"(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 inspected her for a few seconds, then turned around, as if to defend her if the fight between Kisame and her other summon got too close.
The jagged tear in her mesh shirt exposed the freshly healed, little white scars across 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 quiet scoff. If he wasn't, his own scars would've faded by now—
He cut off that line of thought, because it was a pointless one. The curling burn scar across the back of his right hand and licking up the side of his neck were a faded pink, just slightly darker than the rest of his hand, but Mei had noticed and pointed them out.
It had been so long since someone had that they'd stopped being something he consciously thought about.
Nagato forced his attention back on his sister. It wasn't her scarring that he'd been worried about, but 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 as much of their chakra as possible as the blood loss slowed them down and they eventually bled to death.
She was the perfect weapon for someone who liked to enjoy his fights.
Nagato pressed a glowing hand to Oka's stomach, checking again, even though he knew he'd fixed all the internal damage, and didn't know what to make of Kisame.
He hadn't expected him to treat the spar as, well, a spar. Nagato had come because he hadn't trusted him to keep to his word, but he had.
It was hard to trust someone who'd shoved a weapon in his face and absorbed Sage Mode so easily it'd shocked him into silence, but Oka had done it without any trouble.
And it had an effect on Kisame, because he'd gone easy on her. Nagato had known that the instant he'd ran to Oka as she collapsed and his extremely limited range had included Kisame for a brief second before Kisame had dived into the fight against the other summon.
Kisame's chakra had made him think that Mei had been underselling him when she'd told Oka that it was just two large chakra pools that had created him.
Nagato would've been exhausted by the number of water clones he'd created, but for Kisame, it had been a warm-up.
Tailless Tailed Beast.
His chakra had been a shadow looming over Nagato's senses, and it had felt like water to the face when Kisame had moved past the point where Nagato could penetrate the mist and vanished.
His range was reduced to five meters in all directions, and he'd only gotten that far so quickly because he was using nature chakra to cheat.
Mist made from a jutsu was suffocating, the chakra in it making every particle in the air feel like a chakra signature.
It was half why he'd been so sick on the boat. It was like he'd been tossed into a lake made of honey and was too weighed down to use his arms to swim. The other half was that his stomach had really, really not liked the tilting sensation.
Sensing purely with nature energy let him snake around that chakra, following the natural energy in the mist outward until he hit his limit.
But sensing without using chakra as a barrier between himself and nature energy was exhausting, and he couldn't do it when he was asleep. And, it apparently attracted chakra hungry swords.
He hadn't known, couldn't have, but he still felt as responsible as Chojuro must've.
Nagato finished checking that Oka would heal fine again and looked at the chameleon summon.
"Usagi," he tested the name with some amusement.
Rabbit.
It tilted its head down at him like it was responding to the name, surprising him.
"Where do you come from?" Nagato mused, mostly to himself. The toads and slugs had homes here, in the elemental nations, but he knew the salamanders didn't.
Yahiko had once tried to describe that their home was in another country across the water, and that there were more summons and summon lands than there were people there, but Nagato couldn't wrap his head around it.
He still couldn't, but he didn't need to. He didn't need to understand, just accept that it was real.
He wondered if Oka's summons had come from there.
Nagato stood and the chameleon blinked once, sluggishly, as he reached up, slowly, and put his hand on its neck.
He closed his eyes, gently prodding its chakra with nature energy. It had a lot. Not as much as Namekuji in his full form, but more than he had now. It's chakra felt scaly, like it's rough skin, but also like it was folding into itself constantly, trying to disappear—
Usagi moved and he blinked back to awareness. He realized a second later that Usagi was trying to shake his hand in a way that looked a lot like it wanted to be scratched, and obliged.
Usagi's eyes shut in pleasure and Nagato let the nature energy disperse into the air.
He needed a break from it. His skin was starting to form slime.
"He won," Namekuji interrupted his thoughts, sounding disgruntled about it, like he'd been betting on the other outcome, and Nagato looked.
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, but couldn't move.
"That was fun," Kisame said, lightly out of breath, his left hand within the prison. "But it's time for you to go home."
Samehada looked asleep on the water next to him, her tongue hanging out of her mouth, bigger than before.
The dog summon kept thrashing, but it started to slow, snapping weakly at him a few more times before it went limp.
Kisame pulled his hand out before the last bubbles reached the top, and it disappeared the second it and the water started to splash down.
He didn't even seem to mind when it soaked him before leveling out. Kisame turned, assessing Nagato, and Nagato wished he could sense him right then, just to see how much chakra he had left.
