Chapter Seven

'I'm not getting anywhere.' Hinata thought as she kept fighting the genjutsu silhouette. 'My arms are getting tired. I can't keep this up for much longer. Naruto-kun, whatever you're doing do it faster.'

Hinata finally had to pause for a moment to rest her arms but was ready to fight again if the silhouette resumed the fight. While resting, she tried to figure this out. 'My body's not here, just my mind so any fatigue I'm experiencing must be mental fatigue expressed as physical. Is this a sign that I'm not qualified yet to complete sage training? Am I holding Naruto-kun back?'

Her eyes widened. 'Wait a minute, why isn't the genjutsu fighting me or going for Naruto-kun right now?' The silhouette had yet to make a move in her pause or go after someone else. Instead it looked right at her with sharingan eyes. 'It's a genjutsu, not a living thing so it can't make choices of its own, only do what it was created for. Does it have no choice but to wait until we do something first?'

Testing her theory, Hinata took a step away from the silhouette. It did nothing but kept its eyes on her. She then smirked. 'Okay, this thing has a weakness now. I just gotta figure out what the limits to its power are.' Renewed, she began to attack again.

Meanwhile Naruto struggled to come up with an answer for Yagura. "Mizukage-sama-"

"Just call me Yagura. I don't deserve to be called 'sama'."

"Yagura, I don't know what you deserve, but there is one thing I do know that you need to hear." Naruto told him. "There is a man out there that wants to take over the world. He's going to use us to make that happen. By us I mean demon hosts like you and me. Part of his plan was to have you destroy Kiri so it would be one less obstacle for him later on, and for me to become some kind of lapdog without me even knowing it. He's been working on this for at least thirteen years, maybe longer, and unless people like us band together, he's going to succeed and we're going to die."

Yagura didn't respond but his eyes showed Naruto that he was listening. He continued to look at Naruto, noticing his eyes with rings in them. "You have the rinnegan. The eyes of the legendary savior of the world."

"Yeah, I'm Uzumaki Naruto-Kuramamaru, former jinchuuriki to Kyuubi no Kitsune. I'm no savior, not yet at least. The only ones I'm trying to save now are my fellow jinchuuriki."

"From this world conqueror?"

"I know it's hard to believe, and for me it was incredibly hard to accept. But I've seen the proof with my own eyes. I can prove it to you if you want when we get out of here." The former blonde told the mizukage. Standing firmly he watched the mizukage for signs of an answer, but Yagura just looked skeptical. "You may think I'm a fool for accepting help from my prisoner, but if it weren't for him I'd be some dead last in a village that only allowed me to be born so I could be a weapon for them. Who's the real mosnter then?"

"If they wanted you to be their weapon then why were you dead last? And why do you have fox tails?" Yagura interjected.

"They didn't want me to get too strong, not right away at least. They wanted me weak and stupid but capable of getting stronger when it suited them."

"My situation was different. Here in Kiri, strength is expected from a young age and jinchuuriki are no different. If anything the standards for me and my fellow jinchuuriki were higher." Yagura thinking back in his childhood with all the harsh training he went through. The training that he endured but in the end it was the training that kept him alive.

"Yagura, not to be rude, but we don't have all day to chat. We need to get you out of here, and I don't think you can do that until you give your partner a chance."

"Partner?" Yagura repeated, confused. "You mean Sanbi?"

"Yes, Sanbi" He pointed and both men looked towards the big turtle chained up behind Yagura. "He is chained up because you still won't let him do anything. Why not let him help you? Do you want to let the enemy get you?" Naruto sneered.

"But do I deserve-?"

"Yagura," Naruto got right in the mizukage's face. "Do you want to live or die?"

"Naruto-kun!" Hinata shouted just as he felt a kunai impact his left shoulder. He turned while grimacing in pain and saw the silhouette approaching him with a black sword it conjured out of nowhere.

Before it could hit him Kyuubi put his humanoid paw down to block the attack, taking the sword through his palm, if paws have palms that is, thus saving Naruto.

"What the heck?" Yagura said at seeing this.

"Thanks Kyuubi." Naruto said to the fox.

Kyuubi took the opportunity to grab the silhouette to keep it from attacking anyone else. With it trapped in his hand-paw, he looked to Naruto and Hinata. "Try to sever its connection to the host. Maybe then it will go away."

The two teens nodded and tried to break the black chains covering Yagura, which were still connected to the struggling silhouette in Kyuubi's hand-paw. But despite their attacks, the chains weren't breaking.

"Hinata-chan, do you know anything about breaking genjutsu? Because Konoha sure didn't teach me a damn thing about that." Naruto asked.

Hinata thought it over, remembering some lessons she received from her public guardian Yuuhi Kurenai. "One of the best ways to dispel a genjutsu in someone else is to send a strong enough pulse of your own chakra into the victim. This disturbs the genjutsu's hold over the victims senses and causes the genjutsu to collapse. But I don't know if that can work here."

