"Open the door and walk away,

Never give in to the call of yesterday,

Memories that made those days sublime,

These ruined halls entomb stolen time,"

-The Edge of Dawn, AmaLee

"Don't tell me your names," she said, throwing rope in the boat.

It was longer than the other boats, looked newer, and was the only one with a fan at the back.

I looked at the hill behind us. It wasn't even noon, but the dock was swallowed by its shadow.

Yahiko helped Naga climb in, then laid back down across the seats and said, "I think I'm going to be sick."

"I could smother you until you pass out," Namekuji offered as Naga tried not to rock the boat sitting next to him.

"Thanks, but no."

She poured oil into a compartment from an old can and untied paddles and threw them in the boat.

"That was so fucking boring," Hidan said, head and arm hanging backwards off the side.

"What did you say before?" I asked her.

"Which time?" she asked, shoving a pack under the seats near the front.

"Both."

"Fool, because valley-nin are fools, and good luck, Kiyo. Now get in."

Naga held my arm as I stepped down into the boat and Yahiko squeezed his eyes shut.

She spun the fan once, twice, and stepped onto the boat as it made a sputtering sound and caught on the water. She picked up a paddle and pushed away from the dock.

"I don't want to know what or why," she said. "The less I know, the better."

"It sounds like you recognize us," Naga said.

She didn't answer, but her eyes flicked to Hidan.

"It's loud." I held onto the side as the fan whirred.

"It's fast," she countered as the boat jerked forward, raising her voice. "Good for the waters around here. Evasion too. I'll cut it off when we're near Fire."

Yahiko hung over the side and vomited.

"Are you the only one who does this?" Naga asked loudly.

"We have three boats like this one," was all she said, steering the boat to the left.

クリア

"If those Tani-nin didn't appear, we would've left, and you wouldn't have had to this," Naga said, eating the tail of a leftover fish.

The boat drifted quietly in the water. A reflection of the moon rippled as I held my pouch under it.

The woman leaned back, waving a half-finished ration bar at him. "If you didn't blackmail us, I wouldn't have had to do this. So what?"

Yahiko had an arm over his eyes, the other on his stomach as he tried to sleep.

"If we offered to pay for it, would you have agreed?"

Hidan tilted his head over the side.

She took another bite and said, "I'm not going to the village proper. I hope you know that."

"If that's where we need to go—"

"No, no if," she said, sitting up. "I'll destroy this boat and strand all of us before I go past the outer islands."

Naga paused, then asked, "How many are there?"

She blinked at him. "Really?"

He only looked at her.

Kuu didn't wake up as water soaked into his fur.

"Twelve," she said, still in disbelief.

"The business from Tsuri keeps Tanigakure going, but they still saw you as expendable," Naga thought aloud. "They didn't respect you."

She took another bite. "Does this have a point?"

"I wondered why you agreed so easily," Naga explained. "You didn't make us tell you where in water country, or negotiate on how far you'd go. You know how dangerous it is. They know how dangerous it is, but your safety didn't matter if we threatened Tanigakure. You take the most risk when you transport missing-nin, but they still—"

"What did you," she interrupted him, leaning forward, "say to them? What did they ask you?"

"We told them that we were the Akatsuki," Naga said easily.

"I want to know what they asked—"

"Of Amegakure," he continued patiently. "They were more afraid when we said the latter. They asked about our headbands and our cloaks, and then we waited until you were ready."

"Missing-nin are usually quiet," she said. "Tense, but quiet. I think I prefer that to this."

"What happened to Tanigakure's mines?" I asked. Kuu was dry as I put the pouch down between the seats.

She looked at me and didn't answer.

"We could help you. You're not their property," Naga said, cracking off bones to feed Namekuji. "We wouldn't go to war for you, but we could get the Tani-nin to leave and keep them out. We wouldn't be able to feed or supply you, but you'd have control. We wouldn't influence you to do something like this. You'd be independent."

She pointed the mostly eaten bar at him. "Not out of the goodness of your hearts, I assume."

