Our first impression of Saiken was…uh.

Mixed.

On one hand, he was a slug about the size of Katsuyu on one of her better days, but with legs and hands. Tiny hands on tiny arms. And he also had six tails, all of which were the collective reason why he wasn't instantly sinking into the ocean. His eyestalks were about the only parts of him that weren't flailing in a mad panic that looked entirely incongruous on a slug of all creatures. He moved far too fast. Saiken even towered over Isobu, who sat low in the water for the novelty of it even if he had to hold a conversation.

And then he spoke.

"Bro, little bro!" Now, I didn't doubt that he had a roar somewhere in him, but that voice was not the type of sound that made sense coming out of something that big. He sounded like a monster had inhaled twenty thousand helium balloons and made the effect permanent. It was like a man post-groin attack, where it jumped two octaves in pain and then didn't come back down.

"…Is that seriously his voice?" Ace asked me in a whisper, while hiding his mouth from view. Saiken was still a Tailed Beast, after all, and we were at sea and oh right Ace could easily drown.

"I do believe it is," Yugito responded ahead of me.

I was too busy beating my forehead against the wheel.

Eventually, Yugito took pity on me and slid her hand between my head and the wood. When I stopped upon nearly crushing her fingers and rethought my strategy enough to look up, she said, "If you could be more productive than this, it would be very helpful."

Or not.

Still, I redirected my attention out to the Tailed Beast reunion we were barely avoiding being flattened by. Ace couldn't tow the Nautilus with Striker, but he could evaporate a wave or two before they capsized us.

"Bro, bro, it's been so long since I've seen you!" Saiken wailed, making all of us slap our hands over our ears because ow.

"You could at least try to use my name, Saiken," Isobu said, and though I didn't see his expression, his tone implied exasperation.

At a hundred decibels. Yeah, probably time for humans to not be around.

"Any ideas?" Ace called back over his shoulder, while Yugito joined him on wave-deflecting duty.

"Yeah. Not being right here." I completed a quick sequence of hand seals, and the next incoming wave curled around us, conveying both vessels out of the inevitable splash zone.

Isobu's right tail created a much gentler wave, pushing our boats to a safer distance the second my jutsu lost momentum. He didn't really seem to be aware he was doing it—he'd gotten all too used to looking after our little human boats—but I picked up the thread well enough. To my not-so-experienced eye, it looked like Saiken was gearing up to jump.

"Yugito, the wheel's yours," I said as I stuck myself more firmly to the Nautilus with chakra. I'd probably need to be on guard for round two. "Ace, grab Striker and get ready to get a crash course in surfing."

Ace eyed Saiken, then swore quietly to himself. "Got it." In a flash of fire, he was gone and powering Striker back up to full speed. While Ace shot across the sea, Yugito accelerated the Nautilus a bit more slowly for our sakes. Not everyone was a Logia.

We made it before Saiken practically enveloped Isobu in his stretchy mass, looping around my friend's shell twice over before anyone could catch onto what was happening. "I missed you s-s-s-so much, Isobu!"

"That is all very nice, but get off me!" Isobu shouted, unaffected by the constriction in terms of actual breathing, but sounding inconvenienced nonetheless. He thrashed on reflex alone, all three tails pumping, as Saiken latched on still more persistently.

For little squishy humans in the way, it was the next best thing to doomsday.

I made the appropriate hand signs, feeling my chakra converting to water almost as rapidly as I could stand. Just a little more, plus the environmental boost… Water Release: Water Wall.

As the titan-sized ripple—more of a tsunami to us—rose to engulf our boats, I blasted it head-on with a burst of water designed to shield buildings from massive Fire Release attacks. Alone, there was no way I could generate enough water to neutralize even one of those waves. But thanks to Isobu's chakra and the ocean's own mass, I could continually reinforce what chakra-produced water I could spit up, far faster and heavier than I would have been able to do on my own.

And it coincidentally made the Nautilus rocket away from the scene nearly as fast as Striker's top speed, though in a more unstable manner.

"Next time, warn me before you do that," Yugito said, as she steered the Nautilus's bow to face the waves instead of whatever sideways skidding crap we were doing before.

I coughed, spitting a leftover mouthful of water off the side of the ship. Using saltwater as a shortcut made for a really nasty aftertaste. "N-No problem." Hopefully I wouldn't need to deal with that again for a bit.

I take it Saiken is upset. Even as I formed the thought, I balked at its inadequacy. "Frantic" would be a better word. "Inconsolable" was next on the list.

That may be an understatement, Isobu replied in a somewhat distracted mental voice. "Saiken, what happened to your partner?"

"Uta told m-m-me to l-leave," Saiken sobbed, though I had half a dozen questions about the physical mechanics of such an act. The animal he most closely resembled didn't have the correct anatomical structures for it.

"Did I hear that right?" Yugito asked me, her free hand pressed against her ear and her face contorted in a wince. I felt her use Matatabi's chakra to speed her recovery before she spoke again. "Saiken abandoned his…host?"

"It sounded more like Utakata abandoned him," I murmured, frowning.

It wasn't the first time I'd heard of a complete breakdown in relations between Tailed Beast and human partner, but Utakata couldn't be much better off than Yugito had been when I first met her. Sheer necessity should have kept them together while they found their feet. Saiken would have been his only ally by default in this mad world. Something must have happened.

