Chapter 38
Jiraiya coughed and spluttered blood. He was weak in the knees, even with the help of sage jutsu. Ma and Pa weren't looking too good and might dispel at any moment. He tried to take in breath as quickly as he could, but it always got caught on blood seeping into his lungs. Shit! Ever since he came to Rain, things have been going terribly.
All around him there floated great and giant constructs of paper. Large beings made up of tiny little pieces of paper. More than any other enemy he had fought before, they were difficult to kill. No hand to hand, they might split apart at impact and try to skewer him. No genjutsu, because they were paper and it was almost impossible to tell Konan's true location to put her under anything. Only ninjutsu, and even that had its limits.
She must have been prepared. She must have been knowledgeable of his presence in Rain far before he had ever got there. Paper so thoroughly created to be quite indestructible and at such a large amount was no small feat, even if he hadn't seen his student for years and years.
Speaking of Konan, she was idly floating up in the air with those two paper angel wings she was evidently so proud of. Tiny flecks of blood stained those wings. His blood.
Jiraiya was so confused of this situation. Where were Yahiko and Nagato? Of all three of his students, those two were the best at fighting. Konan usually used up a support role.
Yet here she was, looking down on him with no emotion in her face. Jiraiya would have thought she was a robot with the look on her face being the way it was.
"Jiraiya boy," Pa said. "It's not safe. You have to pull out."
"I can't." He hissed back. "Akatsuki is planning something. She isn't the leader, so I *splutter* I need to know where he is. It could be bad."
"Jiraiya boy!" Ma yelled. "Now's not the time to be gallant. Your safety comes first."
Jiraiya took several seconds to answer. "The village's safety comes first." He looked up at Konan through his toad-like eyes. Why wasn't she doing anything? She only attacked when he attacked her, or when he tried to get out and into the open. The only answers she gave were cryptic and strange, yet she was strangely forthcoming with pieces of her plan. But he needed all of it. What sort of attack strategy the leader was planning, where the rest of the Akatsuki were, what the bigger picture was. Those were the things he needed.
He looked up at the unresponsive face of Konan. What was it that made her that way? He was her goddamn teacher. What was it he could have done to make her hate him so erroneously? What was it that he did to make such a bubbly and shy personality become so vengeful?
And why wasn't she acting?
Jiraiya pulled out a kunai and held it out in a cross hold. Several of her wing papers levitated perpendicular to the ground and folded themselves into shuriken in response. He threw the kunai at her neck just as the shuriken scattered and flew at him.
His kunai punctured her throat. Though it had no effect. The paper that made up the outer layer of her body just knit itself back together. But he had been expected that. What he had been hoping for, yet didn't expect was for the shuriken, which had been aiming for his vitals, to suddenly change direction and clip him in the arms and legs.
Despite the pain he was in, he couldn't help but smile. So that was her game. She was acting that way. What her face showed and what her heart thought were two different things. She had absolutely no intention of killing him. She just wanted to slow him down. To stall him. To keep him away from something happening.
That meant that whatever the leader of the Akatsuki was doing, he was doing it right then. And Konan was trying to keep him away from it.
There were only two places that the leader of a terroristic mercenary organization would want to go to. The land of Iron, where the kage were, or the land of Water, where the contract members were.
They might even be going to both areas. Planning to throw the Elemental Nations in chaos in one fell swoop.
No, right then, it didn't matter what exactly they were planning. It just mattered that he not be there to stop it from happening, which was a real fear that Konan and the Akatsuki had.
"Ma, Pa." Jiraiya whispered with little breath and a lot of blood in his lungs. "I take it back. We should go home no-" His statement was cut short as he had to duck more paper shuriken flying his way. Out of the corner of his eye, one of the paper constructs jumped at him and sent a giant appendage flying down at him. Jiraiya rolled out of the way and hopped to one of the walls, where he stuck on to, surveying the situation.
He was on the wall just long enough to see blades of paper cut through the air. He spewed out oil from his mouth and logged down the ones directly heading for him, every other one slicing into the concrete until almost all of them were invisible from how far they cut into it. Jiraiya jumped away from wall to wall as the paper kept peppering his previous location.
