Apologies for the wait. This is another one of those "the chapter was half-written and I had a lot of trouble finishing it" chapters. I ain't dead yet, though, so have at it.
Let's get this trainwreck moving.
"You let him live," Tayuya said flatly. There was no judgement in her tone, only confusion—just when she thought she'd gotten a handle on her master's whims and motivations, he did something that pulled the rug out from under her. As much as it irked her, it gave her a self-fulfilling excuse to be around him, so she let it be.
"I left him for dead, it's up to them to save him if they want to." Yuurei's sly grin betrayed his thoughts on the matter.
"You didn't kill him, you walked away, you knew there was a possibility of him surviving. You let him live," Tayuya repeated. "And you know I'm not condemning you, asshole. I'm just trying to figure out why."
Yuurei looked at the smaller, younger redhead across from him in the room where Mei slept. Fu and Yugito were present as well, sitting closer to the unconscious Mizukage, and his gaze briefly drifted across the room before returning to Tayuya. He paused for a moment, though Tayuya wasn't sure whether it was to find phrasing or justification; the idea that her master needed to answer to the women in his life was an amusing one.
"Jiraiya's life or death is inconsequential to me, as far as accomplishing my goals and fulfilling my oaths," he finally said. "It's my way of trying to look out for the boy traveling with him. He's one of my former teammates, so I've got a bit of a soft spot for him. I want him to stay away from Itachi, and Jiraiya's a known traveler, so it made sense in my head."
The further Sasuke was from Itachi, the less the Hokage's warped mind could influence him. The more he traveled with Jiraiya, the less attached he would be to Konoha. Even if those things didn't pull him directly under Yuurei's command, the blond demon was happy with the idea of keeping Sasuke's hostility to a minimum. The idea of fighting the younger Uchiha didn't bother him, and Yuurei doubted that he would lose in that confrontation, but the sight of Sasuke's left hand had bothered him. It was the same color as a sandworm's scaled hide, brimming with an unnatural heat that made Yuurei wary; not many things could do that anymore.
"Speaking of Itachi, we still need to figure out what to do about him." Fu's voice was cold and clear, her hostility towards the Hokage nearly palpable. Even if Yuurei had exacted his own vengeace, and she'd vented much of her anger by killing many of those who'd traveled from Konoha to Suna, the Jinchuriki didn't want Itachi to escape her justice.
"You want to kill the rest of the Jounin? That's awfully greedy of you, Fu." Yuurei smirked as he spoke, clearly not upset with the idea at all. "Still, I'm not going to make another move unless he decides to make another bad decision. He should know now that he can't indiscriminately throw his weight around. He's not taking me back there, for multiple reasons."
"What do you mean multiple...oh, gods. You didn't blow Konoha up too, did you?" Fu's question was sincere, horrifying images of Taki's destruction flashing through her mind as she looked at Yuurei.
"I don't think so? That's more of a Tayuya or Yugito question, though. I was unconscious, and consolidating my new form," the demon replied.
"Everything's still standing," Tayuya said, "but there's some kind of fucked-up miasma running through the village. We didn't stick around long enough to find out what it did." The diminutive redhead shuddered at the thought, remembering the night from less than two weeks ago.
"I don't have any idea how many people made it out of the village, or if anyone did, but...I'm not sure how safe it is to walk through, let alone live in," Yugito added. "Itachi is in for a nasty surprise when he returns, and so is everyone who traveled with him. Konoha's going to be a non-factor for the forseeable future."
In spite of the fact that he'd been born and raised in that village, Yuurei took a small amount of joy in Yugito's observations. He was one among a number of orphans and abandoned children from the night of his birth and the last days of the Sandai Shinobi Senso, regardless of the fact that he'd received his inheritance. He'd stolen from them to live, and then simply to keep himself sharp; the only authority figure who'd never tried to use him had died for those who should have known better. Why should he care about a place that held nothing for him? Konoha neither loved nor loathed him, regardless of his status. If not for Itachi's decisive attack on Mei, Yuurei would have returned those feelings and left them to look after themselves.
Aside from the fact that the Mizukage still hadn't woken up, though, Yuurei didn't mind the direction his homeland had been led in.
"What on earth?" Ayame stared at the dark area around her, knowing exactly what she was staring at while she refused to acknowledge it. The village of Konoha had become dark and twisted, and the air around it was visibly disturbed by some force she couldn't recognize. Even if she'd left the village behind, she held no ill will for it thanks to Orochimaru's covert allegiance; she couldn't fathom how it could transform into a scene out of a nightmare.
"Boss man's gonna wanna hear about this," Hozuki Suigetsu said from behind his brunette leader. "Shit, what the hell happened?"
