Chapter 26

Oh how Kurotsuchi dreamed of the plushest of sofas and the most relaxing of days in the future. A future where she wasn't constantly walking along a cart on to a new destination just for someone with a loud voice to announce the fact that she was married to a dude along with four other chicks. That future was going to be a good future indeed for her.

Granted, the more she got to know the other chicks, the more she realized they weren't that bad. Hell, compared to the people she interacted with as 'friends', they were all downright saints. And the dude wasn't the worst. His dad killed her mom, but the less thought about that the better.

The walking along the cart to a new destination every week or so, however… That would be better off done with as soon as possible. She was just glad there was only one more to go. What made her not so glad was how she had to trudge through trenches of snow to get there. For all the talk of how important she was to the stability of the world, she sure did feel like she got the short end of the stick at times.

A flair of bright blue hellfire lit up the road in front of her for a second or two and a small rush of newly melted water flowed past her boots shortly after. Yugito stood in front of them all, her arms cloaked in the very same hellfire with her brow furrowed and set ahead to their destination. At least there was a woman who specialized in throwing up gouts of fire in charge of shoveling snow out of the way for them.

She was an interesting case study, to say the least. She used to be a hard ass with a haughty, better-than-thou way of speaking. Now, she was quiet, a little bit removed, and kind, for the most part. The woman seemed to have found her peace, a sort of equilibrium to go back to whenever parts of her strayed too far from it. And finding that peace seemed to have been correlated with her relationship towards a certain blond who she had some relation with.

Kurotsuchi took a shuddering breath and hugged the scarf closer to her neck. The only way she knew the sun was setting was because the overcast clouds were losing their grayness to a darker grayness. Huge, sky-piercing mountains popped out of the white fields every now and then. And if she looked very closely, she could see bright points of light glinting out of the windows of a house almost buried in the snow. It was perhaps a cozy land to some, but hardy and bone-chilling to others.

She just wanted to be back in hidden stone. Sure, there weren't as many entertaining things to do there than, say, hidden leaf, but it was homey. There were walls in the form of giant mountains protecting her. There were nice landscapes to walk through. Enemies to hate… Well, fewer enemies to hate nowadays as it were. But still. It was a simple place and a part of her really wanted to get back to it.

A sudden squeal of excited delight grew louder as it fell from the sky and stopped just as suddenly when it impacted a snow pile next to her. Kurotsuchi didn't have to look over to know that Fu had divebombed the drift in order to make a snow angel. She had always assumed angles' wings to be of the feathered variety, but who knows? There might be one or two out there with insectoid wings. Fu carefully extricated herself from the imprint on the snow and took a few steps back to appreciate her work.

"You know, there could have been a sharp icicle where you landed," Kurotsuchi said.

Fu waved her off. "I woulda just healed if that happened."

"Even if it pierced your brain?"

Fu narrowed her eyes and adopted a thinking pose. "I… don't actually know what would happen. That's never happened to me." She looked at Kurotsuchi, eyes half-lidded and with a dangerous mind in plan. "You wouldn't want…"

"I'm not helping you with it," Kurotsuchi said resolutely.

Fu lost the support of her body and flopped forward. "Awww. But you didn't let me finish."

"Didn't have to."

"I was just going to ask if you wanted to have a threesome with me," Fu mumbled.

Kurotsuchi almost blushed. Almost, mind you. She huffed and turned away. "One, that's not what you were going to ask. Two, no. Three, Naruto isn't even here."

Fu got an impish smirk. "Who said anything about Naruto? Hey Yugito!"

"What?!" The woman shouted back from the front of the train.

"Kurotsuchi wants to have a threesome!"

"I do not!"

There was a pause and Yugito got her breath back from her labors and processed the information that she had just received. "Stop messing around, you two! If you've got time to fuck around, you've got time to help me lead the way!"

