"Start moving your twisted feet,

Let's escape this cage together,

So we can see tomorrow,

So that we can escape despair,"

-Zettai Zetsumei, Cö shu Nie

We were at the opposite end of the village from the hideout.

The shore was dark, jagged rocks instead of black sand and the water held more ruins. Big, curved pipes with only the tops showing above the surface, and a line of rocks that might've been a path a long time ago.

Yahiko put his folded cloak down next to mine behind a rock, patted it, and re-strapped his nagamaki to his back. "I have three ground rules," he said, walking back onto dry, barren dirt. He held up three fingers. "The first is that Namekuji can't help you."

I looked over to where Namekuji sat on a raised rock, a cliff bordering where the shoreline ended and turned to dirt.

Enyo was behind him, closer to the water, putting rocks in his pocket. He'd followed us here while Joji was distracted teaching Maho how to defend himself underwater.

Namekuji only scoffed at him. "I'm a neutral party. I'll spit acid at both of you."

Yahiko paused, glancing at him. "I don't think Nagato will make it here in time if it hits me in the back."

"That's nice, carrot-hair."

Yahiko looked at his still-raised fingers. "Why'd you bring Namekuji, again?"

"Because I wanted to," I answered.

He nodded. "Makes sense. The second is that you don't hold back. I think my pride has taken enough hits already lately—"

"You've been training with Naga?" I asked.

He blinked. After a second he rubbed the back of his head and smiled. "That obvious, huh?"

I shrugged, "No one else holds back."

He shook his head. "Yeah, well, I don't actually have a third rule." His fingers twisted into half-signs. Dragon. Tiger. Hare.

His mouth filled with water and he leaned forward, spewing waves at the ground.

My left hand was halfway up before I realized there was no power behind it. Cold water covered my feet, splashed against my calves, and soaked the earth around me.

He stopped it after three seconds, wiping his mouth, and I looked down, humming.

He only did it to make it harder to use earth-style.

A clone would be more mud than earth. It probably wouldn't make it to him before it fell apart. And he'd only do it again if I used Headhunter. It'd take more chakra to push water out of the earth and solidify it than it did to soak the ground like this. He'd outlast me.

He unsheathed the nagamaki.

I glanced to the side, where Enyo was crouched next to Namekuji, offering him a leaf.

Namekuji stared at it, then up at him. "Look, kid, I don't know who told you to treat me like a bug, but I want names."

Enyo slowly retracted the leaf and stuffed it in his pocket. "Nobody told me," he huffed. "Jus' thought you liked them, like snails."

"Huh. So, how good are you at dodging—"

I ducked and the nagamaki cleaved through the air above me. I glanced up as Yahiko pulled it back.

He shook his head, "What was that second rule again?"

"I'm not," I said back, standing. "This is how I fought at Antei. I let them get close, and then—" My right hand shot up.

I pulled, and his eyes widened as he was yanked off his feet, but he didn't fight it. He made the half-tiger sign at his side, took a quick, quiet breath, and I responded by raising my left hand.

But instead of fire, he exhaled poison.

I dropped him, instinctively holding my breath, but he was too close. Purple clouds swept around my feet as I jumped back and he rolled through the space where I'd been, coming up on his feet.

He was surrounded by a low, slow moving shroud of poison.

"So that's what that feels like," he noted, his breath purple.

I was too used to fighting my brother. He didn't lie when he made hand-signs.

Enyo stepped back, covering his mouth and nose with his arm, but that was why they were up on the rocks and we weren't.

I wondered how long the poison would linger on my feet and clothes, if it'd still enter my nose if I breathed in now, but I didn't try.

It was still true that only Yahiko could hold his breath longer than I could.

I pulled shuriken out of my pouch and ran, tossing them at him a second before I leapt up, but he didn't look at them for long. His body faced the shuriken, nagamaki held down as he deflected the ones aimed at his middle, his legs, but his eyes were on me, above him.

I threw up my right hand as the deflected shuriken hit the mud and he darted left, glancing back as the ground caved in on itself where he'd been.

He was faster than I thought he'd be.

He was there when I landed, blade raised, exhaling poison at me.

I twisted away from the nagamaki and the blade impaled the air where my chest had been.

I had two, three minutes at most before I had to breathe, and lost.

I ducked under a wide slash and shoved off the mud, my right hand aimed at his middle. He didn't have time to move back before I pushed, but in the instant before the pressure hit him, I glanced up and saw his grin.

His left hand was making the snake sign. His right was empty, and I realized he never meant to hit me at all.

He switched places with the nagamaki.

The blade hovered in the air for half a second, and then it was blown backwards. I watched it sail up and back with wide eyes, a silver-red pinwheel spinning through the air.

It plopped in the water. Enyo ran down to the shore and I heard a near-silent inhale behind me.

