Dank © Gary (Den)

Usually quite mild mannered and agreeable in most things, the first issue Akihana had made no mistake of dealing with were personal servants. The palace was understandably more crowded with servants and advisers than the actual royal family and their guests. The huge sprawling building housed close to three hundred people the last time Akihana had counted and of those three hundred, four women had been assigned to care for her personal grooming - an idea that made the kuoichi extremely uncomfortable, resulting in her dismissing the ladies on their very first day in her service.

The women on their part had kept quiet about it, and Akihana didn't really mind that they failed to report this to the Steward, using their time to likely catch up on sleep and hobbies. However a week later the kunoichi stood in front of the Queen, being told off as if she was a wayward daughter caught in the act of stealing cookies before dinner. Not that Akihana had ever done such a thing in her own childhood, her sister would have been the first to give her away if she did, but standing as she was, the medic had to marvel that one never really got too old to be told off.

"And you traipse about the city in servant garb too?" Her Grace, despite the frail body, could win battles with her icy blue stare.

"My hair is too noticeable, your grace," the blonde mumbled sheepishly, not looking up at the Queen. "And the gowns would just get dirty outside the palace."

"Oh will they?" the older woman questioned. 'If only we had a solution for that, Akihana. Maybe if someone was entasked with cleaning dirty clothes here."

The young woman bowed her head in apology. She remained silent however because she could no sooner make promises of not doing it again then she could tell a lie. Yes she wasn't used to how things were done at the palace. The gowns in her chambers were not made for her, neither were the jewels, not the servants. At times it still seemed like a dream but she donned what she had to and said what she was expected to simply to keep the Queen happy. Medication was important but so was ensuring that Her Grace kept her spirits up and if seeing Akihana dressed like her own daughter accomplished that, then there was no reason the kunoichi couldn't humor the monarch.

A tired sigh escaped the older woman, prompting Akihana to move to her side.

"These trinkets, the clothes, the jewels... these are all symbols of royalty, of who we are," the Queen uttered softly, her eyes closing from the effort of the conversation earlier.  "If you do not impose them, how will people know who you are, child?"

"But I'm not royalty," Akihana replied softly. I'm not anyone really.

"That is not important," her patient argued even as her head sank against the pillow. "These people, they need someone to look up to, something to believe in... I cannot be that symbol anymore, and until my cousin arrives, you have to keep their hopes up. Show them a princess they need at this time."

The blonde waited quietly until her charge dozed off, leaving the Queen's chambers silently and making her way to the library. Being spoken to as a child had touched something inside her, something that had been growing anxiously these last few days. The need to see her own children was too strong to be denied at the moment. Akihana knew time passed differently in Sanctuary than it did in the real world. Arata and Arashi would not have gone an hour without her but for her, it had been close to two weeks and she couldn't stand to go another day without looking at them.

And for that, she needed Denkiteki.

Requesting one of the maids to go find out where Den had made his offices, the medic followed upon the information, reaching the area where Den usually worked from when he was in the palace. As had become the norm, Akihana was never invited to these meetings but she and Den had been keeping each other up to date on progress. Knocking softly on the door, the blonde would enter if invited to do so.

Den was looking over files in his office, potential recruits for the academy Den had built. Hopefully they would be enough to create a sufficient shinobi force within the country, but there was no way of knowing how many would accept and of them how many would succeed at being shinobi. T run an academy seemed a daunting task, especially when he had very few available teachers.

He would manage it somehow, he would need a decent sized force to find these powerful shinobi who had caused Min’s death, so assisting Hoshigakure make its own military force that had a similar goal seemed a perfect opportunity to obtain such a force.

As he was looking through documents a familiar chakra presence approached, Akihana. It wasn’t until she was close to his door that he realized she was coming to see him, and he put the files down on his desk as she knocked on his door.

“Come in.” was all the young sage said as he waited for Akihana to enter, curious as to what she wanted to talk about.

