"…You know, I expected him to be a lot scarier than this," I said to no one in particular. Maybe the cow trying to eat a patch of clover nearby.

"You," Yugito began, then sighed. She finished somewhat lamely with, "…are certainly not alone there."

"He" was a seven-and-a-half-foot-tall Iwagakure shinobi who was placidly tending to an entire field of cows, with the assistance of a girl literally half his size. Or maybe it was the other way around.

Pause. Rewind. How did we get here?

Traveling by sea the way we did it, without a concrete destination aside from "next," was a bit like leaping into a taxi and telling the driver "follow that car!" Only more tedious.

At least we didn't end up in a seagoing seven-vehicle pile-up. We did attract at least one Marine vessel, but Ace set it on fire before Isobu drove a three-story spike through its hull and sank it. While the sailors piled into lifeboats, we made a speedy getaway in our absurdly fast watercrafts. Yugito and I were at least careful to change our appearances to hide exactly who was riding the vessel following Fire First Ace around, but sooner or later the Nautilus would lose anonymity.

At least I remembered to cloak the entire ship in a genjutsu to make it look like a Grand Line whale. It probably really raised more questions than answers, but as long as they were the wrong questions, I could live with that.

"Blackbeard's been spotted on this next island," Ace said, as we ate lunch. He, as always, ate the lion's share. Even after face-planting into his plate. "I should be able to track him down pretty quick."

"And we'll all be home by Christmas," I muttered, because it was never that easy.

"What's Christmas?" Yugito asked, frowning.

"You don't have Christmas?!" Ace burst out, spraying both of us with bits of food.

Yugito and I both had to clean our faces with napkins before we could reply to that. Yugito, perhaps of the opinion that the correction wouldn't stick without a sharp reminder, reached over with one hand and slammed his jaw shut.

"Ow!" was what he said to that once Yugito let go, but at least he swallowed first. He shook himself, blinking at Yugito, then said, "I'm sorry, that was rude of me. But you don't know about Christmas?"

"It's a winter holiday where people exchange gifts, celebrate being alive, and generally party," I told Yugito, ignoring Ace's astonished expression. "It's a little like New Year's, but with more shouting and heavier food."

"How do you know about it?" Yugito asked, her eyes narrow with suspicion.

"I overheard some of the Whitebeard Pirates talking about it back on the Moby Dick," I said, shrugging. It was a lie, but I didn't feel like explaining everything to Yugito. Unless I was dying and for some reason the secret cure involved confessing every little thing I'd ever hidden from people. Even then, I'd have to think it over. "Something or other about Thatch's Christmas pudding?"

"…Dammit, now I'm homesick," Ace griped. Then, "What were we talking about before this?"

"You had some kind of plan involving Blackbeard," Yugito prompted. "Though if he is as dangerous as you say he is, it might not be so easy."

Which was what I was really getting at with the Christmas comment. "I'd rather be there for backup, if possible."

You may not be able to, Isobu interrupted. When I dutifully rendered that remark into real speech for Ace and Yugito's benefits, I got some odd looks.

"Why not?" Ace asked, though he didn't seem all that disappointed.

Because I believe the next island we will visit is also where Kokuō and her host are staying, was the forcibly calm reply. Isobu still wanted to get his shot in at Teach and didn't seem likely to forget it, but a Tailed Beast battle would pull him away from presumably-populated areas to fight his horse-like sibling.

"Already?" Yugito's frown deepened. "That would mean we'll be facing Han of Iwagakure."

There really wasn't any love lost between the major shinobi villages. Iwa and Kumo may have been allies when I was a kid, but times changed. Suna was only Konoha's ally because of special circumstances owing to the last war and Sensei's skill with fūinjutsu. That, and Suna was probably the weakest of the five major villages anyway. It didn't precisely need allies, but it wouldn't drop them for no reason.

And that didn't even get into the nitty-gritty of actually tackling the fight. Neither Yugito nor I had any access to higher-level nature transformations like the Lava Release kekkei genkai, but both of Iwa's jinchūriki did. Han's was Boil Release, which was probably the worst of the two given what precedent Terumī Mei had set. Nothing before or since could melt a Susanoo outright.

"On the positive side, I don't think he'll be able to take on both of us if we fight at full strength," I said after a moment of pure dread. If Han hadn't met any other jinchūriki, he would only be fighting with his own power. Which was still significant, but not unbeatable.

"I think you both might be worrying over nothing," Ace said with a shrug. "I mean, you two get along all right. And Gaara was a nice kid. Han should be decent, too."

Yugito and I exchanged a glance that communicated one point with perfect clarity: "Is this guy serious?"

We sure as hell weren't friends. Actually, I was sure the only reason Yugito hadn't tried to murder me basically came down to "Isobu" and "I have more tails than you, nya-ha-ha-ha." One possible secondary reason was…well, moments like this, where Ace did something that threw both of us equally for a loop.

Ace continued without apparently noticing our disbelief, "Anyway, I'll see if I can figure out where Blackbeard is while you two find Han. The island isn't too big, so it's not like either one will be able to hide for long."

Saying it like that jinxed us twice over.

Still, we did go with that as a sort of basic plan. Assuming that Teach couldn't break the island in half or something equally extreme, Ace would…probably be okay. Yugito and I were less likely to be fine, but could probably double back in time for the inevitable literal firefight. Maybe.

In the end, Ace visited the actual city on the island. Yugito and I, however, looped around to the Spring Island's abundant farming on the Nautilus and docked somewhere well out of the way. Without summoning either Matatabi or Isobu, we headed inland and observed for a good long time.

Yugito sat in a tree that looked about as large as some of the ones I remembered from the Forest of Death. I, meanwhile, went about bothering the townsfolk for rumors in a manner I was sure would remind them of Ace if they had seen him first. As it was, I remained a stranger bothering people for accounts of a giant white animal, because I didn't have a clue what Han looked like if he took his armor off.

"Young man, are you talking about the four-horned unicorn?" asked one of the farmers as I sat on his fence.

Thanks to the Transformation technique, I looked like Lee back when he had a braid as opposed to his Gai-derived bowl cut. Not as small, of course, but anyone from home would have seen the resemblance my transformed state bore to him.

"There's a four-horned unicorn?" I asked blankly. Didn't that defeat the point of the term "unicorn?"

"Of course there is," the farmer told me, beckoning me to lean down so I could listen to his whisper. "We try keeping it quiet because the World Nobles probably wanting to shoot it, but it's a good beast."

…Huh. "I promise I won't tell anyone about it," I lied. I had to at least tell Yugito.

"See that you don't, kid. You look like a decent sort," the farmer added.

