Hayate followed his sister all the way back to her safehouse through a thin screen of rain and under an oppressive silence. He had to stop a couple of times to wipe rain from the lenses of his goggles, and Kei never actually moved that far out of arm's reach despite her obvious agitation. Since asking the question and that initial burst of panic, her chakra was a jumble of dread-love-sorry-sorry-sorry that Hayate couldn't pull apart on the first try. Even the occasional smoothing-over from Isobu didn't calm the storm.

"We aren't talking about that here," had been her last word on the subject.

Hayate hadn't argued against the order. Kei almost never used that command voice on him—or at all—and its sudden reappearance didn't help the tinge of fear coloring the world now. He just stuck close, like a duckling, and followed her meekly out of Akaboshi's stomping grounds.

They used the Transformation Jutsu four different times along the way, going for housecat or urban pest shapes to shake any surveillance. Hayate remembered to leave off the red collar after the first time, because Kei gave him a strange look he could read even with her face hidden behind that of a big gray squirrel.

The red didn't mean anything outside of Crime Alley, and Hayate should've remembered that.

The apartment Kei led them to was in a slightly wealthier part of the city. This mostly meant that while there were plenty of signs of age and neglect, steel security grates over shop windows, and a similar lack of live cameras, it wasn't as beaten-down. People were a little less hopeless here than in Crime Alley, even if it didn't mean they were safe. There were also fewer people out at night—more cars—and none of the red markings that signified a place or a person had Akaboshi's protection. Hayate couldn't let himself be seen and wave to the working girls and see them wave back if they weren't around. Honestly, the lack of night shift people was just strange after the last month's level of activity.

Oh, and the building was taller. Five stories instead of the two or three that made up most of the residential buildings near Akaboshi's safehouses. Hayate wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not.

Kei's spot was on the top floor, and she led him down from the roof to the fire escape. While Hayate sat on the railing disguised as a rat, she tapped her fingers around the edges of the window until something clicked, then escorted him inside.

The little devices Hayate found around the window were almost identical to the ones in Akaboshi's safehouses, if smaller. Hayate wasn't sure if that meant they were harder to evade or not. Maybe they'd be a little more resistant to being shocked.

And the fūinjutsu talismans plastered near them felt like home. Sure, they made Hayate's teeth buzz for a moment, but that was how he knew they were working. It was the kind of defensive ward that would smash an unwary intruder flat, or at least into a wall. Kei's power passed harmlessly over him, just like always.

Hayate just wasn't sure how long "always" would last, now. Asking that question had cracked something, like ice underneath their feet, and the low pulse of gut-twisting fear from his sister's chakra was impossible to get out of his mind.

Once they were clear of the window and everything was locked again, Kei ripped off her mask and dropped it on the bed heaving a sigh that went all the way to her soul. She also plucked something out of her ear—a wireless radio?—and stuck it under the pillow. Instead of flopping onto the unmade bed, Kei trudged from the window to the tiny kitchen unit and opened a cabinet.

Hayate considered his options. Because he was still his mother's son, Hayate went past Kei to the front door to strip off his wet shoes and socks and find a way to clean up all signs of his passing. Then he pulled off the goggles and the mask he'd taken from Akaboshi, looked around again, and blinked. There was a big winter coat already present that might've swallowed him and smelled faintly of dirty smoke, so Hayate used the other hook. He'd have to remember to wash the mask before returning it.

After a second's thought, Hayate also took off his coat—the one Akaboshi bought, instead of his mission clothes—and hung that up, too. It was warm enough that he felt comfortable with just his undershirt, which had long sleeves. He…probably needed to figure out how to get his mission clothes back from Akaboshi's laundry bin.

Then he went and got out the broom and a washcloth in case he'd tracked mud over Kei's taller table while entering. He hadn't, but because they hadn't been on the ground, there was a boot-print of roof grit in the center of the room instead. Still gross, but less than it could've been.

Behind him, Kei pulled down a box with English writing on it and plucked out two packets. She filled a plastic container from the sink and set it back on a cradle, then flipped a switch. If not for Kei's reaction earlier, Hayate might not have found that easy familiarity strange. Now that he did, though, he couldn't avoid the thought.

"After…" Kei trailed, her voice as soft as snowfall. She didn't turn to face him. "We'll talk. Go sit down."

Hayate swallowed hard, against dread that wasn't entirely his, and went to the couch. Once he'd pulled off all his weapons and placed them safely on the table, there wasn't all that much to do besides look around, so he tried to just absorb details. What struck him, after the overhead light was turned on, was that there was an actual mess.

