"(Everything I gain) I lost it all,

Now all the times are changing I find myself crying all alone,

(Everything) is right here,

and now I know I can persevere,

Go forward on my own,"

-Bakusou Yume Uta, Studio Yuraki


Nagato lowered his sister down onto the sand and heard the chameleon summon follow him.

It was surprisingly quiet.

It turned one eye to inspect her for a few seconds, then faced the battle.

The tear in her mesh shirt exposed the new, little white jagged scars along her stomach, but he knew she probably wouldn't care about them. Given enough time, they'd fade on their own.

A benefit to not being pale, he thought, and held back a snort.

He'd been more worried about her intestines, but Samehada wasn't meant for a quick death. The serrated spines were meant to slow her enemy, to give her more chances to drain more of their chakra before they eventually bled to death.

She was the perfect weapon for someone like Kisame.

Nagato let out a breath and stood. He didn't know what to make of the mist-nin. He hadn't expected him to treat their fight like an actual spar, but he had, and it'd surprised him.

Kisame had briefly entered his limited range when he'd gone to get Oka, and it made him realized how little of his chakra he'd used against her. The amount of clones Kisame had made would've been enough to exhaust him, but Kisame had only let the clones drop and dived into the fight against the dog summon without hesitation.

It had seemed possible, between the four of them plus Chojuro, that they could take on Kisame if they had no other choice. But now it just seemed like his senses had been more muddled than he thought.

The natural mist was like a thick blanket wrapped around him. No matter how much he wiggled or tried to throw it off, it clung to him. He'd had to start carefully peeling it off instead, like an orange with its skin stuck on with glue.

Man-made mist because made him feel buried. There was no peeling it off, and that made him feel exposed and disoriented, but he hadn't felt mist like that since they'd reached the shoreline.

It had made him almost as sick as the heavy lurching of the boat did.

Nagato stepped around his sister and reached out to the chameleon summon slowly, hesitantly patting its leg.

It tilted its head to stare down at him, unblinking, as if judging him.

"Usagi," he tested the name with some amusement.

Rabbit.

"Do you come from the same summon land overseas like the salamanders do? Or are you from a hidden place in the elemental nations like the toads and the slugs?"

The chameleon blinked once, sluggishly, and then lowered itself so his hand brushed against its neck. It stared at him until he started cautiously scratching the rough skin.

"Getsu usagi," Nagato said with more amusement.

Moon rabbit.

"He won," Namekuji interrupted his musings, sounding disgruntled about it, and Nagato turned to look.

Their fight had brought them closer, and the dog summon was trapped in a massive water prison. The summon was thrashing, filling the water with bubbles as it tried to snap at Kisame.

"That was fun," Kisame said, lightly out of breath, his left hand within the water prison. "But it's time for you to go home."

Samehada looked asleep next to him, her tongue hanging out of her mouth, bigger than before.

The dog summon snapped weakly at him a few more times before it went limp.

Kisame pulled his hand out before the last bubbles reached the top, sparing it, and it disappeared the second it and the water started to splash down.

Monsters like him are the result of large chakra pools mixing.

Kisame glanced at him briefly after the water leveled out, assessing him, and Nagato blinked. He'd seen that grin thrown at Oka, and all it told him was that he couldn't use it to gauge what Kisame was thinking. He was like Yahiko that way, except while his best friend's grin was always full of humor, Kisame's was all menace.

And then Kisame lost interest as his eyes caught on someone climbing out of the water.

He looked at the figure and back to Kisame, but the mist-nin didn't react.

"Mangetsu," Kisame greeted him, and Nagato knew that was for him.

Nagato looked at Mangetsu again, taking note of the handle of a needle-thin sword showing over his shoulder as he shook water out of his white hair.

"Kisame, hey," Mangetu said back, but his eyes were on Nagato. "Not surprised, eh? So you knew I'd—"

"Follow me, yes," Kisame finished for him, tonelessly. "We're supposed to watch out for suspicious activity in each other, after all."

"Yet only one of us was."

"I'm no one's babysitter. I wanted to come here, so I did. But I wasn't completely sure you were here until just now. My sharks are at their most useful in open water, after all."

"They're persistent, I'll give you that," Mangetsu agreed.