Probably because Lee had the second most honest face I'd ever seen. And I was kinda borrowing it. "Thank you for telling me, sir."

"In exchange, can you check on little Moda for me? Her parents work for the Marines, and they did hire a babysitter, but I'm not sure I trust him," the farmer said, before I could hop off the fence and race to tell Yugito about Kokuō being sighted. "He's just…shady, somehow."

"Will do, sir!" I chirped, and disappeared the instant his back was turned.

Then I dragged Yugito out of her tree like she was an actual cat and I was a firefighter. Together, we set off down the lane looking quite unlike ourselves until we found a farm that looked a little different from the rest. Yugito playing at being C for a few minutes—or so she said—and I pretended to be Tenten. We dropped our disguises once we were out of sight of anyone not on the aforementioned farm, then got a chance to observe again.

The cows were tiny. Like, half the height of the already-small child who was tending them. She was probably somewhere between nine and eleven years old, with light brown hair held back by a bandanna. She moved around the animals with no visible hesitation, carrying a pail of milk in each hand.

Those same little cows were practically footstools to the huge guy carrying one cow under each arm. Now, I had never seen Han in person, and his habit of wearing lobster-red armor as well as a white shroud made picking out any of his features an utter pain. But I did remember his flat brown eyes from the Bingo Book description. Everything else about him was a surprise, whether the fact that he'd clearly had his nose broken at some point or that his hair was a close-cropped dirty blond. Or that he was probably around thirty or so.

Also, the fact that he was basically doing his farm work in pajamas, with a white-and-green striped hat. And wore geta. Between that and his height he stuck out like one hell of a sore thumb, even if he was suppressing his chakra down to practically nothing. Still, everyone on this little farm seemed happy.

"I don't really want to interrupt them," I admitted, leaning on the edge of the fence with my arms folded. "You?"

"You are utterly spineless," Yugito informed me.

"That's not the first time I've heard that. Not even the first time I've told myself that," I told Yugito, tilting my head slowly. "But I'm not gonna scare the shit out of a ten-year-old civilian by attacking first."

Yugito sighed deeply. "Then how do you want to approach him?"

"I was thinking of saying hello?" Then I thought that over and winced as I remembered the whole Iwa-Konoha relationship and how thoroughly Madara had burned that bridge. "Or you can do it."

Yugito kicked me in the ankle by way of reply.

I took that as a sign to get moving, and pushed away from the fence to follow my non-plan. "You get to pull my unconscious body out of there if I screw up."

"I make no promises," said Yugito. She smirked, so I had to assume she got the joke if nothing else. Or was making a joke at my expense.

As I trotted down the lane toward probable doom, I prodded Isobu for an update. Isobu, have you had any luck with contacting Kokuō?

Only as much as she will allow. Kokuō was always the shyest among us, and will not leave the forest.

How is she even hiding in there? She's almost entirely white.

Kokuō is using the same mist generation ability as you and I do—though without the genjutsu component. Though a few humans have seen her, she does not feel threatened here.

That quick conversation helped tide me over until I reached the front gate to the little farm of miniature cows. Unlike the section of fence where Yugito and I had been standing before, these walls were made of stones held together by mortar in varying states of repair. From the look of things, parts had been patched by Earth Release ninjutsu when nobody was looking, even if I couldn't feel chakra in the wall anymore.

I could definitely feel it in the field, though, with Han's personal aura tucked in tight against his core to avoid touching anyone else. Still, it felt like a tea kettle about to boil for me. Out in the woods beyond the farm, Kokuō's pervasive chakra seemed to form an impenetrable barrier against other life that would dare do anyone harm.

Or maybe that was me projecting a bit.

"Hello there!" said the little milk-maid when she noticed me. "Can I help you?"

I waved back, though I pulled my chakra practically back into my Gates when I noticed Han looking over. "Mm, kind of. I was wondering if I could speak to your friend there for a moment?"

The girl whirled on the spot and said, "Mr. Han, there's someone here to see you!"

I was starting to see why this girl's neighbors were worried for her safety. But as Han made his slow, ominous way over to the fence, I found myself drawn back to her enthusiasm even as he approached.

"Miss Moda," I said, prompting her to turn around again, "one of your neighbors asked me if I could check in on you. Are you and Mr. Han getting along all right?"

"Oh, Mr. Han is just fine. He's helping me with the farm," Moda said, just as Han finally got close enough to talk.

I had to angle my head back a bit to see his face, and the expression there wasn't reassuring. He said, without taking his eyes off me, "Moda, could you go get some water from the river? I suspect our guest may enjoy some tea."

"You got it, Mr. Han!" Moda said, bowing. To me, she added, "You haven't had tea until you try it with milk from my farm, you know!"

We both waved as she took off. Han even managed a smile, but as soon as she was out of immediate earshot he scowled when he looked down at me. "If you even think of hurting that girl…"

"I would rather eat broken glass," I told him, dead serious.

"Good," Han said. "So, Konoha-nin, what do you want?"

Not for the first time, I wondered if my facial scar was the thing that gave me away. I certainly wasn't wearing any village-based symbols.

"Is it so hard to believe that I just want to talk?" I asked, though I knew the answer.

Han did, too. "So, talk."

"All nine of us are trapped in this weird world until we can all meet up and be friendly or something," I explained briefly, though I didn't doubt that Han knew exactly which "nine" I was talking about. There weren't many available clubs that people from Iwa and Konoha could both join. "And if you make the Seal of Reconciliation with me, you should be able to use Kokuō's chakra again."

And like hell I'd reveal that Naruto could be around.

Han kept perfectly still for a long second. "And what do you get out of this?"

"I get more access to my partner's powers, too, and I get one step closer to going home," I said quietly.

"I have nothing at home to return to," Han told me, closing his eyes. "I doubt my village is even looking for me except to retrieve Kokuō."

Ah, dammit. I sighed deeply, my gaze dropping to one of the nearby cows. "Is that so?"

"It is. Here, no one knows who I am." Han drummed his fingers along one bicep, then said, "It is…peaceful."

"And yet you still look like you've been getting about as much sleep as I have," I remarked, having noted the circles under his eyes. He was getting the same dreams I did. Yugito hadn't mentioned anything since Corkscrew Island for the sake of her pride, but I was observant enough to notice that, too.

"The only reason I can see for agreeing to this bargain is to get Kokuō's power to survive," Han told me, still looming. "No dream can be as terrible as returning to that waking nightmare."

I was saved from having to argue against that by a startled shriek from Moda, making both of us jump. "There's a person in the water! Mr. Han, help!"