Akihana entered the room silently, taking in the space Den had set up for himself, the mysterious chambers where the meetings with the Queen's advisers happened and which she was not a part of. When they had first arrived in Haven, the blonde had let it go as the kind of inherent gender differences found in most traditionalist societies. Now though, the more time she spent here, the more worried she grew. Had it been the Queen's request to keep Akihana away from all matters of government or had it been her advisers who preferred dealing with Den instead of the both of them? Maku still hadn't managed to factor into the system even if crime had almost all but disappeared from the city in a week and she didn't think it was her job to inform anyone else of his existence, at least not yet.

"I came to talk about the Queen," she answered honestly, moving towards the desk Den was seated at but remained standing unless she was offered a seat. "Her condition is more psychological than anything else. She seems to... I don't think she'll ever recover from losing her daughter, and I'm afraid someone on the inside might be taking unfair advantage of her kind nature." Saying it loud made her realize how possibly propitious she sounded, but if there was an inkling of truth in her suspicion, it would possibly save lives. "Is there a way we can check to see if her cousin from Bird Country is on the way? Her Grace mentioned that they sent for the cousin weeks ago so the party should be on the road right?"

Taking a deep breathe, she continued. "I was also wondering if you had any research on medically curing depression. I understand the biology behind it and I try to keep her in good spirits, but I can't help thinking that she needs some kind of medication for it too. Most days she's too tired to get out of bed or even talk, other days she can't top talking about how much she'd welcome death." As Akihana spoke, it was clear how much the recounting troubled her. "And then some days she's perfectly normal, those are the most unsettling, where she doesn't realize she's sick until seh tries to do soemthing normal like get out of bed and can't, and it takes a while for her to remember how week she's gotten."

As a medic, Akihana knew there was no magical cure for depression, retuning the neurotransmitters could only go so far and was not something seh was personally in favor of. But perhaps Den had come across something in his research that could help. She knew the young shinobi kept a library in Sanctuary. Perhaps with access to it, Akihana could help the Queen towards better mental and physical health.

As Akihana entered he would offer her a seat before she explained to Den that the queen’s illness seemed to also be physiological, and that she was worried that some of the others within the court would abuse the queen’s state. Unfortunately that could negatively affect Den’s academy, he needed the support of the queen. Without her some of the religious advisors might try and push for less or even no support to Den’s shinobi forces as he knew many of the religious groups didn’t like shinobi and he in particular wasn’t liked, he was not a promised princess like Akihana so by some his good intentions were misinterpreted as deception, the people thinking his ability to provide food and shelter too good to be true. He had decided not to show his snake summons for fear that he would further feed into fears of him by linking himself to an animal that was often feared.

It seemed Akihana wanted Den to help find the cousin of the queen, “Well we could take the queen to Sanctuary and have her locate her cousin using the pond, or I could go check her route and try and locate her myself.”

Akihana then asked if Den knew any way of curing depression. Honestly Den hadn’t spent much time studying psychology beyond things his dad taught him about how people would behave in fights and things of that manor. Still, he could let Akihana look through his notes and see if she could find anything useful he supposed. The queen’s condition did sound bad, worse than just the illness she possessed.

Den responded by saying, “I can take you to Sanctuary and you can inspect some of my notes, but in all honesty I never spent much time studying conditions like this.”

If Aki agreed Den would stand up and offer her his hand, meanwhile he’d concentrate on his library within Sanctuary. If Akihana took his hand then a moment after she did so the two would disappear in a bright white light, transported to Sanctuary.

They’d appear in a long hallway, the wall in fact being shelves containing who knew how many books. Each shelf was about 20 meters long and 13 meters high, and there was a spacing of 5 meters between all of the shelves, each one having another in front of, behind, and to the sides of it. Den honestly didn’t know how many books or even shelves he had in this realm anymore. Above the shelves it seemed like an open sky was above the library, and the ground beneath their feet would actually be extremely green grass. One thing Den really did enjoy about having full control of a dimension was he could imitate the beauty of the real worlds nature within his realms without having to deal with how dirty nature was, or the adverse effects that leaving books outside would normally have.