Temari hopped out of the wagon and started trudging forth. "A castle with wide open plains all around it would be a terrible idea if you're being attacked by normal people. But it's just about the easiest way to stop an advance of shinobi. The samurai know what they're doing. And nobody knows what sort of truce the minor nations are going to come up with, so we have to keep our wits about us."

"Why can't Fu just fly us all there, anyway?" Kurotsuchi asked. "We've got a giant flying monster. We should be making use of it."

"For the same reason there's only five of us here. We don't know when or if the man with the swirled mask is going to make a move and drawing attention is the last thing we want. The conference of minor village heads at the land of iron is as good a place as any to enact a strategy, but we also can't count on his timing of it. We trudge along and hope we don't get noticed during transit. If he does find us, everyone who's making a perimeter around us converge and give us time to escape."

"Weren't you listening to the plan?" Fu asked.

"She was asleep, I think," Temari answered.

"It took you this long to ask about it?" Fu brought up as well.

Kurotsuchi showed her palms and shrugged. "I just… I just want this to be over as soon as possible. Tell me to follow Yugito through snowy mountains? Sure, if it means that's the easiest way through it all."

Temari and Fu shared a knowing, somewhat concerned look. "What are you going to do after this?" Temari asked.

Kurotsuchi let out a belt of frustrated breath. How did she know a question like that was coming her way? "I don't know. I don't know what I want. Hopefully, I'll pick up a hobby or something. Maybe once it gets really peaceful, I'll go on missions again. What are you two going to do anyways?"

"I'm… going to be the kazekage."

"And I don't know what I'm going to do," Fu said, looking up at the quickly darkening sky. "I'm thinking I'm just going to relax for a bit."

This time it was Kurotsuchi's and Temari's turn to share a knowing look. "Relax?" Kurotsuchi asked. "You?"

"I can live without constant excitement," Fu said with a slight pout. "Have a little faith, why don't you?"

"We haven't really been given a reason to have faith in you, in regard to that statement," Kurotsuchi said.

"I think the only time I've seen you relaxed was when you were asleep after Naruto dicked you," Temari added.

Kurotsuchi squinted and pinched the bridge of her nose. "You know, I used to think that you were rubbing off too much on him, but now it sounds like he's rubbing off on you."

Temari grinned lasciviously. "Damn right he's rubbing off on me."

It took shockingly very little time for Kurotsuchi to grasp the lecherous implications of her statement. She gave up when she did, shoulders sagging down and her last remaining breath leaving her lungs. "Are we there yet?"

"We'd be there a lot sooner if I got some help!" Yugito yelled back, followed by a bright blue flare of fire illuminating the way forward.

"Right, right," Temari said, walking faster to achieve her original goal of helping Yugito out.

This left Kurotsuchi and Fu alone, walking next to the wagon holding their supplies and last occupant, Mei. "Do you really think I can't relax?" Fu asked, lacking her usual exuberance. It was really the only way Kurotsuchi knew when to take her seriously.

"I don't know," Kurotsuchi said. "Maybe? I've kinda got the feeling that things aren't going to die down just because there's peace between the nations, so going on real, actual missions to help things out when this is all over sounds like the thing for me to do. But it's not something I've put real thought into. I can't guess what I'm going to want in the future. So I really can't guess what you're going to want in the future.

"I guess that's fair," Fu said, nodding to what she was hearing. "I think I wanna be a mom."

Kurotsuchi's eyebrows shot up to her hairline. She looked at the other girl mimicking a gaping fish. "W-Wha… How old are you again?

"Okay, okay, in a few years," Fu said, holding a hand up to stop Kurotsuchi's imaginations. "Or… I don't know when. I just know what I know."

Kurotsuchi nodded. "Well, uhhh, good luck with that?"

"What about you?" Fu said with a devilish smirk while leaning closer to her slightly. "Do you wanna pop any hellraisers out?'

