Wow, I sure pumped this one out quickly. Three chapters in six days...Christmas in July, am I right?

Review response:

1. Noahendless: In order...no, maybe, yes, and "yet to be determined."

2. s.k.f.f.f: Something happened to the middle of your review, but my assumption is that you're talking about Aayame. Have no fear: she will.

3. CygnusFang: I'm not sure what happened, but yes, that third response was meant for you. Last chapter (and, frankly, this one) are a bit more on the filler side, but I feel like I need a little bit of filler as a setup for later character growth. Even in this stage, I'm considering my long-term characters and where I want them to develop. Sasuke doesn't know about Ayame leaving, which will lead to an interesting conversation between him and Sai, that's for sure...

Let's get this trainwreck moving.


A loud bang woke Yuurei from sleep, and instinctively, he rolled across the bed. Scooping Yugito up, he cradled the older Jounin as they went to the floor, only looking in the sound's direction after having shielded her with his body. In the doorway, there was a mocking sort of smile on Temari's face as she looked at her fellow blondes. At the same time, Yugito's newly heterochromatic eyes opened, looking at the situation between Yuurei and Temari. She'd heard the door open, of course, but she'd been intent to ignore it until she was spoken to. Yuurei was clearly a little high-strung if he immediately went on the defensive like that.

Yuurei, meanwhile, considered his course of action perfectly fine; in someone else's house, in a foreign country, he didn't know what might happen. Here he was, trying to do the right thing and protect his companion as an unexpected situation developed, and these women both had the gall to smirk at him like they knew something he didn't. It was maddening.

"Should I come back later?" Temari asked meaningfully.

"What, and miss the show that just got started?" Yugito replied, one hand moving up to Yuurei's chest as the other slipped around his back. The hold on her companion wasn't strong, and wasn't meant to be, but both women watched Yuurei's eternal deadpan expression twitch through three or four emotions before settling on embarrassed consternation, including a decent blush on his cheeks.

"Oh, for fuck's sake. You be quiet," Yuurei said, looking at Yugito, "and...what are you here for?" He asked Temari.

"Make me." Yugito laughed, enjoying the look on her companion's face, but the lone eyebrow he raised as he looked at her made the Jinchuriki question her boldness.

"I'm here because it's my house. Just wanted to let you know breakfast is ready whenever you feel like it." The quad-ponytailed blonde said, walking away with a sly grin still plastered on her face. As the door swung shut behind her, she heard Yuurei speak somewhat ominously.

"Make you, huh?" He asked, knowing full well that Yugito was trying to get a rise out of him.

He had her wrapped and trapped between his arms, though, and she was prone beneath him. Even Yuurei, as disinterested as he'd always been in the affairs between men and women—his focus only ever on the pursuit of power on the quest to become the first man the Elemental Nations knew as tenkaichi, the Strongest Under the Heavens—was very well-aware of the situation they'd found themselves in.

"You're a hundred years too young to try to bait me like that." The demon finally said, "But I don't think it sets a good precedent if I just let you do what you want. Talk through this."

As Yuurei's head came down, Yugito's thoughts went numb; the same dark mass that she'd felt in the forests outside of Konoha was massaging her brain and relaxing the muscles in her shoulders, arms, and legs. In comparison, the feeling of his lips making contact with hers was almost too warm for comfort, and her breathing unconsciously slowed as the back of her neck pressed more deeply into Yuurei's forearm. Just as suddenly as it happened, though, the contact was gone—and thanks to the piece of the enslavement seal that had engraved itself onto her brain, she briefly grieved for the missing sensation. So much so, in fact, that her unconscious response was to take the initiative. The muscles in her back shifted as she propelled her head upward, capturing Yuurei's lips in a second kiss before his hands could let go of her. Overpowering the all-too-sweet compulsion of her seal, though, Yugito separated from the younger demon a moment later.

"On second thought, that was a bad idea. You clearly enjoyed that." Yuurei said, though his flat tone of voice belied the fact that he didn't feel so bad about it either.

"Blame your Fuinjutsu fuckups." Yugito grinned, in the next instant springing out from her captor's grasp. "I'm getting food."

In the future, the Sandaime Raikage's niece would look back on these days as some of the simplest, easiest, and most peaceful of her entire life. Though the mid-autumn heat was still oppressive in the sandblasted wasteland of Kaze no Kuni, there was a particular joy she would find in conversations with Temari and Kankuro. Even Gaara, reclusive and near-sedentary as he was, would prove to be a source of light for the Nibi Jinchuriki. And, to top it off, she even discovered a shared hobby with Temari in their affinity for picking at Yuurei's mannerisms...but that would be in the future. Currently, as she left to find whatever Temari had labeled, "breakfast," Yuurei stepped across the Kazekage's family home like a ghost over still waters.

As he stood in front of a particular door, he watched it swing open from the inside, and Yuurei couldn't help being slightly taken aback by the condition of the youngest sibling's living space. On a thin stone slab that had clearly been ground out to perfect smoothness, Gaara sat in a meditative pose.

