Let's get this trainwreck moving.


Though Sasuke's shirt and jacket were riddled with holes that had dried blood caking their edges, there were no signs of any wounds beneath the tattered clothing. As the moon hung high above their heads, he traveled with Jiraiya and Shizune towards Sunagakure—in the aftermath of the sandworm's attack, nobody in their trio had the chakra necessary to activate the void tunnel they'd arrived from. When Jiraiya had explained that it would be a good way to make a report to the Hokage, Sasuke and Shizune had both readily agreed for their own reasons. Sasuke hadn't seen his brother in quite some time, and Shizune had an important question to ask Itachi.

He was the last person who'd seen Tsunade alive. He had to know what happened to her, or have some clue as to where she'd gone after their meeting. Shizune, more than anyone except his wife, needed to see Itachi as soon as possible. She'd done her best to cover her anxiety over the course of her journey with the master-student pair who stood on either side of her, and she felt that she'd done well, but the Hokage was the only one who could tell her what she needed to hear.

The brunette did her best to ignore the voice in the back of her head that asked what she would do if she didn't like the answer she was given. She didn't like the answers she was coming up with.

Jiraiya, meanwhile, was mulling over his powerlessness against the sandworm after it had appeared. Arguably the most powerful member of the Sannin, the white-haired sage was already acutely aware of his limitations; there was very little he could do in the face of an enemy that could fight on fair terms with the Biju...but he didn't enjoy the difference between knowing that information and living the experience. Even though Sasuke had caused a localized natural disaster that killed the worm, thanks to its biological weakness, its presence had reminded Jiraiya of the Kyuubi's rampage several years ago. Its otherworldly appearance and inhuman might made the Gama Sennin's brain want to reject its existence.

Some forces in the world are beyond human reach, or understanding. That simple statement had driven all of the Sannin to the heights they'd reached—or the depths to which they'd fallen. Tsunade and Orochimaru had both been inspired by death; the former veered towards humanitarian ends, and the latter drove himself into a fearful quest for immortality. Jiraiya, meanwhile, had grasped for the natural world they lived upon. The power that existed in the ground, the air, the sky, and the sea—his connection with all of those, and more, had been tempered fiercely on his journey to become a sage.

Seeing the sandworm up close, feeling the heat that radiated from it, and his first taste of the spice melange, had all confirmed Jiraiya's thoughts on the desert-dwellers: wherever they were from, it wasn't the world he lived in. However, he had to keep these thoughts to himself for the moment. There were more important things to do as the moon slowly began to sink in front of them.


On the opposite side of Sunagakure, far enough from the city walls that they could go undisturbed, Yuurei stood across from Yugito and Tayuya.

"Come at me," he said, not bothering to take a defensive stance. "I want to see how much stronger you've gotten since we left Konoha."

"You just want to see how much stronger you are," Yugito accused her master.

"That's part of it too, but you're both on your way to becoming full-fledged demons. Your chakra will be turned into youki, just like mine was, and I want you to experience the difference. Being unfamiliar with your power and its limits is never a good idea," he said.

"Like sinking an entire island?" Tayuya asked, her eyes halfway set into a glare. "Or killing an entire hidden village? Or opening a portal straight to hell?"

"I didn't have anybody to teach me how to manage my strength, and I'm still not sure why my Fuinjutsu is so much more...severe," the blond demon replied. If Yuurei was being honest with himself, though, he hoped that teaching his subordinates would help refine his own understanding; years ago, when he'd begun to show Ayame and the other urchins about chakra and Ninjutsu, he'd found that teaching others gave him a better grasp of the concepts he was trying to apply to himself. "But if you want me to go about this like I'm being selfish, then fine, because helping you helps me. I don't want to see either of you get hurt when we finally make a move on Kumogakure."

Tayuya's eyebrows rose in mild surprise at that declaration, but her expression quickly returned to normal. She already knew that Yuurei cared for them in his own way, regardless of their relationship as master and servants; his lack of physical interest in them was reflective of his desire for strength, rather than companions. Though Tayuya questioned that pursuit—she was firm in her belief that Yuurei could defeat any single person in the world—she only knew life and motivations from a human point of view. For Yuurei, who had grown steadily into demonhood since before he could remember, her priorities in life might be similarly alien.

"Even after all the power we've leeched off of you, you're still concerned?" Yugito asked.

"Faith isn't really something I'm known for," Yuurei replied drily, causing the blonde woman in front of him to snort with derisive amusement.

"Either way, there's still a problem. Remember the night we first met? Not when we got introduced to one another in Nami no Kuni, but when Mizuki tried to kidnap you?" Tayuya asked.

