The Wanderers

by D4rKn3sS

Upon their return from the Chuunin Exams in Suna, the Konoha 12 find that their home has been destroyed, all it's people gone. How will they survive in the brutal shinobi world, without their families, with only each other for support?

98. Chapter 90 Building a Better Tomorrow

The Wanderers

Chapter 90 – Building a Better Tomorrow

A/N: Sorry that this took so long to come out, though as the second-last chapter I felt like it needed to be given its proper due. The final chapter will take a little bit longer as well, for the same reason. Thank you for your patience and I hope you enjoy the ending chapters of my story.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. If I did, I would have ended it long ago and began a Part 3, with its own bad guys and character development sagas.

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***Previously-On***

The final battle has begun.

As the Quiraji leader Benkei proved impossible to kill for more than a few minutes, Sasuke and Naruto took a big risk by using the Kyuubi's chakra to enter into Shikyo's mindscape to try and draw her from his control and prevent him from continuing to revive himself. When they arrived they were lost at the start, but Sasuke was able to pinpoint a chakra location in a nearby stone structure. However, they were side-tracked by an avatar of Benkei within the mindscape that overpowered them relatively quickly, forcing them to retreat to the stone structure. Inside they found the source of Kaguya's power, allowing her to seal her power within a scroll before the avatar of Benkei caught up with them.

Fleeing from that battle as well, the two of them entered the desert and spent the better part of a week searching for the second half of their target. They eventually found an underground structure and made their way through several clusters of traps and Quiraji soldier images before reaching the final chamber. Inside they fought Benkei and freed Kaguya's body, uniting her with her previous-acquired power. The renewed mother of shinobi obliterated the avatar of Benkei within the mindscape, and then requested the two shinobi finish her off so that they could complete the reversal process. The mindscape then collapsed and Naruto and Sasuke were hurled back into the battle outside.

***End Summary***

---

After being pulled back out of the mindscape with the death of Kaguya, Naruto and Sasuke were nearly killed by the chakra backlash that thundered back into their systems. With the last Uchiha's chakra network still connected to Naruto's system, the Nine-Tails regulated the flow just enough to save their lives before falling silent once again within its host. It had been recovered during the internal conflict in preparation for such a backlash, as it knew that if Naruto were to be killed once again it was highly likely that it would be its end as well.

The pair of shinobi blinded rapidly as they attempted to readjust back to reality, both of them looking down to see that Shikyo's body had disappeared into a small pile of pale rags just in front of Naruto's feet. Neither of them could sense her presence anymore, which they hoped was exactly what was needed for the battle.

Sasuke quickly removed his hand from his old friend's shoulder and spun around to try and get an understanding of how long they had taken from their week inside the Quiraji leader's mindscape. The moment he did so he felt a wave of fatigue come over him and his legs collapsed beneath him. His red eyes changed back to their normal black and he could feel himself falling unconscious while he tried to find where his partner might be fighting.

He caught a glimpse of Fiore's battle-face as she twirled her wooden staff and attacked Benkei viciously a fair distance away. Despite his concern over her presence in the battle against the dangerous Quiraji leader, he felt a hint of a smile emerging on his face in the knowledge that she hadn't been killed yet.

He tried to take a step towards the battle, but his body betrayed him as he'd suffered the worst from the chakra backlash and his face struck the ground hard.

Naruto fared slightly better during the recovery period after emerging from the mindscape, but that was only due to his heritage and the sheer amount of stubbornness he used to keep himself conscious. The first thing he noticed when he turned around, besides seeing Sasuke's face hit the dirt in a rather hilarious manner, was that his young wife had taken up a guard position between them and the ongoing battle with the Quiraji leader far off.

Forever thankful for her vigil, Naruto reached out to lean on her shoulder, having been struck with the same fatigue that had laid his friend low. At the touch, Hinata spun around and caught him before he fell to the ground, cradling his head carefully.

"Naruto! Are you okay? What happened?"

Her young husband took a moment to recollect his energy before looking up into her big white eyes and being reminded why he married her in the first place. He groaned and stood up properly, while keeping himself steady with his hands on her arms. "How…long were we gone? Did we lose anyone?"

Hinata's Byakugan gave her a wealth of information about Naruto's chakra network in the few moments she looked at him, which was more than enough to cause her alarm at how dangerously low his chakra levels had dropped. Despite that, she figured they had to have been successful in taking out Shikyo given the pile of rags behind him and that gave her a huge sense of relief that they weren't in danger of being instantly killed by the dangerous Quiraji leader.

"Honey, it's barely been a few seconds. You touched her and then you came back. The others are still fighting Benkei."

There was a wash of relief on Naruto's face upon hearing that, but it only lasted a moment before he got serious and tried to step forward to re-join the battle, wary of the fact that without his help others might suffer the same fate as his old teacher.

But Hinata wasn't going to let him do that. She knew her husband better than anyone in the world, and she could recognise when Naruto was going to stubbornly continue to fight until he was dead. She wasn't going to watch that again.

Muttering an apology, Hinata used some of the last of her chakra to press two fingers into the back of her husband's neck and knock him out before catching him in her arms. Naruto didn't make a sound as he fell unconscious, but he appeared to be muttered silently as Hinata carefully laid him on the ground to rest beside the unconscious Sasuke. The effort was enough to cause her to waver on her feet for a few moments before she steadied herself and retook her defensive stance.

The battle with Benkei was still being fought a long distance away, but she couldn't risk their lives by letting herself move from her position. The others would have to finish off the Quiraji leader on their own.

oOoOoOo

While keeping the Quiraji leader at bay, Neji had been using his Byakugan to keep track of their progress and the others fought off Benkei as hard as they could. Killer Bee's return to the fray had breathed fresh life back into them despite their knowledge that he could just keep reviving after each defeat and take them out one at a time. Through his black and white vision he watched Naruto and Sasuke enter the mindscape of Shikyo and then return within mere seconds with a sharp decline in their chakra levels to dangerously low levels.

However, the black void presence that had existed since the start of the battle had disappeared. The energy connection between the Quiraji leader and Benkei had been severed and Neji could feel hope coming back to him for the first time since they'd engaged the Quiraji leader in battle.

Killer Bee continued to attack Benkei with rapid-fire attacks, now wary of how dangerous their opponent was in close-quarters despite his earlier successful attack. He had done a serious amount of damage in his first attack, but the wound appeared to have healed with strange smoke from his body and Benkei had only been enraged at his reappearance. The other surviving combatants had taken a step back for a few moments to recover and let him take the initiative, but when Benkei had started to retaliate against him they had moved back into their combinations and tried to fight him coherently once again.

Seeing that their mission was a success, Neji stepped back into the front lines with the other combatants with a knowing look in his eyes. "His ally is down," he said quickly while there was a temporary lull in the fighting. "Now is the time to defeat him and win this war."

"That's convenient timing," said Fiore with a tired smile on her face. As the only non-chakra user in the group she would have figured herself best suited to fighting their opponent, but her wood-based attacks had struggled to penetrate through Benkei's armour and the Quiraji leader had learnt how she attacked throughout the battle. It was infuriating, but Benkei was starting to get sloppy with his movements. Each time he had been revived, his movements had dulled and a strange look had settled in his eyes, like he wasn't really there for longer and longer each time.

"How sure are you about this?" asked the Kazekage as he retracted his recent sand attack back into the gourds at his sides. "He doesn't seem any less dangerous."

Wiping off a collection of blood from a heavy cut on her forehead, Mei steadied herself on her feet and stared at their opponent carefully. "He isn't attacking us," she observed after a few moments.

The Quiraji leader had indeed stopped his attacks of the five remaining shinobi strike force for a moment, as he had seen the result of the two shinobi's intervention at his subject and watched her disappear into the pile of rags that now sat on the ground where she once stood.

He had no clue how they had managed it, but those two impudent shinobi had removed his one certainty in the war. So long as his shackle had lasted on the ancestor of both their races, he had been effectively immortal.

His calm demeanour was cracking. Things had not gotten this bad since the fall of the Quiraji Empire and he had taken the rank of leader from their broken nation. With power collecting in his fists, Benkei decided he was not going to take any more chances. The two shinobi that had caused his biggest problem seemed to have suffered for their role in the battle, but he wasn't going to let them live any longer.

He attempted to disappear in a flash of movement and cross the battlefield in an instant, but the shinobi remaining had seen the physical energy move enough times to know what he was trying to do. Gaara had already begun to surround the battlefield with a wall of sand to contain the Quiraji leader in the area, while Mei had been trailing water tendrils around the battlefield and pulled up a pair of them to clasp the Quiraji leader's legs to keep him from moving so quickly.

It was enough to shift Benkei's attention back to his immediate combatants and reconsider them as a threat, as Killer Bee, Neji and Fiore charged towards him hoping to end the battle right now. With a small pulse of power he broke the Mizukage's hold on his legs and pumped two quick fist thrusts towards his attackers. In that instant Fiore and Killer Bee were struck with blasts of spiritual wind energy while Neji moved to the side and opened his mouth wide with the activation of his prepared ninjutsu. It was normally difficult to perform such a complex technique with only one hand, but the pressure of the situation gave him enough motivation to go through with it.

A single pulse of vibrations moved across the battlefield in an instant, striking through the area Benkei was standing in and creating a specific area around the Quiraji leader to disrupt his hearing. It took a lot of concentration to maintain the attack, but he could see that it was affecting Benkei's abilities as he was slow to move as he went to counterattack the Otokage with a large blast of spiritual energy fire.

Seeing that her ally was about to be struck while he was maintaining his technique, the Mizukage stepped across and shielded Neji with a wave of water, though it wasn't quite strong enough to block all the fire. Despite the flames that struck his shoulders and legs behind Mei's shield, Neji kept up his debilitating ability to give the others a chance to finish the job. He disliked the notion of trusting others, but Benkei had seen all of his attacks and he knew that if he were to get in close he wouldn't survive very long as he currently was.

Fiore and Killer Bee recovered from their attacks and began charging back at Benkei with renewed gusto, while Gaara collapsed his sand around the area in hope of trapping the Quiraji leader and crushing him into a fine paste. If their estimates were right and he was no longer able to revive, they would never get another chance like this again. With Naruto, Hinata and Sasuke all out of the battle, and Rock Lee with crushed legs, it came down to just the five of them to defeat him.

Benkei was not going to let the shinobi strike force trap him like some amateur fighting coming into the arena for the first time though. In a quick sweep of his eyes he could estimate his opponents' tactics, as it was clear that the older woman and the red-haired young man had kept themselves at a distance to provide support, while the civilian and the Eight-Tails container engaged him in close-quarter combat. The hated Otokage had placed him in a bubble of silence that was throwing his balance off, but as much as he would have loved to crush his little head between his giant hands, he couldn't focus on attacking him without being countered by his allies.

