Author's note: Hahaha. Um. I forgot to update in time. Oh well.

There was a brief moment where Tobirama and Izuna argued over what the nightwatch would be like.

"Don't bother including us," Natsumi declared with a yawn as she and her clanswomen pulled leather ponchos out of the packs that the ninken carried, and wrapped themselves up in the ponchos. "There isn't any potential targets coming after us for over forty kilometers." She curled up in a tight ball and pressed herself into the flank of the ninken whose pack she had raided, using the haunches as a makeshift pillow. The ninken curled around her, resting his massive head against her knees.

Madara briefly thought about his bedroll, still in the pack they had left behind at their orchards, along with the dead, to remove any unnecessary weight that would slow down their travels. He regretted that in hindsight, since the nights were getting cold, and there wouldn't be any spare supplies for the Uchiha children. However, if the trail and the Nara's report remained true, the raiders and captured children were making their way through the country to the southern beaches of Fire Country. That would bring the Uchiha and Senju clansmen much closer to the Uzumaki clan's territory, and Hashirama would no doubt use his silver tongue to talk Mito out of whatever supplies they needed before they had to head north, for home.

Provided they reached their children before the raiders set sail.

Madara had never crossed the sea before. He had no idea how to sail. He was under the impression that there was a lot of sea sickness? He prayed they would reach the children before such happened.

When it seemed like there was a mutual agreement reached (one Senju and one Uchiha would take up watch, rotating with another clansman every two hours), Madara wrapped his cloak tightly around himself, and laid down on the unforgiving ground with his back to the fire. If he had to be awakened abruptly, he wouldn't be blinded by any remaining light cast by the coals. He would fall sleep easily – he had long learned how to sleep easily, no matter the death he witnessed during the day – but he couldn't guarantee the same for his brother.

Madara wasn't married – he had become clan head before he was married, and the clan elders felt that placed him in the perfect position to cement a political union that would strengthen their clan. Izuna, however, was under no such expectations from clan elders. Five years ago, Izuna married his childhood sweetheart, Uchiha Honami, and Madara couldn't have been happier in life. Izuna had achieved his own little island of love and peace, with his wife and children.

And now that island had been destroyed, swept away utterly in a sea of blood.

Izuna chose to take first watch. As Madara watched his brother trudge out of the clearing, taking up position in the chestnut tree that Hashirama had grown for dinner, he knew that his brother wouldn't be sleeping well, if at all, until he was able to rescue his children, or light their funeral pyres.

He hoped, for the health of his brother's soul, there would be no more funeral pyres this month. Izuna already had to light a funeral pyre for two bodies, one who lived before she died, and the other who died before he could live.

oOoOoOo

Shinzou was ruthless in waking everyone up for their journey, before dawn – false dawn at that – had even started. It didn't help that Madara shattered the stick she used with which to poke him awake.

"Do you mind?" he demanded, glaring up at her. She still wore the poncho she had slipped on last night, which effectively covered her entire torso from view. He still saw the outline of her pregnancy, could still see the occasional rolling movement, but that was much more tolerable and much less traumatizing.

"Look alive, Uchiha," Shinzou told him. "The raiders are at least eighty kilometers away from us, and I hope your armor isn't going to slow you down. My women and I refuse to pace ourselves just because you're dragging useless weight."

Armor that protected vital organs wasn't exactly what he would consider useless weight, but then again, he couldn't exactly expect a half-naked woman to understand, especially when the Inuzuka clan didn't get into as many battles as the Uchiha clan did. (He ignored the voice that quietly remarked that the Inuzuka clan probably had more sense than the Uchiha clan did.)

"We'll be fine," Madara replied. "Don't come whining to my men if your women freeze or shred their exposed limbs on the underbrush while we run. We won't be making any stops just so you can do some patchwork on your skin."

"Children, please," Hashirama grumbled from where he was dumping a bunch of chestnuts on the smoldering coals for a quick breakfast. "It's too early in the morning for squabbling."

Nara Shikataro only grumbled and rolled towards the flames, a welcome respite in the chilly morning. Then he groaned when Shinzou ruthlessly kicked him in the ribs.

