Hey! Sorry for the delay. I'ts been crazy, and having a crazy life isn't improving my writing ability. As lumpy and overlong as my latest chapter is, I hope you like it.

Tah shakur,

-J


Part 6 – House of Candlelight

Kirigakure reels gripped with plague while Mei and a handful of loyal shinobi try to keep it from going under. Haku falls under Lord Hirai's thrall and is charged with ridding the doomed city of the 108 Demons but it's Naruto who might be in far greater danger.


Lord! Here comes the flood

We'll say goodbye to flesh and blood

If again, the seas are silent in any still alive

It'll be those who gave their island who survive

Drink up, dreamers!

You're running dry.

-Here Comes the Flood, Peter Gabriel


Shikamaru

With his hands in his pockets and absorbed in thought, Shikamaru Nara paced down a quiet, Konoha side-street, having taken the long way home to avoid the noisier and more crowded byways. The young ninja's initial anger at his former classmate, Naruto, had cooled to what might be described more accurately as an intense degree of annoyance once the chunin had heard the whole story from Sakura and those two kids from Wave Country. Still, a sour expression prevailed over his pale, oval-shaped face and for once the black-haired teenager didn't feel that his customary epithet of 'troublesome' even began to define the boundaries of his particular predicament this time.

Ok, he came to accept begrudgingly, so you didn't just run off to Kirigakure 'cause you were bored or feeling especially stupid. You wanted to help Haku who, I guess, if I'm following this right, tried to kill you about a year ago in Wave Country but didn't and now you're friends and that was actually him who was here earlier in the Leaf Village during that whole 'Sound Cell Infiltrators' incident.

Shikamaru released a tired breath. Considering WHO was involved he couldn't really pretend to be that surprised. Only you, Naruto, only you.

Alright, he told himself, getting down to business, so I should probably get Chouji to go because we work well together. Sakura wants to go and probably should. She has good medical skills, better than Ino's and, if anyone can calm Naruto down in case he's a problem (assuming we actually find him), she can.

So engrossed was the chunin in processing everything Tsunade had told him, planning for the upcoming excursion and putting together a team that Shikamaru didn't even notice Kiba Inuzuka's approach until he looked up to find the ninja walking right beside him with his companion puppy Akamaru sitting cozily atop his hooded head.

Shikamaru did a double-take and frowned. "'Something I can help you with?" he inquired tensely, his overall irritation leaking through.

"We're going with you," stated Kiba.

The taller ninja's dark eyes narrowed guardedly. "What are you talking about?"

"The Mist Village, Naruto and all-a-that. We're going."

Shikamaru slowed, stopped then looked askance at his former classmate. "How do you know about that? I just found out a few minutes ago…and the Hokage a few minutes before that."

Kiba flashed a gleaming, fanged, lopsided smile and shrugged, all without disturbing Akamaru, then tapped his hitai-ate. "Hey, I am a ninja after-all," he pointed out in his inimitably assertive nonchalance. "And my ears are almost as good as my nose. Plus," the teenager pointed out, gesturing around him, "this is the Leaf Village. Word travels fast and, apparently, desks too if they're thrown hard enough."

Shikamaru winced at this unexpected complication, shook his head and started to turn away until Kiba gripped his shoulder. "Hey," continued the wolfish genin much more seriously, "come on. You need me. Who's a better tracker than me?"

The taller leaf-ninja turned back with a cool smile. "Technically, Shino is," he riposted then watched, somewhat surprised, as the confidence washed from Kiba's face to be replaced with a smoldering, barely-subdued intensity. "Hey, easy," Shikamaru offered in hurried placation as he tried to walk his cutting remark back, "I was only kidding. Since when are you so thin-skinned?"

Kiba's wildish eyes flicked away then back to look squarely at Shikamaru who imagined for a moment that he just might be about to get bit!

"Okay!" the chunin relented, hands upheld. "You're right, I need a tracker. I was probably going to have to drag you into this anyway; I just didn't know you'd get so worked up about it. You can come."

The youngest of the Inuzuka clan returned a tight smile. "Good. We'll see you at the East Gate in the morning then," he replied crisply then spun around and marched off.

A nonplussed Shikamaru watched him go, blinked then stared at Kiba's retreating back in puzzlement. What the hell was THAT all about? Has everyone gone crazy around here?


Team Konohamaru

Way, way, WAY up in a towering pine in the middle of dense forest a large, U-shaped desk hung, held in place by a twisted tangle of needled, evergreen branches. One-hundred and sixty-some feet below, Ebisu-sensei, Konohamaru, Moegi and Udon all craned their necks, standing in a hemi-circle as they looked up.

Konohamaru's eyebrows furrowed angrily. "You said this was going to be a REAL ninja mission, sensei!" the brown-haired boy ranted then set down his armload of drawers, miscellaneous files and office supplies they'd retrieved along the way, having followed them like the proverbial trail of breadcrumbs to reach this point, then adjusted the hang of his absurdly long, blue scarf.

The boy's tutor, Ebisu, dressed all in stiff black, pushed the dark circles of his glasses further up on the bridge of his tapered, pale nose and countered: "This IS a real mission – a D-rank that was originally going to be assigned to a team of newly-graduated genin. I thought you and your friends might benefit from the exercise. Rather than complaining, 'honorable grandson', you might think of some way of getting Lady Tsunade's desk down." The jonin gave his charge a bleak, deliberate glance. "And I mean intact."

While Konohamaru fumed and scowled, balling his fists in frustration, Moegi quivered with mirth then giggled. "It looks kinda like a giant or something was playing horseshoes!" The redhead paused and puzzled in thought for a moment. "That desk must be REALLY well constructed."

Udon wiped his nose, raised his goggles from his eyes to his forehead and chuckled. "Hey, Konohamaru," the boy ventured, "I won't tell anyone you were touching the Hokage's 'drawers'."

"Shut up," Konohamaru snapped spastically, "it's not funny. We're ninjas, not-not…not furniture delivery guys!"

Moegi glared at her supposed, unofficial team leader and snapped back, "He was only joking, Konohamaru! Lighten up!"

Ebisu-sensei, long-since accustomed to such scintillating repartee, sighed then attempted to restore order. "This may seem like a trivial task," he chided, "but it's important that you children understand that there are no unnecessary missions. If the Hokage assigned it then it's critical in some way, however small, to the future of the Hidden Leaf Village." The man sniffed nobly and crossed his rangy arms as all three kids gave him a dubious look.

"Just get the desk," Ebisu directed.

Konohamaru made a face but then suddenly went pale and grabbed his stomach, drawing curious looks.

"Konohamaru," squeaked Moegi with concern, "are-are you feeling ok?"

The ten-year old wobbled a little, looking quite out of sorts, dropped to his knees right then and there and, much to everyone's surprise, vomited noisily and messily onto the forest floor.