"It's worth a try." Naruto said before placing his hands on Yagura directly, which Hinata imitated. They both tried a chakra pulse, but nothing seemed to change.

"What we're doing isn't enough. We might need to try something drastic." Naruto suggested, running out of patience.

"I have an idea." Hinata suggested, then knelt before Yagura. "Mizukage-san, what do you want? Ignore the what ifs and do I's, what do you want?"

The pink-eyed jinchuuriki thought it over for what felt like an eternity, but was probably only three seconds in the mindscape timeline. He knew that two half-foxes and a giant one were trying to free him but he didn't know if he wanted to be free, but one memory he had been suppressing for years came back to him in that span.

(Flashback)

A young Yagura was fighting an enemy ninja during the Third Shinobi War. He and his sensei had been assigned to destroy one of the oases in Land of Wind's desert thus hurting one of Suna's posts greatly in the war. The two of them were assumed to be enough, as he was the Sanbi jinchuuriki and his sensei was the Sandaime Mizukage, a man named Seoto Kurozame who had navy blue hair in a lax cut with sideburns, pale-blue eyes, muscular body, and wore a white-grey long sleeve shirt under a grey camouflage vest with pants the same color.

Disguised as Suna nin coming back to their village through a network of oasis outposts, the duo would destroy the one nearest to the borders of the country and delay the enemy army, the pair had been caught just outside the oasis and were forced to fight. It wasn't hard for the Kiri nin but Suna had the home-field advantage over the ninja who were used to fighting in wetter environments, as well as the number advantage.

The two Kiri ninja were undaunted and cut through them all, but just when it looked like the battle was over Suna revealed a surprise: A young prodigy of theirs by the name of Sasori. The young redhead had appeared right from under the sand and nearly killed them with an attack of countless senbon. The only reason they hadn't succeeded was that Yagura reflexively created some coral out of the sand to shield them.

"Impressive how you blocked my attack. But can you keep it up in such a dry place Kiri nin?" Sasori taunted with an amused smile.

The Sandaime Mizukage smiled, not the least bit worried. "Yes. There's a reason my nickname is the Moving Ocean." With that he released countless storage seals on his clothes and unleashed a huge amount of salt water, practically created an ocean right there in the desert, his chakra helping to keep the sand from soaking it up.

Sasori was caught off guard and had to stand on one of the trees of the oasis before he drowned. One thing they don't prioritize teaching in Suna was how to swim, even though they could walk on water.

Yagura pulled out his hookstaff and charged at Sasori who responded with one of his original puppets, one he liked to call the Crow. The humanoid puppet flew at the jinchuuriki and fired a barrage of senbon out of its mouth. Yagura put his hookstaff in the water and with it pulled up the water like it was putty. "Water Style Mirror Wall Jutsu." From out of the water emerged a duplicate Crow firing senbon at the original.

"Fighting a puppet master with a fake puppet?" Sasori asked. The fake Crow dispersed since it was a stringless puppet and could no longer be effective, but the original still took some damage. Nonetheless Crow came right up to Yagura and blades emerged out of the right arms, which were swung to try and cut Yagura.

He blocked with his staff. "You have no chance against Seoto-sama."

Before Sasori could reply he felt something grab his shins and hold on tightly, but the grip was inhuman. He looked down and saw octopus tentacles sticking out of the water, and looking into the water he saw a single giant octopus, clearly a summons for no such animal would be here normally.

Using his free hand Sasori grabbed a kunai and stabbed the tentacle holding his right leg. The injured limb let go but another took its place, and the octopus tried to pull him under. Sasori had no intention of getting wet though so he pulled back Crow and had it attack the octopus with a senbon attack. The octopus took the attack and withdrew but also looked mad.

"Did you really think some uncooked takoyaki would be the end of me?" Sasori taunted.

"That's not the threat you should be focused on." Yagura said as he rushed in, managing to get his large hook around the puppeteer's neck. Before Sasori could react his body was pulled up and over Yagura's in a loop, slamming him into the water.

Once he was in the water he felt two human hands grab him and pull him down. Turning his head Sasori saw Seoto, but he was different. His skin was reddish-white, not pink but more like scaled fish meat. The whites of his eyes were now a gross yellow with his pupils black as ink and his lips were a glossy brown, almost like they had turned to bronze. But the weirdest part of all was he now had six arms and not one of them appeared to have elbows anymore, rather they looked like noodles.

He had turned himself into a human-octopus hybrid.

Sasori hid his surprise well. 'So he made some changes to his body. Let him see the ones I made to mine.' With that he activated one of his hidden traps, a scorpion-like weapon attacked to his back made or a bladed whip he could maneuver just like one of his puppets.