"You were supposed to leave last night. What're you still doing here?"

"Sleeping. Please, like I wanted to wander off in the dark. I could've tripped and broken my neck, and then my daughter would've become clan leader." After a pause, as he slowly drew his knees up from beneath himself and sloppily rolled upright, he added, "Oh damn, I just missed a perfectly good opportunity to retire. What a drag. Is there some tea to soothe my battered soul and ribs?"

Shinzou dropped a pack of tea leaves at Hashirama's feet. "Since you're on the cook fire, I'm assuming you're in charge of everything."

Hashirama threw an empty leather bucket at Madara. "Since I'm in charge, I'm assigning you water duty."

"Fine, whatever." Just because he was Head of the Uchiha Clan, Madara never considered himself up above doing manual labor or the drudgery of camp duty. And besides, if he did try anything that would be misconstrued as posturing, Shinzou looked grumpy enough to ask him if he wanted to measure his cock against Hashirama's, because she had a measurer and would be happy to settle the score once and for all.

oOoOoOo

This far south in Fire Country, most of the trees were deciduous. In mid-autumn, the green leaves had shifted into the full spectrum of colors – waves of gold, red, and orange covered the landscape as far as the eye could see, broken up only where villages had cleared the trees away to plant crops. And as they ran through the forests, as they passed the fields of golden wheat and golden corn, the spindly lengths of pumpkin and squash vines, the orderly orchids of plums and nuts, Izuna thought it was a beautiful day.

But he didn't find it in himself to care.

The Inuzuka sisters – hell hounds, Madara had muttered, just outside of their sharp hearing – were in the lead. On either side of them was a ninken, matching their brutal pace with graceful, leaping bounds. Natsumi, a full head taller than Shinzou, was every bit as graceful as the ninken. Shinzou lumbered, swaying side to side, like an avalanche that had hit its stride and set to wipe out everything in its wide path. Shinzou kept her poncho on, and the only exposed flesh were her long legs that tapered into a pair of small feet protected by thin leather sandals. Natsumi had tucked her poncho into the pack was strapped to her ninken, a monstrosity the size of a small country that answered to Umeboshi. Natsumi wore a pair of sandals similar to her sister's, and a leather girdle-skirt that sat low on her wide hips and ended at mid-thigh.

Izuna should've felt scandalized, but he didn't care. He was surprised to realize that Shinzou wasn't the only Inuzuka woman who was pregnant – two other women were clearly expecting, but didn't appear to be as far along as their Head.

Madara and Hashirama had allowed the sisters to take lead – something something nose stick your sensory abilities where the sun don't shine, Tobirama, we can tell where people have been, and they're outside your range anyway – and followed after them. They were both still outfitted their armor, as the other Uchiha and Senju men were, and Izuna could see the heavy sweat that saturated the cloth underarmor.

The other Inuzuka women deferred to their clan leader and leader's sister – it appeared that Shinzou and Natsumi had equal authority despite their age difference – and followed without any problems; the two pregnant Inuzuka kept pace in the center of the groups of men, and Madara told himself he shouldn't feel irritated if some of his men seemed more protective towards them than they otherwise should've been. The remaining four Inuzuka women branched around the groups, in the back flanks. The six Inuzuka woman, like Natsumi, had shed their ponchos. Only two others had animals painted on their torsos – one had horses, the other had butterflies.

Or moths. Or just fancy dust bunnies. It was hard to tell; Inuzuka Boshi's artistic talents were nonexistent. She was just younger than Natsumi, with a bosom that was as lacking as her art skills, but had the same admirable stamina as her clanswomen, her skin barely damp with sweat.

Izuna was beginning to see the merit of being half-naked. He was aware of the rivulets of sweat running down his back. He was going to have one hell of a rash if they didn't manage to find a place to take a bath when they settled down for the night. And he wasn't going to ask for a break. If a woman – especially one that was nine months pregnant – could run cross-country without a break, then so could he.

Their first opportunity for a quick rest happened when they hit a ravine that stretched wide and deep. At the bottom of the ravine was the Hirohiro River. It was too steep to scale the walls, and too wide to safely leap to the other side, even if they had a decent running start.