"When you tried to help Mizuki kidnap me, yes." Yuurei paired his words with a deadpan stare, and Tayuya could practically feel the confusion evident on Yugito's face.

"Yeah. Remember the oath that the Sound Four accepted by running away? I know the terms of the pact I made in Suna trump almost anything when it comes to free will and my decisions, but fighting you is literally the one fucking thing I can't do. I'll die and turn into those little specks of light. Not exactly on my bucket list," Tayuya said.

"That's...true, actually. Which isn't to say that I forgot, but I'm glad you remembered. So, instead, how about you fight off a group of my Kage Bunshin?" Yuurei asked. Tayuya rolled her eyes, but nodded affirmatively, venturing a little deeper into the desert with Yuurei's eight clones who appeared a moment later. Left alone together for the first time since their original arrival in Sunagakure, Yuurei and Yugito's mismatched eyes met in silence for slightly too long.

"No seals this time...or clones," Yugito said. While the idea of a spar was self-restraint, she remembered the circumstances of her "capture" quite well—Yuurei had summoned a host of Kage Bunshin to keep her occupied while he constructed his Fuinjutsu array. It was the kind of strategy that only worked because his chakra reserves were astronomical.

Yuurei raised an eyebrow at the ex-Jinchuriki's demand, but shrugged after a moment, silently agreeing. A series of shuriken found their way to the tall demon's hands, and as he released them, Yugito showcased her incredible speed. Each of the throwing stars narrowly missed the ponytailed blonde, who wasted no movement as she closed the distance between them. Clawed nails batted at Yuurei's face, but they met warm steel instead of flesh; appearing almost unconcerned with his subordinate's attack, he'd palmed a kunai before placing its hilt in the path of her swing. As soon as his hands were free, he flew through a short series of hand seals, and lightning began to arc as the kunai touched the sand beneath them.

"Raiton: Raigen'ya!" Yuurei's cry wasn't quiet, but he found he could barely hear himself over the hum of the electrical field he'd temporarily trapped Yugito in. Streaks of electricity jumped out across the shuriken he'd initially thrown, anchored by the kunai in front of Yugito's feet; a searing pain ran across the length of her arms, and her involuntary breath carried the taste of ozone. Aggrieved, Yugito lunged forward, intent on striking Yuurei and escaping the range of his technique.

"You want to fight a Kumo ninja with Raiton techniques?" The blonde growled, her mismatched red eyes narrowing. "Raiton: Hekirei!"

A sonic boom erupted in front of Yugito's body, and three bolts of lightning leapt out to pummel Yuurei in the chest. For a moment, the taller demon's vision turned to sandy static; Yugito used that brief respite to cast the Kato Hikari, and her body faded into a shimmering mirage caused by the desert's heat. Spinning into a kick from Yuurei's left side, her shin connected with the back of her master's knees.

Yuurei's legs buckled, but his hand reached out to grab Yugito's fist as he fell. Unfortunately, he'd underestimated just how fast the former Kumo-nin could be; even without any chakra to strengthen the blow, Yuurei felt several of his bones break as his face made contact with her knuckles. Coughing up blood, he asked himself: when was the last time he'd been struck with such a brutal attack? He didn't count his brief encounter with the Naruto-from-another-universe who'd taken refuge in Makai. The last time he'd dealt with someone that truly possessed the means to take his life, he'd brought Nami no Kuni to ruin. In a world where he and Yugito weren't bound together by a seal drawn in blood, the strength behind her strike might have made him afraid.

Yugito didn't bother apologizing for the grievous wound she'd dealt her master; she knew that he wouldn't want her to, because she knew that he could handle it. His nine iridescent tails gently bobbed up and down, but their calmness did no justice to the complex emotion on Yuurei's face. The more Yugito looked at him, the more certain she was that she'd inadvertently flipped some kind of switch. Though his Sharingan continued to spin lazily, his natural right eye was wide in surprise. Before Yugito could get too worried, though, a savage grin quickly split his lips apart. Multiple deep breaths quickly began to dry his blood into a glaze on his teeth.

Yugito could only return the smile he sent her, though she was could plainly see his growing mania. For a split second, she wondered how severe his reaction to her punch would become; only her faith in their bond kept her from delving further down that path. The blonde couldn't relax, though; in the next moment, a brutal punch was thrown her way, and she only narrowly dodged it. To her shock, though, the force of Yuurei's passage was enough to hurt the shoulder near his outstretched arm.

"You're right, of course," Yuurei said, making a string of hand seals that ended in the sign of the Ox. Yugito didn't bother asking him what she was right about. "Small-scale Ninjutsu like that are unbecoming of me."