I vaulted the fence as Han took off with all the speed his ninja training gave him, reaching Moda's little fishing pier over the river in a blink with me on his heels. I felt Yugito's chakra flare as she also Body Flickered to the scene, perhaps thinking that Han and I had decided to kill each other after all.

Moda had retrieved a certain orange hat from the water on her own, but Han reached down and helped her haul the drowning victim out of the river with all the apparent effort of a man retrieving an errant kitten. It seemed that, once again, the commander of the Second Division of the Whitebeard Pirates had about as much luck with water as Ranma.

While Han dragged my pirate friend onto the little pier and Moda sprang into action like a tiny lifeguard, I slapped my hand across my face. "Dammit, Ace."

"How often does this happen?" Yugito asked, while from the sound of things Ace spat up water like a human fountain.

"Way more often than you'd think," I grumbled. Still, I thought as I finally felt ready to view this bizarrely commonplace scene, it could have definitely been worse. "Han, Miss Moda, thanks for saving this idiot."

"I take it you know him, then." Han picked up Ace's hat and steam-cleaned it with barely a whisper of chakra, then pulled Moda back while Ace continued to work on the not-drowning thing. Coughing up that much water couldn't be healthy.

"He's been our navigator—of sorts," Yugito hedged. When Han finally looked down at her and recognition showed in his eyes, she bowed and said, "It's nice to finally meet you in person. Nii Yugito."

"…Likewise, I suppose," Han responded, a little off his game. "I'm Han."

"Mr. Han, if this is their friend, we should help look after him while he recovers, right?" Moda piped up, since Ace had finally stopped coughing. He still didn't move on his own, though, so perhaps this would take a bit longer to recover from than the last…three times?

For a guy whose power literally required him to sink like a stone, I would have figured Ace would be more careful around water.

Moda was the only one of us women who could pull off a puppy-dog look, so neither Yugito or I bothered. Still, Han folded like a damp paper towel. "All right, Moda."

Han scooped Ace up like the pirate didn't weigh anything at all, while I grabbed his hat and Yugito picked up Moda's forgotten pails. The four of us (with one casualty) then trekked back to Moda's house under her cheery command, only occasionally dodging miniature cow pies along the way.

In a way, it was kind of lucky that Ace wore more accessories than pieces of clothing. Han got him dried off and sorted out in record time, then bundled up in at least two layers of blankets and left him to sleep off the morning's adventure in a spare cot that had to be Han's. Given Ace's weird physiology, I was going to assume that if he didn't manage to die in the preceding few minutes, he'd be fine if we left him alone.

Even so, I needed to get him some kind of bell. Or get a vivre card from him if I could. I still didn't know how they were made, but if they really were as accurate as reported, they sounded much more useful when direct chakra usage made him want to puke his guts up.

"Thank you for saving my friend," I said as I bowed deeply to Moda, once everything was sorted out for the time being. "If you hadn't spotted him, he would have drowned."

"Our friend," Yugito corrected me. When I blinked at her, she just took a long sip of the milk Moda served her guests, clearly enjoying the experience and my confusion.

"I'm just glad I could help," Moda replied, while Han continued serving tea. With milk.

Moda certainly kept her promises, though Yugito declined the tea half of the equation.

"Miss Moda, would you like us to do anything for you on the farm?" I asked. I hadn't done a real D-rank since the last time my students had earned punishment duty and was feeling a bit restless while waiting for Ace to recover.

"Well, um…" Moda hemmed and hawed, clearly unwilling to let guests work. I already knew from her nosy neighbor that her parents were working for the Marines, but the militaries that I knew of generally tried not to ship out both adults in a household at once. Yet another consideration for the pile. "I do have one thing that Mr. Han can't help me with…but it will take a long time. Maybe after your friend wakes up?"

I bowed my head again over my mug of tea. "That's fine. But if you do think of anything in the meantime, don't hesitate to let us know."

"What is this 'we' business?" Yugito muttered. When I elbowed her, she subsided with a wordless grumble.

"You could do something for me," Han suggested, likely more to make us shut up than anything. He certainly used that kind of impatient tone.

Anyway, that was how we ended up patrolling the farm and nearby areas for Han's peace of mind, in separate directions. Kokuō didn't put in an appearance, though Isobu and Matatabi separately assured us that she was aware of our presence and didn't mind us being there. Once patrols were finished, though, there wasn't much left to do but wait.

Ace woke up about an hour and a half later, stumbling out of the little thatch-roofed farmhouse with a yawn already escaping his mouth. As though he hadn't almost been killed by sheer accident and forgetting his buoyancy problems, he stumbled up to the low wall where the rest of us were gathered.

Moda crouched by one of her cows, stroking her fluffy head and singing softly as the animal drank from a repurposed roasting pan. Han knelt next to one of the other cows, running his thumb over the sharp-looking tip of one of her horns and clearly trying to decide if he wanted to file it down. Yugito was drinking her third or fourth cup of whole-fat milk and was clearly in heaven. As for me, I was writing up a series of tracking seals to add to the pile of non-explosive fūinjutsu I finally had a chance to work on.

I clearly couldn't rely on Ace to do much to ensure his own safety.

"Did I miss something?" Ace asked when he finally reached the rest of us. Dressed in a clearly borrowed shirt and sandals, he resembled a beach tourist getting one over too many fruity drinks.

"You had another near-drowning experience. For the third time in a few months, from what Kei tells me," Yugito remarked rather cheerfully, since she was still riding the emotional high of finding her favorite food in perfect form. It didn't mean she couldn't get a shot in, of course.

"How did that happen, anyway?" I asked, as I completed a mostly-passive tracker for Ace. He was a walking trouble magnet, and I needed a way to keep tabs on him if he didn't want to hand me a vivre card.

"Funny you should ask…" Ace scratched the back of his neck and the tips of his ears turned a tiny bit red as Yugito and I watched.

The story, as it turned out, made me regret that I hadn't chased after him the second I noticed that he was searching for Teach in a town. Not because I would have fought a pitched battle in a population center, but because every pit stop on our trip with a restaurant got to suffer Ace's eating habits and his lack-of-payment habits. I'd been dealing with that problem by paying for his dine-and-dashing without letting him know, but this time I'd been occupied spying on civilian farmers. By the time Ace got around to explaining how he'd kicked a guy in the head without checking that he was Teach—as opposed to a completely unrelated Dr. Blackbeard innocently practicing medicine—I sympathized with the townsfolk more than I really wanted to. Ace could be annoying as all hell.

"Try verifying targets next time," Yugito suggested, like a shinobi would never make that kind of mistake.