Using his whip-tail Sasori tried to cut his captors arms off. Seoto reacted by spraying a cloud of ink, obstructing Sasori's view but not his weapon. When Sasori got out of the ink and reached the surface he didn't see the Mizukage, giving him time to try and stand on the water.

Immediately Yagura attacked with a barrage of coral kunais. He was standing on a coral platform he had created from the sand floating on the water so he had a ready source of the mineral at hand. Sasori took a hit and decided to go on the defensive. Taking out a scroll he unsealed another puppet, this one having a barrel-like body, one he called Black Ant.

"Good luck getting me now." The redhead Suna nin said before opening a hatch on the puppet and crawling inside its body cavity, closing it.

"It's just wood." Yagura said before firing more coral projectiles at the puppet. To his surprise they bounced off. "Okay, obviously a strong kind of wood." He noticed it was merely floating in the water, not being supported by chakra now. 'This puppet's probably just a shield, though it should have some sort of trick to it.'

One such trick became apparent when Crow proved still functional with Sasori in the Black Ant and tried to attack Yagura with blades on all four arms.

"Coral Wall." Yagura created a barrier made of his coral to take the hits. Sparks flew when metal met coral but neither were damaged. Nevertheless Crow kept attacking, until Seoto emerged from the water under the puppet and grabbed it, using his six tentacle-arms to pull the puppet arm. It came apart like a puzzle.

'That was too easy. It's almost like...' Seoto thought, realizing the trap too late as the pieces of Crow showed steel spikes that stabbed into him in several spots, making him yell out.

"Seoto-sensei?" Yagura said before taking his coral wall down to see the problem. He had enough time to see Sasori leave Black Ant and use Crow to lift Seoto into the air before dropping him into Black Ant, trapping him. "Release him right away."

Sasori smiled. "No problem, just after one little thing." With a flick of his wrist, Crow's parts drove into Black Ant fitting into slots and stabbing Seoto further. And if that wasn't bad enough, two blades could see seen slicing thru the center horizontally, silencing the cries of pain from within.

Yagura faltered, almost losing his balance enough to fall into the water. "N... no."

Sasori grinned and opened the hatch, dumping the sliced remains of the Sandaime Mizukage into the water. "Here you go, as promised."

Yagura grew enraged and red chakra started to cover him. "I'll kill you!"

The pink-eyed jinchuuriki must have blacked out because the next thing he remembered was being on his knees in wet sand as the sun was setting. The mini-sea Seoto had created was gone, evaporated or absorbed by the sand. Not only that, but Sasori was gone too. Yagura was mostly uninjured save for some cuts on his body and tears on his clothes, but he felt drained.

A severed hand in the sand snapped him back to reality. "Seoto-sensei!" He called out, hoping that against the odds his sensei was still alive. Getting to his feet he showered the landscape until he saw Seoto's head and upper torso but not much else. "SENSEI!" He all but screamed as he rushed up and got a closer look at the older man.

Seoto had been cleaved cleanly just below his lungs, and his blood was staining the sand. Because he had fused with one of his summons he hadn't died yet, but the strain of keeping himself fused was preventing him from healing. And to unfuse would kill him for sure. Yagura could tell that at best, the Sandaime Mizukage had minutes left.

"Yagura..." Seoto groaned, his fusion started to fall apart.

"Yes Sensei?"

"Remember... what I told you."

"What? Sensei you've told me many things." Yagura replied, confused.

"You'd be wise to remember them. But what you need to know the most is..." He coughed up some blood, frightening his student more with the chance that he'd die before he finished his last words. "Kiri needs to change. I want you to lead it into a new era... as the yondaime mizukage."

"Me?" Yagura asked. "But the village would never accept me. And if I told others what you said they'd never believe me."

"I have a notarized will. No one can dispute it. Upon my death you become my successor." Seoto said as his eyes returned to normal, meaning his death was getting closer.

"But... but how am I supposed to change Kiri?"

(End Flashback)

'Wait, why can't I remember what came next?' Yagura asked himself, finding his memory hazy all of a sudden. He struggled to make it come to him, but it couldn't. 'Kill those that oppose you', 'Purify it of those that have no place in our world', and 'Make the Bloody Mist bloodier' came to mind, but the voice wasn't that of his senseis. Not only that, when he heard those the silhouette chains on him grew tighter, almost cutting into him.

'Could the genjutsu be affecting my memory as well as my ability to control myself?' He asked.

As he asked himself that he saw Naruto and Hinata were back to fighting the silhouette, meaning it had gotten out of Kyuubi's hand while he was lost in memory. They were fighting in a joint style, indicating the two had trained together. They landed hits that appeared to disrupt the silhouette but it always recovered from the damage it took. Seeing them fight reminded Yagura of the times he fought alongside Seoto, and the animal features both had reminded him further of his late sensei.

