It's been a while, friends. I hope you've been doing well. As an apology for how late this chapter was in getting published (I swear, I didn't mean for it to take six months), I extended it—compared to my normal chapter lengths, it's about an extra half a chapter.
Let's get this trainwreck moving.
"So, is there a reason we haven't reached out to this friend of yours? Whatever he's planning, I'm hard-pressed to believe it's not him in the booth at true north," Karin said offhandedly. "Him, and three other monsters just like him."
"When he needs me to act, he'll give me a signal." Ayame's initial words were cryptic, and she continued speaking after her three teammates shot quizzical looks in her direction. "We spent years together. Living in the same spaces, working toward the same goals...the two of us, and Sai, and everybody else under him, all struggled and suffered and thrived together. When we were orphans in the streets, he kept me fed and warm. When we got older, and had a place to stay, he made sure we stayed together. If I'm this close to him, and he doesn't know I'm here, then we may as well be irreconcilable."
"That's a pretty strong statement for someone you haven't contacted in months," Suigetsu remarked snidely. "How do you know that he knows you're not dead? Blind faith in him, that he's supposed to reciprocate?"
"He's the only one allowed to kill me," Ayame responded. Unconsciously running a finger against the crystal embedded in the fleshy gap between her throat and her chest, there was a wistful smile on her face as she said those eight words.
"Okay. I'm gonna ignore that." Suigetsu cringed at the way Ayame seemed to romanticize her pseudo-self-prophesied death, and his expression betrayed his thoughts. "Besides killing time and waiting to hear back from Orochimaru, if we're not gonna meet this Kyuubi, what the hell are we doing here?"
"Have faith we'll meet him," Juugo replied. "The two of you were never particularly involved with most of the other seal-bearers, so you may not know as much about them, but there were points when I was. Whatever name Ayame's friend now chooses to go by, he was an ally to the original Sound Four on multiple occasions before they died. Even if it's only because of their memory, he should be willing to see us."
"Faith and I aren't exactly compatible companions. I trust my sword, my skills, hard cash, and two of the three of you. Asking me to just believe in something with no real reasoning isn't gonna do it for me," Suigetsu said. As the next round of combat began in the arena below them, the mutant swordsman refused to elaborate on exactly which two of his three teammates he trusted. Watching the contestants below with no small amount of fascination—and a regret that Karin had ever brought up the subject of the Kyuubi impersonator in one of the other private booths—he began to rip grapes off of their stems before crushing them between his molars.
"Master...master..." A voice Jiraiya hadn't heard in years was haunting his dreams. "Have you found the dreams that you've chased after?"
The mighty sage bolted awake, banishing the failures of his haunted past, only to be confronted by the vision of their future. Cobalt hair was cut short and tied into a bun, with an origami ornament decorating the right side of her head; a steel labret piercing had appeared at some point in the last twenty years, and a woman's pale eyes stared at her former teacher while he gathered his wits about him.
"Konan?" The shirtless man's ponytail shook with the wind from the desert's edge, a litany of stars lighting her face in the late-night air. He lifted an arm, as if to reach for her, but hesitated. "Is this another dream?" His eyes drank in her pale appearance, with dark pants that stopped at her ankles and a low-cut top that ended before her rib cage.
"If you want it to be," the woman replied. Her voice was different from Jiraiya remembered, with the timbre of regret that echoed the voice narrating his thoughts. There was a deep, revolving pain that rumbled from her dantian to her mind's dark recesses. The things Jiraiya saw before him were real. The chakra that pulsed out of his body faded into the breeze, dispelling his last reservations. Tears began to glisten in his eyes, threatening to spill over, as he stood to tower over the younger woman.
"You're everything I ever hoped you'd become," he said, his voice shaking as he smiled. She was beautiful, he thought to himself as he took in her appearance. A slim top hugged her chest, navy blue with a deep neckline, and a slightly more modest black skirt stopped short of her knees. "And for everything I've lost..."
"You did not lose me," Konan interrupted dispassionately, her body motionless in the wind beneath the moonlight as she accused her former teacher. "You did not lose us. You abandoned us, master. You went home when the Hokage beckoned you, and you left your students behind. But in spite of all your faults, I was told to show you mercy as our elder."