Team Konohamaru, with the obvious exception of their leader, and Ebisu-sensei turned to stare with their faces frozen in curdled expressions until silence again prevailed, interrupted only by the brown-haired boy's residual, rasping, dripping breaths.

"I didn't think this mission was THAT bad," commented a dismayed Udon who again wiped his nose.


Krishenay

The 108 Demons sat on the floor, cross-legged among the corpses some of which lay twisted amidst upended furniture or sprawled in heaps near the doors and windows. The city, Kirigakure, was quickly becoming littered with the dead and the dying, awash in a misery and despair that gave the chakra on which the unearthly congregation fed an especially succulent quality. From behind glassy, years-dead eyes, the demon controlling their vessel's mustachioed face made it smile. It had only been through pure providence that they'd been on-hand while the curious plots of men beset their own Village with plague. Surely such plentitude as this, gained without effort, was deserving of physical expression or maybe that was just a human conceit that it and they had picked up somewhere along the way.

The face frowned. Chakra of this sort, though tremendously satisfying, was not the kind that sustained. It was not the kind on which they could grow stronger and the multitude sequestered within Krishenay's body knew this very well.

The Kyuubi escaped. A wave of communal disappointment shuddered through them – through all one hundred and eight. Now there was a chakra they could feed on for lifetimes, a bounteous ocean of life-energy! And though there was much conjecture over how it had happened they all agreed that they shouldn't be too surprised for the Fox is nothing if not crafty.

Patience, the demon-governor of the higher functions advised. Time was long and they had forever to hunt, not just the Kyuubi no Yoko but all the rest of the tailed beasts. More immediately: Kirigakure would soon find itself a city of corpses whether they acted or not which seemed like such a shame in a way. Their revenge would have been so much sweeter if it had arrived in the Mist Village as a fresh, unexpected terror rather than as a mere exacerbation of ones already present. Still, none of the one-hundred and eight could gainsay the circumstances that had led to their collective freedom from the Fourth Mizukage's tenuous hold or allowed them to preside over the Mist Village's downfall however it came about. Besides, even if Kirigakure were spared in some way a full reckoning there was still the rest of the Land of Water on which to unleash their judgment.

Before then though they'd need to slake their appetites with more nutritious fare – chakra on a magnitude few humans possessed. The tactic they'd decided to employ made perfect sense and they all agreed - to let their bottomless hungers rage unleashed, GORGE, FEAST, not only to quell their urges but to draw out the Mist Village's remaining champions and force a confrontation. Unlike before, this time, even if the herd had among their depleted ranks a shinobi the caliber of the First Mizukage, the 108 Demons had little to fear.

A ripple of anticipated pleasure passed through the legions lodged within the shell of what used to be a man named Krisheney Rahaman. Their decades of lightless incarceration and years of humiliating servitude were about to be transformed into a sublime state of unfettered freedom coupled with nearly unlimited power.

The vision of such a bounteous and prosperous future put the congregation at ease.


Haku

With his mind spinning from their earlier conversation, Haku followed Lord Kissohomaru Hirai through the sprawling estate that bore his clan's name. They wound through galleries housing weapons and suits of armor, paintings or objets d'art and crossed through garden courtyards where children played – all of them obedient and observant enough to stop whatever it was they were doing and bow, deeply and respectfully to their Grand Patriarch.

Preoccupied as Haku was, the young ninja couldn't help but gawk at the grandeur and opulence that conjured from his memory some of the samurai epics he used to watch, and could easily imagine some white-faced empress dowager regarding him coolly from behind her latticed window high up in one of Castle Hirai's towers, guarded by fearsome swordsmen and with an army of black-clad ninjas (all much more masculine and imposing than him) at her command. This was all so different from bustling Wave Country and his musty basement lodging with the Tezukas and reminded him, in some ways acutely, of the offer he'd turned down. Not that he harbored any regrets, of course; it was just that having passed up the chance to possess truly colossal wealth was hard to banish from his thoughts completely.

The sight of all the servile manciples about on their menial tasks, dressed in the grey uniforms of a non-person, indicating that they should be ignored as part of the background, served as a reminder that wealth on that scale almost always came at another's cost.

Their path took them through a library wing and then past a training hall where three generations of noble Hirai, nearly all of them shinobi, bowed reverently to their elder as he passed but regarded his girlish, floral-kimono wearing 'guest' with glances that were concerned or amused at best and dripping with undisguised contempt at worst. Now, much more than he'd had in a while, Haku felt distinctly alone and out of place – a pale and feminine outcast within this shark tank of Kirigakure's elite.

What a lie, he could almost hear Zabuza's voice hiss. You're still the killer I made you to be. They should tremble before YOU. And the truth was that he, his master and all his zealous followers had probably killed Hirai loyalists by the score back in the full flower of the Demon of the Hidden Mist's revolutionary days.

The teenager bridled, stung by the recollection, but could not deny the truth of it. A killer was never what he'd wanted to be and yet out of love for his sensei he'd killed an awful lot of people. After that, out of love for Mari and a deep, all-possessing need to protect his new home and new life, the former Demon's Apprentice had killed a whole lot more. Despite all that, the teenager spared himself a full reckoning and took a measure of solace in the knowledge that he was no longer JUST a killer.

Maybe that is what I was before but not anymore.

Now, over a year since his master's death, he'd found himself (often to his surprise) capable of being more. He'd become a friend, a boyfriend, a sensei and a constable – someone whose newfound purpose in life was to help people and he liked to think that he had. What salved his spiking conscious the most though were his memories of those close to him: Mari, Chuuya and their family; Inari and his; Naruto and even Orimi. At the same time they made Haku realize quite acutely that, unlike his days with Zabuza, his death would not go un-mourned and unmarked. He was no longer a tool easily discarded and replaced. His death would matter. Being aware of that brought a strange sense of responsibility the ninja still hadn't quite gotten used to.

Walking with his grey eyes fixed on Lord Hirai's back, Haku returned to what the silver-haired man had told him. 'I was having a little chat about you with my grandmother…and yours…' That's what he'd said.

Haku frowned. Being that Lord Hirai was at least in his nineties, the thought of HIS grandmother having anything to say about anything seemed a bit farfetched. As for his own grandmother…

"Your clan, the Aramata," intoned Hirai as if eavesdropping on his thoughts, "they were heroes, you know."

Haku's brow rose at first then narrowed suspiciously at the elderly ninja-lord's words, wondering what kind of reaction the councilor was trying to provoke. "They were scapegoats in the purest sense of the word," the teenager couldn't help but counter sourly. "Kirigakure blamed them and the rest of the blood-gifted clans for the civil wars, fired the Land of Water's anger against them using fear as a tool. It was easy enough to do because people always fear those who are different. Then they destroyed us using a secret cache of forbidden weapons. The rest were hunted down like animals."