"Why do you fight?" He called out.

Naruto responded without even looking back. "Because Kiri has to change." Thinking of Zabuza but also the others who are fighting to have Kiri change, not only a few people but the whole nation.

"And how are you supposed to change Kiri?" Yagura asked, wondering what their answer to his own dilemma was.

Hinata ducked under a strike and attacked the silhouette's legs, causing it to stumble. Naruto took the opportunity to tackle it and try to beat it down. Hinata meanwhile looked at the yondaime mizukage. "By trying to make it so hatred is no longer encouraged and rewarded. A lesson all the villages need to learn."

Yagura's eyes widened as Hinata's words made him finally recall what Seoto had really told him just before he died: "Quench the bloodlust. It was a mistake to make Kiri shinobi crave the blood of enemy and comrade alike. If it continues, Kiri will only dig its own grave with a sword."

'Seoto-sensei, you wanted me to stop the genocide, not reinforce it.' Yagura realized in shock.

"Hinata-chan, did you see that?" Naruto said, referring to the silhouette he was trying to pummel.

"Yeah, it sort of went out of focus for a second. What did that?" Hinata replied, trying to beat it while Naruto kept it down.

"I don't know, but that proves it's not invincible." Naruto stated.

"Boy, girl!" Yagura called out, and they briefly looked at him, seeing him now struggle against his chains. "I have your answer for you. I want to live, whether I deserve it or not."

"Then fight back with us." Naruto told him.

Yagura nodded. "I hope this works." He told himself before letting go of the chains he was holding that restrained the Sanbi.

With that the chains seemed to crumble into dust, allowing Sanbi to finally stand and move, much to the two bijuus surprise. "I'm... I'm free?" The giant turtle asked in disbelief.

"Here maybe, I bet you're still trapped in your host though." Kyuubi told him. "Deal with that later. I think your host is finally asking you for help."

Sanbi looked at Yagura then at the silhouette, which stared back at the three-tailed demon. Sanbi lifted one of his three shrimp-like tails and brought it down towards his target. The silhouette jumped aside just before the massive tail could crush it, but before it could land Naruto sneaked in behind it and punched it in the back hard enough to make it go right to the tail. The tail then curled around the shadow figure and lifted it up. Because of the chains Yagura was dangling right under it.

"I really hate chains." Kyuubi said casually as he reached out and used a claw to cut across them, not completely sure that would work. To his relief it did work and he caught Yagura before he fell too far.

On the ground Yagura wrestled out of his black chains, which were evaporating as he struggled. "Thanks everyone, but the problem's not over yet. The fight's still going on in the real world." He said as he straightened out his scarf. Sanbi meanwhile constricted the silhouette while burning it with his chakra until the thing fell apart, signifying the end of the genjutsu over Yagura.

"Do you think you-know-who will be able to know the genjutsu is gone?" Naruto asked Hinata.

"He might, I'm not sure. If he does he'll likely try to recast it and make it stronger than this one." She replied. "This genjutsu must have been designed simply to overpower the host and keep attempts to free him blocked, but it couldn't fight off a bijuu. Namikaze must have figured Yagura would never have let Sanbi help him even here. He won't make that mistake twice no less."

"I can't be Mizukage anymore. The war will not end as long as I live, the rebels want my blood too much to accept otherwise." Yagura commented, then looked like he got an idea. "Unless..."


"Yuge-sama!" Zabuza shouted when he saw his leader skewered by one of the Mizukage's guards.

'Why didn't my substitution work?' Yuge asked himself as he tried to get himself off the blade. What he didn't know was that Yagura had ordered all the training logs in Kiri destroyed so rebels couldn't use the substitution technique within village walls. The rebels never thought to bring new logs to use, but rather chose to rely on the ones already in Kiri they knew the locations of. By the time they realized their targets for the switch were just ash, it would be too late to escape or find something else to switch with.

The guard then knocked Yuge to the ground, pulling his sword out in the process. Yuge turned and tried to cover his wound, but doing so meant he had no free hands. Zabuza and another rebel immediately came to his side while a medic kunoichi tended to his wound.

"You don't actually think you can stop us or save him do you?" Kisame asked, confident they could only fail.

"Maybe not both, but definitely one or the other." Zabuza replied, both swordsmen staring each other down brandishing their trademark weapons.

"Momochi Zabuza," The other guard said, getting the eyebrow-less ninja to look at him, then he pointed at him as if to single him out. "Don't think you can win here."

Rather than respond Zabuza went in for a quick kill. Creating mist would have been pointless as Kisame too had been taught to fight in low visibility and offensive water jutsu wouldn't have been as effective against the fishman either. Kenjutsu was virtually his only option.

Swinging his sword at an open side he thought Kisame was a goner, but his sword was stopped. But that's not what bothered him. 'What? He was completely open, but my sword hit something other than him.' A couple of seconds after he felt Kubikirbocho collide with something he saw that Kisame had maneuvered Samehada to block. 'I felt the block before I saw it. What's going on?'

