Author's note: I enjoy exploring the clans from pre-Konoha, trying to figure out their individual territories and cultures. Unfortunately, aside from the Uchiha, Inuzuka, and Senju clans, the only other ones that get their own guest appearances are the Nara and Uzumaki clans. (Mito shows up in the later chapters.)
When Shinzou had demanded that the Uchiha and Senju join the Inuzuka women around a fire, Madara hadn't realized that she meant it literally. It didn't take long to gather a bunch of summer-dead wood to build a decently-sized bonfire, and even less time for Izuna to light it with a Grand Fireball when he should've instead saved his strength. But if his brother felt well enough to posture in front of the Senju despite being stabbed through the chest just an hour earlier, then Madara would hold his tongue.
After what they had seen, three days prior, after Izuna had gathered up the remains of his wife while his vision burned with the newly-born Mangekyo, Madara would let his brother take any satisfaction from wherever it could be found. Short of actually getting back his two missing children, Izuna was not likely to ever gain any more real satisfaction in this life.
Between his men and the Senju, they outnumbered the Inuzuka women three to one. That didn't include the ninken. Madara initially hadn't thought them worthy of being included. That was before he realized just how huge they were.
When the ninken had surrounded the perimeters of the battle site, crouching low and poised to attack, Madara had underestimated their size, even with his enhanced vision. He had seen domesticated dogs bred for work – they were large. He had seen wolves in the wild, and even fought them off in the winter, when the fenced livestock meant to provide for the clan looked like easy pickings when wild prey was scarce. The wolves had been large.
Domesticated working dogs and wolves didn't compare to these ninken, especially when two dragged a recently killed Nara deer to the fire. The ninken were nearly the same size of the deer. Another ninken dragged an actual Nara behind, and the Nara, renowned for their intelligence, hung from the ninken's mouth like limp rag. The better for which to look less like food or prey, and to look more like an obedient puppy.
The Nara was old, his hair steel-gray and face lined with wrinkles. He blinked at the Senju and Uchiha surrounding him, firelight glinting off the steel of their armor, and then craned his neck to look at the half-naked Inuzuka women lounging around the fire. "Oh man, this sucks," he declared, rubbing the nape of his neck. The ninken that had dragged him over to the fire approached Shinzou, wagging its tail and looking remarkably smug.
"Look at what the dog dragged in," Shinzou said, her voice flat. "Bad boy," she told the ninken, even as she scratched him behind the ears. "Bad, bad boy. Next time, leave it where you find it."
Natsumi reached over and patted the Nara's head as if he was a puppy. "Look on the bright side, Shikataro-san," she said happily, "you have been saved the effort of trying to hunt my sister and I down to demand payment for the deer. Sorry about that. We needed the extra meat because these bozos here," she jerked her thumb at Madara, "forgot to pack adequate supplies for dinner." The fact that Hashirama had been able to grow a small seedling to a full grown chestnut tree heavy with nuts that were now being roasted in the bonfire was left pointedly unsaid, and Madara could feel the arrogant satisfaction radiating brighter than the bonfire's flames. He would've stabbed Hashirama on principle, but that would've raised Shinzou's ire, and he didn't want her alien, independently-moving torso any closer to his sight line.
Madara busied himself trying to remember if he had ever before met the elusive Head of the Nara clan. He knew that they had been close to the Nara clan's territory. He kept his gaze trained on Nara Shikataro as Natsumi flexed her fingers until it seemed like her nails had gained extra length.
… did it surprise him that the Inuzuka were animals enough to use their claws to skin animals? No, no, it didn't.
"I am disgusted," Izuna said, unable to tear his gaze away from Natsumi's brutal skinning and gutting of the carcass.
"Oooooooh, wow," said Hashirama, eyes wide with curiosity.
Tobirama twitched, narrowed eyes shifting from Natsumi's bloody hands to Hashirama clapping in delight, and back to Natsumi, clearly not willing to share in his brother's bright-eyed interest, but also desperately not wanting to have anything in common with Izuna.
"I want the antlers," Shikataro declared, as he rolled onto his stomach and pillowed his head on his arms. He yawned. "And the heart."
Natsumi pouted. "But the heart is the best part."
"If I have to suffer the indignity of being dragged backwards through the brush, the least you can do is feed me the best part of my animal."
"Fine. Heart and antlers. Want my first born son, too?" Natsumi demanded.
