Let's get this trainwreck moving.


A knock at the door moved Kankuro out of his room. It wasn't that he wanted to be the household's doorman, but his room was the closest to the entrance and Temari was frequently too busy to be home. What he hadn't expected was for a member of the Sannin to be standing outside the doorway. Jiraiya stood tall with his arms folded across his chest, a neutral expression on his face as he looked at the Kazekage's brother.

"Jiraiya? Welcome, come in. What can I do for you?" Kankuro asked, puzzled for a number of reasons as he moved out of the way.

"Good question," the sage replied as he stepped through the entryway. "I'm looking for...well, you might know him as the Kyuubi no Yuurei. Tall, scars, long tails? I've got some questions for him."

"Most of the time, I act first and ask questions later." A low voice emanated from down the left hall, soon followed by a mess of blond hair coming into view with the demon attached to it. "But I tell you what, I'm feeling generous. And I don't want to spill blood in the house, so let's hear it."

Nine iridescent tails fluttered behind the blond like the limbs of a willow tree and, just from the scars he saw, Jiraiya could identify the demon in front of him as the same one who'd saved Kirigakure's rebellion. Behind him emerged the Kazekage, and a woman Jiraiya didn't immediately recognize: it was the Raikage's missing niece. Even having suspected the missing-in-action Kumo-nin was still alive, very little would have prepared Jiraiya for seeing her beside his long-lost godson.

"Bloody mercy, kid, you know barbers exist, right?" Jiraiya couldn't help himself.

"Trust me when I tell you that you don't want to know what it takes to make him do the most mundane self-care," Yugito said. Giving her master a meaningful side-eye, only her sense of shame kept her from revealing how long he'd gone without buying a new set of clothes—mostly for the events that had immediately followed the excursion, and how they could be construed as a reward from a certain point of view...but Yuurei's next words left her no choice.

"I resent that," the demon said, taking an insulted tone.

"Okay, fine. I was trying to save your dignity, not mine. You wore the same set of clothes for almost an entire year, and calling it a set is generous. You went around shirtless in the desert for months, and then in Kiri, and you didn't replace those threadbare rags you called pants until after we came back from the Blessed Lands. Do you know how hard it is not to say something? I mean, don't get me wrong, there's nothing I can do if you decide you don't care about your appearance. But for crying out loud," the older blonde cut herself off. Her aggressive explosion was met with silence for several seconds as each member of the audience wrapped their brain around just what she was saying and implying.

"Oh, wise philanderer of Konoha, how does one keep women happy?" Yuurei's quip to Jiraiya was met with brutal force as Yugito's open-handed smack broke his jaw and neck. Letting the shattered bones repair themselves, he avoided making eye contact with Yugito. "Okay, maybe I deserved that, but enough with the comedy routine. We're wasting this man's time. You see what I have to put up with around here? And this is only half of it."

Equal parts disturbed and worried by the demon before him shrugging off a near-lethal blow, Jiraiya composed himself while noting in his heart that perhaps Naruto—or Yuurei, as he'd taken to calling himself—might not be the most worrying personality in the mansion's entrance. And he had definitely deserved it. And Jiraiya was not a philanderer, or wise in his own estimation. Setting all of those thoughts aside, though, he moved straight to the point.

"You killed Uchiha Izumi," the Gama Sennin declared, circulating his chakra in the event that his rogue godson lashed out.

"Yes," Yuurei replied. Even if he could have lied, why would he? There wouldn't be a point to it.

"Why?" Jiraiya asked, confused.

"Why did I kill her, or why didn't I kill Itachi?" Yuurei asked a question in return, but after a brief pause, decided to answer it himself. "To send a message. I'm not someone who takes kindly to my people being hurt. Follow me."

The demon's order was absolute, and his unnatural Sharingan stared Jiraiya down as he passed the sage. In response, Jiraiya followed after the trio of blondes; they traveled down the other hallway, on the right-hand side. Arriving at a certain room, Yuurei knocked three times on its door. Music that they could barely hear through the stone wall was suddenly paused, and the door swung inward. Jiraiya saw a beautiful woman lying unconscious on the room's lone bed, her two-toned red hair providing both allure and mystique. He recognized her from the statue in Kirigakure—it couldn't be anyone but the leader of the rebellion.