Kisame charged at him with a fist. "You're getting slow Zabuza." He taunted and Zabuza felt the punch before he saw the fist even connect, and it hit his gut in a spot he knew the fist wasn't touching once he did see it.

'That other guy got me in a genjutsu.' Zabuza realized as he backed away. 'He must have made it so my eyes don't process what I see as soon as I see it. Like everything I see already happened and I'm only now seeing it a few seconds too late to react properly.'

Using his ears Zabuza could tell Kisame was trying for another attack even though his eyes told him otherwise. Taking a chance he swung his sword low to catch his opponent's legs and cleave them right off. He did cut Kisame's calves but just enough to draw blood and cut the muscle, not enough to cut the bone.

His muscles cut, even Kisame had to stop moving but the momentum he already built up made him lose his balance and fall on his face. 'Dammit, I better heal fast.' He said as he started drawing chakra out of Samehada to undo the damage to his legs.

At that time Zabuza had to break his left pinky, something that wouldn't hinder his ability to hold a sword. But the pain did its job and snapped him out of the genjutsu on him. Seeing Kisame down he turned to see the other guard, who had already slain the two rebels around Yuge and was being blocked by Yuge using a metal arm guard.

The masked guard then pulled out a kunai with his free hand. Yuge blocked this one with his other hand, drawing blood but saving himself. The guard did not look impressed. "Foolish rebel, you're already bleeding badly yet not only to do you stop applying pressure to the wounds you create another on top of it. Do you wish to die?"

"If I can help my forces win then I'll gladly die for the rights of others to live in their own home." Yuge hissed.

"Yuge-sama no!" Zabuza countered, moving in for a kill strike on the guard who performed a substitution with the rebel leader, forcing Zabuza to strike Yuge instead of the guard. "N... no." Zabuza said in horror once he say what he had done.

"Looks like we're done here." The guard said before going to Kisame and shushining with him away.

"Yuge-sama, can you hold on?" Zabuza asked despite knowing the answer. Just from the looks of wounds it was a wonder the redhead man was still alive.

"No, I'm a goner." Yuge wheezed then coughed some blood. "Zabuza, two things. First, make sure the rebellion doesn't die with me. Help keep people's hopes up. Second, if we win, tell my daughter... I want her... to take... my... place..." With that he closed his eyes and passed on.

'Mei is not going to like this.' Zabuza thought before steeling his nerves to finish the fight for the rebels.


Mei herself saw a red-haired man take a hold of Yagura and push him into a submissive position while Naruto and Hinata were helping keep the pink-eyed jinchuuriki down. For a moment it looked like they were in a staring contest, then after a bit everyone seemed to relax.

But that didn't last long. Yagura ripped his arms out of Naruto and Hinata's grasp and started a quick set of hand signs. "If I'm going down you're going with me." Naruto and Hinata grabbed a kunai each to stop him but they were too late. "Water Style Condensation Destruction Jutsu."

Between Yagura's hand there was the beginning of an orb of water, steadily getting larger and brighter with chakra. When it got as large as a grapefruit the brightness from it began to pulse steadily, getting marginally brighter each time.

Mei paled, recognizing this from a scroll of jutsu the rebels had taken with them when they left to hinder the loyalists. This jutsu was a last resort tactic, to be more specific a suicide jutsu. What it did was collect moisture in the air along and condense it greatly, before it finally explodes with enough force to make every water droplet, and there were millions of them upon explosion, act like a senbon charged with wind chakra. With the castor being at point-blank range and unable to get away from it before it exploded, it was of course a suicide tactic.

'If that thing goes off we're all dead.' Mei worried, seeing the mists of Kiri being absorbed into the water ball. Kiri had enough moisture in its air to make this one have maximum damage potential. No one would survive if they were caught in it.

'I'm sorry kids, but if I don't do this then all our work will be for nothing.' Mei thought with a heavy heart as she prepared a jutsu. "Lava Style Molten Container Jutsu." She planted her hands on the ground, and around Yagura and those close to him a dome of magma burst from the ground and surrounded them. With this, the lava would stop the water blast, and only the people inside would die from it.

The lava dome held up but it quivered after a moment, making Mei think the jutsu bomb had gone off. 'With access to moisture cut off it couldn't get much bigger.' She thought, then was left with the quandary of withdrawing the magma or letting it drop and destroy the bodies. 'Maybe the kids can be saved.' She decided.

But before she could enact her intention, Zabuza came up to her. "Mei-sama, your father was just killed."

"What?" Mei asked in horror. And in that moment, her hold on the lava was lost, making the magma dome collapse rather than rescind. Saving any survivors inside it was now too late.


