It took maybe a day or two before I was satisfied with Ace's claim that he was fine. I rode mostly on Isobu's head during the long open-sea says when Ace zoomed up and down random waves on Striker, keeping a mostly superfluous lookout for (other) pirates and occasionally getting shouted history lessons from Ace when he came across yet another thing I didn't know about.

He wasn't any good at it, even after I was riding sidesaddle on Striker again and didn't have waves whisking his voice away.

For one thing, he got distracted.

"Seriously, your family name is Gekkō? Man, if you'd seen the wanted posters for Moriah when they were around…"

"I think I'll save myself the trauma," I told him, shaking my head. "That kind of random coincidence is why I don't use my whole name."

"Gekkō Keisuke—okay, are you sure your old man didn't look anything like—"

"Ace, I don't want to know." I also didn't need to see his face to tell that he was grinning like a complete shithead about it.

"What about—"

"No."

Even when he had information to share, enough of it was disturbing or horrifying or just plain worrying that I sometimes didn't want to hear the rest.

Like, for example, learning that slavery had been illegal for three hundred years and then getting the clarification that those kinds of rules applied only to ordinary people. The Celestial Dragons—fishbowl-wearing bastards that they were—could do whatever they wanted and never face consequences. And that meant absolutely anything. The way Ace described it, they could kill whoever they wanted to and for any reason they cared to name, and the Marines would clap politely as they stood by.

The old anger in Ace's tone and eyes kept me from asking for details. He didn't have to say anything to communicate that he'd lost someone to that kind of utter injustice.

Instead, I decided to reciprocate with a little information of my own. It ended up probably being about as comprehensible to Ace as his anecdotes were to me.

But first, we got distracted again.

"Actually, there's another reason why I don't introduce myself by my whole name," I said, more or less after the previous conversation had a chance to sink in. "But it's kind of a…cultural holdover."

Ace made a neutral noise, probably not listening all that much. "How so?"

"Keeping in mind that these are from my history lessons, mostly," I cautioned. "And it's been almost twenty years since my last cram session."

"You actually learned history?" Ace asked. When I made a noise that amounted to a nonverbal "duh," he explained, "Basically no one out here does, not with the way the World Government keeps rewriting things."

"I…well, that's a bit depressing," I replied, hesitant.

"I guess." Ace shrugged. "Also, twenty years?"

There was something in his tone that made me think he was avoiding asking a certain question. Not like I cared, though. "I'm twenty-six, Ace." Then I calculated how many months I'd spent in this ocean of mysteries and horrible, horrible things, and corrected myself, "Or maybe twenty-seven. It's been almost five months by now, right?"

There was a pause. Then, "…We missed your birthday?"

I blinked. "Probably? I don't know what day it is now, but my birthday's the tenth of July."

Ace groaned aloud. "Thatch is going to be frantic. He has lists of birthdays, favorite foods…"

Did Thatch even know how to make mochi? Well, I could—no, I needed to stay on topic. "I can tell Thatch about it the next time we find a snail. But can we get back on topic?"

"Do you promise you'll be the one to tell him?" Ace demanded.

"Uh, yes," I said, surprised by his vehemence.

"Good." Then Ace let it go. "Okay, what were you saying?"

It was…going to be messy. If anything, it was probably for the best that I knew so little, relatively speaking. "Like I was saying before, most of the people I know don't use their family names in casual conversation because of the Clan Wars. Actually, a lot of people only have them in paperwork and don't use them at all."

Like Tsunade. She could use her grandfather's clan name if she so chose, but had apparently decided against it. Maybe she thought the Senju clan legacy would be better left to the village, not to any designated heir. I'd never asked, and I was still worried I'd never get the chance to do so.

"I take it the name pretty much explains what happened." Ace looked back over his shoulder, his expression shadowed. Still, he remembered he was supposed to be steering Striker and corrected his course before we wandered too far into strange currents.

"Yeah. I mean," I corrected myself automatically, "I wouldn't know—no one in my family participated from what I remember—but if you shared your clan name with the wrong other clan, it meant certain death." The Uesugi clan may have had some members old enough to remember the conflict, but the Gekkō family hadn't participated except probably as money-laden targets. "Decades later, and it's still hard to break the habit."

"So, if, say, the Portgas clan pissed off the Gekkō clan or something…" Ace trailed off, more uncertain than I'd heard from him in ages.

"Assuming we were in the bad old days, it wouldn't end well." I sighed as I dredged up the most infamous example I could think of. "The big clans, like the Uchiha and the Senju, had a blood feud so bad they were killing each other's kids." I leaned against the mast, frowning. "The thing is, they were all mercenaries who changed employers all the time. I guess someone killed someone else on a job once, and after generations it got personal."

"You don't say," was all Ace said in response.

I shifted my gaze to Ace's back, chewing the inside of my lip as I thought. While I knew he was one of Whitebeard's commanders—effectively second mate on a crew that large—I didn't know all that much about him as far as his personal history went. Of course, that did go both ways. Even when it came to the stories I told Thatch, I hadn't elaborated on my personal history to anyone.

Looking out to sea, I'd just squandered a shot at a heart-to-heart moment without knowing it had even passed until too late.

I didn't say I had more depths to sink to just because my self-esteem was low. Shinobi around my age and older were all weapons quenched in blood.

"What can you tell me about the next island?" I asked, changing the subject somewhat clumsily.

Ace was about to answer, but Isobu surfaced just to the left of us. In the roar of displaced air and waves brutally splattered by his immense mass, I doubt I could have heard any reply.

"Got something to say?!" Ace demanded of Isobu, nearly at the top of his lungs.

"In fact, I do." Isobu surged forward until his head was nearly even with Striker, then continued, "The next island is where we will find Matatabi and her host."

"That's Nii Yugito," I said, completing the thought. A gusty sigh ripped its way out of me. "Dammit."

"Is this another clan thing?" Ace asked over his shoulder.

Oh, I wished. The only clan enemies I'd ever made were at least polite about disliking me. "No, this is a village thing. Yugito's village and mine are really unfriendly."