Usually, Kei kept their apartment neat if she could. Well, her fūinjutsu workspace was a mess of drafts and ink, and sometimes dishes sat in the sink for a while, but she also tended to channel nervous energy in one of three ways. The first was fūinjutsu experimentation, and the second was sparring with a friend. Most relevant, the third was to go on a cleaning spree. The last one tended to happen mostly when she was kinda-sorta trapped inside, waiting on something to happen. While Hayate didn't really get the feeling Kei was trapped here, not really a prisoner, she'd made all those coral decoys for a reason. Outside wasn't safe.

Here, Kei's bed was unmade, there were takeout containers on the table, and there was a fine layer of dust on the furniture. The first was tolerable, the second was weird, and the third was unlikely at home, to say the least. Kei cleaned the ceilings when she really got going. She attacked messes like they were her enemies on the battlefield.

The water started hissing.

"Was he kind to you?" Kei's voice asked, from across the room.

"You mean Akaboshi-san?" The correction slipped out before Hayate even thought about it. Against the tiny spark of surprise in Kei's chakra, Hayate added, "Or Aniki. The other thing was too hard to say most of the time, so he let me use those."

"All right. Akaboshi-san, then." It was probably a long shot to hope that Kei and Akaboshi would get along after how their encounters had gone so far. "But he looked after you?"

"Yeah. Yeah, he did. He didn't have to, though." Hayate tried to make it sound casual and failed a little. In a stronger voice, he insisted, "I could've taken care of myself."

Kei huffed. "I'm sure."

As Kei came over with two tea bags in two steaming mugs, and dragged a trash bin so they could both decide how long they wanted to steep, Hayate tucked himself into a smaller space on the couch. "I mean, you did."

"I really didn't," Kei admitted as she sat down next to him. She waved her free hand briefly to indicate the small apartment. "This place was handed to me once I went to the Bat-clan for help. For that first stretch after I landed, I was scrambling. The assassins even found my other hiding spot and burned it to the ground."

Hayate's hand landed on her knee. "And you're okay?" He'd unfolded himself and peered at her face, like any injuries would've lasted more than a day.

Other than her hair being shorter than the last time he'd seen her, she mostly just seemed stressed. The problem with assuming that was, due to that accelerated healing jinchūriki all seemed to have, lingering injuries were often the more severe ones. Kei didn't usually like to talk about those.

"I couldn't afford to sleep," Kei said with a little sigh, as she leaned back against the couch cushions, "so I wasn't. But I'm fine now."

Hayate poked her in the cheek. "You're sure?"

Amusement-love-exasperation made it out of her chakra and into her expression. Kei's mouth quirked even as she turned her face, getting a little squished up since Hayate hadn't moved his finger at all. "I'll share details if you do."

There was only one thing that came to mind. "I got shot."

Kei's next breath came out as a carefully controlled hiss. "I heard about that."

"You heard?" Hayate let Kei loop an arm around his shoulders and draw him against her side again. He nudged his knee against hers. "How?"

"Robin and Spoiler told me the other night. It sounds like there was a fight in a warehouse, and they found a blood sample from you while the local law enforcement were investigating all the deaths." Kei rubbed her hand up and down his arm. "What actually happened?"

Hayate told her. Looking back, it was clear that Hayate had stumbled into some kind of gang operation, where there were dozens of men moving things or looking for whatever, and Akaboshi had been gearing up even then for his hostile takeover. He'd probably been in the building already, scanning through files and blueprints to decide where he was going to strike next. But then the shooting started, and Hayate got hurt, and then everything sort of spiraled out of control.

In Hayate's opinion, it was more like dovetailing. Hayate needed a place to stay and recover, and it seemed like Akaboshi needed someone to fuss over.

Hayate pulled up his pant leg when Kei's hands started to tremble, indicating the size and shape of the long-gone injury with a finger. He squirmed around until he could put his leg across Kei's lap, so she could inspect it, and went on, "It hurt, but everything worked out."

Kei hummed as she completed the hand seals for a diagnostic technique. Her hands glowed just a tiny bit. "How'd they hit you in the first place?"

"It's not like I knew what a gun was," Hayate complained. He shoved at her shoulder, making Kei laugh near-silently at his childishness more than anything. It was just one way to try and ease the tension. "And there were a lot of them. When Akaboshi shot two of the people who had me cornered, I had to kill the other two so I could get out unnoticed."

Kei nodded along. "One strike?"

"Well, one strike each."

Hayate hadn't wanted either of them to get their weapons to work even with a dying reflex, so he'd done it quick. It also meant there weren't any witnesses, but that would've probably happened anyway. "I never thought I'd actually be glad for all of Inoichi-sensei's kunai drills."

"Yeah, that's how it tends to go." That was definitely approval in her eyes. He'd followed their training just fine.

