Hi, reader! I hope you had a great 4th of July and/or are continuing to have a peaceful and prosperous Ramadan.

Haku

Haku searched through two more of the Coral Pavilion's lonely, spare but elegant chambers before deciding that such efforts were useless. The place was completely empty and, more than that, unnervingly devoid of furnishings or anything even suggestive of habitation – no wear patterns, scratches or stains, no dust or even a stray cobweb. It also turned out to be far larger on the inside than it had appeared from outside, leading Haku to surmise that he might spend the rest of his life exploring rooms that, for all he knew, didn't exist until the moment he opened the door to them. The way out too had vanished as if it had never been. Whatever was to happen now he had no control over. He would just have to wait.

The notion that none of this was real, not even the mythical Coral Pavilion, but only a illusory pageant created by Itachi's genjutsu trickled though his mind like cold water, playing on the gloomier, more pessimistic reaches of his imagination. Perhaps he and Naruto and the others had not been miraculously rescued by a handful of the 108 Demons after all. Maybe they were all still back in that courtyard imprisoned within their own minds, awaiting whatever fate the two Akatsuki saw fit.

Letting out a breath, Haku went to a screened window panel and slid it open. Whatever the case at least he could enjoy a view. Outside, the glassy waters of the lake that bounded the Coral Pavilion reached toward the walls of the surrounding apartment blocks, reflecting their bleak facades and the luminous, cloud-slathered sky above so perfectly that it was if the buildings rested on mirrors.

A pretty enough prison anyway, he considered.

An unexpected sound from behind drew him alert - a door sliding open - and for a fleeting instant of supernatural fright, he startled.

Stupid Naruto and his ghosts, Haku grumbled in exasperation as he collected himself – victim of the power of suggestion. As if any self-respecting ghost would need to use a door.

Footsteps approached and he turned. Though prepared for practically anything, the sight of this ninja still surprised him – a boy about his age, his height, skin as fair as his, but the newcomer was broader through the shoulders and had his black hair pulled back into a bushy top-knot. Serious, dark eyes penetrated from an oval face. Though Zabuza's student remembered the teenager as a shinobi of the Hidden Leaf, he wore a mist-ninja's uniform.

Haku straightened, brow knitted in thought. "Shikamaru?" he offered as the name came to him; they'd only met once in passing. "Shikamaru Nara."

The chunin joined him at the window, pushing into its light. "Good afternoon, Constable Hiroo Okame from Wave Country," he riposted with a sardonic smile, "or would you prefer Haku?"

Haku winced in acknowledgement then turned his guilty expression back toward the tenements of Friary Hill. "Haku's fine," the Demon's Apprentice admitted with a sigh, thinking that the leaf-ninja would make an exceptional prosecutor.

Shikamaru regarded the cornered constable closely, squinted then prodded him in the arm. "Huh," he grunted, apparently satisfied, then allowed, "you seem solid enough."

"Thanks, I've been working out."

"I meant that you don't seem to be a gen-jutsu or chakra clone, not like that fake Naruto who lead us here then disappeared."

Haku smiled distantly then offered, "I think it's harder than that to tell the difference." Zabuza's student's eyes widened, he gaped then and turned back to the leaf-ninja. "You…you're here to capture Naruto," he stated then grimaced as the full realization settled in. He could only imagine that the Leaf Village's Fifth Hokage had not been very happy to discover, finally, that her jinchuuriki had traipsed off to Kirigakure. Of course Naruto's ridiculous plan to cover up his absence had fallen apart; that it had lasted this long was a miracle! Of course Lady Tsunade had found out and of course she'd sent a team to retrieve him. "You mustn't be angry with him," Zabuza's disciple ventured in shaky, angry desperation. "I'm the one at fault."

Shikamaru leaned against the window jamb, deliberately casual. "And how do you figure that?"

"Because I…I knew better than to let him come." Silence passed, over which Haku abandoned the track. "Can you tell me what will happen to him?"

Shikamaru shrugged. "I don't know for sure," said the chunin, his voice cool, his words glib. "I suspect Lady Tsunade will wring his neck like a chicken, shake him out like a rug, beat him like a rented mule, use her exceptional medical powers to heal him back then repeat the process over and over until she's got it all out of her system which could take a while. Thankfully, Naruto's durable."

Haku said nothing but his face sank gloomily at the boy's arid humor. In Kirigakure, under previous regimes anyway, deserters faced a severe and lengthy excruciation followed by execution at the hands of the Mist Village's Seekers of Truth and Penitence. As for those who'd disobeyed Zabuza Momochi…well that didn't even bear thinking about.

