It was bitingly cold in the audience chamber. Breath fogged upwards from around the table. People shivered despite the fact that they were indoors and that somebody had possessed the sense to equip each seat with a heated cushion and footrest.

Gaara barely noticed. He stared blankly at the sheets of paper in his hands, letting Kakashi's endless report wash over him unheeded. His thumb rubbed softly over the white margin, the words gradually merging into senseless black smudges. He closed his eyes…

"…Kazekage-dono?"

Gaara started upright, staring wide-eyed at the Tsuchikage. A large white cloud of frozen breath blossomed in front of the Kazekage's face and he blinked rapidly a couple of times before he shook his head. "I'm sorry," he murmured, rubbing his forehead, "I didn't quite catch that… Could you…?"

"I asked," the Tsuchikage sighed, folding his hands into a steeple in front of him, "If you could verify Kakashi-san's report? I asked that four times now. Are you sure you're feeling all right?"

Gaara winced. "I'm fine," he muttered, holding up a hand to ward off the inquiry, "I just have a lot on my mind. Sorry."

The Tsuchikage shot him a sideways glance, evidently still concerned. "Kakashi was just telling us about the opponents you faced," Tsunade prompted helpfully from beside Gaara, "He felt you might have something to add?"

"Hn," he nodded, looking into the round. They were assembled, all six of them including the Raikage, around the same small table in the conference room. The last of the hidden village leaders to arrive was a broad, muscular man, dark-skinned with a tiny goatee, bushy eyebrows and white hair bound back over his head in cornrows. Some way from the paper-strewn table, nearer the door, stood Kakashi with his hands clasped behind his back and his body angled so they could all see him easily. He was unusually lackadaisical, even for him. Gaara guessed that the temperature in the room was getting to him.

"I was saying," Kakashi continued, filling the silence as the Kazekage examined him, "Our original enemy consisted of a group what were, or were once, children. They seem to possess a particular type of jutsu enabling them to produce a particularly vicious smoke, which they used as weapon. I presume it was controlled with the use of chakra. Once away from them it was able to attain a certain amount of solidity, enough for a strangle-hold, and it… it seemed almost to possess a consciousness of its own."

"It was as if a part of them became the smoke," Gaara muttered, leaning back in his chair and dropping his papers on the table, "Full of nothing but a malicious intent to kill."

"Consciousness projection?" Seishin's daimyo looked up sharply, whistling softly through his teeth, "Nobody's heard of that being done for years…" The remainder of the room stared at him.

"What do you mean?" the Mizukage turned, "What's 'Consciousness Projection'?" She leant forward instinctively and the Tsuchikage craned his neck, trying to see passed her.

"It's an old jutsu," the daimyo grunted, scratching the side of his head and moving backwards in his chair, "Practised by an off-branch of the Rowna Clan. That's our resident physic clan – I believe some of you met them; tribe of sassy, stuck-up Amazons, the lot of them. " He paused, looking down at the table in contemplation. "This particular jutsu involved casting some of your own mental energy into an inanimate object, causing it to temporarily come to life," the words came out rather more fiercely now as he focused on his recollections, "The lifespan of the jutsu is usually limited by the chakra of the caster, but it can be prolonged or you can widen the affected area widened by allowing it absorb the chakra of others around it." Tsunade blinked, listening intently. "All told, it's a pretty remarkable skill," the daimyo went on, "But unfortunately it was pretty much exclusively possessed by a particularly troubled branch of the clan and they've all but died out. We've got a few descendants left here and there, mixed with other branches, but this particular jutsu was thought to be entirely extinct. I'm quite surprised to hear of it now." He finished, his nose and mouth pressing against his fist as he glowered at the tabletop.

"It wasn't limited to smoke," Gaara interrupted, looking at him, "They seemed to be able to combine it with other elements around them, forging still stronger opponents out of rock and water."

The daimyo nodded. "That'd certainly be in the realms of possibility," he murmured, his eyes still fixed downward, "There are records of a couple of Rowna able to do that similar things with their own chakra."

The Raikage exchanged a worried glance with the Tsuchikage. "You keep mentioning these Rowna," he began, with Tsunade nodding at him encouragingly, "Any chance they are involved?"

A derisive snort emitted from the daimyo, and he glanced up, shaking his head at the Raikage. "I'd say not so much as your Mum's eyeball. No chance that I could think of, no," he laughed good-naturedly, shrugging as he sat back in his chair, "I'll be honest. I've got a bit of thing going on with the Rowna at the moment – it's not making them friendly towards the official government, but the Rowna have been here longer than even the shinobi clans. They're fiercely loyal, patriotic-like and protective of their lands and their people – and they don't give a rat's chewed tail about anything from beyond their own island. I can't see why they'd need or even want to have soldiers of this kind of capacity. Anyway, they'd slit their throats before they did anything that'd harm a kid. Children are sacrosanct to the Rowna. I guess that's a woman thing too…" He waved a clawed hand across his eyes, dismissively.