"I see," Hirai muttered direly in response, his smooth strides nearly silent as he walked. "You're not entirely ignorant of the un-varnished history but you've missed the point."

What the former Demon's Apprentice took for callousness, intended or not, struck him like a blow. "What point? I've been to Kaori no Hana island, walked among the ruins of Castle Aramata. It's a grave. The family I never knew died in flames."

"So that an entire nation could live!" the old man snapped over his shoulder. "As gifted as you are, do you think your forbearers were any less so? Do you imagine they were blind and deaf, ignorant to what was happening?"

The teenager's eyes flickered. "What are you saying?"

"You'll find out soon enough," answered Hirai with a sharp sniff. "It's clear to me that you distrust my motives, find them incomprehensible if not sinister, so you're sure to doubt anything I say. Ha! You must have thought me quite the monster for attempting to destroy your precious, adopted home of Wave Country. 'What a vicious and senseless old man! How could he?'" the ninja mocked. "I trust you see my wisdom more clearly now in hindsight."

Haku grimaced in exasperation even as he had to acknowledge that Lord Hirai had a point – the destruction of Wave Country might indeed have spared the Mist Village its current travails or at least postponed them.

It was an awful way of thinking, the teenager couldn't help but note. In the Councilor's world, the razing of the entire city and putting all its people to death would have been nothing more than a simple, precautionary gambit – take a piece out of play and thereby thwart his rival Lady Inoue's plans even if he hadn't been entirely sure what they were at the time. Then again, considering the old shinobi's devotion to order, maybe he simply couldn't stand the idea of a country adjacent to the Land of Waves going un-ruled.

The Mist Village's other councilor, Lady Inoue, charming and sympathetic as she'd been, was no better – destroy the old Kirigakure to make way for a new one more to her liking. In the equations writ large by both their ideologies, human lives didn't count for much.

It hurt to suppose that he himself was little different but there had definitely been a time, and it was not that long ago, when Haku had been nothing more than a weapon wielded by his master's will. People had meant little to him compared to Zabuza's dreams. Would HE have destroyed Wave Country or murdered innocent civilians if the Demon of the Hidden Mist had so ordered? Haku couldn't help but wonder. It was hard to say though he'd always believed in his heart that he would, whatever his misgivings. Zabuza, for his part, had never asked such a thing of him; never. Maybe it simply hadn't come up…or maybe the fearsome mist-jonin appreciated the capabilities and limitations of his weapon better than he'd let on. Either way, if Haku had learned nothing else since Zabuza's death it was that he'd been wrong. Lives, even truly wretched ones, were priceless because they were irreplaceable and, though the inexplicable alchemy of time, chance, experience, love and loss could be transformed. Hadn't Haku learned that himself?

Looking up at the tall, silver-haired ninja-patriarch, Haku doubted there was anything he could say or do to make Lord Hirai fathom his admittedly complicated sensibilities and could only imagine that his awkwardly-phrased offerings would clatter impotently off a stratum of calcified ideas more than ninety years in the making.

"What is it you really want?" he blurted at last out of pure weariness.

Replied Lord Hirai with barely a pause: "I already told you, Haku. I want you to save Kirigakure."


Mari

Making her way home from the markets, laden wicker baskets in hand, the Wave Country girl tried not to think – to just keep herself focused on the mundane activities of life: watching the porters and fishermen come and go or make a mental note of who was new in town. Even just staring up at the sky or down at her own two feet, watching them cycle back and forth over the paving stones as she walked, was preferable to anything else. So far the tactic wasn't working.

Haku's gone…still! she pondered sullenly.

No one had heard a word from him or Naruto either. What made things worse: Chuuya and Inari, who were only supposed to fetch the yellow-headed ninja had instead decided to remain in Konoha, apparently to cover up the fact that he'd left!

Inwardly, Mari shriveled.

The little problem with this unexpected and bafflingly stupid complication was that the pretext of the two boys being away on a 'camping trip' had gone up in flames after a full week at which Mari's parents along with Tazuna and Tsunami, all equally furious, had wrung the truth from her…or most of it. She hadn't been able to tell them (and, in truth, it had seemed extremely detrimental to her health to volunteer) that sending the pair of fledgling ninjas off on a mission in the first place had been her idea or that she'd known about it the whole time. Mari could hardly bear it herself – that she had shoved her own brother into a world of countless unknown dangers and now there was no telling what had happened to him or his friend.

In hindsight what appalled Mari the most was that it really hadn't seemed like that bad of an idea at the time. It had been so easy to fool herself into believing that all those crazy techniques, martial-arts moves and jutsus they'd learned from Haku made them more than the stupid little ten-year olds they were; that sending them off to the Hidden Leaf Village just for a visit, just long enough to give Naruto a message would be as simple as it sounded.

Dammit! Even Haku almost got himself killed there! What was I thinking! she lamented. NOTHING involving ninja shit is EVER simple!

"Excuse, me," a voice interrupted, distracting her from her burning, oft-repeated reverie. "Mari? Mari Tezuka?"

Her dark eyes darted toward the offender - a tall boy, athletic and not bad looking, with tied-up black hair and a sort of stuck-up / serious expression on his oval face. But, first of all, the girl hated it when people she didn't know just came at her as if they did. Second of all, she wasn't in the mood for any more complications in her life and, third and final, she'd lived in Wave Country way too long not to realize that good things and good people NEVER came looking for you. Those were things that had to be sought…or chanced upon.

"What?" Mari answered testily without slowing. She was nearly home anyway.

"I'd like -," the stranger went on, pausing to veer clumsily out of the way of oncoming pedestrians, "—I want to talk to you about Hiroo Okame if you don't mind. It won't take long."

The black-haired girl grimaced and shot him an acidic look. "He's out on a mission somewhere. I can't talk about it."

Mari turned down the front walk to her house, stepped up onto the porch and unlocked the door, borderline angry that the kid was still glued to her side after getting what most people would rightly take as 'the brush-off'. "Look! I told you," the teenager asserted sternly as she stepped inside and set down her baskets, "he's on constable's business. If you've got something to ask you'll have to wait to ask him when he gets back."

The stranger's demeanor shifted subtly as he stooped slightly and replied in a quieter, more level tone: "Who I really have to talk to you about is Haku."

Without so much as a flicker of recognition, the girl looked at him coolly then replied in a voice of pure, measured indifference: "Never heard of him," she said and shut the door forcefully in the boy's surprised face, throwing the latch-bolt home with a pronounced 'clack'.

Haku, Mari thought, slumped and rested her freckled forehead against the door. How does that guy know about Haku? This is bad!

The girl turned, deeply worried, memories filled with zodiac-masked killers and murderous she-devil apprentices then gasped with a squeak as she found the tall, black-haired kid standing right there behind her in the hallway.