The shinobi had cornered him, in a sense, but only because they believed he would be more cautious now that they likely knew he wasn't going to be able to revive anymore.

Now they were underestimating him.

Benkei took a step back with a pulse of physical energy, preventing Killer Bee from approaching him for a few moments while he turned his attention to the supporting shinobi. With a flick of his hand, he sent long tendrils of lightning directly towards them while his other hand punched the air towards the Otokage.

Gaara was able to get his sand defence up in time to cover both himself and the Mizukage, but Neji was sent flying backwards from the air blast and was forced to cancel his technique to defend himself. He landed awkwardly on the ground, feeling his shoulder come out of its socket at a painful angle. It wasn't anything worse than he had suffered before, but the mixture of frustration and pain was not helpful.

While the Otokage tried to recover, Fiore flew above on her platform of wood before transforming it into a spear and stabbing it towards the Quiraji leader's head. However, Benkei moved his gaze towards his flying foe and erected a powerful spiritual energy barrier that her wooden spear wasn't able to penetrate. Before he moved to counter attack her while she hovered in the air, the Mizukage pulled her away with a water tendril and showered Benkei with a small amount of water. It wasn't enough bother him more than a light drizzle, so the Quiraji leader didn't bother wasting energy on a defensive barrier for that, instead focusing his efforts on trying to blast the Cascading Flow warrior out of the air with air blasts.

Neji grimaced as he shoved his shoulder back into socket, wishing that he still had the hand attached to that arm before placing his hand back into a handseal and concentrating on moulding his chakra. He had enough strength for only a few more attacks, but he could feel an ending to the battle coming and that kept him going. He could see Gaara concentrating a large amount of sand at the back, while the Mizukage and Fiore kept their opponent occupied. Through his Byakugan he could see a pattern emerging with the other four combatants attacking.

There was a way for them to win, but they had to be quick about it otherwise the opportunity would no longer be in their favour.

Pushing his chakra to his throat, Neji emitted a directed pulse of high-pitched sound at the Quiraji leader. It was a technique he had learnt from Dosu and adopted to his own, and he did his best to direct it away from Fiore as she was retreating from the area and straight into the enemy's ears.

However, Benkei had seen the technique before and he clapped his large hands in front of himself to disrupt the vibration-based attack for a few moments. The attack was enough of a distraction for Killer Bee to reappear on the battlefield and slam his fists into the ground directly in front of their enemy. His arms were covered in lightning and he fuelled it straight into the small pools of water that the Mizukage had created at the feet of their enemy.

Even though his attack was chakra-based, Benkei still suffered under the electric-based attack and let out a roar of pain as he thundered forward and grabbed the Eight-Tails container's throat in both his hands tightly. His movements were far faster than Killer Bee could defend himself from and within moments he could feel his throat being crushed under the Quiraji leader's fingers.

"Die…" he said through clenched teeth, while small tendrils of lightning still flitted around his face.

Just as he was about to kill the Kumogakure shinobi, Benkei's grip lessened as he felt the half-dozen sand spears from the Kazekage drive themselves into his back from high in the air. The concentration was enough to pierce through his weakened spiritual energy armour temporarily, and the shinobi strike force converged on him immediately.

Killer Bee grabbed at Benkei's hands around his throat and pumped as much lightning as he could into his body, seeing the Quiraji leader suffer and loosen his grip further. While this happened, the Mizukage moved behind the two of them with her hands covered in molten lava, driving them straight into Benkei's kidneys. Her attack hurt her as much as Benkei, but it was enough to force the Quiraji leader to drop his grip of Killer Bee completely and turn around while she retreated backwards and blew a small cloud of acidic mist directly into his face.

Benkei roared out in rage and clawed at his face, unable to stop his skin from burning as his regenerative abilities had been due to his link with Shikyo and now he was feeling the full effects of their attacks for the first time. He flailed around his area with one of his hands, causing huge chunks of earth to emerge from the ground and hurl around the nearby area, but his attacks were unfocused and unable to hit his nimble foes as they regrouped and attacked him once again.

Neji leapt forward with his single arm and drove a kunai into the back of their enemy, unable to penetrate a renewed spiritual energy barrier, but it stayed in place as he jumped back and activated the explosion seal on it. The blast sent Benkei forward and spun him around, while Gaara rained down sand projectiles on top of him to keep his attention scattered and unfocused.

This gave Fiore enough time to concentrate her physical energy into her wood element into a single spear that she thrust from both her hands straight into Benkei's chest, at the same time as Killer Bee drove four of his swords into his back. They pierced every major organ they could reach, but even as they could see Benkei trying to retaliate they repeated their attacks with an unrelenting fury.

After a few seconds the Quiraji leader stood still and the two combatants held their weapons inside his body, unsure what they were to do now. The black eyes of Benkei had been sealed shut by Mei's acidic mist and his body bled from dozens of wounds from every angle, but all of their senses couldn't tell whether he was actually dead or not. The many revivals that they had encountered earlier had made them cautious, but Benkei's body teetered for a moment before it started to collapse.

As their enemy's body began to fall to the ground, the combination of Fiore and Killer Bee leapt back in case he were to recover immediately and retaliate at them. While they retreated, the Kazekage surged forward and slammed both his hands into the ground just in front of Benkei's body.

The ground began to collapse as he converted massive amounts of minerals into sand and drowned the Quiraji leader's body in the growing pit around him. It took all the chakra Gaara had left in him, plus the extra that Shukaku had been siphoning to him throughout the battle, but he could sense that the end of the battle had come and he wasn't going to take any more chances with their enemy.

Once he had created a deep enough hole, Gaara pumped a pulse of sand over the top and activated his technique. "Sabaku Sousou!"

The heavily concentrated sand crushed the Quiraji leader's body into a bloody mush and buried it deep into the hole he'd created, but Gaara wasn't going to believe they had finished the battle just yet. He turned his head and shouted for the Mizukage, who was already running towards him with her hands in a handseal. The moment she came into range of the deep hole the Kazekage had created and saw the sand-based grave he had made, she put her hands to her mouth and spewed a wide spread of lava over the top of the sand before rapidly cooling it into a hard rock cover.

"Did that do it?" asked Fiore as she turned on her heel and began moving back towards them.

Her combat companion clenched a fist triumphantly and grinned behind his sunglasses, "Surely that fool is dead and gone. We crushed his face in something harsh." Killer Bee hadn't been present for the Quiraji leader's revivals, but he knew that there was a reason they were being so cautious about him, considering how easily he had taken him out earlier.

The final fighter stepped forward to join the others with his white eyes staring into the grave intensely. Neji watched the Quiraji leader's body fade away within the sand and lava tomb, the black and white vision doing nothing to dissuade his fear for several moments before his chakra started to fail him and he was forced to cancel his Byakugan. There was no way to tell if he was going to return back to life or not, but the other Kages had done well sealing him into the ground and he hoped that that had ended it.

"How long do we wait?" asked Mei, having completed her sealing of the Quiraji leader's grave with her lava.

"Until we're sure he isn't coming back," said Gaara softly. He felt more tired than he'd ever been in his life, but he knew that if their enemy were to come back they would have to keep fighting and that kept him on his feet.

The five of them waited for almost fifteen minutes around the hole in the ground that held the body of the Quiraji leader. None of them could sense anything within and once they had recovered a little bit, both the Kazekage and Mizukage layered on their seals until it was at the same level as the stone ground beneath their feet. They waited for another fifteen minutes, but there was no proof that Benkei was ever coming back again.

The battle was now over.

---

After confirming that their enemy was not coming back anymore and they had won the day, the survivors of the shinobi strike force took a few moments to recover from their ordeal and comprehend what they had done. Both Rock Lee and Hinata had been unable to participate at the end, with the former still trying to recover from his crushed legs a long way away from the battle and the latter still stubbornly standing over her husband and Sasuke's unconscious bodies with the last bits of her strength. The two sleeping shinobi were exhausted to the point of near-death, but they would survive now that the battle was over.

Despite their victory however, the members of the shinobi strike force were well aware of the high cost they had paid to defeat the Quiraji leaders. The bodies of the last Inuzukas and their companions were almost destroyed beyond recognition, having been felled on the battlefield that they had once been born on. Itachi, Konan and Kakashi each lay where they respectively fell, having sacrificed themselves for the good of the battle, while Yugito's body was far away from the others, having been defeated by her own companion while she was under the enemy's control.

They had lost nearly half the strike force in their efforts. But they had won and that was what mattered.

Having created a wooden seat to rest on, Fiore glanced over at her unconscious partner for a moment before turning back to the conscious strike force members, "So, what are we going to do now? I could sleep for a century, at the least."

"You wouldn't be wrong there, lady," said Killer Bee with an exhausted grin. "But we ain't done quite yet." His voice was tiny in comparison to how it normally sounded, as part of his throat had been crushed in the final moments of Benkei's life. The chakra he was been given by the Eight-Tails within him had been helping heal him, but it was a slow process and it stung like hell to talk.

"He's right," said Mei as she ran a hand through her bloody auburn hair. "If he wasn't lying about those bombs, we have to return to our villages as soon as possible and make sure that our people are safe."

Gaara echoed her sentiment, though he was more concerned about the fact that he knew there was a huge Quiraji army that had been bearing down on his village before he had left with his force of ANBU. As confident as he was in Shikamaru and the defenders, he did not expect the village to have held and the retreat protocols to have been enacted. Still, it was at least a two day journey to his village, probably longer considered his exhausted state.

"You can't go yet, we still have battles here to fight," said Neji quickly, not wanting the two conscious shinobi leaders to leave before they had finished what they had started. "You both left shinobi at the Fire Temple to defend my people from the Quiraji army, which has no doubt struck them and is pressing the defenders as hard as they can. With their leaders dead, we have the best chance to break the back of the Quiraji once and for all and end the conflict completely."

"There are also the groups that went after the Chakra Nodes, if they are still alive," said Fiore, forcing herself up from her reasonably comfortable chair. "They were told to return to the Fire Temple after finishing their missions, right?"

Neji breathed out heavily and tried to remain steady on his feet as he made his way towards Hinata and the two unconscious shinobi that had made their victory possible. After seeing Benkei fall and their victory assured, Hinata had dropped to the ground and swallowed a soldier pill to temporarily boost her chakra so that she could bring both of them back to consciousness. She knew it would likely knock her out within minutes, but having Naruto and Sasuke back was more important to her at this stage. She smiled when Neji placed a hand on her shoulder; it spoke volumes as to how they both felt at that moment. He did his best to assist her efforts, wanting to thank Naruto and Sasuke for their help before they left the battlefield.