I knew better. Nagato's childhood wouldn't have ended with his parents dead on the floor if we did. But there was no point to adding that little detail to this conversation when Ace wouldn't understand who I was talking about and Yugito wouldn't care.

"Hey, you don't even know what Teach looks like. The resemblance was pretty close," Ace said defensively, holding up his hands to forestall Yugito's scolding.

"Your information was nonetheless wrong," Yugito argued, undeterred. "And that exhausts our leads."

"So, Ace, Miss Moda over there has a favor to ask now that you're awake," I said, mostly to distract Ace and Yugito before they could do or say something ill-advised. Again. "Since she saved your life and all."

Ace blinked, turning his attention from the two kunoichi mocking his recent "accomplishment" and toward the little girl and giant guy tending the miniature herd of mini-cows. He caught his hat without looking when I tossed it at him, then sat it straight on his head. "Right, then. I better go apologize for the trouble I've caused."

"And nothing about the trouble he's caused us, I'm sure," Yugito muttered, then continued drowning her sorrows in milk.

"He apologized for mistaking me for a man when we first met." I shrugged, folding up my seals for easy storage. "But at this point I think we've been folded into the 'family' category. Experience tells me families tend to be more casual about this kind of thing," I concluded with a sage nod.

"…Weird," Yugito said, after giving me a long stare.

I wasn't sure if that reaction said more about her history or about mine, really.

…Probably mine.

Anyway, at that point Ace had gotten through the usual niceties with Moda under Han's careful supervision. That included two exchanged deep bows of gratitude, and a brief recap of what had happened while Ace was out. She even introduced Han.

"Oh, and here!" Moda said, thoughtfully providing a cup of fresh milk to Ace. She might have been a very small ninja, because that cup appeared out of basically nowhere.

"Thank you very much," Ace said, for probably the fourth time in the same conversation. "Is there anything I can do to make up for all the trouble I've caused you?"

"There is, there is! Please deliver this letter for me!" Moda concluded, bowing her head and holding out the envelope like it was the most precious thing in the world. "It's for Vice Admiral Comil."

While I pressed my lips together to avoid frowning, Ace remained unfazed by the idea of wandering into a naval base despite having a bounty of over half a billion beris on his head. Yugito's chakra twitched like a disturbed campfire, but otherwise she didn't react.

Ace just grinned, accepting the letter. "Of course I'll deliver it. It's no problem." He tipped his hat to Moda, making her giggle, and then strode back toward the house to retrieve his other things. All the way, Han glared a figurative hole in his back.

"He does know he's a pirate, right?" Yugito wondered at the universe as he passed.

"Some days, I wonder," I remarked dryly. In a somewhat louder voice, I added for Ace's sake, "I hope you don't think you're taking that mission alone after what just happened."

"I'll be fine," Ace scoffed. He was pretty confident for a guy who would've been dead more than an hour ago if not for a sharp-eyed ten-year-old. "It's just a quick infiltration, and I might be able to find more info on Teach."

I rolled my eyes, already standing up with all my equipment packed. "Sure thing, hotshot. It's not like we haven't been using that kind of argument on each other since day one."

Ace waved off my commentary, disappearing into the house.

I then turned my attention to Han and Moda, instead. "Han, I don't think we'll be coming back to this island after the mission. We'd better get the light show over with."

"Is it going to be something fun?" Moda asked, while Han slowly approached me as though walking to his execution platform.

Dramatic of him. I held out my fist.

He stared at it. "Is this a Konoha thing?"

"It's certainly a childish thing," Yugito muttered.

"Just bump your right fist against mine," I said, sighing. I didn't want to admit that I'd gotten the impression that the fist-bump was about the least offensive way I could think of to get hostile jinchūriki to have anything to do with me. Such as Yugito, who hadn't wanted to make the Seal either. "The Seal of Reconciliation has too much baggage, right? So just do this, and you'll still be able to protect Moda better than before."

"I don't really need Mr. Han to protect me," Moda protested. She flexed her skinny biceps. "See? I'm strong!"

Han's gaze softened as he looked at his tiny charge, and he completed the fist-bump. It was easier than putting up with my whining, I supposed. Before Han's wrist and mine completely blinded all of us with that obnoxious purple light, Yugito settled her hand over both of ours and Han's Wristband of Doom gained two more kanji.

YOU HAVE FOUND THE FIFTH.

ASSEMBLE THE NINE.

Then all of us separated to the sound of Moda clapping.

I blinked to clear my vision of spots, then flexed my right hand and called on Isobu's chakra. The four revealed numerical kanji disappeared under a layer of blood-red chakra, as dark as a scab and rippling like something alive lurked under it. I turned my hand back and forth, then let the energy fade away.

I had the V2 cloak once again. Not that I'd ever be able to use the whole thing after what I'd done to my left arm in the past, but having the ability to reproduce the Coral Palm gave me yet another fun component for my combat style.

"Well, well, well," I murmured. "Four unlocked seals for the V2 cloak."

"I suppose I'll have to remember that, since you don't," Yugito said, shrugging as she turned off her own V1 cloak test firing.

"That stuff was really cool, even if I don't understand it at all. Mr. Han, does that mean you can do new things too?" Moda asked, automatically turning back to her giant bodyguard.

"I believe so, Moda," he said in a gentle tone.

"Then this was worth it. Show me sometime, okay?"

"I will—" Han began, though I was already shaking my head. "What is it?"

"I don't even use that much chakra near Ace," I told him. I jerked a thumb over my shoulder to Moda's house. "People here have about as much resistance to it as most people do to Kokuō's."

Han's eyes widened just slightly. He wasn't truly surprised, because it wasn't much of a logical leap for a jinchūriki to make after a few unfortunate incidents, but confirmation of the problem's existence nonetheless firmed his resolve. Then he turned his attention back to Moda and corrected himself with, "I will not, Moda. I am sorry."

Moda frowned for maybe ten seconds. Then she smiled again. "It's okay, Mr. Han."

This kid was definitely one of a kind. Ish.

…Now I kinda wanted to know what her reaction to Kokuō would be. It'd be something between hilarious and sad if she was just as accepting of Tailed Beasts as Luffy and Ace and her nosy neighbor were, when so many people at home preferred to run away in terror.

Ignorance helps.

That it does.

And then Ace wandered back out, gear in hand, and the game was afoot.

We got all our shit and shipped out, with Ace apparently deciding it was time to go back to being a half-naked cowboy pirate and getting a giant lunch box as a going-away present. We made sure to wave goodbye to Han and Moda, though I didn't doubt Han was secretly still trying to kill us with his mind. He might've been an ally, of sorts, but he wasn't much of a friend just yet.

Maybe later. I still gave him a means to track me down later, via fūinjutsu.