Konan wasn't pulling anymore punches. She must have figured out what he figured out and concluded that his death was unavoidable.
Jiraiya had a new directive. Cause enough destruction that he could bust out, get away from her long enough to be reverse teleported, and warn the kage of impending doom.
Oh, and send a telegram Naruto's way or something. If his wives were in danger, he should definitely know.
00000000
A few minutes before then. The mansion in the Land of Water.
Yugito was woken abruptly from her catnap in the form of a certain Sandy mistress falling in her room in a puff of smoke. The subsequent groans of pain and confusion acted as her alarm clock.
Just at Temari got up and the smoke cleared, a pillow hit her head with such force as to unbalance her and send her tumbling back to the ground. More groans pain rung out from her vocal cords.
"What the fuck?" Temari asked to no one in particular. She still didn't even know what was happening. First she was meditating on a slab of rock on a spire in Toad Mountain, then she was hurting on the hardwood floor of the mansion.
When she got up the next time, she was slightly less forthcoming with sounds of pain as she surveyed her surroundings. She looked around some, noticed the light coming in through the windows and the fact that Yugito probably shouldn't be sleeping due to the fact that there were violently pregnant women about.
She also realized who and what her hit her face.
Tucking the pillow under her arm, she walked out the doorway and into the living room to check up on Fu and Kurotsuchi and perhaps get some answers as to why she had been suddenly teleported miles and miles away.
She found Kurotsuchi and Fu snoring peacefully away on the living room couch. Within armsreach, there was a bucket full of rancid puke, and the TV was playing a sort of soothing ocean noises program.
Fu groaned a bit in her sleep and rubbed her pregnant belly. With a slight frame like hers, the pregnancy had to be hitting her harder than most. In fact, Kurotsuchi should also be affected fairly heavily from her boyish frame.
Temari tutted at such a sight. It was an accident them getting pregnant and all, but they really should have practiced safe sex a bit more heavily than just the anti-pregnancy jutsu. A combination of their youth and not exactly 'womanly' frames were wreaking havoc on their bodies.
Temari gently took the handle of the bucket and brought it over to the kitchen, where she cleaned it out. When one person was pregnant, the whole family was pregnant. When two people were pregnant, the whole family was crazy.
Temari brought the bucket back to the living room and laid it on the ground next to them. Knowing that she wasn't going to be getting any concrete answers from anyone anytime soon, she contented herself with channel surfing and ignoring the weird nap sounds that Kurotsuchi and Fu made.
After a few seconds of boredom, she clicked the TV off and started to wander around the mansion. Even if she had been there for several weeks by that point, Temari had actually never really explored the place. There was the training room, entertainment room, bathroom/baths extension, her room, Naruto's room, and the indentation in one of the hallways where a shadow clone of Naruto, who had been taken over by Kurama, was sleeping.
It would appear that bijuu had very different sleeping schedules than humans.
The only thing that was differentiated the rest of the mansion from the part she had just begun to explore were tiny little asynchronous types of things. No bedroom was arranged in quite the same way. No hallway shrubbery was placed at exactly the same spot. Nothing to denote any spectacular change in direction or appearance, but everything had a sort of eerie similarity to it. Every hallway shrub looked exactly the same, even though she knew no one cared for them. There must be some sort of function in the sealing arrangement to make the plants so similarly uniform.
Temari sighed into her palm and leaned on a wall in a uniform bedroom. She needed to find out what was wrong. The main advantage with the mansion was how protected it was, but the main disadvantage was how it was nearly impossible to get information on a nearly deserted island in the middle of buttfuck nowhere.
She did have one thing though. It was a sort of thing that had not been on her mind as of late because of a lack of reason to use it. Temari bit her thumb and made the handseals for the summoning technique, then slammed her hand against a wall. Sealing arrays spread out from them and in a puff of smoke, out popped her personal summon Kamatari.
He looked around a bit and held the giant kama that he came with threateningly in all directions before he turned his attention back to Temari.