"Define 'unfriendly' for me real quick," Ace suggested.

I grimaced. I could give two or three reasons, but the one that came to mind easiest was, "They tried to kidnap a three-year-old clan heiress with a diplomat acting as a spy. We've been glaring at each other's borders ever since."

And that didn't even get into the "fun" parts of my history class, like when we'd covered how the Second Hokage got killed stalling out Kumo's Kinkaku Force after they'd already murdered the Second Raikage in a coup. Or the fact that Sensei had fought both A and Killer B during the Third Shinobi World War, repeatedly. Or that my father had been killed when I was eight by a combined border raid by Kumo and Iwa forces.

In hindsight, I'd had a lot of reasons to dislike Kumogakure before ever bringing the Hyūga incident into consideration.

And if I remember correctly, you are one of the people responsible for that diplomat being summarily executed for espionage.

Kakashi is the one who got him. I'd been busy trying and failing to recover from my hellish year of constant missions. But I'd at least remembered to forewarn Sensei about that diplomatic shitstorm before it happened.

"Only kidnap?" Ace craned his neck a bit to look back at me. "Because the look on your face says it was a hell of a lot more than that."

To say the least. My frown deepened.

"Clans can have…special abilities passed down through bloodlines," I admitted, still sickened all these years later. Even if I hadn't met someone who'd been the victim of bloodline theft, Kumogakure's plots had a theme going. So did Orochimaru's. "And it's not the first time someone's tried to target that clan because of theirs."

Ace paled under his tan. "That―that's sick. And this new whoever-the-hell is from that village? What kind of hellhole world do you come from?"

My answering smile was as bleak as they came. "Exactly."

Not that it couldn't be worse. Or that it hadn't been. The Clan Wars were the Bad Old Days even compared to this kind of thing.

"Fucking hell…" Ace shook his head slowly. "Celestial Dragons all over again…"

I made the decision then and there not to tell him about my experiences in the Third Shinobi World War. He didn't need to hear it. Or about how old I'd been when it all went down. Even if Ace was a pirate, and a successful one, he didn't need that kind of knowledge sinking into his brain like a slow knife.

I changed the subject as abruptly as I could manage. "Ace, what do we know about the island itself?"

"Oh, I was gonna say it's a Spring Island," Ace replied, somewhat distracted, and I didn't know what that meant. Spring where? What was the date anyway? "It's basically like Jaya, but without a Mock Town stuck on it."

"I understood about half of those words without context," I told him.

"Oh, and with a big spiky mountain that looks like a lightning rod," Ace went on, without apparently hearing me. "And tornadoes."

I dragged my hand over my face. "Stop talking."

"Fighting there will be fun," Ace said, cracking his knuckles.

"Ace, no. If it comes to a fight, you shouldn't take Yugito or Matatabi on," I said somewhat frantically.

"Might wanna give me a reason," Ace said, with a dangerous edge to his voice. "You don't look much like Pops."

And this entire venture proved just how willing he was to listen even to Whitebeard if his pride got a say. For fuck's sake, even if he was bored there were better targets than a jinchūriki who'd been in the game for as long as Yugito had. There was an entire ocean full of better targets.

"My sister is a massive two-tailed cat made of blue fire," Isobu told him. "Your powers will be at the same disadvantage as those of any other human who has ever tried to use her greatest strength against her."

"And Yugito's been training to fight other humans since she was about six years old." So had I, in fact, but it didn't seem like something that I needed to mention. Instead, I said, "If you jump in, Matatabi might feel like she should intervene. And so far, my plan is to have Isobu keep her out of it."

Besides that, Matatabi was the only other genjutsu-type Tailed Beast I was aware of. If she was anything like Isobu, and Ace was still as vulnerable to genjutsu manipulation as the scarecrow incident proved, then this entire situation was a clusterfuck waiting to happen if I couldn't control who went where. If I could, then I was hoping Yugito's reliance on Fire Release would get me as much of an advantage as I needed to eke out a win.

And, well, I didn't want Ace to get hurt in what was probably just a grudge match between Yugito and little ol' me. I was still a softie at heart.

"I can handle myself just fine," Ace replied, totally undeterred.

…I was gonna have to cuff him to his boat to keep him out of a fight, wasn't I? And that probably wouldn't even work because I knew Ace had the strength to physically lift Striker and the kind of firepower that made him a bit too used to being able to blast seagoing opponents to pieces.

"Ace, this is my fight. I'm the one who has history with her." Sort of. Yugito and I had never actually met, and I hadn't directly fought Kumo-nin in ages. But I was scrambling for any kind of excuse to keep everyone else out of Yugito's firing line.

But maybe I'd used that argument one too many times. "Are you gonna stay out of my fight with Teach?"

"That's different," I protested. Because I didn't care if I poisoned or burned Teach to death a dozen times over. He'd damn well earned his fate for attacking Thatch.

"Not from where I'm standing," Ace replied. He craned his neck a bit to look back at me again, and if that wasn't a shit-eating grin I'd eat my paintbrush. God damn Whitebeard Pirate loyalty. "Did you really think I was just letting you come along on this trip because I wanted to play navigator? It sounds to me like this Yugito needs to learn a few lessons the hard way."

"Yugito may or may not be guilty of a lot of things," I argued, "but I can't blame her for what her village does." I could hardly believe what I was saying. "Politics is a reason to keep my guard up, not to attack her."

Though she'd probably attack me. While the thought had occurred only belatedly, I was still pretty sure that my "kill on sight" order was active in Kumogakure. "Flee on sight" only applied to Iwa.

Shit.

"…I can accept your interference, for now," Isobu told him, golden eye glowing against the waves. "But if Kei or I judge the situation as too dangerous, we will remove you."

Ace, if he had been slightly less mature, might've decided to shake his fist at Isobu. As it was, I was fairly certain he just rolled his eyes, because Isobu certainly did.

I subsided with a grumble, somewhat secure in the knowledge that Isobu could stop Ace from doing something reckless.

Hopefully.