"Listen, Mari – HEY!" the stranger yelped. It was only because he obviously had some thorough training in tai-jutsu, not to mention splendid reflexes, that he was able to duck the knockout power of the girl's overhand left then fade back enough to avoid a stinging, follow-up right. "Mari!" he barked with a tenor of command and the girl paused though still with fists up and ready to go. "My name is Shikamaru. I'm a shinobi from the Village Hidden in the Leaves. It's very, very important that I get some information from you. We don't have to talk here in your house if you don't want to," the boy explained with calm gravity, "but we do have to talk…now."

Mari, scowling but curious, unlocked and opened the front door, ushered the raven-haired intruder out with a curt, sweeping gesture then followed him out onto the porch. There the fourteen year-old was surprised again for there were three others waiting – a fat kid with bushy brown hair, earrings and whorl tattoos on his chubby cheeks who crunched away on potato chips; a very pretty girl with pink hair; and then a kind-of-a-crazy-looking, outdoorsy-type with fierce eyes, a hooded jacket fringed with fur, half-crescent tattoos on his cheeks and an absolutely adorable little white puppy sitting alertly by his booted feet.

"This is my team: Chouji, Sakura and Kiba." The two boys nodded and muttered hello while the girl smiled and offered a wave. "Oh and that's Akamaru."

The puppy barked with an friendly-enough "HARF".

"Heaven and Earth," Mari offered upon review, quite unimpressed, then turned back to the one calling himself Shikamaru, "you're the brains of the outfit!"

The tallest of the group took the not-so-subtle derision in stride. "I'm afraid so," he acknowledged in a weary tone. "Although if this was really a 'brains' operation, none of us would be here."

"So what do you guys want?"

"As I think you already know - one of our ninjas, Naruto Uzumaki, has gone off to Kirigakure no Sato to help your friend, Haku. We've been tasked to see to his return. Your little brother and his friend knew some details. We were hoping you might know more."

Mari's heart caught in her throat. Gathering her nerve she managed to ask: "H-how…how are Chuuya and Inari?"

Shikamaru smiled for the first time, just slightly, but Sakura broke in before he could speak. "They're both fine, Mari," the pink-haired girl gushed understandingly. "We dropped them off at Tazuna's house on the way here. We wanted to talk with you first and then leave you guys alone. I'm…I'm sure you got a lot of catching up to do."

"Thanks," answered Mari, so breathless with relief that she almost fainted. "I hope Tazuna and Tsunami weren't too mad."

The sudden silence and grey looks that fell across the faces of her visitors was enough to acquaint the girl with poor Inari's fate…and undoubtedly Chuuya's too once he got home.

The leaf-ninjas' black-haired leader reasserted himself: "We'd appreciate it if you'd tell us everything you know about why Naruto and Haku went to the Mist Village being that it's not exactly a sane idea for either of them to go there even at the best of times. The kids mentioned something about some rival ninja clans trying to destroy the place?"

Mari chewed her lip as she calculated for a moment then nodded firmly. "Ok," she said finally. "I'll tell you everything…on ONE condition – that you find Haku too."

Shikamaru's dark eyes flickered for a moment and the shinobi started to say something diplomatic when Kiba broke in: "Don't worry about that, Mari," the wild-looking one answered in a determined voice, "we'll bring him back safe and at least mostly sound. I was gonna do that anyway."

Their leader stared for a second then squeezed the bridge of his nose. "Gee, Kiba, you might have filled me in on the part where you start changing the mission objectives…being that I'm team leader and all."

"Now what good would that have done?" answered Kiba casually, cocking his head and gesturing into the air. "You'd have just said it was 'troublesome' or something."

"Um," added Sakura, a bit less obliquely confrontational, "I was kind of hoping we'd be able to see if Haku was ok too?"

Shikamaru canted his gaze toward her and then at Chouji who only shrugged. The dark-haired ninja spread his hands and frowned. "Fine," he said in surrender. "We'll bring Haku too…IF we can."

Mari brightened. Shikamaru and Chouji she couldn't remember if Haku had mentioned or not but this Sakura had to be the same girl-ninja from the First Battle at the Bridge and who now knew how to heal people (that was good, right?). And Kiba was some kind of dog-master or something, a strong fighter and a pretty good person in general from what Haku had told her about his mission to Konoha a few weeks ago.

The idea of this unlikely-looking crew going out and bringing Naruto along with her wayward boyfriend back from Kirigakure still didn't offer much hope but at least it was better than nothing. In this life, sometimes, you just had to take what you could get.


Shikamaru

With his hands in his pockets as he stood with Sakura, Kiba and Chouji at the railing of a clattering and smoking, east-bound ship, Shikamaru supposed that his mind should be crunching calculations even now, coming up with just the right solution to wrest Naruto (and now Haku, he supposed) from the clutches of so many unknowns and return him safe and sound to the bosom of Konoha or the great BIG bosoms of Lady Tsunade whichever came first.

Mari's report sure hadn't made him feel any better and the chunin could feel the weight of this mission heavy upon him. He and his team were about to try and sneak into an enemy village known for its savagery that might already be under attack by an alliance of severely pissed-off, blood-gifted ninja clans. The chunin's three teammates, his friends, were ready to do whatever it took but they'd all be looking to their leader for direction so he'd better have something worked out or, as the famous poster said, this 'journey of a thousand miles' was indeed going to 'end very, very badly'.

For right now though, Shikamaru could think of nothing else but that last frustrating conversation he'd had with his father and the resulting decision he'd ended up making without really making it at all.


"Dad," he remembered saying distinctly, beginning the conversation in his patented, very-serious, drop-an-octave tone as he looked over the shogi board at the battle-scarred man who bore much more than a little family resemblance to himself. "Lady Tsunade called me into her office today."

"Oh, I remember," chuckled Shikaku with a fiery grin. "That pink-haired girly's a handful!"

Shikamaru didn't bite and was not in the mood. "She gave me a new mission: it looks like Naruto Uzumaki's run off…to the Village Hidden in the Mist. I've been assigned to bring him back."

Shikaku's hand froze a moment before pushing a piece forward in a measured attack strategy. "He hasn't defected, has he?" the man asked with a pensive frown as he rubbed his stubbled chin. That was the elder Nara's version of hysterics.

"Not as bad as that," Shikamaru answered, having duly noted the sudden tension in his father's voice and posture. "He's on some kind of 'personal business' or whatever, trying to help out a friend of his. Tsunade just about came unglued though. She said that Naruto's value to the village can't be overstated, that him being captured by Kirigakure would be catastrophic." The boy repeated for emphasis: "catastrophic, Dad. So I need to know – just what is it about that guy that makes him so important?"

Shikaku frowned, breathed in then out. "What Tsunade said is true, Shikamaru. But I can't tell you why."