Suigetsu, along with Uzumaki Karin and a young man named Juugo, had been corralled by Orochimaru to work alongside Ayame as the second iteration of the Sound Four. Officially, they were teammates; unofficially, Ayame had declared herself their leader after beating Suigetsu and Juugo halfway to death. The outburst of violence hadn't been unwarranted—neither of the two Infuin-bearing teens had wanted to convene with others, albeit for different reasons, and had lashed out at the first opportunity. They hadn't expected for the unassuming, nondescript girl to wipe the floor with both of them.
"It looks like a large-scale sealing array, but it feels...bad. That's the only word I can really use to describe it," Karin replied. "Like our cursed seals, but worse. Much worse."
"Do we enter?" Juugo asked Ayame, looking between the brunette and her former home.
"Only one way to find out what happened in there," Suigetsu said, running his thumb along the handle of his sword. Even after saying that, though, he didn't move forward.
"Fan out and circle around the village. We'll see if there's anybody nearby who can give us a clue. I'll set the outer range." Ayame launched further from Konoha after speaking, with hard footfalls on broad tree branches carrying her away from the desolate village.
The remaining members of the Otoyon's second generation looked at one another for a moment, unable to decide if it was duty or horror that moved their leader's feet. Still, orders were orders; if they really had qualms about Ayame's course of action, their only real choice would be to wait until they'd returned to Otogakure to report it to Orochimaru. Karin stayed closest to Konoha's outer wall, with Suigetsu closer to her and Juugo closer to Ayame as the two men went to the middle. The two women had the strongest seventh sense of the Sound Four's members, but only Karin had a genuine talent in that area. Ayame's skill had been grafted into her with the remains of Tsunade and her former teammates. Karin's range extended into the village itself in an attempt to peer inside its walls, Ayame's went the furthest outside of it to try locating people outside, and the two men covered the interior to make sure nothing got missed in their sweep.
They found nothing. Even after repeating the search two more times, making sure that Karin's field of perception overlapped with the edges of Ayame's previous range, the four Oto-nin found nothing to suggest human life outside of the village's walls. The dissatisfied quartet reconvened closer to Konoha's entrance, but made no attempt to go past the gate. Shaking her head, Ayame dispersed any thoughts that tempted her to walk inside and search from within.
"We need to go back and report this to Orochimaru. I know you two want to explore," the brunette looked toward Suigetsu and Juugo, "but he needs to know the situation."
Suigetsu rolled his eyes at that accusation, regardless of how true it was, but fell in line as the Sound Four began to move out.
"Care to explain what you were thinking?" Shizune looked pointedly at Jiraiya, green medical chakra coursing out from her hands as she moved them over his body. Though the demonic corruption from Yuurei's Chidori was gone, Shizune wanted to make sure that the Toad Sage was truly healthy before they continued traveling. "Because your choices today have been absolutely horrendous. Mostly in the last few hours."
"Yeah, well, you try getting provoked by a brat who chose women over his home," Jiraiya groaned. He, Shizune and Sasuke were shielded from the afternoon sun by the shade of an angled tarp.
"I'm looking at one," Shizune replied nonchalantly, her eyes almost seeming to glaze over as she continued her checkup. "Does it bother you that he's more successful than you are?"
Sasuke nearly spat out the water he was drinking, not sure whether to laugh or be alarmed at the aggressive question. Looking over, he saw Jiraiya's lack of a physical response, and wondered what the sage was thinking. Instead, he tried to content himself with the water he was drinking—never, before this trip to Suna, had he taken the resource so seriously. Growing up in a region as affluent as Konoha was, it was difficult not to take certain things for granted; having fresh water on a daily basis was among those unrealized liberties.
Jiraiya just rolled his eyes.
"There are a lot of things I could respond with," the Gama Sennin drawled, "and some are more hurtful than others. But I won't do it. Someone needs to be the mature one here."
"So that's why you let your corrupted godson stab you in the stomach? Maturity? Wait, don't answer that. It makes perfect sense." Stopping her medical scan, Shizune's chakra dispersed back into her body before she walked to the corner of their lean-to and grabbed a bag. Walking out, striding away from the slowly-setting sun, she called back. "Sasuke, we're leaving. Clearly, we're too immature for him."
Sealing away his water bottle, Sasuke raised an eyebrow as he looked at the older woman's receding figure. Unsure what to do in response to Shizune's aggravation, he stood and looked in Jiraiya's direction.
"Just go," Jiraiya said tiredly. "I'll catch up with you sooner or later. She's right, I screwed up and took his bait, but it might do her some good to be away from me for a day or two. I'm...well, to her, I'm a reminder of everything that's gone wrong in her life, and she's been stuck with me for months. I think you're the only reason she's kept going along with the trip. Maybe she'll talk to you about it, but I won't. It's her business."