"And yet you're still as slippery as always. So then, why did you reveal yourself?"

"I saw something interesting," he answered, still looking at Nagato. "No one spars with you anymore for a reason. It tends to take a whole team of medics to fix the mess Samehada makes of someone, even if it looked like you were pulling your punches."

Nagato understood the attention suddenly, but it hadn't been hard. Then again, his perception of what was and wasn't hard was skewed.

He'd been raised on war wounds.

"I'm Nagato of the Akatsuki," Nagato introduced himself politely, side-stepping the implication of what Mangetsu might've wanted from him.

"Akatsuki," Mangetsu repeated, rolling the word around on his tongue. He glanced at Kisame. "I don't think I've ever seen you pull your punches either."

Kisame only showed him his teeth.

Mangetsu smiled back with all his sharpened teeth too, and it felt like they were having a silent conversation, and Nagato could only watch in curious silence.

"Not mercenaries. They're not your style," Mangetsu eventually guessed, breaking eye-contact first. "So, then why are you hanging out with foreign-nin?"

"He's an Uzumaki," Kisame offered, and didn't answer the question.

Mangetsu's gaze slid back to Nagato. "I see that."

"Her too."

He looked down. "Doesn't look like it to me."

"Must get her looks from the other parent."

"Lucky."

"Yeah."

The 'other parent' was their dad. It hadn't been as noticeable when she'd been younger, before she'd grown into looking like him.

He and Oka didn't look that much alike anymore.

They had the same eye shape and almost the same noses, but only someone looking closely at them would notice that. It was nearly all of what Oka had gotten from their mom.

They used to have the same brown eyes, the kind that looked hazel when the light hit just right, but looked black in the dark.

They kind of had the same ears too, but their dad had been tan like her. Not as dark of a shade as Etsudo, but darker than Yahiko. Somehow neither of them looked like a true mix of both, and Nagato didn't think he inherited anything from their dad at all.

"The Uzumaki's summon is tired of humans talking about us in front of us," Namekuji spoke up when he didn't, deadpan.

Mangetsu and Kisame had still been talking while he'd been lost in thought, but he wouldn't have interrupted them anyway. He'd learned a lot just by watching them. It seemed like him not being able to trust the expressions of mist-nin would be a common thing, and it made him think about Mei Terumi.

She'd talked like a diplomat, like Ren did in his letters, but she'd been earnest. Or so he'd thought.

"It talks," Mangetsu drawled. "Does the big one talk too?"

"It thinks your teeth look like they're rotting," Namekuji said back.

Mangetsu blinked but was still smiling as he said, "I brush my teeth as often as I can."

"Bad genetics then."

But Nagato supposed it was about time he start acting like a diplomat too. He kept scratching Usagi, ignoring the bickering as he asked, "Is it true that you can turn any part of your body into water?"

Mangetsu glanced at Kisame. "Bold, isn't he?"

Kisame, who knew about Chojuro, said nothing.

"Yeah, maybe it is," Mangetsu finally answered, clearly wondering where he was going with it.

"And that the blade on your back is the Nuibari?"

Mangetsu looked at him a little more sharply at that. His eyes went back to Kisame, who shook his head in a 'not me' way.

"It must've made following Kisame harder since you can't turn it to water, but you still brought it, which means you were expecting you'd need to fight," Nagato reasoned.

Mangetsu stared at him in silence, and Kisame was looking at him again.

"You must've been looking for an opening for a surprise attack," Nagato casually continued. "Has the Mizukage made Kisame a traitor already?"

Neither changed expressions, but Mangetsu's smile was frozen. He put a hand on the back of his neck, moving slowly so they saw he wasn't reaching for his sword.

"It's always a headache when an educated one is involved," was all Mangetsu said.

It wasn't a compliment, but it felt like one to him. "For you to abandon that mission, it must be someone important to you whose injured or dying, and you think I can help them. Are they worth becoming a traitor?"

"I don't know what you think, but not much would change for me if I went missing-nin."

"That's not true. You value something else here," Nagato mused, thinking as he talked, and Usagi shifted so his hand was scratching under its eyelid. "You only decided to abandon that mission once you were convinced that I could do it. You didn't accept it in the first place out of loyalty, or to kill."