The oppressive desert heat suddenly rose to an even greater level when Yuurei raised his arms, and as Yugito looked up, she nearly did a double-take. Had the sun...gotten larger? That felt like a logical impossibility, and she dodged preemptively. Not long after, a focused ray of brilliant light shot through her prior location. Sand turned to molten glass, hardening as it sprayed into the air, and Yugito looked at her master in mild horror—all the techniques in his arsenal, thanks to the Sharingan that had belonged to Hatake Kakashi, and he chose to use that? A technique that could actually kill her?

She'd been unconscious when Yuurei had last used this technique, one of the devastating jutsu that had allowed him to single-handedly fight off the three-village coalition that had attempted to attack Suna. It had been a vicious strike, cast with a heart full of hate, and slaughtered at least a hundred ninja without leaving any evidence of their existence. In comparison, this version of the technique had been much more controlled; after Yugito had moved away, she was in no danger. If she wanted to look at it in a certain way, it might almost come off as a warning—as if Yuurei was flaunting his restraint.

The taller demon launched himself forward, swinging his entire arm towards Yugito's neck; as the older woman blocked the strike, she felt her left arm go almost completely numb, and she groaned softly in protest. Not letting up, his left hand attacked with a crane strike, targeting her right elbow. At the last second, though, she managed to twist out of the way. Yuurei seemed to remember the entire reason they were sparring after a moment, collecting himself as his expression returned to normal. Straightening his back, Yuurei stood to his full height and waited for Yugito to come after him again. He didn't have to wait long.


"This is kinda bullshit," Tayuya said to the clones she was facing off against. "Does Yuurei actually want me to fight you, or show off my improvements? As long as we've traveled together, we've never done anything like this."

"You're at an awkward evolutionary stage, even if it's not a bad one," the nearest clone told her.

"That literally didn't answer my question, but fine. I'll bite. What the fuck are you talking about?" Tayuya asked.

"Your body is currently undergoing the same process ours did, transitioning from a human to a demon thanks to your proximity to our power. Yugito, Temari, and Mei should all be experiencing it, but you and Yugito are the furthest along thanks to how much time you spend around our original." This time, it had been a different clone who spoke. "Humans grow stronger by training their bodies and their skills, while demons grow stronger through killing. So, we want you to abuse that system just like we did. Plus, since you're oath-bound to our original, you get a little bit stronger every time he does. So, come at us."

Tayuya hesitated for a moment, entirely unused to Yuurei's apparent goodwill. Her experiences with the blond demon revolved around his mitigation of risk towards others, interspersed with terrifying displays of strength that defied all logic. Even though he demonstrably didn't hate the women he seemed to collect around himself, he wasn't warm with them either, and only the decisive nature of her joint "attack" with Mei and Yugito had brought him to show any physical attention to them. Something like taking an active interest in their strength was unusual, especially to this extent. Until Yugito's death in Kirigakure, he'd trusted them implicitly—and in the time since then, he'd shouldered every burden upon himself.

Whether it was the Naruto from another universe who'd taken refuge in Makai, the Shinigami in the Blessed Lands, the Speargod, or the Kyuubi no Kitsune, the blond demon had taken the initiative to deal with them; if Tayuya thought about it for too long, she might be forced into concluding that Yuurei was afraid for their safety.

"Okay, well, if you're just gonna stand there...don't blame us for making the first move," a third clone said, clearly somewhat put off by Tayuya's immobile silence. Launching a Kazeryu Endan at the redhead, his right eye twitched as she flapped her wings and dispersed it before taking flight.

Before Tayuya could go too high, though, a beam of blinding light and scorching heat tore through the sky. It wasn't in a position to hit her, but she shot a deep glare at the eight clones who stood on flat sand; each of those clones, however, was looking at his compatriots in confusion. They weren't the ones who cast it. The redhead's eyes went wide, knowing that it had to have come from Yuurei himself, and she wondered what Yugito must have done to make him use a technique that she'd watched kill dozens of men at once.

Emptying those thoughts from her mind, Tayuya brought her flute to her lips and began to play. The eight clones in front of her gathered into a guarded formation, only to be matched by eight large monstrosities that she seemed to have summoned out of thin air. These were her oni, dark spirits from the age of gods, who were bound to her will as the bearer of their summoning flute. Before meeting Yuurei, she'd only ever managed to call upon three of them at a time.

As she looked at them for the first time in several months, she hesitated. They were still much larger than humans, but she was used to controlling three truly titanic spirits. The eight that she'd summoned, one to be paired off with each of Yuurei's clones, were nowhere near that size—the tallest only stood half-again as high as its opponent. Had her progression into demonhood caused them to grow with her, or were these oni simply more powerful than the ones she'd previously been able to summon?