It took us a couple of days to reach the weather disaster known as Corkscrew Island. According to Ace, it was pretty much uninhabited, and I didn't have to observe for long to see why. While the island's central volcano-like structure rose high enough to stab the clouds, a very fat funnel cloud launched a reciprocal strike downward, and sucked up sand, water, and trees on the opposite end of the island. While Isobu bobbed in the sheltered bay, Ace and I rode Striker into what might as well have been meteorological hell.

"Well, at least she has enough sense to avoid the tornado," I said when we landed. In fact, I could sense Yugito barely fifty meters straight ahead, somewhere in the forest that wasn't being smacked around by thunderheads or their children.

"Not seeing a giant killer pussycat," Ace said, holding his hat down in the face of the wind whipping across the island.

"Not yet you're not," I told him. Matatabi was roaming the side of the island with the murderous clouds. I hadn't expected to find them that far apart, but I didn't know that much about how they operated. "She'll make her way over here when Yugito sees us."

Ace made a vague noise of acknowledgement. Then, "What's the strategy?"

"If Yugito decides to hit me in melee? Don't be there." Aside from Matatabi's flames and Yugito's general cat tendencies, I didn't have that much information about how she fought. I wouldn't have been at all surprised to learn that she grew claws like Naruto and Kushina did in initial jinchūriki mode, gained night vision, or had terrifyingly quick reflexes.

"Helpful," Ace commented dryly. "What am I supposed to do if it turns out all she wants is a giant yarn ball?"

"Don't say that to her face," I said sharply. Sure, I was making assumptions that Yugito would want to kill me, but as far as I knew the only non-Konoha jinchūriki who wasn't hostile toward me was the one we'd already met. Argh. "Ace, I don't want you getting caught in the crossfire."

"Let me worry about that."

Ace didn't have a grasp on my personality if that was his response.

I sighed mentally and waved Ace away. When he'd backed up enough that I was sure I wouldn't catch him in the backwash, I drew Isobu's chakra up through my coils and directed a concentrated burst in Yugito's direction. There wasn't much actual intent behind it—it was just that non-sensors couldn't always tell when another shinobi wanted their attention.

Yugito started heading in our direction, drawing her entirely human chakra as though it was a bow and she had a shot lined up at my head. I tensed, but didn't move.

Matatabi is aware of our presence. I will go meet her.

Well, hopefully they wouldn't flatten the island. Isobu had a better relationship with the other Tailed Beasts than I did with most of my fellow jinchūriki, at least.

The woman who emerged from the tree line, at least at first, did not look anything like the Bingo Book picture I remembered.

The Yugito I generally expected was a very composed, put-together kunoichi who knew her power and was confident in both her strength and that of her comrades. As much as I had a problem with her village's interactions with mine, it was tempered by the knowledge that she was basically a model soldier and couldn't have logically had anything to do with most of Kumo's more notorious operations until relatively recently. Hidan and Kakuzu and Akatsuki might've killed her in one world, but the Yugito of my timeline was alive and well.

The Yugito in front of me was more like a feral cat. I had enough time to take in her ragged Kumo uniform, loose, tangled hair, and faintly wild eyes before she rushed me.

I caught her opening roundhouse kick on the back of one arm, using the other to brace against the impact. We still skidded backward along the sand, but neither of us was hurt.

"So you're the first human I see in months in his hellhole," Yugito hissed, bouncing off me and landing in a crouch. She crossed her arms so that her hands hovered by her shoulders, fingertips gathering chakra.

"Sorry to disappoint you," I said, resting my hand against the hilt of my katana. My chakra collected mainly in my right hand, ready to channel into my weapon at a moment's notice.

"So great to be noticed," Ace grumbled.

Yugito's slanted eyes slid slowly sideways, taking note of Ace's presence but otherwise dismissing him as a concern. When they focused on me, I wasn't quite sure what sensation permeated her chakra most—rage or despair.

"If there's one thing I can still do, it's fight," Yugito said, apparently mostly to herself. Still, I didn't let my guard down, and she obliged my worse suspicions by extending her fingernails out to the length of a wakizashi. Each.

I slid my katana very slightly out of its sheath. If I could just get her to attack first… "How much saltwater have you been drinking?"

"That's enough out of you, Tidal Blade!" And Yugito whirled into motion, displaying the kind of flexibility I'd last seen in Raidō and Genma's cats.

Crap. Here we go.

The next few seconds were a blur. Though my kenjutsu would be effective against Yugito's claws despite her jutsu's reinforcing effect, I relied on drawing my sword directly from the sheath to put an end to fights of this level quickly. And she did not want me to get an attack off.

I ducked and dodged at maximum speed as Yugito's strikes ripped up huge chunks of the beach with every missed blow. With every movement, I led us farther and farther into the island proper and toward our Tailed Beast partners.

I drew my blade halfway out to block one of her slashes, catching her claws on chakra-reinforced steel, and drove my knee into her stomach hard enough to almost fold her in half. With no Tailed Beast chakra enhancing her stamina or recovery rate, Yugito doubled over coughing once she hit the ground.

"I'm starting to think I got lucky," I muttered as I slid back into my starting stance, warily watching Yugito push herself back up onto her hands and knees as her claws retracted.

"How so?" Ace asked from his perch atop a nearby rock. When I glanced at him, he was, in fact, almost literally perched like a bird, and his hands were occupied by a fish on a stick. The fact that the fish was the size of an adult Bluefin tuna meant nothing, apparently.

Returning my gaze to Yugito, I said, "You Whitebeard Pirates picked me up after a day. Yugito's been here for months, and I'd bet my bottom beri that Matatabi hates water too much to help her swim off this island."

"So you think she'd be friendly if she didn't get stuck here," Ace said, gesturing with the fish—and how was half of it already gone?

"Maybe," I muttered, returning my attention to Yugito. I didn't know enough about Yugito's actual personality to be sure. For all I knew, she'd just act on her village's policy, and that'd be the end of that.

Are you besmirching my sister's character?

I have no idea. Am I right?

Perhaps partly, Isobu allowed. Still, Matatabi is working on her partner.

I lifted my hands and cupped them around my mouth to imitate a megaphone. "Yugito, I just wanted to talk!"

