Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto nor do I own Highschool DxD. I make no profit writing about them either.

(AN): Didn't plan to start this so early, but eh… Blame Glacious. He nagged.


The golden sunlight blazed as it reflected off the pure white snowbanks, making Valerie wince and shield herself against the glare. The dhampir-turned-devil wasn't going to burst into flame at the sight, but her eyes were still more sensitive than any mortal man's. Some in the Church suggested the vampiric sensitivity to the sun was because they were cursed. The vampires themselves just claimed it was part of their evolution as nocturnal hunters.

With Sephiroth Graal constantly whispering in the back of her head, Valerie wondered if there wasn't a little bit of truth to both.

"Why are we stopping?" Valerie asked Sasuke, peering up the frost-bound hill as Naruto slowly ascended alone and unaided. Her King had ordered them all to let him go on by himself before starting his trek up the frozen hills.

An undead crimson gaze shuttered in exasperation, frustration visibly twisting the Uchiha's face as he stared up after Naruto. "A few of his old 'friends' are coming. He wanted to talk to them alone."

Despite the annoyance sharpening Sasuke's words, Valerie was pretty sure his anger wasn't directed at her. She'd never really given Sasuke a reason to be upset with her.

Ice crunched as Koneko shoved her way forward, nose wrinkled with distaste as a concealed dip in the terrain brought the snow up to her knees. "You should go." The nekomata advised, slapping a handful of white powder away from her waist. "Before he sells us all to the circus."

"It would be counterproductive."

Koneko's roundabout assertion that Sasuke had just as much right to be negotiating as Naruto was one Valerie disagreed with. Valerie didn't dislike the Uchiha, but he wasn't as strong or as determined as her King.

But she did understand Koneko's loyalty.

Naruto's voice rose into an indistinct murmur as the blond waved his remaining hand at a pair of dark-skinned men that appeared on the mountainous horizon. The man on the left was swaddled up in white and yellow robes, while the one on the right sported sunglasses and a black kimono.

The trio watched warily as the Raikage and his brother slowly made their way over to the jinchuuriki, stomping through the snow until they stood tall and unbent before the scarred blond.

The tension was thick enough to be cut with a knife as the entire expeditionary force waited for the slightest sign of hostility from the Kumo-nin. More than one face burned with unyielding hatred, to the point that Valerie knew most of their so-called comrades were waiting for an excuse to start a fight. Peace wouldn't come easily to those kind of men. One way or another, the rivers would be running red.

Chewing anxiously at the inside of her cheek, Valerie turned to Sasuke and repeated the Rook's suggestion. "You really should go up there, even if Naruto wants to talk to them alone." If a fight did break out she didn't want her King to be caught standing alone right next to a pair of ninja whose strength was supposedly legendary. Sasuke wasn't her King, but he was powerful, especially in this world. "Please."

They weren't really close enough that she'd feel comfortable making personal requests of him, which was why it surprised Valerie when Sasuke just exhaled irritably and started trudging his way up the frosted hill without a word of argument. She'd thought he would need a little more begging than that.

"I hope you don't try to suggest we go up there too." Koneko warned coolly, the ochre tint of her eyes piercing as she studied the dhampir. The implication that she'd have found the proposal utterly moronic was hardly subtle.

Without the buffer of the rest of their companions, Valerie was exposed to the brunt of Koneko's chilly regard, and it made her wilt a bit. "Of course not." The blonde reassured the pale-haired girl, waving away the idea vigorously. "We're just strangers here. Sasuke and Naruto know these people and know how to deal with them. We just need to stay out of the way until it's time to go back home."

That just prompted an amused snort from Koneko. "That's one way to put it. But making Sasuke your negotiator isn't the smartest move."

"Excuse me?" Valerie's eyebrows climbed upwards.

"Sasuke cut the one on the left's arm off and tried to sell the other one off to a homicidal maniac as a human sacrifice. They're not exactly best friends."