"There used to be a rope bridge here, somewhere," Natsumi said, looking both directions.

"Bah. Probably got burned down," Shinzou replied. "The Shimura are jerks like that."

"The mountains drop into a valley ten kilometers east, we could cross there, but we'll lose however much time it takes to travel twenty kilometers," Madara said, gesturing east with a sweep of his hand. It had taken them four hours to travel nearly seventy kilometers, and that had been relatively easy country to travel – land that had been cleared and farmed for generations. Hitting the minor mountain range surrounded with old growth forest would dramatically decrease their travel speed, especially if they had to detour.

Natsumi put her hands on both hips, and took a deep breath. Izuna felt her chakra flare minutely, like the swell and pop of a bubble. "The group that hit the Sarutobi clan has already reached the beaches. Two other groups aren't far behind. The group that hit the Akimichi clan is furthest back, west and north of us by about sixty kilometers."

Hashirama lifted his face to the sun, frowning slightly. "How far away from the shore are we?" he asked Madara.

"We have at least a hundred kilometers to go."

Hashirama's eyes went wide as he looked at Natsumi. "Damn. How good is your nose?"

"I'm one of the best," Natsumi replied. "Almost as good as my sister, but," she shrugged, "biology."

Shinzou snorted into the collar of her poncho, "Strong odors make my morning sickness worse. I haven't been able to do any decent tracking for the last nine months. Come on, we don't have time to rest when we got an unexpected extra twenty kilometers to cover."

Hashirama immediately clapped his hands together, slapped them flat against the ground, and coaxed a thick, sturdy vine to shoot out of the earth, through the air, and into the trees on the other side of the ravine. "We rest for thirty minutes," he declared, crossing his arms in front of himself. The brief pause did nothing to stop the sweat dribbling down his face, soaking his armor.

Shinzou glared at the vine as if she expected it to bite her. Natsumi poked the vine with a claw; it was easily as thick as a grown man.

"Fifteen minutes," Shinzou replied with a growl.

Hashirama stepped directly against Shinzou, his armor brushing against her poncho as he loomed over her. "Thirty minutes. It took one unknown person to utterly annihilate a dozen very skilled, very capable Senju clansmen. I don't know how many Inuzuka or Uchiha clanspeople were also killed, but I've got a feeling that we're dealing with some freakishly strong fighters. The raiders have long been renowned for their berserker style, and the demonic strength and stamina that comes with the berserker style makes them nearly unstoppable. If lore is accurate to truth, all of us are going to be pushed to our limits to defeat them. Pushing ourselves to get to the seashore in time isn't going to do us any good if we're too damn exhausted to take back our children. We need to be able to conserve our strength, and actually think of what we're going to do when we finally reach them."

Natsumi made a fist and smashed it into an open palm. "We're going to squash them before they even realize we're there, rip out their throats, dismantle their bodies, piss on their insides, throw the pieces into the longboats, and set the whole thing on fire."

Izuna silently approved.

Hashirama stared at Natsumi for a long moment, his expression torn between agreement and horror at her bloodthirsty description. "That sounds like a tremendous way to get revenge on the clanspeople who were slain," he began carefully, "but we still have no idea what we're up against. If it were me, I would expect retaliation, and I would set the captured children up in a deathtrap that would leave them alive, but kill anyone trying to rescue them."

Natsumi wrinkled her nose, as Shinzou studied Hashirama with narrowed eyes. "Very well," Shinzou replied. "We rest and recover for thirty minutes, and work out some basic plans."

Izuna desperately hoped that their basic plans still included ripping out throats, dismemberment, pissing on the carcasses, and fire. He was Uchiha; revenge was always best served with fire.

oOoOoOo

"Look at what we do know," Shinzou began, sitting crosslegged on the ground. Hashirama, Madara, Izuna, Tobirama, and Natsumi also sat on the ground; they formed a misshapen circle and faced each other. Shinzou had shed her poncho since the midmorning sun was starting to feel more intense. Madara was trying to be respectful and watch her while she spoke, while also not trying to watch the tightening movement under her skin, with rigid muscles and wandering limbs – at one point, he saw the perfect imprint of a foot. It had been the size of his thumb. "We know that in these five groups, at least one is a warrior of catastrophic strength and skill. We can either assume that all five people in these groups hold equal strength, or that the single person who took out our clanspeople is the only warrior, and the rest were just support staff to carry supplies and children."