Efficiency in battle was one of their first lessons, all the way from learning kenjutsu at their mother's knee. If a fight could end in one blow, then there was no excuse to waste time. As he got older, Hayate learned that while it was a part of the general thought process behind their iaijutsu-heavy style, it also reflected their mother's failing health. By the time she went out that last night, Hayate didn't know if that first step was the next best thing to a death sentence.

Going out killed her in the end, but they'd never know the math behind that choice.

"Oneesan." Once he had her attention back, Hayate gave his mug a pointed look. It had a bright red heart on it, cracked down the middle with white, and everything smelled like lemon and ginger. He couldn't reach it without escaping Kei's grasp.

Kei moved Hayate's leg off her lap, apparently satisfied with his healing, and checked their tea. After a second spent staring down at her mug, she pulled the teabag out by the string and flicked it into the trash bin.

"You said the Bat-clan were the ones who figured out what happened," Hayate said, once he'd also disposed of his tea bag. The heat in the ceramic wasn't too much, yet, but it did mean he left his mug on the table to cool a little. "Do they…investigate crimes?"

Kei nodded. "Better than most shifts of MPs I've met."

"Oh. Does that mean I'm a wanted murderer?" Hayate's personal mission kill-count was less than a dozen combatants, because most of his missions were geared toward his team's information-gathering specialty. If he had to kill someone before Inoichi-sensei took care of the problem, something had already gone wrong. A broken battle plan always sucked.

"Maybe a little." When Hayate opened his mouth to protest, Kei held up a hand to try and stem the tide of words. "They aren't a clan like back home. They aren't an army. None of them kill people."

"Akaboshi does," slipped out before Hayate could stop himself.

"I—what? Did he tell you he was one of them?" Some of that surprise in her face wasn't real, but Hayate let it lie.

"I mean, no, but he didn't have to. It was obvious once I had a real point of comparison." Hayate held up his finger as though to lecture, then realized he wasn't going to make discrete points. Well, whatever. "You didn't see it, but when Batman first showed up, it was like they'd been fighting together for years. It's not the same style, not exactly, but I watched them for at least a minute. I know what I saw." Oh! "And Akaboshi uses almost all of the same equipment they do. And…"

Kei took a long sip from her mug. It was a defensive feint. If Hayate directed his question to her and that non-reaction, he wouldn't get anything.

"And every time we saw something related to the Bat-clan, he'd miss them." Hayate wouldn't forget the shape of that soul-splintering yearning until the day he died. Even smothered by rage, it was a cover for a deep well of despair, and that longing kept up its refrain from the bottom. It was worse than punching broken glass. "It felt like us, you know. Like Being separated. Only worse."

Kei didn't dispute the claim.

"Only…" Hayate rubbed at his eyes. It wasn't late, exactly, but he hadn't used that much chakra in such a short time since arriving. His endurance was probably total garbage now. "I don't know. Give me a bit to think about how to phrase it?"

Kei nodded, then took another long sip of her tea despite the heat.

Hayate followed suit. The prickling of ginger along his tongue dulled pretty quickly, and he sniffed a few times as the spicy steam made his nose run. It wasn't bad, just weird after a lifetime of green tea as a first resort.

"Honestly, you probably have more insight into whatever's going on in that helmet than anyone," Kei said after a while, leaning against the arm of the couch. "I can't decide if that's a good thing or not."

Hayate shrugged. "It probably comes out as neutral."

"But you still care."

"Yeah, I do." It was hard not to, when Akaboshi clearly cared so much about him.

Akaboshi's emotional problems went deep. Probably deeper than Hayate could see, even when skeletons kept bobbing up in the current. The hurt-betrayal-nothing-even-matters smashed all together was more surface-level than not, but that didn't make it a lie. Enough of it still made anybody dangerous. Hayate was great at distracting people—Yūgao called it a "little brother instinct" when she was annoyed with him—but splitting Akaboshi's attention only worked for so long. He was trained, driven, and whatever idealistic instinct he had left was predicated on Hayate's presence. Akaboshi was torn between following through on his plans and hiding them from Hayate's poor, innocent eyes even if it made the whole enterprise less efficient.

Hayate wasn't sure he'd ever managed to properly communicate how much shinobi warfare didn't let anyone hide from the ugliness of it. His first kill had happened as a genin, in peacetime, and he'd still come home and cried. And even Hayate's experience paled in comparison to Kei's: she'd been deployed five whole years before him and seen the Third Shinobi World War to its conclusion. Between the two of them, they'd probably seen just about everything.

Akaboshi didn't even like insinuations about Hayate's combat record. Mostly, it made him sad when it didn't make him angry. He never took either of those emotions out on Hayate, but he did change the subject real quick if he could.