"Look," Shikamaru added suddenly in biting earnest, "I don't know what you think's gonna happen but it'll only go so far. We're Naruto's friends too, you know."

The teenager searched the leaf-ninja's expression then returned an awkward smile, thankful to be set straight. "Of course." His comfort didn't last long. Almost at once, he returned with another blurted, breathless question: "What about -?"

"Ugh!" Shikamaru grunted, rolling his eyes in aggravation, "Chuuya and Inari are fine, alright? We dropped them off in Wave Country then had a nice little chat with Mari who told us the whole story about what you're doing here and why Naruto joined you."

"Mari," Haku seized, wide-eyed, "you talked to her? How is she? Is she -?"

"She thinks of you often and longs for your safe return," quipped the chunin briskly, cutting him off yet again. "In exchange for what she told us, she made me promise to bring you back too. Also, she's mad at you."

The young ninja blinked, taken-aback. "She…she told you that?"

Shikamaru shook his head with grave disinterest. "'Didn't have to."

Haku wilted then, leaning heavily on the window sill.

"Now that I've answered your questions," Shikamaru's phlegmatic yet somehow intense voice dogged the Demon's Apprentice, "maybe you'll answer a couple of mine."

With an air of defeat, Haku nodded.

The leaf-ninja swept his arm, gesturing at the Coral Pavilion and its surroundings. "Just where ARE we?" he gushed in tightly-restrained frustration, "what is all this?!"

As his voice died out, the rooms of the Coral Pavilion returned to their strange silence.

"There's a story behind it," replied Haku at last, finding himself surprised, almost relieved somehow that his new companion was even capable of being disconcerted.

Shikamaru blew out a breath, bent down and rested his forearms on the sill. "It seems like I got nothing but time just now so take as long as you like."

"Well…it was about eight years ago," Haku began dutifully, turning to rest his back against the jamb, "an uncommonly strong shinobi named Kisame Hoshigake renounced the oaths he'd taken to the Hidden Mist Village and went rogue. The first thing he did afterward was attack the Mist's medical research station at Durgon Atoll. One of the ninja sent to stop him was his former teammate, Kujira Okino who, they say, unwisely attempted to reason with him. In turn, Kisame maimed him, blinded him, cut off his legs but left him alive – the only one at the atoll he did. He was sending a message to his former masters, letting them know that the price they'd pay for pursuing him would be not just death but humiliation.

"Kirigakure has never held much regard for the defeated even if it's at the hands of a true monster like Hoshigake and so Kujira was hospitalized, cared for in a minimal, obligatory way but otherwise shunned for his failure to either defeat his former partner or die heroically in the attempt. Many in the shinobi world began to refer to him as 'The Manatee' for his disfigurement, made up unflattering rhymes about him."

Shikamaru's expression pained. "I'd always heard that the Mist Village was a rough place even to its own," he remarked. The young ninja's dark eyes slid toward Haku. "I know about Hoshigake too. He paid us a visit in Konoha just a little while ago, he and his partner, Itachi Uchiha. My sensei fought with him. I wish I could say he scared them off but it's more likely that they had their own reasons for leaving."

Haku frowned at the mention of the Akatsuki then made a mental note to warn the chunin that they and he hunted the same game. That was only fair but first thing's first -.

"One day," Zabuza's former student continued, "Kujira vanished. He vanished so thoroughly that not even the Mist's corps of Hunter-Ninja could find a trail to follow or rumor of what had become of him. Shortly after that, whispers of a phantom house began to circulate – a pavilion with bright red-orange columns that would just appear here and there then disappear. The story evolved that Kisame's former partner, having lost his sight and mobility, had developed his genjutsu to the point that he could bend reality, that this Coral Pavilion was The Manatee's new home – an entry point into an entire world of his creation that only surfaced into this reality on occasion…when he felt like it or when the stars were aligned or the proper rites were performed."

Shikamaru gave him a scrutinizing, dubious look.

"The details vary a lot depending on who you hear it from but the basic idea's the same," Haku explained at which the leaf-ninja closed his eyes and nodded. "I looked for the Coral Pavilion myself a few times when I was younger, searched all over Kirigakure but never found it. I remember feeling quite heartbroken. After a while I figured it was just an urban myth, a Mist Village ghost story. Anyway," the young shinobi concluded with a gesture, "that is where I believe we are. Why its owner has allowed us to discover it or, as I think now, has guided us here, maybe shepherding us along the way, I have no idea." Haku paused then, when his guest from Fire Country seemed to have nothing to say, ventured a curious look. "Was that it?"