"She still hasn't woken up," Tayuya said quietly, looking at the Mizukage with a forlorn expression. Her wings shuffled against one another as she recognized Jiraiya with alarm, but seeing Yuurei's fixed expression, she chose not to act.

"In negotiations, a single person and a ninja village would typically be regarded as the weak and strong sides, respectively. A strong tactic for the weaker side, in some cases, would be to remain more aggressive than the stronger party and make them back down, because showing any sign of submission will cause them to lose out on benefits. Itachi crippled the Mizukage and put her into a coma, so I killed his wife. If he attacks the Kazekage or her brother, I will kill any of Konoha's Jounin who are still alive. I don't care about reasons or motives, Jiraiya, I care about actions and results. He's lucky I only killed one person as my warning. Choose your next words carefully." Yuurei's stone-faced stare fell on Mei's comatose body, visually tracing the curve of her chin and lips while fighting off the urge to simply murder Jiraiya where he stood.

"You'd choose to protect the Mizukage's reputation and turn against your home?" The Sannin asked with more confusion in his voice than accusation, briefly registering a green-haired girl leaning against the far wall.

"Look at the people around you. Every single one of them is guilty of abandoning something that their families or neighbors would condemn them for. For the most part, I gave them chances to avoid that fate, even if they didn't recognize it for what it was at the time. The only thing you don't share with them is that you didn't, and won't, make the choice to follow me." Yuurei stared at Jiraiya with his bloodshot natural eye, genuine anger seeping into his voice as he continued speaking. "Yugito left her village and her family. Tayuya broke her covenant with Orochimaru. Temari and Kankuro refused to seek revenge after I killed their father. I kidnapped Fu and destroyed her village. I took Mei's freedom in exchange for fighting in her war. You left your godson behind in Konoha because you didn't want to raise a child."

"You can't seriously be comparing my negligence to your war crimes," Jiraiya scoffed. "I wasn't there, and I should have been, but are you going to tell me that you think things would be better if I'd been around?"

"I think things would be better for Konoha, at least. The Sandaime wouldn't have tried to use me as a spy in my childhood, and my Genin team would never have been sent on that mission to Nami no Kuni. History will look back and say that it was the worst mistake he made during either of his tenures, but it was the greatest gift he could have given me, and I'll never take it for granted," Yuurei replied.

What would life be like if he'd felt a need to stay in Konoha, bound by friends and family, rather than leaving them behind with Yugito in the wake of their victorious defense? Would he be hailed as a hero like his parents before him? Might he have risen through the ranks like his dead mentor, becoming highly feared and respected in spite of his young age? For the first time in months, Yuurei allowed himself to think about a different world where he was still just Naruto.

That daydream didn't last long.

"If you're intent on trying to settle this with violence, I'm more than happy to," the demon continued. "I'm not in my best shape right now after sparring, murdering, and saving Mei's life, but I'm good to go. Outside the walls, so Itachi can get an eyewitness account." In front of everyone, the shaggy-haired blond vanished in a puff of smoke.

"That son of a fucking bitch," Tayuya muttered under her breath. "Always goes and does whatever the hell he feels like."

"Really makes you wonder how much he actually thinks about us and our feelings," Yugito agreed. "And we've had that conversation with him before. Twice."

"I usually think jokes about dumb blondes are in bad taste, but you know...it seems like he couldn't stay out of trouble if it was locked up in a prison in the sky," Temari added. That was when Fu had had enough.

"You're the ones who decided to fuck him, though. My hands are clean in this. Figuratively." The tanned woman nearly spat that last word, pointedly ignoring the dried blood-smears that stained her fingers and the backs of her hands. That sight made Jiraiya's eyes widen more than the revelation of his godson's apparent harem—it wasn't hard to put two and two together, thinking about the sight that had greeted him outside of the hotel where Konoha's forces were staying. Seeing the Gama Sennin's stare, she rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I did it. I'm one of the Mizukage's guards. What was I gonna do, not get revenge? Fuck that shit. If it weren't for Chojuro wanting to play nice, I'd have killed them all."