I rolled, off-balance, and threw my left hand back just as I started to feel heat. His chakra didn't burn as hot as other fire-style users, but only because he didn't waste any.

Most wasted chakra to make their fire burn a little hotter, a little bigger, or just didn't have perfect control, leaking chakra like a dripping faucet.

The small fireball hit my palm as I turned, and I made the tiger sign. I wasted the air I had left to spit it back at him, but he was already making the half-dog sign before it left my mouth.

My fireball exploded against his water bullet, blasting thick steam around us.

I fought the urge to take a breath and flipped backwards, away from the heat clinging to my skin, the mist I couldn't see through. I slid back on the mud as I landed on my feet, spinning a kunai into my hand to block one that shot out of the steam in front of me.

Yahiko darted out after it.

I tossed my kunai at him and raised my right hand, using just enough force to push it and make it faster than I could ever throw.

He didn't dodge. The kunai cut straight through his chest and he burst into water.

I froze, hand still raised when I felt a sharp point against the back of my neck.

Another lie, a distraction while he snuck around me—

I couldn't stop myself from gasping, lungs burning, and I breathed in deeply, tilting my head back.

Yahiko pressed a hand to my shoulder and white tendrils of smoke floated up through his fingers.

The air was thicker, wrong, and the more I inhaled, the harder it was to keep breathing. My throat itched like there were fingers scratching at my skin from inside, hands filling the space, more and more blooming over each other until there was no room left to breathe—

I felt scaly, webbed feet on my neck, but I didn't move, and I didn't stop breathing in, even though I barely could.

Naga or Mamoru-sensei would've stopped.

They would've tried to hold in the little air they could to try and lessen the effects until Emon dosed them with the antidote. But I wasn't scared of Yahiko's poison or not being able to breathe.

If it was someone else, maybe.

Yahiko retracted the kunai and dropped to his knees, then flopped onto his back. "And that's the last of my chakra," he panted.

It was like drowning, I thought.

My body told me to cough out the poison, but I couldn't. No matter how much air I breathed in, it wouldn't go down.

The sky slowly went dark as I looked, as black and bottomless as the ocean, and I saw the other me floating in the water, tangled in seaweed, her lips purple-blue, sightless eyes staring down.

This isn't right, she seemed to say, though her mouth didn't move. Konan should be here. Yahiko should be—

Yahiko, catching his breath on the ground next to me.

Yahiko, who should've slipped off my brother's shoulder and died, just like that.

Should've? I repeated, staring back at her. The seaweed around her bled red, staining the water like someone had dropped in a bucket of paint, because I knew who I was.

not-Madara and you, you're the same, I thought at her. I'm not the Sage of Six Paths, and I'm not you, either.

Thick and heavy with blood, the ocean started to drip down like rain, muddying, bleeding into what I thought happened, what I knew happened—

I felt a hard tug on my pant leg and looked down.

Yahiko's hand fell away from where he'd been trying to get my attention for seconds or minutes or longer. He was still breathing hard, but I could breathe again.

The ocean stopped dripping, receding, contained again, because I knew who I was.

I wasn't someone afraid to kill a ghost if I had to. Over and over again until she was another drop of blood in an ocean of red.

Yahiko laughed, breathlessly, like nothing happened. "I have to find the nagamaki, but I think I'll die if I move," he said. "Joji-sensei's going to kill me when he finds out I used it as a substitution. Then he'll take it back, tradition or not."

Emon was still on my neck. I reached up—

"She doesn't like anyone touching her that isn't me," he warned. "She'll de-summon herself. Like a certain terrible slug we know."

I didn't lower my hand.

I stared at my palm. I thought about the other me, the ocean in the sky, and about my chakra. "I've been using her from the start," I realized.

I didn't know I could summon until I did it. I learned to make an earth wall in barely any time at all.

Special, Jiraya used to call me in those bright, early days.

She knew how. How did she know?

"You know," Yahiko began, and I blinked down at him again. "If we're believing at least some of what not-Madara said, I think either I was a good person in my last life, or a really bad one, considering some of the things that've happened."

I paused, and he looked meaningfully at me.

I dropped my hand and sat next to him. "You were a good person," I told him.

"Think so?"

I hummed. "I know you were. Even if the gods came down and said you weren't, they'd be wrong."

He laughed. He stretched a hand up as much as he could and Emon immediately scrambled down to his palm.

"I don't think she likes me much," I said.

He shook his head, "Emon isn't as much of a baby as she was the first time I told you about her, but she still is one. Unlike Namekuji, she can still grow to be nicer."

I looked toward the rocks. Enyo hopped from one big one to another and back again.

Namekuji was still at the edge watching us. "I'm not half as insulted at that as I was watching her lose to you," he said, but didn't come down.