The Nara lifted his face. Some dirt clung to his wrinkled cheek. "I already have your first-born son, vicious little energetic monstrosity that he is. And Shinzou's first-born son. And another four or five or however many Inuzuka male offspring that you gals abandoned in my forest, because they move around so fast I think I've already counted the same kid two or three times. Pawn your male offspring onto some other unsuspecting clan, next time." The Nara indicated Madara with a limp-wrist wave. "Like them. I'm sure they'd appreciate a bunch of high-strung, impulsive, hyperactive little demons from hell. The Uchiha would never notice the difference."
Izuna looked highly offended with the idea of being gifted an Inuzuka son, especially when he didn't know if his two missing children were dead or alive. Nonetheless, Izuna was much more polite than Madara, and much better at holding in his temper. Right now, at least. "No, thank you."
"You sure? They're really great for herding deer and sniffing out the best mushrooms and herbs. There's just something about that Inuzuka nose that makes them remarkable cooks – they're great at flavoring food. And if you work really hard on disciplining them, they can even be housebroken."
The hallmark of Uchiha cooking techniques, even among Uchiha women, was their ability to flambé everything. Meals frequently doubled up as charcoal fire starts. The Uchiha clan was nothing if not experts at making everything do double-duty. "I believe we're fine," Izuna said, crossing his arms in front of himself.
"Hmm." Shikataro scratched his chin. He focused an eye, every bit as curved and narrow as Natsumi's eyes, on Madara. The other eye was milky-white with thick cataracts. "After the children you lost, you might want to consider adoption."
Madara felt his spine go ramrod stiff. He was equally aware of Shinzou, Hashirama, and other Inuzuka women focusing on him. "What would you know about the children we lost?"
"The South Sea raiders hit a lot of shinobi clans, all in transit or in preparation for winter," the Nara replied. "The first to be hit were the Akimichi. They were bringing a wagon train to the Autumn Suna Bazaars. The South Sea raiders not only stole the younger children, but enough supplies to survive the trek back across the ocean. That was a week ago."
Madara hadn't heard of any attacks on the clan of merchant-ninjas. Then again, word wouldn't have reached this far into the heart of Fire Country if the first attack took place in River Country. People would've been heading to the Bazaar for final trading with the nomadic clans of Wind before winter struck, and since the Bazaar wasn't due to start until next week, then the word didn't have much chance to travel backwards.
As for the Akimichi clan – they normally had the strength to protect their trains, but they didn't have the speed or stamina to pursue attackers long-distance. If they needed to hunt down long-distance enemies who wronged them, they reached out to the Inuzuka clan through Aburame clan. The insular and creepy Aburame clan was normally content to remain in the swamp-marshes that crossed Fire Country into River Country, defending their ancestral lands against invasion and keeping the locals safe from the nomadic warlords of Wind. The only times they left their territory was to track and to trade. Bringing back targets was a task typically left with the Inuzuka, who paired well with the Aburame.
"From what we could gather," Shikataro continued, "the raiders bypassed the Aburame clan, skirting around the marshes, and struck the Senju's rice fields, three days ago."
The Senju women would've been busy gathering autumn harvests for their winter stronghold, guarded by an elite force of men. The Senju had been killed at the same time as the Uchiha had been killed.
"How did they strike the Senju women, and our women at the same time?" Izuna demanded. "Ours have been dead for three days, also."
"That's where Shikataro is wrong. The invaders split forces when they reached the shores of Fire, into five groups," Shinzou replied. Her eyes were focused on the flames, her gaze distant. "The South Sea raiders hit the shores of Fire Country two weeks ago. From there, they split into multiple groups, and headed inland in separate directions. Their paths are very deliberate, like they knew exactly who they wanted." She took a deep breath. One hand, resting on her raised knee, curled into a fist. Blood dribbled through her clenched fingers as the claws pierced skin. "We had left our eldest and youngest, those who didn't have the energy to make the trek to the Bazaars, ten days ago. Five days ago, my sister and I caught the stench of their death on the wind. One group of five hit the Akimichi. One group of five hit the Uchiha. One group of five hit the Senju. One group of five hit the Inuzuka. One group of five hit the Sarutobi. After each group struck, they started back tracking back to their longboats."
Shinzou lifted her eyes to meet Madara's. They held the promise of death. "They haven't reached their longboats, yet. They don't seem to be running very fast."