While they were healing the two of them, the others of the strike force used their temporarily downtime to gather the bodies of their fallen comrades to a single location. Even those that hadn't known some of them well felt the pain of each death as they laid them on the ground next to each other, recognising the sacrifice they had given so their world could go on. After a few minutes of final bone-setting that was one of the most painful things he had ever done, Rock Lee got back onto his feet before deciding that was a terrible idea and sitting back down on the ground to cradle his damaged legs tenderly. With the chakra he still had, Gaara offered him a small sand platform to sit on; recognising that the taijutsu master was feeling quite helpless while the rest of them helped get the rest of the strike force got themselves together to depart the battlefield. It felt strange that they'd only been in the ruins of Konoha for less than an hour, yet the landscape had changed massively even more than it had before.

Despite this though, the small building that the Quiraji leaders had emerged from and fired the projectiles from was still untouched. If any of them had had the energy, they would have blasted it into a thousand tiny pieces on general principle, but they had to concentrate their efforts at the moment.

"We should give them a proper burial," commented Mei after they had gathered all the bodies together. They had done a similar thing with the bodies of the Quiraji leaders that weren't in tiny pieces of buried deep within the ground, but she melted them into bloody pools with her lava just to ensure that they would never get the chance to be used by anyone ever again.

"And we will," said Neji as he walked towards the gathered group. He had transferred some chakra to his cousin and helped her get Naruto and Sasuke back on their feet, though they were still very groggy. "But we won't do it here. We don't necessarily have time for a funeral, as much as they deserve one."

"I still can't believe Kakashi-sensei is dead…" came Naruto's voice a short distance away, with his wife's arms around his shoulders. "It just doesn't seem real."

Beside the two of them, Sasuke stared silently at the body of his brother as it was placed next to the other fallen shinobi. He had felt a myriad of emotions when his brother had knocked him out of the way and saved him from Kyoukou, but now that the rush of battle was over and he had a few moments to think, he felt everything bubble up inside of him all over again. Sasuke wasn't the type to openly grieve like some of the others, but the frustratingly understanding look from Fiore next to Itachi's body was almost enough to send him over the edge.

After laying out a long scroll in front of himself, Neji pulled out a brush and began writing a long collection of seals. He reassured the others that the bodies would be perfectly safe within the scroll while they made the trip back to the Fire Temple and it was mainly so they could deal with them at a later stage. He was a little concerned that the two Otogakure shinobi groups that had attacked the Chakra Nodes hadn't entered the battlefield to assist them like he had ordered them to, in case they failed in their mission, but he hoped they had chosen to return to the Fire Temple rather than lost their lives.

"How are we going to get there?" asked Mei after checking her chakra levels. "None of us have much in the way of chakra to move at high speeds anymore."

Fiore rubbed at the back of her neck for a moment, thinking hard at what to do. "Does anyone have anything to eat? I'm suddenly starving."

Most of the shinobi strike force didn't respond, but Killer Bee surprised her by producing a small rice ball from one of his pocketed that had been slightly squished during the battle. He threw it to the Cascading Flow warrior without a word, having lost his appetite upon seeing his own handiwork in Yugito's body laid out besides the others.

Fiore thanked him quickly before shovelling the food into her mouth and feeling herself regaining some of her strength. It was mostly just so she could move around easier with a fuller stomach, since she knew that the first time they got to sit down and eat she would eat enough for six people at least. With her mind set to it, she took her wood from its seat-shape and expanded it out into a wide platform hovering a few metres above the ground. She could only maintain the specific shape as it was one she could use without much mental strength involved, though this was the most exhausted she had ever really been and it was interesting to note how much energy it actually took to manipulate the element.

"I can carry everyone for now," she said once she checked to make sure it was sturdy enough. "But I don't know how long it'll last, so we've got to go now."

Naruto and the others re-joined the group quietly, while Gaara's sand platform deposited Rock Lee onto Fiore's platform and the others joined him. On the ground Neji swiped at a small piece of blood from Nagisa's body and used it to seal the seven shinobi and two hounds inside the scroll before rolling it up and placing it into his pack. He hated treating the dead in such a manner, but it would be at least an hour or two until they reached the Fire Temple and they didn't need the weight of the dead on their minds when they had other people to protect.

All he could think about was his people and his family, hoping they were still safe. The Fire Temple was the most defended area in the shinobi world at this current stage, but that didn't mean that people wouldn't have lost their lives in the defence of it. The Quiraji had lost their leadership but that didn't mean they weren't still a threat.

Their main goal now had to be recovering from the battle and preparing themselves to return to their people and assist with their battles. If not, their victory here would be ultimately meaningless.

oOoOoOo

It took them over three hours to cross the distance between the ruins of Konoha and Fire Temple, as Fiore's wooden platform eventually failed with her strength and they were forced to walk. As they approached the areas nearby where the Otogakure people were holed up, they saw where the Quiraji army had trampled the forest in their attacks on the Fire Temple. It was clear to the survivors of the shinobi strike force that they had brought a huge army to destroy one of the last bastions of shinobi strength in the world, but from what they could see the army was no longer in the surrounding area.

Using some of the last of his chakra that he'd been recovering, Neji used his Byakugan to survey if his people still survived.

Within seconds a relieved look came over his face and he dropped his doujutsu. The others asked what he saw, but Neji didn't say anything as they came to the opening the Quiraji army had created and saw the front of the Fire Temple for the first time since the last part of the war had begun.

The eight of them were greeted by the sight of the remaining shinobi in the world, standing on the battlements erected around the sacred area, watching the strike force walk across the battlefield towards them. The ground was littered with both Quiraji and shinobi bodies, but they were more focused on the people that were surging out of the Fire Temple to greet them.

There was no cheering or fanfare for their return, as the shinobi approaching them couldn't tell whether the strike force had been successful or not overall. Their numbers had been halved and many of them bore wounds that would take weeks to heal, if not months.

But when the first elements came into contact with them and Neji confirmed their suspicions, the approaching mixture of Otogakure, Sunagakure and Kirigakure shinobi all let out a cheer of relief and embraced their leaders as the saviours of their world.

Among the Fire Temple shinobi that approached them were several elements from the shinobi squads that had gone after the Chakra Nodes that had allowed them to attack the Quiraji leadership in the first place. Neji was relieved to see Jin standing among a group of Otogakure shinobi, looking a bit worse for wear but otherwise okay, with the surviving four members of the Sound Four ordering their subordinates to begin cleaning up a path for their leader to return to the Fire Temple.

Mei looked around for any of her subordinates that had attacked one of the Chakra Nodes, but the only Kirigakure shinobi she could find were the ones that she had left in defence of this place. Their numbers had taken a beating, but they spoke nothing of it as they approached her and thanked her for saving them. She asked what had happened to the battle, but none of the Kirigakure shinobi could give her a straight answer; they were just happy to see that their leader was alive.

Once they were greeted by the surviving Fire Temple shinobi, Killer Bee took a look around to see that there were no Kumogakure shinobi in the area. He consulted the Tailed Beast within himself for a moment before stepping out of the back of their group and disappearing in a flash of movement. The only ones who noticed at the time were Naruto and Hinata who were the closest to him, though neither made a comment as they knew exactly where he was going and why. They shared a look for a moment before progressing forward with the others, hoping that he would be able to find some of friends in his village. If nothing else, they knew he'd be back for his friend's body.

Gaara wasn't an emotional person, but seeing many of his ANBU coming towards him singing his praises was something he hadn't been expecting, but there was something sombre in what they were saying. He didn't get a chance to brace himself as the invisible Matsuri appeared at his side and stopped him with a hand on the middle of his chest. She looked up at him with a look that was entirely inappropriate for a woman that had sworn herself as his bodyguard, but Gaara could tell in those brown eyes that there was something terribly wrong at the same time.

"What happened, Matsuri?"

The young ANBU kunoichi glanced around for a moment, as if checking to see whether someone was eavesdropping on them, but Gaara reached up with his hand and brought her face back to look at him.

"Tell me," he ordered in a confident tone.

Matsuri swallowed loudly as she spoke, "It's home, sir. It's…it's…"

Seeing how difficult it was for her, Gaara breathed out slowly and ordered some of the Sunagakure ANBU around to clear the area so they could enter the Fire Temple directly. The Otokage was getting a report from his head shinobi while the others were moving inside to get the rest they so desperately needed, but Gaara sensed that their day wasn't quite over yet.

With a path cleared for them, he told Matsuri to tell him what she knew. She still struggled to get it out in proper words, but Gaara could already guess what had happened when she told him that they'd found someone just after the battle had ended close to death.

Immediately Gaara demanded to see his sister and her child, to hear the tale from her mouth directly. If his home had fallen like he suspected, then he would need to go immediately.

oOoOoOo

After entering the Fire Temple and hearing about the fall of Sunagakure from Temari before she collapsed from exhaustion, Gaara was all set to return to their village immediately and free it from Quiraji control, but the combined voices of his older brother Kankuro and his bodyguard Matsuri reminded him that none of them were in particularly good fighting condition at this stage and they wouldn't be able to fight any battles right now. Rock Lee had protested the delay under concern for his fiancé, Sakura, but he was still unable to move well and would require help returning to Sunagakure regardless, so he was forced to relent with the Kazekage that a night's rest was required.

Before she had fallen unconscious, Temari had kept the details of what had happened to her husband to herself, knowing what that kind of information would do to their moral. If the projectiles flying over her head during their escape to the Land of Fire had been any indication, she had doubted that anyone in the village had survived at all, but she was only currently concerned with the fate of her daughter and she was safe for the time being.

While many of the shinobi strike force were getting rest, Neji gathered the leaders of Otogakure that had survived the battle and gotten full reports from them before relaying the events of the battle with Benkei and the Four. The two Chakra Node groups had decided to return to the Fire Temple, contrary to his orders over concerns that they would lose their friends and families and the victory would have been for nothing. Their return had struck the Quiraji from the flanks and threatened to break their ranks; the attack was enough to drive them from breaking through the Fire Temple for almost half an hour before the Quiraji had returned in force and almost overrun their position.

That was when Dosu told him about when most of the Quiraji soldiers had stopped their attacks and had appeared dazed and confused, allowing the combined shinobi force to counterattack and kill hundreds of foes within seconds. The specialist Quiraji soldiers had fought to the death, but even they had become lost another half an hour later and become easy-pickings. Neji figured that had been due to the deaths of Sensou and Benkei respectively, but he kept that to himself, praising the efforts of his shinobi and thanking them for fighting as hard as they had.

They had lost terrible numbers in the battle, including a number of civilians that had been unfortunate casualties in a Quiraji infiltration attempt, but they had won the day finally. The remaining Quiraji soldiers had surrendered upon seeing the day was lost and had been captured, while those that hadn't were slaughtered.

It was a bloody mess, but the war was almost over. After dismissing his leaders, Neji dragged himself back to the place he had been using for living quarters and opened the door to see his wife Yuko and their children waiting for him.