"Don't make me regret that decision, or change my mind," said a voice from behind Jiraiya. Konan almost thought the sage's body would split in half from the torque he put his spine through as he spun to see the speaker. It was a man whose youthful face hid deep thoughts, standing proudly in the night as he watched his former teacher with a blank stare.
"Yahiko?" Jiraiya asked, knowing the answer to his question without the other man's input. "But if you're both here..." Jiraiya strained his chakra and his senses, his body aching as he searched the surrounding area for the final member of his original trio of students.
"Nagato isn't here. Your departure hurt him more than it did me, and he couldn't channel it to anger like Konan did. He's still in pain." Yahiko shook his head, though whether he was dismissing Jiraiya or Nagato was up for interpretation.
"Let's just get on with it," Konan said tersely, practically spitting the words out of her mouth. "We know the depths of your information network, and we know you've been looking into our organization. We also know that you're...at odds with many of the other hidden villages. If you'd ever like to hire our services, you can reach out to us directly. It might save you the lives of your subordinates' subordinates. Though, I suppose you care for them even less than you cared for us."
"That's...that's unfair, Konan, and you know it." Jiraiya's tone took a melancholic edge as the older man determined not to submit to verbal abuse from his former pupil. "I stayed for as long as I could, because I wanted to see the three of you grow up strong, but I'm not a ronin. I never have been. So when the Hokage called me back to Konoha, I couldn't refuse his summons."
"I know. I've had more than twenty years to think about it, master, but no time or understanding will undo the hurt you caused by leaving." Konan's voice was flat again, but her frown never disappeared. "However...I'm capable of separating business from my personal life."
A small piece of blue paper flew off from Konan's top, which would have led Jiraiya to many questions if he'd chosen to think about them; that paper soon seemed to fold itself under the woman's direction, and it finally took the shape of a small bird. The origami construct flapped its wings and chirped, flitting in the air around Konan's head, and a smile appeared on her face for a brief moment before she directed the bird in Jiraiya's direction. The bird obeyed its creator, making a beeline across the short distance separating them, before falling motionless. When Jiraiya caught it, he marveled at the miniature golem while cradling it in both hands.
"If you ever decide that you'd like to use the Akatsuki, whether for our manpower or our information network, take out the oracle and hum our song." Yahiko's dark eyes didn't wander, looking at Jiraiya's face as he spoke to the older man. "And with that taken care of, I think it's time for us to say goodbye. I think we'll be seeing each other again soon, though, master."
Night turned to day in the blink of an eye, and Jiraiya struggled to come to terms with everything he'd just seen. Konan and Yahiko were long gone, as if they were never there in the first place, and the sage looked around the makeshift camp he'd used to shelter from the worst of the sun's heat. No matter how hard he searched, he couldn't find traces of Genjutsu; worse still, the situation felt nothing like the mirages people often spoke of as a danger in the open desert. Even after briefly drawing on the energy of the natural world with his skills as a sage, a logical answer refused to present itself. And then, the only remaining answer crept into his mouth.
"The spice...?" His question could only be directed at himself. He knew about the legendary melange and its numerous effects, including an ability to give its user visions, but that hadn't felt like a mere vision—it had felt real, like his former students had been within reach. Their indignation and anger at being left in Ame...it couldn't have been fake.
Of all Jiraiya's regrets, leaving that trio of war orphans behind was the one he'd done his best to put out of his mind. Not because he'd forgotten about them, of course, but because he'd failed to learn anything about them in the decades since. Virtually no information came out of Amegakure that was of consequence anymore, at least since the news of its former leader's assassination. Eventually, Jiraiya stopped searching for clues to the teens' whereabouts and accepted their deaths; it was easier for him to assume the worst, and move forward, than to hold on to a desperate hope.
"If I'd asked them to come back with me..." Jiraiya sighed, sealing away the various pieces of his makeshift camp.
