Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or Highschool DxD, and I make no profit writing fanfics about them.

(AN): Nice responses.


Naruto wrapped his worn tan headscarf tighter around his face, covering everything up to the eyes in an effort to keep the blowing sand of the desert out of his mouth. Sweat stung the corner of his vision; brought out by the blaze of the sun despite the late hour of the day.

"I still think you should have just used Tailed Beast Mode. Scurrying around like rats is beneath us."

"Settle down, Kurama." The blond muttered, bracing his knees when a strong gust of wind pulled at their travelling party. "This way is smarter and you know it."

"Tch."

When he'd been a kid Naruto never would have let himself travel anywhere so covered up. Everything he did had been about getting noticed.

But he was much older and wiser now. They had to stay below the radar if they didn't want his and Sasuke's return to be blabbed about from one end of the continent to the other. Secrecy was important, so he hadn't kicked up a fuss about taking the longer route to Sunagakure.

If they were discovered before they'd had a chance to come up with a good plan, there was no telling how the other villages would react. Twenty years dead had probably dented his reputation, so the younger generation of ninja from Kumo or Iwa might think his story was just a bunch of puffed up bullshit and do nothing about it. Or they could panic and escalate from the current stalemate into total war.

In the end, they had to play their cards right to prevent more death. Naruto wasn't dumb or selfish enough to value pride over human lives.

"Sakura." The blond coughed when the wind finally died down, falling into step beside his aged squadmate. "What happened to everyone else? You and Gaara are right here obviously, and Kaka-sensei…" Naruto trailed off, biting the inside of his cheek until he drew blood.

Damn his stubborn old teacher! He would have been fine just being an Edo Tensei summon like Sasuke, so there was no reason for Kakashi to just go and die like that. But Kakashi had always gone the extra mile for his team. It was part of what Naruto admired about his first sensei.

Glittering emerald orbs shifted from the distant sand dunes to peer at the reborn jinchuuriki.

Sakura blinked the grit from her eyes, barely feeling the pain after her years of get used to the arid clime. It was nothing compared to the agony in her chest. "Hinata committed suicide a few months after we found you dead. Tenten and Sai died during the invasion that destroyed Konoha. The rest of us made it out, but not in one piece. Kiba lost his legs and Lee's blind."

Each name was like a fresh dagger to Naruto's already aching heart. He'd never wanted to die, but knowing just how badly his absence had affected his friends and his village made him wish more desperately than ever before that he hadn't. If he hadn't let himself go that one night at the bar all those years ago, so many things would be different.

"What else?"

"Shikamaru and Temari got married half a year after you died, but they got divorced a couple of years ago and he's with Ino now. Chouji and Kankuro have an understanding. Shino turned into a bit of a playboy, but everyone knows he's the father of Kurenai-sensei's second kid." Sakura rattled off in a crisp tone. "Gaara and I married for politics, right after the Exile."

Naruto was glad for the tidbits of gossip that helped distract him from thinking about how so many of his friends were dead or crippled. "Kurenai-sensei and Shino? That's…" he shuddered dramatically.

"What about Taka?" Sasuke spoke up for the first time in hours, his uncovered hair rustling in the breeze. Unlike the rest of their small party, the undead warrior made no concession to the heat and breeze he couldn't feel. "And Orochimaru?"

The Uchiha asking after his old team and sensei wasn't entirely unexpected, but the quiet scoff that Sakura gave off let Naruto know that even after all these years the pink-haired woman was still holding a bit of a grudge. She blamed them, and Orochimaru especially; for leading Sasuke away from Team Seven.

Naruto himself had forgiven Orochimaru a long time ago, but that didn't mean he liked the man either. A creep was still a creep, no matter which team he was playing for.