"Haaa… well, considering I can't have extramarital affairs, none. Even if I were to throw my shits to the wind and have one, my dating pool is ridiculously small. And even if were to catch a guy, the possibility of starting a long-term relationship is disappearingly small. So the chances of me catching a guy, going into a long-term relationship, and then having a baby is just about zero."

If Fu was anything at that moment, it was that she was impressed by the leaps of logic. "Or you could… you know…"

Kurotsuchi looked at her for a few seconds, waiting for an end to the thought, before finishing it herself. "Naruto."

"I never was clear on how you felt about him," Fu confessed.

"He's… nice."

"I think… we're both aware of his attributes. I want to know how you feel about him."

"Okay," Kurotsuchi said, putting her hands on her hips. "How do you think I feel about him? I like him, okay? He's probably one of my best friends right now. Hell, he's one of my only friends."

"But…"

"But what?"

"Is that it?" Fu asked, somewhat perplexed. "I thought you were in love with him and weren't acting on it because he was seeing Temari, then me, then Yugito."

"I think…" Kurotsuchi closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "I think I was in love him. And I might still be. But I'm not sure if the same goes for him. After all, he has you, Temari, and Yugito. He doesn't really need me anymore."

Fu cracked a grin and chuckled a little bit. "Love isn't about need. Well, maybe, depending on how you define 'need'. Anyway, you don't love someone just because you need them. And you don't need someone just because you love them. It's about want; desire; the thing that you can't rationalize."

Kurotsuchi blinked and looked at her suspiciously. "Does he love me?"

Fu shrugged. "Wouldn't know, he hasn't told me and I haven't asked. Even if I did, I wouldn't tell you. And if you told me you loved him I wouldn't tell him. It's not something for a third party to put their hands in and muck about with."

Kurotsuchi turned back to the trench she was walking through. Temari was augmenting the fire Yugito was producing with her wind attacks, meaning there were more frequent rushes of warm water going past her boots and they were able to walk forward faster. "Good for you for being faithful, I guess."

"It is a good attribute to have, you know?"

Kurotsuchi nodded. "It is, it is. I won't refute that… I guess I'll be left guessing until he comes back."

Fu hopped on the wagon and laid herself out on the top of it. She was wearing light clothes, but was able to stave off the cold by continually taking in her beast chakra. It made Kurotsuchi want to put a coat on the girl. "Well, let's say everything goes lovey dovey. What after that?"

Kurotsuchi crossed her arms and glared up at the girl. "Oh come on, why do we have to pay so much attention to the future? Why can't I figure it out as I go along? There are too many paths forward to make adequate plans anyway. For now, it's blow-by-blow for me."

"Halleluiah!" Came the muffled voice of Mei from inside the wagon.

"She gets it!" Kurotsuchi said with a huff of laughter.

Fu put her hands underneath her head and looked at the sky slowly get darker and darker. "As chaotic as the times have been, I think I'm going to miss them a little bit."

Kurotsuchi looked up at her dubiously. "The times? What's so great about them?"

"I don't know. Just a feeling. Maybe it's just because it's almost over."

Kurotsuchi shook her head a little bit. "If I'm looking back on this time fondly, then that means the future is going to suck ass."

"Future's not the only thing going to be sucking ass!" Temari yelled back, followed by uproarious laughter from everyone except for Kurotsuchi, who glowered at the ground and tried not to let a smile come to her lips.

00000000

Mei sat down the bed first, letting the notion that she would stay in the position and function like how a kage would function flitter across her mind for a few graceful seconds before she plopped the rest of her body on the bed and belted out a huge sigh of relief. The bed wasn't even a little bit comfortable, but anything beat the rickety old wagon. She did like the horses though. They were the more stout, furrier variety, made for dragging wagons and carriages through snow. They were cute little sweethearts and they were still alive, surprisingly enough.

She'd had misgivings the entire trip. How they hadn't been attacked at sea was anyone's guess, but it didn't happen. Because of that, the idea that they'd be surprised while on the way to the land of iron was almost a surety in her mind and also the reason why she made so many redundant fallbacks in case they were attacked. All of which, turned out to not really matter in the end.