"They can't," said Natsumi. "The children move at a slower rate." She reached over and jabbed Tobirama in the shoulder with one bloody claw. "Hey, sharpen me some green willow branches so you can cook the meat over the fire." She flashed him a wicked smile. "I prefer to eat my meat raw, but that I realize my guests may have different preferences."
Rubbing his shoulder and shooting her a nasty look, Tobirama retreated from the fire. Madara heard him grabbing a few Senju to do what Natsumi had demanded. Shinzou was silent while they waited for Tobirama's return.
No one local within Fire and the surrounding countries, as far as Madara knew, were dumb or suicidal enough to attack the Inuzuka clan head-on. The Elemental nations, as a whole, felt that women were the weaker sex. Only the Aburame and the Uzumaki clans were as known for their female kunoichi as their male shinobi, but they were bizarre. The Hatake clan didn't count, as they were a samurai clan, where women were as proficient with their white chakra and sabers as the men were. The Inuzuka clan, however, was strictly matriarchal, so they had no men to defend them. They didn't want men to defend their clan. Rumors had it that the Inuzuka women killed their male offspring, that's how much they didn't want Inuzuka men.
Evidently, they foisted male offspring onto the Nara, via child abandonment in the Nara Forests. Which, in the world of the Warring Era, was a kind way of disposing unwanted children. The Nara clan, at least, didn't have to worry about keeping their Bloodline Limits pure, seeing as how their shadow techniques didn't rely on Bloodline Limits.
Madara turned his thoughts back to the memory of his slaughtered clanspeople, a shiver of horror racing up and down his spine as he thought, five people. The ten men he had left with the women and children should've been enough to fend off, even destroy, five South Sea raiders.
The bodies of fighting men and defending women had been mangled. They hadn't fallen in battle – there was every indication that their deaths were designed to be slow, long, and brutal. Shattered bones, skin sliced to ribbon, the eerie identical placement of broken bones and lacerations… And from the look on Hashirama's face, the Uchiha clanspeople hadn't been the only ones refused a swift, clean death.
Natsumi was efficient and clean as she dressed the deer. She was swift in removing the intestines, the lower parts of all four limbs, and the head, which she wrapped up in the skin and dragged off to the perimeter of the battle-come-campsite. Natsumi directed three of her clanswomen to divvy up the spoils for the ninken before she returned to the carcass. She didn't even need chakra-enhanced strength to break open the ribcage. Madara silently admired the ripple of the thick muscles that corded Natsumi's arms – they were much lovelier to look at then her heavy swaying breasts, and a much safer topic to mentally dwell upon than the brutal deaths of his clanspeople.
When Tobirama returned with sharpened spears made from fresh willow branches, he also brought a leather bucket filled with fresh water, which he set beside Natsumi. "For cleaning your hands," he muttered.
The red in Tobirama's cheeks wasn't a reflection of the fire, Madara noted. But Tobirama's obvious discomfort didn't stop Tobirama from skewering thick, heavy chunks of venison and passing them over for people to hold in the flames to sear to their own preference of rare to well-done.
Madara liked his meat as cooked thoroughly as a hardboiled egg. He couldn't stand the taste of fresh blood. As the meat sizzled, Hashirama pulled the roasted chestnuts from the fire, cooling them with a wind jutsu (cheater), and splitting the shells with the hilt of his kunai. He tossed the roasted nutmeats into another leather bucket.
"They can't run fast," said the Nara, stretching to snatch one of the roasted nutmeats. He juggled it between his hands, huffing and puffing to cool it down even more. "Not if they have well over fifty children to drag along. How many fighters are you going to need to take out twenty-five raiders?"
Shinzou's eyes fluttered shut. "A group of five struck my clan, but there was only one scent tied up with all the death. Only one person killed everyone. The same is true for the Uchiha, Senju and Sarutobi clans. Two were responsible for the deaths in the Akimichi clan."
Izuna's eyes were spiraling red, shifting erratically into the Mangekyo. "You mean to tell me one person slaughtered over forty adults?" While Madara's Mangekyo had bloomed a few years ago with the death of their father, Izuna's was so new that he still had difficulty controlling it. "How is that level of power possible?"
According to tradition, the Mangyko was born when you killed your loved one – or best friend, depending on which translation one went with. Apparently, feeling responsible for the death of your best friend/loved one also counted, in Izuna's case. Which Madara found odd, because there were many Uchihas over the years who had felt responsible for the death of their best friends/loved ones, and yet he and Izuna was the first to awaken the Mangekyo in the last four generations. Someone really messed up on the translations, somewhere.