"What?"


Sakura rubbed her fingers, the mixture of glass and ash that made up the Konoha landscape grinding away against the callouses on her skin. Everything had been reduced to fire and ruin. With Yamato long dead it would be years if not decades before they could restore the life and greenery to her homeland.

The destruction of Konoha was just one more grievance in a long line, reinforcing her resolution. Kumo and Iwa could never be forgiven, and their crimes could never be forgotten. One way or another, they'd get their pound of flesh.

She wondered if this was how Sasuke felt when Itachi drew the curtain on the Uchiha clan that bloody night so long ago.

Rising back to her feet, Sakura brushed the dirt from her faded cheongsam before turning to Shikamaru. "How soon will Kiri get involved?" she demanded without preamble, stalking back towards the tent city that had been erected by Leaf-nin eager to reclaim their village. To think that a few hours ago she'd been one of them, still full of hope and energy.

Coughing harshly into his fist, Shikamaru spat out a wad of yellow phlegm before shaking his head. "If they get involved, don't you mean? They've done pretty well for themselves sitting on the fence."

Sakura narrowed her eyes into a poison green glare. "Don't play games with me, Nara." The Hokage had very little tolerance for bullshitting at the best of times, and with the ruins of Konoha surrounding them she wasn't exactly in a joking mood.

Schooling his face into neutrality, Shikamaru shrugged lightly. "It depends on a lot of things. If Naruto and Sasuke get stalemated, they'll sit and watch. If those two keep bulldozing their way to Kumo, I'd expect Kiri to declare war on Iwa by the end of the week. I wouldn't worry too much about it. We don't need them and the probability they'd declare war on us is so small it's essentially nonexistent."

In the end, Sakura couldn't find any points in his assessment to disagree with. It wasn't exactly a secret that the northern alliance had been throwing its weight around after the destruction of Konoha, and in doing so they'd alienated a lot of the smaller villages and the only 'neutral' great power left. Supporting the northern alliance wasn't in Kiri's best interests.

More than one village council was probably sitting at the edges of their seats drooling as power on the continent was rebalanced. Everyone wanted a piece of the pie but few were willing to spend the blood and treasure needed to buy it fairly.

Kiri wasn't Sakura's real concern anyway. As long as Sasuke and Naruto didn't turn their backs on Konoha, they could take on the rest of the world and win. Which was the rub. "You saw them more often than the rest of us put together did before the invasion. Do you think they're determined enough?"

It wasn't exactly the most subtle of questions, and the fact that Shikamaru just looked at her with his inscrutable dark gaze without answer made Sakura's blood run cold.

Once the pair were safely hidden away in the command tent with the rotating remnants of ANBU standing guard outside, Shikamaru scrabbled for a cigarette and lit up. "Do you want me to make it pretty for you or just give it to you quick and dirty?"

"Just tell me straight." Sakura muttered, sweeping around the battered table and peering down at the yellowed maps that were spread out and marked with troop movements. "Don't beat around the bush." After the downfall of Konoha she wasn't the sort of person to mince words. The death of her country had been the final nail in the coffin of the bubbly little girl she'd once been.

Giving Sakura a wry look that clearly implied she was asking for it, Shikamaru tapped an idle finger against the diamond marking the front pushing into Shimo no Kuni. "Sasuke is at any given moment three steps away from telling us to fuck off. Maybe he just liked being dead, who knows? But he isn't invested in the war and if Naruto wasn't here then he wouldn't bother with us."

Which was just about what Sakura had expected, to be honest. After the clusterfuck that led up to the Uchiha Clan massacre Sasuke was never going to be the blind patriot Itachi had been. Reluctant protection was the best they could have hoped for from him. It wasn't ideal but as long as Sasuke didn't end up as Konoha's enemy again she could work with it. "And Naruto?"