"Suigetsu went back to Kiri and reformed the Seven Swordsmen. He's now ranked pretty high in their government and is one of our closest allies. Juugo died when Kumo rolled right over Oto at the start of the war. Orochimaru was taken prisoner by Iwa, but our spies say he's still not talking. Kabuto is one of our most skilled Iryu-nin, in case you were wondering."

The absence of a particular name stuck out. "And Karin?" Sasuke prodded, his voice coloured by only a cool sort of disinterest.

If Naruto hadn't known already, he never would have guessed his friend had taken his distant relative as a lover once upon a time. It made him question just how much emotion there actually had been in that affair.

Sakura's eyes crinkled with an anguish and pity. "Karin was captured by Kumo during the fall of Konoha. They took her back to their village and put her in one of their bloodline breeding programs. When she got pregnant she sabotaged the electric system of the house they were keeping her in. In the end, she burnt herself to death. It kept them from using any of her DNA after she passed on."

"I see." Sasuke sighed raggedly, running a hand over the back of his head in a stress-relieving gesture.

There was no reaction to the death and imprisonment of several of his old comrades beyond that, and Naruto wondered if it was because Sasuke was simply used to people he'd formed bonds with dying brutally. The thought was profoundly sad.

"We're almost there." Gaara cut in, tossing a look over his shoulder as he interrupted the depressing conversation. "Keep those scarves up – and that includes you, Sasuke. Even twenty years later you're still recognizable, and we don't need word about you two getting out quite yet."

Clicking his tongue at the Kazekage's order, Sasuke pulled the balled-up headscarf from his pocket and swiftly wrapped its concealing folds around his hair and face. "Let's just get this over with."


Rias woke with a bitter aftertaste in her mouth and a heavy throbbing ache between her eyes.

"Good, you're awake." Akeno's exhausted voice greeted her, and a soft warm hand slithered underneath Rias' shoulders to help the redhead into a sitting position.

Wincing at the stiff pull of muscles in her neck, Rias turned her attention to her Queen and stopped short in shock.

Akeno looked awful, with heavy dark bags beneath her eyes and thick bloodshot lines all through her white sclera. The skin of her face was greyed with bone deep fatigue, and even more concerningly her pink lips had tinged to an unhealthy blue.

"What happened?" Rias demanded in dismay. "How long was I out?"

Blinking in confusion, Akeno tilted her head. "Only a few hours, why?"

"A few hours?" The disbelief was think in Rias' strident tones. "But you look like…" she trailed off, not quite sure how to say it without sounding outright insulting. But it seemed like her hesitation was for naught, as Akeno suddenly just looked very amused.

"Like death warmed over?" Akeno chuckled roughly, stepping back away from the bed to give her mistress more space. "That's so cruel of you to say, Rias-tan."

Rias snorted at the teasing, relieved that at least that was the same and rolling to her feet in a single smooth motion. Patting at her tangled mane in an attempt to restore some order to the mussed strands, she smirked. "If you have enough energy to act the fool, then you'll be alright. Now, what happened with Ophis?"

Pouting just a bit, Akeno waved her hand about airily. "After she fed us our reptile supplement she said she would be in touch, and then she went kapoof."

Rias frowned at that. "What do you mean us?" A niggling suspicion burbled up in her gut, and Rias hoped she was wrong. She had decided to take on the risk of venom alone, and she hadn't wanted the rest of her peerage to come gambling along with her. It was stupid and unnecessary.

Scratching the side of her nose sheepishly, Akeno let her violet gaze track off to the side to avoid meeting the redhead's piercing teal stare. "Well, once you had the snake stuffed down your throat Yuuto raised a good point. You and Naruto are practically brother and sister, and it would be strange if you weren't seen together. So if you're pretending to be Naruto, then someone has to pretend to be you, and we all agreed that I was the best choice. And then Ophis made it happen."

"Idiots, all of you!" Rias exploded, clapping a hand to her forehead and giving an exasperated groan. The Ruin Princess had no words to describe just how thoughtless they were rushing ahead like that without even asking for her opinion. Soul binding magic was complex and dangerous.

