Well, it's a little later than a little late, because I meant to get this chapter out a while ago, but...better late than never, right? And now we can keep moving forward, just like our protagonist and his women. I'm trying to split their screen time evenly, but who the hell knows if I'm succeeding.
Let's get this trainwreck moving.
[Help me...help me up. Please.] Mei's thoughts were sluggish and jumbled, but communicating telepathically was still the easier way to ask for help. Even without opening her mouth to speak, she could feel something was off about her vocal cords.
Yuurei watched the Mizukage attempt to push herself upward on her own power, and saw that she couldn't propel herself more than a hand-length off of her mattress; reaching out gingerly, he lifted the redhead and positioned her back against the wall beside the bed frame. The contact gave him a chance to observe her in motion, now that she was awake again, and the young Kyuubi couldn't stop himself from briefly fixating on her visible eye. Mei's iris was a fractal blend of red and orange—unnoticeable as separate colors unless someone was close enough to truly focus on the minutiae of the situation. That warm blend matched her two-toned hair well, but contrasted with her rich blue dress in a way that her prior green eyes didn't.
[Thank you, dear.] Mei smiled softly, not showing her teeth. Looking into Yuurei's eyes, a sense of calm warmth overcame the Mizukage, and her serene expression brightened little by little as her arm came back down to hold her master's hand in hers. [I love you.] She looked up at the other demon with nothing less than adoration, confident in those words as she conveyed them. Whatever reservations she'd had months ago were gone now, and had been for some time—dust in the wind, just like the last vestiges of humanity that had been forced out of her. If she couldn't call it love after knowing he went so far for her, seeing how he conducted himself with the other women around him, feeling what she did...what else could she call it? Dark blood crawled through her veins as she looked at Yuurei's face, and each drop seemed to sing with adoration. He'd saved her people, and he'd saved her. That was more than she could ask for.
Yuurei, on the other hand, felt a hot frost creep out from his chest. For a brief moment, his thoughts and frame were paralyzed in sync; he couldn't help feeling like they were going about their relationship's development all wrong. Whether it was her dedication to his service, their first night after retrieving Yugito's soul, the fact that their first kiss happened afterwards, or her first declaration of love, their timing was completely off. As Yuurei looked at the fourth woman he'd bound to himself, though, he didn't have to debate his own feelings on the matter. He had difficulty showing many of the more positive emotions that humans fell back upon, but that didn't mean that he couldn't feel. Whether it was his fear for the safety of the women around him, or the rage that consumed him when they were hurt, those feelings went beyond master-and-servants or comrades in arms.
[I-] He started to respond, seconds later, but Mei interrupted him by tightening her grip on his hand. Glancing down, and then back, he saw a serious expression back on his tallest lover's face.
[Don't say it,] she demanded. [Even if it's true, don't say it. Not until you can say it to the others and mean it. It's one thing for each of us to say it to you, but you're not allowed to play favorites. Not when Yugito's so jealous, and Tayuya's having her own struggles, and absolutely not when your relationship with Temari is so poorly defined. I know how I feel about you, and I'm as excited to have those feelings as any woman would be, but even I have my difficulties with this situation. If the four of us are going to be bound to you like we are, then we need to be equals. Anything else will do nothing but make everybody uncomfortable.]
Having said her piece, the Mizukage released Yuurei's hand and looked past him; Temari was there, sitting in a chair with her back to the door. Mei moved her lips and seemed to try to speak, but grew frustrated a few words in and simply gestured. Temari took the invitation she believed she'd been offered, quickly getting up and walking over to stand in front of the other woman. The Kazekage waited politely for her redheaded counterpart to speak, but when her words finally came out, they were little more than whispers.
"Thank you," Mei said quietly. "I'm sorry. I know you're busy."
"At some level, I'm responsible for what happened to you. Please, don't apologize," Temari replied with a sad and guilty smile. She was happy to have met the taller, older woman; it was nice to know that, through Yuurei, she had allies in the wider world. Her short interaction with the newly reborn demon had been pleasant enough—and because they were both linked to Yuurei, business and pleasure could intermingle. Even so, the Mizukage shook her head at Temari's words.