Nara raised his eyebrows silently as he studied Izuna's eyes.
Could Madara have single-handedly wiped out ten men and thirty women who had comparable strength of the clanspeople killed? He could, he realized with a chill, but the personal cost of chakra and stamina would be catastrophically higher. He would've collapsed from exhaustion twenty meters from where the bodies were left to rot, and slept for a week.
Shinzou glanced around the fire. "But I think, between what we have consolidated here, it should be enough to take out the raiders."
Madara twitched as Hashirama tilted his head in thought. Shinzou was bold to assume that the Uchiha – or even the Senju – would join forces with her in hunting down the raiders and rescuing the kidnapped children, no matter what she had said when she crashed their (hunting/battling) party.
Natsumi shoved four spears with dangling chunks of raw meat into Madara's hands. "I know what you're thinking," she said with a low growl. "You're thinking that you'll be able to waltz in and destroy the raiders, la-di-dah, and then release the children. Do you have any plans of returning them to their respective clans? The Akimichi clan children are comfortable with us – they know the Inuzuka clan. They won't trust to go anywhere with you, or the Senju. The Sarutobi children might agree to go with the Senju, but they wouldn't go near you Uchiha even if you're on fire and they had the bucket of water. The Inuzuka girls will have absolutely nothing to do with either the Senju, or the Uchiha."
At her words, Hashirama's face tilted downward as a worried expression crossed his face. Hearing how the children of other clans – and clans that weren't even rivals to the Senju – would be too fearful to trust their safety with the Senju, when Hashirama had talked to Madara a week prior about the possibility of offering sanctuary and friendship to other clans, was no doubt throwing a cloud over what had otherwise been the only good thing to come out of being gone while their loved ones were getting slaughtered.
"We," said Madara, refusing to think any further of what he had been doing when his sister-in-law was brutally murdered, "would never hurt any children."
"Bullshit, Uchiha," Tobirama cut in with a growl. "I still remember how four grown Uchiha men surrounded my seven year old brother and cut him down like a dog."
"That was on the battlefield, and he was considered a fellow warrior, no matter his age or actual strength. That's entirely different from unarmed children locked in cages or chained up by South Sea raiders." Although South Sea raiders had been driven out of the Elemental Nations more than half a century before, it was for a good reason – children had long been considered a source of food and pleasure for the native islanders that the South Sea raiders liked to sell the children to.
The Nara clan head turned to Shinzou. "Are you quite certain that you don't want at least four of my people? While they would endlessly bitch about the brutal travel pace you set, I guarantee my men won't constantly bring up old bygones and grudges."
"True," said Shinzou with a languid shrug of her shoulders. "But I would like to think that the heads of the Uchiha and the Senju clans can set aside their differences and be mature about working together. After all, that's why they gathered together last week, isn't it? To set aside their differences? Oh please, it wasn't a secret to this nose," she told Hashirama as he looked at her in surprise. "Clan heads of Uchiha and Senju gathered a week in one place without bloodshed?"
"It was either a peace treaty, or a massive orgy," Natsumi said, scrubbing her hands clean in the provided bucket of water. "And since we didn't smell any sex happening, we figured it was probably a peace treaty."
Madara didn't really want to think of an orgy between the Uchiha clansmen and the Senju clansmen present. He really didn't want to think of Tobirama or Hashirama naked… although he knew that Hashirama was the epitome of masculine health, and had a very beautiful set of arms and shoulders. "I'm sure," he began, doing his best to turn his thoughts away from any nudity, "that we can continue what we started last week, setting aside old hurts and grudges, and work together to create a new future where the children of all clans can trust their safety in others in times of kidnapping."
The smile that Hashirama sent him from his side of the fire was brighter than the sun. Madara ignored that as easily as he ignored thoughts of nude orgies.
"There you go," Shinzou told the Nara, pressing her hands against her abdomen again as it rolled and wobbled, liquidly shifting from side to side.
Shikataro's eyes were sharp. "I hope you haven't included yourself in any plan to defeat the raiders. You're due to give birth any day now."
Madara also hoped that Shinzou hadn't planned on fighting. Everyone knew that the chakra of pregnant women was weakened and unreliable.
As if suspecting his thoughts, Shinzou shot Madara a glare that would've scorched his hair if she had laced her eyes with chakra. "I," she said with a haughty lift of her chin, "am quite capable of leading my clan into battle, and coming out of it unscathed, regardless of my physical condition."