"If they're the legendary berserkers," Hashirama said, "it would be a single warrior." Because two berserkers in the same fight would be too deeply in their rage to recognize the other as an ally, and notoriously battled each other instead of their enemies. "But that's assuming that these even are berserkers. It could be that they developed a whole new style and skill in the seventy years they've been gone from our continent."

"Don't over-think this," Natsumi said. "We could be here all day and into next week if you keep saying but and if."

Madara accepted a skin of water from one of his clansmen, and handed it to Izuna after taking several deep gulps of water. "We need to be able to scout and gather information on these raiders if we have any hopes of making a decent plan. Your nose can only provide so much information. We need a set of eyes and to actually see them in battle to know what they're capable of."

Tobirama had been tracing his fingers through the dirt – meaningless doodles, if it hadn't been the lance of chakra he kept sending through the dirt to map out their surroundings. "We should avoid battle," he said. "If we can ambush and kill them swiftly, before they have a chance to meet up with each other or to realize our presence, we'd decrease our own chances of loss."

"That," Madara replied, "would require us to accurately predict their path, circle around, lay traps, and set the ambush. No doubt they'll be expecting pursuit and will be watching their backs. In a foreign country, they'll be just as wary of their way forward."

"So say we set the trap," Natsumi said, "and they figure it out, they'll immediately be on the offensive, and then we're right back to open combat and the unknown of the other's abilities."

Madara leaned forward. "If we can get Uchiha eyes on their attack, we'll be able to get a better assessment of their abilities. What we need is a decoy."

Natsumi rubbed her chin. "Decoy?"

"Yes."

"Not decoys. As in, a single person, in one-on-one combat, with the raider?"

"Yes. There's a reason only one person took out our people, and the other four didn't. Why? Where were those other four when one person attacked your clan? What did your nose tell you?"

Natsumi and Shinzou exchanged a look. It was obvious to Madara that they hadn't put much thought into why four raiders didn't battle, while only one did. Natsumi's expression dipped into a thoughtful frown. "The four stayed half a kilometer away until the one fighter killed the adults."

"How did they know the fighter was finished? Did the fighter return to the four?"

Natsumi slowly shook her head. Her beads and caltrops clattered together from the movement. Madara briefly wondered how she managed to wear them without shredding the skin across her shoulders and breasts. "No. The four went to the fighter after the battle. Which implies that they had some way of signaling each other, or that one or more of the four is a sensor."

Tobirama swore under his breath. "If each group has a sensor, that would explain how they managed to find the villages, huts, and merchant trains when and where our children had the weakest security."

"That means we won't be able to successfully ambush them, either," Hashirama said. "They're going to know that we're coming, and they'll be able to plan accordingly."

"So," Madara continued, "we need to send a very small, targeted force against one group to better assess what we're up against. It needs to have at least three people. The decoy needs to have the strength and stamina to take on the fighter who was capable of single-handedly taking out ten adult men, and last long enough that the second person can get reliable, accurate intel on the raiders' skills and abilities, and then the third person can get the second person back to our main group, should the first person fall in battle. If the first person survives, they'll need assistance from at least two people to move fast, anticipating grave wounds. The third person needs to be a sensor or one of the Inuzuka women, so they can find the main group without any delays or running into other enemies."

"I'll do it," Natsumi said. "Be the decoy, that is." She glared defensively at Hashirama and Shinzou. "What? No, don't even think about it, buster," she told Shinzou. "You're in early stages of labor."

"I thought your contractions were getting more regular," Izuna said to Shinzou, and boy did Madara wish he could scrub the memory of those words out of his brain.