He managed a smile and a tight hug before collapsing into his bed and falling into the deepest sleep he'd ever managed. His wife put their children to sleep as best she could before slipping in beside him and embracing him with a relieved expression permanently etched into her face.

oOoOoOo

The next morning the Otogakure woke up to find that the Kazekage and all of the Sunagakure shinobi had already left for their home. They had taken the heavily-exhausted Temari and her daughter with them, including Rock Lee and many of their supplies that had been given to them by Jin. He hoped that his suspicion about the bombs hadn't been correct, as there was no proof that said that there wasn't going to be any residual effects, but Gaara had his own mission to complete and Neji wasn't about to begrudge him that.

After walking around a little bit to recover his strength, Neji discovered that while the Kirigakure shinobi that had helped defend the Fire Temple were still present, the Mizukage had departed on a similar mission to her home village. They had protested her going vehemently, but Mei had commanded them to stay in the area and recover from the battle properly before waiting further instructions from her. He could only guess at her motivations for doing so, but he was at least grateful to see that their other allies were still within the Fire Temple just in case any potential Quiraji threats were to return.

He didn't think they would, but being a Kage meant he had to be cautious and prepare for the worst.

Sasuke and Fiore had apparently locked themselves inside one of the shrine rooms that had been doubling as living quarters and were refusing to let anyone in no matter what anyone said. It only took a single glance through his Byakugan for Neji to be permanently scarred by what he saw, but then again he figured that everyone had an outlet for exhaustion and he wasn't going to argue with their actions. He was at least grateful to see Naruto and Hinata had recovered well enough to be walking around, though neither would let go of the other's hand, even when they were trying to do tasks that would be monumentally easier with two.

The Otokage felt like he could sleep for a generation, but their position in the Fire Temple was hardly secure and Neji had a thousand things to attend to that would determine he would be just as exhausted tonight as he had been the previous night.

oOoOoOo

After the people that had decided to leave for their original villages left, Neji and the others went to decide what they were going to do with the Quiraji soldiers that had surrendered after the battle of the Fire Temple. Jirobou had locked them all up in a single massive stone cage and a guard of Otogakure shinobi hadn't moved from their holding positions since they had put them inside; each of them held a large sound cannon that would obliterate the surrendered soldiers instantly if they so much as looked at them the wrong way.

The surrendered soldiers seemed to have become both confused and lethargic once they had stopped fighting, as if their controllers had left them to die. Many of them remembered who they had once been and began begging the shinobi to let them return to their families, but the Otogakure shinobi didn't budge. Many of them had been there while the Quiraji soldiers had attacked them with furious rage and unrelenting determination; a little bit of begging wasn't going to help them now.

While some of their ranks rested and recovered, Neji, Naruto and Hinata walked around the area to try and figure out what to do.

"We can't just release them back to their respective villages," said Naruto grimly, while Hinata gave no comment on the issue. "There's no guarantee they won't attack us again."

"That's something I am aware of," said Neji dryly as he came up to the lead guard and asked for his report.

Flipping through a chart before handing it to the Otokage, the self-appointed guard leader Dosu turned his attention to the prisoners within the large stone cage. "There are nearly two hundred prisoners, give or take a few that died to their wounds. Most seem to be civilians from around the Land of Fire, villages that were taken over by the Quiraji and they were drafted in."

"Do they regret what they have done?" asked Hinata after a few moments of consideration. "Do they remember?"

Dosu turned his one-eyed gaze to the Hyuuga heiress and his expression darkened beneath his bandages, "Remember, yes. Regret…is debatable. Many of them express their apparent regret over the killing of shinobi and how they wish they could go back and stop themselves, but none of us believe they are telling the truth. Our scientists believe that while they were under a form of Quiraji control as soldiers, they still conducted their own movements and performed actions they wanted to do."

"So they wanted to kill us," said Naruto with a shake of his head. "We tried to help them before this whole thing went down."

Dosu leaned down on his large sound gauntlet in front of his body, "There's no helping them now. They are still our enemies, regardless of what they might say."

Neji looked over the prisoners with his white eyes, taking particular care to notice the expressions on their faces. While many of them appeared to be outwardly sincere about their unwillingness to fight them any longer, Neji was a well-versed student of precise observation and he could read the emotions that lay just below the surface.

There was disappointment and resentment beneath their pitiful expressions and attempts to placate their jailors. They hated the fact that they lost, though it had been clear that surrendering was the option available to them.

As a person he didn't like it. As a leader, he knew what he had to do.

Even with his allies there, Neji couldn't show weakness in front of his people. He closed the chart and handed it back to Dosu before giving his command.

"Execute them all."

The Otogakure guards each flicked the switches on to activate their sound cannons as the prisoners began to shout and scramble in panic at the sound of his order. Dosu gave his leader an understanding nod before stepping into line with the other guards and raising his hand to give the order to fire.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?!" shouted Naruto, reaching forward to grasp the Otokage by the arm. "They might be our enemies, but they are people!"

Neji turned his white eyes to his cousin-in-law and glared at him coldly, "They are a threat to shinobi everywhere and are responsible for the deaths of many of my people, including many of the innocents that had nothing to do with this war."

"That doesn't give you the right to kill them, Neji," said Hinata with a serious expression on her face, dropping the honorific from his name. "Naruto is right, they are still people."

Reaching to his back to bring his hat onto his head, Neji indicated to the black and white symbol at the centre of it with his hand, "I am the Otokage and they threaten the security of my people. I will not leave a group such as this to threaten my people, my children. I have every right."

With that he turned away from them and looked back at his guards. He could see that some of them were a bit apprehensive about what they had to do, but he'd hand-picked many of them for this duty particularly because they had lost people to the Quiraji recently. It wasn't something he was proud of, but Neji had made decisions in the past that required a heart of steel. Just as when he had declared war on a fellow shinobi village to keep his people safe, now he had to do this.

And he had to watch. They would die in a relatively painless way; he wasn't going to make them suffer despite what some of them had done. This would close the book on the War in the Land of Fire.

Seeing that they had no voice to speak with anymore, Naruto and Hinata turned away and began walking away. Neither of them were happy with what was happening, but they knew that neither of them could stop him from doing what he thought was right.

Before the order was given, Naruto turned back to Neji and said the one thing he truly believed.

"If you do this, Neji, you are no different than the Quiraji."

The Otokage gave the order. Despite the fact that they were using sonic-based weaponry, there was no sound as the Quiraji prisoners died. Neji forced himself to feel every death that he inflicted, forcing himself to remember that it was a necessary step to ensure the safety of his family and his people.

"You are wrong," he said quietly, long after the married couple had left the area. "We are different because we won. I will not make the same mistake as our ancestors."

After the job was finished, Neji ordered Jirobou to bury all the bodies in a nearby area that had been cleared by another group of shinobi. The Sound Four member expressed his concern over the treatment of the prisoners and Neji reminded him of to whom he had sworn his vows to and that they had an obligation to treat them humanely.

It was not something he would look back on fondly. He hated that such action was necessary.

But he never regretted it. Not once.

---

The Mizukage travelled across the ocean with such velocity that it looked like she was gliding along the top of the water. Her connection with the Three-Tails was getting stronger with every day, yet she still wasn't sure how she felt about being a Tailed-Beast container. The survivors of the battles in the Land of Fire had remained behind with the Otokage's forces to assist with defence and recover from their wounds, while the Mizukage departed to discover the fate of their home.

She hadn't wanted to believe what Benkei had said when he revealed the nature of the bombs, but it made a twisted-type of sense in terms of the Quiraji battle strategy. When she had come to the edge of the Land of Waves she'd expected to find the trace of the Kirigakure shinobi by now, as she refused to believe that they had fallen despite the fact that they had failed their mission to destroy the chakra node.

But she had a bad feeling that she couldn't shake in her gut. She knew something terrible had happened and she couldn't delay for a moment longer.

After making landfall, Mei saw something that brought a huge feeling of relief to her heart. Standing at the end of the ocean to where Kirigakure stood, were a pair of shinobi that she knew personally. They had accompanied her into the Land of Fire and had been part of the group that had accompanied the remaining Swordsmen on their mission to destroy the Chakra Node. Normally there would be more scouts in the area, but she could see that clearly something was wrong by how relieved they were to see her in return.

As her feet landed on the sand, the pair of Kirigakure shinobi saluted her sharply. "We knew you would survive, Mizukage-sama," said one of them with a relieved smile. "Juu owes me some money."

"I'm very happy to see that the two of you are okay. What happened on your mission?"

The two Kirigakure shinobi looked at each other for a moment before dropped their heads shamefully. Seeing their distress, Mei smiled affectionately and placed her hands on their shoulders, "What happened to the village? Is Mangetsu still alive?" She tried not to sound too frantic, but she had a suspicion on what had occurred during the past day.

The shinobi shared a silent conversation for a few moments before the one that had spoken earlier offered his hand to show her to the village. The look on his face told her everything she needed to know. As a leader she knew that it might have been the case, but that was something she would have to deal with at a later point.

"Mangetsu is in the village with the others," said the Kirigakure shinobi as they began to move through the surrounding areas between the ocean and the village. "There aren't many of us left."

"We'll get through this," said Mei with a comforting smile that didn't betray what she really felt. "We are shinobi. We'll survive."

"If you say so," said the shinobi softly.

After a few minutes of travelling through the bush, Mei noticed that there was no damage to the areas around her village. It was suspicious that an area that would have been very heavily bombed was relatively unscathed. She hated the fact that she might have to accept that the village was lost, but too many things didn't add up. The Quiraji soldiers hadn't come anywhere near the Land of Water since she had taken her army into the Land of Fire with the hope of ending the conflict, and if anything it was becoming obvious that they wouldn't have been able to reach these shores anyway.

The bombs had been a final attack, and they had worked. As they came closer to the hidden area that concealed her village, they began to come across bodies that had clearly fallen where they had been working when the bombs had fallen. It broke her heart to see them, but Mei knew it was only going to get worse.

She'd been concerned that she'd been putting off starting a family for a long time, especially after her elevation to the position of leader of the village. After a while she had come to see the shinobi under her command as her family, besides a few Chuunin that she would not miss so much. But now everything was different.

"Is there anything I can help you with?" asked the shinobi accompanying her as they approached the village. "Or should I return to my post? Mangetsu gave us orders…"

Mei dismissed him with a comforting smile and watched him leave for a few moments before turning around and gathering her sensibilities. She could see several Kirigakure shinobi manning the large wall they had erected after the removal of the fake Mizukage, though to her disappointment she recognised them as part of her initial force into the Land of Fire. They saluted her sharply, as had the others, but they appeared less happy to see her. She wasn't sure whether that was due to the fact that she was alone, or the growing rift between herself and their commander. But that would be a problem for another time as she stepped into the village and took in everything that had happened.