They made it.

They were safe.

Yugito spit very loudly into their shared bathroom sink and the sounds of her washing her mouth and toothbrush followed suit. The woman walked out while in the process of undoing her braid while belting out a wide yawn. She was wearing loose and cozy-looking pajamas that had shuriken art on them.

"You really are a beautiful woman, you know that?"

Yugito paused and slowly turned to Mei, a cautious look in her eyes. "Thank you?"

Mei tilted her head, a warm smile splitting her face. "Don't be so cagey; it was a sincere compliment. It's just so odd to me that you had such bad luck with men before Naruto."

Yugito shrugged. "It's not that I had never been advanced upon, but I had been burned badly and was content to live as a useful tool to my village." She sat down on the bed, feeling the rough blanket between her fingers. "Oh, how the times have changed."

"Oh, I get that," Mei breathed out. She had just gotten in the room after confirming the following days plans. She still had to get her makeup off and get into proper sleep attire. Apparently, all the minor village heads, sans the head of rain, who no one had even seen before, had all arrived and negotiations were planning to take place the day after and continue until a settlement could be reached.

It would take either a very short or a very long time for them to come to agreement on how they ought to interact with each other from then on. When and why they could bring up tariffs, shared responsibilities for dealing with bandits and robbers, any transnational infrastructure, those kinds of things. They were either going to follow what the major villages had already done or come to their own conclusions. Them being there was originally meant to be a symbolic gesture, but now they were essentially a bodyguard detail in case there was an attack.

Her nerves were getting riled up. Their enemy had too many unknowns, too many variables. The last time they had gone up against him, they got thrashed and only escaped by the skin of their teeth. She liked to think that their chances of survival were better this time around, but she didn't actually know that. It was worrisome.

"Can I ask you a question?" Yugito asked.

"You already have."

The cat woman's eyes went half-lidded. "Are you okay with this?"

"Okay with what?"

Yugito shrugged. "Anything, really. The marriage is a good place to start. The future. The man with the swirled mask. Take your pick."

Mei considered the slew of questions for a moment. "The marriage is treating me fine so far. The future is looking… good if we have some presumptions about how the man with the swirled mask arrives."

"Naruto?"

"Hm?"

"Do you love him?"

Mei hummed a light laughter. "Love, huh? I'm starting to feel like that's a mainstay of what we talk about."

"It's important."

"Is it the most important?"

"Depends on the timing of it. If I'm being attacked, you can rest assured that I won't be thinking of anything frivolous. If I'm, well, trying, to console a friend, I won't be thinking about my love life. And even now, it's probably not the most important. But it's important to me. Do you love him?"

"…I love him in a way," Mei finally said, wistfully. "I've seen a lot. More than most. Much of it unpleasant to dwell upon. I'm perhaps somewhat cynical of most people… and Naruto is the most directly opposite that that I can think of. He's… uhm… cute, I guess. Not in the puppy-dog way, or even in the pitiful way. Just a bit naïve."

Yugito regarded her with the side of her eye. "Can you envision a future where we're both in the same bed, talking over him?"

Mei blinked twice. "That's quite a way of asking if I want to fuck him."

"Not just sex," Yugito added.

Mei took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Probably," she said. "I want kids. And I also believe in this union from the bottom of my heart. Ergo... you can fill in the rest on your own."

Yugito hummed approval, nodded, and sat down on the bed, drawing the covers over herself. Mei waited for the conversation to continue, but after a couple minutes of her staring at the back of the other woman's head, she lost to her own curiosity.

"Is that… okay?" Mei asked tentatively. "It's not like I'm going to rape him, or emotionally bend his arm into doing it, if that's what you think."

"I don't think you'd do that," Yugito said plainly, turning around in bed and sitting up. "I'm just… trying to get a handle on you."

One of Mei's eyebrows went up. "Get a handle on me?"