"What else can you tell us about these children?" the Mizukage inquired, turning towards Gaara and Tsunade, "I believe you brought one back with you…"

"They are definitely not natural," Gaara murmured, rubbing his brow, "It seems as if someone is deliberately creating them with these abilities. My siblings and I came across what appeared to be a dumping station for several unsuccessful experiments. The child we brought back was one of these." The Raikage winced unhappily and the Mizukage glanced down at her fingernails with an unusual amount of interest.

Tsunade only nodded, straightening, "Shizune and I are still only about half-way through our analysis of him," she railed off, reaching absently for a few of her notes scattered on the table before her, "But we would agree that someone appears to have tampered with his DNA. How successful that someone was or what abilities the child has developed from that remain to be seen." She flicked absently through a few pages, looking for her place as she reached for a glass of water and took a sip. The Tsuchikage made an impatient grunting noise. She glared at him. "The research papers the Kazekage's team brought along with the child were most useful though," she carried on, setting down the glass and adjusting the page as she found what she was looking for, "There are multiple references to 'failing to develop suitable mental connections' and 'retaining too much individual identity'. It seems as if they were actively trying to remove the very essence of these children's personality and consciousness, turning them into a multiple drones with a single hive mind. This collective mind then seems to respond to orders placed by a controlling consciousness on the same mental wavelength. Like a Queen Bee with her workers." The Mizukage widened her eyes, straightening up. She was impressed, despite herself.

"Or a Queen Ant," the Raikage muttered darkly. He shifted and glanced irritably at his hands. The word 'bee' appeared to have antagonised him for some reason.

Tsunade barely blinked. "If you like," she shrugged, addressing Gaara instead, "That appears to have been the reason these children followed you for as long as they did. The child you brought with you hadn't fully lost his own mind, but its seems his mental presence still projected on a similar wavelength, so the others could sense him and followed him as if he were their 'Queen Ant'." She shot the Raikage an amused glance as she used the term. "Presumably attracted by a consciousness stronger than their own," she finished. The daimyo whistled softly between his teeth and the Mizukage sat up in alarm, her long tresses of hair fluttering over her shoulders. On the other hand, the Raikage just looked blank, as if he was running the conversation back through his mind a second time just to try and understand it.

Gaara frowned. "They were attacking us long before that though."

"Indeed," Tsunade nodded, dropping her papers back on the table and sitting back, "It's likely that this was under orders by their real 'Queen' mind to protect the island, but there seems to be a limit to the range they can sense each other from. That's why I suspect later on they were following the child rather than orders."

The Tsuchikage closed his eyes. "So somebody on that island knows we were there," he grunted disparagingly.

Tsunade nodded again. "Almost certainly."

"Do you think they could still sense the child if they come close enough?" the Mizukage interjected, leaning forwards and addressing both Tsunade and Gaara with an anxious expression, "What about the ones that followed you? Could they still sense him?"

It was the daimyo who interrupted her with a wave of his hand, drawing everyone's attention back towards himself. "My hime informs me that the various members of the Rowna Clan who treated the boy, shortly after his arrival, successfully sealed the child's mind back into his body," he rolled his eyes, waving his hand again in apparent frustration, "Whatever that means. Damned if I know, you'd have to ask her. She also informs me that she knocked your pursuers so far out to sea she doesn't think they would even know where Seishin is, let alone return. Chances are they just went home again."

"There seems to be a lot of telepathy going on around here," the Raikage grumbled, kneading his forehead with his hands, "Must be a Seishin influence…"

"My jounin certainly think so," the daimyo sighed, pushing away a stack of papers on the table. It collapsed in on itself, spilling over in a messy heap of printed white.

The assembled kages simply stared at him. "What on earth do you mean?" Tsunade demanded, turning towards him in confusion.

"I've been hearing nothing but that from one of my senior jounin after he returned from escorting your scouting party," the daimyo explained, without meeting her eyes, "Apparently some of the child's injuries reminded him of something. Now you're talking of Rowna type abilities and DNA… He won't damn shut up about it." He sat back in his chair, rubbing his eyes. He suddenly seemed very old and very tired.

Tsunade straightened, exchanging confused looks with the other Kages. "Bodily injuries, you mean?" she inquired, leaning back towards him, "There seemed to be some strange circular patterned bruises on the child's skin, as if he's been hit with an engraved circular object… and there was something weird embedded in his neck. It seemed to stretch right back into the nerves of his spine…" She tapped her finger on the table as she listed each item.

The daimyo closed his eyes. His face had grown so ashen that one might be forgiven for thinking Tsunade had just pronounced his death sentence. "So that's true then," he mumbled, hunched over in his chair with is head bowed, "Maybe that boy-ninja of ours has a point after all…"

The Mizukage leaned forward on her folded arms, fixing him straight in the eye. "Please elaborate." It wasn't really a request.

He did not reply for quite a while. Instead he sat there, staring at his hands as if looking for some kind of inspiration. "I wonder," he began at last, sitting upright in his chair and staring coldly into the round. He seemed to have made up his mind about something, "How much do you know about Seishin's hime?"