The village was completely intact; it didn't have a single battle scar on it. The Hidden Village in the Mists had always been a beautiful place to live and even with the heavier mists that were being maintained around the area as cover during the war she was still constantly amazed at how beautiful it could be.

Even with everything that had happened, it gave her a small glimpse of hope that they would be able to recover from this war. Mei began walking into the main area of the entrance to the village, noticing immediately what was wrong with her home.

It had been a village of tens of thousands of shinobi, plus even more family members of the shinobi that lived within their borders. Even with the constant moving water flows that provided the mist cover around the village and the dozens of waterfalls that had been constructed around the inner sanctums had always given the village a loud water sound that would generally silence most of the noise that the regular hustle of the villagers themselves.

But now, the sound of the village's water features rang sadly hollow to her now. She had always thought that the sounds of people chatting in the streets of the village and children running around were the cause of many of her headaches, but the empty streets hurt her far more than anything Benkei had done to her during the last battle. Mei would have hoped that defeating the Quiraji would have given her some peace of mind, and she was grateful some of her people had survived, but the cost had been too much.

If someone had told her about what was going to happen, she would have kept herself in the village and accepted her fate. She couldn't stand the fact that she had lived while others had died.

What victory was worth this?

In the middle of the streets, she could see that the Kirigakure shinobi that had come to the village first had begun to move the bodies of the villagers out of the streets and into areas away from view, something that she respected that they were doing so, considering how they must have been feeling as well. They noticed her presence one at a time with a sweeping show of relief, but after speaking a few words with the Mizukage they went back to their duties, directing her to Mangetsu near the centre of the village.

Of the group that had departed with Mangetsu to destroy the Chakra Node, she figured that less than half of them had survived to return to their now-destroyed village. She wasn't as strong a sensory shinobi as she would have liked, but with the Three-Tails enhancing her senses she could tell that her main advisor had not been one of the group now in the village.

She would miss him greatly. He might have chastised her more than anyone else, but Ao had always found a way to keep her on track and remind her of what her duties to the village were.

With her senses extended over the village temporarily, Mei thought she noticed a strange movement in a nearby now-abandoned house on the side of the village. The Kirigakure shinobi had cleared that area for the time being; it hadn't been a residential area so there hadn't been too many bodies to remove, yet she couldn't shake the feeling that there was something there they had missed.

As she was in no particularly serious rush to confront Mangetsu and the issues of what to do next, Mei decided to investigate the area and give herself the time to process everything that had happened so far. She stepped across one of the water channels that sectioned off the different parts of Kirigakure and looked down to see a discarded bag of groceries that had been lying there for probably a day or more, as its contents had spilt into the water channel. Whoever had owned them must have fallen where they were standing and lost their life without a movement of protest, since they looked like they had just dropped to the ground.

Mei wondered if they had suffered or not. It was difficult to think about, but of the bodies she had seen so far none of them appeared to have been burnt or torn apart by the bombs that had fallen on her village. She couldn't even find any evidence of those, though it was likely that Mangetsu's group had already removed them from the village under the fear that they might reactivate and kill those who were left. It was as if they had just…died.

Following the feeling in her stomach, Mei walked through the distinct slowly, processing the information as she thought of it. She knew they lay on the edge of a cliff and were in danger of falling off if she were to lose faith now. Those that remained needed her more than ever now, but she also needed them to support her. If they were to rebuild and continue to live their lives, she had a number of difficult decisions to make.

There were less than a few hundred of them remaining, all of whom had lost families and loved ones in the devastation. As she traced her hands along the edge of one of the buildings that had been there since she had been a little girl, Mei came to an unquestionable conclusion.

They wouldn't be able to last on their own, even if they worked with the civilians of the surrounding islands in the Land of Water. Their numbers were too few and none of the metrics added up in her head. That wasn't even to mention the mental fatigue that each of them no doubt felt at living in a place that would be frighteningly silent and a ghost town.

For their civilisation and ways of life to survive, she would have to do things that no Mizukage in the past would have been forced to do.

But she didn't have the power alone. For that, she would need the support of the remaining shinobi leaders of her village.

After passing several of the buildings in the area, Mei thought she heard a strange sound coming from one of the double-storey houses at the other side of the street. Even with her senses she could tell immediately that there were no shinobi in the area, as there were no chakra signals besides her own within a significant range. That could mean there were Quiraji soldiers within the village, or civilian bandits that had come to loot the corpse of the village, but Mei didn't think it was either of those.

It was strange to think about, but she couldn't feel any killer intent from inside the village. It wasn't a sense she relied on all the time, but it had saved her life many times when she had been a Chuunin and now it told her that she need to go look into that noise.

Thankful for the reprieve from her thoughts, Mei walked over to the building silently; her years of being a shinobi allowing her to walk across stone and water without making a sound and open the door to look into the insides of the two-storey house.

It looked like it had been well-lived-in for some time, though not because it was made as a house to live in properly. Mei recalled this had been part of the merchant's district, though one that had fallen on hard times during the war and had been forced to shut down while they concentrated on defence and other parts of their economy took priority. The main section of the house was a small hall with a trading desk and a few scattered chairs for customers to sit in.

As she closed the door behind herself, Mei noticed a tiny movement on the staircase at the other end of the hall, one that brought a frown to her face for a moment before she broke out into a relieved smile.

Trying to keep herself as calm and non-threatening as possible, Mei moved across the hall and up the stairs before stopping at the entrance to a hallway that had several open rooms and a single room that wasn't dusty and had its door shut. She walked up to the door and rapped on it gently, "It's okay, you can come out. I'm not going to hurt you."

Inside the room she could hear muffled whispering between two people, clearly trying to be as quiet as they could, but not so quiet that she couldn't hear the fear in their voices. Keeping her voice steady, Mei tried a different approach. "The village is safe now; you don't have to be afraid. There are no bad people left. We won."

She heard further muffled whispering, but after a few moments she could hear a lock being undone from the other side of the door and it slowly creaked open. Looking down at waist-level, Mei could see a pair of terrified faces standing in the doorway, looking up at her with fear and awe, though that only lasted until they recognised who she was. Even in half-destroyed clothing and non-traditional Kirigakure garb, Mei's hair and face were known to everyone in the village and even young children such as these two knew the Mizukage.

After having spent a long time for children so young, the appearance of a benevolent figure such as Mei was enough for them to drop all pretence of strength and charge towards her to embrace her legs in a fiercely tight hug that they were determined not to let go from. Mei could see that they weren't malnourished or injured, but it was obvious to her that they had been present during the bombing and had likely seen people die around them with no explanation as to what was happening.

Feeling her motherly instincts kicking in, Mei reached down and embraced the two surviving children affectionately. It warmed her heart to know that at least someone had survived and it didn't bother her in the slightest that they weren't shinobi children.

They were children of the village, and that was all that mattered.

"It's going to be okay, little ones," said Mei, trying to remember what her old friends used to say to their children. Being a mother hadn't been high on her priority list, but now it felt like the most natural thing in the world. After they finally relented and lessened their grips on her legs, Mei knelt down to their level and patted their heads with a smile, "Would you like to come with me? I'll keep you safe, I promise."

The little girl of the pair wiped her face as if she had been crying, though there had been no tears shed for a long time and spoke in a tiny voice, "But mum and dad…"

"I know dear, I know," said Mei in response. "It's a scary time, but we'll be together the whole time, I promise you."

"There were strange people around earlier," said the little boy with a slightly stronger voice than his female companion. "We didn't let them see us."

Mei figured he must be talking about the shinobi earlier. At such a young age, they would have found it difficult to distinguish between friends and foe after such an ordeal. She was amazed that they had survived as they were and were in such a reasonable state.

Giving them a few more words of encouragement, the Mizukage hefted them up into her arms effortlessly and smiled as the two children immediately fell asleep once they sensed they were in relatively safe hands. They were heavier than she would have thought, but not so much that she wasn't able to carry them around.

Having taken them into her charge, Mei slowly made her way back downstairs and back into the streets of the village. They didn't make a sound the whole way down, as she figured they probably hadn't slept the whole time. The two children were adorable in their own way, but Mei was just grateful that there was something good to have come of the ordeal.

They were something to keep fighting for.

oOoOoOo

After leaving that area of the village, Mei found a pair of shinobi waiting for her at the water channel. They offered to take the children from her hands and escort her to Mangetsu directly, but Mei didn't think she'd be able to give up holding the children even if she wanted to. She did agree that it was about time she spoke to the Kirigakure leader though, and asked for them to take her straight to him.

The escorting shinobi took her to the central fountain of the shinobi village, where she could see the last surviving members of the Seven Swordsmen standing in their own council, while another shinobi read off a report. The Mizukage's heart soared at the sight of Chojuro, sitting on the edge of the fountain with his large bandaged sword between his legs. He had a hardened look in his eyes that she hadn't seen before and a number of scars that would heal in ugly ways, but upon seeing her walking towards them he adopted a wide toothy smile and spoke a word to the others to tell them she had arrived.

The first to turn around was Ameyuri, though she seemed less than pleased that the Mizukage had only now come to them. She had admired Mei for years and that wasn't about to stop now, but she was tired and cranky after the past few days.

She'd only just buried her little sister. Ameyuri wanted to kill something with her bare hands, but there were no enemies within her reach.

Mangetsu gave no reaction as he dismissed the shinobi giving him the report and watched the Mizukage approaching silently. He noted the two children in her arms passively, figuring that they were probably civilians that she had picked up along the way and decided to bring along. That was her business and he would not fault her that.

"You took your time getting here," he said after a moment. "Having a good time wandering around?"

Mei knew he was trying to bait her, but she wasn't about to give him a reason to hate her. They had come to conflict in the past over a number of issues, but now was the time they needed to work together. "The others remained behind in the Fire Temple, Mangetsu. We are not the only survivors of this war."

She thought she saw a hint of emotion in his eyes for a moment, though it was something she likely attributed to the fact that the younger Houzuki brother was not present with the other Swordsmen. Regardless, Mangetsu took in the information and spoke a few orders to a nearby shinobi, watching her depart before turning back to their leader. "The bodies in the village have been mostly moved. I don't know what you intend to do, now that we've lost the war, but the village is not a place for us to live anymore."

"We won the war," corrected Mei, readjusting the children in her arms, "Benkei is dead and the Quiraji are broken."

Mangetsu let out a scoff and leaned on his knee with his arms, "This is certainly no victory."

The Mizukage wasn't going to argue the semantics with him; she agreed that they had lost too much to be proud of what they had achieved. "Regardless, we must decide what we are to do next. The others in the Fire Temple are waiting for word, while they help the Otokage rebuild."

"Surely you'd want them to return here so we can shore up our defences," said Ameyuri at her leader's side. "If the Quiraji come again, we don't have the numbers to stop them."