Isobu and I had officially been partners instead of two beings allied by mutual survival for well over a decade. While I knew damned well that our friendship was unusual, I'd still never considered that another pair would split like this. Sure, Kurama—both of them—talked about this kind of thing when they were frustrated or deliberately provoking people, but I hadn't recalled anything specific about Utakata and Saiken that would lead to a breakup. And if Saiken was this upset about it, the choice couldn't have been mutual.

"We need more information," was all I said aloud. Instead, I turned my attention to my partner. Isobu, what the hell happened with them?

Since Isobu was still being constricted by a babbling monster slug, I didn't get an answer immediately. Of course I didn't.

"Tell me what happened, Saiken," Isobu managed, once he wasn't being squeezed until his shell creaked ominously. He'd recover, but what the fuck. "And let go."

"I-It was awful!" Saiken uncurled from Isobu's shell, shifting back into his default form with his disproportionately small hands clutching at empty air in anxiety. "Uta fought another human, and I couldn't reach him, and he got hurt and—I know where Uta is, but he's not talking to me and the sea is too hot there—"

"Hot?" Isobu repeated. "Saiken, was there some kind of flame? Or lava?"

"Why would there be lava in the open ocean? Son Gokū is nowhere near here!" Saiken asked, flailing his tiny arms. Kinda Tyrannosaurus-like really. "I-I'm not stupid!"

I had an idea. When Ace reappeared from around the other side of the arguing Tailed Beasts, I stood up on the Nautilus's stern and waved both arms to catch his attention despite the waves. Sure, I could have shot a Water Dragon Bullet at him, but that would probably count as "unnecessarily hostile" by any standard. Even if it was steerable.

"Answer the question!" Isobu bellowed back in his stronger brother's face as Ace skipped across the waves in our direction.

"Did you catch any of that?" I asked Ace without so much as a pause for a greeting. We had two titanic monsters arguing in the middle of the open ocean to contend with, after all.

"Hard to miss it," Ace said, raising his voice slightly to be heard over the cacophony of background noise.

Yugito growled, while wrestling with the steering, "Does Lava Release exist here?"

I repeated the question for Ace's benefit, and he responded with, "Lava—no, not by that name. But Admiral Akainu ate the Magu Magu no Mi, and he's definitely someone to not tangle with."

And if Utakata hadn't met any other friendly jinchūriki and was instead limited to just his own power… Shit. Information, information… I asked the first question that came to mind. "Any idea what he looks like?"

Maybe Saiken would be able to identify him. Maybe not. But any information was more useful than the dearth we faced now.

"I don't have a recruitment poster handy," Ace said, his eyes briefly rolling skyward as he thought, "but off hand? Ten feet tall, probably around fifty, looks like a pinch-faced bastard uncle and has a Marine cap."

"I take it you've seen him before?" I asked, sitting on the edge of the Nautilus and holding Striker at a distance with both feet. I didn't want to see what would happen if the boats collided, even in some minor incident like being pushed together by random eddies.

"Only at a distance." Ace sat on Striker's sole actual seat, leaning back to observe Isobu and Saiken's continued argument. "So, this 'Uta' smacked right into an Admiral right off the bat?" Ace made a "tch" noise, then spat over the side of the boat. "Talk about rotten luck. Akainu is the biggest bastard out of all three Admirals. He's all 'absolute justice' all the time or whatever. Never lets a pirate live if he can kill them first."

Well, that suited what I'd read of the man. Melting entire enemy ships with lava was…perhaps overkill, perhaps not. But certainly most people wouldn't survive that.

And "Absolute Justice"? I'd heard that line before, too, in the form of the "Swift Death to Evil" mantra. It was definitely less poetic when it was pointed at us.

I was nodding along until a thought struck me. I felt my face freeze in place. "Wait a sec…"

I shoved Striker away for a second, then stood up with Isobu's chakra overlaying mine as much to get his attention as it was to make myself heard. "Ace, Yugito, cover your ears." Once they did, I shouted, "Saiken, do you know if Utakata is alive?!"

Both Tailed Beasts' heads swiveled toward me, though Isobu's lack of a real neck meant he had to turn his entire body for the same effect.

"I-I think he is!" Saiken's six tails all lashed, one after the other. A little more firmly, he added, "Uta has to be!"

Taking that as truth—Saiken would know if Utakata had managed to drop dead, right?—then something must have happened that could cut the connection between them down to almost nothing. And I still remembered the first time I'd been entirely cut off from Isobu after being sealed, thanks to the Five Elements Seal being installed as an emergency measure. But I was under no illusions about any kind of last-second, measured seal modification happening anywhere around here, least of all at the hands of an Admiral. Something he'd done must have screwed around with Utakata's seal.

The last time that happened, I'd almost died even with Sensei and Kushina on hand. Utakata, at most, had me.

I ran a hand through my hair, decision already made. Isobu, we're going to follow Saiken back to Utakata and see what we can do to help.

You are certain? Isobu's question came out flat, like it wasn't really a question at all. He already knew damn well that while I liked to waffle about things, I couldn't say no to someone in trouble when I was the only one who could help.

Yeah, I am. And I still needed to check in with Yugito and Ace about the choice.

I let Isobu's chakra drop back out of my system, waved for Ace to return since it was safe enough for his eardrums, and mentally steeled myself. Ace brought Striker close again so we could hold the conversation, and Yugito cut the power to the Nautilus's engine. Behind and looming over us, both Isobu and Saiken leaned in to listen.

"Got something to say?" Ace asked at a completely normal volume, since the Tailed Beasts were being polite again.

"Yeah." I crossed my arms, frowning. "I need to follow Saiken back to Utakata and see what I can do for him."