"I sensed you'd come." The redhead said, staring at Yuurei with something between curiosity and distrust. "Shukaku seems very interested in you."

"I offered him something that he couldn't say no to." Yuurei said with a smirk. "I heard from your sister that your seal isn't in good shape."

"You intend to do something about it?" Gaara asked.

"I do." Yuurei said. "I lost a lot of blood yesterday working on a seal for someone else, but after I've recovered in a few days, I'd like to work on fixing your containment array."

Gaara nodded, but otherwise showed no further reaction.

"I'll take my leave, then." Yuurei said, closing the door behind his back. He'd come to deliver a message, and he'd done so; there was no reason to stay longer than necessary.

Quietly, he tried to reconcile himself to the blast scars left by explosions—and the numerous long-dried bloodstains—that coated the walls and floor of the Ichibi Jinchuriki's room. What kind of battles had he been forced to wage, here in the security of his own home? There was a tragic backstory in there somewhere, and Yuurei didn't like the smell of it at all. So, deciding to conveniently ignore it, he walked back toward the kitchen, where he found Yugito in the middle of eating a large slice of melon.

"Didn't really take you for the scenic type." The older blonde said as Yuurei walked into the room. "Find what you were looking for?"

"I did." Yuurei replied, declining to comment further as he looked at the offered food.

A mass of fruits and vegetables were laid out on the table, all grown carefully in a series of greenhouses across Sunagakure that were considered among its most precious resources. The city was built on an ancient oasis, but water was a hard thing to come by, and Suna had an entire division of ninja tasked with learning techniques to control the weather in conjunction with one another. From the greenhouses came all manner of fruits and vegetables, and one particular underground facility used a series of techniques to draw moisture out of the air and to create water. Once a year, at noon on the summer equinox, all of the members of the agriculture division would join together to perform a technique that Yuurei and Yugito had seen Hulasikali Wala perform with a wave of his hand: shifting the air currents, they would cause a drastic change in air pressure that made rain fall all through the city.

Placing a mass of mixed berries into a small bowl, and taking a slice of the melon Yugito had cut from, Yuurei offered a word of thanks to Temari as he began eating. The berries were all larger than any that Yuurei had seen in the wild, clearly an effect of being grown in a greenhouse for dozens of generations. In addition, he realized, most of these were out of season. Not only had Sunagakure found a way to grow their own food, cementing their independence from the other great nations, but they could access all of those foods year-round. Taking a large bite out of an apple as big as his sixteen-year-old fist, he was slightly shocked by its sweetness, and it showed on his face.

Seeing how long Yuurei was spending savoring the apple after just one bite, Yugito grinned, and moved to wait behind him. After he finally tore the apple out of his mouth and ate the piece he'd bitten off, Yugito leaned over and whispered in his ear.

"Do you miss me that badly?" She said with a devilish smile that only widened as she watched embarrassment, irritation, and another expression she couldn't place, flash across Yuurei's face.

"You're never going to let that go, are you?" Yuurei sighed in defeat. "I'll have one foot in the grave, and you'll take the time to lord it over me."

"You already have one foot in the grave. So, of course I will." Yugito responded, smiling. Lifting the younger blond's hand, she took her own bite out of the apple, already aware of its natural sweetness. All the while, her eyes never left the side of Yuurei's head. In the two weeks they'd been traveling, he'd grown a little bit taller, already standing a few hairs taller than Yugito when he stood to his full height.

Turning his head to look at Yugito with his natural eye, he sighed for a second time as he walked toward the room where Temari had gone to eat—a screened-in courtyard that allowed for all of the wind, and none of the sand or sunlight, to come through the building. It was a peaceful place, he thought to himself; Temari bit through a particularly large strawberry as a gentle breeze snaked through the air. She sat on a small suspended couch, one that might swing if it was convinced to, and Yuurei placed himself toward the other end as he looked at his own bowl of berries.

"I can see why you come here." He said after a moment.

"It's nice, isn't it?" Temari replied, a soft smile on her face. "I remember when I was very young, right before Gaara was born, my parents and I would come out here and just...feel the wind. It's the only piece in that part of my life that I remember."

"I'm sorry things turned out the way they did." Yuurei said politely.

"I am too." Temari said, her expression wistful. Her body was present, but her mind had briefly traveled back to a time when the world had still been full of kindness. "To tell you the truth, even if my father hadn't died in the ivasion, he probably would have been assassinated by now. He hadn't proved himself an effective leader, and he was considered weak among his generation of the clan."

"Why wait so long, then?" Yuurei asked, confused.

"Because everyone in the village's political nexus had planned on either Kankuro or I supplanting him, as early as a decade ago. The position of Kazekage has been hereditary from generation to generation, and the Sabaku clan has lived in the desert since before the founding of the village. Legend says that we're the descendants of the Demon in the Open Desert."

Yuurei raised an eyebrow at that, but declined to comment on the fact that Hulasikali Wala did look incredibly similar to Temari's youngest brother.

"So you were destined for this from the beginning." He said instead.