"What?" coughed the teenager after a moment of disbelief. He blinked his dark eyes and leaned forward. "I'm not asking because I'm nosy. I'm asking because it should factor into my strategy. I'm a chunin now; don't you think I can keep a secret?"

"It's no reflection on you, son," the veteran explained. "The Third Hokage, Lord Sarutobi issued an edict that no one was to speak of it and Lady Tsunade hasn't said anything contrary to that. I mean to honor the oaths I swore to them; that's all."

Shikamaru stared. "Dad…come on. I swore oaths too. Why else do you think I'd even consider going to Kirigakure; you know the mist-ninjas' reputation better than I do!"

His father nodded understandingly but was clearly not about to give in. "It's a question of faith," he supplied. "Look, I followed Sarutobi's commands and follow Tsunade's for a reason, and it's not just 'cause they get to wear those big, fancy hats. It's because I believe in what they represent and because I trust their wisdom and judgment." The man chuckled sardonically, "At least more than I do my own."

"Uh-huh, meanwhile, that 'wisdom' is sending me, Sakura, Kiba and Chouji into a snake pit without the slightest idea why."

The man looked up gravely and said with an edge in his voice: "Don't you think that makes it about a thousand times harder for ME to take?" The elder leaned back in his chair. "You're so young, Shikamaru. You don't look like an adult but you certainly have an adult's responsibilities.

"Son," he continued after a pause, "I think we both know that you could easily find out what you want to know now that you're on the track. This is just another choice you'll have to make – whether you really trust our Hokages or not, and I'm not just talking about managing all the tedious day-to-day stuff, but when it's life and death." The quiet that followed seemed to intensify the moment. "Maybe," the man continued hypothetically, "they've decided to keep what's so important about Naruto a secret just to piss you off or out of some, I don't know, weird, personal whim. Or maybe," he paused for effect, even going so far as to level a glance, "maybe they had very good reasons that you're just not understanding right now. Maybe it should be enough that that crazy yellow-haired kid is one of us."

Shikamaru frowned and shook his head, already starting to stew.

"It's not what you think," offered Shikaku, having obviously taken notice. "This isn't your basic parental life-lesson guilt trip. Although this IS a test there's no right or wrong answer. I made my choice which is why I'm not going to tell you and I'm sorry if you're upset about that. But now you have to decide for yourself what's best for you, your friends, your teammates and your village. If I was on your team," the wily jonin concluded with a grimace of a smile, "I'd expect nothing less."

The younger ninja grunted then let the matter drop. Clearly there was no point in pursuing it. But by the time their game of shogi had ended (with Shikamaru the victor), the newly-promoted chunin was absolutely certain of two things: one, that being an 'adult' was overrated (of course, that he'd long suspected). And two: he would know what the hell makes one Naruto Uzumaki so freaking special by the end of the day.

As the day had worn on however with him organizing things with Chouji, Kiba and Sakura, studying the latest intelligence reports on the Mist Village, consulting the very few ANBU with field experience in the region and generally making his preparations, discovering the blond genin's secrets kind of got pushed back until ultimately it was too late.

Shikamaru told himself it wasn't because he was going to trust anyone's judgment but his own, Hokage or not; that didn't make any sense to him at all. And it was certainly NOT that he was going to follow the old man's example. It wasn't.


"And it's still not," said Shikamaru under his breath as his eyes flickered up to look out over the choppy sea with Chouji, Kiba and Sakura close beside him.


Haku

The aged councilor led the boy down into the castle's lower levels – a world of irregular corridors of bright, white-plastered stone where thick, varnished wood lintels crowned plank and rail doors, then from there through a series of out-buildings used for storage, scullery, kitchen and the like. Upon seeing the master of the house, startled servants either fled from his path or dropped to their knees with foreheads pressed to the stone-tiled floor.

Haku smiled at them in awkward apology and was quite relieved, though puzzled, when his host at last strode out the back way, past a covered well-house and from there onto a path that led off through a series of lower and lower walled courtyards, all gated and guarded. Soon enough they arrived at the outer-most gate which was flanked on both sides by stout, steep-walled towers. Standards danced fitfully in the wind which occasionally gusted enough to raise ragged, desultory clangs from the bells that hung every so often around the clan compound.

The former Demon's Apprentice eyed these carefully, remembering very well how Lord Hirai's Dao magic could turn that music into watchdogs, executioners or Heaven and Earth knew what else. The old shinobi had had ninety years to perfect his arts and the boy marveled again at how fortunate he was to have survived raising his ire.

Haku remained puzzled as the Councilor continued his pace, without so much as a word, out the gate and onto the forest-bounded gravel road that lay beyond it.

When Lord Hirai had asked Haku to accompany him back in the precincts of his castle, a grueling hike was about the last thing the teenager expected and yet, as the elderly patriarch continued his pace down the road then off onto a trail through the woods that took them crisscrossing back and forth down increasingly rocky and treacherous slopes toward the sea, that's exactly what it turned into.

Halfway down, Haku paused to look up through the stands of trees to where their rugged and storm-lashed tops vanished against a backdrop of blue then down to where the forest dissolved into a narrow stretch of barren shoreline with its ramparts flooded and battered in turns by turbulent waves. Though barely an hour had passed since they'd left Hirai Castle the solitude of the landscape here was in itself nearly enough to convince that man had never set foot on this island.

Where in the world is he taking me? Haku couldn't help but ask himself and wonder what any of this had to do with saving Kirigakure. As powerful and learned as the old councilor was, it was hard to believe that even he knew of anything that could help. Then again it was even harder to believe that a man like this, very nearly a centenarian, would waste his time so frivolously.

After another hour of descent which had left the forests far behind, the silver-haired ninja-lord lead the way with admirable sure-footedness along the island's besieged shoreline then through a narrow split between craggy rock faces that towered up to compress the broad, bright sky down to a ragged-edged sliver of light high overhead. The ground shuddered from the force of crashing surf and the air was thick with fine spray and the scent of the sea.

For whatever reason, Haku found himself growing increasingly uneasy. His senses prickled. The sun's rays beaming down between the rocks blazed insufferably hot, the sounds of the sea roared and threatened, startling in their intensity while the air hung heavy and seemed to close in.

Though his guide continued on with a steady pace the teenager swallowed hard with trepidation, his eyes darting with paranoiac urgency back the way they'd came. Only then did the young ninja suspect that all this was not just a trick of the mind but an inexplicable property of this place that, had Lord Hirai not led him here, the former Demon's Apprentice certainly would have avoided.

The passageway swelled suddenly into a gallery of sorts between the rocks and here the thunderous sound of the crashing, unseen waves alone was enough to drive the boy close to panic that the whole place was in imminent danger of being claimed by the sea. All around, as dense as a forest, thick pillars of stone reached like fingers toward the blinding sky. Wiping sweat from his forehead, Haku raised his eyes toward the top of the columns then nearly recoiled at the sight of the scant, sun-obscured shapes that hung past the edges – shapes suggestive of blackened, skeletal limbs outstretched in a gesture of life's final surrender.