The battle for Kiri continued for another twenty minutes, and it was a brutal one. News of Terumi Yuge's death was spread and while it affected their morale it also boosted their desire to win. None moreso than Mei, who burned boiled and melted her way thru the kekkei genkai haters of Yagura's reign. News of Yagura's death affected their moral and desire to win too, but the Terumi bloodline overpowered them. Within twenty minutes, those still alive had conceded.

"It's over." Mei told the gathered rebels outside the Mizukage Tower when the loyalists had surrendered.

"Is the Yondaime dead?" One of the rebels asked.

Mei nodded. "Yagura performed a suicide technique that would have been the end of all of us. I stopped him from destroying Kiri but in the process killed himself and the two who helped make this invasion possible. We will probably never know for certain if he really was being controlled by a sharingan, but the important thing is that we have won. After all the blood shed and lives lost, Yagura's reign of terror is over."

Everyone cheered to their heart's content, unaware that outside the village two things were going on right then.


"Wow, it worked. Better than I thought it would."

Outside Kiri's walls stood Naruto, Hinata, and Kyuubi in human form, along with Yagura, none of them hurt from what Mei had seen. Yagura had indeed performed a lethal suicide jutsu but he canceled it as soon as Mei obstructed her own view with the lava dome. The kitsunes then reverse-summoned themselves to escape the dome while Yagura performed a substitution with something he left outside the village for just such an occasion. Naruto, Hinata, and Kyuubi then came back to confirm he had survived, but as far as Kiri was concerned, all four of them were dead.

"I told you it would work." Yagura said, proud that the plan he shared in the mindscape went off so well.

"But we can't stay here much longer or else everyone will know it was a ruse." Hinata pointed out.

"Where will you go?" Naruto asked.

"I don't know. I'm bound to be recognized sooner or later. I do want to go find my comrade Utakata and give him the warning you gave me. Maybe even give that brat Shinju a piece of my mind if I can keep my identity safe. I can only hope the threat you speak of hasn't gotten to him yet. From there, I'll probably just leave Mizu no Kuni and try to find a place where I can try and learn to put things right with Sanbi, as they should have been." Yagura answered. "What about you two?"

"We still need more training. And we need to find the other jinchuuriki and warn them." Naruto answered.

"I'll make it a little easier on you for that. I can tell you where some of the jinchuuriki are." Yagura suggested.

Both teens were surprised to hear that. "You can? How do you even know where they are?" Hinata asked.

"All villages have spy networks. I've learned a thing or two as Mizukage, including the identity of some jinchuuriki. One is in Taki, and two are in Iwa."

Hinata arched an eyebrow. "Taki? The Hidden Waterfall Village? Why would one of the minor villages have a jinchuuriki?" To the preteens it made no sense that such a minor village would get their hands on a biju but also know how to make a jinchuuriki no less.

"That was Hashirama's decision." Kyuubi pointed out. "I remember from Mito that he had almost been assassinated by a greedy Taki nin, and the Waterfall Village was in a panic over it. They were frightened that they were going to lose their ally and be at risk for war. Hashirama knew that the only way to settle their fears was a grand gesture, so he gave them the Nanabi as well as instructions on how to contain him. All he asked was for Taki to never use the jinchuuriki against Konoha and to treat the jinchuuriki with respect and kindness."

Naruto could not resist the scoff. "Yeah, I bet that happened."

Kyuubi looked at Yagura. "I already have a good idea which bijuu went to which village. What I don't know is the identity of their containers. Can you tell us anything in that regard?"

Yagura thought it over. "The two from Iwa are definitely male and older than me."

"No offense Yagura, but some people might think I'm older than you if they didn't know better." Naruto commented.

Yagura silently groaned but deep down he was glad to have someone talk to him like a person again. Something like that he missed greatly and wished to keep longer if he could. "I'll have you know I'm in my thirties little boy. I'm old enough to be your father."

Naruto frowned at the wording. "I have no father."

Sensing he should avoid the subject, Yagura cleared his throat. "Anyway, Taki would be the easiest to get to soon but the jinchuuriki would not be easy to identity. I'm not certain of their gender or skill, but I have heard they are young and I have reason to believe they're a girl. The two Iwa jinchuuriki I've personally met on the battlefield before so I can tell you exactly how to identify them. One is a redhaired guy with a beard called Roshi that uses magma and the other is a tall guy named Han who wore a suit of steam armor and can be best described as malicious. Here, maybe I should henge as them for you. Keep in mind these are based on how they looked years ago."

With that Yagura henged into a somewhat younger Roshi and Han respectively.

"Thanks Yagura, though actually finding these guys and the others is going to be difficult and get in the way of our training. Kyuubi-sensei, do you know any ways to communicate with the bijuu long-distance?" Hinata asked.