Hayate knew better than to push for details. He didn't even know how to start untangling all of that. He didn't even think Inoichi-sensei would have a clue.

Hayate leaned heavily into Kei's side, exhausted. "Can we talk about your thing now?"

The fear slammed back into her like a dropped training weight on an exposed foot.

The ice-cold shock of it woke Hayate sharply enough that he nearly fumbled his mug. "We don't have to, but—" Hayate tried to say, after the mug was safely away.

"No, we do." Kei made sure to put her tea back on the table and then fold her hands in her lap to keep them still, but it didn't really help. She started fidgeting almost immediately. "About some of it, at least."

Hayate pried one of her hands loose from that task and wrapped her arm around his shoulders.

Kei was quiet for a long time, with her chakra swaying unsteadily. It felt like the sea in a storm, or spring floods. Too big for her body. Then: "I need you to understand something, okay?"

Ominous. Super ominous. Hayate angled his head so he could look directly at the side of Kei's face, since she was staring down at her other hand. When he glanced at it, the fingers clenched and unclenched in a motion that was almost meditative. He could even feel Isobu peering at them both from the inside of Kei's chakra coils, wary down to his nonexistent bones.

"I won't be able to tell you much. It's not because I don't trust you or don't love you enough." Kei paused to calm herself again, free hand digging claws into her pant leg. "But a couple of years ago, Sensei decided this had to be classified. Okay? It's not because of anything you did."

Hayate worried at the inside of his lip with his teeth. He did get it. Not everyone in the village needed to know everything. Some of the penalties for spilling Konoha's secrets went all the way up to summary execution. Even the situation with Kei's jinchūriki status had been a secret for as long as the conspirators could manage. Hayate didn't have to be told about Naruto and Kushina, though, because by then his sensor abilities had developed enough that they could hardly hide when he lived in their house.

He still wasn't allowed to know what happened to Obito for those six months he was gone, even though he was sure Kei knew he didn't believe the story everyone told.

Kei's eyes glowed faintly yellow when she turned her head away from the light to make eye contact with Hayate. Isobu was definitely listening.

"What can you tell me?" Hayate asked, refusing to be intimidated. Neither Kei nor Isobu had ever hurt him. Sparring didn't count. Everyone agreed on that ahead of time, and Hayate knew he barely had to squeak in pain before Kei would back off like she'd been shocked.

Sometimes that got her actually shocked, which was usually coincidental.

"That I'm going to use what we" —and here, she actually gestured with her hand to indicate this included Hayate, which was nice— "know to try and get us home, and I'll be able to tell you if the Hokage gives direct permission. Once we're back. But, for now, I have to ask that you just trust me. There's no level of secrecy that makes me love you any less."

It—wasn't ideal, to be kept in the dark by a teammate, but Hayate could live with it. He'd done it before. Mission headspace hadn't really been a thing for the last month or so, because there hadn't been anyone from Konoha to rely on. Now that Kei was back in his orbit, it was like feeling the click of a loose puzzle piece put in its proper place. A little thing was missing, and then it wasn't.

So, Hayate nodded. It didn't really matter if he thought S-rank missions were bullshit. It didn't make that info his by right.

"And…" Kei trailed off, sounding uncertain again. "Getting home might take a lot of work. This isn't really our world…"

Hayate rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I noticed."

Kei's laugh was a low, surprised thing, but she just said, "What gave it away? The buildings? The language?"

Oh, come on. "The moon's wrong. It's not that hard to figure out."

The things she mentioned might've been just quirks of foreign places, like how central Amegakure was somewhere around thirty percent metal and piping according to all the stories. People made cities, and people could be incredibly weird. But the moon? All of the shadows were strange and off-putting the first time Hayate got a look at it, and people couldn't affect that.

The stars were probably weird too, but the city's heavy cloud cover and interfering lights meant Hayate couldn't actually confirm that. Seeing four stars out of however many were supposed to be visible at this latitude wasn't enough data.

"Well, if you already knew that, I guess it's settled." Kei's amusement was pretty easy to read, but Hayate decided to let it go. "I'm pretty sure we can get home despite everything, because Shimika-senpai's butterflies keep showing up. Spoiler said you'd seen them. And probably saved her from them, given how they act."

"Yeah, they were following those fake coral tracker things around." Hayate jabbed Kei with an elbow, though it didn't make her flinch. "Making those was irresponsible."

Kei rubbed at her scar with one fingertip. "Yeah, figured that one out. I just needed some breathing room and was reckless about how I got it. Don't actually know how many people died except for what the Bat-clan told me."

"You could've just killed those assassin guys."

"Really not a viable option in a society like this," Kei muttered.

"Akaboshi did."

"I bet he did, but—" A thought occurred to her. Hayate felt the anxiety through her. "Wait. Why did he have to deal with assassins?"