Ace blinked, then the words caught up with his thoughts and finally interrupted them. "Wait, you're leaving? When we're this close to finally putting an end to Teach once and for all?" Under the disbelief, the anger, I could have sworn I heard a note of…hurt?

Well, I'd already known this conversation was going to be a flurry of punches to the gut, so what was one more?

"Utakata doesn't have a chance otherwise," I said reluctantly, because each word hurt to form. I didn't want to leave, but ultimately a mission of revenge didn't compare to a life-saving one. In a lower tone, I muttered, "And even if he's probably going to want to kill me."

Yugito pursed her lips ever so slightly, then said, "I doubt he'll get far. You'll simply have to reunite with us in a few days." Yugito knew all too well how weak she'd been before the Wristband of Doom started loosening. She, at least, had confidence in my ability to handle myself.

Ace still didn't seem convinced. Flame flickered along his forearms as he drummed his fingers against them in agitation. "Can't the guy just go to a doctor?"

I tried to imagine it. Blood, death, and destruction came to mind immediately. The last time I'd lost myself in Isobu's strength had been…bad. Utakata wouldn't be using Saiken's power, but injured jōnin never reacted well to strangers trying anything out of the ordinary. Add in the likelihood that his injury wasn't one medicine could handle…

"No, that…would be pretty much impossible," I said, my shoulders sagging. "I'm the only person on this side of the Red Line who might be able to stabilize him, since Kushina's with Shanks in the New World."

"Aaaand I just told you last week that we can't spare the time to go back," Ace muttered. "Damn." He tilted his head to one side, frowning. "What exactly is wrong with this 'Uta' guy?"

"I won't know for sure until I get there," I admitted, "but all of the likely options are pretty dire."

Isobu raised his left tail, like he was in class. He didn't have enough range of motion on his shoulders to do the same with his arms, but the effect was similar. "Is there a reason that Saiken could not simply summon Utakata back here?"

There was a very long pause. Then Yugito and I simultaneously smacked ourselves in our respective foreheads. I'd introduced her to the concept, and she hadn't remembered either. Personally I thought I was more at fault for the brain fart since Yugito rarely summoned Matatabi, while I'd been through both ends of things before. Twice.

"Ace, what's the next island called?" I asked, after I managed to calm myself down. Two birds with one stone, two birds with…okay, I still felt dumb, but there was a way to salvage the situation after all. Utakata would be fine.

"Banaro Island," Ace said immediately, perking up now that there seemed to be a solution to the problem of our group breaking up.

And I made us sound like the Beatles or something.

"I don't think bringing Utakata to the same island as where we expect to find Teach would be ideal, but…" But Utakata needed help now. Delaying wasn't an option. "Isobu, show him how to do it. We'll just adapt."

"I'll summon him on your back, Isobu!" Saiken said, once he had the technique figured out. He leaned over Isobu, both stalk-eyes swinging around wildly as he tried to plan. "Parts are flat, right?"

Well, some parts weren't spiky. Close enough.

I was already leaping out of the boat and toward Isobu, accompanied by all of my fūinjutsu gear, by the time Saiken made the first hand seal. I heard Ace shout when I bounced off a wave ("She can walk on water?"), but quickly shot out of range and up the miniature mountain that was Isobu's crab-like shell. By using Isobu's spikes as launching points, I arrived just as Saiken summoned Utakata to the apex of Isobu's shell.

My first look at Utakata told me that we would have been better off if Saiken had brought him over on Isobu's hand, because at least then I'd be able to access cool water faster. Parts of his skin were various shades of unhealthily pink, reddish, blistered and weeping, or even black in some places, indicating as many varied types of burns as there were ways to be burned. While no finger or toe seemed to have been entirely converted into dead flesh or bone, but he did not look good.

While I'd never seen Utakata in anything other than the blue kimono he'd died in, in another lifetime, here he'd found a pirate getup very similar to Marco's but in blue rather than purple. It looked quite pirate-like, complete with a Jolly Roger. I had to wonder if that was what had gotten him into this mess. Either way, in some places his flesh stuck to the cloth where bits had burned.

Utakata wheezed a breath, but it dissolved into coughing a moment later as the other fun effect of being exposed to that much flame and heat—smoke inhalation—made itself known. Even at my best I couldn't fix all of this.

Whether it was jinchūriki vitality or something else, Utakata's eyelashes fluttered. His orange irises were clearly visible for a moment—unfocused but responding to light—before his eyes slid shut again. I channeled a small portion of Isobu's chakra into my right hand to see if I could change anything just on reflex, then stopped with my fingertips an inch above his singed skin.

I couldn't heal him. I didn't have the knowledge or the ability, and if I didn't do something he would die.

Or at least I couldn't heal him directly. Isobu, ask if Utakata can regenerate from these kinds of injuries. Show Saiken what I'm seeing if you have to.

But that kind of order was unnecessary. Saiken loomed over Isobu's back, both stalk-eyes leaning down and examining his human partner without needing any prompting. "Uta, Uta… This isn't fair! That human—he wasn't from Iwa—"

"A lot of things aren't working the way we think they should," I told Saiken, and his stalk-eyes focused on me. I reinforced myself with just a touch of Isobu's chakra, to withstand this conversation. "Saiken, can Utakata heal overnight like the rest of us?" From most things, anyway.

"He can't use my chakra. If he could, yes, but…" Saiken's tails writhed in distress and his arms flailed. "What if he dies?! He's my friend!"

Utakata's eyes opened again, half-lidded, and I heard him whisper through cracked lips, "Fr…friends…?"