Natsumi ignored Izuna. "You," she pointed at Hashirama, "have wood release. We need to get you to the children, because you can use that," she indicated the vine that stretched across the ravine, "to create a barrier around the children, so they're not dragged into a battle or caught in a death trap. And you," she vaguely waved at Izuna and Madara, "well, you got the pinwheel eyes. I'm assuming that one of you gets to be the second person gathering the reliable, accurate information on skills and abilities." She squinted at Tobirama. "I don't know what to do about you, but I'm sure you can think of a way to make yourself useful. You could always hold my sister's hand while she gives birth."

Tobirama ground his teeth. "I can be the sensor."

"Good, now that we've got all that decided—"

"It is not decided," Izuna cut in. "What makes you a good decoy? If you get yourself killed, I don't want your sister to strangle us with her placenta cord."

Natsumi sniffed in disdain. "I can heal myself in real time, on the battlefield. It's not a talent I'd like the whole world to know, gotta keep some secrets in the back pocket and all, but hey, we're supposed to be allies here, and it just doesn't make sense to keep secrets at the cost of getting us all killed and cursing our children to the unknown fate of whatever lies across the ocean. Which is child prostitution and cannibalism, if the odors on the raiders are anything to go by." She wrinkled her nose. "And something demonic, but not like the tailed beasts. I haven't been able to put my finger on what the cause of that odor is about."

"How close is the nearest group?" Hashirama asked.

Natsumi turned her head to look in various directions. "The Akimichi group is about fifty-five kilometers away, north-west. The Sarutobi and Inuzuka groups are already at the beaches, one hundred kilometers south of us. The Senju group is only twenty kilometers behind them. The Uchiha group is the closest – forty-five kilometers south-east."

Madara glanced over at Izuna – his brother had gone deathly still, his face expressionless. His eyes flickered erratically between red and black.

"It looks like I'm going to being delayed, for reasons," Shinzou said, making a pained face as she rubbed her stomach – it had gone rigid again. "Three of our sisters can help me, the other three I'll attach to the group of men to act as trackers. As a force, they won't be able to move as fast as Natsumi. One of you," she glared down her nose at Madara and Hashirama, "get to be leader of the rescue, in my temporary absence."

Wait a minute… Madara was pretty sure that he never agreed to Shinzou being the leader of the rescue. He had just assumed that they were working side-by-side, equal in authority, but hands-off in regards to the other's clan.

Shinzou turned back to Natsumi. "By the time the main group reaches you, you should've taken out the other berserker and learned of how to defeat the raiders as a whole, or you'll be dead, and the two with you can explain to the main group how you managed to get yourself killed, so they don't have to share in your fate."

Natsumi grinned. "I don't intend to die until I'm a hundred years old."

"The gods aren't big on intentions."

Natsumi made a fist and shook it. "If the Shinigami comes for me today, I'll just sock him in the nose and tell him to return in eighty years."

"I'm going with you," Izuna said in a low growl.

Madara instantly clamped a hand around Izuna's wrist. "No. You would never be able to stand back and do nothing but watch."

Izuna kept his wrist and arm loose; he didn't bother pulling away from Madara, but tension tightened his shoulders and legs. "I don't care who deals the killing blow, as long as the raider is dead." He pinned Natsumi with a solid Sharingan-gaze. "I'll let you rip out the raider's throat, dismantle his body, piss on his insides, and throw the pieces into a pit. Let me set the remains on fire, and I'll be satisfied with that."

"Swear it to me," Madara whispered urgently.

Izuna's hand tightened into a fist before it relaxed again. "I will not involve myself in the fight."

"Good," Natsumi declared. "It's my fight. I'd be quite irritated with you for interrupting my fight."

Madara suppressed the urge to kick Natsumi, seeing as how she had interrupted the fight between Madara and Hashirama just yesterday by assaulting them from mid-air.

"I'm going." Tobirama stood. "If you're going, so am I. I'll be the sensor."

The look Izuna gave Tobirama was toxic with loathing as he rose to his feet. "Why – do you plan on stabbing me if I lose control?"

"I don't need to stab you. I just have to prop my sword up on a rock where you'll trip onto it."

Natsumi stepped between them. "Boys, please. You'll have your chance to spill some blood in a little while. In the mean time," the smile that flashed all her teeth was as cold as steel, "I'll need you to strip down."