Kisame was a lot like Yahiko, even if both would disagree with that. Yahiko didn't always mean his grins, while he didn't know Kisame well enough to tell whether he did or not.
But when Kisame grinned at him, it reminded him of Yahiko, grinning to hide that he was scared.
And then Nagato lost his interest as Kisame watched someone climb out of the water.
Nagato watched Kisame instead of the white-haired figure, deciding to gauge his reaction based on how Kisame reacted.
"Mangetsu," Kisame greeted him, and Nagato knew instantly that he'd only said it for him.
Nagato looked at Mangetsu with cautious curiosity, taking mental note of the needle-thin sword showing over his shoulder.
"Kisame, hey," Mangetu greeted back, but his eyes lingered on Nagato, which made him more curious. "Not surprised, eh? So you knew I'd—"
"Follow me, yes," Kisame finished for him, unreadable. "We're supposed to watch out for suspicious activity in each other, after all."
"Yet, only one of us was."
Kisame's grin looked sharper. "I'm no babysitter. Orders not to do something have never stopped me. But I wasn't fully sure you were here. My sharks kept missing you, but there's no hiding from them in open water."
"Sure, they're persistent, but even they wouldn't see me unless I wanted to be caught."
"You are slippery," Kisame said, neither agreeing or disagreeing with him. "So then, why did you reveal yourself?"
"I saw something interesting," he answered, still looking at Nagato. "No partner assigned to spar with you ever shows up anymore for a reason. It tends to take a team of our best medics to fix the mess Samehada makes of someone, and only half the time they succeed. Even if it looked like you were pulling your punches, which I'll ask about later, taking less than three minutes to fix someone hit by Samehada, and doing it by himself without breaking a sweat is... new."
That was why Mangetsu seemed so fascinated by him.
"I'm Nagato of the Akatsuki," Nagato introduced himself, side-stepping that Mangetsu obviously wanted him to heal someone.
"Akatsuki," Mangetsu repeated, rolling the word around on his tongue. He glanced at Kisame. "How much were you restraining Samehada?"
Kisame only showed him his teeth.
Mangetsu smiled back, and it felt like they were having a conversation in a language Nagato didn't know.
"Not mercenaries. They're not your style," Mangetsu thought aloud. "Then why are you playing around with foreign-nin?"
"He's an Uzumaki," Kisame offered, and didn't answer the question.
Mangetsu's gaze went 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, but there's no mistaking that chakra."
"Lucky."
"Yeah."
Nagato glanced down, thinking over the unspoken answer that Oka looked like their dad. Other than the black hair, it hadn't been as noticeable when she was younger, before she'd grown into looking like him.
He and Oka had the same eyes, or used to before the Rinnegan, the kind of brown that looked hazel in the sunlight but could turn pitch black in the dark.
Nagato liked to think they had the same noses, just to say they shared something, but Oka hadn't gotten much from their mom, just like he'd gotten nothing from their dad.
He was a pale red-head like their mom. Oka was tan. Not as dark of a shade as Etsudo, but darker than Yahiko.
"The Uzumaki's summon is tired of humans talking about him in front of him," Namekuji spoke up when he didn't, deadpan.
Mangetsu and Kisame had still been talking while he'd been lost in thought, and they hadn't just been speaking in words, but in body language, and Nagato would have missed more than he caught.
"It talks," Mangetsu drawled, turning. "Does the big one talk too?"
"It thinks your teeth look like they're rotting," Namekuji said snidely.
Mangetsu blinked, smiling with teeth as he said, "I brush my teeth as often as I can."
"Sorry for your genes then."
Nagato started scratching Usagi again, pretending he didn't hear either of them as he asked curiously, "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, didn't look back at Mangetsu, and that seemed to send a message of its own.
"Could be," Mangetsu finally answered, clearly wondering where he was going with this.
"And that the blade on your back is the Nuibari?"
Mangetsu looked at him more sharply. His eyes snapped back to Kisame, who shook his head in a 'not me' way.
"The Nuibari had to make spying on Kisame harder since you can't use your kekkei genkai on it, but you still brought it," Nagato mused aloud. "You must've been waiting for an opening for a surprise attack."
Mangetsu looked at him in silence, smile frozen.
Kisame was studying him again, but didn't seem at all concerned about what he'd said.
"The Mizukage works fast," Nagato said, slightly impressed. "Is it only Byakuren that knows Kisame is a missing-nin, or has he spread it to Gengetsu too?"
It had only been a day since Kisame came back from his unfriendly meeting with not-Madara, and already...
But then, it was not-Madara. Even if they met somewhere in Gengetsu, not-Madara could've teleported back to Byakuren instantly and made the announcement through Yagura about Kisame.