"We'd do it for half of the income Tanigakure is taking from you," Naga said, spreading out a scroll to summon another piece of a fish.

"If only they weren't taking all of it."

Naga handed me the body of a fish, then got another tail for himself.

"We have a saying in Tsuri that goes, la confianza en los extraños es para tontos. Means putting your trust in strangers is for fools," she said, leaning back again.

"I'd like to think my word has more value than most," Naga responded.

She looked at me, at Yahiko, and back at him. "Which one of you is the Amekage then?"

"Taiyokage," he corrected, eating skin.

She glanced at Hidan as he stared blankly at the sky, then away. "Do you want to see Tanigakure destroyed?"

"No. They'll ask for help," Naga answered. "If Sunagakure destroyed their mines like I think they did, they won't ask them. The nobles in fire country had their chance to help. We're the only ones who might treat them fairly."

"Diablo," she said under her breath. "How do you know so much about us? About them?"

"I'm bored out of my fucking mind," Hidan said loudly, getting up.

Yahiko groaned, scrubbing his hands down his face.

"Red-headed bastard," he yelled, for no other reason than to have someone to yell at.

"Shhh," she hissed, eyeing the dark water around us. "A dead zone doesn't mean you can be as loud as you want—"

Ignoring her, Hidan went to the front, climbed onto the bow, and shouted, "This is so fucking boring—"

I raised my right hand, pushed him off the boat, and he cursed as he hit the water.

Yahiko groaned again and mumbled, "Why do boats move so much?"

鳴っている

I held a piece of Mei Terumi's letter out to Kuu.

He poked his head out of my pouch to sniff at the purple smear, climbing onto the seat as he took it in his mouth.

"I need a direction," she said again, swiping sweat off her forehead. "We can't move until I get one. Not this close to the border."

Kuu spit it out and sniffed my hands, then ran along the side to sniff at Naga, then Yahiko, using his back as a pillow.

"It hasn't been a week," I said.

"Weather's been usually good, if hot. Don't often get sensor-nin as passengers either. Or any I'm willing to let take over while I sleep."

I hummed.

Kuu sniffed Hidan's leg, then the air, dodging his kick as he hopped to the front.

She watched Kuu as he sat and stared ahead, tail swishing, then looked at me.

"That's your direction," I said.

She paused, glancing at him again. "Alright," she finally said, rowing the boat forward.

"You still haven't told us your name."

She didn't respond for a long time, and didn't look at me when she eventually said, "Hibiki."

"If I don't get a sacrifice soon, it's going to be her," Hidan said dully. He pointed at her, but didn't move otherwise, slumped down between the seats. His headband was tied around his leg, poking out from his scrunched up pant-leg.

"How long can you wait?" I asked.

"It's not like needing to take a piss," he said, holding up his middle finger.

I looked at Hibiki. "How close are we to land?"

"Roughly five miles," she said, pulling the paddle out of the water. "But we'd be spotted by an outpost in two. Fire knows better than to have boats out here where Water can cause accidents, which means they'll have Hyuuga—"

"We're staying here," I dismissed. "Where's the border?"

She paused, then looked to the left. "There's a peninsula. We should be around the middle of it. Southeast, it's Fire. Northeast, it's Water."

"How many miles is it in days?"

"For you? Two hours at top speed."

"And for him?"

Her eyes slid to Hidan. He was asleep. "He's what I expect from my usual passengers. So, four or five, if he doesn't run out of chakra first."

I stood and said, "I think you shouldn't underestimate him."

I nudged his side with my foot until he said, "I'm going to gouge out my heart so I can sleep through this shit."

"Later," I said. "There's a Fire outpost to the southeast. They'll come to meet you before you make it to them."

Hidan squinted at the sun. "Those assholes'll retaliate."

"They won't follow us into Water," I said, looking at Hibiki. "And they won't be able to catch the boat."

She looked away.

"Fuck the boat," Hidan said venomously. He dragged himself up, rubbing the back of his neck. "What a pain in the ass." He stepped up onto the edge and jumped into the water.

"You're confident that he can find the boat again?" Hibiki asked, watching him swim.

