I touched down in Ame on Konan's landing pad, the guards for Pein's tower opening the gateway for me.

As I floated through, I was greeted by a visibly drunk Naruto.

"Jon! You're flying! How are you flying?" he slurred questioningly.

I shrugged, "Right now? I'm using a technique to alter the way gravity affects me."

"So you can use gravity release like Nagato-nii?" He asked.

I shrugged, "I can't use chakra, but there are other ways of manipulating gravity. I happen to be using one of those."

"I wish I could fly." He pouted, "Konan said that flying with Nagato was fin and I wanna fly with Hinata!"

"Technically, you could use wind release to fly." I offered, "And getting a better handle on your Tailed Beast state would let you fly too."

"Really?" He asked.

I shrugged, "You would need to get a better relationship with the Kyuubi first, learn his name and actually learn to cooperate with him."

"Why? The bastard fox doesn't like me!" He yelled.

I shook my head, "I'd be pissy if I experienced what your mum did to him too."

"What did my mum do?" He asked with bewilderment.

I ruffled his hair, "I'll tell you when you sober up, okay?"

"But I wanna know what my mom did to make the nine-tails angry at me!" he whined.

I chuckled, "Why don't you ask him? Actually, can I see your seal for a moment?"

He stared at me for a moment before rolling up his shirt.

Closing my eyes, I felt the flow of life force within him. Four different souls in there… I wonder.

Drawing from my staff, I carefully injected a good deal of life-force into the two that were near death, increasing their reserve dozens of times over.

"There." I said, "I've left you a little surprise for when you talk with the fox again and be nice to him okay? He's a nice guy, but he hasn't had a lot of friends."

"Really?" Naruto asked.

I shrugged, "Well, as far as I know, he hasn't gone on any rampages and given that he's at least a thousand years old, that makes the attacks I know of relatively out of character. I know that at least three of them including the two attacks on Konoha were initiated by an outside party, not him, and if I'm not mistaken, his only real family are the other tailed beasts. And well, would you like having the Ichibi as a brother?"

"Isn't that the racoon-thing that was making Gaara crazy?" Naruto asked.

I nodded.

Naruto stared at his stomach, "That's terrible! It would be like having Kiba for a brother!"

"It's no wonder that's he's grumpy all the time, isn't it?" I offered.

He nodded vigorously, "I'm gonna talk to him!"

Stumbling into a loose lotus pose, he started meditating on the spot.

Shaking my head, I ambled on forward and found my way to Pein's office. The man himself as well at the two women were drinking in the waiting area outside it, a new table laden with bottles and dishes of sake.

Settling down on one of the cushions, I took a moment to reach into my jacket and pull out a bottle of Hennessy, "So, I heard that you are something of a connoisseur? "

He stared at the bottle, "What's this?"

"High-end alcohol from my homeland. This particular variation is called Hennesy XO, a cognac, which is an aged distillate of wine - a spirit made from grapes." I explained as I retrieved a set of snifters from my jacket.

Nagato looked at me as I put the glasses around the table, "None for yourself?"

I shrugged, "I don't really drink, though I suppose I could have a tot."

Pouring a generous glug into one of the snifters, I sipped at the liquor.

"It's strangely sweet, isn't it?" Nagato mused.

Konan nodded from her glass, "It's really fruity too. Nothing like Sake really."

I nodded, "A fair bit stronger too, this is about 40% alcohol by volume. I believe most sake is about 20% out of the bottle."

Nagato nodded thoughtfully.

Hinata looked at the door behind me, "Where's Naruto? He went out to see you."

"Meditating outside… or possibly sleeping. He was pretty drunk when I saw him and after we got talking about the nine-tails for a while, he said he was going to go talk with the fox." I said with a shrug.

Hinata sighed picking herself off the ground, "Please excuse me, I need to find Naruto before he wanders off."

"Go ahead!" Konan cheered with a grin, "My offer of a private room for the night is still open."

Hinata blushed brilliantly and scampered out of the room.

"Ahh, young love!" declared Konan.

Yahiko laughed, "It's almost like seeing you and Nagato as kids again!"

"We weren't that bad." Konan frowned.

He rolled his eyes, "Nagato had to drag you back from the bar more than once."

Konan shook her head, "Yeah, so what?"

"You are Naruto in this situation." Yahiko said with a grin.

Konan gasped, "No, really?"

Nagato chuckled, "Don't worry too much about it Konan, he's just sad that he doesn't have a partner."

The room bust into laughter at that, with the three friends refilling their snifters.

After Hinata dragged Naruto back into the room, the younger man having fallen asleep on her shoulder.

Eventually, the alcohol overcame the heiress's constitution and she fell asleep too, the four of us remaining awake taking a moment to stash then in one of the guest rooms and snapping a few pictures of the comatose couple.

As we returned to the little lounge Konan looked at me, "You know, Hinata told me that your world hasn't had a war in almost a hundred years."

"That's true. The last major war ended about around seventy-five years ago." I responded, "Since then, there's been a few conflicts, usually internal struggles that other countries get involved in, but the fighting rarely followed them back home."

Nagato and Yahiko stared at me, "How did your world manage that!"

"A short version?" I shrugged, "Money and risk."

Nagato motioned for me to continue as I took a sip.

"Now, keep in mind that I'm not trained in international affairs, but my understanding of how things became the way they have starts about two hundred and fifty years ago. Someone managed to put harness to steam and we left the age in which the muscles of man or beast were all that powered our society." I began.

I grinned as the three settled in to watch, my magic weaving into illustrations of the industrial revolution, billowing clouds of steam filling the area around us.

"And with this, came ways to move faster and more effectively. No longer limited by the wind, travel by sea became faster and more predictable, until eventually, trade between distant nations became the norm." I continued.

Illusory waves crashed around us and we could see the massive silhouette of a tanker passed by us.

"Unfortunately, as these titans of industry were born, the wonders that birthed them were turned to war. With no chakra to aid us, we turned to artifice, and weapons of war were manufactured en mass, until one broke the beast's back."

In the distance of the illusory world we were in, we saw the iconic mushroom cloud of a nuclear blast.

"The first bomb destroyed everything within one point six kilometres of itself. The second reached two. 120,000 were killed and another 130,000 were injured, doomed to a lingering demise." I intoned.

"Still, this was insufficient to truly deter the most war-hungry, and two of the victors of the war worked to make their position unassailable. Until these were created" The view around us changed to an ICBM peeking out of a silo.

I watched their expressions as they stared at the gigantic weapon, "Each far more destructive than the two bombs that were deployed, they were able to strike any nation regardless of the distance within hours at the latest."

They turned to look at the innocuous white pillar again, a strange understanding in their eyes."

"Alone, this would not be enough. But something else had happened." I said, and we returned to see a feet of planes being loaded with shipping, "The military alliances from the last war morphed into trade deals. The knowledge taken from the wars turned to the generation of profit. Wealth flowed between nations more easily than water, people became prosperous and those in power quickly realised that the prosperity they enjoyed was in part thanks to other nations."

"And if they got into a war, they couldn't get the stuff they liked." Yahiko noted.

I nodded, "It's a lot more complex than that, one of the bigger things is that we don't have Daimiyo, we have elected leaders of government that depended on the approval of their subjects to maintain power. Companies were the only ones with the wealth needed to finance the campaigns needed to have a chance at winning. Those companies couldn't exist without markets that spanned multiple nations."

We continued talking about the nature of peace and war long into the night.