Anyway, we had a few things to clarify once we got on our way.

"We don't have a plan, do we?" Yugito sighed as soon as the thought became a sentence hanging in midair, weighing us down by existing. "We never have a plan."

"The plan's pretty simple. I go in, mug someone for a uniform, and then sneak around until I find what I'm looking for," Ace explained cheerfully, in between tearing huge chunks out of a loaf of fresh-baked bread Moda had thoughtfully packed for him. "It'll be a piece of cake."

"We never have a plan," I agreed with Yugito, as though Ace hadn't said anything.

"That hurts, you two," Ace said. He had his hand over his heart. "Right here."

I reached over from my position at the Nautilus's wheel and pulled his hat down over his eyes. "Shut up."

"Pff, hey, can you even imagine doing this kind of thing back on the Moby Dick?" Ace asked, once he'd rescued his hat from my attentions. "You were a million times quieter."

"Guess I came out of my shell," I said breezily.

Ugh.

"Ugh," said Yugito, unknowingly echoing Isobu perfectly. "Turtle puns."

Ace snickered, then devoured the rest of his allotment of food in a few seconds flat.

"I also have fire puns and cat puns," I informed them loftily, suppressing any grin threatening to creep onto my face. "Don't tempt me to use them."

Yugito kicked the back of my chair. "No."

Road trip shenanigans on a boat. We really were on our way to being friends, or else one or more of us would have killed the others weeks ago! …Or at least that's what Naruto would've been able to say. I was still pretty sure one of us would be dead inside of another month. Yugito and I still treated each other like sea urchins. If she hadn't been one seal behind me at all times, Yugito would use her V2 cloak and make me regret ever meeting her.

Once Ace polished off his ludicrously large chunk of our food supply, I eased off the Nautilus's equivalent of a throttle and scrambled over the back of the seat so Yugito could take her turn and I could eat lunch. Yugito was probably a less-distractible helmswoman than I was, overall, but didn't really enjoy water activities. She could sleep off some trips entirely, though I was never certain if it was due to motion sickness or not.

"What do we know about the internal structure of G-2?" I asked, while picking up a sandwich.

Ace shrugged. "Nothing."

"The number of men?"

Another shrug. "Who knows? Big Marine bases can have a couple thousand, sometimes."

I could almost feel a headache starting. "…Are you serious?"

"Yep." Ace grinned. "I just make things up as I go along."

Dammit, Ace. Still, Yugito beat me to the punch with, "If that is the extent of your thinking, Kei and I will be following along to observe your…method."

…Close enough.

"Or are we testing the Marines' security?" I wondered aloud.

"Who cares?" Ace said with a careless wave of his hand. "As long as the letter gets delivered, the Marines end up looking like the idiots they are, and we get out before they figure things out, we can do whatever we want."

True to his word, Ace mugged a Marine for a uniform. Specifically, he stole the jacket. And rolled up the sleeves so that his spelling accident of a tattoo was on full display. He stashed Striker just out of sight while I slapped a fūinjutsu-derived genjutsu over both it and the Nautilus, then turned to Yugito and me with a clear expectation of not being laughed at.

And to be fair, we weren't laughing.

"This…will be a disaster," Yugito pronounced, shaking her head in disbelief. "A fiasco. We will be telling our non-existent future children about this as a warning for their children. We're going to need to put this in a report."

"You seriously have that little faith in me?" Ace asked, unjustifiably baffled (in my humble opinion). "Come on, the Marines are idiots."

I made the appropriate hand seals and vanished under a thin veil of water-based invisibility genjutsu. Sensei had given it a name I couldn't remember, so Water Release: Refraction was what I was going with. Underneath it, I had a Transformation going that would make me look like any rank-and-file Marine mook from a distance.

Yugito's genjutsu felt a bit hotter, probably based on heat distortion, but I had no doubt she knew how to avoid any attention that might bring her.

"You two both suck," Ace said to what, to him, would have seemed like empty air.

Regardless, all three of us still ventured into the Marine base and immediately split up to explore.

I would not be surprised if he is heading for food, Isobu said as I snuck past a pair of chattering officers. I needed to find higher-ranking prey.

You and me both, Isobu, I thought wryly. Following the sound of one pompous voice and half a dozen others muttering underneath, I made my way up through the corridors and toward an apparent conference room.

"This coffee is undrinkable," griped someone as I passed.

Not exactly the intelligence I was looking for. Though I'll skip raiding the coffee pots anyway.

What is coffee?

Think tea, but far stronger, and it basically tastes burned. So what if I was describing it in the worst way I could think of? I had a style to uphold even if I liked coffee.

…Humans eat the strangest things.

I shrugged to myself and headed on, since if all the officers were trapped in a meeting it would be harder for them to personally defend their paperwork. I'd heard enough about Marines to know that of all the people in G-2, only the vice admiral was a real threat. Keeping out of his way made my life a little bit easier.

I spent a few more minutes loitering in hallways as people passed by, trying to decide which office to truly ransack. I wanted a few specific things, like a few more backups for my ink supply and every ship schedule I could get my hands on, but would also stop for such goodies as an unclaimed snail or an operational black book. Thanks to invisibility and the ability to cast a genjutsu on everyone besides Yugito, I could take my sweet time for that.

It took me about ten minutes to find something worth the effort. I managed to find Vice Admiral Comil's quarters, steal an entire wall safe by stuffing it in a storage seal, and start prepping the filing cabinets for the same treatment. I was making progress!

And then the intruder alert went off, making me freeze in place even though I was still invisible. Outside, men ran all over the place and filled the halls with the sounds of their boots pounding on the floor, but none of them stopped in the office. If I had to imagine, the intruder was probably my terminally unsubtle friend with the pyromaniac tendencies. Yugito wasn't that careless.

I packed up my things and eased the door open as soon as I couldn't detect anyone outside of it, then strode out of the officers' hall with half a mind to knock the freckles right off Ace's face.

I wonder what broke his cover.

Probably something stupid. I rounded a corner as the Marines continued to run around in a panic, shouting about an intruder. Really, if this was their idea of decent response time, they needed a good kick in the pants.

Ace seemed willing to provide an incentive.

"I take it this wasn't our fault," Yugito's voice whispered out of a hollow in the wall. At first glance, the shadow of the columns nearby was entirely innocent, but I could tell exactly where Yugito was.

"Not remotely," I replied, already moving on. Yugito would be fine, and I needed to assuage my curiosity as well as Isobu's by investigating the cause of the disturbance.

Of course, it had to be Ace.