"Uta! Uta, you can hear me?" Saiken cried, pushing his huge face closer to us. While I had never noticed before, Saiken's single mouth had nine separate openings, each like a tunnel that could swallow a grown man, and all of them were pulsing as he wailed. "Uta, please! Speak to me!"

Utakata's eyes rolled up in his head. A split second later, he went completely limp.

"UTA!" Saiken shrieked.

I would have so much hearing damage if not for jinchūriki healing rates. As it was, I still had my left hand clamped over my left ear when I waved to get Saiken's attention. Once his eyes were on me again—not literally—I said, "Saiken, I'm going to see if Utakata's seal is damaged. Please hold on, okay?"

I didn't check to see if he was listening before I went through the hand seals for the Diagnostic Jutsu.

Unsurprisingly, there were plenty of surface-level and serious burns. Only the deepest damage had been done by direct flame, however—the rest was likely from radiant heat. If Admiral Akainu had confronted Utakata and this was just the damage from a bunch of near-misses or scaldings, then I did not want to see what that man could do if he got a direct hit.

Of course, my imagination was more than up to the task. I had a single horrifying image in mind, of a human boiling and burning to death in the same instant. Flesh bubbled and wisped away like smoke. The man in question—I didn't need to see Shirozora's death again. I didn't.

Concentrate, please. Isobu's mental voice was sharp, to remind me to stick to the present.

I shook myself to ignore those thoughts, then tried focusing on Utakata's chakra network. A quick scan showed that his seal was on his back, between his shoulder blades. And so, with as much care as I could manage, I rolled Utakata over and cut his jacket apart with a chakra scalpel.

Like my seal had been at the start, his stood out in sharp black lines against his skin. And while Utakata's seal-work was similar to mine due to the primary organizational number being four—hooray for Uzumaki sealing style motifs proliferating across the sea—one corner had been burned clean off. Going from a stable four-cornered seal matrix to this…

Shit. No wonder his connection with Saiken was screwy. If he'd been able to pull on Saiken's chakra after receiving this kind of damage to his seal, he would have probably experienced a total meltdown. In the nuclear sense.

Tearing my sealing kit from my belt, I unpacked all of my gear faster than I ever had in my life. I had scrolls, brushes, ink, references I'd built as memory aids with Isobu's help, and a bottle of sake I'd gotten from somewhere. Not sure what the last one would be useful for, but if we were devolving back to Age of Sail levels of medicine, alcohol was something that ended up on hand whether I thought about it or not.

Any expertise either Yugito or Ace have on burns would be appreciated, I thought as I fished out the last inkwell I'd been able to steal months ago. The liquid inside was still good, so I uncorked the bottle and prepared for what really amounted to spiritual surgery.

Isobu's voice asked the relevant question of the two resident fire-users, but there was no way I'd be able to hear any of their answers from so high up. Besides, I still needed to use my own blood as a catalyst for a seal like this, and carefully drew a line on my left hand with the point of a single chakra scalpel. There was no room for errors, no matter how small.

Yugito arrived next to me just as I finished dripping blood into the inkwell. I'd use the whole thing in one go.

"I can't treat him for burns if you're working on a sealing ritual," Yugito told me flatly. When I looked at her, she was carrying the medical supply box we'd cobbled together when we first bought the Nautilus.

We did not have nearly enough bandages.

"I'm just prepping the ink. In a second, I'll help you wash the burns out as best we can," I said somewhat distantly, as I mixed the ink and blood together. Mostly, it meant capping the bottle again and swirling it around a few times. There were more precise methods for non-field surgery, but desperate times called for desperate measures. "But Yugito, if you touch his right hand and he gets Saiken's chakra again, he might die from overload before he can recover."

Yugito frowned, then glanced over my shoulder. "Ace, help me get his belt off. Anything tight needs to go."

Ace bumped my back with his knee as he perched behind me, but did reach out to carefully remove anything that might constrict Utakata's burns and reduce blood flow further when everything inevitably swelled up. "I'm not sure he'll survive this. Akainu's good at what he does."

"That may be so," Yugito said patiently, "but what I need is for you to manipulate his arms, because I can't unless we want to see what happens when a jinchūriki explodes." Yugito glanced at me for confirmation, and I nodded. "So we need to work fast so Kei can repair his seal."

Every time one of them cleared a section of Utakata's skin, I carefully ran jutsu-condensed fresh water over the site to clean and cool the burns. There would be no point to ointment just yet, and I couldn't even risk cleaning the sites where it looked like Akainu had burned Utakata past even his nerve endings, but we were doing our best. None of us were truly medics, or doctors, or nurses, but we all knew fire in one form or another and we knew something of how to help.

Slowly, bandages appeared as though by magic. Whether by the power of desperation and spare clothes or something else entirely, we got Utakata cleaned up.

Honestly, by the end it seemed like his back was the least damaged part of him aside from his face. His arms had taken the worst of it, as expected from someone trying to block an unexpected attack, but the other sites I could see were already healing. It made sense given what little I knew about the revised physical rules that all of the jinchūriki were living with. Even at my lowest allotment of Isobu's chaka—no conscious use of it—I had healed from mere cuts in seconds. The scalpel cut I'd made to add blood into the ink was already long closed.

Though Utakata was no Marco the Phoenix, he was recovering without prompting from Yugito or me. Some of the burns were visibly shrinking, leaving new-looking flesh in their wake. But it was going slowly enough, relative to the damage, that it might not matter.

He needed Saiken's boost.