"Their leaders are dead and their armies are scattered. For now, the Quiraji aren't a factor," said Mei quickly. "I'm more concerned about our people's spirit. The shinobi here have no drive or motivation, now that our people have been killed. What reason is there for them to fight?"

"Vengeance, anger, justice, to name a few," said Ameyuri angrily. "We'll hunt down the remaining Quiraji even if it takes our whole lives to do so."

"I'm not saying that we won't do that," replied Mei back. "But many of our people are sick of fighting and want to restart their lives, even without their families. We can't do that here while they are constantly reminded of what happened to their loved ones."

"What are you suggesting then, Mizukage-sama?" asked Chojuro, who had been silent for much of the conversation. "There are no other survivors. We're all that is left."

Mangetsu put a hand in front of his subordinate to stop him from talking further as he figured out where the Mizukage was going. "Are you talking about establishing a new village outside of Kirigakure?"

"Maybe that would be for the best," said Mei with a hint of defeat in her voice. "I honestly don't know at this stage. But we cannot remain apart from our brethren if we want to survive the near future."

"You want to return to the Land of Fire?" Ameyuri tried not to sound surprised and failed miserably. They'd only just gotten back from that horrible place where so many of their friends had died in front of them, and now she was asking them to return. The idea was absurd.

"Mangetsu, our people have to be united," said Mei with an authoritative tone in her voice. "They were our allies when we needed them most and we defeated the Quiraji together. I don't believe that maintaining the village system is the best thing for us shinobi to continue doing. It was inherently flawed from the beginning."

It was an argument he had heard before from her before they left for the Land of Fire. Since the replacement of the Mizukage and the shambolic state of their nation's politics, he had brought up concerns about the direction of where the village was heading. The village system had only worked to bring together groups of shinobi to oppose other groups, thus creating a cycle of conflict that had caused their current situation. If they'd helped the other villages earlier, perhaps they could have avoided the bombs altogether, but now they had to face the situation in front of them.

Mangetsu considered her point for a few moments before dropping his gaze and letting out the breath that he figured he'd been holding since they'd discovered the ghost village. "Ameyuri, gather everyone here in an hour's time. They will want to hear what the Mizukage has decided for us."

The only female Swordsmen snarled at him as a show, but she was grateful they had some kind of direction to go off. She left the Mizukage to discuss the matter with her leader and made her way into the village to gather what few Kirigakure shinobi remained within.

"We aren't abandoning our home," she clarified when she saw the concerned look on Chojuro's face in front of her. "This is only a place that we lived in. Home is where our people can feel safe and live in peace."

The younger shinobi nodded in understanding, though he wouldn't believe it until he saw it. While Mangetsu began considering their current position, the two children in Mei's arms began to stir, asking for their parents with soft voices.

It would be a difficult journey, but she promised them with a slightly cracking voice that she would find them a new home. The little girl asked whether she was going to be their new mother, to which Mei could only stutter an awkward response.

Give me a chance to find a nice man to marry first, at least.

---

It felt like it had been an age since they had left Sunagakure with the intention of taking down the Quiraji once and for all. Gaara had taken a terrible risk in leaving the village when he did, knowing that there was a Quiraji army nearby that was likely to attack. But after hearing his older sister's account of the situation and the trail of devastation that had followed, the Kazekage recognised that by taking that risk he had kept some of his people alive that would have otherwise been killed.

That didn't make the trip back to their home any easier though. The entirety of the Sunagakure army rode upon a giant platform of sand to shorten the travel time, though they were not looking forward to what they were going to encounter. They'd all had families in Sunagakure when the Quiraji had struck and the bombs had fallen, and despite Temari's claims of the civilians being evacuated to the north of the village, they had found nobody alive.

They had found scattered clusters of Quiraji soldiers however, suddenly leaderless and without direction. They hadn't immediately attacked the Sunagakure shinobi on their approach, but Gaara was not as kind. In the knowledge that they had assisted in the sacking of Sunagakure even before the bombs had fallen, he was not in a merciful mood. They were slaughtered without prejudice.

They had sick and injured with them as they flew, being treated by the medical shinobi that the Otokage had lent them to potentially treat any survivors of the village, yet Gaara was most concerned about his sister and his niece. Temari was a strong woman, but they'd nearly lost her a few times after her arrival at the Fire Temple and even now she wasn't looking so strong. Kankuro had stayed by her side and looked after her daughter while she rested, though the puppet-master was discovering that he was not nearly as good at dealing with babies as he would have liked.

But Gaara put that out of his mind temporarily and directed the large sand platform across the Land of Wind desert towards their home. Since they had left the Fire Temple, his bodyguard Matsuri had stayed by his side night and day, without saying a word to him. He was immensely grateful for her presence and for the peace that she gave him, as he had too many things on his mind to deal with personal things at this time. This was a time when he had to be strong, for his people.

The one that was the most troubling was the presence of Rock Lee, sitting on the other side of his part of the sand platform. Considering the fact that it had only been very recently that he'd had his legs shattered, that he was up and around at all was freakish. He wasn't quite up to walking yet, but the Kazekage wasn't going to wait for him to heal to accompany them, and Rock Lee wasn't about to leave the fate of his fiancé to be told to him by messenger. As the reality of the bombs had struck all of them he had fallen into a sombre mood, keeping his own council and only responding with the least amount of words necessary. He wasn't quite broken, but that was because he refused to believe it until he saw her body with his own eyes. It was all he could do.

They saw the village from a distance long before any of the buildings came into view. Despite the sacking of Sunagakure having happened several days ago, the shinobi village still burned with such ferocity that the flames and smoke were visible high into the sky.

Every Sunagakure shinobi's stomach dropped at the sight of their burning village during their approach, as they knew that the rumours and talk from the older sister of the Kazekage was true. It didn't look like anyone could survive such devastation.

Despite his own melancholy over the state of his home, Gaara kept a straight face and began giving out orders to the surviving shinobi. They were all ANBU and professionals in the field, even when they were faced with such a situation. He expected them to deal with the problems at hand and deal with their personal grief afterwards. It was a harsh demand, but they lived in a harsh world and it was something they had to do.

Their main priority when entering the village was searching for survivors. They were not expecting any, but considering the fact that they had encountered several groups of civilians that had been unaffected by the bombs that had fallen around them, it was possible that some might have survived.

But what was suspicious was that since coming into viewing range of the burning village, they hadn't encountered any Quiraji forces at all. Gaara would have thought they would have at least had a few scouts posted beyond the village to warn the internal forces of their approach, but there was nothing alive outside of the village.

There were plenty of bodies though. It had looked like Shikamaru's defence of the village had been fairly effective, as there were far more Quiraji bodies littering the battlefield than shinobi corpses. It looked as though each shinobi had taken a terrible toll on the enemy army, but that didn't make the approach any easier. He knew many of the shinobi that they passed over as they came towards the broken walls of their village, having given the orders for some of the more wounded ANBU in his ranks to begin collecting the bodies and giving them the respect they deserve.

They were ordered to burn any and all Quiraji bodies they found.

As they split up and began to move into the village, Gaara immediately knew that there would be no rebuilding the village. There were no buildings that were undamaged and almost the village's entire infrastructure had been torn apart during the sacking. Even if that weren't the case, he could rightfully guess that the Quiraji had put all of their external farms to the torch and drunk the few reservoirs of water that remained dry.

He couldn't keep his people here longer than a few days even if he wanted to.

With an elite group of ANBU around him, plus his bodyguard Matsuri and the ex-Konoha shinobi Rock Lee accompanying him, the Kazekage entered his home and began surveying the damage directly. He had some of his best sensory-type shinobi by his side and his sand eyes scattered as far as his concentration could take them, but something didn't quite add up in Gaara's mind.

Where were the Quiraji attackers? If they had taken the village as they had clearly done so, why would they abandon the foothold? Even if it was a ruined mess, Sunagakure was still a moderately defensible position and it was clear that they would be returning in diminished numbers.

Yet by all accounts, they could find any living Quiraji in the village at all. As the reports came in, they all said the same thing.

Perhaps they abandoned the village once they sensed that we had defeated Benkei. The Quiraji soldiers we've encountered so far have been scattered and confused, so that might make sense.

The Tailed Beast within him snorted in response, but Gaara hadn't been talking to him so he ignored Shukaku for the time being. With his group of twenty shinobi, Gaara rose up above the village to get a bird's-eye view of their devastated home. The stench of death was overpowering and more than a few ANBU had been forced to remove their masks to evacuate their bowels at both the sight and smell of the bodies scattered throughout the village. There were civilians, shinobi and Quiraji alike, countless thousands that would takes weeks to clear from the streets, let alone those that had died within the buildings and on the battlefield beyond.

Looking at the large building that had been his office, Gaara saw that it had taken a massive blow from some kind of siege weapon and he could see into what had once been his office. In a strangely serene manner, he could see that his desk was untouched despite all the chaos that had occurred in his home. The paperwork that had been left on top of it when he'd left for the Land of Fire was still there, stacked neatly in the piles he had left them in.

It was like a bad joke, mocking him with its presence.

"This is madness," said one of the ANBU shinobi at his side. "How can we possibly rebuild?"

Gaara couldn't respond to him. He had no words of comfort, not for them or himself. His mind was filled with darkness; he could feel himself falling deeper and deeper into a depression that would inevitably consume him.

But before that happened he felt a hand fall on his shoulder that drew him out of his depression. Looking over he saw the serious expression of his bodyguard staring into his eyes with those large brown eyes he had seen so often. She didn't have to say anything to him, the look was enough. She had reminded him of his duty and that he was a leader before he was a shinobi.

With no joy in his face, Gaara moved the sand platform towards the ground and gave out orders for the shinobi with him to join the search for survivors. They didn't question his orders, despite the fact that it left him exposed; they each understood that he had things to do that only a leader had to. Rock Lee was still unable to walk properly and stayed seated on the platform, while Matsuri flat out refused to budge, though the Kazekage wouldn't give such an order anyway.

Once his feet touched the sandy ground of the village, Gaara was struck with how unlike his home it now was. He had few positive memories of the village from when he was a child, for various reasons, but with the fires still raging and the bodies around him, he couldn't imagine how they could possibly think to live here again.

As Gaara absorbed the images around him, Matsuri placed a hand to her ear and acted as the facilitator for the reports being fed to her from the ANBU around the village. To her disappointment, much of the reports were simple casualty reports as the Sunagakure shinobi discovered fallen friends and family. Even the battle-hardened ANBU were unable to conceal their grief as time passed and they discovered more of the consequences of the battle. However, despite all the negative reports, there were reports of certain areas that had been spared the devastation of the battle, such as the school near the centre of the village and large sections of the hospital. Everyone inside those buildings was dead, but the structures were intact.

"What kind of victory did we really achieve?" said Rock Lee as he held himself steady against a ruined section of a building. "He was right…we'd lost the moment we stepped onto the battlefield."