She considered that lesson, about mercy and its faults, to be the second-greatest thing that Yuurei had done for her. Even though a large part of her would always resent him for his methods and his spontaneous nature, she wouldn't deny that the blond demon was an important person who'd shaped her worldview after she'd met him.

"Why on earth would Itachi come here?" Jiraiya talked to himself aloud, shaking his head. None of the puzzle pieces were lining up, he couldn't get the clues to make sense, and there was naked hostility almost everywhere he looked. Making a half-Ram seal, he vanished in a puff of smoke, and the rest of the house's occupants were left to their own devices.

"You all go and watch, I'll stay here. I'm not leaving Mei alone like this," Fu said.

The room cleared out, and the mansion's residents soon found themselves standing on the broad walkway of Suna's highest wall. Though their senses were sharp, Jiraiya and Yuurei appeared as little more than swaths of respectively white and yellow hair. With their chakra, however, the spectators could still hear what the two men said to one another.

"I don't enjoy or appreciate what this has come to," Jiraiya said, "but protocol dictates action."

"Servants rarely find joy in doing their masters' bidding. You're not special," Yuurei countered.

"Futon: Teikiatsu!" Jiraiya felt chakra bloom out from his keirakukei, hand seals flying as he cast his jutsu. A miniature cyclone threw sand everywhere as it sought to grind Yuurei's flesh to dust, but a horrifying grinding sound met his ears as it closed in. The attack was vicious, and as it died down, Jiraiya felt a sense of dread grip his heart; Yuurei stood unharmed, with an arm outstretched to meet the cyclone, and oily youki fading from his arched fingertips.

From his left hand, the demon cast out metal shrapnel that he'd held onto for no discernable reason. It fell in front of Jiraiya, or to either side of him, and the sage did his best to move away.

"Raiton: Raigen'ya." With a small burst of youki, the metal came alive with arcing electricity. Incensed that his hunch had been right, Jiraiya finally came to grips with the fact that all of Kakashi's secret arts were held in the hands of a sixteen-year-old nukenin. What bothered him the most, though, was that the technique used against him was his own. He'd invented it, he'd taught it to Minato, and it had served as the initial basis for the Yondaime Hokage's infamous Hiraishin technique—what if it wasn't electricity, but an armed assailant, that jumped from one fixed point to another?

"You're a menace," Jiraiya hissed, sending out a Doton technique that launched earthen spikes in Yuurei's direction. This time, the blond summoned a crystalline object into his hand before launching a wave of his youki through it. Each of the spikes Jiraiya had attacked with was torn apart in rapid succession, and he was forced to dodge the counterattack with a kawarimi. Expecting to be caught flat-footed and on the defensive, he was surprised when Yuurei didn't press his advantage.

"I'm a demon. Your strength doesn't meet mine, and that's the only thing that matters here. Why flaunt that advantage? Even if you can't do anything for me, and even if killing you would benefit me, I think you're most useful doing what you've been doing." Yuurei's eyes glanced upward, spotting a dark-haired teen he recognized from his childhood before the desert began to freeze. "I'll make you a deal, just this once. Take Sasuke and leave. Keep him as far from his brother as you can. I don't care where you run to, and I don't care what you teach him. I won't actively pursue you. We're not friends, but we don't have to be enemies. For his sake."

The pressure of those words came down around Jiraiya like a mountain, and a chilling frost raced across the ground before rooting him to the spot. One bloodshot, blood-red eye, and one Sharingan, stared at him with enough intensity that the sage thought his soul was going to crack open. Momentarily panicking as all other life in the world seemed to freeze—metaphorically, in spite of the cold that had been conjured from thin air—Jiraiya watched helplessly while Yuurei walked forward. Each of the demon's footfalls echoed through the heart of darkness, until he stood less than an arm's length away from Jiraiya. Though the older man's hair fluffed up high enough to make him look taller, neither of them was under any illusions about Yuurei's greater height.

"Go back to hell," the Gama Sennin spat in defiance. Very slowly the cold began to recede, as if the desert's unnatural condition wanted Yuurei to give new conditions to his opponent. Instead, the demon began weaving hand seals of his own.