"Oh that's rich, coming from you," Yugito wheezed, but she was up again and with her nails short, she could make hand seals. Crap. "Or am I talking to a different Gekkō Keisuke?"

This is why I say you make terrible first impressions.

"No, you've…you've got the right kunoichi," I admitted, lowering my hands. "But I still don't want to fight you."

Yugito's response was to exhale a fireball the size of a building right at me. Ace and I tore off across the beach in different directions, but my return shot would be a fair bit nastier as far as potential damage could go. Once I was sure Ace was behind me and well out of the way, I blurred through my hand seal sequence and let loose.

Water Release: Great Waterfall Technique. Drawing strength from both the nearby sea and the water in the clouds, a massive spiraling vortex—really more of a waterspout turned on its side—blasted across the beach and engulfed Yugito's fireball with the power of elemental rock-paper-scissors.

I dropped my hands before the jutsu had fully worn itself out and threw myself into the current. Rocketing across the beach in a truly improvised chakra cloak, I slammed into Yugito at a force I could stand, but one her baseline self couldn't.

Once again, Yugito hit the beach with a bone-shaking thud and rolled to recover. She finally came back to her feet when she hit the edge of the water, her chest heaving against the pain and the impact.

"Not so tough, is she?" Ace asked, from somewhere over my shoulder. I glanced at him, watching the flames lick over his forearms even as he continued to eat the giant fish.

"Not now, no," I said quietly, as Yugito swayed on her feet. "She's been out here alone for too long. She doesn't have the chakra to keep this up."

"…Is that anything like stamina? Because that's what it sounds like." Ace hoisted the giant fish over his shoulder, taking a brief break from eating.

"More or less." And if Yugito kept this up, she could kill herself. Her chakra was so low that I was half-amazed she was still conscious.

"Do you think this is a joke?" Yugito snarled, once her eyes focused on me again. I squared my stance automatically at her tone, sword clear of my leg in case I needed to very quickly figure out how to break her nails with kenjutsu.

"No, of course I don't—" And that was as far as I got.

"You are the Tidal Blade," Yugito cut across me, heaving herself into an upright position. She was already starting to make hand signs. "The most monstrous sword-wielding freak to ever step foot out of that ridiculous village of yours. 'Kill on sight' in Kumo. 'Flee on sight' in Iwa! AND YOU SAY YOU WON'T FIGHT ME?!"

There was a brief pause, in which I could almost feel Ace edging away from me the more I failed to deny any of Yugito's words.

"Are you sure you're talking about this Kei?" Ace asked, though perhaps from a little farther away than before. "Because, well, she kinda reacted to a guy flirting with her by running away."

Or not.

I smacked myself in the face with my free hand. "Not helping."

At that point, Yugito had enough. She completed her hand seal sequence, taking a deep breath—

I only needed one seal, and I formed the jutsu right around me like a shell. Water Release: Water Dragon Bullet.

I hit Yugito before her fireball got all the way out, punching through the heat and the flame to tackle her full-force. The two of us bounced across the sand until we hit the water, skipping across the initial wave before they closed over our heads.

Both of us surfaced a second later, sputtering.

"Cool your head yet?" I asked Yugito, since I recovered from saltwater faster than any human ought to. I shook my head rapidly, like a dog, and it stuck to my face in an epic mess I'd regret later. I did own a comb, after all.

Yugito, with her unbound blonde hair pasted flat to her face by seawater, scowled in my general direction.

I hastily hopped out of the water, sword still drawn. Yugito would have taken a swipe at me if she'd remembered to grow her claws out. Or had enough chakra for it.

As I waited for Yugito to decide whether or not she still had enough chakra left in her to kill me, I looked around.

While we'd made a wreck of the beach and probably reshaped part of the forest, it wasn't anything the local weather patterns hadn't already done. The rock Ace had been sitting on earlier was upside-down, but since nothing was on fire, I was going to assume that I hadn't managed to kill him by accident. As Yugito stood on wobbling legs and I made it back to the sand that was left, I debated shouting Ace's name even though the island's winds would carry my voice away.

Glancing at Yugito again, I stepped back as she approached the beach once more, eyes locked on me.

I didn't want to kill her. But she didn't seem to want to give me a choice.

Thankfully, I was saved by "divine" intervention.

"Are you two finished already?" Isobu's voice called out, and both of us automatically looked toward the water again as a rather interesting group rounded the curve in the bay, close to shore.

Isobu sat with all his tails submerged, seeming more amused than anything at the squabble between Yugito and me. On his head, Ace sat with yet another massive Bluefin-sized fish gnawed down to half its mass. And on his back with all four paws as far from the sea as physically possible, an arched back, and two tails nearly vertical, was Matatabi.

But not for long.

"Yugito dear, did you get into trouble with Isobu's friend?" Matatabi asked, while she hopped over to the beach from Isobu's back. She carefully avoided the sea as she moved, reaching Yugito and I in two graceful leaps. Steam hissed off the sand where she stepped.

Yugito raised a shaking hand, pointing her index claw right at my heart. "It's the Tidal Blade, Matatabi! She can't be trusted!"

"What do I care about your petty human squabbles?" Matatabi shot back, her paws coming to rest on either side of Yugito and knocking her partner back onto the sand. "My brother and I are not going to allow either of you to kill the other. You are both too important to waste your lives like this when there are no shinobi here."

Ace made the long leap to the beach next by transforming into fire at the apex of the jump, landing next to me as though nothing had happened. With the fish.

"Or…perhaps not?" Matatabi tilted her huge head to one side. "Young human, was that a normal technique for your kind?"

"The name's Portgas D. Ace," he replied, bowing to the giant cat made of his preferred element. "At your service!"

"How polite! See, Yugito dear, you should be more like this young man," Matatabi said in an approving tone.

"That is a bad piece of advice," Isobu put in, finally reaching us. He'd moved slowly out of deference to Matatabi's water sensitivity, but I still relaxed even though he'd been close enough to help the entire time. "He is not nearly so polite when you know him."