"What worries me is that he's not awake," Yugito murmured, while she and Ace carefully turned Utakata onto his side so I could see his seal again. "Ordinarily I'd expect at least some kind of defensive measure…"

"Utakata's out of chakra," I said, digging around in my sealing kit and pulling out the rougher horsehair brush I used to manipulate the ink before actually using it. "If I had to guess, it took everything he had to survive fighting Akainu."

"I still don't get why he even would," Ace said, looking down at Utakata's unconscious face. "I don't recognize him from any posters, so it's not like he's a known pirate. He should have been able to get by just by avoiding the Marines, like both of you."

"We'll simply have to ask when he wakes up," Yugito said.

I glanced up at her, seeing her grim expression, and wasn't honestly sure if she was putting on a brave face or acknowledging just how many laws we were breaking to interfere with Utakata like this. It wasn't like we knew him, but the penalties for tampering with a jinchūriki's seal, especially if they were from another village…

Well. We'd burn that bridge when we came to it, I supposed.

"The good news is that I know how to repair this seal," I said, after I'd properly prepared my ink and brushes. And put the junk brush away. "The bad news is that even after I do and he gets his chakra back, we don't know how long it will take him to recover. And we also don't know if he'll be hostile."

"He shouldn't be!" Saiken said, trying for something like being huffy and falling short by virtue of his worry. "Uta is a good person, you'll see. He's just…he's had a hard time."

"We'll leave that to you, then," Yugito responded, and both of Saiken's eyestalks bobbed in agreement.

"Do you mind telling me what—wait, no, you mentioned this. This is the same sealing ritual you talked about before." Ace was chewing the inside of his lip when I looked up from my last preparations. He looked up at Saiken, then asked, "Hey, what happens to you if this thing breaks?"

"I don't know! I've never had it happen before," Saiken said worriedly. "And I don't want this to be the first time, either!"

"If a jinchūriki's seal breaks, ordinarily the host dies and the Tailed Beast goes on a rampage," Yugito filled in, her voice solemn as she looked up at Saiken. "I don't know what will happen if Utakata dies like this, but we will do our best to make sure it doesn't happen."

"…'Host?'" Ace repeated.

I didn't need to know what dots he was connecting. I didn't have time to care about it. I didn't have time for this.

Leaving that explanation to Yugito before it occurred to her that she needed to make one, I swirled my smallest, sharpest brush in the ink and started writing the first line of the isolation seal. Yugito, Isobu, and I were all interfering with the process, but I could write us out of it.

"Kei always said you were partners," Ace was saying. "That she and Isobu are in this together."

…Clear skies and pure water unsullied… With a snap of the air that not even Yugito could detect, I cleared our leaking chakra from the area. To me, it felt like a shockwave, a cold snap of some sort, and then the air was empty. That left just Utakata and Saiken.

And my will binding them together where the original seal had cracked.

Ace shivered, perhaps feeling the energy ghost past him.

"She's an optimist," Yugito responded. "And got very, very lucky. There have been others—"

Ace interrupted her, "The one that exploded."

"He was not the first," Yugito said coldly. "Not remotely."

…Bind…beast and…soul…

"We aren't called 'jinchūriki' just because we like the way it sounds," Yugito told him, her chakra twisting in on itself. "Entire nations—our nations—view us as monsters in human flesh. And if we can't be controlled, we need to be disposed of before the death toll mounts."

Like what the Kazekage tried to do to Gaara, one timeline over.

…Until death…vow…

Like what almost happened to me at Sorayama.

I completed the last line, right over the healing edge of the burn that had destroyed the original seal-line, and brought my hand up in the Seal of Confrontation. "Seal."

The ink blazed for just a moment, then settled into its new place. Prodding at Utakata's chakra network with my diagnostic technique revealed that the seal would hold, though there wasn't much of anything flowing through it.

Time to fix that. "Yugito, take his hand."

"Is there a reason you won't?" Yugito asked, looking up from her discussion of pure cynicism with Ace. She didn't look any happier for it.

"I'll put him out again if he's a problem," I said in an even tone, even as I held up my right hand and the five purple flames alighting on the ends of my fingers. "After all, this is the Five Elements Seal."

Yugito sucked in a breath, perhaps recognizing the technique as a way to shut her down as well, but she took Utakata's right hand with hers anyway. Wasn't like I knew where Yugito's seal even was—if I didn't figure it out in time, I'd just punch her in the face. Same effect, lower chakra expenditure. If I had to.

So much for being the optimist.

Utakata's and Yugito's wrists lit up, as was becoming annoyingly commonplace, and then Utakata's seal finally had something to regulate and thus justify its existence. In my mind's eye, his seal started cycling reddish-orange chakra through his coils in a subtle manner as soon as the wristband from hell stopped acting as a dam.

And he was still weak enough that if something did go wrong, he couldn't be a threat. Chakra exhaustion hit everyone pretty hard, even if jinchūriki took longer to reach the point where we couldn't just get back up and fight some more.

Except… "Ace, Utakata is a Water Release user like me. You may want to back up a bit, just in case."

"Thanks, but no thanks," Ace said, choosing instead just to sit there, well within range if Utakata got enough mental resources to attack.

We waited with bated breath, but there was no flicker of consciousness in his chakra or behind his eyelids. He was well and truly out.

"His burns are healing faster," Yugito noted, allowing Utakata's hand to drop back to his side as we moved him onto his back again. With the seal taken care of, we just needed to decide what to do with him while he recovered.

"We can put him in the Nautilus for now," I suggested, prodding Utakata's right wrist so he and I would get the light show over with as quickly as possible.