A surge of paralyzing, existential terror flooded through the young ninja until he looked again to find the shapes gone as if they had never been. Haku wavered, breathless and sick, thoughts hovering.

"I'm sure you can sense that this is no ordinary place and it isn't," echoed Hirai's stately, commanding tenor as if in a cathedral. The man straightened and studied his surroundings with a cautious sort of reverence. The councilor had been steadfastly silent for so long that the unexpected sound of his voice nearly made Haku jump. "You may think of it as a pivot point, a locus around which energies both natural and preternatural circle. This, what we call The Dwelling Place of Spirits is the reason why this island out of so many in the Land of Water was chosen to be the seat of the Hirai Clan.

"Generations ago," Hirai went on to explain in a manner at once boastful and confiding, "my grandmother sought, as so many have and still do, an answer to mortality. Foremost among the differences between her and lesser talents was that she actually found one. She was the first to master the mysteries of this island as she was the first to be Mizukage before there even was a Village Hidden in the Mist.

"Midori Hirai, our great clan matriarch, did battle with the 108 Demons that plagued the islands of Water Country and, in defeating them, was able to unite over a dozen contentious ninja clans, yours included, to found Kirigakure no Sato in part because her victory was theirs as well."

Haku blinked to clear his bleary eyes and tried his best to be attentive. Still, for all his efforts, the teenager couldn't help but sway slightly as the peculiar energies associated with this place tested him, pushing and pulling on the fringes of his consciousness. To be honest, Zabuza's student didn't quite follow what his guide meant but his thoughts were too fractured at the moment to allow him to compose a sensible question.

"The jutsu she employed is a secret passed down through generations, shared with the heads of Kirigakure's noble houses because its unique nature demands that it be used rarely and only to defend the welfare of the entire village. I suppose, since you are the head of your house, by default, that it really is your right as well.

"Of course, the obvious question," continued the councilor with a clever, almost self-deprecating grin. "If I know a technique so powerful then why haven't I used it by now? No small part of it has to do with my advanced age. To be blunt, Haku," Hirai began then turned the full force of his autocrat's gaze on the boy many decades his junior, "this jutsu is taxing on the chakra, mind and body in ways my aged ones are no longer able to bear. And then too there is a certain, let's just say, spiritual component that I have alienated over the course of my long and eventful life and so, in this case, your youth and unique lineage makes you the most likely candidate.

"I should point out," the ninja lord added, his voice rolling off the rock walls of the chamber where they stood, "that this jutsu has only ever been carried out twice successfully."

Just from his tone, Haku didn't have to ask the price of failure. Gathering himself, the girlish shinobi managed, though with some hesitation: "This jutsu…it's why you brought me here?"

"Haku Aramata," intoned Hirai, gesturing around him grandly, "you are standing at the sepulcher of kings and queens. Generations of ninja elite from all the clans of Water Country have traveled here especially to die in this place, willingly, eagerly even so that they could again be summoned to assist their village when called upon. The Candlelight Gate Jutsu, which I intend to teach you, creates a crossroads of sorts between states of being. Executed successfully, all the combined powers of their chakra, vast knowledge and experience will be yours to draw upon; their life energies, memories, their very essences will merge with yours."

Haku gaped. Though the old man's tale tested credulity, Zabuza's student knew he would never fabricate something like this, not when there was so much at stake.

The teenager had certainly heard his fair share of stories over the years, apocryphal and otherwise, about the kinds of secret jutsu horded by the great clans but never thought he'd be privy to one. Of course, any technique that would allow him even a slim chance against the 108 Demons had to be far beyond anything in his experience.

He turned away lost in thought for a moment and stared dazedly. For him, this whole adventure had started weeks ago with the simple idea of trying to save Kirigakure. Now he was faced with a basic question: how much did he still mean it? To what lengths was he really willing to go and what was he willing to risk? The answer ended with an acceptant smile…and then, when he turned back, something else too.

"What?" asked Lord Hirai brusquely to the calculating look on the young ninja's face.

"Should I succeed," advanced Haku in his measured contralto, "learn your jutsu, defeat Krishenay Rahaman and all the monsters inside him then there is something I wish from you in return."

The old man goggled, momentarily dumbfounded then gave forth with an easy laugh. "Well," he began curiously, "this is certainly a change. I'd assumed that you were 'above' such coarse and worldly considerations as quid pro quo."

"And you have to swear," said Haku who paused and looked around the chamber meaningfully, "by all your ancestors that you'll grant it."

The man's steely eyes rose, surprised but still tolerant. "My goodness, it sounds like you have your heart set." The two exchanged a quick glance before the stately old man realized aloud: "Oh I see. You're serious about that last part. Very well then," he began, falling into the role of indulgent grandfather, then straightened before he declared in a formal tone: "I, Lord Kissohamaru Hirai, Patriarch of the Hirai Clan and Councilor of Kirigakure so swear. Now, whatever could it be that has you so determined?"

"A pardon," Haku stated immediately, "an exoneration of all my past wrongdoings in the eyes of Kirigakure and Water Country - full, incontrovertible and uncontestable."

Hirai blinked. "But…I offered you that before and much more."

"Yes, but this is on my terms now," said Haku with a resurgent smile. "I'm tired of going through life hiding under an alias. I don't want to be your Mizukage or even a daimyo but I do want my name." The Demon's Apprentice, acclimated at last to this strange sanctum, gave his unlikely benefactor a conciliatory glance. "When it comes to most things, I don't think we could ever understand each other but I know you can understand that. The Aramata name is mine," he insisted flatly, simply, "and I want it back."


Mei

The Mizukage is dead, thought Mei as she stared out her porthole window high up in the tower of one of the ministry buildings she'd appropriated as a command center. Past her own shadowy reflection in the sagging glass the Village Hidden in the Mist sprawled under her gaze. Out in its gloom-shrouded streets, fires tore the darkness while smoke, shouts and the clash of metal and breaking glass filled the air.

It was only a matter of time before they found out, the woman mused. Actually they're taking it rather well…all things considered.

So far the riots had been relatively manageable perhaps because of all the years these citizens had been deathly afraid of their ninja. But with so many catastrophes besetting us and now the Fourth Mizukage dead I suppose we deserve a vote of 'no confidence'. Maybe it's just that these poor people don't believe they have anything to lose anymore…and maybe they don't.

For her part, the feeble public statement she, as the highest ranking jonin, had been forced to issue after the fact had been pretty poor medicine. What the citizens of the Mist Village faced could not be made any easier to bear with vague assurances. Words alone were not going to cut it.

They probably know about Rahaman too, she considered. Maybe not that he's the vessel for the 108 Demons but surely it couldn't have escaped people's notice that he's running around killing people en masse and that we're more-or-less powerless to stop him.