Shikamaru cocked his head, "I was going to ask if you knew anything about what might have happened to my team: Chouji, Sakura, Kiba and Akamaru. But I think you would have mentioned it if you did."

"They're here too?" said Haku, straightening. The very idea of a team of leaf-ninja venturing into Kirigakure NOW of all times tested his imagination. His jaw tensed. This was much more than an abstract notion: he knew those people; Sakura and Kiba were his friends. And now he'd gotten them tangled up in this increasingly quixotic-seeming quest to save the Mist Village along with Naruto. "I can only think that they are prisoners of this place, the same way we are."

Again silence fell.

"So," muttered Shikamaru minutes later, "saving Kirigakure…how's that going?"

Having already gone on at length to answer the leaf-ninja's first question, this time Haku offered a much shorter answer: "Not well."

"I hadn't noticed."

"To tell you the truth, I find myself outmatched by the circumstances," he added in grim, painful honesty, skirting his grumpy companion's sarcasm. "What started out simple has snarled into this…this…"

"Clusterfuck?"

Haku nodded. "Shikamaru, Naruto once told me that you're a genius – not simply smart but an actual genius, the first and only one to be promoted from your class. Is that true?"

The chunin shrugged. "I have my moments. Being stuck in here like a bug on a glue trap isn't one of them," he answered in a more revealing tone than Haku had expected. "Whether I am or not, being thought of as a genius is mostly…troublesome compared to what it's worth."

Haku started to speak, thought better of it then fell quiet. This Shikamaru had a certain sphinxlike quality he found disconcerting, aggravated, no doubt, by concern over his missing teammates. He could hardly blame the leaf-ninja for being a touch prickly toward the fool who'd gotten them all into this mess.

"Like I said, Haku," ventured Shikamaru as if to set his thoughts aside, "I've got nothing but time so if you have something to say, now's good."

Outside, a trio of black birds streaked across the sky. Though the Coral Pavilion and the mirror-like waters of its lake were perhaps too perfect to be anything but an illusion, the Kirigakure that stretched around them looked real enough. Harder to tell was where one ended and the other began.

"I could use some advice," Haku explained then laid out, in all the detail he could remember, the full scope of the problems at hand: Inoue, Hirai, the Blood-Gifted Clans, the 108 Demons, Lord Nikai's zombie-crewed Fire-Tongue ships counting down to destroy Kirigakure, the armies of Water Country surrounding it, all of it. Shikamaru listened patiently, took the lengthy report more-or-less in stride though his expression fluxed from baseline-serious to horrified when Haku mentioned that Itachi and Kisame, both just under discussion, were right here in the Mist Village looking for Naruto also.

"Well, it all seems simple enough to me," offered Shikamaru at the end much to Haku's astonishment.

The teenager's feminine face lifted in hope and bewilderment. "What, really?"

"No, in fact I'd say it's hopeless."

Haku hung his head; the wind struck from his sails.

"I wish I could tell you something better," said the leaf-ninja, just slightly apologetic this time for having kidded him. "You seem like a decent-enough guy and I really wasn't at all sure about that. Sure, Naruto likes you and trusts you but he's way too gullible most of the time, and Kiba too but who knows what goes through his head. Trust me on this, Haku. There're a lot of things in this world that once started cannot be stopped."

The Demon's Apprentice turned to stand beside Shikamaru at the window, stared out over the water and nodded softly. "I know all that but still…is it really hopeless?" He couldn't hide the ache in his lilting, contralto voice.

"In the game everyone is playing, victory cannot be achieved as long as the other side survives. By those rules there is no middle ground, no room for compromise. Someone has to lose. Someone is going to get wiped out. Maybe that's the whole Mist Village. Maybe it's only Lord Nikai and his camp or Hirai or Inoue in theirs. That the Akatsuki are here is a whole another complication but it's for sure that nothing good ever happens when they're involved and I don't see any way of stopping them. I think you're smart enough to see that." Shikamaru's thoughtful frown was not without sympathy. "You asked for my advice. Here it is: get out while you can."

The black-haired teenager's words poured through Haku's mind. There it was in the starkest possible terms. Probably the smartest person he knew had just upheld what he most wanted to do – go home. He'd already put together in his head some beautiful sounding justifications to do just that: that he was only one person; that leaving Kirigakure was not a sign of failure or cowardice but a simple acknowledgment of his limitations; that he owed far more to Mari and his new family in Wave Country than he did to the Mist Village. But he also knew that if he did, he'd never be able to look Naruto in the eye again.