"Because they were watching him, at first, but then I think Akaboshi decided he needed to keep them off me." The first time Hayate crashed into an assassin stakeout and kicked all their asses as a way to break his fighting hiatus—or recovery period, whatever—Akaboshi hadn't actually known they were scoping out his safehouses. That momentary shock was unpleasant for both of them. "If they were after you the whole time, I guess that makes sense, but I never had any real trouble sneaking up on them when I had to."

"Well. One of us is a jinchūriki."

Yeah, but that didn't mean everyone could pick Kei out a distance. If Kei couldn't operate in the field without attracting the attention of any shinobi within thirty kilometers, there was no way the Hokage could send her on the missions she took. "Just because you're used to being a target doesn't mean it makes sense."

"I—true." Kei frowned as she thought, then shifted so she could rest her cheek against the top of Hayate's head. "Shimika-senpai's butterflies can track me, sure, but they're predators following a scent trail. They're adapted for it. The assassins don't have that advantage."

"They don't have chakra at all," Hayate corrected her, deciding to give up and rest his head against her shoulder so he didn't strain his neck. "Akaboshi doesn't either. No one does except you, and me, and the bugs."

Kei made a contemplative noise. "How do you feel about trying to get their attention on purpose?"

"The butterflies or the assassins?"

"Why not both?"

Um. I don't mind doing it eventually, but— "Now?"

"Absolutely not." The thought made Kei at least as uncomfortable as it did Hayate. "Not until we do some prelim work."

Good. While it was something they could theoretically handle, Hayate didn't want to move right now. The city's threats weren't insurmountable, but there was value in not borrowing trouble. He was tired, probably needed a shower, and his stomach was trained for Akaboshi's weird nighttime schedule. He was going to be hungry soon.

And then both of their stomachs growled.

"And eat. I can come up with something quick." Kei kissed the top of Hayate's head before letting him go, so they could both get off the couch. "Or the bathroom's yours if you want it."

Once he'd downed the last of his tea—depressingly lukewarm—Hayate raised an eyebrow at her. "Was that a hint?"

"Maybe." Kei's dry tone was at odds with her chakra signature, which was too genuinely happy—despite the lingering touch of dread—for her to really mean any snippiness. Hayate got the feeling she wasn't going to be able to make a real cutting remark for ages.

Hopefully, she'd feel better soon. Though, Hayate had an additional concern. "I don't have any spare clothes."

"Really?"

"I went straight from a fight to here and don't use fūinjutsu to hide my entire wardrobe in a back pocket." Hayate crossed his arms in solemn judgment. Kei carried so much shit it was ridiculous. "Normal people don't."

"I am not going to Akaboshi's place to steal your stuff back from him. Not gonna happen."

"It's his stuff, technically, since he bought it for me." Hayate hadn't spent his own money on anything since arriving in this wacky city. Nobody recognized either the paper or the coins; he'd even checked with Akaboshi's goons.

"You say this like someone his size would even be able to even stick one limb through clothes sized for you. He'd probably stretch it to death." Kei started to dig through the fridge, pulling out a pack of eggs, something in a covered plastic container, and an apple. Of course there were apples. There were never not apples. "He outweighs you by what, forty kilos?"

"Something like that. Makes wrestling him a pain." Hayate spotted something stuck to the fridge door as she closed it, giving him a weird look probably in response to that last sentence. Hayate didn't care about that, though. He had concerns. "Oneesan, why do you have a sign saying 'stop killing people, Shimika-senpai'?" Another look and— "Why do you have multiple signs saying that?"

"I was going to put them somewhere nearby the next time I use Isobu's coral," Kei said over her shoulder. She pulled bowls down from cabinets and frowned thoughtfully. "Just in case Shimika-senpai finally gathers enough of the damn things in one spot to make them literate through the hive mind."

"I don't think they work like that."

"I'm choosing to be optimistic."

Hayate sighed like his soul was being weighed down by his sister's nonsense, transformed into anchors. "Sure you are."

Luckily—or unluckily—a device on the wall started making a boop-bwoooooop noise. Kei's head whipped toward a red light on a grayish-silver casing with a scowl, so Hayate used that chance to slip into the bathroom.

"What is it?" Kei's voice said through the door. She was probably talking on the phone that had buttons instead of a useful screen, so Hayate didn't bother replying.

Hayate flicked the light on and looked in the mirror out of sheer curiosity. In lighting that was a little starker than he liked, maybe he'd look different. After a second's assessment, Hayate concluded he was a little too ragged for his usual standards, and his eyes were a tiny bit more shadowed, and maybe he was paler—but all of that was predictable. He'd seen the sun over the last month, but mostly through blackout curtains because Akaboshi's sleep schedule was a roll of the dice at best. Otherwise, the only real complaint was that maybe he needed a haircut.