A few seconds later, I came across an officer, who had clearly been punched unconscious, lying in the middle of a hallway. Judging by the way the Marines were still running all over the place and the officer's lack of either a jacket or indeed any clothes other than his underwear, it had happened quite recently. That boy needs to wear some kind of tracking device. This is ridiculous.

And you need to give him one, Isobu responded. He yawned, then said, Incidentally, a new ship has arrived in the harbor.

Oh?

…It is now aflame. The window approximately thirty meters from your location disgorged a fireball.

…I don't suppose you have any idea why?

"This coffee is terrible!" is the only thing I heard. Aside from the shouting going on now.

Though no one could see me, I dragged my hand over my face. This was becoming far too common of an experience. Would it have killed Ace to just not do that?

"The secret intelligence ship is on fire!" screeched someone, and I looked up from my moment of comedic despair to figure out who the hell had spoken.

Given the coat, this was Vice Admiral Comil. In the time it took me to think that, the man rushed off while shouting about fire control, clutching at his face in utter panic.

I sighed, then opened the window and snuck out. While G-2 was nestled in a pretty sheltered spot, the ability to walk right up the fortress's walls made their physical defenses pretty useless. While the flaming ship in the bay marked the spot where Ace would probably end up, for the sake of the show he'd just started, I hopped from rock to rock toward the Nautilus.

About ten minutes later, Yugito's chakra finally started heading my way. The entire time, I'd mostly just been watching the ship burn and wishing that someone, somewhere, had invented marshmallows. With Yugito on her way, though, I dismissed the thought of confections and turned my attention to the mission again.

"I probably don't need to tell you where our navigator ended up," Yugito said, still not dropping her genjutsu.

"Nope," I said. "If I were a betting person…"

"Don't even finish that sentence. I don't want to know," Yugito groaned, sitting down on the seat that, in a car, would have been "shotgun." On the Nautilus, I wasn't sure what to call it. None of the locals seemed to use anything other than flintlocks of various types, so the terminology probably didn't carry over.

Sometime after that, Ace finally showboated his way out of the Marine ship's funeral pyre, even if he got shot at plenty of times. And probably ended up standing on a man's head. It took him a bit longer to actually escape the base, but by the time he reached us Yugito and I were already ready to go.

In fact, we were nearly gone, being already ten meters off the rocks by the time Ace arrived.

"Screw you both," he said, once his leap carried him onto the back of the Nautilus safely.

"You brought that on yourself," said Yugito, who was wholly out of patience.

"So you were going to take Striker?" Ace demanded. Why was he more offended by the prospect of losing his boat than his life?

"Actually," I said from the helm, "I was going to bring them around in case we needed to pick you up."

"Oh. That's cool, then," Ace said. He glanced around, then added, "Kind of a crappy haul, though…"

Yugito pinched the bridge of her nose, but otherwise ignored Ace's remark. Instead, she said to me, "Why do you keep spoiling him? There are genin with more discipline!"

"I know, and I've trained three of them," I replied, "but I basically gave up on controlling what Ace does months ago."

"…The hell's a genin?" Ace asked, once again perching on the back row of chairs like a giant bird.

Oh, right. "It means 'low ninja,' which means…something like 'rookies,' or the idiot sailors we ran rings around today." I shrugged. "They're usually young, generally get the boring jobs, and get to learn from teachers or retire. And they're prone to recklessness due to ignorance."

"On the other hand, genin are our precious children," Yugito corrected me a bit aggressively. "Everyone above that rank had to start there."

Spoken like a woman with no students. I loved my trio of dragon hatchlings, but their antics would be the death of me someday.

…Though Ace was forcing me to reevaluate that assessment pretty much every third day.

"Again, screw you both," Ace concluded. He held up what looked like an armored briefcase—which still made me wonder how he hadn't instantly burned everything when he was turned into Swiss cheese via bullets—and held it up. "I got the documents I need to find Teach. What did you get?"

"I stole Comil's wall safe and secure filing cabinet," I said. "Yugito?"

"Why do you assume I stole anything?" Yugito crossed her arms defensively.

"Because you're a kunoichi hanging out with a pirate?" I guessed.

"I didn't steal anything," Yugito insisted.

"Then what's that?" Ace asked, pointing to a lump that finally crawled up onto her back from the depths of her open rucksack.

The lump in question fully uncurled, revealing a disturbingly human-featured blue snail with a pink shell, easily the size of an entire backpack. It had the sigil for G-2 inscribed on both sides of its shell, complete with Marine flag. It bobbed its stalk-eyes and grinned rather nervously when it noticed Ace and I were both gaping at it.

"I heard you complain about using public snails on the island before last," Yugito explained, shrugging. The snail crawling on her bobbed both eyestalks again, as though trying to imitate her movements and then remembering the limitations of being a mollusk. "So I asked this snail if it would like to join us."

Ace recovered first, peering at the creature. "Wait, this is the big transponder snail for all of G-2."

"If Komushi cared, it wouldn't have agreed," Yugito said coolly, while the snail attached itself more firmly to her shoulder and hunkered down for the long haul.

"No, I mean that Komushi probably has some serious range with that Marine transceiver rig," Ace corrected, reaching over to gently poke at the dial on Komushi's shell and make it spin. Though I hadn't spent too much time around transponder snails due to traveling a lot in a very small boat or in a very large stomach, the metal contraption attached to Komushi was much more elaborate than the machines I'd seen before. The microphone even had an enamel-and-gold-filigree backing.

"So, does that mean you'll finally call Captain Whitebeard yourself instead of making me give the updates?" I teased Ace. "Because if you skip out again, I'm going to start making things up."

"Given your reaction to the stuff I actually do, I say you can do your worst," Ace challenged me with a bright grin. "Besides, I can just top it next time."

Punk. There were many reasons I occasionally wanted to throttle him.

"I'm missing a bit of context here," Yugito said, watching Ace and me bicker. She took the time to feed the giant snail an entire head of lettuce, since Komushi had been patient so far.

"Everyone generally is," I said distractedly, directing us out of the path of a rampaging Sea King before Isobu grabbed its fore-fins and dragged it underwater. The resultant swell flattened into something the Nautilus could manage when he flared his chakra, and we shot over the disturbance with Striker in tow without an issue.

Amazing how such things became mundane.

"Ace, give him a call," I continued, like nothing had happened. "He's probably going to hear about what happened at G-2 sooner or later."

"Probably later, since we st—recruited their snail," Ace corrected himself, as Komushi whipped both eyestalks around to stare him down. "You know if I call, I'll probably get Thatch. And he's just going to go on and on about food again."

"I have that part handled," I replied, so Ace had no further excuses.