Ace rolled his eyes, though I wasn't sure the Tailed Beasts could see the gesture. "To answer your question, turning into fire is something only I can do. It's not common at all."

And Logias as a category were already rare for Devil Fruits.

With Matatabi, Isobu, and Ace all involved in their conversation, I sidled over to Yugito. She appeared to be in shock, staring up at her partner's total refusal to fight in disbelief.

"Cat got your tongue?" I teased, because there was never a time worse for puns that I couldn't worsen.

Yugito swiped at me with her nails, but missed because she forgot to grow them out first. Upon realizing that she was out of chakra, she just growled, "Oh, shut up!"

"It's okay, you know," I said, as I finally relaxed enough to upend my katana's sheath, shaking out the water trapped in it. "A lot of people try to kill me the second they recognize me."

Yugito shook her hair fully out of her face, dislodging some of the salt and sand but not enough to appear graceful. With her gaze clearer than it had been before, she looked up at me with the perfect mix of exasperation and disbelief. "What the hell is going on?"

"It's a whole new world out here. And the rules are a lot different than what we're used to," I admitted. I still offered Yugito a hand up as soon as I sheathed my katana. My right hand, specifically, with two fingers extended.

"You're…still willing to help me," Yugito said, still skeptical although she undoubtedly recognized the gesture. Her eyes narrowed. "Why?"

"There aren't any Hidden Villages out here, so we're on our own. And I don't think we have to be enemies when we have so much in common," I told her, powering down from using Isobu's chakra. Not a subtle hint at all. "I'm Gekkō Keisuke, partner to Isobu and jōnin of Konohagakure."

"Nii Yugito," she replied, still regarding my hand a bit warily. "Jōnin of Kumogakure, and partner to Matatabi."

"Well, it only says good things about you that she actually told you her name," I commented. From what I knew of people, they tended not to ask about the giant monster's name before trying to run or kill it. Even though Yugito had been a child at the time Matatabi had been sealed into her, I'd still worried.

"Oh?" And at that point Yugito took my hand to complete the Seal of Reconciliation, and our wrists lit up like I had come to expect. Going by Yugito's surprised yelp, she had not.

YOU HAVE FOUND THE SECOND.

ASSEMBLE THE NINE.

When the light show was over, I added rather cheerily, "But if you'd tried to kill Ace, I probably would've kicked the hell out of you."

"You mean the man who was with you. And who is currently occupying both of our partners." Yugito blinked slowly, then scanned our battlefield. As she did so, her eyes turned from jet-black like mine to an odd-eyed look that matched Matatabi's.

Speaking of Matatabi, I remembered her reaction to seawater well. It just looked hilarious coming from such a large creature. Even now, she was sitting above the high tide line as she chatted with Ace, where Yugito had already pre-scorched the landscape.

I hid my mouth from their view with my hand and whispered to Yugito, "By the way, did anyone ever teach Matatabi how to walk on water?"

"Do you really think it would help?" Yugito whispered back, deeply sardonic.

Given Matatabi's size, elemental affinity, and age…no. But all the same, I said, "It couldn't hurt to try."

Yugito sighed. Then she flexed her fingers experimentally, blinking as her nails extended again despite her exhaustion. "Matatabi's chakra…?"

"Oh, right, you should be able to access that now," I remembered belatedly. When Yugito gave me a deeply suspicious look, I asked, "Did you get a horrible dream that kept telling you to 'assemble the nine' like I did? And maybe another flash a second ago?"

Yugito frowned. "I did, but I assumed it was merely an implanted genjutsu command. If a stubborn one."

"…That probably isn't wrong. But if you do meet up with another jinchūriki, you should get bits of your power and bond with Matatabi back at a time," I said, holding up my right wrist so Yugito could inspect the Wristband of Doom.

"You have three kanji," Yugito said, and then held her hand out so we could compare. "I only have mine and now yours."

…Dammit. "Well, that proves my theory wrong," I muttered, annoyance alone trying to give me a pounding headache. Without waiting for a prompt from Yugito, I went on, "I was hoping I wouldn't have to meet all the others in person to get power back, but I guess I do."

"And that applies to all of us," Yugito said flatly, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Damn."

And at that point, we went to rejoin the conversation with the other three. It was better than just standing around awkwardly.

"So is the catfight over?" Ace asked, still eating the giant fish. He shut up for a second when he swallowed, but then the next thing he said was, "I missed half of it, but at least I have a snack."

Yugito bristled. Even her soaking-wet hair seemed to try to stand up. "You—"

The mental arithmetic sorted itself out depressingly quickly. "Ace, you're eating her food."

Ace burst into flames as Yugito lunged through him, dropping the fish into the sand. She shook herself a bit, but landing in water mitigated the immediate effects of leaping through flames in the form of a man, and Matatabi's chakra took care of the rest. Thus recovered, she spun on the spot and chased the serial dine-and-dasher up the beach without even apparently acknowledging the weirdness of a guy turning into fire.

Then again, she grew up with Matatabi.

Speaking of the giant fire-cat, she sat down directly in the middle of the long-wrecked beach and wrapped both of her tails around her feet. "Yugito, do be careful."

"She is perfectly fine. Ace is our human navigator." Isobu didn't say that Ace wouldn't hurt her, but really, this reminded me of a scene set to "Yakety Sax" more than anything.

"Oh? Then he sounds quite useful to keep around. Tell me, do you think we will able to find all of our brothers and sister if we travel the sea?" Matatabi shuddered, her fiery coat fluffing up. "Because while I am not…comfortable with water, I am starting to see that traveling across it may be necessary."

"We already found Shukaku despite his problems with water," Isobu replied, his voice as dry as dust. "You need to start thinking of ways around this discomfort if we are to travel together, because I cannot carry you all across this ocean and keep you dry."

"I am sure we will muddle along somehow," Matatabi suggested hopefully, while Isobu sighed.

I guess that means we're taking Yugito with us. I continued to watch both Ace and Yugito set the beach on fire, with the only real difference being whether I could pick up chakra from a particular spot or not. A significant factor to be sure, but not one that really made a difference to what little wildlife could survive on this island. My only question is how we're going to get Matatabi out of here willingly.