Haku grimaced as he considered that.

That wasn't it. Though his yellow-headed friend had certainly inspired him before during an uncertain and difficult time in his life and it would be nice to be able to blame him, Naruto had nothing to do with the decision he was going to make now. The truth was that if he abandoned Kirigakure to its fate he wouldn't be able to live with himself.

Haku turned back to the chunin. Sparing him the details, the Demon's Apprentice grinned demurely, batted his eyelashes, leaned towards him and asked: "What's your next best advice?"

Shikamaru's expression shifted as he dipped his head. His shoulders shook with quiet laughter. "I see it now. I see how you and Naruto got to be friends. At least he wears his crazy on the outside." The boy looked Haku up and down then added: "more on the outside, anyway. But okay, I get it. You want my brilliant 'genius of Konoha' plan that saves Kirigakure and the Blood-Gifted Clans, where no one gets killed, and everyone finds a way to live in peace and harmony, holding hands and singing songs. Fine. Think triangulation."

"Triangulation?"

Shikamaru nodded then rose. "Grab my hand." Hesitantly, Haku did. "Now, keep it right where it is. Don't let it move." The leaf-ninja pulled back, Haku matched the effort with his own. Shikamaru took hold of their coupled hands with his free one and pushed them to one side at which Haku countered similarly. "You see? You get all the forces to balance each other, equal and opposite, and thereby achieve a state of equilibrium…stalemate if you prefer. That may sound simple, and it is in concept, but translating that concept into a strategy that accounts for so many actors in the middle of a plague, a siege, a plot, the tail end of a demonic invasion, a poorly conceived coup d'état, all while somehow managing to avoid the imminent destruction of the city by naval bombardment not to mention the Akatsuki (did I leave anything out?!) is just -."

They were in a different room now. The dislocation had not been jarring or abrupt. In fact the transition had transpired quite seamlessly, naturally, the way places and times shift in dreams. From a wooden floor polished to a mirror shine, four stout columns of blazing coral hue soared up into a clerestory inhabited by carved beams braced by dragons. Occupying the center of the room atop a padded mat, a hulk of a man sat, his size intimidating despite his many scarred-over injuries, obvious blindness and that his legs were missing, having been severed at mid-thigh.

A smile creased his battle-worn face. "I knew you young fuckers would figure something out," his deep, mellow baritone voice called out to them. "Now, enough chit-chat, how do we make it happen?"

Akatsuki

The ruins of half-demolished buildings dripped with a syrup-thick mix of ichor and seawater. Atop mountains of broken masonry and splintered timbers the corpses of demons lay strewn.

"There, there, Samehada," Kisame consoled his bandage-wrapped weapon which was swollen and kinked slightly. "I know, the texture of demon chakra doesn't agree with you." He turned to his morose companion. "I would've bet a mountain of ryo that we'd scared that one demon away. I didn't figure the thing had just slinked off to round up a bunch of his little friends to come after us."

Itachi said nothing for a while but only stood by, seemingly soothed by the dimness in which he stood or rather that he seemed to draw around him. "You would, I believe, have won that bet."

"Huh, what do you mean?"

The Uchiha glanced at him. "We did impress the beast, sufficiently I think, so that it would not simply return to attack us little more than an hour later no matter how many allies it could gather. I believe there's something at work here we're not grasping."

Kisame shrugged. "Like what?"

"I don't know. I've seen many things. Having these eyes, I've seen them in ways most shinobi are blind to but I have no answer to that question, not yet."

The severity of his partner's seriousness lightened Kisame's mood. "Itachi, I hardly ever question you but you're overthinking this," said the former mist-ninja in strange good-humor. "That jinchuuriki kid just got lucky is all. It happens sometimes. He got lucky LAST time, remember? Not everything has to be a big mystery even in the ninja world."

The other Akatsuki allowed a rare smile. "Perhaps you're right," he granted. "Either way, your outlook is more useful for the moment. We're wasting time and allowing our quarry to gain even greater distance on us."

"What are you worried about? We're in the Hidden Mist Village – an island under quarantine enforced by an army and a blockade. He can't get far."

"Being that this child, barely into his teens, has escaped us twice now I no longer assume that our capturing him and delivering him to Pain is inevitable." Itachi looked up, his Sharingan eyes blazing fire red. "We shall have to increase our efforts."