“This shelf right here should have any of my notes that might help you.” Den said while pointing to a shelf on their left, “I know I don’t have anything on any sort of cure for depression… but maybe I have something on the human brain somewhere that might help.”

Den would start going through books after he finished speaking, each one bound in a similar fashion and black material, with the titles displayed on the spine and cover in white lettering. The titles would have simple names, usually just stating it was Den’s notes on a particular subject.

Along with the black material bound books, which while they took up a large portion of the shelf they were looking at weren’t the only type of book taking up space on Den’s shelves, nor did they take up a large portion of the library’s collection. Most were books Den had copied from libraries of the various villages he had lived in and visited during his life, as well as a series of shelves dedicated simply to white clad books with golden lettering on the spine and cover, which while a few shelves could be seen from their current spot there was no way of telling how many shelves were dedicated to those books, which were actually autobiography’s of Kokou’s life.

All of the books containing Den’s notes would seem typed out, the notes were not hand written but simply created from Den’s mind as he worked using Sanctuary.

She knew the news of Her Grace's illness would not bode well for any one them since it was only the Queen's word that had allowed them to attempt training ninja in the first place. Akihana wished she could convince the people of the good work Den was doing, but the downside of a deeply superstitious society was that her hair color afforded her more leniency than all of Den's good intentions did him. Thanks to him and his clones, the city'a hunger rate had gone down by more than half, Akihana making up the rest by travelling on foot to churches, temples, mosques and quays to deliver food from her basket. The food she gave away was also from Den, it simply went down better with the religious people of Hoshigakure because it came out of a basket instead of thin air. The mind could convince itself of many things, Akihana had learned when she had first started practicing genjutsu, and this was just another example of it.

It was the same reason she truly believed the queen could get better if she put her mind to it.

"There seems to be no leadership in the council at the moment," she added as they sat and discussed the current political climate of Haven. "Official work has been ignored for so long, there have been no communication with the outside world. No ships have left our waters in the last two years, no other forces contacted. At first I thought it was simply because the people were busy dealing with the rogues who killed Minorin but... now I'm starting to think it's because someone on the inside is trying to cacoon the queen into her palace so she wouldn't even consider outside help. We just ended up here by chance and whoever was trying to isolate her won't be too happy with this turn of events."

At his suggestion of bringing the ruler into Sanctuary, the blonde shook her head. Now as not the time to expose her majesty to a world that would unsettle her even more. Though she did appreciate Den's offer of making use of his library. The medic had barely touched his hand when the world around them disappeared, Sanctuary enveloping them in it's protective folds and making a soft smile appear on the kunoichi's face. Who would have thought she'd missed this place? She certainly missed her children, and the thought of being closer to them made her golden eyes glow with happiness.

"Thank you!" Akihana breathed as she took in the entire library, the books sectioned off accordingly and shelves dedicated not only to Den's personal notes but also his considerable collection from his travels around the world. She thought she spied a section dedicated to kirigakure alone, probably containing their unique brand of water techniques. She didn't know much about Denkiteki, the few details she did know coming from him and his mother whom she sometimes had tea with, but she did know he was in Kiri before it's destruction. In a way, they both knew what it was like to have their home destroyed. Maybe that was why he had decided to make Sanctuary his home? Few things in the shinobi world were a constant but this as the closest anyone would ever get, she'd imagine.

"I'll stay here for a few days with the boys," she spoke quietly, trying not to sound as enthusiastic about it as she felt. Everything else aside, Akihana had missed Arata and Arashi dearly even though to them it would only be a few hours since she'd left. It didn't matter that the last time she'd seen her youngest, he was hurling insults at her. All that mattered was that both of them were safe. "Get them used to the idea of Haven, I'll also research in the library and try to track the Princess in the pond myself. I haven't seen her but I know the borders where we traveled, I can keep track of those to see if any caravan or party passes. In the real world I'd only be gone about half an hour but here I can spend a few days with the boys and then... maybe I could bring them out, do you think it might be safe for them in Haven?"