"Temari-sama, what is the meaning of this? There is no danger." He said in a gravelly voice.
She knelt down and rubbed his head. "I know," she said. "There's this thing I need your help with. It's not combat related."
He growled a little bit. "I'm a warrior. I fight. That is what I am summoned for. I do not enjoy idle chit-chat." He said harshly.
"I'm not asking for idle chit-chat." Temari said seriously. "I need information. How far away is… well, wherever you live to Mount… wherever the Toads live?"
Kamatari settled down and rested on his haunches. "If I run with the wind, thirty minutes maybe."
"Good, I need you to desummon back to where you live and head to Mount Toad. Around the giant rock spires, there's a human male practicing not falling off of them. I need you to get him and come back here."
Kamatari growled again. "I am not a shuttle business. I am a warrior of the weasels! Does this mean nothing to you?"
Temari looked to the side in thought. That was the thing with the weasels. Whether it was cooking, fighting, building, destroying, they were a one-track mind kind of animal. They didn't really make for rousing speech partners. If Temari meant to convince him to do something that didn't include cutting something up, she'd have to do some pretty convincing acting.
Temari sniffled. She began to subtly breathe in large amounts of air very rapidly in an effort to make her face red. "I-I know that you aren't a shuttle. And- and I'm sorry. But… but, you see, he's my husband… and, I- I just- I just have a horrible feeling…" She paused to hold her stomach and take in a shuddering breath. "Please… please help me out. Just this once?"
Kamatari looked at her for a while before he averted his eyes and stared at the ground. He began to do a sort of half grumbling, half growling sound only animal summons were capable of producing. "I swear, if you mention this to any living soul, I will part our contract as it is." Saying that, he poofed away in smoke, leaving Temari to regain her normal facial expression.
"Well that was eas-" She paused herself midsentence and whirled around to face behind her. There had been a noise. A slight, almost non-existent rusting sound that came from behind her. The only things behind her though, was a shelf, a fern in a pot, and a bed.
Temari pushed her hand behind her without tearing her eyes from the normal looking bedroom and brushed up against a splotch of ink. At the touch of her hand, it expanded into a web full of tiny little indentations and sliders, all with their own unique function. One was slightly larger than the rest, so Temari was able to touch it by memory without looking away.
Instantly, what looked like fissures began to spread all across the room as all the hidden array ink lit up through its chakra mark. There were tiny little dots all along the walls, floors, and ceilings symbolizing all the hidden living things inside the floors of the building. And Temari could feel her own body begin to light up a bit. The fern was also glowing lightly.
Thanks to the fact that the array covered such a huge space and had some sort of self-replenishing chakra store, it had the huge amount of power required to light up all biological chakra signatures in a given radius. There were no hiding techniques, genjutsus, or invisibility ninjutsu that could hide from such a function.
Temari stared all around the room a few more times before sighing to herself and undoing the power on the seal. She didn't know why, but she had a really bad feeling right then. It was also the feeling that made her want to get Naruto, someone she could rely on. As well as the feeling that made her constantly turn around and check to make sure there was no one behind her, staring at her intently.
There never was though.
Temari didn't like it at all.
Slowly, she turned around and jogged down the hallway back to the living room right where Kurotsuchi and Fu were continuing to rest.
Temari checked behind her again. There was no one there.
It was eerie the feeling of being in a huge, mostly quiet mansion with only the sleeping to give her company.
And the plants.
The plants that would occasionally twitch when out of sight every now and then.
00000000
Somewhere in the Land of Lightning.
"Yo yo. You betta back up. Or you're gonna get cut up."
Suigetsu sweatdropped. "That didn't even rhyme." He whispered to Sasuke.
"Shut up Sui. We're here to capture the Jinchuuriki, no criticize his rhyming." Karin said, emphasizing her point by slapping him on the back of the head.
While those two were fighting, Sasuke, Juugo, and Kisame sized up their opponent. Sasuke withdrew his sword and Kisame began unwrapping the Samehada menacingly.