Hayate went searching for a hair tie instead.

"Now? We just got settled."

Someone said something in a tinny voice through the device, so Kei left gaps to listen. He could hear her making listening noises, like she usually did when Rin was giving a biology lecture.

Hayate dug his phone out of his pocket and set it on the bathroom sink, wary of needing that translation app again.

"Then send someone who speaks this language," Kei was saying, her tone clipped. He could feel her irritation clearly through the door, too. "I'm not leaving my brother in the dark about this. And it'd be faster anyway, so we could all actually get some sleep before sunrise."

Hayate unlocked his phone and looked down at the green icon. He could just call Akaboshi, maybe drag him into this situation too, but…given the way he acted less than an hour ago, it didn't seem like he was in the mood. He'd actually ditched Hayate in favor of fleeing the scene.

Not that it stopped Hayate from getting in a final read on his emotional state, but it was a solid attempt. Relief-regret-spite-I'll-show-you was a worrying combination. There was every chance Akaboshi would take this chance to do something reckless—at best.

"Fine, I'll try to accommodate that." Something clanged in the kitchen as though Kei was moving plates around. She probably was. "But I'd like something in return."

Hayate's finger hovered over the little gun picture Akaboshi had chosen. Maybe…

The next sentence—statement?—Kei went with was entirely in English. Which was probably not a great sign. She actually laughed at the end of the other person's response, and that was pure growing mischief. Hayate couldn't get the translation app back fast enough to catch what she said.

Dropping his phone, Hayate hit the door with his fist hard enough to make a noise. "Quit scheming!"

Kei ignored him, saying, "Good, thanks, see you soon. Or whoever gets sent over, I guess."

Ugh. Big siblings were the worst sometimes.

Whatever she was scheming could wait until after his shower.


"Well, there's a puzzle." Jiraiya kept one hand hovering over the surface of the crystal ball, scratching his chin with the other. "Our girl literally put a 'stop helping me' sign on the fridge. Guess that's one way to send a message. As though we weren't going to take a look at the problem at its source." Jiraiya laughed, low in his chest. "Ah, kids. Anyway, you sure you can send a clone this time, Shimika-chan?"

"It may take several attempts, Jiraiya-sama, and I…have to take my time." With heavy modifications made to the seals both on her arms and trailing along the ritual chamber's walls, floor, and ceiling all visible, Shimika sat with her legs crossed and her chakra thrumming. "I have no more interest in losing half a colony today than ever."

"Fair enough, fair enough. As long as we're being careful."

The last time she'd nearly collapsed from chakra exhaustion, so there were two more Aburame accompanying Shimika for this attempt. If something happened, they'd be able to replenish her colony and Kushina could carefully patch up her chakra reserves if needed. Still, that was no reason to be reckless.

"All recording equipment is active," was the verdict a few minutes later. The ANBU agent with the tiger mask surveilled the room, more as the Hokage's eyes during such inconvenient hours than his own person. He bowed his head to Jiraiya. "Begin when ready."

Shimika brought her chakra up in a wave and her kikai insects flowed out of her shadow like ink spots on paper. Slowly, they began to march. In ants, their pattern would've been called a death spiral. Most Aburame allies didn't call it anything at all. Whatever the term chosen, they strode to their appointed places and froze all together, perfectly coordinated. The ground around her, apart from the many glowing talismans, was like glittering black oil.

The seals flared. Kushina's Adamantine Chakra Chains, coiled around the room like rope and garlands and festival lanterns, contained the energy flare like nothing.

Thousands upon thousands of insects vanished, carrying the loose talismans with them.

Shimika's shoulders sagged, but not from exhaustion or relief. A quarter of a colony, gone in an instant. No matter how many times Shimika committed her charges to that kind of loss, it still hurt. Like any Aburame, she kept her soldiers in good condition. She raised them. They served her well in response.

But there was still a thread. A tiny trail of connection, fainter than any scent trail the kikaichū usually followed.

"Did the Flying Thunder God Seals make it through?" asked Kushina, but in the distracted way that meant she was multitasking with fūinjutsu again. The golden chains snaking from her body still glowed brilliantly, unbroken, and cut off all outside interference.

Jiraiya peered through the crystal ball. "Not this time. But the remote summoning ones did, Shimika-chan. Wanna give it a shot yet?"

Shimika shook her head, twining her fingers together in the Snake hand seal. The seals painted on her hands burned, briefly, as chakra was transferred through the connection.

The world split.

Thousands of tiny eyes fed Shimika their input: The fūinjutsu chamber, the gap in their defenses left by their missing fellows, and allied shinobi arrayed around the room to reinforce their collaboration.