Akihana would wait for the raven haired shinobi to reply and contemplate his point of view accordingly before looking up to him once more.

"While I'm gone, could you try and figure out who on the council might have motive to want the Queen neutralized? There's a big festival coming up in a few days. The Queen's Joust. It's celebrated annually and there's usually people coming in from all over the country to attend. I'm afraid the venue and situation might be ripe for treason given the circumstances..."  The blonde shook her head, not wanting to continue. The idea of someone hurting a frail old woman who had already suffered so much pained her deeply.

Den was enjoying being back in Sanctuary, and admittedly, was feeling a bit proud that the woman who could bring people back to life found his library impressive. Akihana informed Den that she actually wanted to spend a few days within Sanctuary, and while she was gone she wanted Den to investigate embers of the council. Den assumesd she meant get started on the work, or perhaps she had made the common mistake of forgetting the time difference despite specifically requesting one, unless she actually meant she thought Den could uncover the plot within 30 minutes....

"I suppose I'll start attending more of those council meetings... " Den paused as he thought over that, normally Den only attended meetings where the academy was a topic of discussion or when he needed to present something to it, though he had been told to attend regularly as he was to be the representative for the shinobis within the academy once it was finally up and running. The past few days however Den had been focusing more on getting the academy up and running rather then attending silly meetings.

After a brief pause in which he had contemplated his scheduled Den would continue his sentence, "..I'll just have to make another clone in the mornings to go to those while I attend the rest of my business, it shouldn't be a problem."

Den looked next to the shelf and as his visage rested on a point there a door would appear, "The house the boys have been staying in is through there, I'll pick you all up in... how about 5 days? I'm sure if you keep them in the palace it will be safe, you'll be with them and I'll be close by as well when I'm not in the academy... and honestly we might need Arashi to go on missions.. um.. if you're alright with that... and of course only if he wants to help." Den wasn't entirely sure how Akihana would feel about sending Arashi on missions within a dangerous country like Haven, from their brief encounter Den had sensed that the boy seemed capable however so he'd be far more helpful than any of the new recruits Den was likely to get.

Den's plan of using clones to attend council meeting seemed like as good a plan as any. It was what Akihana would have done too had she been allowed in council meetings, but from the way Den spoke, it seemed he didn't take much interest in the ruling aspect of Hoshigakure either. This worried the kunoichi slightly. After three days of being in Haven, Maku had admitted that he wished no role of leadership upon himself. For him, she could at least understand because he had admitted to being a village leader before and not being very good at it. Den however seemed to be someone who would make a good leader. Unlike his brother, the young doctor seemed to have a compassionate streak not like her own and would surely protect those in need.

But that was a discussion for another time. Right now they had to focus on fixing what was wrong with the city's government system and to do that, they needed the Queen protected.

As Den reassured her that bringing the kids into Haven would be safe, Akihana gave the young man a grateful smile. He was offering to keep her children safe in a way and that was always the best gift any mother could ask for. When he mentioned however that he would return in five days to take them all back to Hoshi, the blonde looked up at him questioningly.

"Actually... is there a way we can access Sanctuary without having to bother you all the time? Not that I'd ever presume to have any kind of authority over it but..." she trailed off, her gaze dropping to the floor. "If the children are ever in danger, the safest thing I can do is send them to Sanctuary. And if you aren't around then it might be difficult. So if you could maybe allow us access to your dimension independently, we'll be very grateful." The female medic didn't know if she was asking for too much, nor did she know if Den would agree. All she did know was that she had to try.

2385

Den was a bit caught off guard by the question, allow her to come into Sanctuary whenever she wanted? Maku was the only person other than Den who could enter the dimension at will and it unsettled Den to have someone else possess power within Sanctuary, even his own brother. Briefly his discomfort at the idea would show as Akihana explained her need to be able to enter Sanctuary at will.

Still, Den understood Akihana's desire for safety, and wove Sanctuary around himself, taking the massive amount of chakra needed to create a realm and compressing it into a sphere within his hand. Visibly this would just show the creation of the small sphere as he lifted up his hand to present it to Akihana, the sphere seeming to come into existence in the young sage’s palm.