Shikataro, with a lazy ease of an elderly man who was quite experienced with weathering the scorn of the Inuzuka, and was hardly intimidated by her posturing, declared, "I'm more concerned about you going into labor while in battle."
"Good." Shinzou's words were clipped with anger. "The brat is a week overdue. I'm ready to serve an eviction notice."
He shrugged. "My offer still stands."
"Send your men to the Sarutobi clan to explain what happened, and that we'll be returning with survivors after we rescue them."
"Very well. I'll leave them at the Sarutobi clan's holdings. If you take the Akimichi children there, my men can accompany them the rest of the way to their village, and that'll let you return to your wintering huts sooner."
With those details decided, they focused on completing their dinner of venison and roasted chestnuts.
"These are good," said Shikataro, helping himself to another nutmeat. "Such a shame that the chestnuts require an ungodly amount of effort to prepare."
"Is there anything else we should discuss?" Natsumi asked her sister, pointedly.
Shinzou didn't even bother looking up from her venison, which was almost as well-done as Madara's. "I think that about covers it. We can't make plans on the enemies until we get closer."
Natsumi clicked her tongue and shook her head. "That baby's gotta hurry up and get here – your pregnancy brain has just been awful. Fine, I'll say it for you, for I am a wonderfully thoughtful sister, always looking out for you, my dear." Her smile took on a predatory edge as she slid close to Madara. Without hesitating, she looped a gloriously muscled arm around his neck and dragged him uncomfortably close to her bare breasts. With her other arm, she crooked her finger in a come-hither movement at Hashirama. Madara wanted to push himself free, but that would've required him to make physical contact with Natsumi's torso. And her bosom was so grotesquely large, he was pretty sure that there wasn't any possible way to avoid not touching them.
"Clan leaders, we have to have a brief discussion on expectations around here, just so that we're all on the same page. I'm sure your men would appreciate hearing it more from you than from me, at least."
When Hashirama moved closer, he too was dragged one-armed to Natsumi's side. Unlike Madara, his face burned bright red. "This hardly seems proper, Inuzuka-san," Hashirama declared, keeping his body stiff. "I am quite uncomfortable with this."
"I'm not," Natsumi replied with a flash of her teeth. She wiggled her torso, which made her breasts sway. Now Madara felt the flush of heat across his face. He tried to glare at Izuna, just to get his gaze anywhere that didn't have a pierced nipple. Damn woman could put an out eye out with those bar bells. Izuna, on the other hand, looked highly amused at Madara's discomfort.
Oh yeah, Izuna already had a first-hand experience of getting up close and personal with Natsumi's chest.
"As I was saying," Natsumi said, "none of the Inuzuka women are uncomfortable with their bodies. We happen to be very comfortable in our own skin."
"Boy howdy," Shikataro muttered as he ripped his venison apart with his teeth.
"We also happen to enjoy sex. Some of us," here, Natsumi sent her sister a pointed look, "even enjoy sex with men."
"And you have way better stamina than the men, too," Shikataro added.
"Thank you, but that's not an impressive achievement, in the great grand scheme of biology. Anyway, after we get our children back, there's the strong possibility that my clanswomen might want to engage in victory sex. Hell, they may even want a roll in the bushes before we get the children. You know, when we have to stop for a breather. And that's fine, too, if any of your clansmen are up for a roll in the bushes. However, if your men are up for it, and my women are not, and your men force themselves onto my women, I will know who the perpetrator is by his personal stench, and I will rip his cock off with my bare hands, and jam it down his throat until he chokes to death on it."
Natsumi slid her arms away from their necks, and then carefully poked Madara and Hashirama in the nose with one claw. The very same hands that she had used to skin and dismantle a deer. It was terrifyingly easy to imagine her effortlessly neutering men. "Are we clear?" she asked with a sweet voice.
Hashirama rubbed his nose. "As clear as a summer blue sky," he replied, wide-eyed. "I shall let my men know to keep their hands to themselves in regards to unwilling parties."
"I require the same for my men," Madara said, crossing his arms before himself, and trying hard not to press his knees together. "I don't want any pushy Inuzuka woman pawing at my men, especially if they don't want to be touched." He really didn't want to see what would happen if some woman was stupid enough to try seducing his brother.
"I wouldn't ask anything of your men that I haven't already told my women."