While Ace picked up the microphone and punched in the numbers for the Whitebeards' longest-ranged snail, Yugito frowned and leaned over to whisper, "Would that be about feeding him?"

"Thatch knows him pretty well," I said. Ace ate like a black hole in a densely-organized star system, which would put a dent in most discretionary funds the world over. And unlike the Whitebeards, I didn't generally have a steady income from knocking over Marine ships. "Or I guess he could be worried I still haven't managed to do more on a ship than peel potatoes. He was pretty worked up about that last week."

"That seems…arbitrary." Yugito subsided, shaking her head.

"It's kind of an inside joke," I admitted, as the other end of Ace's call finally picked up.

"Who's this supposed to be?" Thatch's voice rang out, and Komushi took on his wide habitual grin even if the pompadour and goatee were a bit outside of its capabilities. "Kei, is that you? Did you get another snail again? What did I say last time about buying your own?"

"Sorry, it sounds like I've got the wrong number," Ace replied cheekily. "I'll hang up."

"ACE!" Thatch boomed. "Don't you dare, you complete asshole! We've been—Marco, Marco, get over here, Ace finally showed his stupid face—"

And then the other end of the call devolved into a lot of voices shouting at once. Some of them were identifiable as greetings of various decibel counts and hostility levels, and I could pick Thatch out as one of the loudest and happiest of the lot.

"Yugito, do you want to steer?" I asked, leaning over the back of my chair. "I wanna talk to them a bit."

"Should I introduce myself?" Yugito wondered aloud.

Izo's voice broke in with, "Who's there, Ace?"

I supposed that answered her question, then.

"A cat," I said, before Yugito could say anything.

"I can answer for myself," Yugito said primly. "My name is Nii Yugito. I am…an associate of Kei's."

"Strong words, there," I said immediately, drawing a glare from her. "But Yugito and I do know each other and are traveling with Ace and won't let him die."

"I already said that," said Yugito peevishly.

"…Is this the same Kei who couldn't even hold a conversation with Namur?" asked Marco, because he didn't stop being a snarker even if I was thousands of miles away.

"Hey, I got Ace to finally call you for real, so lay off," I griped.

Ace rolled his eyes. "You can't really call Marco out for nagging when that's half of what you do."

"…Why did I have to get stuck with you two?" Yugito wondered aloud.

Thatch's voice piped up again, "Hey, Yugito, are you a cat that ate the Hito Hito no Mi, or a human that ate the Neko Neko no Mi?"

Yugito paused, nonplussed. "Excuse me?"

Oh, right. Grand Line bullshit. Hastily, I cut in with, "It's just a joke, Thatch. Yugito doesn't know what Devil Fruits are."

I got the impression that Thatch was scratching his head in confusion as he said, "So she's a mink?"

"No, Thatch. Yugito's human," Ace corrected, but while muffling a laugh. "Probably."

"Again, how did I get stuck with the two of you?" Yugito complained, shaking her head.

If that didn't set the tone for the rest of the conversation, I don't know what would. Anyway, we stayed on that call for maybe two hours, while Yugito somewhat distractedly steered us this way and that according to the Log Pose. She wasn't as confident in the spinning hell-magnet as the rest of us, but she did perfectly well.

The next major island was more of a pit stop than anything, about two weeks later. We hit a couple of smaller spots, to avoid starving to death or running out of water, but it was the first time in quite a while for new bounty postings. The News Coo had too much trouble finding us to really get consistent reports.

"Ah-ha!" Ace crowed in triumph, holding another large sheaf of paper he'd probably stolen from the post office.

Yugito and I were sitting outside of a nice little café that Ace hadn't hit yet, with Yugito testing her snail friend's call list and me checking in with Isobu about other Tailed Beasts (while apparently reading a comic page in a day-old newspaper). Apparently, Matatabi, Kokuō, and Shukaku were still doing fine, and Shukaku rambled on about a new destination for the Straw Hats. I didn't quite get the idea of a Sky Island, but apparently it was a thing despite physics sobbing in the corner.

And then Ace rocketed back from wherever and slapped the paperwork down between us on the fancy table.

"Hi, nice to see you again?" Yugito said, looking up from the mechanism she was poking at with a tiny screwdriver. The dial of the transceiver rig was lying on the table, but since Komushi wasn't panicking I decided not to care even if I didn't know when she'd done that.

"Luffy's crew has new bounties after Alabasta," Ace announced, pulling up a chair at our table. "Wanna see?"

I folded my newspaper and set it aside, where Komushi considered eating it. "Is Gaara in there?"

Ace flipped through the pile of paperwork, then pulled out a poster to hand to me. Glaring up from under a half-shield of sand, Gaara's photo stirred something akin to pride at the same time as it made my stomach try to turn into a knot. Pirate or not, he was twelve years old. Sure, he could turn most grown men into bone-flecked meat paste or blood splatter, but…

"…I guess the Marines really don't care that he's a kid," I muttered, frowning faintly. "'Red Sand' Gaara. A bounty of thirty-one million beris."

"…Wasn't that Sasori's epithet?" Yugito asked, picking up what looked like Zoro's bounty poster. Sixty million beris for the Pirate Hunter, apparently. I wasn't sure why they kept calling him that when he obviously didn't hunt pirates anymore.

"It beat Luffy's first bounty," Ace said, poking through the rest of the pile. "Huh, and so did his swordsman. Not bad."

Who assigns a partner of Shukaku's a name like that? Isobu grumbled, quite unhappy with the sudden reminder of Sasori's existence. Even if the guy was thoroughly dead, Isobu had seen my account of one version of Gaara and his (temporary) demise and could be tetchy about it.

Marines who have no idea what cultural context is, I think.

We flipped through the pile a little more, then found a few new faces for the Marines' office dartboards.

"Wait, Ace, you didn't just grab the Straw Hats' bounties, right?" I asked as I stared down at a very familiar face.

"Nah, I grabbed the whole pile. There's usually a note saying which crew they belong to," Ace said, still drinking in the sight of his brother's bounty poster. A hundred million beris in less than a year was an impressive accomplishment, I supposed. "Why?"

I groaned aloud and turned the poster in my hands around. Yugito gaped openly, while Ace just looked confused.

"Shanks actually got another redhead to join his crew," Ace said. "So what?"

"Th-that's—" Yugito cut herself off, then glared at me. While I held up my hands in clearly sarcastic surrender, Yugito snarled, "She's a jinchūriki?"

That cat was definitely out of the bag.