I also do not think that Yugito will fit on the small boat you have been using.

Striker was only designed for a single rider—Ace, specifically—so just keeping me within earshot was already pushing its weight limits. It looked like we'd have to break out the rowboat again, and that thing didn't—

Speaking of that vessel, it is far too slow and small. Consider replacing it.

Sure, sure. But in the meantime, I needed to stop Corkscrew Island from being turned into a giant ashtray. Once again, I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted, "Yugito, Ace, can you two stop trying to kill each other?"

"Dear, I need you to come back over here so we can discuss what we will do next," Matatabi added, lifting one of her paws in a beckoning gesture. "Come along, please."

The two of them paused: Ace holding off Yugito's clawed hand with a firmly human hand while his other looked more like the opening to his nickname-earning attack, and her foot raised to stomp a hole in his stomach. After a second to check their relative positions, they sprang apart and pretended that they hadn't just been caught being sillier than I was.

Isobu's voice was as dry as dust. "It may be helpful if you two travel at arm's length."

I'm fairly certain I'm worse at both people skills and at leadership than either of them, and somehow I'm still playing babysitter.

It is not as though you do not have experience wrangling unruly children. Relatively recently, too.

Thank you so much for the reminder.

We ended up not backtracking to Alabasta, because for all we knew the Straw Hat Pirates had turned the whole place upside-down when no one was looking. Instead, we ended up heading further out into the Grand Line in search of Teach, because semi-recruiting Yugito exhausted that (flimsy) lead. Isobu and I filled Matatabi and Yugito in on the grudge we had against him, and the other jinchūriki pair agreed to stick with us at least until they found something more productive to do.

Though Matatabi still had a problem—several problems—with traveling across the ocean, Yugito learned about the Summoning trick I'd forgotten to tell Gaara about. That knowledge assuaged the big cat's fears about being separated from her partner by the sea for a little while, but failed to deal with the root problem. I just kinda wished Matatabi had been a bit more of a tiger than a housecat.

Isobu dealt with it in his own way. "I would be astonished if dipping your toe into the sea actually hurt you."

Matatabi had huffed indignantly. "Just because I am capable of surviving underwater does not mean I have to enjoy it."

Aside from feeling like someone needed to give the Two-Tailed Cat a pair of water wings, our supply run went smoothly.

Sure, someone recognized Ace and there may have been a street brawl, and I had to pay off an angry head chef who realized he'd been cheated out of the net worth of a week's meals. And Yugito didn't find anything in local fashion that went with her white Kumogakure headband and didn't seem to be cut to her sternum, for some reason. And Matatabi being summoned in the Autumn Island's mountain chain set off a minor snowpack disaster when she shook out her flaming fur coat. And the boat I ended up buying ran off of some kind of weird seashell thing in the engine that, if it broke, would probably explode. The sail was there more as a backup than anything.

But hey, no one died.

That we knew of.

Sailing along the sea in a partially shell-powered sailboat, following Ace's raft, didn't give us that much to do on a minute to minute basis. Getting the local newspaper in town only provided a few minutes' worth of distraction since neither of us knew the context for what was being reported, and Ace didn't seem the type to bother with much other than bounty postings. Or possibly the funny pages.

Thus, things devolved.

"I spy with my little eye…"

Really devolved.

"Uh, something orange," I finished weakly, not wanting to go for the lazy route of picking blue in the open ocean.

"It's Ace's hat, isn't it?" Yugito asked without looking up from her section of the newspaper. She tried to be the mature adult. It was as though to make up for the silliness from the first time I'd met her.

I sagged even as I steered the boat further out of Ace's wake. "Yep."

Yugito turned a page, sighed, and then stood up carefully as our boat rocked as it hit wave after wave. Sticking her feet to the ground and otherwise relying on her prodigious feline balance, she strode to the cabin in the bow, opened the door, and slunk inside for an apparent nap.

"Wake me when we get there." Yep, a catnap.

I sighed. Maybe I shouldn't have made so many cat puns earlier.

It cannot possibly be worse than the barrage of turtle puns.

Oh, I don't know. Practice makes…purrfect.

…Stop talking.

I snickered to myself, slowing the boat a bit when I noticed Ace's raft seeming to get a little larger to my craft's left. While Striker was certainly faster and didn't have a fuel limitation as long as Ace ate enough for breakfast, the Nautilus (because of the "powered by a seashell" thing) was no slowpoke. And it was big enough to lug Striker around if Ace wanted to join us for lunch.

"Yo," I said as the Nautilus drew up beside Striker. I called down to Ace, "Something change?"

"Just hungry."

So, no. And I had a security seal in addition to the food storage seals so Ace didn't have open access to the larder. Still, I mentally braced myself for yet another resupply run in the near future. If I understood the value of the beri and its purchasing power correctly, we had enough money for maybe two more grocery trips before I had to find a wreck and salvage it.

Ace tied Striker's tow line to the Nautilus's stern somewhere, letting the raft stay about fifty feet away from its new mama to avoid getting caught in her wake. Then he sat down on the deck, stomach growling like a Sea King as I popped half a dozen storage seals and set an Ace-sized lunch down in front of him.

"Just don't wake Yugito," I warned, before turning back to my steering.

Ace was kind enough to take his Log Pose off and let me use it to navigate, but admittedly I was only so great at following the little needle. I was still used to compasses, not this fickle thing. Worse, Ace had told me about a three-needle version that was supposedly standard issue in the New World. Since we were only in Paradise, his single-needle Log Pose would suffice for now.

New day, new Grand Line bullshit.

Speaking of, the bloody needle flipped around the second I took my eyes off it. I hastily corrected our course, then corrected again when the thing spun. The currents in this part of the world were just that evil. All the while, Ace continued devouring more food than Yugito or I did in an entire day in one sitting.

What the literal hell was his daily calorie requirement, anyway?

"So, Tidal Blade, I'm assuming Yugito calling you that wasn't just for show," Ace said once he was finished, wiping his mouth on his arm.