It was bad enough that one of their little family had to take the risk of switching between bodies to keep Naruto's absence and past life a secret, but playing a game of musical chairs with possession was just asking for trouble. "You're being too reckless!"

Akeno gave her best friend a chilly glare. "And who exactly decided you're the only one that is allowed to take risks, Rias? Because the last time I checked, we were all treating each other as equals. You and Naruto might be nobility by birth, but we're your friends, not your slaves. And if we want to stick our necks out for you, we will. That's what love is about in the first place."

The rebuke came like a slap to the face, driving Rias to recoil with a jaw clenched in indignation. Maybe it wasn't some rule they'd explicitly laid out, but the redhead thought it was pretty clearly implied. The older members of her peerage took care of the younger ones, and the strong defended the weak.

Rias was the second oldest and the strongest in their little family, with the protection and resources of the nobility on top of it. Out of all of them, she was the most qualified to take risks and make decisions. For anyone that wasn't Sasuke to step up and throw themselves in danger alongside her without so much as a 'by-your-leave' felt bizarre and disorienting.

Then again, maybe she should have expected it. Having lost her family once and spending years on the run made Akeno even more reckless than Rias herself could be. A few years of stability wouldn't tame the underlying insecurity.

So rather than throw down the gauntlet over Akeno's choice, Rias just screwed on a blandly polite smile instead. "Well, I suppose it's too late to do anything about it now." If she couldn't change things, Rias would just work with them as they were.

She was good at that.


The moon was high in the sky, hanging fat and pale like a swollen melon by the time they slipped into the backstreets of Sunagakure. More than one patrolling guard had flitted by overhead to inspect their party, but they always cleared out once Gaara made a wiggling motion with his left hand.

Naruto couldn't help but find it amusing. Secret handshakes and code words? Maybe the whole Kage game was much less serious than he'd always thought it was, and much more like a bunch of kids playing in their secret base? The Konohamaru Corps would have pissed themselves with glee back in the day if they knew.

"I don't think you're one to talk. All you ever did was whine on and on about being the Hokage."

"Shut it, furball."

Knuckling the sand out of one eye, Naruto dogged Sakura's footsteps as she led him to one of the many squat homesteads that populated Suna. It looked exactly like the dozen houses they'd already passed, and if not for the swelling sensation of chakra at the edge of his still rusty senses Naruto wouldn't have thought it was any different from the rest.

Sakura coughed dryly, knocking on the door twice, then five times, then once, and then finally eight times. "Hurry it up, Kazui-kun!" She harangued in a rolling tone better suited to a peasant fishwife than the Nanadaime Hokage. "The dango is getting cold!"

"Troublesome bitch." A baritone voice rumbled from the other side of the door, vaguely familiar and accompanied by the sound of a lock clicking open. "I knew I should have told your parents to piss off with the whole marriage idea."

"Oh sure, I'm the problem." Sakura snapped as the door cracked open, turning to usher in her followers without missing a beat in her contrived ranting. "It's not that you smoke too much or that you drink too much, oh no. It's all me."

Naruto slipped through the thin opening, squinting his eyes as they were plunged into complete darkness. The only thing he could see was Sasuke's faintly burning Sharingan hovering in pitch black.

And then with the stink of burning pitch orange light flared. "About time you got here." Shikamaru muttered, angry red scars curving across the planes of his face as he harshly studied the two resurrected shinobi. "I expected you three hours ago."

"There were complications with the Edo Tensei." Gaara replied frostily, shucking off his cloak before squarely meeting his ex-brother-in-law's dark eyes. "We needed more sacrifices to bind their souls than we expected, and ended up burning through every volunteer before we managed to take hold of them."

"Tch." The Nara grunted, holding his torch aloft to better considering Naruto's lively flush and the grey pallor of Sasuke's undead flesh. "Well, at least it was worth it."