Yahiko only laughed again and draped an arm over his eyes.

"You haven't given him the antidote?" I asked Yahiko.

Yahiko dismissed the question with a vague wave. "Doesn't work well on slugs. I found that a poison meant for people works differently on non-people the hard way," he answered. "Nagato kicked me around extra hard for it. He claims he didn't, but my bruises say differently."

"Why don't you make one?"

"Sounds so easy when you ask like that," Yahiko said airily. "But I should really look for the nagamaki. If only I was someone with a lot of chakra left."

He lifted his arm, peeking at me, but I didn't move.

"If only," he sighed, dropping his hand back down.

"I saw where it fell. I'll find it," Enyo offered, then hopped down to the water without waiting for a response.

"The next generation is already better than this one," Yahiko lamented.

I only smiled and looked up at the sky. "It's blue," I murmured, surprised. The blood ocean was gone.

He moved his arm down to look. "So it is."

飛ぶ

"How many times a week do you have to do a sacrifice?" I asked.

Hidan sat on the floor with his scythe across his lap, eyes shut.

He didn't answer, but I didn't expect one.

"Why is Lord Jashin's symbol a circle with a triangle in it?"

His eyebrows pulled together at the question, but he still didn't answer.

He barely spoke since we talked about the Rain Daimyo, barely looked at anyone, and only made a half-hearted effort to kill us.

"Why does the triangle have to be backwards?"

Annoyance flashed across his face. "Will you piss off already?"

I considered it, "And if I won't—"

He stood fast and loomed over me, anger burning bright in his eyes. "Why the hell do you care what I do, one way or the other? You got what you wanted, didn't you?" he mocked, and grinned, but there was nothing behind it. "I'm still in this shithole, so why do you give a damn about anything else?"

I met his stare. "I don't."

He laughed in my face. "Could've fooled me," he said. "You care so damn little that here you are, asking me shit when you could be fucking off somewhere else."

He leaned close, but I didn't move back. "Go ahead and keep lying to yourself." He shoved past me as he left the room, but didn't take his scythe.

I stared down at it. He'd cleaned it recently.

I didn't care.

If he left, it wouldn't hurt. It wouldn't even sting. But I'd wanted him to be alive in Hot Water Country before I ever knew he was.

Why, I wondered.

Because we might've been almost-friends, once? Before he became a Jashinist, before I was known as the Wolf of the Rain, before we ever knew anything about each other.

Someone I kind of—maybe—not really at all knew when we met again, but still asked him to come here—

"It's raining," Maho said, out of breath.

I turned. It's...?

He leaned heavily against the doorframe. "I already told Yahiko—he's outside—"

"Why?" I asked.

Why would it rain when we had the sun?

Maho pushed wet hair out of his face. "Nagato-sensei didn't—he ended training early and didn't say why—and then the clouds—I didn't pay enough attention to them until I was—" he gestured at his waterlogged sandals.

I glanced at the puddle he left on the floor, then slipped out past him, into and down the corridor. "Did you see Hidan?"

Maho pointed down the opposite hallway. "I didn't think he'd be interested," he admitted.

It would've made more sense if I took the bounty.

If I cut off his head or his arms and legs so he couldn't fight back, if I collected the reward for him and left without a second thought, but I hadn't.

I heard the rain before I saw the water pooling on the stone steps, splashing and dripping down to the bottom. Rain crashed against the staircase as I walked up but was barely audible hitting the sand.

I looked up and felt cold drops. The sky reminded me of the day we killed Hanzo.

Maho stood back on the driest step, but I stepped up onto wet sand and ducked my head as I was doused. But I smiled, too, and it surprised me.

I was only a little more surprised watching rain slide off my cloak.

Yahiko stood in front of me, head tilted back, eyes closed.

I maneuvered closer to him, grains of sand sticking to my feet. "Do you know why Naga did this?"

His eyes slowly opened. "It's my birthday."

I stared at him, but he only gave me a sad smile.

"I wish I'd known," Maho said, teeth chattering. He stuffed his hands under his arms. "No one ever mentions their birthday until it's the day of."

Yahiko's smile looked a little less sad as he looked back at him. "I didn't tell anyone because I'd still rather not think about it. But Oka and Nagato insist on replacing all my bad memories with good ones."

Maho frowned. "The rest of us would too, if you let us."

Yahiko's eyes widened slightly, and then he laughed.

I glanced at the dark, grey clouds, felt the cold sting of rain on my hands, my feet, and thought that maybe I missed it a little, too.

.

.

.

"You didn't tell me it was Yahiko's birthday," I accused.

Naga's eyebrow twitched, but he didn't open his eyes. "It's hard enough to concentrate already, Oka," he said, strained.