"Oh? And how do you know that, foreign-nin?"

"Because you're listening to me." Nagato answered, and Mangetsu went silent. "You're not loyal because it didn't take very much for you to abandon it, but you still came here to do it, which means that something made you agree to it. It's not because you enjoy killing, because I've outed you as trying to carry out as assassination, and all you've done is make sure we don't see you as a threat. Why keep up the act if we're on guard?"

"He's good," Kisame said, enjoying the show.

Mangetsu could've proven him wrong easily by fleeing, by attacking them, or by flaring his chakra to alert the sensor-nin.

He didn't make a move, and only looked at Nagato for a long time, still smiling.

"Are you leaf-nin?" Mangetsu finally asked, still holding the back of his neck.

"He wouldn't be alive if he was," Kisame answered for him.

"Had to ask," Mangetsu drawled, but didn't look at Kisame, as he said, "Seems to me you're getting soft, Hoshigaki."

"Oh yeah? Come over here and say that to my face."

"I'm good," Mangetsu said, and then, to Nagato, "You want me to join whatever you've got going on or what? What do I have to do for your help?"

Nagato paused. He tore a page out of Oka's book, aware that Kisame was watching him, "You have to stay out of the way. I don't know how or where it'll happen, but there will probably be a war soon."

Mangetsu, for the first time, frowned. "You want the village?"

"No, we were only hired to assist. Our client wouldn't call it a war, but a revolution like this will be bloody."

"Terumi," Kisame provided.

Mangetsu's eyes shot to him.

"That's on Oka for letting him in on so much," Namekuji muttered, sounding like he was somehow blaming Nagato, but Nagato didn't let himself look anything but neutral and patient.

"You're with Terumi?" Mangetsu asked Kisame in blatant shock.

"Nah," Kisame said, but didn't elaborate or explain.

He just grinned like the whole thing was funny to him. Like he hadn't told his sister he had nothing about an hour before.

"Sure, fine," Mangetsu said, eyes sliding back to Nagato, "If Terumi wants to burn the village to the ground, I'll grill some ikayaki over the fire."

"I need to know more about the injury before I can fully agree to help," Nagato said, not knowing what ikayaki was.

Mangetsu frowned again. He didn't answer for a while before he said, "Not here. Water's too open."

"I would know if we weren't alone," Kisame said.

Mangetsu only smiled at him and said nothing.

"It's not just us. There are others in the Akatsuki waiting in Minakami. We can talk there, and you can meet everyone," Nagato said, even though there had been barely enough room in the alley before Kisame. But until they talked and were led to his important person, Mangetsu would have nowhere else to go too.

They needed to make a temporary home in one of the abandoned buildings for all of them, he mused.

"I didn't think rain-nin had your types," Kisame said, giving him away again. "Amegakure was always a small fish in a big ocean."

Namekuji muttered another insult.

"Every village started out as a small fish. That didn't stop Iwagakure or Kumogakure from becoming two of the five great nations," Nagato responded.

"You dream big."

"Those are the only dreams small fish can have."

Kisame flashed his teeth, saying nothing.

"Wont the sensor-nin get suspicious seeing that you let us live?" Nagato asked after a second.

"Not if they stop breathing."

Mangetsu was frowning at the water, not paying attention to them anymore, somewhere else.

Usagi stood abruptly, making all of them stop. It peered down at Nagato, then just as suddenly turned completely invisible. Usagi's chakra vanished like a candle snuffing out.

Nagato blinked, but only his hand against Usagi's scaly skin told him it was still there when everything else in him tried to convince him it wasn't.

Usagi didn't become visible again, but turned more to face him, and Nagato thought he understood what the summon was trying to tell him. He'd only ever felt chakra vanish like that when someone died instantly, too fast to even think to defend themselves.

"It disappeared," Mangetsu said, blinking like he couldn't quite believe it.

"Interesting," was all Kisame said.

He felt Usagi lower down to the sand, turn its head, and then he was touching Usagi's open mouth.

Nagato didn't understand how it could do that without even gathering its chakra, or what the limits of what it understood were, but he still knelt and wordlessly gathered Oka in his arms. Because what he did know were two things. Usagi was her summon, and it wouldn't hurt him. He was confused, but he didn't distrust Usagi's intent.