YOU HAVE FOUND THE SIXTH.

ASSEMBLE THE NINE.

From the brief power surge, he got the ability to access V1 back as expected, while I needed to experiment to find my new limits. It had to be something from beyond V2, in my case, though I wasn't sure what it could be. I didn't tend to use much past V1 these days.

Regardless, I said, "It'll be easier on him if he's inside a vessel if Isobu needs to eat the boats for a quick getaway. It's not pleasant."

"…I'm not sure what it says about my life experience as of now that your sentences make sense to me," Yugito muttered. "I'll carry him down."

Without waiting for any input from Ace or me, she picked Utakata up as easily as if he was just any injured comrade and started down Isobu's sloping shell.

"It is over, Saiken," Isobu said aloud. "You can look."

"I know it's over!" Saiken snapped. "I felt—I felt it when I could feel Uta again for real!" The giant slug finally pulled away from Isobu, dropping lower into the water so half his tails could finally be put to use in the water properly. Butting his bulbous head against Isobu's shell, heedless of the spikes, he added, "I'm going to concentrate on helping him get better. Don't try to distract me!"

"We will not," Isobu promised, and Saiken let go of him.

As the giant slug sank deeper and deeper into the water until only his eyestalks showed like wiggly twin periscopes, it was clear that Ace and I were the only ones holding the awkward silence together. At that point, it was better to just let it die.

"We might as well head down now, too," I muttered, packing up the rest of my stuff and, in some cases, sticking them back in storage seals. I got to my feet, starting the much slower descent. "Teach isn't getting any more dead."

"Wait," Ace said, holding out a hand to block my path.

I stopped short of bumping into his arm. "Need something?" I asked mildly, like I hadn't heard any of the conversation he and Yugito had been having while I worked.

"Why didn't you tell me how bad it was?" Ace asked, his eyes hidden by his hat.

I just kinda blinked at him for a second or two. "How bad what was?" Wait. The jinchūriki thing. "Ace, it's not a big deal. The people back home who'd give me crap because I'm a jinchūriki don't matter. The ones who matter don't mind."

"And Yugito?"

"Yugito grew up in a town where one of the previous jinchūriki couldn't handle the power, so his seal broke. People died," I explained quietly as we walked down the slope of Isobu's shell. It was the same incident where Gyūki had gotten one horn broken in half by the Third Raikage, but Ace didn't need to know that part. "She got more pressure on her, and it's clearly still a problem that people don't let her forget."

Ace was still frowning. "And you?"

"Like she said, I got lucky." I shrugged. "I was already an established shinobi by the time Isobu and I met, and I helped stop another attack on my village. There were procedures in place by the time I needed to go public with it."

Sort of. At the very least, I'd gotten the benefit of the doubt.

"I…guess I can kinda see your point," Ace said, though he hesitated noticeably. "But you could've told me a while ago. I would've understood."

"There wasn't any point." I turned to him, letting him see my entire face for what honesty it would convey. Almost unconsciously, my fingertips drifted to my scar before I realized what I was doing and stopped. "I could tell you why I have this scar on my face, or how my mother died, or a million other things if you wanted a personal horror story. But while those experiences helped shape me, they're not everything I am. Then or now." I patted his shoulder. "So I don't let them define me."

Ace went quiet for a while after that, though we continued to treat Isobu like a hiking trail. Yugito could control the Nautilus and with Striker tied to it, it wasn't like we'd be in danger of losing the boats.

"You're a really frustrating person to talk to, you know," Ace said. When I glanced at him, he was rubbing a hand over his face with a wordless groan. There was clearly something eating at him. "Just really, really frustrating."

"I've been told that before, and by you," I replied. Peering at his expression, or at least what I could see of it, I came to a decision. I extended my olive branch of sorts. "What did you want to talk about?"

Ace let it go for a couple of seconds as we continued down Isobu's back. "...Nothing."

Uh-huh. So much for that. "If you change your mind later, I'm all ears," I said, then hopped once, twice down the massive dip in Isobu's shell that led to the edge. Ace followed in a burst of flame a little while after.

Yugito got Utakata situated in the Nautilus's cabin while Ace and I dawdled, so when I got back to the boat there wasn't much for me to do other than to take over the wheel while she cat-napped. At least, at first.

After another hour (and Ace passing out at Striker's helm for ten minutes), we finally decided it was time to discuss what the strategy for taking on Teach would be. Isobu listened in with half an ear though my mind, while Saiken fussed in the other about Utakata in a low voice that sounded almost like water burbling from above the waves. A bit distracting, overall, but the session went sideways without their help.

At some point, I'd noticed that Ace was...reckless. He tended to charge into situations without properly assessing the risks, confident or at least impatient enough to assume that things would work out for the best. Irritatingly enough, it was only his own life he treated so casually—all it took to see that was to look at his record of near-death experiences just in the months I'd known him. Yugito and I had only managed to rack up one of those between us, which was more the fault of Grand Line weather than anything we actually did.

To be clear, neither Yugito nor I were afraid of taking risks. I'd almost died plenty of times back home, and Yugito was a career kunoichi who had undoubtedly seen major action if her life was anything like mine. But we avoided unnecessary incidents because we generally weren't stupid. Not knowing Teach's powers meant Yugito agreed when I suggested caution.

Kinda.

"One of the first things my elders ever taught me was that simply blasting enemies into submission was a good way to get myself killed," Yugito said, when asked for her opinion. "I had several object lessons to that effect."

