One Long Mission

She was glad she'd caught wind of the event coming up and had first stocked, then overstocked, then packed her back room so tightly that almost nothing more could fit, because it seemed like people were coming in constantly for this or that. It was almost never flowers, what with the festival's theme, but that hadn't been what she'd spent the money on this month, so that was for the best.

And she was, at this moment, so very grateful that she'd thought ahead, because while the shop was open, she could barely breathe, let alone make more stock if she ran out of something.

Finally though, she managed to shove her last customer for the night out the door so she could try and get herself a little dinner!

It seemed like the second the rain started, everyone switched from flowers to edible oils and teas for their purchases from her, and she'd been running mad the last couple days trying to keep up with the demand. She had the supplies, after all, she just didn't have everything assembled or bottled, and it had been a bit... frantic.

Upside? She was sure when it died down she'd be more than able to get some new stock she'd been eying, and she was currently taking a break, the shop getting closed for the night.

Ino had taken extreme care to tailor her gifts and had spent the last couple weeks getting everything she needed for today sorted out. Now it was just getting everything to everyone.

She'd already sent the poor flustered Godaime Itachi home with his bag of sweets and the basket with sours and tomatoes for Sasuke. There was also a pack of carefully stashed sharpened hairpins stashed for Tenten in the pile that she was sure the boys probably wouldn't notice right off.

She'd hunted down the two stray younger Neji's and left baskets of teas in their apartments, so they were taken care of. Sakura had gotten a nice batch of her favorite dessert tucked into her freezer while she was in her clinic too. Kakashi had a copy of one of Jiraiya's books left just inside his windowsill. It wasn't new, but it's what she had available and it wasn't the one he'd been carrying around.

There was a detour to drop off chocolates and a couple scrolls where she knew the rather put out Sannin and his newest housemate would find it near his cave. She just hoped the chocolate was well received by the teen.

And then there was Mikoto's house. Putting on her resolve face, she sealed pretty much everything into an assortment of ribbons and headed over. The youngest Sasuke had gotten half his Valentine's present already but that was fine, she still had his sour candies to give over, and she knew they'd likely be taken well.

The elder Itachi was getting a bag with at least two dozen sweets of non-repeated types. The littlest one was getting more. He was adorable. The middle boy Sasuke was getting the same as the youngest. The girl Sasukes were getting bittersweet chocolates.

Banking on the fact that most people seemed to like the same things as their male counterparts, Sakumo was getting some of the same fancy dessert as Sakura got. Lee got flowers. She'd actually found the guy lotuses so that's what he was getting. Neji elder was getting a tea mix she'd put together just for him. Hinata was getting cinnamon rolls.

All the Narutos were getting red bean candies. She hadn't missed how fond of the flavor the guy was when they were in academy together. Mikoto was harder, so she defaulted to straight chocolates and sours for the woman in case she didn't actually like sweets.

The little Tenten was getting chocolates herself, and Kabuto was getting some tiny vials of poison she was experimenting with.

All of this she checked over carefully to make complete sure she wasn't forgetting anything. Which reminded her of Fugaku having moved in... More sours into the ribbon seals for him, yes, and chocolates for Karin... Just to be on the safe side, more chocolate was stashed to cover any new people she hadn't spotted yet, and that was that.

Once that was settled, she headed out to make sure everyone got their Valentine's gifts.

At first, the snow had seemed fine, and she'd actually been out of doors for once with her shop closed. Then the lightening started.

Usually she had a bit more warning about things like this in the village because one of the old gossips liked to babble at her, but today was clearly not that day. At least she knew why her regulars had insisted she make sure her lightening rod was in good repair.

Still, lightening storms in the dead of winter? This place definitely had some odd weather, and she hurried to get inside the nearest somewhere so she wasn't a nice lightening rod herself.

(ooc: You can have her duck into a shop where you are, have her having been visiting Mikoto's, what have you.)

This place was weird. True, the locals were friendly enough, and there was no end to the gossip she could get about Michi no Sato politics. Apparently, this was not a shinobi village. That was all good and well, but it also confused her, as the add on to that was often 'usually.'

Thus, when she asked about how it was 'usually', she got a long detailed explanation about the 'cycles' that the village went through. Apparently, for as long as there had been a village here, there were years when they had an absolute flood of shinobi, then one day they would all vanish, not to be seen again for years on end after that.

It was a bit creepy to tell the truth, and it didn't tell her a thing about how she got here, all it told her was that if she was going to go home, she was going to be in for a very long wait indeed.