The latest report on them was that they'd appeared in one of the branch hospitals and left no one alive – drained every last soul of their chakra. Mei had dispatched a team to try and contain the beasts within a seven-star seal but to no avail. They'd killed all seven jonin with barely a flicker of effort.

"Let it out, Kirigakure," Mei sang soothingly to the window, pressing her hand to the glass, "let it out. Things are only going to get worse."

At her feet lay the latest intelligence report informing the kunoichi that the Land of Water had declared a state of emergency. An armada made up of all the major daimyos' combined forces had set sail and were on their way to Kirigakure even now to enforce the quarantine. In addition to everything else, the Mist Village was about to find itself under siege.

Gripped by helplessness, the woman hung her head. Kirigakure was dying. And, for all her vast, blood-gifted powers and dreams of one day being Mizukage, there seemed little she or anyone could do to stop it.


Yashako

"So how long you figure you can keep me here?" the kunoichi growled from where she crouched on the floor, her dark face savage.

Being blind and disfigured, her crippled sensei's expressions were hard to read. "Until it's over."

Yashako squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn't ever recall a moment in her life when she'd been involuntarily confined and was discovering that it didn't suit her. The swordswoman's hunting gaze swept again across the boundaries of her prison – a gilded cage if there ever was one. Glossy, red columns soared from a wooden floor polished to a mirror shine. High above, elaborately carved and colorfully rendered dragons and lions guarded capitals and lacquered beams. Few had ever been so privileged as to view the Coral Pavilion even from the outside let alone from within. It came and went like a mirage, a shared hallucination and the stuff of urban legends, a haunted place right in the middle of Kirigakure that not even the cleverest ninja had been able to penetrate without the owner's assent.

She could see it – the shabbier districts of the Mist Village crouching just on the other side of the bright little lake that compassed them. There wasn't even a wall in between, only a short, wooden railing dense with geometric patterns. In theory, the kunoichi could just vault over it, cross the waters and be gone before the old man could even blink.

That's IF this was any kind of normal place, considered Yashako with a grimace of pent-up frustration.

Deep down she knew it was only a fabrication of sensei's genjutsu and maybe even more than that. Bottom line: the rules of this world were different.

"I'm a shinobi," she argued with what was, for her, truly remarkable calm. "I'm supposed to be defending my village, not hiding like a scared kitten."

"There's no point. The Mist Village's sins have all come back to roost and maybe it's high time. Maybe the countless evils done in the name of preserving itself have gone unanswered for too long and this is the universe's way of making things right. Whatever the case, the Mist Village can possibly survive; I've seen it myself in the energies that flow from the finite past through the singularity of the present moment into the branching rivers of all possible futures. It will die one way or another: from a disease it gave itself, being eaten up by a monster it created or consumed in a fire it helped light. But look at it this way," he quipped suddenly, changing tack with a lurid smile, "you and I will be left to repopulate the village. What more meaningful service could you offer Kirigakure than that?"

For maybe the first time in her life, Yashako was mortified to the point of being speechless. "Sensei," she admonished at last when she was able, adding to that a withering scowl. "Flag on the play."

'The Manatee' shrugged affably in concession. "Sorry. I'd always thought you were impossible to offend."

"Look!" barked the woman who gestured abruptly, "do you really think this stupid genjutsu of yours will keep out the whole fucking world? Kirigakure is under attack! Doesn't that MEAN anything to you?"

The old ninja's hulking, already-sagging posture slumped even more as he let silence fall rather than reply to his former student's outburst right away. "It used to. It probably still would if I believed the place worthy of the devotion I once had. As for your first question - you must know after all this time, Yashako, that what I've created here is more than mere illusion," he confirmed at last. "Although, I can't blame you for the assumption. Back when I was on Kirigakure's active roster, genjutsu was indeed my strength. After my little 'disagreement' with Kissame that left me a beat-up, legless cripple, defeated and humiliated I tried to disappear within myself. I thought that the natural thing to do but there I discovered new applications for my talents and a greater depth to my awareness." With a calm, kind and yet ghastly smile, 'The Manatee' looked right at Yashako with his sightless eyes. "What I see, Yashako my student, is that the Mist Village cannot be saved…by me, you or anyone. For that matter I see no reason to try. But I can, and will, save you."

The woman's face blanked at the treasonous pronouncement and for a moment she didn't know what to say or even think. The kunoichi had always suspected that the trauma of what the Scourge of the Hidden Mist had done to her former teacher had changed him inside as dramatically as it had on the outside but this was far worse than she'd feared.

Her sharpened teeth grated. Personal considerations aside, even if she killed the old man, which would be regrettable considering that he was her sensei and all, there was no telling what would happen. The Coral Pavilion, the whole place a fabricated reality, a figment of her sensei's imagination made real, might just wink out of existence, taking her with it!

There has to be a way, thought Yashako as she strove to keep her impulsive nature reigned in.

Even while the ninja tried to sort out some scenario by which she could escape though, the woman couldn't help but feel a little touched by the unexpected depth of her sensei's concern for her, however inappropriate.


Haku

Sitting cross-legged in The Dwelling Place of Spirits, Haku repeated the hand signs and intonations Lord Hirai had taught him. The elderly shinobi had been quite surprised and impressed at how quickly he'd picked them up before realizing, apparently, that he shouldn't have been. Not everyone had had a master as exacting as Zabuza Momochi…not to mention the innate ability to execute seals one-handed.

The real problem now laid not his ability to memorize or perform but to clear his mind. The Candlelight Gate Jutsu required a consciousness free of clutter and preoccupation in order to prepare the mind and body to accept coexistence with other worlds and the soul with other souls. For the time being, messy thoughts and feelings intruded: guilt that Mari must be really worried about him by now and that she'll be absolutely FURIOUS if or when he ever saw her again; concern knowing that Chuuya and Inari were still stranded in the Leaf Village and who knew what kind of trouble they might be getting into; more concern that Naruto probably wasn't going heed his warning; deep trepidation that it was up to him to stop the 108 Demons and outright fear that if he didn't the whole city full of people were going to die. Finally: a sense of lingering hopelessness that even if he were successful there was still a plague, mass-poisoning or whatever it was that Lady Inoue had done to simulate the effects of the Tsujita clan's kekkei-genkai under way there.

It was too much!

One by one, though, the distractions fell away as they always had before and the space within his calming mind opened into a vast and empty world. Discipline like this he owed to his late sensei whose harsh tutelage he'd never questioned. A state of balance took hold where Haku's consciousness hovered, aware of his surroundings but detached from them as if viewing them from a great distance. His heartbeat slowed, his breath stilled though his mouth continued to move, forming sounds even as his fingers streamed through the seals of the Hirai clan's secret jutsu.