I set the poster down on the table, looking down at a picture of Kushina about to punch the photographer's lights out. "Uzumaki Kushina, new-slash-old nickname 'Blood-Red Habanero' and worth two hundred and fifty million beris just for being on an Emperor's crew." I paused, rereading the poster upside-down. "And for assaulting a Marine officer in the line of duty, and for aiding and abetting piracy, theft of government property thanks to raiding a slaving ship single-handedly, and for half a dozen other things I know she would've done. Fuck."

"Your Hokage's wife must not believe in low profiles," Yugito commented, sotto voce.

"Nope." I smacked my hand into my face again. Then I thought of a better idea and slammed my forehead into the table. Twice. Muffled by the table, I groaned miserably.

"What's a Hokage?" Ace asked, probably tilting his head to one side like a curious bird. Because of course he didn't share my pain.

"Think if one of the Four Emperors decided to settle on land. And establish a country," I muttered into the tabletop. While Komushi and Ace digested that, I could hear Ace stealing my food but couldn't bring myself to care. And then a thought struck me and I sat bolt upright again. "Fucking shit."

"What?" Ace asked, around a croissant.

"I know why Kushina's raising hell." And it was because of Naruto. As the other jinchūriki for Kurama, that kid could've been pulled through the same way the rest of us were. Kushina was a shinobi even if she was pretty bombastic, and she knew the value of keeping a low profile when in a new environment as well if not better than I did. But if Naruto landed separately from Kushina, then she'd be willing to tear the planet in half to find him the second she realized that her son was in trouble.

No wonder she'd gone full pirate. The Marines would've tried to stop her and suffered the consequences from both her and Yin Kurama.

Yang Kurama would only have the first shot at anyone who tried to hurt Naruto due to proximity.

"So…?" Yugito prompted.

So hell if I'd tell Yugito about Naruto before I had to. Even if Yugito seemed nice enough, if formal, I didn't trust anyone from Kumogakure that far.

"So if she asks, I'm gonna help," I growled instead, "even if I have to burn my anonymity in a funeral pyre shared by entire fleets."

Yugito just looked away, all too familiar with the darkness associated with hanging onto humanity by the (extended) fingernails. Yugito would have figured it out before I had needed to, given how Kumogakure trained their jinchūriki, and she respected the abyss yawning inside some of our souls. It was hungry.

…I needed to never read Roku's vent poetry ever again.

"Moving on," Ace said warily, scooting away from me the slightest bit. "Know this guy?"

For the universe's next trick, Yugito got to experience my reaction from the inside. "Killer B?!"

And right in front of us, grinning and making two perfect sets of bull's horns with his fingers, was the other jinchūriki from Yugito's hometown. He had his shades, too, but had replaced his Kumo headband with a plain bandanna with the iconic cloud stitched into it. I didn't know if he'd lost it or what, but the guy was certainly rocking the new career choice.

"Oh nooooo…" Yugito moaned, dropping her hand into her hands. "Lord Eight-Tails, why would you do this?"

"He's even on the same crew," Ace remarked. He smoothed the poster against the table, still trying to read it while Yugito succumbed to comedic despair. "It looks like he's wanted for a lot of the same things, but add in…cattle-raiding? What the hell is that?"

"Stealing cows," I said, without looking up from the poster. Killer B and Kushina as a part of the same crew…

I didn't know when I'd be able to contact them, but it was clear they were doing okay. I just had to wonder where Rōshi, Utakata, Fū, and Naruto had gone. Han was fine, Gaara was with Luffy, and both Yugito and I were going to keep doing our thing. At least until we turned Teach into a historical footnote.

"Ace, do you have any idea how we'd be able to talk to the Red Hair Pirates?" I asked. "Because while Kushina and Killer B are our seniors, we still need to find them."

"They've already been found," Ace pointed out, while Yugito continued to mutter into the table. While I tried and failed to come up with a reason for why new members of an Emperor's crew might be in more trouble than we generally were, Ace went on, "We can finish up the hunt for Teach and then backtrack all the way to the New World afterward, okay? And I don't have Shanks's snail number anyway. I don't think Pops does either."

I sighed, weighing my options. While I could probably get back into the New World with just Isobu's help, and bring Yugito along for the ride, I wasn't comfortable leaving Ace to take on the Whitebeards' traitor on his own. It wasn't that I didn't believe in Ace's luck after all the recent displays thereof, but we still didn't know what had been so fucking special about the fruit that Teach would kill Thatch over it. Or try to kill Thatch, and fail by a hair's breadth.

If Teach had picked up a crew to compensate for the apparent hitch in his step (going by the information Ace had uncovered about his movements, both personal and in general), anything could happen. The casualty tally would easily tick upward into triple or even quadruple digits depending on where it all went down, and I knew that while Ace would try to avoid hurting bystanders, Teach would not.

I couldn't leave it to chance.

So I said, "Fine. Let's roast that bastard on a spit and be done with it."

Of course, events conspired against us.

While heading for some island or other, none of which I could recall by name afterward, Isobu broke through the general traveling haze of boredom by surfacing ahead of Striker's nose, making Ace swerve like an adrenaline junkie to avoid hitting him and crunching his rocket-powered raft against my turtle friend's face.

"What the hell was that about?!" I heard Ace yelling from Striker as Yugito and I pulled up alongside him. After a second's thought, Yugito put the Nautilus directly between Isobu and Ace, preventing him from throwing a fireball.

"Saiken is approaching us," Isobu announced, with his golden gaze falling on all of us in turn. Yugito and I already had our hands over our ears, and I saw Ace's catch fire for a second. "At speed."

Did he say why? I asked, already casting my chakra sense outward to see what—if anything—I could pick up about the Six-Tailed Beast before he arrived. He had the highest number of tails we'd encountered so far, beating out Kokuō by one. And I really didn't want to fight him even if he was a slug slamming on the figurative gas.

I saw Ace pin his hat to his head with his hand, then hop over to the Nautilus from Striker's bow. "Which number is he?" he asked once he arrived, cooling his heels on the stern.

"Six," I said, frowning. "But…wait, Isobu—" What about his partner?

That is the problem. Isobu's tails churned the water as he slowly turned to face our right. In the distance…yes, just entering my fifty-kilometer range, an absolute monster of a chakra signature was heading our way. Isobu was in that weight class, but the rest of us? Not even close.

"Brace for impact," I said aloud in a grim tone. "Because this? This could hurt."

AN: Ace's adventure at G-2 is entirely canon. No one knows who taught the Marines how to run anything pertaining to security, but at this point my money is on Garp. This entire scenario was ridiculous. And for everyone who was wondering where Kushina and Killer B ended up, this chapter is for you! Utakata, too, but only at the end. :p

So, now I have thirteen chapters nearly completed. This story somehow got...a lot longer than I thought it would. Oh my.