"Here, this'll allow you to transport yourself to a safe location within Sanctuary when you use it, it'll create a realm based on your own desires. Unfortunately though in order to allow you to transport between Sanctuary and the world we're from we'll need to take it there for it to imprint on that dimension." Den didn't want to delve too much into the interworking of the device, as Akihana wasn’t a space time manipulation specialist and there might be some aspects she didn’t understand.

“Sorry for the inconvenience… I can take you back to Haven for a moment and you can use the item to create the link between our world and Sanctuary.” Den concentrated on his teleportation ability as he awaited Akihana’s answer, and if she allowed Den would teleport them bot back to his office.

Upon their arrival Den would simply say, “All you have to do is put some of your chakra into the sphere and it’ll do the rest, it creates a sort of bubble like that jutsu Maku used to teleport us and you have to decide what’s teleported and what isn’t.” The two of them would be standing in front of Den’s desk, on either side of the chair that was across Den’s own.

Akihana knew what she was asking of Den was too much, she wasn't surprised when the hesitation took over his expression briefly. She wouldn't have been surprised had he rejected the idea altogether. After all, providing someone with such an item was akin to giving them the keys to your home except on a much larger scale. Had Denkiteki been a less kind person, he would have turned her down. As it was, he saw fit to oblige her request albeit with some modification, modifications that Akihana had no problems with at all.

"Thank you very much," the blonde murmured gratefully as he created the orb in front of her using his spacetime skill. The idea of manipulating time and space still made her feel slightly queasy but after all her months in Sanctuary and Maku's continuous display of his own ability despite her telling him it made her noxious, Akihana was slowly beginning to be alright with it. As Den offered to take her back to Haven to show her how it worked, she nodded quickly and in the blink of an eye, they were back to the library Den was working out of.

Being back in Haven still felt odd, the constant jump between times and spaces but she had no time - or maybe all the time in the world, the conundrum made her head hurt - to ponder it. The kunoichi listened carefully as Den explained simple terms how it worked, trying to ensure she understood the complicated bit of creation as quickly as she could and another teleportation later, they were in the pocket realm he had spoken of earlier. The realm that she could apparently customize to her will.

Aki seemed find with the item, and the two quickly arrived back within Haven before Akihana used her new item to take them both back to Sanctuary, however instead of the library they arrived in Akihana’s personal realm.

“Decide how you want it to look now, unfortunately you can only manipulate its appearance this one time so choose something you’ll know you want.” Den could of course change things for her later though thankfully, so if she did want something changed later it could be.  

After Akihana had done so Den would create two doors at spots that would be appropriate for such things, as well as accessible from what would more or less be the ‘center’ of the realm or where Akihana create the most things. One would lead to Den’s library and the other to where Arashi and Arata where.

“That should do it, that door goes to the library and that to the house you’ve been staying in, which of course you are welcome to stay in if you want to this realm would simply serve as your entrance point into Sanctuary in that case.” As he finished speaking Den would start to concentrate back on his office.

“There’s a meeting I guess I should go attend, if you’re alright here I think I’ll go see what the Queen’s advisers want from me.” Den’s voice might have betrayed a bit of his displeasure at the idea of going to the meeting, even if he intended to use a shadow clone. If akihana said she was fine Den would disappear back to his office, where he would make a lightning release clone before sitting down to do paperwork.

The meeting turned out to be over something terrible. As the clone entered a few advisers remarked that he showed up for once, before informing him that due their being so few Queensguard now they couldn’t be bothered with leading the shinobi forces as well as protect the queen and organize the queensguard, so basically not only was Den the teacher but also the commander of the shinobi forces.

When the meeting was over and the clone dispersed, Den received all of the information and could only sit back as he resisted the erge to start cursing.

Not again. Please no.

Exit
Claiming lead of shinobi forces in Haven (Leader status)
2017 wc
all towards portals cuz did space time stuff
SA word count finished
1k ryo cuz Den can't claim leader ap xD