Looking across the desert, he cast a long glance to the west. There was no way a confrontation wouldn't come to pass between Naruto and Itachi; neither one could abide the other, anymore, and violence was inevitable between two people with their strength. Jiraiya didn't know if he could help the situation getting ready to explode in Sunagakure, but enough blood had already been spilled for his taste—and there was little doubt in the sage's mind that more deaths would follow, even if he turned back to the city that had disappeared from the horizon. Then, looking east, Jiraiya reminded himself of the reason he'd been walking out of the desert: Sasuke was still out there, and Jiraiya had a duty to find him. With a heavy heart, the sage shook his head to clear his thoughts. Standing tall, he made his next steps in the face of the late morning sun.
All the while, two olive-colored eyes were expressionless as their owners watched Jiraiya move into the distance. Their black cloak was decorated with red clouds, and they waited in silence until the great sage had disappeared from view. After the last vestiges of his white hair had disappeared into the horizon, a small tree grew out of the sand before disappearing with the entity that summoned it. Their leaders needed to know that he was on the move.
"This is ridiculous. I'm going to have a message delivered," Karin said. Minutes later, a piece of paper was folded in half and handed off to a member of the arena's staff. "You might be content to play the waiting game, but I'm not. The sooner we can just meet this guy, the sooner the mystique fades."
Ayame just gave the other woman a sideways glance, not deigning to respond with words. Her commander's magnetic personality was well-known, and well-documented, from before his feigned death. Where Orochimaru commanded with a strong hand and no small amount of fear—a method that seemed at odds with the worn and weary elder she was familiar with, in their private conversations—Naruto shouldered others' burdens and welcomed nearly anyone to his side. As the third exam's proctor announced an intermission at the end of the first round of combat, she simply sat back and waited.
When the letter was delivered to the Kazekage's booth, Temari originally intended to send it away, but Yugito accepted the piece of paper out of the runner's hand before she could say anything. The former Jinchuriki briefly read it, slightly surprised as a young woman's figure flashed in her mind. She handed it to Yuurei, who shrugged his shoulders and declared that he'd return in a little while. Wordlessly, Yugito and Tayuya fell into their places beside him; he hadn't gone anywhere without them in public for several months now, and neither woman was ready to let him break that trend now.
"I guess if you were sick of traveling with me, you'd have stopped by now," the demon laughed at his own joke, but neither woman smiled as they walked around the arena's interior upper floor.
"You're the reason we put up with it all," Yugito retorted, not taking her eyes off of the door of a different private booth. "Don't give us a reason to question that loyalty."
"I feel like that's a bit disingenuous, I've given you several reasons to question it. I'm just grateful that you've stayed with me in spite of it all," Yuurei said. Pulling the door open, he was greeted by the sight of four teens—one of whom he'd left behind in Kiri, nearly dead.
"I'm happy you're here," Ayame said with a smile, echoing the words Yuurei had said to her when they'd reunited on the shore of Kirigakure. "Sorry for the state I'm in, but Zabuza...well..." None of the other three people in the room missed the way that Yuurei's trio responded to that name. Yugito clenched her neck muscles as she remembered her final moments before dying, while Tayuya narrowed her eyes and Yuurei balled a hand into a fist.
"If you're traveling with these three pathetic fucks, then the rest of the Sound Four are really dead, aren't they? They died from the same attack that should have killed you, but you were wearing armor for some stupid reason," Tayuya said venomously. She hadn't loved Kidomaru, Sakon, Ukon, or Jirobo, but there had been a mutual trust in their familiarity. Even though she'd assumed their deaths at some point during her trip through Makai, her heart ached at the confirmation.
"Hey, what the-" Suigetsu started to protest Tayuya's judgement of him as a so-called pathetic fuck, but lost the will to make his argument when he drew in just who was in front of him. Tayuya, one of the original members of the Otoyon, stood together with the Raikage's niece. And between them, possessing nine tails that looked like they were dipped in oil and an aura that felt like it could physically crush him, was a young man with enough scars that his battle record was unquestionable.
"They live on in me." Ayame responded to Tayuya's question with no small amount of sorrow; even if it hadn't been for the same amount of time, the three and a half men had been her comrades as well. "Them, and...someone else. I'm not sure who. Someone important enough, or strong enough, that her keirakukei help keep me alive."