Yugito bit her cheek and glanced to the side. "Maybe that's wrong. Not 'get a handle'… I'm trying to figure you out, if that makes sense."

Mei blinked twice, again. "You're not the first person to try to figure me out and also not the last, I'll assume. What's bringing this on, anyway?"

"Well, we're…" Yugito blushed a little bit and looked away. "We're family, right?" she asked resolutely. "And I don't know anything about you, or why you are the way you are."

"Is that… necessary?" Mei asked, almost wincing.

Yugito shrugged. "It's necessary to me. Otherwise I'm just talking to this… to this puddle."

"A puddle?"

"A shallow existence. There's no depth to you, to me."

Mei sighed a little bit and looked away. "It's not a good story."

"Mine isn't peaches and rainbows either."

"That's a… fair enough point, I guess."

Mei didn't continue on with her train of thought for long enough for Yugito to wonder if she was going to continue at all. "Do you not want to get too close to us, to me?"

Tapping her finger to her knee, Mei nodded in the slightest of ways. "It's possible. Putting everything you have into someone only for them to be taken from you is a lot of work and takes a lot of energy. I'm thinking I might be out of that."

"Then why do you want kids?" Yugito asked severely.

Mei shrugged.

"Don't shrug. You know. You're just not telling me. Putting everything you have into someone knowing that they're going to die is what being a mom is all about, or at least it's what being a mom is supposed to be all about."

Mei squinted at the floor. "I want to make something real and put it into the world. Really real. It's nice being kage and walking among the people and talking to them and hearing them thank me for one thing I've done or another, but then I'll walk away and I won't remember their faces or their names and it'll be just another notch on a belt for me. I want to make something. Something good. Because maybe if I make something good enough, then that means that the world isn't so bad. If I can make something good, then that means that if enough people make enough good things, then the world will be good. Not just better. Not just bearable. Good. That's what I want." Mei pressed her lips together and refused to make eye-contact with Yugito.

A short silence reigned. "Is that… Is that why you offered yourself for the marriage?"

Mei blinked. "What? I could have kids with any suitor that pleased me. I didn't do this for the sake of forcing myself to have kids, if that's what you're asking."

Yugito shook her head. "It's not. I was asking if you volunteered because you wanted to make something real, put it into the world, and make the world a good place."

Mei shrugged, this time for real. "I'm sure that had a part to play in all of it. There were other factors of motivation too, of course. No relatives and no females of whom I have close ties to. It would strengthen mist. Less death. But… yes, I wanted to make something good."

Yugito tried to give as reassuring smile as was possible. "Hey, you did it. The alliance is here. People are getting along, finally. We're done with war."

Before Mei could respond, the room they were in vibrated violently as an explosion rocked the castle somewhere on its other side. They only had to share a single look before finality set in.

It was go time.

00000000

Kurotsuchi woke up from the sound of the explosion going off on the far side of the castle. But what really woke her up was falling from her uncomfortable bed to the even more uncomfortable concrete floor. "Aww… FUck-" she tried to yell, but got smacked in the face with a sword scabbard, cutting her voice off at the knees.

Temari and Fu (who had been sharing a bed, which led to a somewhat awkward conversation between the three of them) were already out the door by the time she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and found her footing. "Thanks," she mumbled to herself as she clipped the scabbard to her nightwear and ran out the door.

Almost immediately, from the opposite direction Temari and Fu ran to, a giant wooden salamander piloted by Temari's brother, Kankuro, came careening through the hallway. Kurotsuchi hopped on with nary a word edgewise and drew her sword out, keeping it at her side and at the ready for anything that might threaten her.

They caught up with Temari and Fu within ten seconds and they hopped on too. Temari mumbled a thanks, which Kankuro nodded to. If pressed, Kurotsuchi would have to admit that she had only found out Kankuro was traveling with them that evening, such was the way that their travel plan unfolded over the week it took to get there. Apparently, he'd had a pretty good time all on his lonesome.