"I did this to myself," she whispered, and her free hand rose up to run along her silk-smooth throat. "It was an excuse to spend more time with Yuurei, Yugito, and Tayuya."
Yuurei looked at the two-toned redhead with a confused expression. He could smell lies, and based on that fact, Mei was telling the truth—but she had no way of knowing that his traveling trio would end up in Sunagakure, because he hadn't decided on where they were going until after they'd reached the mainland. Either she'd gambled heavily on the idea that he'd travel to the Chunin Exams, or she'd genuinely wanted to follow after them when they'd left Kirigakure.
"You don't need an excuse. Anybody who wants to take issue with your departure..." Yuurei's open-ended threat faded, interrupted by Mei's shaking head.
[I'm not like Yugito and Tayuya, dear. Even if my heart belongs to you, it still belongs to my people as well. I didn't lead a rebellion just to abandon my friends and soldiers once it was over. In the future...we'll see,] Mei answered telepathically. Yuurei sighed, somewhat dejected by the redhead's refusal, but he would respect her decision. She deserved at least that much.
"Mei!" An excited shout came from the doorway as Tayuya's head poked through it. Her brown-and-red eyes shone brightly as her teeth showed themselves, and the diminutive redhead shot forward to wrap her arms around the Mizukage. Tayuya's entire body seemed to vibrate as she hugged Mei, her black wings fluttering anxiously while the reality of the situation sank in. "We were so worried about you..."
Just as she'd done to Yugito when they returned from the Blessed Lands, the pseudo-demon let her lips continue talking without words; the kiss initially startled Mei, and the two-toned redhead had to force her neck muscles to relax. Two silk-smooth hands snaked behind Tayuya's back as Mei returned the smaller girl's emotional outburst, and the reborn demon winked playfully at her master.
[Hook. Line. Sinker.] Mei's thoughts betrayed her behavior, though only Yuurei could hear the words. Rather than chastise the Mizukage, though, he only raised a questioning eyebrow. They'd all been worried for Mei, certainly, but what had she done to make Tayuya throw away the enmity she'd carried from the moment they met?
[Did you use beguiling techniques on her?] Yuurei's question wasn't unfounded. Mei had admitted her skill in that discipline to him.
[Only the lightest ones. She was more than ready to receive my attention, she just didn't want to say it. I couldn't tell you why.] Mei smiled as she finally separated her face from Tayuya's, and the smaller kunoichi processed that Temari's face was inches away from her own.
The young Kazekage at least had the decency to look away, pretending that she didn't see Tayuya's first and only reaction to the scene she'd walked in on—or that she'd blown by Temari to go through with the act.
"Fuckin' damn it. Sorry. You probably didn't want to see that." Tayuya wasn't bothered about the idea that Yuurei saw her kissing another woman, as she'd spent every day of her life with him for the last several months, but as much as she liked Temari...she wasn't sure how to feel about the affection she just displayed.
"Don't worry about it," the blonde said with a slight smile, unbothered. "Unlike some hidden villages, or a certain hidden village, you won't find many people bothered by things like that."
"No I meant, uh...never mind." Tayuya couldn't find words, flustered as she was.
"Like I said, don't worry about it." Temari waved off the other girl's frazzled state. Before turning around to walk away, she added, "I should probably get back to doing my job, but...I'm glad you're awake again, Mei."
The Mizukage's only response to those words was a light smile and a gentle nod in Temari's direction. She then proceeded to lean back against the wall, away from Tayuya's face, before she closed her visible eye and slowed her breathing. Even without using telepathy, Yuurei knew what that meant as well as anyone else; she'd just woken up, but the process of fully transforming into a demon had taken an enormous toll on her once-human body. Yuurei had entered a coma for six and a half days to complete his own transformation, and he'd spent his entire life connected to his demonic power. Mei had barely gotten half of that time, and her body had never truly adjusted to the strength Yuurei gave her when he planted the Mark of the Beast on her brain.
"She needs to rest some more," he said, taking Tayuya by the hand. "We'll have more time to spend with her later. All of us."