Thousands of other eyes observed an insect clone identical to Shimika emerge from their collective mass and lie in the middle of what was likely an empty bedchamber. The clone was also making the Snake seal, then stopped, sat up, and looked around through false eyes.

"Aaand you're up and running." Jiraiya pumped a fist in the air. "One fully-realized insect clone, right on target. Nice shot, Shimika-chan."

Aside from the terrible lighting and the personal effects, it could have been a barracks room for any ANBU base. While there were some strange touches—such as a flat, folding device that hardly resembled a computer—but otherwise, this fell within the bounds of a military base. Not something incomprehensible, and certainly not something immune to sabotage.

The clone dissolved into its component insects and crept out of the room in a black flood under the door. Little shelled bodies dragged the butterfly-summoning seals after it.

The hall it emerged into was empty, at least for the moment. The walls of the strange new building were shadowed, adorned intermittently with what looked like artwork. The pieces were mostly in frames, at least. Along the tiled floor, someone had placed long rugs to muffle untoward noise and hide vents or drainage pipes, where necessary.

Some of the kikaichū uncovered their wings and took to the air with a faint buzz. There were dozens of potential routes and the females could mark the way.

While the clone's supply of kikaichū spread out and began their infiltration of the ventilation system, Shimika directed a small portion of them to gather around the butterfly-summoning seal instead. Dozens were already chewing their way through the defunct Flying Thunder God Seal, to remove the evidence of its existence.

"All right, the head of the swarm's started to find some people. Kushina-chan, Tiger, take a look."

Shimika's swarm trekked onward. Though they were many, their eyes were weak, and for a moment all Shimika could see was a room from the perspective of a being less than three millimeters tall. Humans were incomprehensible giants, but moving feet were known hazards, and her kikaichū skittered through shadows to find better observation points.

The image resolved, somewhat, and there was a woman there holding a dark-haired child by both shoulders. Their lips were moving, but the kikaichū didn't have the same sort of hearing humans did. Language was just vibration and pitch was just a method of determining how close a threat might be. They cared more about movement.

"I remember seeing that woman earlier," said Kushina's voice, filtered through Shimika's human ears and brain. "But the child…"

"She must've been keeping him clear of the mess. I know I wouldn't want a kid too close to that creep who started all this."

"Agreed." Kushina's chains moved, briefly changing the distribution of light in the room. "Shimika-san, do you have eyes on the creep?"

Hundreds, eventually, Shimika thought. "Not yet. Jiraiya-sama, I am prepared to summon at a moment's notice."

"Fire away," Jiraiya said.

Back in the first hall, four hundred and fifty-seven of her kikaichū died as they spent all their chakra on the ritual. For the purposes of that summoning alone, she'd allowed a small portion of her swarm to walk off with her blood on their shells. In a tiny puff of smoke, the surviving kikaichū watched a hundred white-and-black butterflies stride over their comrades' corpses.

Convincing insects of such similar feeding requirements to get along was always a careful dance, especially when there was no food source nearby to feed all of them comfortably. As it was, they were all constrained by Shimika's chakra and parallel-if-similar control schemes.

The kikaichū began to form another clone from their mass, rising from the floor like a living, angry shadow.

A few of the butterflies fanned their wings experimentally. They were too large to hide inside a building as themselves, unlike the kikaichū, and so they took flight and darted around each other. After the insect clone was complete, they landed on the false Shimika's head and shoulders, laid their wings to rest, and vanished from human sight. They took the clone with them.

But the swarm knew exactly where the ambling clone was at all times. It was difficult to ignore the whirlpool while caught in its current. That, and individual kikaichū brains were too simple to be affected by genjutsu.

Find me the source, Shimika thought.

The butterflies led the way. They weren't a part of the Aburame swarm the same way the kikaichū were, so they relied on their own senses.

They were…moving rather fast. And she wasn't entirely certain they'd understood her.

"Your buddies spot something, Shimika-chan?" Jiraiya asked. A frown had crept into his voice.

"Possibly, Jiraiya-sama." Shimika's knuckles whitened as her grip on the Snake hand seal went tighter. Using the kikaichū's eyes was a matter of putting together ten thousand tiny viewpoints without any inclination to form a picture on their own, and the butterflies gave her no input at all. "Please give me a moment."

Many of the swarming insects surged through the ventilation, down the halls under rugs, and generally spread out like water.

The clone, concealed and guided by the butterflies and animated by Shimika's will, rushed along its indicated route. Shimika felt the kikaichū writhing as they tried to keep the clone together, crawling over each other in a frantic attempt to keep their place in the clone as it moved.

