"Goodbye; this is a break-up verse,

to my loathsome past,

I'm filled with lament and wracked with grief

but though the sun may not shine,

my song still goes on,"

-Seasons die one after another, amazarashi

"You're Orochimaru?"

I looked down at the figure on the shore from the top of a sand dune. He dressed like a Kusa-nin in a black robe-like shirt and pants, but I knew he was, or had been, from Konohagakure.

His gaze slid down from the empty sky, taking in my cloak and bare feet with a hand on his hip. He stopped on my face, lingering for a second too long before he looked over me again.

I noted it as I asked, "Why are you dressed like a Kusa-nin?"

"That's because I am, and am not one," he answered easily. "So, you are the leader of the so-called Akatsuki? It makes me wonder what secrets Sasori of the Red sand divulged to you that made Sunagakure so afraid that they lied. They never went so far as to mislabel the Hyuuga or the Uchiha in their bingo books even when allied with Konohagakure. Well, no matter."

"Why are you here?"

"So cold," he said, amused. "I find the Akatsuki interesting and came to offer my services. Ninja are terrible gossips, you see. A village recruiting powerful missing-nin to their cause is something of interest to all who deal in the unsavory. The demon of Yugakure, Explosive-style Maho, Sasori of the Red Sand. How could I not come see it+?"

It was the opposite of what Yahiko wanted. It had spread from the top down instead of from the underworld up.

"How long have you been a missing-nin?" I asked. We didn't have any updated bingo books, but he wasn't in the ones that Kusagakure used to send.

Orochimaru waved his hand. "Does it matter? I'd be offended if asked to prove my skill, considering how long I spent here—"

"Here's a question," I asked, sliding down the dune towards him. "Why would the Akatsuki want you?"

He looked at me.

"We looked for Hidan, and we looked for Sasori, but we didn't look for you," I added. "All I know about you is that you helped make a mess, and then you went home."

He tilted his head. "Are you trying to intimidate me?"

"No," I answered. "But I've only really tried once."

His eyes flicked up behind me and his eyes glittered. "Ohoho, friend of yours?"

I half-turned to look at Naga. He stood at the top of the dune, staring at Orochimaru in a way that I didn't often see. That look was for someone he didn't like.

He wasn't wearing his cloak like he'd come here in a hurry.

"You know him, Naga?" I asked.

Orochimaru smiled. "To encounter more remains of a supposedly dead clan all the way out here..." he trailed off and shook his head. "Fate is really mysterious, isn't it?"

"More?" I asked.

Naga wasn't listening, "Why are you here, Orochimaru?"

"I asked that already."

Orochimaru stared at Naga and slowly, he lost his easy smile. "Those eyes," he said, something raspy and old in his voice. "The way you look at me, it reminds me of someone."

"You clearly don't remember, but we met before. You were with Jiraiya-sensei and Tsunade-sensei, and you asked them if you should kill us," Naga said. "You didn't fit with what we wanted then, and you don't feel any different now."

"Jiraiya," Orochimaru realized. He looked at Naga and saw someone else. He glanced at me, eyes bright with recognition, but I didn't remember it.

It didn't change that he was suddenly no different than the man whose name I'd never learn, who picked on kids who couldn't defend themselves.

I opened my mouth and what came out was, "At least Jiraiya had Minato. He was proud of him. He told us about him." He didn't, not to me, but Orochimaru didn't take his eyes off me.

"He was a really good Hokage," I said idly, walking around him.

He watched me, all his amusement abruptly gone.

"You were still there weren't you, after he died? But they still picked the Third again over anyone else. No wonder you left," I said, laughter in my voice. "An old man was a better choice than you—"

Orochimaru launched himself at me like his body was a spring. He moved so fast that he was in front of me before I finished taking half a step back, a hand barely in my pouch as I saw his grin, the fingers reaching for my eye—

—that hit an invisible barrier and snapped backwards. The pressure in the air left him suspended for a second, just long enough for me to watch his face go slack and say, "Kidding."

His body folded backwards and disappeared under the wave of sand that was blasted away around me. I pulled a kunai out of my pouch and idly tossed it up for a few seconds, until I thought it was enough, and clouds billowed up as the sand crashed down.

The beach was lower and flatter around me with new hills of sand farther away.

Naga had moved back and I followed his gaze to the body face down out in the water, still tossing and catching the kunai. It didn't move, but Naga's expression didn't change.

I hummed and threw my kunai. Snakes burst from the sand under me as it left my hand, wrapping up my legs and opening their mouths wide to bite wherever they could.

I pushed them aside as I stepped out of their hold, hearing them hiss as they were blown away or burst from the pressure when they wouldn't let go of my cloak. I felt blood under my feet as I walked down to the water.