"It might have been a pyrrhic victory," replied Gaara with his hands on the ground, feeling the vibrations from the sands that comprised the village, "But it is still a victory. We all lost people, but we survived. We'll rebuild and become great again."

"It wasn't worth it…" muttered the taijutsu master as he tenderly took a step forward and winced at the pain shooting up his legs.

Gaara ignored his last statement and took a deep breath as he felt the cracks through the sand up his arms. He shook his head and made a decision before standing up and breathing out slowly, "But we won't do it here. This is no longer our village."

He let the gravity of his statement sink in for a few moments in his own mind before Matsuri drew his attention with a wave of her hand, "Gaara-sama, they've found someone."

oOoOoOo

When they arrived at the scene, they had no idea how to react. The ANBU shinobi that had found the scene had been ordered to keep their distance and wait for the Kazekage to arrive. When Gaara, Rock Lee and Matsuri saw what they'd been told about, it was almost impossible to digest properly.

There were mountains of bodies littering a single large open area near the northern side of the village. The buildings that had been populating the area looked to have been blown apart from inside the village rather than out by some explosive force that had hurled them into the other buildings nearby. The bodies on the ground were exclusively Quiraji bodies; they looked as though they had been butchered by a myriad of different weapons or animals. It was obvious that the Quiraji had been slaughtered some time ago.

Yet as the ANBU had discovered, there was still a single living soul in Sunagakure that had been present during the sacking of the village. A lone figure stood beside a huge pile of Quiraji corpses, drenched head-to-toe in blood, to the extent that even the animal mask that it wore didn't have a single speck of white remaining at all. It hadn't seem to have noticed their presence at first, but when the Kazekage and his companions touched down on the ground its head snapped around and it glared at them with such an aura of force that it was painful to look at.

"What the hell happened here?" said Matsuri with a shake of her head. She stared at the figure for a few seconds before turning to her leader grimly, "Sir…I'm not sensing any chakra."

At that, all of the gathered ANBU in the area readied weapons and began moulding chakra, yet the figure made no motion to attack them at this stage. The Kazekage stared at the figure intently, taking in the fact that there were only Quiraji bodies in the surrounding area and he wasn't sensing any aggression towards them from the figure. If anything, it was looking past them to something else altogether.

While the Kazekage and the ANBU didn't recognise the bloody figure, it didn't even take a second for Rock Lee to recognise who the figure was. Despite the mess that was his legs, the taijutsu master lurched forward with his hands at his side, "It's okay, she's not going to attack you." He looked at the mask that covered her face with a mixture of hope and despair; he'd felt this feeling before from her. "Sakura…it's me. We've been through this already. You aren't Iceheart anymore."

The bloody doctor's head jerked unnaturally to face him as her hands clenched into fists and then unclenched as she struggled with some kind of internal conflict. The spiritual energy that had been gathered around her began to dissipate as Rock Lee approached her. Once he came within reach, she appeared to have come to a conclusion and one of her bloody hands reached up towards her face.

Sakura removed the borrowed ANBU mask from her face to reveal her pale face that was the only part of her not drenched in blood. Her green eyes looked at her fiancé for a moment before the shadow of a smile emerged on her face.

"Lee…"

The female ex-assassin's eyes quickly rolled into the back of her head and her body slumped to the ground. Rock Lee jumped forward and caught her just before she struck the stony floor, though he fell to the ground himself as his legs were still not up to such movements. The Sunagakure ANBU around them lowered their weapons and turned their attention to the silent Kazekage to wait for his orders.

Seeing her reaction to Rock Lee's presence, Gaara was able to deduce what had happened to his head doctor. The lack of Quiraji soldiers within the village now made sense, though it was a scary proposition to think that she might have killed them all herself. The fact that she'd survived the bombs was suspicious, but for now he knew that she wasn't a threat to them directly. He turned to Matsuri and began issuing orders for the ANBU to collect all of their fallen companions so they could bury them properly. It was grim work, but they had to pay their respects before they took the next step.

oOoOoOo

They stayed in the ruins of their old village longer than Gaara would have liked, but after a month of preparations and resource gathering, the remnants of Sunagakure were finally ready to depart their previous home. The bodies of their fallen had been buried in the graveyard outside the village, with both shinobi and civilians alike placed in individual graves with small stone markers giving their names. They'd held a mass funeral for their fallen and Gaara gave a speech about the importance of staying together to honour those that had sacrificed their lives so that they might live. He emphasised that they had an obligation to do the best they could for their families and build a new life for themselves.

He then told his people about an offer that had been made by their allies in the war against the Quiraji. He would never order them to follow him, but after giving them the choice to either depart now and live their lives elsewhere or follow him to their new path, he didn't hear a single word against his plan.

It filled him with pride that they had such faith in him and gave him hope that they would be able to forge a new path for them.

Standing at the back of the Sunagakure group were the ex-Konoha couple of Rock Lee and Sakura. After collapsing from the stress of accessing her inherent Iceheart abilities, Sakura had lain in a coma for nearly a fortnight before she awoke with her consciousness still intact. She had accepted her gifted power with a mixture of disgust and understanding, but was thoroughly horrified with what she had done to the Quiraji soldiers that had occupied the village. Rock Lee had reassured her that it wasn't her that did the massacre, but Sakura knew that he was wrong. She had been completely aware as she had torn them apart, relishing in their agony and bathing herself in blood. It was a part of her now and that had scarred her for the rest of her life.

Regardless, they still planned to be a family and get married when time permitted. They had sworn their services to the Kazekage for the time being and would assist him in the venture he was proposing, but beyond that they didn't really know what they were going to do with themselves.

Perhaps they would stay with the others, given the options presented to them. It was difficult to decide at this time. They both had wounds that needed healing and that would take time.

For now, they were going to return to where it all began.

---

The leaders of the shinobi world had gathered in one place once again, though under very different circumstances from the previous time they had been forced to do so. At the Kage Summit, the village leaders had gathered to answer the growing Quiraji threat, only to come under attack by a large Quiraji army that culminated in the ascension of the Otokage and the agreement to work together to combat the enemy.

But now, the shinobi world had changed irreparably since that time. Every shinobi village had been devastated by the Quiraji bombs; some like Iwagakure were gone completely with no shinobi remaining alive to continue their legacy. There had been no word from Killer Bee or any other Kumogakure shinobi, and no indication on whether they ever would either.

And now the surviving leaders had gathered to pick up the pieces of their broken civilisation and determine what they were going to do with their hard won lives. The three leaders that had been present at the Kage Summit sat in the room silently in their Kage robes, still pondering the fates of their destroyed villages.

The Kazekage had just recently returned from the Land of Wind, having led his people out of the desert with the intention of building a new home for them somewhere that had the resources to sustain them, though he was still haunted by the thousands of bodies they had buried and the unknown future that lay ahead of them.

The Mizukage had always intended to return to the Land of Fire to retrieve the Kirigakure shinobi she had left behind to get to her village as quickly as possible. However, after reaching the village and seeing what happened, plus her discussions with Mangetsu, Mei had decided that staying apart from the rest of the shinobi world was a foolish notion. They had lost too many people being apart and she knew there were likely still Quiraji soldiers that could be a threat to them and that would require a united front.

The last Kage had been pensively silent as the other two had taken their seats in his meeting room in the Fire Temple. Their victory had taken nearly everything from him and his people, but out of all the villages his people were the most numerous and had the greatest number of surviving shinobi. It gave Neji an unprecedented amount of power in the uncertain times, but he knew that he couldn't abuse such power without consequences. He had sent messages to his fellow Kages in the hopes that they would be able to forge a new alliance for the future. Regardless of what their concerns were, he would listen and offer whatever resources were at his disposal.

They were in this together, whether they liked it or not.

Besides the three Kages, there were four other people present for the meeting to decide where their society might go in the future. The married couple of Naruto and Hinata had joined their allies at the meeting room at Neji's request, as they had just as much a right to sit at the table as anyone, given their contribution to the ending of the battle with Benkei. Naruto had spoken with the Otokage privately on several occasions about his treatment of the Quiraji prisoners and they had come to an understanding of sorts. The blonde shinobi still wasn't happy with the decisions Neji had made, but he had come around to an understanding that sometimes drastic measures had to be put into place. Hinata had shared his concerns, but had been forced to confess that she couldn't argue with her older cousin because it was his right to protect his family and his people in whatever way he saw fit.

But she did warn Neji that she would hold him accountable if he got out of hand. She would not allow him to become a tyrant, even if it meant she had to fight him herself.

The last two people in the meeting were the oddly-matched couple of Sasuke and Fiore, having essentially invited themselves to the meeting. As the last Uchiha and as someone who knew much about the founding of Konoha from his study of his clan's history, Sasuke felt he would be able to contribute to the direction their people took in the next little while. He also felt that he should be present at such a gathering considering his contribution to the overall war.

Fiore had let herself into the meeting and ignored any potential protests at her presence as she sat down beside her fighting partner. She had remained in the Land of Fire even after her part in the war was essentially over, though she had communicated with her mother and the others in Cascading Flow over their victory and the results of the battle. In the response back, she heard that any of the resistance that had survived their sacking of Iwagakure had been killed by the Quiraji bombs that had fallen in the Land of Earth. The civilians of the continent had taken back much of the power that the shinobi had taken control of in the past month, which was causing a new array of problems that they were forced to deal with. She had told Sasuke that she was there to make sure that the shinobi understood their place in the world and to keep them honest.

None of them were sure how they were meant to start the meeting. Much had been discussed prior between individuals, but having gathered together as a collective it was another thing entirely.

With his Kage hat in the middle of the table, beside the other two, Gaara looked around at the faces gathered before clearing his throat and leaning forward onto his elbows, "These are difficult times."

With a smirk, Mei fell back in her chair and chuckled, "Truer words have not been said in a long time." She turned her green-eyed gaze to their host and tipped her head respectfully, "Thank you for being the host of these meetings, Otokage. It is good to have a place to hold these talks in these times."

Gaara echoed her statement, though they both knew it was only a formality. The Hyuuga leader held the most power at the table and was the greatest threat if he were to decide that only his people were to prosper. After what they had been through together, the two of them had a pretty good gauge of the Otokage's character, but that didn't mean they weren't going to approach the discussions tactfully.

"So what are we really here to discuss?" asked Naruto after a few moments of silence. "If it's just for the food, I think we're all a bit out of luck."

"I'll inform the chefs," said Neji with a dry tone, though he was grateful for the blonde shinobi's comments as he had reduced some of the tension in the room. "But no, as you are all well aware, we face an important crossroads in our world. Our villages are in ruins and our numbers are tiny. If it weren't for the defeat of the Quiraji we would be on the brink of extinction. I know my fellow Kage can echo this statement: we will not allow our race and culture to die out."