Left turn. Right turn. Scramble along the ceiling like a massive housefly, to avoid enemy operatives walking below. Female kikaichū fell out of formation to drop onto hoods, scarves, or sleeves, blending in perfectly with dark fabric until they could properly hide. Someone swatted at one, killing her, but Shimika didn't have the time to stop and scold the offender.

Lethally.

The clone arrived at a T-junction, butterflies flitting along ahead of it. Shimika leaned on its tens of thousands of hidden eyes, getting a flash of white-and-black wings heading for—

One of the enemy combatants opened his mouth, and the butterflies were on him.

"What the hell?" Jiraiya barked. "We were on a stealth mission, Shimika-chan. Call them off."

The butterflies would not be called off, even when Shimika's clone batted a hand across the victim's face in an attempt to dislodge them. It took two swipes—or slaps—before the target smacked headfirst into a wall with enough kikaichū latched onto his face to drive the butterflies somewhere else. If from hunger if nothing else.

The face came with them. Color drained out of the skin until all that was left under the combined insect assault was putty-like white flesh. The slack jaw was full of inhumanly rounded, stubbly teeth. The eye rolling up under slack lids was a flat yellow disc, with no visible pupil. The other side of the face was a useless, warped mass. The clothes didn't change, but the dark fabric made the pale face stand out in a way that made every hair on Shimika's head stand on end.

Shimika stopped trying to convince the butterflies not to eat him. In fact, she urged her kikaichū to join in. The clone collapsed under the weight of its own hunger, mandibles moving over ten thousand mouths.

"Oh, fuck no." That was Kushina's voice. She glared down at the crystal ball with her hands on either side of it, even with Jiraiya's hand on her shoulder. "Not those things again!"

The kikaichū focused on the flesh, this time, while the butterflies devoured all the chakra as voraciously as ever. Shimika reminded them, absently, not to bother with the clothes, but luckily there were no bones to care about. Both swarms could feast.

It was probably a good thing that kikaichū didn't really feel fear. They weren't repulsed by their prey at all.

"Guess that explains their excitement. Time to clear out, Shimika-chan." Jiraiya was frowning even as he removed his hand from the crystal ball and crossed his arms. "I'm sure an empty set of clothes in their main base will result in some…awkward questions."

"Not the time for innuendo!"

"That was an accident!"

Kushina started looking around the chamber anxiously. The seals were still glowing. "We need to get Shimika's colony back and report this."

"I have it written down and I have the video, Kushina-sama," Tiger said quietly. He held up a notes sheet with one hand, with pages folded back. "Shimika-san, can you withdraw?"

Shimika drew a deep breath, feeling her colony's two-places-at-once sensation. With a blank look fixed to her face, Shimika pulled her cramping hands apart. Her head ached even with the occasional reinforcement of her kikaichū inside her skin. Everything felt strange and wobbly as her colony tried asking for reinforcement.

"Shimika-chan?"

"I've got it." Shimika ran through four more hand seals, and her butterflies popped back along the held-open door that allowed their displaced summoning ritual to work.

Her kikaichū, meanwhile, crawled down from the empty clothing and made their way along the rug. While it couldn't hide them forever, they needed a little time to remember how to come home.

"I'll leave the females for later," Shimika said, and held her hand on the Seal of Confrontation. "Just in case. Otherwise, just pull them through. I'll retrieve the maximum number I can."

"Got it," Kushina said, and moved back to the ritual chamber's floor to place her hands on the inked lines.

The air popped. All the thousands of tiny lives landed on the floor again, even running over Kushina's fingers, and almost all of them flooded back toward Shimika as she fell over backwards. Her shoulders landed in an unhappy, rapidly-depleting bed of kikaichū ripped from the site of their last meal. They were, understandably, annoyed by this.

"I've got you," said one of her cousins, Noriaki, as the kikaichū all started flooding the room with distressed pheromones. "It's all right."

But they did understand that they were being called home.

"Ow," was what Shimika managed to say.

"Yeah, I agree with that one." Jiraiya sighed. "Hey, Tiger, you good to run off to the Hokage now?"

"Yes, Jiraiya-sama."

"Good, 'cause I think Shimika-chan is gonna—"

The world went comfortably black.


Notes:

1. The fact that the moon is an artificial planetoid in the Naruto series never fails to piss me off. It makes absolutely no sense. Why do you hate astronomers, Kishimoto?
2. The function of the sealing chamber is manyfold, but the most relevant one is giving Shimika the ability to actually use the kikaichū as a hivemind. They're eusocial insects when under Aburame clan control, but they're not directly perceiving the world for their shinobi. Usually, they have to report back physically to convey a message, like how bees dance for their hive.
3. Zetsu is a lot like a cockroach. If you see one, you're missing way more than that.