The scene shifted, not gradually as Haku had expected but with a lurch that was felt rather than seen. The rock walls around him, the streaming sunlight, the mist hanging in the air all at once seemed false, insubstantial – a world rendered on a backdrop of gauze. Only then did he really feel the truth in what Lord Hirai had told him, that he sat at the sepulcher of kings and queens, a place where spirits dwelled. And he was no longer alone. Presences, still unseen, compassed him, crowded him, pressing in and he could feel the assault of their not-quite-living chakras.

By then it was too late to realize that his breath had stopped and so too had his heart. There was no time for a panicked thought, a moment of doubt, or to wonder if Lord Hirai had deceived him, and maybe that was for the best.

Unseen by any living soul, the teenager's grey eyes rolled heavenward as his body crumpled slowly, coming to rest against the pitiless stone.


Lord Hirai

The ink-brush moved with slow, practiced effortlessness across the page, leaving in its wake breathtaking, incomprehensible wisdom. Embodied in those glossy, ebon strokes was the same beauty and secrets anchorites sought to discover in the whispering wind, the shapes of the clouds or the patterns of light caught upon ocean waves – an elusive knowledge visible only to a few but so manifest that even the uninitiated could tell at once that therein lay something inexpressible.

Lord Hirai paused to rest and flex his stiffening fingers. Harsh was the discipline that required a lifetime to master just in time for old age to rob it from you no matter what efforts you made or steps you took to delay it.

The old man took the moment to let his eyes roam around his office – a repository of a past few were left alive to remember. There were shelves and cases full of awards won back in the days when sports and academic competitions were important to him; curios from a time when travel was; weapons and trophies taken in battle from a time when war was; letters and tokens of affection from a time when love was; and then countless photos of all his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren who still were.

He hadn't done well by them, the thought haunted him. If only he'd devoted more time into the development of his heirs then maybe at least one of them would be ready now to take the reins from his aging hands. Of course, if he'd been any less vigilant, Lord Hirai pondered, Kirigakure would have fallen a dozen times by now. That had been his sacrifice to the Village as well as theirs.

Kissohamaru's thoughts fell to Haku and the last time he'd used that jutsu and it didn't seem like that long a time ago. A hurried council of jonin had only just determined what it was the Third Mizukage intended to do with the armies he'd built up – that he would take Kirigakure to war against the entire world starting with Fire Country and the Hidden Leaf Village. A much younger Kissohamaru Hirai had harnessed the powers of the supernatural through The Candlelight Gate Jutsu left to him by his grandmother, the First Mizukage, then went to confront Madara Uchiha who, to his astonishment, acknowledged surrender and left without a fight.

It had all seemed so plausible at the time – that the great patriarch of the Uchiha clan would simply go once he'd realized that he was outmatched. And yet in the years that followed, as the young Hirai had become Lord Hirai and then Councilor Hirai, with all the sacrifices he'd ended up making to Madara and his infernal freak-show collection of misanthropic and traitorous shinobi all for the sake of peace and stability in Kirigakure, it was hard not to doubt that even then, blessed with godlike power, he'd still been nothing more than a plaything before the much more subtle and insidious powers of the Sharingan.

The sound of raised voices, one of them raspy and shrill, rang suddenly outside the old shinobi's chamber muffled by its door of thick, ancient oak. Lord Hirai raised a grey eyebrow then went back to his chirography as the voices grew louder still until they were joined by an outbreak of fisticuffs. The brawl escalated. Shouts and grunts rose up punctuated by the crashes and cracks of furniture breaking, of bodies being thrown against paneled wood and plaster walls.

The racket crested sharply as the door creaked open and a slightly battered Naruto Uzumaki stepped inside, giving a short glimpse of the tumult raging in the antechamber beyond where Hirai clan guards battled a vast army of yellow-haired shadow clones. Relative silence fell as the boy swung the door behind him shut and marched up to Lord Hirai's desk.

"May I help you, Uzumaki-sama?" said the old man with perfect calm as he continued, focusing on his careful brushstrokes.

The young leaf-ninja set both palms on the desk, leaned forward and glared; his whisker-marked face full of purpose. "What did you do to Haku?"

"Such a scurrilous accusation," the councilor began in mock indignation, "I didn't do anything to your little friend."

"Well where is he then?"

"Assuming he survives the jutsu I just taught him, I expect he'll be on his way back to Kirigakure to fight the 108 Demons. It's too bad though." Hirai shook his head with grave regret. "The best anyone can hope for is that the boy delays them awhile. It's almost impossible he'll survive."

"WHAT?" squawked Naruto, recoiling with wide-eyed alarm and disbelief.

The ninja-lord put his brush aside, capped the inkwell and looked down at his work critically before giving it a final blow to dry the ink and sliding it gently to the side. "I'm afraid so," he offered then gestured at his manuscript, "but it's all right here. See for yourself."

With a quizzical expression in his blue eyes, Naruto came around the desk and looked down at it – a snowflake-like design surrounded with cryptic characters. "So what's this supposed to be?"

"You'll have to look closer than that," Hirai pointed out.

The boy bent and as he did the paper came to life, flying up angrily into Naruto's shocked face and wrapping around it like a second skin. Conflicting chakra energies crackled and stormed. The genin stumbled back, crashed into the paneled wall and then staggered around the room. Lord Hirai watched coolly as the young ninja lurched one last time and fell to the floor, struggling with the anguished desperation of a fish snatched from the water before finally going limp.

The councilor picked up a tiny bell that sat on his desk and rang thrice at which a pair of grey-dressed manciples entered, their expressions, by necessity of their professions, completely blank.

"Take this to the tower and prepare a sarcophagus," he instructed. "I'll be along shortly to seal it."

The servants took the blond ninja under each arm and marched off with him without so much as a word, leaving their master alone once more.

A fine thing, Hirai considered sadly. Here I am, the great ninja lord, patriarch of a noble and powerful clan, a counselor in Kirigakure no Sato and yet reduced to this – a pimp and a broker for jinchuuriki. First the three-tails then the six and now the nine.

The weight of his memories carried him back through the decades – all reduced to bits and pieces, images faint or sharp. There'd been a young man, he recalled, with pale green hair and lavender eyes, and another with skin as white as alabaster and black hair…or had it been brown?

And I actually believed that I'd defeated Madara Uchiha. He sighed and, in retrospect, couldn't help but laugh at himself. I went meaning to kill him but chose to let him live…or so I'd always thought. Hirai leaned back in his chair and frowned. I see now that it's much more likely that I simply succumbed to the old bastard's manipulation. Ah, I hate to think what that man intends to do with all the power he's amassing, collecting so many of the tailed beasts.

That was just one of the many thoughts that plagued his dreams and more than a few of his waking hours.

Still, if Haku can't destroy the 108 demons, Lord Hirai considered grimly, perhaps the Akatsuki will.