And yet she'd still tried overwhelming Hidan and Kakuzu point-blank in that other timeline. I couldn't call it hypocrisy if this Yugito had never done it, but I made note of the irony anyway.

"Not to mention that we still don't know what powers he might have," I added, frowning. Even with all the bloodlines, back home was way more predictable. In the Grand Line, every random asshole seemed to have entirely new rules to run with. Devil Fruits were bullshit. "I tried asking Thatch last time, but he didn't know, and I guess Teach must've taken the Devil Fruit encyclopedia with him when he jumped ship."

If I'd known that book had existed prior to Teach's betrayal, I probably would have "borrowed" it during my short-lived obsessive research phase aboard the Moby Dick. And if I had, maybe we wouldn't be in this mess at all.

Ace sat with his arms crossed on the deck of the Nautilus, listening to Yugito and me exactly enough to not actually take the advice. No matter how badly-delivered. "You think I haven't been out here long enough to pick up a few more tricks than 'burn everything?'"

"I certainly haven't seen much else," Yugito said acidly.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. This was going swimmingly.

I still want to see who can get first blood, Isobu put in. Speaking of swimming… But because your strategy does not seem to allow me to flood the island, I will consider "killing all of his allies" an acceptable substitute.

Thanks, I thought back dryly.

"You don't get to a bounty of five hundred and fifty million beris by being an idiot," Ace argued, oblivious to Isobu's murder plot.

Bad argument. Yugito growled out, "And Teach is a no-bounty nobody who's been avoiding you for months. The money only measures how much the World Government wants your head."

"Strictly speaking, you can get a massive bounty by being an idiot," I said, having actually read most of the bounty posters. While Ace shot a half-hearted glare in my direction for that contribution, I said, "Just punch a Celestial Dragon." Then I thought of something that had been bothering me for a while now. "Say, Ace, how long have you been a pirate anyway?"

"Three years," was Ace's somewhat proud reply.

Yugito and I exchanged a silent look of something akin to horror. No wonder he was as subtle as a sledgehammer. Three years of actual activity on the high seas? Compared to our approximately twenty years of combat experience apiece?

...Well, it wasn't like pirates were subtle. Ever. Hell of a culture clash, there.

Ace caught our judgment, because we weren't being subtle either. "Seriously? Screw you both."

"It's...partly a shinobi thing," I said after a second wherein Yugito and Ace were the main ones fuming at each other. "Pirates may show off, but we're usually taught not to. Though neither of us are all that stealthy by our standards—"

"Speak for yourself," Yugito said in a dark tone. Like she had any room to talk.

"—Killing powerful opponents quickly is just common sense," I concluded. "If I escalate, it's because the quieter approach didn't work."

Though, of course, that only applied to my operating procedure in the Grand Line. Back home, calling on my particular skillset in the field meant that it was time to get loud.

"Um, anyway," I said, digging around in my pockets for a few seconds. Once I found what I was looking for, I held out the prize to Yugito. "Here. A tracker seal in case we get separated somehow."

"You think I could be blown off an island by one idiot?" Yugito demanded.

"We don't know what his powers are," I pointed out, though I hesitated to think of what kind of ability would enable Teach to knock Yugito or me fully out of the running like that. Then again, that was what summoning was for.

"You're only tracking Yugito?" Ace asked, since Yugito looked torn between arguing or just accepting that I slapped a GPS device to all of my friends. Just in case.

I was becoming terribly paranoid of losing people.

"It's more that my old style of tracking tag only works if you can channel the type of energy we do," I said, scratching my head with my free hand. "But if…hm. Ace, can I have your thigh holster for a second?"

By the time Ace got it unbuckled, I had unsealed my set of paintbrushes and the very last dregs of ink. "Maybe...if I just pair the tags? No, that wouldn't work…"

"Why not just make something that's always on?" Ace asked.

"I'm afraid I'd hurt you," I admitted, still not putting my brush to the leather. Even with my blood, the result would be more like an airplane distress beacon than anything. On a very limited battery life. Add in my concerns about chakra poisoning…

"I can take it," Ace said, clearly unbothered by the idea. When I frowned at him, given that we both remembered the extreme motion sickness he'd gotten last time, he said, "I mean, it's only gonna go active if we're separated. That won't be a problem for long."

If only I could share his confidence on that front. What was the saying? Expect the best, plan for the worst?

"...Fine. Let me see what I can do." I uncorked my bottle of ink and tried my best.

The resulting seal had probably one of the weakest pings I'd ever designed, and would only turn itself on as long as we were at least a few hundred yards or meters or something apart. I'd deactivate it permanently once Teach was dealt with, I promised myself. This was just a tiny risk, taken in case somehow things went to hell in a handbasket.

Then we got to planning.

The first thing I needed to do upon reaching Banaro Island was to isolate the battle from civilians. Given Yugito's total lack of straight defensive powers that could be used without burning people with Matatabi's chakra, I came up with two broad possibilities that would function about the same. They'd achieve the same result, at least, but I didn't know how comfortable Yugito would be with them.

"I've basically got two barrier seal designs," I said, holding out a single barrier seal in one hand and a set of four in the other.

"What's the difference?" Ace asked, while Yugito examined both seals with a completely blank expression.

"This one is called the Uchiha Flame Formation," I said, lifting the single tag a bit higher. "It's a barrier made of flames that incinerates everything that tries to cross it. It only requires one seal, but it needs to be maintained with a constant flow of chakra."

"Doing so would anchor one of us in the same place for the entire fight," Yugito noted. "And anyone who touched it would die."