The body hadn't moved. Naga made his way down, his attention farther out.

I kicked it over when I was close enough. Its mouth was stretched unnaturally wide. Skin sagged and peeled from its face, showing paler skin beneath. It was bloated around the middle like something that had been dead a long time.

Naga didn't stop staring.

I turned it back over to take my kunai and searched their pockets.

"He's with another chakra. A child," he said absently. "It feels familiar, but it shouldn't, because I've never met her before."

I found a bingo book in his pouch, along with shuriken and wire.

"Uzumaki," Naga said idly, shaking his head. "I wish I looked more like our father, sometimes."

He tugged on my hair when I didn't respond and I threw a kunai at him.

.

.

.

"You're still alive."

Yahiko opened his eyes slowly, tilting his head back against the wall as he looked at the shadow standing still in the doorway with one foot on the top step. The puppeteer stared at him with those blank, doll-like eyes, but he picked up on the surprise in his voice.

He laughed, and it hurt. "Mamoru-sensei-he'd call me all kinds of names. I think cockroach was one of them."

Sasori didn't look at him again as he walked past his corner. This floor, the first floor, had wooden arms and torsos strewn around. A leg hung down from an unfinished gap in the ceiling. The teeth in a wooden head with too many eyes chattered when the puppeteer lifted his hand a little.

Yahiko held his side and tried to sleep.

"Did you come to beg? To waste my time pleading for your life?"

Yahiko pried open his eyes again. "No," he said, staring at the ceiling. "I wanted to see it. We've been trying to build this place back up for so long, and you come along and do more work than an entire village in a few months. Makes me feel bad."

Sasori said nothing. The teeth chattered again as he looked for useable puppets.

"And we're kind of homeless," he added, wincing as he sat up. "Oka destroyed the hideout. Couldn't think of anywhere else to sleep. No one would look for me here except Nagato, but he already knows."

Yahiko blinked a few times and Sasori was suddenly in front of him, staring down at him in silence. Yahiko's mouth opened, then closed.

He swallowed and asked, "Got any water?"

"Be quiet," Sasori said, and Yahiko felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise.

"You should've seen the hideout. Wasn't much, but it was ours, you know? I wanted us to move on, but I didn't want it destroyed."

Sasori didn't move for a long time.

Until his fingers suddenly twitched and Yahiko flinched as the puppet head smashed into the wall next to him and burst into pieces.

"Your eyes still aren't pretty enough," Sasori said with dissatisfaction. "You're afraid, aren't you?"

Yahiko let out a weaker laugh. "You're an S-ranked missing-nin, of course I'm afraid. I'd be an idiot not to be. But Oka used to scare me. And Nagato too, every once in a while. Didn't change that I never would've left them, no matter what they did."

He tried to grin and Sasori kept staring at him.

"I told you. You're Akatsuki. It's not just a label to get the villagers to accept you. I don't know how long Sunagakure will let us blackmail them, but even then, we don't give each other up," he said. He shook his head and it made him dizzy. "Nagato said he talked to you. No charisma at all, that one."

Yahiko dragged his eyes up again—

—and Sasori was looking away.

It made him fall silent.

Sasori shoved up his sleeve, raised his arm, and a compartment in his lower arm opened.

His arm was filled with vials in different shades of yellow. Sasori pulled a dark yellow one free and the compartment closed, stitching the skin seamlessly back together.

Huh.

"Your summon will die if exposed to this," Sasori warned. He bent down without waiting for a response, shoved aside his hand, and lifted his shirt without his permission.

Huh, okay.

Yahiko didn't admit that it was because he'd de-summoned Emon that he was in this state. If he hadn't, she'd already be dead.

How much seaweed would he need to scavenge so she didn't eat him from the inside out in anger? He hadn't really given her a choice—

"This could be anything," Sasori said, rolling the vial between his fingers.

Yahiko only smiled. "Then I hope it's quick."

Sasori paused. He uncapped the vial, jabbed it into his swollen skin, and Yahiko remembered nothing else.

暑い

"We're going to Kirigakure," I told the table.

The tentative, high-pitched notes coming from the chikuzen-biwa stopped as Maho choked on his tea and asked, "We?"

I raised a cup to my mouth as I said, "Me, Naga, Yahiko, and Hidan."

Across from him and shirtless, Hidan leaned an arm on his knee as he said, "They should've called you Coward Maho."

"This coward beat you in a spar," Maho shot back.

Hidan blinked. He hooked a thumb at Naga next to him, who scooped tea leaves from a pot into his cup without looking. "You forget I wasn't allowed to kill you, cash cow? Or use kenjutsu or ninjutsu while you did all the shit you wanted."

"You had the advantage from the start. You can't die."