"Sacrifices?" Naruto questioned lowly, with a particular edge to his words that only came from slow-building fury. Both he and Sasuke were intimately aware of what price had to be paid to use Edo Tensei or Rinne Tensei: at least one life for each jutsu. But Gaara's words fairly clearly suggested they'd needed more than that. "How many people, exactly, died to bring us back here?"

"One hundred each." Sakura broke in clinically, flicking the lock shut with calloused fingers before grabbing the torch from Shikamaru's lazy grip and plodding through the hallways of the empty home.

Left with no choice but to follow if he was going to get answers, Naruto clenched his jaw and stomped after the pink haired woman.

More and more the blond was questioning what the fuck had happened to everyone. He'd died and had faith that his friends would at least be able to carry on his dream. Instead he came back to discover they were all dabbling in murder and human sacrifice.

They descended a vast spiraling staircase, tunneling deep into the earth until all sounds of the world above had faded away and the only sound was Naruto's thrumming pulse in his ears. "Hey, are we almost there?" he prodded, breaking the silence with a huff.

"Almost." Gaara answered, abruptly turning in place and feeling along the bricked walls of the stairwell. Nimble fingers slid into recessed caches, and the redhead shoved forward, pushing a hidden door inward on its hinges.

Coughing at the stale air, Naruto waved the dust away and moved into a great chamber bathed in golden light and filled with the scent of wax candles.

"Yo, Naruto."

A grin split the jinchuuriki's lips, and for the first time in hours he felt something like steady ground underneath his feet. "Wassup, dogbreath?" he shot back, a teasing twinkle in his eye as he set his gaze on Kiba.

The Inuzuka clan head had let himself go in the decades since they'd last seen each other. What used to be a tightly muscled abdomen had grown into a meaty belly, pushing against the roughspun cotton of Kiba's tunic and jiggling when the man patted at his great stomach. Really, the only thing that was the same was the shaggy hair and the thick red tattoos marking his flabby face. "Just waiting for you to lounge your wussy ass in here foxboy."

Naruto refused to look away from the stumps of Kiba's legs, rounded at the knee and covered up with rolls of cloth and blankets. It would demean his old bar buddy if he started treating the man like a freakshow cripple. So even if it made his heart ache in his chest, Naruto was determined not to react to it. "Well, better late than never, ne?"

The fanged grin on Kiba's face twisted. "Yeah." He replied, a brittle sound to his booming voice.

"So, who all else is here?" Naruto questioned with a practiced smirk, azure gaze shifting from one face to the next. Shino he had expected, and Chouji's stern face; but the heavily pregnant Ino was a bit of a shock. "Fuck, you look like you're about to pop!"

Sakura slapped the blond across the back of the head, near two decades later but with all the familiar reflex of yesterday. "Naruto." The Hokage groaned, shaking out her hand and glaring half-heartedly at her wincing squadmate.

Barking a sharp laugh, Ino cradled a protective hand over her belly and eyed Naruto with an expression of nostalgic fondness. "I see you haven't changed." She mused, cocking a pale eyebrow when Sasuke huffed. "And neither did you, Sasuke-kun."

The smile Naruto offered the hodgepodge collection of his old friends was only a little strained. Sure, there seemed to be too many faces missing. And sure, the ones that were there were all marred by war scars and old despair, but they were still his old comrades. If he turned away from them now just because they'd had a few tragedies or because they were a little weathered, he couldn't claim to be Uzumaki Naruto.

"So, what's the plan?"


(AN): Another 3000 here. Short chapters, so short ANs.

Tags – People are so baffled by this I'm surprised. The reason the pairing tags changed is that the series overall (it IS DxD after all) is a harem. I only have four spaces to work with, so the tags rotate the girls rather than tagging the series Naruto/Ravel and Sasuke/Rias all the way through. The posting on Ao3 gives a clearer list of ALL pairings in the entire series.