"He doesn't have to," I said, tugging on the blanket of cloaks under the front seat to wake Namekuji. They'd been in a neat pile when they were put there.

Hibiki watched me, then gazed at Naga and asked, "What convinced your brother that I was the one he needed to make that pitch to?"

"You listened."

She held the paddle vertically and folded her hands on top of it. "The other one, Yahiko, was right. The needs of ninja are not often the needs of everyone else. Does he, do you, really think Tsuri will give up complacency?"

I paused, then stepped up next to her on the side of the boat. "I think Tsuri is a town full of hostages. Those Tani-nin weren't strong, but they don't have to be. I think that you agreed to this so easily because rabbits with teeth can still spill the blood of rabbits without just as easily as wolves."

She leaned forward. "That doesn't answer my question." Killing intent seeped from her like sweat.

"The Tani-nin will kill someone. It's the only way rabbits happy to be rabbits ever see how many traps sit under their feet. Maybe you."

She studied me, killing intent warming my feet, and asked, "What, exactly, are you asking me to do?"

"Not asking. I'm telling you to provoke them," I told her. "You let them make you lazy. What do you think that'll look like in a year, or two, when you're the only one left with teeth?"

"Let them?" she whisper-hissed, leaning even closer. "Do you have any idea what provoking them would look like? It's the cornered animals that bite."

I couldn't stop myself from snickering at her as I said, "You don't know what a cornered animal is."

She looked taken aback.

"If you meant a war, there wouldn't be one. You'd have help," I continued. "But if Tsuri doesn't want it, we can't help. No one wants to fight a war they know they'll lose."

She studied me again, hesitated, then quietly asked, "Is it you? Are you the-what your brother called it...?"

"Taiyokage," I told her, climbing down.

She waited for an answer. Eventually, she said, "Tsuri gave in to Tanigakure's generosity because the other option was death."

I didn't turn around as I said, "Then stay hostages."

I walked on the seats and sat on the side at the back.

Hibiki didn't move, still watching me.

Naga's eyes were open, but only barely, using his arms as pillows. He'd been listening, or sensed the killing intent.

He was awkwardly stretched over the seats and even more awkwardly balancing on them with Yahiko mostly on him. It didn't look comfortable, but Naga fell back asleep almost immediately.

ベル

I couldn't find the sun through the mist.

"Fuck," Hidan said, shivering, hands shoved under his armpits. It was so cold that he was wearing his cloak.

But it wasn't. Not really. Not like the bone-deep cold of being soaked.

I finished a sit-up in the cramped space between the seats, legs hanging over the side.

Hibiki had a longer-sleeved shirt on over her first and paddled slowly, rippling the water as little as possible. Tall reeds bent and scraped the boat as she navigated through a reedbed.

I sat up again and saw a patch of sand.

"Las personas," Naga warned, slow and fumbling around the words.

People.

Hibiki had taught him a few words, and only because he kept asking about it. "It's Nankai," she eventually said.

"Nankai?"

"It's the name of this island," she explained. "The southern sea."

While he was distracted, Yahiko scribbled out his circle in the grid they'd drawn on the back seat, drew an X on top, and circled the row of three matching X's.

Naga looked down and blinked.

"I think I deserve the win after the week I had—"

"You cheat more than Namekuji."

"It's not cheating if you win," Namekuji said, watching them from another seat.

Hibiki stuck her paddle in the reeds and the boat stopped. "Whatever you're looking for, it's here," she said over them.

I stopped, looking at her from the floor. "You're sure?"

She nodded at Kuu. "Kobutsu is to the west, and Muki is more east. If not here, then Kirigakure."

Hidan hopped over the side and stretched his arms above his head. "Fucking finally."

Yahiko grimaced.

"What else do you know about it?" I asked, carefully standing.

Naga strapped the empty pouch Kuu slept in to his side and tossed me his.

"It's the second smallest of the outer islands. Good place to hide, bad place to live," Hibiki said, gazing at the bottom of an old stone staircase half-clouded in mist. "It wasn't my area, even before things worsened, but I've heard that patrols don't come here. The guy who told me this would say, todos se pliegan al poder."