Hidan leaned forward. "How the fuck is your mortality my problem?"

Matsu plucked at a bottom string with an awkwardly carved piece of driftwood and the chikuzen-biwa made a wrong sound. Bandages wrapped up his back and around his shoulders. He examined the string he'd played wrong as Maho looked at me.

"Why are you taking him?" he asked.

"Fuck you too, cash cow."

Matsu tugged a blanket over Yahiko up as he shivered, curled up and pale and feverish.

I pulled a storage scroll from my pouch and Hidan caught it without looking. "Because of that."

Hidan unrolled it over his leg and a folded cloak appeared on top of the seal. He went still staring at it.

"And because he wanted to come."

"I underestimated you," Sasori mentioned from where he stood against the wall with crossed arms, watching Maho intently. "I thought of everyone here, the Iwa-nin would have the least resistance."

Matsu stopped playing. I looked at the tea left in my cup. Maho burst into coughs, spraying tea on the floor as he bent over.

Hidan re-sealed the cloak and hastily stuffed it in his pouch. Then he deliberately chugged the rest of his tea.

Naga sighed and left the spoon in the pot. "When did you do it? I was watching it the whole time."

Sasori only blinked at him. Tea sloshed on the table as Hidan dipped his hand in the pot to refill his cup. Steam came off his knuckles.

Naga wordlessly picked up the pot and went to toss it out a window where the wall was unfinished.

"You're a child," Maho muttered at Hidan, hiding his trembling fingers.

"Why'd you do it?" I asked Sasori.

"Why the hell do you have explosion style if you're a coward?"

"I'm not my kekkei genkai. What are you without your immortality? A loudmouth?"

I found a semi-sharp kunai in my pouch.

Hidan tilted his head. "Want to run that by me again, cash cow—" He gurgled around the kunai stuck in his throat and toppled backwards, laughing as he choked on his own blood.

"Your village has the same ability to keep a room sterile as a child playing in mud. I didn't waste time building this for someone else to think I'd do experiments for them if you died of your own stupidity. You won't insult me by falling to poison."

Matsu looked stunned. "How'd you know what they'd do?"

Naga finished wiping the pot, made the half-dog sign, and drained a ball of water into it.

"Intimidation," Sasori finally said, staring at the wall.

"Root?"

"Root is loud and arrogant," he said in distaste. "They don't know the meaning of subtle."

I held the cup between my hands. It was still warm. "Not Suna-nin. You would've killed them."

Naga scraped a rock and metal rod together over a campfire until the sparks re-lit it.

Hidan sat up and wiped his mouth, smearing blood on his cheek. "Didn't Iwagakure raise cash cow's bounty?"

Maho covered his eyes. "It's not them. Iwa-nin are taught to look at the Tsuchikage as an example of what a ninja should be and you know how subtle he is. Iwa-nin just take what they want."

Hidan shook his head. "Those lightning bastards can do subtle."

"What about Yugakure?" Matsu asked.

Hidan laughed and laughed.

"I'd be a fool not to expect the Ame-nin to have adapted to small amounts of poison. Yugakure has its springs that spew toxic fumes," Sasori spoke, looking at Maho in fascination. "But you?"

"I've been here a long time," Maho said, more steady than his clenched fists.

"Thank you for telling us," Naga mentioned, adding half-crushed leaves to the water.

Sasori left the room.

I glanced at Naga and he shrugged.

"He doesn't know what to do with honesty, or an honest ninja," he answered.

I hummed, looking around the table. "How long do you think Kumogakure's been here?"

"At least since the war ended," Hidan said, emptying his cup.

"Kumo-nin were always the hardest to predict," Maho mumbled.

"How many of the attacks we thought were Root could've been Kumo-nin?" I asked.

No one had an answer.

"Not the last one. He blew himself up with a seal on his tongue," Matsu mentioned, plucking the chikuzen-biwa's strings. "Is all of you leaving the village a good idea?"

"The village will have to outlive us eventually," Naga answered. "This is a good start. If it can't, what have we been doing this entire time?"

"Mamoru-sensei'll be here. You and Joji'll help him. And Maho is promoted to head medic," I added.

Maho tilted his head back, still covering his eyes.

Matsu shook his head. "And does Mamoru-sensei or Joji-sensei know about this?"

"They will," I said.

Matsu leaned back against the wall, closed his eyes, and went back to playing.

"Last I checked, your shit slug can't track," Hidan said.

"I asked Ren to borrow Kuu," Naga responded, leaving the fire to burn itself out as he returned the pot to the table.

Hidan squinted at him. "That piece of shit is still alive?"

I waited until Naga sat before I said, "He could've poisoned the leaves."

Naga paused, staring at the tea. "When?" he asked himself.