He sat at the edge of the roof of the building where I found Matsu and Enyo and he found me. The rest of the roof behind him had caved in, but it was still the tallest building we had left.

His hands were clasped together in the snake sign.

I turned away from him to look out over the village. I couldn't see anyone, but most would be somewhere dry, waiting out the rain. Except the boy and girl standing far below, pointing up at us.

Hachirou and Sen, I remembered.

"Won't this ruin the hospital?" I asked.

Naga hunched his shoulders and squeezed his hands. "I—"

The rain suddenly came down harder, a downpour that flooded the area below us and soaked into the edges of my cloak. Hachirou and Sen threw up their hands and ran as my hair stuck to my face.

"Everyone is—" he stopped, let out a deep, shaky breath, and the rain lightened. He tried again, "I can feel chakra everywhere. I can barely focus on—talking is—"

"Everywhere," I repeated, pushing hair out of my eyes. "It makes your range bigger?"

"It's more than that," he answered slowly, carefully. "Rainmaker normally uses water produced naturally by the clouds. That's how Hanzo was able to keep it going for so long. It takes a lot to start it, but it's not a constant drain. I thought if I—if I mixed my chakra in, I'd be able to control it better."

I turned back to him. "Yahiko already saw it. You don't have to keep it going."

Naga didn't seem to hear me. He took another deep breath and sat up straighter, his fingers loosening. It reminded me of the way he made himself relax before he took in nature energy.

"I don't," he agreed absently, like he was only half-paying attention. "But if I can get used to this, I can use it. I can sense all the way across the sea to the border of Rain Country. Every time a chakra-fueled drop hits someone, I can feel it."

He breathed in, then let it out. He turned his head west. "I can tell Joji-sensei, Matsu, and Enyo are that way, in the middle of the sea, probably practicing water walking. I couldn't tell you exactly where, but that doesn't matter. I couldn't sense them that far at all before."

I squeezed water out of the ends of my hair, uselessly. "Could you add nature chakra?"

"If I wanted to go into shock," he answered, fighting off a smile.

The rain stuttered again, and I didn't bother pushing my hair aside again as Naga inhaled deeply.

"I warned them that I'd do this this morning," he eventually said.

I tilted my head, even though I couldn't see him well through the curtain of black.

"What you asked before," he said. "I had them cover it and every other construction project with earth. It's a good stress test for when I do this again—"

He stopped, abruptly stiff, but it wasn't like before. He frowned, eyes narrowing, and pulled his hands apart.

"Zetsu or not-Madara?" I asked as the rain turned light, then stopped completely. I hadn't brought my weapons pouch, but that didn't really matter. I was a weapon all on my own.

"Zetsu. The white half," he said distractedly. "And I'm not letting him go this time."

"Which way?" I asked, but he didn't answer.

He only closed his eyes and made himself relax again.

I waited ten, twenty seconds.

I looked down over the edge of the roof, as if I could see Zetsu through the mud and stone. I wondered if it knew how much I hated it.

Less than not-Madara, but that wasn't very much at all.

Thirty, forty seconds, and I thought of who would still be alive if it or not-Madara warned us instead of watching, helping us die.

Fifty seconds, and I thought that if not-Madara had done that, if he helped us early on, Yahiko would've asked him to join the Akatsuki, and he'd already be someone I trusted.

But no. I pulled down on my eyelid. He'd wanted the Rinnegan first, and me second.

And this, this is what my eyes got you, not-Madara.

I laughed quietly, humorlessly, because I hated him so much I could die.

Seventy seconds, and Naga's eyes opened. Blue markings adorned his face and twin blue lines ran down the sides of his hands and traced his bones down to his elbows. His skin looked slimy, and blue-white tentacles poked up through his hair.

He pushed himself up. "I'll take care of him. I should have enough time," he said.

I looked at him, smiling. "If you told me where he was—"

"I'm taking him to Shikkotsu," he said, shaking his head. "Joji-sensei snapped his neck and Osamu-sensei burned him alive, but he hasn't shown any scarring from it. I'll try, but if I can't kill him, I can make sure he can't come back."

I shook my head. "That's not enough."

Naga glanced at me for a second, then briefly closed his eyes. "If I can't, I'll find apples and fry them to make it up to you. Deal?"

My eyes widened and I thought of someone I hadn't for so long—

Chibi. Not being alone in a damp cave.

Would an apple taste the same if I had one now, or would it be soured by memories?

"You don't know how," I said.

Naga fought a smile. "I'm on a time limit here."

I thought about it.

"Oka," he stressed.

"If you try," I finally agreed.

He shook his head, faced the edge, and his smile faded into something more serious.

He jumped.

A/N: 飛ぶ - Fly

Yahiko - 19

This chapter of hand-horror is brought to you by Jujutsu Kaisen. If you know, you know.