"Meaning?"

"Everyone bends to power."

I hummed. I used Namekuji's slime to smudge their game with my thumb as Naga helped Yahiko off.

"Nankai wasn't always off-limits," Hibiki added. "No one knows what changed."

"I'm never doing that again," Hidan promised.

"Ever been to Kirigakure?" I asked.

"Fuck no."

I scooped up Namekuji and half-listened as he grumbled. Kuu jumped and clung to Yahiko's offered hand.

"Think about what I said," Naga told Hibiki as she watched us. "No matter what you choose, I... lo dije."

Said it. Meant it.

She looked at him for a few seconds. "Why are you so interested in learning our language?"

Naga let go of Yahiko and shrugged. "I like to learn," he admitted. "Even when I'm wrong. It's why I know that Oka was right. When I made that offer to you, I was thinking like a ninja."

Hibiki watched me hop out of the boat and said, "You're all demons."

"Will you do it?" I asked.

"I don't feel that I have a choice."

"You do—"

"I don't," she interrupted him. "Not if, as you say, she's right."

She pushed the boat backwards without waiting for him to respond.

Yahiko watched her, hands behind his head, then looked between me and Naga. "Someone catch me up."

"I'm surprised you can stand with how of your body mass you threw up, carrot-hair," Namekuji said.

Yahiko looked at the sky and said, "I don't know why you brought him."

"I didn't," Naga said, amused.

Yahiko looked at me and nodded like it made more sense.

"If Namekuji should've stayed, you could've too," I said defensively. "Naga could've come with Hidan. Or I could've come with Naga."

"It's about manpower—"

"Then you should be happy."

Yahiko shook his head. "We should go. I think seeing Hidan first might not make the best impression on Nankai."

I followed his glance to where Hidan walked up the patch of sand towards the stairs. He'd left us.

.

.

.

Standing on the top step, I saw people immediately.

Weathered, heavily scarred hands appeared through the window of a covered stall, cutting an orange-brown fish into pieces with a machete. Blood was dried on the counter and splattered the stone.

A woman with tired eyes dropped coins into a slim hand that came out of another stall.

A kid with his or her back to me and a small, rotting fish on the floor, pulling out organs and tossing them aside.

People who stopped moving, stopped breathing as we walked by.

I looked at a stand covered with shells with meat in them and asked, "What are those?"

The hands retreated inside.

"Oysters," Naga answered, slowing to look. "They live in salt-water."

People inspecting small strips of meat on another counter hastily shifted their gazes away when I tried to look at them.

The kid with sharpened teeth and black irises that didn't, shoving a handful of gray meat in their mouth, fish parts behind them.

I hummed.

The entrance opened to wooden docks that sloped down into the water. The docks were empty, except for ropes tied around posts and left in piles, and two boats with rotting holes and missing pieces all over them. And someone sitting in the corner, staring out into the mist.

He looked down at a thick square of paper, slid a blue-tinted brush across it, and looked back out. He had plastic containers with different shades of blue paint spread out around him.

I stopped, watching him until his back tensed and he spun around.

He had pale skin, but looked plain. He was the kind of person who could make himself look like anyone.

I waved, and his pupils shrunk.

He turned away quickly, hastily stuffed the brushes, paint, and paper away in a bag and hurriedly walked out of sight, under the slope of the cliff.

"He knows how to spread his chakra thin like the puppet. Annoying," Namekuji said.

"I don't want to catch him," I told him, turning away. "I just wanted to say hello."

.

.

.

Nankai was built on top of stone pillars.

There was sand around them, but it looked unnatural without grass, gravel, or dirt.

"Are sharp teeth normal for water country?" I asked Hidan, watching a muscular woman with sharp teeth pull oysters and other shells from a net and sort them in a rusty bucket. Next to her another net was hauled up, splashing water onto the stone.

"It's fucking creepy, right?"

Kuu poked his head out of the pouch at Yahiko's side, sniffing. He jumped up Yahiko's arm, sniffed again, and leaned on his head.