Shikamaru spent much longer digesting that query, even bringing up his hands into his so-called 'thinking pose' as he mulled it over. "It's hard to say." He admitted after a long moment passed, the crow's feet around his eyes tightening in thought. "We all have personal experience with Naruto's particular brand of… doggedness."

"But?" Sakura prodded.

"But he's different." The shadowbinder frowned like he'd bitten into a lemon. "It's like he's just going through the motions. Like he's doing what he thinks he should do, rather than what he actually wants to do. Maybe death had a greater effect on him than we expected."

Sakura grunted her agreement. She'd seen it herself in the handful of times that she'd actually spoken to Naruto since pulling him out of the grave. Her old friend didn't have the same drive he'd once had, which was convenient if it came to sidelining him out after any peace agreement but less useful on the battlefield. It was almost like when they'd resurrected Naruto they hadn't summoned all of him. Like something had been left behind.

"That could be a problem."


The taste of winter was in Naruto's mouth, but that cold bite was nothing next to the shattered feeling in his chest. It felt like someone had taken a blade to his heart and mangled it until nothing was left but bloody meat and raw sinews. Physically he was fine, but spiritually he was bleeding.

The blond just couldn't understand why they'd turned their backs on him. Sure, rationally, he could see why A and Killer B might feel pressured into breaking their shared dreams. Cynical people gave up too quickly and too easily on what was good and clean in the world. Sasuke had been a prime example of that sort of mentality before Naruto beat it out of him.

But coming up with a handful of excuses in the back of his mind while trudging across Fire Country was one thing. Actually coming face to face with his old comrades and seeing the darkness that resignation and 'pragmatism' had carved into their souls was another. All he could cough out with a single broken question. "Why?"

Why did they turn their backs on him? Why did they abandon their shared dreams? Why did they flood the land with blood and slaughter? Why didn't they believe in him anymore?

Killer B pursed his lips, brown eyes pensive as they dropped to the ground in shame. Of the two of them, his betrayal hurt Naruto far more. But in the end it was the Raikage, and not Naruto's fellow jinchuuriki that broke the silence. "Because we had to."

Naruto almost punched the elderly Kage in the face for that, but they were all distracted by Sasuke's sudden arrival.

"Raikage." Twenty years ago the hostility between Sasuke and Kumogakure's leader would have been thick enough to choke, but it seemed like time and death had reduced them to a watchful neutrality. "Killer B. Naruto."

A small part of Naruto wanted to demand Sasuke give him a bit of privacy with his old friends, as they'd agreed, but the larger part of him was just glad for the sudden show of silent support. It steadied the jittering shards of his heart into orderly fragments.

"You didn't have to." Naruto denied, resuming the conversation with Sasuke at his back. "We knew it was gonna be hard, but we all knew it was gonna take sacrifices. So just cut the bullshit, alright?"

The bitter accusation in Naruto's tone made Killer B wilt, but it sparked a touch of defiance in A and the man stood taller. "It wasn't about being hard. We could have worked through something that was hard. It was about being impossible. I fought off forty-three assassination attempts before I started questioning if we could actually achieve peace without you. Don't blame us for failing when you couldn't even keep yourself alive to see it through."

A threw Naruto's fury right back in his face, stoking an even heavier burn of anger in the jinchuurki's gullet. "It's not like I asked to get my head cut off." he bit out, shoving back the memory of the guilt he'd felt when he realized the comfort of his new life was bought by the suffering in his old one. Easy life in Gehenna or not, it didn't justify all the war and murder.

"We didn't think you did." Killer B spoke up for the first time, his deep voice absent of the rolling rhyme of his youth. He sounded nothing like a reckless rebel Naruto had once known. "But without you everyone lost faith. They didn't see a way to get to that future you promised without you."

It was the admission of utter hopelessness that finally took the wind out of Naruto's sails, pouring water on the fire of his rage. "That's not an excuse." He sighed, breath misting into the air with his exhale. "All you had to do was keep trying. There were always gonna be those people that couldn't let go of hate and revenge. We knew that even when we were fighting Kaguya. It wasn't going to be perfect, but it could've been better than this."