Kyuubi smiled. "As a matter of fact I do, but I'm afraid right now it wouldn't work. You see, when we're sealed away in humans those seals block off our shared mindscape so we can't communicate with each other that way until we're freed. We can get our jinchuuriki to help us access it with us, but it only works if they're in sync with us and the recipient is in sync with their bijuu as well. Under the circumstances we can't make that kind of connection unless we repeat what we did with Yagura and use our chakra on him simultaneously with Naruto using his rinnegan. So either way we'd have to find the jinchuuriki directly."

"Damn." Naruto muttered under his breath.

"Where should we go first?" Hinata asked.

"Back to Kuo. You two need to resume your proper training. Right now you'd be of no help to the other jinchuuriki beyond moral support, and that's not enough to save a life." Kyuubi told them.

"Yes Sensei." Both teens replied obediently.

"Anything else I can provide for you?" Yagura asked.

"Yeah, can you tell me anything about past interactions with Kiri and the Uzumaki clan?" Naruto asked. Wondering what the rebels didnt tell him, he hoped that Yagura might know something that can help his cause.

Yagura nodded. "Yes, I can."


"So the host is dead?" Kisame asked his partner, who took off his mask and revealed himself to be Uchiha Itachi in disguise.

"It would appear so, but I didn't sense any dissipating bijuu chakra. Did you?"

"I wouldn't know what to sense. How would you?" The fishman said as he sat down and worked on bandaging his sore calves. The bleeding had stopped and the muscles were mending, but the injury was still sore and the nerves were aching.

"I'll never forget that day when I was seven and the Kyuubi came to Konoha's doorsteps. I imagine that a bijuu dying would be similar to that sensation I got on that day." Itachi explained.

"Not quite." Kisame commented. "You felt a bijuu arrive, not a bijuu die. I imagine comparing the two would be like comparing the beginning of a storm to the end. Or an entry wound to an exit wound."

"Maybe you're right. Maybe it's no different than when a person or animal dies. The chakra just goes away, for a time at least." Itachi replied.

"But during that time that chakra is completely useless. We've got no way to gather it, nowhere to put it, and nowhere to transport it." Kisame noted.

Itachi nodded. "Indeed. It appears all we can do is wait for the Sanbi to revive itself and capture it then when it's vulnerable."

"Leader-sama isn't going to like this." Kisame groaned, standing up and testing if his feet could handle the weight of his body. So far they could. "He might even say we failed our mission in protecting the host until it was time to bring him in. Not only that, Kiri's back on the road to recovery and could be a problem by the time the Sanbi returns. If I were Leader-sama, I'd say we screwed up big time here."

"Perhaps. Maybe we should perform a little extra here to make up for our incomplete objective. Maybe even get rid of the Daimyo to throw the country into anarchy even if only for a short time?"

Kisame chuckled. "Personally I think leaving that girl in charge will cause more problems then killing her will, but you know what? I'm still in a mood for some blood so I won't object. Hunting down the other jinchuuriki is pointless for the time being so we might as well have some fun making life hard for the rest of the world."

"Actually, maybe we should contact Leader-sama so we can make it up to him properly."

Kisame just looked at his partner. "You're losing your backbone now?"

Itachi shook his head. "Not at all. Your phrasing just a while ago made me consider that maybe we need to report right away rather than risk going too far and possibly compromising future plans of his."

Kisame shrugged. "Alright but you do it. I'm not in the mood for reporting. You talk to the big guy and I'll go get us some real sake before we leave. If I'm not going to be home for a long time I'm getting one last drink before I leave."

The fishman then left, walking moderately, and Itachi used his ring to contact another member of the Akatsuki. After a moment a hologram appeared in front of him of a man's silhouette, lacking all features except the outline and the man's eyes, which were dark black right now.

"Ah Itachi, what's the occasion?"

"I have bad news to report. The civil war in Kiri ended much sooner than anticipated. I believe somehow the rebels got access to someone very talented in genjutsu and was able to disrupt your genjutsu on the Mizukage."

"What?"

Itachi nodded. "The Mizukage was in the battle directly, and unfortunately I was occupied with the rebels so I could not get back to him before he enacted a suicide jutsu. That leads me to believe the genjutsu you placed on him faltered and in his horror he wanted to kill himself before you returned. Even if I had gotten to him in time, we both know I only had the power to prolong and reinforce the genjutsu, not recreate it."

The hologram nodded. "True, that was why I had you cover for me while I had to take care of some business Itachi."

"How goes the hunt for the Kyuubi jinchuuriki Tobi-sama?" Itachi asked, knowing that the 'good boy' of the Akatsuki was the real leader, even if he had no idea who Tobi really was. He thought it was a fellow Uchiha, not someone masquerading as one.

"Fruitless. Wherever he is he is hiding good. Too good to be unassisted. Konoha was left specific instructions regarding the handling of the jinchuuriki so there is no way the boy could be good enough to have escaped on his own for this long and take another with him. The problem remains that we have no leads in the search."