Tayuya nodded, letting Yuurei lead their way out of the room and closing the door behind her. In the back of her mind, she was still recovering from her public display of affection, and her wings rustled unevenly as her thoughts continued to turn. Yuurei's right arm surprised her as it looped around her slim waist, and as she looked at her master, she saw a haunting expression: his eyes were wet with tears that refused to fall, and his lips had pulled themselves back into a hideous snarl that spelled death for anyone within reach. A moment later, he shook his head forward, and shaggy hair fell down to keep his face from view. Still, his jaw was set with hatred, and Tayuya instinctively turned to wrap her arms around Yuurei's chest.
"You have to make peace with what happens," she said gently, her slim hands pressing a little firmly into the taller teen's ribs. "This is...it's part of life as a ninja. You know that. She's alright now, though. There was nothing you could do." The redhead felt like her words might be falling on deaf ears, and didn't think she was expressing all the things she needed to, but she wasn't afraid when she felt Yuurei's grip on her waist become a little more forceful.
"She should never have been in a position for that to happen, though. It feels like I failed. Like I failed Yugito, twice. Like I failed Gaara. Just because things worked out this time..." Yuurei trailed off, shaking his head once again. He couldn't get over the feeling he'd experienced while examining Mei's body—the sensation of missing something, in spite of everything functioning correctly. And whether it was the way the Mizukage whispered, or the physical weakness she'd displayed after waking up, neither sat well with the young Kyuubi. Something lingered, and he couldn't quite put his finger on it.
"You can't prevent the whole world from affecting us," Tayuya replied softly, moving her right hand up to hold it against Yuurei's jaw. The taller demon relaxed his muscles, and let the redhead's hand guide him to looking in her eyes. "Not as a human, not as a demon, not as a ghost. Things will happen that you can't stop, because you can't know everything or be everywhere. We aren't asking you to, either. Mei doesn't blame you for what happened, just like Yugito doesn't blame you for what happened to her. All that we want is to be loved and accepted, as equally as possible. We're people, not objects to protect and control...master."
The addition of that final word rankled Yuurei's expression, as he knew perfectly well that Tayuya resisted referring to him by that title when she wasn't transformed. Still, her words aligned with the conversations he'd just had with Mei and Yugito—even if their attitudes varied when they spoke to him. What he couldn't decide was why they would insinuate he cared for one or two of them over the others. Had he not proven himself to them? He was closest with Yugito and Tayuya, but he'd spent the longest time with them, and it wasn't as if he could replicate or replace the complexities of his relationships with Temari or Mei. In fact, of the four of them, he'd spent the least amount of personal time with Mei—she hadn't spent the same kind of traveling days with him as Yugito and Tayuya, as their sole excursion had been after Yugito's death, and she'd never experienced the kind of quiet moments he'd spent with Temari during his first stay in Suna. So if he could begin responding to Mei's own declaration of love, why wouldn't he be able to say it to one of the other three? And yet, as he looked Tayuya in the eyes, the only word that came out of his mouth was the same sound that had leapt from his brain to Mei's.
"I..." The silence hung in the air for a moment as Yuurei's brain seemed to freeze.
"Sorry, that was probably too much." Tayuya apologized, misunderstanding the reason Yuurei's words couldn't find themselves. Before she could respond further, her body rode up the taller demon's abdomen while he brought his second arm to hug her. There was enough force in his grip for a mild pain to wrack Tayuya's sides, but he wasn't trying to hurt her. It was the same kind of hug she'd given her mother as a young child on dark nights—one that was filled with anxious worry, and that said, 'I don't know what to do.' Acting on instinct, Tayuya leaned forward and placed her lips on his in the hope that her affection could help ground his thoughts.
Yuurei responded in kind, but a sense of self-loathing had overtaken his thoughts. Was it so hard to say those words to the women around him? Did he really not have the ability? When Tayuya pulled away to end their shared moment, looking at him with some confusion, he smiled at her in grateful reflex—but that smile, depressed as it was, didn't reach his eyes.