"Surgically implanting the...no, that's not possible. Even if you put aside the necessary chakra control, no two people have the exact same network. It gets warped too much from training and combat," Yugito replied, quietly mortified.
"That's the kind of monster Kabuto is," Tayuya replied grimly. The redhead stepped into her successors' private booth without any more fanfare, and her harsh gaze made two of the new Sound Four uncomfortable. Only Yuurei's hand on her shoulder pulled her back from her private thoughts.
"You wanted to meet me. I'm here," the demon said as he stepped into the room, walking past Ayame and Suigetsu while employing force in his last two words. "Though I'm surprised Orochimaru isn't, considering the way his nose keeps ending up in my business."
"He's exploring Konoha's ruins," Juugo said, causing Yuurei's eyes to turn to him. Juugo didn't enjoy the brief feeling of scrutiny that accompanied Yuurei's inhuman gaze.
"Is he? I'll have to ask him what he finds. There shouldn't be any remains of my predecessor left, anymore, but that doesn't mean there's nothing valuable in the remains." Yuurei wanted to be surprised, but he couldn't feign the emotion; even more than power, the one thing Orochimaru had always coveted was his homeland—it was why, on a distant day nearly beyond his memories, the Hebi Sennin had openly accepted the hatred of the village to maintain its peaceful existence.
"Your predecessor?" Karin asked, only to shudder unconsciously as Yuurei swept his gaze over her.
"Sorry, I didn't introduce myself. I'm the Kyuubi no Yuurei, and I fully inherited the title after I ate the Kyuubi no Kitsune alive. Whatever name, or names, you might otherwise know me by? They no longer matter."
"He's making a habit of doing this," Yugito said with a sigh, mostly to Tayuya.
"No, he's always been like this," Ayame replied, pointedly ignoring the disapproving stare Tayuya gave her in response. "I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse, though."
"You talk more than you used to. Is that Orochimaru's doing, too?" Yuurei watched Suigetsu, Juugo, and Karin in his peripheral vision as he looked out across the arena from their booth's window. The west-falling sun hadn't reached the point of making the room untenable, but it made its appearance felt as it shone more directly on the stone interior.
"Don't tell me you're jealous," Ayame teased, starting to reach for the demon's shoulder. "I haven't forgotten who my Banchou is."
"You've never been offered the luxury of forgetting. Since the day I pulled you out of the fire and left your father to die, your life and your loyalty have both belonged to me. That was the deal you made, and that I've continued to honor at every opportunity after our paths diverged." Yuurei didn't move his eyes away from the window, and didn't see the way Ayame flinched as her hand stopped moving towards him. "Everything you are, or will ever be, is because I decided that saving a crying girl was more important than stealing food from the burning building I found her in." The demon saw Karin's head turn to look at her leader, but he paid no attention to the motion beyond recognizing it. "Whatever Orochimaru gave you, whether it's the powers of our dead comrades or that garbage he calls Fuinjutsu, will never change that."
"Did you come here for a reason, Naruto, or did-" Ayame was cut off without warning as a titanic force began to crush the room's inhabitants. While Yugito and Tayuya seemed unaffected, Juugo crouched onto a knee; Suigetsu and Karin both fell flat, clutching their sides in pain, and Ayame dropped into a seated position. Her eyes were wide and pained as she watched the demon turn back around to face her, seeing him in a new light. Dark fury was etched into the creases of his snarling lips, pale lids twitched around both of his bloodshot eyes, and all nine of his iridescent tails were rigid with his sudden rage.
"My name," he intoned, as Yugito pulled the door shut behind her to prevent his aura from leaking further, "is Yuurei. Kidomaru, and the rest of the real Sound Four, never bothered to challenge my authority on that subject...but the four of you are a pale imitation of that group, at best. You've got a sensor who's too nosy for her own good sending a missive to the Kazekage's viewing booth, a loose cannon, an uptight swordsman, and a girl who ran away from home. You may have stolen their abilities, but their most important skill was teamwork." The irony of his words wasn't lost on Yuurei, and he was sure that either Tayuya or Yugito would have some thoughts about that statement coming from him. "I originally came to ask if you were willing to help me, but it would clearly be a mistake. I can't rely on you to avoid putting your deaths on my hands. Maybe you'll be more prepared the next time we meet."