Yahiko stopped, raising a hand to him, and stumbled back a step as a bigger man bumped into him.

Naga was looking to the northeast.

"Sorry, sorry, I thought you were farther back. See, my eyes—" he glanced at him, and his left eye was milky white. "—aren't so good with distances."

Kuu sniffed again with less enthusiasm, looking at him.

The people working around the net stiffened and went quiet. They avoided my glance.

"I said sorry, didn't I? What's that look for? You accusing me of something?" he asked quickly before Yahiko could respond, suddenly gruff.

Big signature, Naga signed against my arm.

Alone? I signed back without looking at him, keeping my fingers pointed down.

No. Four more. Normal and small.

It was Hidan who lazily answered, "You trying to pick a fight? 'Cause I've been itching for a good sacrifice."

The nets were suddenly dropped wetly to the stone and abandoned. Hidan watched, bewildered, as buckets and whatever else could fit in hands were quickly picked up as the people around us hurried away. Until it was us and the stranger.

"I wasn't sure how you wanted me to act," Yahiko said, grinning.

The man stopped and looked up at him. "You know me? How?"

"I don't, but our friends does," Yahiko answered, gesturing at Kuu. "You smell like the person we came to find."

He looked at Kuu, having overlooked him, the same way no one blinked twice at Namekuji.

"Why did they leave?" Naga asked.

"They know what's next," he said. "You don't cause accidents with missing-nin. If you're confident enough about it, they might respect your guts enough not to kill you. Stick around to gawk and it's no one's fault but your own if they pull you into it. You'd already know that if you were one. Then again—" he glanced at my headband, then over Naga's cloak. "—you're not trying to hide."

"Let me guess, our client doesn't take guests without an escort?" Yahiko asked.

He eyed Yahiko. It was the look people gave him when they were mentally noting him as dangerous.

It made his grin widen.

"Why stop us here?" Naga asked.

"I wanted to talk to you alone, and now is the only time I'd get to do it. The Lady has less friends than you think. Even with a gamble like this, she still has to be careful. My cooperation depended on your answers. We knew when and where the message was delivered, but that doesn't mean it'd end up in your hands, did it? Most spies from different nations act the same, especially when they're trying to be different. You ask too many questions for sand-nin or stone-nin."

Naga blinked.

"Coming on too strong for leaf-nin."

Yahiko laughed.

"Could be from one of the smaller territories. Their tells aren't known so widely. But, bringing him with you, if you were spies—" he nodded at Hidan. "—isn't the best strategy. Sends a message."

"That's the point," I said.

He glanced over Hidan, ignoring his middle finger, and said nothing.

"What about staring at someone?" I asked. "Would missing-nin treat that the same as accidents?"

"I think I know who you're talking about. Kid asks for trouble like no one else on the island. Won't learn, no matter what happens to him."

I hummed. "Did you?"

"Did I what?"

"If you kept your head down, would you be here, helping to make deals behind Kirigakure's back?"

"Hey, hey, are you plotting some shit with that kid?" Hidan cut in before he could answer.

"I don't remember asking you to be part of it."

Hidan turned to me. "You saw the kid's weird eyes. Where the fuck would you put him, anyway? Who'd watch the kid?"

"Hidan," Naga sighed, hopelessly.

I hummed and said, "You're asking a lot of questions for someone not involved."

"He's not some fucking sad rain kid with a hat. He's a Kiri kid."

"He doesn't have pink pupils, so you don't have to be afraid of him."

"Fuck. The Karatachi are fucking here, aren't they?" Hidan asked the stranger.

Ignoring him, the stranger suddenly turned away and only said, "Follow closely behind me, and I'll take you to the Lady."

The road was still empty, but something had changed.

I tilted my head back and saw a bird-like shape flying in circles through the mist.

A/N: クリア - Clear, 鳴っている - Ringing, ベル - Bell

pft, what, I didn't forget Yahiko's birthday.

...he's 20. Around chapter 76.

...Hidan's 16. Maho's 17. Matsu's 22. Somewhere in 78/79.