As her fingers moved gracefully across the holes in the flute's smooth surface, Tayuya was glad that she hadn't fallen too out of practice. At first, controlling all eight oni was a difficult process, but her previous skills all built on one another as her driving melody continued to flow. Her song of control was fast-paced and sharp, unlike the morose tones that accompanied her Genjutsu. Speed was the only way to maintain control of so many spirits at the same time; playing slowly would only hinder their effectiveness.

Yuurei's clones quickly found themselves mired in a terrible battle. One solid blow would cause them to burst, while their great strength proved useless—each time they dealt a killing blow to one of the oni, it was staggered for a few moments instead of disappearing. Though they were visibly frustrated with their lack of progress, the clones all knew that this was what they'd been brought out for. They were testing Tayuya's limits, not fighting her in earnest.

Changing the key she was playing in, Tayuya's music took on an eerie tone as she layered a very minor Genjutsu over the battlefield she looked over. While she doubted it was necessary, as the eight clones had their full attention occupied by the eight oni she was controlling, she was supposed to be showing her strength here; invisible to her opponents, she drifted on the wind. Once she was behind the clones in their defensive grouping, nearly encircled by the oni she controlled, they had no way of resisting her—at least, as far as their purpose went. The only indication that she cast the Futon: Jaakuna Kaze was the brief change in her playing style, as a few languid notes rang out. Moments later, the clones were torn open by a wind current that carried a tinge of purple miasma.

Confirming that none of the clones remained, Tayuya dispelled her oni before beginning her trek back to Yuurei and Yugito's location. What she found was a much more ravaged site than her own battlefield; blood was everywhere, coating Yuurei's mouth and teeth, reminding the redhead of how her master had bitten out the Yondaime Kazekage's throat during the invasion of Konoha. More blood, which she assumed was still Yuurei's, had splattered on Yugito's armor and across her face. The two red-eyed demons seemed to have eschewed any attempt at using Ninjutsu after Yuurei had brought down that scorching ray of sunlight, and only their ability to regenerate had kept them recognizable. It would probably be a bad idea to let Mei find out that the clothes Yuurei had gotten in Kirigakure had already been reduced to shredded strips of cloth; conversely, the only material damage Yugito seemed to have suffered was the destruction of the wrap that kept her hair in a ponytail.

"What the fuck?" The redhead asked. Yuurei turned to look at her after hearing her speak, and paid for his hubris when Yugito sailed her foot straight into his cheekbone. The blond demon let himself travel through the air for a few moments with the momentum of that blow, arriving on the sand in front of Tayuya.

"Okay, fair enough. I probably deserved that. Tayuya, since you're done, I think we're going to call it here." Yuurei already knew Tayuya was finished before she arrived in front of them, thanks to the memories of his Kage Bunshin, but it was as good an excuse to stop as any. "I got what we came out here for."

Yugito, for her part, seemed to have vented the last of her aggravation with that final kick. Sharing a look with Tayuya before finally relaxing, she quickly nodded in deference to Yuurei. Together, the trio began to make their way back to Sunagakure.

"So, now that you've experienced the difference between human chakra and demonic youki, in your own bodies, what do you think?" Yuurei asked.

"I'm not sure that I experienced anything like that," Tayuya replied.

"Not directly, no, but I think your flute reacted to its existence in your body. Since your chakra is slowly being converted into youki, you're naturally releasing a very small amount of youki whenever you use chakra in your Ninjutsu or Genjutsu. You don't have very much, but it's enough to make a difference," Yuurei said.

"It's a pure power rush," Yugito said. "I...think I understand you a little better now."

"Your body has adapted to it very quickly, possibly as a side-effect of being a Jinchuriki for so long. You're on a much faster timetable for the transformation than Tayuya is...I think. Either way, I'm glad that I know where the two of you are in terms of your strength and abilities. It makes me feel more secure about what comes next," Yuurei said.

"And...what comes next?" Tayuya asked, slightly hesitant.

"When these Chunin Exams are over, in the middle of May, it'll almost be the one-year anniversary of Nami no Kuni's destruction. I'm thinking of making my move on Kumo then," Yuurei answered.

"So soon? It hasn't even been six months since you told Temari you'd do it." Yugito hoped she didn't sound like she was trying to buy time for her homeland; regardless, Yuurei and Tayuya both knew better than that.

"I was apprehensive about it because I wanted to make sure both of you would be completely safe when we attack. I never, ever, want what happened in Kirigakure to happen again." Neither woman needed to ask what Yuurei meant. "Now that I've seen what you're capable of, though, I think I don't need to be worried about it anymore. While we're waiting, I can also get the four of you started on exercises to accelerate your transformations."

With that new information to think on, the trio made their way back to Sunagakure to continue their day.