"We don't need to put the ninja around here on higher alert yet. I'll go with Usagi, and it'll look like you won when our chakra disappears," Nagato told Kisame, awkwardly maneuvering himself into Usagi's mouth as his eyes insisted nothing was there.

It was like one of Mamoru-sensei's genjutsu.

Namekuji made a disgusted sound as saliva stuck his sandals to the tongue and he had a hard time pulling them up. Nagato didn't go too far in, which made it cramped, but he still made them fit, and tried not to step around too much, even if Usagi stayed relaxed the whole time. Namekuji made another disgusted sound.

He saw the two mist-nin exchange a glance as Usagi's mouth closed and he was left in the sticky dark.

.

.

.

Nagato watched Yahiko and Hidan play dice. When he'd climbed out of Usagi, on the wall above Yahiko and Hidan, Yahiko had just nodded a few times like sure, this may as well happen.

Hidan had eyed Usagi for a second, then lost interest.

Chojuro was still asleep, but not on Hidan anymore.

Usagi had burst into white smoke once Nagato was out, having barely been able to fit its head in the alley. It made him realize that Usagi's ability would only be useful in wide, open areas. Usagi hadn't left marks on the wall, but would on the sand, or on the grass of a forest, and was too big to sneak between most trees.

Nagato leaned back against the wall with Oka's head on his leg.

If she hadn't stubbornly summoned Usagi, her chakra exhaustion wouldn't have been half as bad. From what he could tell, it seemed like each summon took only a little less than half her chakra. Doing it a third time would've killed her, and still, he didn't think it would concern her if he told her.

He'd never seen a summoning seal like hers before. It'd seemed like Usagi was following her will, until Usagi had shown that it had some will of it's own when it wanted to be scratched.

Nagato watched Yahiko roll a set of dice, and quietly accepted that her summons were just another thing to take it in and move on from. He knew that even Oka didn't quite understand how she did what she did, but questioning everything would get them nowhere when there was no one to give them answers.

He paid more attention to the game. He didn't need to ask to know Yahiko had made it up, or that the dice were stolen.

The dice landed on one and five and Yahiko scratched a line in the ground with the now-blunted edge of a kunai.

Hidan scooped up the dice, tossed them between them, and looked annoyed when they landed on three and two. He didn't make a scratch on his side.

Nagato was still curious about where they came from, and he'd have to remember to ask Yahiko about the other summon regions across the sea, but later.

He looked up as Kisame and Mangetsu finally caught up, wondering if Oka would name one of the summons 'Getsu' if he asked.

Kisame strode into the alley and walked around them, taking his place against the back wall.

Mangetsu stopped at the opening, his eyes instantly finding Chojuro. "Now that's interesting."

Yahiko glanced up briefly, and Hidan looked more annoyed at the interruption.

"Mangetsu, right? Want to join?" Yahiko asked.

Mangetsu looked him over and said, "We just met."

"Sure, but I'm trying to make a better first impression than I did last time," he responded, waving him over.

Kisame scoffed.

Mangetsu gave him a sharp smile and shrugged. He ambled over and crouched, making a loose square. He studied Yahiko for a second. "You're in the bingo book."

Yahiko paused. "So I am," he drawled, meeting his gaze. "Yahiko," he added.

Mangetsu studied Hidan next, who stared back with bored eyes.

"Skip the bullshit. I've heard it before. You going or not?" Hidan asked.

Mangetsu glanced at the dice as Yahiko held them out to him. "If you teach me to play, sure."

Yahiko explained the rules, which were that if the dice added up to an even number, the roller got one point, but if it added up to an odd number, it was no points. If both dice landed on the same number and it was even, the roller could steal a point from anyone they wanted. If it was odd, the rules became reversed.

"And now Nagato has no excuse not to play too," Yahiko finished, staring at him.

Nagato felt amused, but had no counter. He gave a quick, hopeful glance at Kisame, who only shook his head once.

Mangetsu shook the dice and let them fall. They landed on two and two, and he immediately stole a point from Yahiko.