I shrugged as Ace slid into the…copilot's seat? It was certainly toward the bow and the left and didn't include a steering wheel. Did include a cracked Log Pose of its own, though. "It was nice not having to hear that kind of thing for a while."

"I'm not hearing a 'no,'" Ace mused aloud, probably mostly for effect.

"Wouldn't be honest of me," I said, like I didn't lie by omission all the time.

Ace allowed me to navigate in my inept way for a little longer in silence. Sure, it forced me to stew in the awkward atmosphere too, but I refused to let it get to me.

"So, are you going to ask anything or just let me dig my own grave?" I asked blandly, following the Log Pose as it shifted yet again.

"I could hand you a shovel…" Ace said in a light tone, "but I think you're fine on your own." Still, he leaned back in his chair and decided to actually formulate an enquiry. "So, how'd you get your nickname?"

"I use a sword and control water," I said. When Ace snorted, I added, "It's not as though it's that different from how you earned yours, I bet. Honestly, I was half-convinced that if I ever got one of those fancy nicknames, it'd be 'Scarface' because of this." I gestured vaguely at the line bisecting my face, still visible even so long after the initial injury.

"Nice attempt at changing the topic, but not really what I meant," Ace replied, and when I looked over he was staring at me with worrying levels of patience.

Drat. "Well, then what did you actually want to know?"

"I'm more asking about what your bounty poster would look like if you had one," Ace told me, while I looked away. "Obviously, if you'd done anything here Pops would have heard of you, or someone would have, but what about back where Yugito and you are from?"

Oh. War stories. I dug one of my canines into the inside of my lip, trying to decide how much Ace ought to know.

"If it makes it any easier, I could say what parts I've guessed," Ace suggested, though I could see perfectly well that it wasn't a request. Maybe this kind of subtle command presence was partly why Whitebeard had made him a division commander.

"Give it your best shot," I said anyway, because it wasn't like Ace could guess much worse than what I'd actually done. Or what Yugito would be able to tell him if he asked.

"All right then." Ace lowered his hat to cover his eyes. "Given how you talked about those clans the other day, your hometown's probably still mercenary or at least has a big part of it that used to be. Only you probably saw a bunch of people bury the hatchet and settle down together, right?"

I favored him with my flattest expression. Strictly speaking, we were still mercenaries. We just had a large homeland and relatively new borders to build grudges over.

"Your brother and your boyfriend wear the same uniform, even if I don't recognize it. And you're used to giving orders and having them obeyed, even if you have to argue about it," Ace went on. "And you wear your heart on your sleeve anyway, so you have a lot of people even in that organization who care about you and vice versa."

"And you wonder why I'm homesick," I muttered. Not a bad series of observations, really.

I hope that under normal circumstances that you would not give so much information away.

Yeah. Then again, I'm usually not trapped in a weird ocean for months on end with no missions aside from a self-appointed one, and no fellow Konoha-nin in sight.

"The next thing," Ace said, counting down on his fingers, "is that you've done a lot of work in subtle stuff. Sneaking into places and getting out with what you want. And you're trying to read people all the time. Could be a thief, right?"

I bobbed my left hand in midair, still steering with my right. "Some of the skills overlap." I'd broken into a Marine base with no trouble not too long ago, after all. Sure, Ace had not been happy to learn he'd been left out, but I didn't want to risk his safety.

Also, I wasn't that subtle once I got going. Subtle people did not carry nearly as many explosives as I did. I couldn't remember the last time I'd had a pure stealth mission.

"You also fight mostly by tricking people into thinking you're weaker than you are, until you can't." Ace grinned a bit sheepishly. "Which is why you opened with the mist when you fought me, and then didn't bother at all with Yugito. You just hit her immediately after she decided to fight."

"Well, you're right and you're wrong," I said, once it seemed like he'd let his points rest for a bit to percolate in my brain. Nothing I hadn't noticed before, really. "There's one other reason I used mist first instead of just trying to kill you."

"Is it because of my roguish charm?" Ace's grin made the transition to "shit-eating" once again.

More like the fact that Yugito was a Kumo-nin and thus knew what a Kiri-nin could do. A little mist wouldn't faze her. And past that, I liked the Whitebeard Pirates a lot more than I did Kumogakure. The former had never tried to kill me, except for Teach, and so Ace got the kid gloves while I tried to beat Yugito into the ground. The fact that Yugito was the first hostile chakra-using fighter I'd encountered here also accounted for part of the increased ferocity.

"You keep telling yourself that, Mr. Eye Candy," I replied somewhat distractedly, eyes returning to the now-reversed Log Pose. I obligingly spun the wheel around to reorient us toward our destination. "Do you remember how I said Yugito had been trained since she was six to fight?"

Ace's grin fell. "Same deal with you, huh? Can't say I'm surprised."

"Sort of. I didn't start combat missions until I was eleven, at least," I explained, while a rogue wave tried to push us off-course. "But back to the actual topic. You might've noticed the giant animals following us around."

"No, I totally missed that detail," Ace snarked.

"Hah." I rolled my eyes. Still, this did need to be explained. "Shukaku, Matatabi, and Isobu aren't just our partners. And the way we get attached to them isn't simple or kind. And each one of them, if they got serious, could blast an island back down to sea level."

Ace went still. His gaze shot out to sea, in what happened to be about the opposite direction of the submerged Isobu.

"People back home figured that having them run around loose was a bad idea, and instead decided to use them as weapons." Because of course we did. I went on, my voice still terribly calm, "They figured out that if they bound Isobu and the others to children, they could raise loyal soldiers and have one-person armies whenever they wanted. What the Tailed Beasts wanted never came into consideration, and none of us humans were asked for our consent either." I met Ace's gaze, all humor gone from my expression. "The word we use for it is 'jinchūriki.' In a word, 'the power of human sacrifice.'"

In your case, it was very nearly literal, Isobu said in a soft tone.

I try not to think about it much. Even years after the fact, I could still remember the ritual that had turned me into Isobu's landlord. It wasn't like I hadn't been through worse since, but the helplessness I'd felt then never became nothing in my mind. Trying to slot "being turned into a human bomb" into some convenient mental category was an exercise in futility, even if I'd been defused quickly.

