have to deal with both this and saving the world.” Shikamaru walked out with a wave and Hanabi began to dig deep into her work..
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