"Thank you," Yuurei said quietly. Hugging Tayuya again, he pressed his forehead into the crook of her neck. Even if he wasn't able to articulate his real thoughts, and even if she wasn't understanding him because of that failure, the redhead was still doing her best to help and advise him. In the moment, that was enough—he wasn't asking for guidance on what to do about the past. He needed his mind clear to think about their future. All of their futures.
Tayuya's hands reached around Yuurei's broad frame, clutching his back and gripping tightly. She wasn't sure what had come over the tall blond; outside of the time he'd spent carrying Yugito's corpse through Makai, his displays of deep emotion were infrequent and short-lived. Was it something about Mei? Something they'd talked about before she arrived? Questions filled the diminutive redhead's mind, but she decided against asking them in the moment. Something had started to change her master's bearing in the last few days, or a collection of things. Yuurei was becoming...softer was the wrong term, but his constant edge—the one he carried even when alone with Yugito and Tayuya—was receding when he was among his women.
Months ago, Tayuya would have scrunched up her nose at the idea of taking a place in whatever relationship she had with Yuurei, or that she'd be involved in the kind of relationship that he had with the four primary women in his life. She still wasn't entirely sure how she felt about the structure of it all. But if she could believe the things she was seeing, hard as that was for any Genjutsu specialist, then she knew how she felt about the man in question, just like Mei knew.
Makai was healing. The land itself was breathing, its features swelling and receding over time like a titanic heartbeat. Principles of space and time trickled out from the hands of a robed figure who levitated over the ground in the lotus position. How much time had passed since he started this process? It had been at least five thousand years since he'd seen a living person—that slavemancer from another universe didn't count, and neither did the women with him—and he'd been here for much longer than that. The world principles that held Makai together...simply hadn't existed when he'd arrived. Even in universes whose logic and power systems didn't match up with his own, they still relied on the same fundamental building blocks. It was such a bizarre thing to stumble across that he couldn't help himself from making an attempt at it.
In many of those universe worlds, Makai was simply sealed away. It was damaged in others, and occasionally beyond his ability to repair without sinking a significant amount of time into the task. In all his millennia of wandering the World Tree, the Starry Sky, and other universes beyond his own, though? Naruto had never seen Makai be so thoroughly obliterated that its world principles had dissipated. After tens of thousands of years, all that was left was to artificially accelerate its growth.
And if that had the side-effect of growing the strength of the swordsman who'd been fumbling his way through the reborn land with his infant of a sentient infernal sword, so what? Every universe's Naruto needed to face stronger enemies that threatened the world and the lives of those close to them. That went double for those Narutos who had evil intentions, triple for those who had harems, and quadruple for those who were bound and determined to be whiny little fuckers that refused to play their part. The Crusader didn't give up his eternity—such as it was—to save every universe one by one, just to have some jackass dismantle that effort when they would never be talented enough to hold his shoes.
The man in the distance would make a good litmus test for the Naruto of this universe after he and his sword spent thousands of accelerated years in Makai. Their strength would condense, the world principles would gradually forge them, and the demonic creatures that grew strong would serve to hone their superhuman talents further. With his ten tails gently floating, Naruto wondered: could there be a better way to raise a lamb for slaughter by a demon? To let it think it was a lion, preying upon the world, and then deliver it to a butcher? More than fifty thousand years ago, when his mother was still alive, a sadistic thought like that would have been enough to get a smile out of him. Now, though, his face remained motionless as he continued his work.
He knew the name and face of the one who waited for him, across the bridge of death, and it would never be someone as ill-natured as the Speargod. Out of thin air, an enormous blue head appeared, severed at the neck and bleeding profusely. It had been a long time since he'd spoken to the bastard divine demon from his universe, and no matter what he tried, he couldn't ever seem to kill it. Some abstruse Secret Art he'd cast long before Naruto was ever born, dictating that the Great Darkness would never die as long as one demon still lived.
As the head in front of him shrank to a normal size, Naruto knew better than anyone that he wasn't hallucinating. As it began to speak in a tone so low that even his supernatural hearing couldn't listen in, he desperately wished he was.