"Yes. The first thing that the village council did when we returned was determine whether Kankuro or I would take our father's place. Kankuro was fairly excited to not be chosen." Temari confirmed the taller blond's line of thinking.

Yuurei grinned at that. In his singular interaction with the black-clad young man, he was able to tell quite easily that Kankuro wasn't the type of person who enjoyed, or could be made good at, dealing with people. Though, frankly, none of the Sabaku siblings seemed well-adjusted to the idea of public life. Gaara's room, alone, was proof enough that he should never be left unsupervised in the company of other people. And Temari...as the eldest child of the Kazekage, his presumed-and-realized heir, and the only woman among the three siblings, Yuurei was hard-pressed to believe that her life had ever really been her own.

In the time that I'm here, I'll see if I can help consolidate your strength." He said.

Others might consider it odd, even uncharacteristic, that Yuurei was going out of his way to be helpful. The scar-clad demon, however, naturally understood the concept of making allies who stood in high places—and, additionally, the benefits of helping them when they were weak. A lasting alliance could only be forged in the depths of combat, or a long series of returned favors. So, while he was certainly stronger than most of the rank-and-file shinobi in Suna, it was easier to ingratiate himself to the new Kazekage. So, with a cool breeze constantly blowing through the room, Yuurei and Temari continued to talk.


"We've returned, Lord Orochimaru." Jirobo announced. "There were no complications, but your son asked us to deliver a message."

Kidomaru walked forward, handing a black sheet of raw chakra to the White Snake. Orochimaru crushed it in his hand, watching the foreign chakra fade into his skin, and the information stored in it was instantly conveyed to his mind.

"Sai...how bold." Seeming to have recovered some of his vigor in the days the Sound Four had been gone, Orochimaru offered a vicious smile as he looked at his subordinates.

"Do you have any further orders?" Sakon asked.

"Yes. Begin training Ayame in the skills I require you to be proficient in. If she shows sufficient aptitude for them, she'll be inducted as the next fifth member. Other than this, all of you except Tayuya are dismissed." The Hebi Sennin spoke, and his word was law.

The redhead did her best not to show alarm as the other four ninja around her all dispersed, the rest of the Otoyon offering her looks of pity as they all entertained their own ideas of what was going to happen to her. In the dimly-lit stone chamber, she stood before the man who'd taken claim of her life, waiting to hear whatever words came from Orochimaru's mouth.

"You can relax, this isn't a punishment. You're just uniquely suited to this mission in a way that the others aren't." Orochimaru said. "I debated whether or not to have you do this, but it will give Ayame the chance to learn how to play a part as a member of the Five Fangs."

At those words, Tayuya did relax, her shoulders loosening as she started breathing again. The foul-mouthed redhead nodded, silently indicating that she was ready to hear the details of her next mission.

"Based on the little information I have, I find it most likely that the man you call Yuurei is in Sunagakure. Go there, deliver this letter when you find him, and stay until the parameters it specifies are fulfilled."

A wax-sealed scroll found its way to Orochimaru's hand, and he gently tossed it to his subordinate. Pocketing it, Tayuya looked at her leader with a meaningful expression.

"Permission to speak, sir?" She asked.

"Naturally." Orochimaru said slyly.

"When you sent us on the mission to collect that girl, you referred to him twice as, 'the man we call Yuurei.' Do you know more information about him, and if so, may I know it?" Tayuya asked. She had a feeling that the mission Orochimaru was sending her on would be long-term, especially if his intention was to train Ayame in the techniques the Otoyon were proficient in.

"I do, and you may." The Byahebi had a smirk on his face. "Though he objects the use of a family name, he formerly went by Naruto, and he's the son of the Yondaime Hokage. He's also descended from the Uzumaki clan, on his mother's side. Everything else I know about him, I learned from you and your teammates."

"I see." Tayuya said, putting her own thoughts on the matter to the side as she processed her previous interactions with the red-eyed teen.

If his lineage was that impressive, it was no wonder why Orochimaru would want to claim him; though there was a necessity for effort in the undertaking, it was an observable phenomenon that strong shinobi and kunoichi would give birth to children who would grow up to eclipse their parents. This was the reason many large clans neither encouraged nor discouraged relationships between members who were only distantly related, as seen with the new Hokage and his wife. To that end, any member of the Uzumaki clan was a natural force to be reckoned with—a statement Tayuya was all too familiar with, as she knew full-well that it was the reason Orochimaru had taken her away from abject poverty in the middle of Tsuchi no Kuni's capital city. However it was that the White Snake learned about these things, he was adept at gathering information.

"Take your leave whenever you're ready, but don't waste too much time in preparing." Orochimaru said, an obvious dismissal.

Quickly heading to her room, Tayuya gathered everything she needed for an unknown-length mission, and she was gone within the hour. Alone in the darkness, Orochimaru quietly twisted his mind around the question of whether or not he was making the right decision, but he was eventually forced to retire that train of thought—only time would provide his answer, and if his experiments found their way to their natural conclusion, he would have nothing but time.