Hidan wrapped his arms around his stomach, groaned, and fell sideways.

"Are you sure Yahiko is up for this?" Matsu asked.

"Up to him," I answered, pouring the tea in my cup back into the pot.

春 日

Maho squawked as I wrenched his arm behind his back, wiggling uselessly, his legs already pinned between my own. He reached for one of the kunai littered around and I responded by bending his arm back until he gave up and pressed his face to the sand.

"Lady Oka," Urakawa greeted, hesitant.

I let Maho go and he grimaced, clutching his shoulder as he rolled over.

She was on one knee in the sand, head bowed, but it was her hair that I noticed first. It was short, around her ears, and cut badly, like she'd done it without a puddle of water or shards of glass to look into.

Or like she'd been angry.

She tensed when I stood. "I went to Lord Mamoru to tell him I was leaving-the mission Lord Nagato gave me—" she licked her lips. "He sent me to you."

"I scare you that much?" I asked.

She kept her head bowed. "The Wolf in her blood red scarf—" she stopped, mouth clicking shut. She let out a breath. "Hide, before her apathy reaches you before she does."

I hummed. "I scare Root."

Urakawa dropped a hand to the sand. "Storage seals have a limit to how much they can hold and they have to be-without a specific formula they won't work. You can't account for everything if you want to make a working storage scroll. You have to work around the limits you set, but it-the formula has to be simple enough to be mass produced. That's why any old commander can activate them without knowing anything about fuinjutsu."

Her other hand hit the sand and she bent down, breathing hard.

"Commanders that keep Root in line. Makes sense," I mused. "What if others get attached?"

Maho frowned, healing his shoulder as he stood. "How much information did you have to give to your commander for them to let you leave?"

Urakawa opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She clenched her teeth. "A storage seal can't have limits that are too broad or they become less effective," she gasped. She shoved a hand over her mouth and suddenly vomited.

"How long will you be gone?" I asked.

"I don't know," she managed. "Lord Nagato-he didn't say—"

"Six months," I decided.

She stopped in the middle of wiping her mouth to stare up at me. I crouched in front of her.

"I say you have six months. If you don't have a reason for me to trust you by then, I never will."

She trembled. "It's not possible," she said. "People like me don't need to know about villages, only how to fight for them. I don't know anything outside of where I came from—"

"I don't know what Nagato told you, but they're only doing this because Matsu knew that Sasori could get away with killing you because you're Root," Maho said, not looking at her. "You don't have a place to complain."

"If I don't trust you, Yahiko won't either. Naga might say he will, but he won't."

Urakawa avoided my gaze as she said, "I understand, Lady Oka."

She flicked open a pouch at her side, pulled out a white scroll, and held it up to me. I heard footsteps behind me as I took it.

"Tell him that he should've talked to me. He should've trusted me to make this choice," she said quietly, tonelessly, then disappeared.

Maho turned around as I opened it.

It wasn't anything. There were a few letters, but it was mostly covered in dots, triangles, half-squares and scribbles. It looked like something Junpei might do.

"Kuu-stop, don't-I—"

I rolled the scroll back up. I watched Maho duck his head, raising a hand to stop Kuu from running across his shoulders.

"—I'm happy to see you, too," he admitted.

Naga was in front of him, holding Yahiko's arm around his neck.

Yahiko gave me a two fingered salute as I stood.

I hummed. "If you hide that you're hurt from me again I'll feed you to the slugs."

He caught the scroll as I tossed it at him. "I'll remember." He paused as he looked over it. "I'm suddenly remembering that we don't have a cypher division."

"Where's Namekuji?" I asked.

"With Hidan," Naga answered, watching Maho hide his face in his shirt as Kuu sniffed at him. "Kuu was... excited," he settled on.

Yahiko held the scroll out to him. "How annoyed do you think Mamoru-sensei would be if you left him this with another note?"

"Another note?" I asked.

"I wanted to talk to him in person, but he knows my range. He found out enough of what we're doing from Matsu to know what we want from him," Naga said, quickly wiping away a smile.

Maho sat on the sand and dropped his head in his hands. "Joji-sensei is going to take it out on me."

"You can fight better on water than off it, so it's working," I pointed out.

Maho only shuddered.

A/N: 暑い - Hot, 春 - Spring 日 - Days

Oka is a MENACE

more patch notes:

*rewrote Nagato vs White Zetsu

*cleaned up 56, 57, 60, 61, 63, 67, 75

*rewrote Yahiko's conversation about the nagamaki in 59.

*rewrote some of Oka and Hidan meeting Sasori.

*there's a multiverse world out there where I killed Nagato instead of Konan. It almost happened, and only didn't because I didn't want to write a story that dark at the time. But you still see sprinkles of those ideas sometimes. What almost was.