"I don't discuss terms with peons." With his left hand gripping his right wrist, iridescent youki hissed against Yuurei's right hand. Standing so near to it, and still unable to get away, Jiraiya's dread gave way to acceptance; he knew that technique as well as any of Konoha's upper echelon could. Kakashi's righteous Chidori had been twisted into the demon's knife, a killing blow if he'd ever seen one.

Jiraiya didn't recognize that heat had come back to the desert's winds, or that his freedom of movement was no longer restrained, before the attack fell. The pain in his gut burned like nothing he'd ever felt before; no flame, no acid, no poison had ever made him fold himself in half from the pain. Ever so slowly, it began to spread, and the sage felt his skin being eaten away by the corrosive nature of Yuurei's youki. He fell back against the ground, staring up at a clear blue sky with agony written across his face, and struggled to concentrate on staying alive. Two figures raced down from the highest of Sunagakure's protective walls, coming more clearly into view with each passing moment—naturally, they were Sasuke and Shizune.

"What have you done?" Shizune asked, horrified as she watched Jiraiya's muscles seize and his skin wither.

"I've given him a long road to a slow and painful death, unless you can stop it," Yuurei replied with a cold stare as he began to walk away. "I told him I would let him leave if he took you with him, Sasuke. Have you been traveling together before this? That makes his refusal even stranger."

"Why would that be your...Naruto! Come back!" Torn between chasing after his former teammate and looking over Jiraiya's failing health, Sasuke chose the former. His tempered body dashed across the sand until he was side-by-side with Yuurei, and then in front of him. "Why was that your condition? What good does it do you to keep me on the move with him?"

"The closer you are to danger, the further you are from lasting harm. Just because I'm not present, that doesn't mean I stopped caring about my teammates. And that left hand of yours..." Yuurei looked pointedly at the off-color appendage, feeling an unnatural heat rolling off of it that Sasuke didn't really seem to have control over. "Maybe you can save Jiraiya. Who knows? If not, though, I'd harvest and refine his dantian while he's still alive. You're smart, you'd be able to learn something from it."

"You're not making any sense," Sasuke said, confused and upset; Yuurei said he was trying to help him, but all the Uchiha could see was ways in which he'd been hurt by Yuurei's actions.

"I have my own considerations, but I want you to become stronger. I'm doing what I can to spur that growth forward, whether Jiraiya's a willing participant or not." Yuurei disappeared after speaking those words, launching himself up to the area where Yugito, Tayuya, Temari, and Kankuro were waiting.

A small seed of horror began blooming in Sasuke's heart at those callous words, and he rushed back to Shizune's side as quickly as he could. He didn't know how he could help her save Jiraiya's life, but Naruto had told him there was a chance—and for all his other faults, the demon had never lied to him. His rust-colored left hand shimmered with heat, and where it passed, the corroding of Jiraiya's body began to stop.

"Don't hold it too close, or you'll burn him. And me," Shizune said, green medical chakra coming out from her hands. Thankfully, Yuurei had seen fit to bring more pain than outright destruction; with the help of Sasuke's unnatural hand, she could absolutely save the white-haired Sannin. As she thought about what Yuurei had said, though, she wondered if healing him outright was the outcome she should be going after. Jiraiya's actions didn't make sense—why would he refuse leniency from a stronger opponent whose only condition was to do as he'd been doing?

Even with those tumultuous thoughts running through her mind, she didn't stop making an attempt at saving him. It was her job as a medic, her duty as Tsunade's apprentice, and Sasuke's wish as the sage's student. Whatever questions or misgivings she had, she could voice them later. Jiraiya wouldn't be able to answer for his actions if she let him die.

When Sasuke glanced up to Sunagakure's tiered walls, he didn't see Naruto watching him. The demon had disappeared as simply as he'd arrived, caring little for the trials and tribulations he brought to the humans around him. Jiraiya's life or death wouldn't weigh on the demon's conscience at all. Neither did Izumi's, or anyone else's. He'd turned his back on the light of the world, embracing his role and title as the Kyuubi no Yuurei.

Sasuke wasn't sure that he could forgive his former teammate for that.