"I've always wondered what octopus tasted like." Kisame said as he licked his lips.
"We need him alive." Sasuke said.
"People live through shark attacks."
It was there, a while away from the Village Hidden in the Clouds with naught but themselves, mountain peaks, clouds, and moisture as witnesses to the capture of the Hachibi Jinchuuriki.
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Somewhere in the Land of Iron.
Tsunade began rubbing her temples. Sharing a circular table with her were Gaara, Ai, Mifune, Ao, and Onoki. Behind her was the crippled form of Danzo, who was flanked by his Root bodyguards. Behind Gaara was his brother and his former teacher. Next to Ao was Chojuro. Behind Onoki was Akatsuchi as well as some man that looked like he just got done swimming a 200m. Behind Ai were his bodyguards C and Darui.
Somewhere in another far off room were the Daimyo. To her knowledge, they were contented to just play cards and let the military leaders do what they did best, lead in military excursions.
There was only one problem with that though.
It looked like the brunt of the attack plan would fall on Konoha, which upset her greatly.
Cloud didn't have many Black Op agents suited for search and destroy missions, nor did they have any knowledge of where any Akatsuki hideouts were in their country. Sand wasn't much better off in that regard and Mist was still having trouble recruiting suitable people for their Covert Operations even after several years of peace.
Onoki came up with a plan of contacting the Akatsuki again and tailing them to their hideout to hopefully kill some of the higher ups. But Tsunade knew that was doomed to failure. Even if Stone had done business with them before, Akatsuki as an organization was far too a suspicious to let any of the actual fighters come in contact with who they were doing business with. There was a thing called 'bitch work' in the mercenary industry. Anyone who had any sort of clout over there would never stoop to 'bitch work' levels. And anyone who had to do 'bitch work' would never come in contact with those who didn't want to stoop to their levels.
It was a system that worked marvelously for them so far.
All of this indecision, bullheadedness, and downright stupidity was what was making Tsunade wishing for something, anything to take her mind off their little sit down with the Samurai.
And that's exactly what she got.
She just wished she got something other than the room blowing up.
The circular table the leaders were sitting at imploded violently and spat out large chunks of sharp wood at bullet speeds. Huge amounts of dust were kicked up into the air the sudden gravitational anomaly, obscuring vision for all involved.
Most of everyone were unscathed, having reacted fast enough and with great enough defenses that there were only minor cuts and disorientation.
Rocks coalesced in the room. Lighting charged throughout the space. Clicks of a mechanical puppet were drowned out from the ringing in everyone's ears. Everyone was in defensive and waiting for the smoke to clear enough that they could get even a rough idea of what was going on.
When visibility returned enough, they saw six figures standing in the room, right where the table blew up. They all had orange hair, save for one, who didn't have any. They all had piercings in their bodies and faces. They were all emotionless. And they all had the Rinnegan.
"As of now." They all chanted in unison. "Akatsuki is at war with the elemental nations."
Onoki couldn't help it. He had to chuckle in a way that only an old man could chuckle. "Well this is going to make finding them a whole lot easier."
Then the entire room blew up into chaos, action, and general lethality.
00000000
Back at the mansion.
Temari was pacing back and forth in the living room, only the second of two occupied rooms in the entirety of the large house. Fu and Kurotsuchi were still asleep and showed no signs of waking up and there were sounds coming from Yugito's room. It began to appear that Yugito was up and about.
The reason for her uneasiness came from the strange, concurrent series of events that followed her for the last few days. She knew she needed Naruto right then. If not for her safety, then at least for his.
She didn't feel safe. Not anymore.
Another light shuffling sound came from behind her, to which she wheeled around to face, only to be faced with a disappointing lack of intruders. Anything at that point would have been better than nothing. She huffed and started pacing again, not having noticed another shrubbery join her in the room.
She also didn't know of the patchworked hundred year old zombie outside her house, waiting for a signal from an idiot, happy shrubs, and an angry shrub.
Not that she could have known that little tidbit of information.
AN/ the chapter's a bit shorter this time.
Sorry.