"Sir, is it at all possible that the Kyuubi itself is assisting the jinchuuriki?" Itachi asked.

The hologram was silent for a moment. "I suppose it's not impossible, but I don't see how it could be true. Bijuus aren't exactly subtle creatures, not to mention the boy still had to do the act of leaving. The most likely answer is those lousy insurgents who support jinchuuriki rather than dominate them. Some of them had to move the boy somewhere safe. We just can't find out where yet."

"What about Orochimaru? He could have done it."

"Hmm... you may be on to something there Itachi. But if he isn't a part of this, then approaching him would alert him that there is a free jinchuuriki out there. Can you find a way to see if he has the boy without him knowing you're there?"

Itachi thought it over for a second. "I am not sure. I know he failed to defeat me once, but he might have something new up his sleeve this time. If I do this, I will have to approach this with caution rather than speed."

"Very well. And with the death of my puppet Mizukage I'm afraid the Sanbi will not be around for a number of years so we will have to postpone our efforts to capture the jinchuuriki. I'll get Nagato to continue the search but limit efforts to just search and monitor until we have reason to believe the Sanbi is back in the world." It was quite clear that 'Tobi' was not happy by these events.

"I'll do my best Tobi-sama."

"Actually Itachi, let me do this job. I could use something to take my mind off this."

Itachi was surprised. "You're going to go see Orochimaru yourself?"

The hologram nodded. "Yes. I believe I can handle him quite effectively." His voice held a hint of mirth, like he had something in mind he couldn't wait to see happen.


"Umm... Orochimaru-sama?" A young boy said to the rogue sannin days after the civil war in Kiri ended.

"What is it Zaku?" Orochimaru asked, annoyed that he had been interrupted before indulging in one of his more normal past times, working on a crossword puzzle. Yes even Orochimaru sometimes had to take a break from being a researched and mad scientist and do something normal to keep himself from going crazy. Sinister he may be, delusions of grandeur too, but he wasn't crazy (his mother had him tested) and he intended to stay that way.

"Someone's here to see you. He says it's about Konoha."

That certainly got the pale sannin's attention. Being more curious than cautious, he put down his crossword puzzle and stood up. "Show me this person."

Zaku led the man who saved him from cold homelessness to outside the underground base. Before they got outside Orochimaru created a mud clone and put a recording device on it, so in case anything happened he'd get a record of what was said.

The clone went outside and saw a masked man leaning against the wall. After a moment he recognized the outfit right away. "Why is someone from Akatsuki here?"

"I just thought I'd tell you that Konoha's vulnerable right now." The masked man told him.

"Why should I believe you?" Orochimaru asked, knowing that Akatsuki wouldn't go out of their way to help him.

"You shouldn't, but maybe you'll listen to your spies in Konoha. I just thought I'd get your interest up again. Best time to strike is the chuunin exams. What better time to get into a shinobi village?" The masked Akatsuki member said before disappearing. Not by shushin or substitution, he just vanished.

'That was weird.' The clone said before going back to the original and dissolving.

Orochimaru soon listened to the recording, however brief it was. "That was weird, but it is worth a look into."


"Hokage-sama?" A toad asked as it appeared on Sarutobi's desk.

'So close.' The old man rued as his hand was millimeters away from reaching his Icha Icha, but now he drew it back. "Yes. Any word from Jiraiya or Yondaime-sama?"

"Namikaze-sama says he has found no trace of the missing boy. But he has an idea. He intends to make something happen that will hopefully force the boy to come back to Konoha."

Sarutobi arched and eyebrow. "I'm listening."

"The boy may have left Konoha, but for years he was ingrained to feel a sense of love for it. It's unlikely that has been completely obliterated. So if the boy believed Konoha was in trouble, likely a great kind of trouble, then he should feel compelled to do something about it." The toad explained.

Sarutobi thought it over. "Understandable, but highly risky. There's no guarantee the boy would do anything. If anything he might just leave Konoha alone more and let it suffer."

The toad nodded. "True, but that works for your benefit as well. Namikaze-sama feels that if a disaster of great proportion were supposedly befalling Konoha, the boy should inquire about it in some way, giving your ninja a greater chance of finding him. And if not, you can use the crisis and say an enemy just happened to acquire some form of proof that the boy is Namikaze's son and it conveniently made it's way to Iwa."

Sarutobi smirked. "So, Naruto either comes back thus exposes himself to us or we send Yondaime-sama's enemies after him to look for us and eliminate the problem for us. It's good, though in the latter case we risk loosing the Kyuubi."

"It will reform and be vulnerable to being resealed." The toad reassured.

"So how do we get Naruto's attention?" Sarutobi asked.

"Namikaze-sama is already on that. He is going to set up an invasion."