Mangetsu didn't move, and Kisame watched them both curiously.
"It's always a headache when an educated one is involved," was all Mangetsu said.
It was meant as an insult but it felt like a compliment, since he was uneducated.
"But you abandoned your mission just because you saw me heal," Negate continued like he hadn't heard him. "It must be someone important, if they're worth giving up what's driving you."
Mangetsu rubbed the back of his neck, and his smile seemed less friendly. "I don't know what you think, but not much would change for me if I turned missing-nin."
"It sounded like you've been following Kisame for a while, but if you were a loyal ninja, or one who just liked to fight, you wouldn't have abandoned it so quickly," Nagato pressed on. "And if this is all a trick to get information, I get the feeling Kisame would be reacting a lot differently."
"He's good," Kisame said, grinning at Mangetsu.
Mangetsu tightened his hold on his neck.
"Something, or someone, is tying you to the village—"
"Stop," Mangetsu said. Then, "Are you a leaf-nin?"
"Wouldn't be alive if they were," Kisame answered for him, looking like he was enjoying the show they were putting on.
Mangetsu dropped his hand, looking less tense than he had the moment before. "You're getting soft, Hoshigaki."
Kisame sent a grin his way. "Oh yeah? Come over here and say that to my face."
Mangetsu didn't respond to him. "Don't worry about my ties, foreign-nin," he said, showing his teeth. "Just tell me the cost of your abilities. You want me to join whatever you roped Hoshigaki into?"
"No," Nagato said after a second. It would've been easier to say yes, but he knew what that would look like to Kisame, that they were only wearing him down until he agreed to join. "If you agree to stay out of what'll happen, I'll do it, but only after I hear the details of their condition."
Mangetsu frowned. "You want the village?"
"We were hired to help someone else become Mizukage to replace Yagura," Nagato answered.
"Terumi," Kisame provided, cutting through his vagueness like his tongue was a kunai.
"Should've helped the summon eat him," Namekuji muttered, and Nagato carefully didn't react.
Mangetsu looked at Kisame like he was trying to solve a puzzle. "You're with her?"
"Nah," Kisame said and didn't elaborate.
Mangetsu eyed Kisame, and then shrugged. "Sure, fine," he said to Nagato. "If Terumi wants to burn the village to the ground, I'll grill some ikayaki over the fire."
"I need to know about her condition," Nagato reminded him.
Mangetsu smiled. "Not here. Water's too open."
"I would know if we weren't alone," Kisame said.
Mangetsu said nothing.
"It's not only me and Oka. More of us are hiding out in Minakami. We can talk there. It's safe," Nagato said.
They'd have to move out of the alley if they added anyone else to their group, he mused. Mangetsu, if he didn't leave the village, wouldn't have anywhere else to go either.
"I didn't think Amegakure had people like you," Kisame said, giving him away again. "Rain-nin were always small fish in a big ocean."
Namekuji muttered again.
"That's why I didn't come alone," Nagato said, amused. "Enough small fish grouped together can take down the biggest predators, can't they?"
Kisame eyed him, then flashed his teeth and didn't answer.
"Wont the sensor-nin get suspicious seeing that you let us live?" Nagato asked after a second.
"Not if they stop breathing."
Usagi suddenly did a full body shake, making Nagato pause, and as he met the summon's gaze he realized Usagi had done it to get his attention.
Before he could think more of that, Usagi turned completely invisible.
Nagato blinked, but only his hand against Usagi's scaly skin told him the summon was still there when all his other senses tried to convince him Usagi wasn't.
Usagi didn't become visible again, but turned, deliberately slow so his hand stayed touching it, and the summon lowered itself.
"It disappeared," Mangetsu said, blinking like he couldn't quite believe it.
"Interesting," was all Kisame said.
Nagato prodded out with nature energy again, but Usagi's chakra vanished completely, in a way he'd only ever felt when someone died instantly. He felt Usagi open its mouth, and thought he understood what the summon was trying to tell him.
He didn't get it, but he still knelt and lifted Oka in his arms. Touching wasn't enough, because he'd stayed visible, but if he were to get inside Usagi and be shrouded by the summons chakra, he'd disappear too.
"We shouldn't raise any suspicion for now," Nagato said. If they were still watching, Kisame being a missing-nin hadn't reached Minakami yet, at least. "I'll go with Usagi, and it'll look like we died."
He didn't wait for them to answer before awkwardly maneuvering himself into Usagi's mouth as his eyes insisted nothing was there.
It was like a 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.
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. 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