"See you soon, then." Sasuke grabbed his own traveling pack before leaving to catch up with Shizune.
The sun was slowly crawling toward the west horizon, but Jiraiya just continued to lay down in the shade. He knew that in Itachi's eyes, he would be culpable if anything happened to Sasuke. He knew that objectively, it was probably a bad idea to send Sasuke out into the world with a woman twice his age—especially one who had no other friends or family in the world. More than anything else, though, he knew that the young teen would have to grow up some day and make his own way in the world. Giving him an early taste of that life wouldn't do any lasting harm, right? In either case, Jiraiya knew that he wanted to be alone for a while. He wanted to process his thoughts on the morning he'd just survived, and all the different pieces that had led him to lie on his back in the desert...so he did.
Sasuke caught up to Shizune after a short sprint, moving an arm's length to her side as he followed her lead. In the far eastern sky, blue had started giving way to pink and orange pigments; night would fall soon, and the desert would freeze with its arrival, but he was more concerned with her sudden change in attitude.
"Is everything okay?" Sasuke already knew the answer to his question—it was "no"—but he wanted to hear Shizune voice her concerns. In all the time they'd been traveling, the medic hadn't tried to force a decision, and she hadn't offered any serious resistance outside of the first day they'd started roaming as a three-person group. For her to change her attitude now, after months of silence, must have meant that she thought their situation had changed at some point after entering Suna. He couldn't say he disagreed with that assessment.
"I've struggled to deal with Jiraiya's existence for my entire life," Shizune said. "It's been bearable in the past because Tsunade and I ran into him around once a year, and usually for less than half a day. I've put up with him and his attitude for months because he has such a large network of informants, and I hoped he'd be able to point me towards my master, but he's barely even tried. I know the destruction of Takigakure has nothing to do with him, but if he was at all interested in helping me, we wouldn't have spent so much time traveling to Kiri or around Kaminari no Kuni. He took you in as a student, so it's not fair to you for me to take that training away from you, but...I can't deal with him continuing to ignore my situation. Your brother not knowing anything didn't help things, either, but I was always going to make this decision eventually. I didn't actually expect you to follow after me, though."
The medic looked over at Sasuke as she shifted slightly closer to him, wanting to hear the Uchiha explain himself. Suddenly put on the spot, his expression froze—he didn't want to tell her that it was because Jiraiya had permitted it, especially after the vague way they'd both danced around some issue from the past. What could he say, then?
"I felt more secure leaving him instead of you," he finally said. It wasn't the reason, or even a factor, but as he thought about it? It was the truth. Jiraiya had lived alone as a traveling hermit for longer than Sasuke had been alive, he would be fine on his own—especially if the timeframe was only going to be a few days, as the sage had insinuated. The only time Sasuke knew of Shizune being alone, though, she'd run wild and distraught. Of course, there were extenuating circumstances to that event; Shizune had been searching, quite desperately, for her missing mentor and sole surviving family member. It was only natural for her to be frantic, panicked, and desperate.
Those past circumstances didn't change the fact that he worried about what might happen if Shizune was left alone again.
"You're worried about me?" There was a touch of surprise coloring Shizune's voice, but the medic quickly turned that shock around with a gentle smile. "That's kind of you, Sasuke, but you should be careful with how much kindness you show...and how often you show it. This doesn't have anything to do about earlier, does it?"
"It might," Sasuke replied, quiet enough for his companion to question if he'd actually spoken.
"We'll find her," he'd whispered into Shizune's ears as she'd cried into his shoulder. Those were words to give hope to the hopeless, given by a young man who had no reason not to believe in them. At her most vulnerable points in years, whether he'd actively done something or not, Sasuke had been there—on more than one night since she'd received it, the medic had taken out the flower crown that Jiraiya's informant had made.
Shizune loved Tsunade. They were master and student, aunt and niece, and they'd been one another's confidants for Shizune's entire life. But when her heart ached because of Tsunade, it ached for all the pains and tribulations that the Slug Princess's lifestyle had delivered to them. As she looked at Sasuke with her softly-smiling eyes, she understood perfectly well that the heartache he could cause her was an entirely separate kind. She'd meant it, a moment ago, when she cautioned him to ration his kindness; even if she was twice his age until his birthday in two months, and he was simply operating on the idea of trying to be a good person or companion, she could only put up with that behavior for so long before she was forced to act on her feelings.
She decided that those thoughts were better saved for the future, leading Sasuke by less than a stride on their way out of the desert.