Not great for avoiding civilian panic, either. It was a technique designed for basically pinning enemy formations in place for Uchiha fireball artillery, even if Obito never used it that way.

But it would certainly keep Teach away from noncombatants, one way or another.

"You get a choice, though." I held up the set of four. "This is something a friend came up with. He called it…something involving compasses. I forget."

"Why are there four of them?" Ace asked cautiously, which was perfectly justified given the previous seal's description.

I grimaced, fanning them out like playing cards. "That's the downside. This barrier needs either four seals or four people in a perfect square, but once it's up it's just a really tough wall. We won't risk killing anyone on the inside until they start to run out of air."

Ace looked from me to a clearly irritated Yugito, who would be the one dealing with the barriers' fickle preferences if I didn't. Then he said, "Let's assume we do get one of these up. What about the actual fight with Teach?"

"You draw his attention while one of us takes the time to pick off his crewmates?" Yugito suggested, in no way interested in a fair fight. "And if things don't go well, we leave via Reverse Summoning and Matatabi or Isobu bombards the island."

I dropped my face into my hands. It was practical, but jumping straight to Matatabi was a hell of a leap. "Did I not just say we were going to protect the civilians? A barrier will take an indirect hit, but your idea of targeting might level the place."

Ace's jaw worked, but no sound came out. He'd gone alarmingly pale and was looking between the two of us in shock. Like he couldn't believe what he was hearing.

My "Ace, what's wrong?" was drowned out by Ace's roared, "WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!"

Since he was louder, Yugito turned her gaze on him. I was fairly sure her hackles were rising defensively, insofar as she had any.

"Do either of you have any idea what's wrong with your reaction?" Ace snarled, flames blazing along his back and shoulders.

Yugito remained stone-faced, but I decided to give it a hesitant guess. "Um, we did discuss the fact that destroying an island and killing innocents is bad…"

"No, you did," Ace corrected me harshly, and the flames crawled down his arms. "No, I mean that right there. You're both not getting it."

I fell silent, while Yugito scowled at him.

"Explain," she said in a cold tone. "You're overwrought."

"The attitude," Ace bit out, as the fire receded a bit. Just a tad, and he was still going to leave scorch marks on the Nautilus's deck. "Does the idea of killing hundreds of people really not bother you? Either of you?"

My eyes immediately focused on the tops of my knees. Guilt and shame reached up through my heart and stopped my throat, and still Ace kept talking.

"When you talk about using Isobu and Matatabi," Ace continued, in a calmer voice that still managed to quiver with a mix of outrage and horror, "it sounds like you're trying to use them for a Buster Call."

"What is a Buster Call?" Yugito asked, sounding vaguely concerned at most. But her chakra flickered uncomfortably, like a flame in the wind.

My stomach was already filling with lead before Ace spoke again. "It's the World Government's last, worst option."

I looked up cautiously through my eyelashes.

He wasn't exactly fidgeting, but his eyes blazed. "Ten battleships, five vice admirals, and whoever else they can throw in. The island dies in fire, until there's nothing left of it or of anyone on it. The World Government doesn't say that, but the goal is to destroy every trace that it ever existed."

It probably said something…worrisome about Yugito and me that neither of us did have the instant denial reaction to the idea of killing an entire island dead. Part of the problem was that both of us had been involved in the kinds of operations that required a Tailed Beast Bomb or two to sort out. Another aspect was our respective roles as heavy artillery to our respective nations, where the target was usually hardened or at least resisting all other attack types. While Konoha avoided civilian casualties where possible and Kumo…sorta did, we probably had more in common with the Marines in a moral sense than not. Ace had "being a decent person" and Whitebeard's moral code to work from. Yugito and I generally didn't.

We weren't good people.

"I could summon Matatabi to us, instead," Yugito offered somewhat weakly, while I continued to feel like the scum of the earth. "But she would land on something, and it could be worse than a precision blast focused on me."

She had to be aware that it wasn't what Ace wanted to hear, but Yugito's pride wouldn't let her back down entirely.

"No," Ace said flatly. "We're not the Marines. We're not that volcanic son of a bitch Akainu. And we're not going to start heading that way, either."

I averted my eyes and bit down on the rough edge of my thumbnail as I thought, wincing at the comparison to the Marines' most brutal admiral. The one who'd burned Utakata like that, and the one who'd probably turn all three of us into charcoal the second he spotted Whitebeard's emblem on Striker's sail. Or Ace's back.

Extreme options flipped between "No" and "All too easy" for jinchūriki. All too often.

And why should you allow your enemy a chance to strike you again?

And lo, the reason why.

Maybe I was just fooling myself.

We sat in silence—Ace and Yugito caught in a battle of wills—for a long enough span that it transcended mere discomfort and wandered into being downright tense.

Yugito looked away first, chakra twisting in shame and defeat.

"Let's not get Matatabi or Isobu involved at all," Ace said finally, when it became clear that Yugito had nothing to say. "That…that kind of thing isn't something people should be able to just…use. They're not weapons. You're not, either."

...I am not something to be used. Isobu made a pleased rumbling noise, sounding almost surprised that he was reversing his prior statement. In a good way. Amazing. Someone here understands what other humans have not grasped in centuries.

And it was a fact I'd needed to be reminded of. This place is amazing and horrifying by turns.

"We'll take care of Teach ourselves, and that'll be the end of it." Ace nodded to himself, then cracked his knuckles. "Okay. Let's do this."

AN: Aaaaaand here we are. We're all caught up, now.

Also, this chapter's title is named after one of the Assassination Classroom openings.