'This' being another generation of hate and violence, with gore running through the cracks of their hearts and vengeance on every tongue. So much suffering, and for what? Pride? Money? Land?

"There's a difference between a couple of terrorists and civil war, Naruto." A chuckled bitterly, the veins in the hollow of his throat shifting. He'd already been an older man during the Fourth Great Shinobi War, but the wrinkles and liver spots made him seem like a hidebound centenarian. "No one was hiring shinobi anymore, and your naïve fantasy doesn't put food in the belly."

Naruto's lip curled back in disgust. "So you figured there was going to be blood either way, and better for it to be everyone else than you? Did you even try to find other things for shinobi to do but kill each other?"

The white folds of the Raikage's robes rustled as he hooked a thumb in his belt and sneered. "And what exactly do you think is a good career choice for a man that's spent his entire life killing for money? Most shinobi just aren't good for anything else." Every word was a tired exercise in pessimism.

At some point the thick taste of copper and blood had exploded over Naruto's tongue, but he couldn't pinpoint exactly when he'd bitten into the inside of his cheek. He was too busy trying to knuckle away the pounding headache building in his temples. "Just… shut up, okay? We'll fix this. Just call for peace and we'll get around the table and hammer something out. I'm not happy but we can still fix this before it gets even worse."

"No." The simple denial Killer B offered was unexpected, reigniting the simmering tension into a blazing boil.

Silence hung for a moment before Naruto squared his shoulders, his mien shifting from disappointed friend to implacable enemy. "What do you mean, no?" he questioned, deceptively soft. All the tangled up hurt and mercy drained out of him, leaving nothing behind but diamond determination. The blond's phantom limb burned. Did they think that he wasn't strong enough to fight them? Naruto didn't want to hurt anyone, but he was more than willing to kick some ass if he had to.

In contrast to Naruto's rising aggression, it seemed like that last dregs of pride fell away from the Kumo-nin. Neither of them seemed willing to meet his eyes, but eventually Killer B pursed his lips and raised his head. "We're tired, Naruto. It's time for a new generation to step up, which ain't gonna happen until we're out of the way. Darui already knows what we want him to do."

Disbelief made all the muscles of Naruto's face go slack. "What?" He struggled to comprehend just what exactly they wanted from him. It just didn't make sense. They couldn't…

Surely not. "What?"

"We're tired."

Tired but unwilling to surrender. Tired, but still searching for that crimson blaze of glory and honor. All it would need was for Naruto to stain his fingers with scarlet sin.

Viscerally, he refused. He'd fight if he had to, for the sake of the future. But fighting to satisfy the pride and masochism of his old comrades? What they were asking for make Naruto recoil, his right hand fisting in denial.

Perhaps that was the last straw.

"Fine then." Sasuke cut in coldly, settling on hand on the hilt of his chokuto and pinning the two Kumogakure shinobi with his spinning pinwheel gaze. For the first time since his resurrection the Rinnegan burned in his left eye, and naked steel shone under the dawn sunlight as he drew his blade. "I'll end it for you."


(AN): Another 3000. Started watching some DxD OVAs and I feel like my brain died a little. Issei I swear to God…

Matatabi – There's still a bit of argument over how exactly this could work. Look, there's a difference between 'we threw big attacks at each other while a kilometer apart' or 'I took a glancing blow from a moon cutter but got out of the way in time' and 'I experienced the point-blank vaporization of the entire life force of a bijuu ten feet away'. Naruto could defeat any of them in open combat, but that's not the same as a bonafide nuclear detonation that you try to contain with your own body.

Anyway, beyond this I've started a Discord server with a couple of authors. The invite is yuF2GYx. Hop on for fanfic discussion or just to nag me about updates if you like.