As suddenly as the pressure had arrived, it vanished. Yuurei closed his eyes, turned around, and opened the door before leaving the room. Yugito and Tayuya quickly followed him, and he could feel the weight of their stares as they tried to drill holes through his shaggy hair with their eyes.
"You don't think that was a little much?" Yugito asked quietly, though her inner jealous streak had quietly enjoyed the last few minutes. "I know we don't really care about the others, but she's our ally."
"She's not one of us," Yuurei shook his head. "My reasons for helping her, when we were children, were ultimately selfish. That sets the two of you apart from her, even if my actions were still self-serving. My friendship with her is, or was, rooted in her obedience to me...that's not real friendship, not as I've been led to understand it. My only friends in the world are the two of you, Mei, and maybe Temari and Kankuro."
"You aren't seriously about to friendzone us months after we had sex," Tayuya deadpanned, causing Yugito to let out a short snort of laughter.
"Of course not, but you're doing that on purpose. Any serious friendship or relationship is built on mutual trust and appreciation, right? I don't have that kind of foundation with many people. Maybe the rest of the Sound Four, but they're dead. Maybe Sai, but he serves too many masters for me to really feel close to him. No matter where we've gone, I've had the two of you and not much else." Yuurei turned around, smiling softly at the two women while resisting the urge to re-enter the booth that Temari and Mei were sharing with their guards; he didn't take advantage of most of his opportunities to talk to the pair of women standing with him.
Yugito and Tayuya were both moderately shocked to hear their demonic master speak the way he did, each woman staying silent while waiting for the proverbial shoe to drop.
"I promised Mei that I wouldn't be specific about my feelings towards you until I could say the same thing to all four of you, but Ayame isn't included in that group. I know I haven't always done the best job of showing it, since bad things seem to happen routinely, but I don't want either of you to feel like I care about any one of us more or less than the others. So if there's something you want from me, all you need to do is ask." Yuurei took both of the women in front of him by the hand, running his thumbs across the backs of their respective knuckles. What he was doing was entirely foreign to him; the feelings, the closeness, and the intimacy were all things that directly opposed his old way of life.
That didn't mean he found the new sensations unpleasant, though.
"When we go to Kumogakure," Yugito began, emphasizing that they would go together. Her fingers tensed without warning, clutching her master's hand with a fervor he rarely felt from her. "I don't care who else you kill, and I don't care how you do it, but you will leave my father untouched. I'll be the one to kill him."
Tayuya shot the taller woman an incredulous look, halfway to a glare; that was not, under any circumstances, what she'd told the blonde to ask for. And yet, as the redhead looked between her two long-time companions, she could practically see the invisible weights lifting off of Yugito's shoulders—this was clearly, somehow, more important to her...and if Yuurei were to deny her now, it would crush her.
"You will." Yuurei's expression didn't change, but he was taken by surprise a moment later; Yugito crashed into the taller demon, one arm flying behind his head as she seemed to attempt to topple him, and he felt her kiss him with a force he couldn't explain. After several seconds, the shorter blonde pulled her face away, and she couldn't stop herself from smirking in the demon's face as he questioned her with his eyes.
"Is there a reason I shouldn't have done that?" Yugito spoke through her smile, separating herself from Yuurei completely, and the young blond struggled to come up with any response at all.
"I think you broke him," Tayuya said with a chuckle. "Come on, let's go back inside before they start wondering what the hell's going on. The intermission should be ending soon." Saying so, she pulled the other two by their arms to the door.
Meanwhile, in the Sound Four's viewing booth, an overwhelming silence hung over the group. Ayame was still stunned, the hard stone of Karin's seat digging into her forearms; the redhead, Suigetsu, and Juugo were all still trying to process what they'd encountered. The Kyuubi no Yuurei that they'd just met was a real demon, like the ones from legends and childhood stories. More than that, his aura alone had been enough to crush what resistance they might have put up. In the eyes of the younger shinobi, as they'd sat through his brief monologue, the nine-tailed man wielded absolute power.