And even if I'd met Isobu then.

"So when Usopp said you could pull off some kind of evil ritual with blood…" Ace's jaw worked. "People actually used them."

"Mm-hm." I elaborated in a slow, almost casual tone, "I know how Gaara and Yugito and most of the others ended up the way we are, but that's their business, not mine. As for me, I was kidnapped when I was thirteen."

Actually, Kushina had been kidnapped by Kumogakure when she was about that age, too. The difference between us was that I hadn't had Isobu in my chakra coils to start with. Either way, Konoha could have lost big if not for the actions of the people around the two of us.

Ace almost looked like he regretted asking, but was continuing to listen out of sheer determination to see this through. "What happened next?"

"I nearly died, for one," I replied, shrugging. The Log Pose directed us into a slow left turn, so I obliged. "I was being used in a plan to destroy my entire hometown. If I'd been anyone else or my friends were any less stubborn, everyone would've died. But they weren't, so we didn't."

"That's…worse than I thought it would be, actually." Ace frowned, and once again I'd managed to drag up unpleasant memories for him. "A lot heavier. So, you're saying you got that nickname because you're stuck with Isobu?"

"Sort of. About four years after that, an enemy army hit a town in our territory because…well, a couple of reasons. Kidnapping children, killing me, hurting my hometown…" The scar on my chest started to ache again, but that was old news. I shook my head to clear it, then said grimly, "So I killed every single soldier I could get my hands, my sword, or Isobu's teeth on. I'm pretty sure that's what solidified it."

Ace crossed his arms. "I guess I'm starting to see why you keep worrying about me. The only one I know who could destroy whole islands that fast is Pops, but he never would. World Government battleships, maybe…" His mouth formed a grim, narrow line. "Sorry for bringing it up."

"You say that like I haven't brought up sensitive points for you, too." When Ace looked up, perhaps a bit surprised that I'd been able to read him at all, I just said, "It's fine, Ace. It all happened years ago. Isobu and I get along fine now."

Mostly.

Hush, you. "And you were right to say I was a soldier. But more specifically, I am a shinobi. Or a ninja," I added belatedly, since in a pirate world it wasn't like there would be a lot of exposure to my type of culture. Gaara had used the word before, but I didn't know if Ace had understood it. "Yugito, too."

"…Okay, I don't think you get how silly that sounds," Ace said after a pause.

Oh, it definitely sounded dumb to me before I had to grow up as one. "Enlighten me," I suggested.

"I think I get what you mean, like spies and assassins, but the only people we have here who do that are the Cipher Pol units who do the World Government's dirty work," Ace said, and it seemed like he was fighting a grin. Sounded like ANBU to me, though. "'Ninja' is what I used to play with Luffy when we were kids and I needed him to stay quiet."

Water off a duck's back, really. "To be fair, I know I used to play at being a ninja when I was a kid, too." I found myself smiling faintly. "Anyway, that's pretty much it. Satisfied?"

Of course, that wasn't everything. It didn't cover how most humans viewed Tailed Beasts as nothing less than living natural disasters and nothing more than malicious monsters. How jinchūriki were shunned and feared for being more monster than human. How Gaara and one timeline's Naruto had grown up. How people acted like jinchūriki didn't deserve to exist when our entire lot in life was dictated by other humans and their ambitions.

Cynical of me, I supposed. I'd gotten lucky. For one thing, I actually had a therapist to talk to about this stuff.

"I got a good story out of it, so I think so," Ace said, getting up. He picked up his Log Pose and strapped it to his wrist again, then waltzed to the Nautilus's stern. "Okay, time for me to lead again. Slow her down a bit so Striker can catch up!"

"The Nautilus is definitely a guy," I corrected Ace, but I still did as he asked and let the Nautilus relax a little.

Ace ignored me, of course, and took off as soon as he undid the tow line. Within a few seconds, his speedboat-raft was shooting along ahead in the water as though strapped to a rocket. All I had to do was get the Nautilus up to speed again.

"So, Yugito, did you have anything to add?" I asked the supposedly empty air.

Yugito obligingly dropped her camouflage genjutsu, then lowered herself into the seat Ace had recently vacated. "He's not as observant as he thinks he is."

"Yeah, I've noticed no one around here has genjutsu resistance." Still, I glanced over at her and said in a warning tone, "But try to be careful who you use jutsu on. As far as I can tell, chakra might literally be poisonous to people here."

Yugito frowned faintly, a small crease appearing between her eyes. "Have you had to test it?"

"Yeah, but I didn't get a conclusive result." Teach was still apparently alive, after all. And I'd have to check in with Ace later to see if he'd gotten motion sickness during this conversation, just to be sure. "I've mostly been treating the people here with kid gloves to avoid drawing unneeded attention."

"Smart move," Yugito commented.

Aaaand I was pretty sure I was being patronized. "Call me a soft-hearted idiot if you want. You won't be the first."

"Now who's being catty?" Yugito muttered, then clapped a hand over her mouth in horror.

So I was contagious. Still, hearing Yugito make those kinds of comments helped calm my nerves a bit. "Yugito, I know we're…kinda peers, of a sort."

"We are," Yugito admitted after a moment. After all, we were the same age, same rank, and had similarly-powerful Tailed Beasts shackled to our souls. "I don't consider us friends by any means, just so we're perfectly clear."

Naruto and Luffy had both made fast friends out of people who said things like that. I didn't have their knack, but I hadn't exactly liked the Whitebeards at first either. Maybe I'd grow on her.

"Still, we have a similar mission. To get home." It wasn't like she could protect Kumogakure from the middle of the Grand Line, even if she knew where we sat relative to the Elemental Nations. "So I think a temporary alliance would be appropriate for the time being."

Or longer. I have not spoken to Matatabi at length for centuries. She can likely convince her partner to be more amenable to a deal.

Yugito looked at my extended right hand, then slowly held out hers as well. We fist-bumped on it. "For now."

"For now," I agreed.

AN: Hi, Yugito! Welcome to the party.