"Alright," Yahiko said mildly, scuffing a line in front of him with the handle of the kunai. "If you want to play it that way."

Nagato paid attention, but dug out the scroll Oka had sealed her cloak in. He might as well see if it was mendable. He wouldn't force Mangetsu to speak.

Hidan rolled six and two, Yahiko rolled one-one, and Nagato rolled one-three.

Mangetsu held the dice for a long time, looking at them, until his gaze flicked to Nagato. "She should've died a long time ago," he finally told him. "She was kicked in the chest during the war. It ruptured something inside of her."

Mangetsu's gaze went to Hidan, who was staring at him, and he opened his hand, letting the dice drop.

Two-five.

Mangetsu picked up the kunai in the middle to scratch a point on his side.

"The person you're talking about is Ringo?" Kisame asked, faintly surprised. "That firecracker is still alive?"

Hidan rolled five-one.

Mangetsu smiled, all teeth. "Never met a person more stubborn than her."

Kisame grinned right back, and it looked, somehow, more genuine.

Yahiko rolled a five-five and stole Mangetsu's point.

"Where is she?" Nagato asked, rolling a three-four.

He scratched in his point as Mangetsu's gaze lingered on Yahiko.

"Gengetsu," Mangetsu finally answered. "Can't tell you how long she'll last, 'cause anyone else would've died already, but she's been steadily getting worse."

Mangetsu, still looking at Yahiko, rolled a three-three, and then pointed two fingers at Hidan's scratches.

Nagato knew instantly that Mangetsu had started a silent war.

"They said you escaped alone," Kisame pointed out. "Another lie?"

"I did," Mangetsu said, "I retrieved the weapons and the guy that did it and turned them in. But you don't really get breaks if you're me. I went looking for her body while I was out there. The others too, but mostly just her." And then he stopped talking.

Hidan rolled five-five, immediately looked at Mangetsu, and Nagato was left as the only one who wasn't cheating.

One-one. Yahiko didn't look Hidan in the eyes as he took a point from him, who tsk'ed loudly.

Nagato, with amusement, rolled two-six.

Mangetsu shook the dice in his hand but seemed distracted. "She was still alive when I got there," he said. "Long trail of blood from dragging herself through corpses for two days."

"Well, shit," Kisame said back.

One-one. Mangetsu stole from Yahiko, who only nodded expectantly.

Another five-five. Hidan stole back from Yahiko.

"Was easy to smuggle her in when everyone was out there, but no one would waste medics on someone who was a lost cause. They'd have killed her to free up a bed," Mangetsu said.

"Lord Mizukage would have your head if he knew you left that out of your report," Kisame said, still grinning. "Explains why you never got the other bodies."

"I wish him luck in cutting it off," Mangetsu said back, shooting him a harsh smile.

Yahiko rolled two-two.

Nagato rolled a three-one, added a point, and went back to feeling out the tears in the thick fabric.

The cloaks were supposed to be hard to tear, made out of some flexible plastic along with all the dyed thread, but Samehada had sliced it apart like it was nothing.

Mangetsu rolled six-six.

"Ninja," Yahiko dramatically sighed when he was stolen from again.

Hidan rolled four-four and stole from him again too.

Chojuro sat up slowly behind Yahiko, squinting, feeling around for his glasses.

Yahiko handed them over without looking as he rolled six-six with his other hand.

Nagato rolled six-four and quietly added another point as Chojuro put them on, as Hidan glared at both Yahiko and Mangetsu and Mangetsu stared at Yahiko again.

Chojuro sucked in a harsh breath the second he could see properly, his pupils shrinking as he took in Mangetsu.

"L-Lord Mangetsu—"

"Chojuro, hey. What did I tell you about the lord thing?" Mangetsu asked, casual.

Chojuro swallowed.

Mangetsu leaned back and dragged his gaze to him. "You didn't tell me you'd made so many friends while I was gone."

Chojuro looked at Mangetsu, at the rest of them, and radiated confusion, looking like he didn't know what to do or say.

Yahiko reached out and ruffled his hair without looking, ignoring his yelp of protest.

In the end, Nagato won.


A/N: Ikayaki is grilled squid

fun fact: chameleon tongues are 400x more sticky than human tongues