It went without saying, but the sentiment was felt throughout the room. However there was one that had a more cynical view and it was that none of them would expect it from.

Sasuke didn't need to change his position at the table to garner the whole group's attention, though he still stood up to make his point. "I know many things about legacies. My family founded a village and then tried to destroy it in an attempt to maintain their own power. The Uchiha should be an example of what not to do. I loved my family, and my brother died to give me a chance to live, but I will not see the mistakes of the past repeated. The Quiraji were once our masters and we threw off their shackles, but the reason we almost lost the war was because of our relationship with the civilians of our world. Regardless of what decisions we make now, we must not forget what we went through to come to this point."

He let his statement settle in for a few moments before sitting back down and gesturing for them to continue.

Naruto stared at his old friend with pride in his eyes, it was clear that Sasuke had grown immensely from when they were children. To come to point of understanding about his own clan in such a manner was particularly impressive.

"We are not going to establish a new empire, Sasuke," clarified Neji quietly. "None of us want to repeat the mistakes of the past."

"Even so, we still wield a lot of power in this world," replied the Mizukage. "The Quiraji are broken and scattered and the civilians know that it was us that defeated them. Even without our villages, some of them wish a return to the shinobi system so they can utilise our skills once again."

"We don't have the numbers to return to such a time," said Gaara grimly. "My people have just finished fighting a war that killed their friends and families; they have no intention of becoming a civilian's pet. We need time to rebuild our lives and figure out our place in this world."

"I think we all want that," said Hinata, having decided it was time to pitch in. "The shinobi world has seen enough war for several generations. None of us want a return to conflict, but we also cannot simply set up housing without prior acknowledgement of the war. We shinobi deserve a place to call home, and until that is the case we won't feel safe."

Naruto smiled proudly at his young wife's comments, knowing exactly where it was coming from.

"Nobody is disputing the fact that we all want a home to call our own," said Neji, grateful for his cousin's contribution. "We have the beginnings of a settlement here, both in the Fire Temple and the surrounding areas. Our home village was devastated by the Quiraji much like everyone else's, but we are committed to beginning our lives again." He cleared his throat and stood up from the table, looking around with his white eyes before saying what he had intended to offer when he first invited them to the meeting.

"We are all shinobi, regardless of origin. Now more than ever, our people are united under the same origin with the same purpose. If there was ever a time for us to unite under a single nation, it would be now."

He focused most of his attention on the two other Kages at the table, but his offer was extended to both the married couple at the table and all shinobi that had survived the war with the Quiraji. The Kazekage and Mizukage both stared at the Otokage intently, having guessed that he would make such an offer before they'd even arrived. They then turned their gazes to each other, sharing a silent conversation for a few moments before Mei chose to speak first.

"My people will not serve another, Otokage, this you should know. They are loyal to those that have gained their trust and respect, and while you might be a Kage, I will not submit myself to another either."

Neji could see that the Kazekage felt the same way, but he was quick to clarify his meaning. "I am not talking about rule under a single leader. The village system was partially at fault for our preparations for the Quiraji invasion and I would not ask your people to follow me."

"What are you suggesting then?" asked Gaara quickly. "My people are warriors, not builders or farmers. I suspect the Mizukage's people are the same. We don't have the means to create proper villages for ourselves, so as such we would be at your mercy if we were to join forces with your people."

The Mizukage started voicing similar sentiments, but before she could get too far along Naruto slammed a fist on the table and stood up so that everyone's eyes were on him.
"Is this really how we are going to do this? We're going to argue about the semantics over who does what at this time? If I didn't know any better, I'd think you all want to go back to fighting each other." He sighed and indicated to the young woman sitting beside him with his hand. "I love this woman and have every intention of making a home for her and the family we will have in the future. If that means I have to build a home with my bare hands, then I will do so."

At his words, Hinata felt herself blushing terribly for the first time in a long time. She had no idea why he was saying these things, but she had every intention of paying him back for every word he was saying.

"What is your point?" said Sasuke shortly.

"My point, you idiot, is that we are far stronger together than we are apart." Naruto turned from his old friend back to the three Kages at the other side of the table. "We are the leaders of the remaining shinobi and there is no reason we cannot work together to build something greater."

Seeing where Naruto was going, Neji was the first to offer a compromise at the table. "Naruto is right. If we were to create a single village together, with all of us as equals, then it is within our power to do so. That way, nobody will be under the impression they are subordinate to another they do not respect and we can come together as a single people, rather than as separate villages."

Naruto sat back down as he saw Neji had gotten the gist of what he was talking about, though he jumped as he felt Hinata pinch his side to draw his gaze before kissing him on the lips lightly.

"What you offer is quite generous," began the Kazekage. "But what knowledge of governance do we know beyond the military dictatorships of the shinobi villages of old? How can we keep our people safe without such a system?"

"We still have the greatest military strength in the world," replied Mei with a sharp tone. "If any force were foolish enough to threaten us, they would not last long."

"The Mizukage is not wrong in that regard," said Neji as he sat back down into his chair. "With so many people well-versed in warfare, it would be difficult not to have our military power as the main source of our political power in the continent."

The conversation went on like this for several minutes, before one of the group that had been silent the whole time had had enough. Fiore eventually pushed her chair back and stood up while slamming a fist down on the table in a similar manner to Naruto earlier. She hadn't intended to say anything at the beginning, but as a representative of the people the shinobi had to live with, she couldn't stay silent any longer.

"I will not stand here and allow you to create a new shinobi tyranny in the world. There is a saying amongst the civilians of the world: show me a shinobi and I'll show you someone who will eventually become corrupted by their power. Nobody can deny that you shinobi possess a powerful force in this world." She pulled out the wooden pin in her hair and transformed it into a massive wooden hammer that she drove straight into the middle of the stone table between the talking shinobi. "But you are not allowed to take power for yourselves just because you want to. Cascading Flow and the civilians of the Land of Earth took down such a tyranny in Iwagakure and that was not an isolated incident."

"What are you getting at?" asked an irritated Neji, having felt he was finally making progress with his compatriots before she interrupted.

Fiore turned her steely gaze to the Otokage and he could see how determined she was to speak her piece. "More civilians died in this war than shinobi. We are still picking up the pieces of our own worlds and now you want to create something else for us to fear? I will not allow it to happen. We will bring the full force of our strength down upon you." She reached across the table and retrieved her wooden hammer, hefting it onto her shoulder. "And then there will be none of you left. Perhaps then there will be peace."

After retaking her seat, Fiore could see her words had made an impact on her audience as they were considering their positions. She wasn't going to tell them that she thought the idea of a single shinobi nation was actually a great idea, as most civilian casualties resulted from collateral damage of the shinobi civil wars. They had to come to the conclusion on their own; otherwise they would just go back to the way things were.

After almost a minute of silence, Neji finally stood up and reached for the black and white hat he had placed on the table. "Those are good points, Fiore. We shall keep them in mind. For now, I suggest we take a break and consider the direction that is best for our people."

The Kazekage and Mizukage stood up as well, reaching for their own hats and excusing themselves from the table. They had each been given a lot to think about and no decisions were going to be made after the first meeting. There had been no conflicts between their different factions of shinobi as of yet; it seemed as though any old grudges had been forgotten during the heat of battle.

After the three Kages left the meeting room to consider what they had discussed, Naruto and Hinata excused themselves as well, sensing that the others wanted some privacy.

Once everyone else had left, Fiore relaxed in her chair and grinned at her partner while putting her wood back into her hair as a hair pin. "That went well."

Sasuke felt like she was expecting him to get annoyed at her, but if anything he found himself agreeing with what she had said more than ever. Having worked with Cascading Flow for the years that he had and gotten close to civilians such as Fiore and her mother, Sasuke had to agree that only by working with civilians and understanding the impact that they had on them.

The last Uchiha stood up from the meeting table finally and offered the Cascading Flow warrior his hand, "Come on. Let's get some food before getting some training in."

Fiore looked at him with a cocked eyebrow for a moment before chuckling and hopping up and reaching around to slap his backside playfully. "Always working hard, eh Uchiha? Can't stop you even for a moment."

"Evidently not…" said Sasuke with a sigh as he followed her out of the room. Even now, he still couldn't get a proper read on the Cascading Flow warrior. It was extremely frustrating.

---

Naruto winced as he removed his shirt and sat down on the bed, feeling every ounce of soreness accumulated over the past few years down to his bones. He let out an extended breath and looked over to see his wife walk out of the bathroom with her night dress on and her hair down. She looked as tired as he felt, yet she always seemed to have a smile for him whenever he was looking.

The young kunoichi yawned widely and sat down beside him on the bed, stretching her arms out in front of her before leaning her head onto his lap. Without saying a word, Naruto began to stroke her hair, feeling each strand carefully with his fingers.

"What are we going to do now?" asked Hinata quietly, her eyes still closed as she enjoyed the attention.

"Do you mean with the settlement?"

Hinata didn't respond verbally, instead she moved her head slightly back and forth.

Understanding what she meant, Naruto placed both his hands on her shoulders and began massaging the sore muscles that he knew were there. "You mean us…of course. Well, I've been thinking about it for a while now."

"…and?"

It was simple enough to think about and now that they came to it Naruto found that it was the easiest thing to say. "First of all, we should have a baby. That should be our first priority."

For almost a minute, he got no response from his young wife. He thought she might have fallen asleep, but eventually her head turned and she stared up at him through her pure white eyes. They held that contact for a long time before Hinata nodded slowly and turned her head back to a more comfortable position on his lap. "Not right now, honey. I'm very tired."

Naruto grinned and continued to stroke her hair affectionately, "So am I, strangely enough. I'm glad that we're on the same page though."

After a few minutes he gently lifted her into the bed and covered her with a blanket before getting in himself and embracing her lovingly. It was nice to just be in the moment and let the problems of the future come.

"We'll try in the morning," muttered Hinata before drifting off to sleep.

Naruto sighed silently and tried to fall asleep, but the thought of the future now determined to keep him awake.

He could have sworn it was intentional. She was an evil, evil woman when she wanted to be.

Eventually he did fall asleep, with the thought of the hopes he knew were on the horizon.

---

Author's Note:

This may feel like the end, but it is not. There is one final Bonus Chapter to wrap up the story, plus the Writing Tips and Tricks chapter that will come out at the same time after it. That chapter will basically be my flash-forward, though it'll be at several different points and will cover every main character that has been present in this story. Basically I want to give everyone their due.

The reason I've left things a little bit ambiguous is so that the next chapter has a reason to exist. I don't just want to do a flash-forward with no middle ground. It won't be fully laid out, for obvious reasons, but there is a rhythm to these things. I hope you enjoy it.

Please review and tell me what you think. I try to take each review into account, and believe me I read them all. Tell me what can be improved, what you liked, what you didn't, everything. I'm a writer so I'm always open to criticism.