"Any ideas?" Fu asked.

"Sounded like an explosion," Kurotsuchi offered sardonically.

"It wasn't large," Temari said. "There's been no other signs of commotion. Hopefully, this is just… the…"

Her words got lost in her mouth. The salamander slowed to a crawl and finally stopped in a wide open room. The dead bodies of samurais littered the floors, even staked to the walls at points, their copious amounts of armor doing their best to hold the spilled blood inside. That was all only decoration of the main draw, however. In the middle of the room was a giant, burning, purple, transparent ribcage. And at the bottom of the ribcage was Sasuke Uchiha, grinning like a madman with blood pouring out of his left eye.

"Oh, fuck," Temari finished eloquently.

His head swiveled up to look at them, grinning like a demon. He reached his arm out and black fire raced through the air straight at them.

00000000

Yugito and Mei threw open the door to the main conference room and immediately stopped cold in their tracks. The man with the swirled mask was on top of a conference table, holding Shibuki up in the air by his neck. The water swords that the man usually used a mainstay for fighting technique had failed and sloshed to the lacquered hardwood. They couldn't figure out if he was alive or dead. All across the room in chairs looking inward were the various heads of villages with varying degrees of fear evident on their faces.

The swirled mask turned to look at them in an eerily inhuman way. He focused on Yugito. "I don't suppose you'd sacrifice yourself willingly and heroically?"

The muscles along Yugito's jaw knotted and unknotted. Her mouth scrunched up and she shook her head.

He hummed a little bit and tilted his head downward as if he were genuinely saddened by her reaction. "Hm… I see… that's a shame."

From the shadows of the room, a large figure walked forward, intimidating and monster-like in appearance. His sword shivered and undulated rapidly. Kisame's black, dead eyes stared into their souls. "You're the only one whose chakra I'm missing right now. The best part is that I don't even need your whole beast—Well, it'd be easier if I did, but I'm not the greedy type."

One of the heads of a village Yugito didn't even remember hissed at her "If you don't do it. We're all going to die."

More dead figures walked out of the dark of the room. Akatsuki members who could be brought back, past village heads, legendary shinobi of any day or age. There was a familiar face in the bunch that made both Mei and Yugito glad that Temari wasn't there. A shock of red hair with a gourd filled with sand on his back.

Gaara was back from the dead.

The last one that stepped out was hunched over and cloaked in a red hood with a giant constrictor peeking its head out of the back.

"And you said this would be over within the day, correct?"

"If all goes as planned, yes. But that's assuming all goes as planned. I've learned not to lean on that assumption around these people. That's enough from me on the subject." He looked back to Yugito and tightened his grip on Shibuki's throat. A newly pained expression blossomed on his face and his limbs struggled fitfully against his captor. "Right now, you're outmatched. Come with me willingly, or I slaughter everyone in the room, one by one, starting with your friend here."

"Friend where?"

Obito looked at Shibuki, or more accurately, the voice that was most definitely not Shibuki coming from the throat he was holding. When he did look, the only thing he saw was a red eye with swirling tomoe and then he saw nothing but pitch blackness.

He fazed out of existence, letting 'Shibuki' fall to the ground, where he was engulfed with a puff of smoke that Kakashi walked out of. Behind Mei and Yugito, more of their heavy hitting comrades began filing into the room. The air went cold and the tension was high. Every addition to their numbers was another tic in the box of reasons why things could go nuclear at any moment in time in such a small room.

Obito fazed back into existence. He saw Ai and his escort, Onoki, leaf ninja, Tsunade and Jiraiya, Mei, Yugito, and the numbers kept increasing. And it wasn't just from the big five either. Bodyguards for the minor village heads appearing the swell too.

"They don't look too outmatched to me," Kabuto murmured.

If looks could kill, the room would be covered in blood and viscera through Obito's gaze alone. "What are you waiting for?" he ground out. "Go get her!"

And then the room exploded outwards.