"Chairs so close, a room so small,
You and I talk all the night long,
Meager this space but serves us so well.
We comrades have stories to tell,
And it's always like that in the evening time,"
-So Ist Es Immer, Hiroyuki Sawano
The water was cold as it splashed over his bare feet. It reminded Nagato of the past.
Of Konan, pointing and laughing at him, standing on top of a lake that he fell in. Before it was poisoned.
Holding Oka on his back after she fell asleep on the beach with sand in her hands and bruises on her knuckles. Before any of them had ever killed anyone.
It had been over four years since he let himself think about the past like this. His happier memories, without them bleeding into what came after. Without seeing dead fish and purple water or an empty, abandoned lake.
It was because he could look at the water and only see himself in its reflection. He couldn't see the bad in anything he looked at, because he had no attachment to the waters of Kirigakure. It had been a long time since his reflection showed him the present and not the worst of himself.
Nagato heard a frustrated sigh and looked up, at Chojuro, standing on the water in front of him.
His pants were rolled up to his knees and he was making the dog sign with both hands, trembling as he tried to force the water to rise up into the shape of a bubble that could, but probably wouldn't, have tiny fish in it.
Minnows, Kisame had called them.
It wasn't quite ninjutsu, but elemental manipulation. If he couldn't do it, Nagato wouldn't teach him any actual jutsu.
Namekuji was helping, in his way of helping, by advising Chojuro through berating him. He'd started doing it with Enyo first, or at least that was what he heard through Matsu.
Yahiko sat further out on the water with Mangetsu crouched next to him, holding an improvised fishing rod made with from a kunai tied with ninja wire and a stick. He'd skewered a blue beetle he'd dug out of the sand on the end, and had it sitting in the water. He was shirtless, with faintly wet bandages wrapped around his middle, and was using one hand to wave emphatically at the water as he talked to Mangetsu, probably trying to convince him of the value of fishing.
Nagato could guess, because of the skeptical way Mangetsu looked at the water.
Nagato glanced at his reflection again and saw his sister with Kisame behind her, telling them that he would help them fish.
She had only told them what she thought they needed to know about what happened while she was gone, which was only that she met with the leader of Minakami.
And then he'd fallen asleep after healing Yahiko a little more, and when he'd woken up she was gone again and had taken Hidan with her.
Nagato had known that Kisame hadn't slept at all since meeting not-Madara, and it didn't seem like he would, until he'd woken up to find him not asleep, but something close.
Trusting them, because he trusted Oka.
If he really wanted to help her, Kisame hadn't needed to stay and wait for them. Nagato had felt and seen enough to know that Kisame didn't need them to fish, and needed them even less to help him haul the fish.
Oka had known that too, but had asked him to do it with them anyway.
Trust them, because you trust me.
Chojuro dropped to one knee, panting, but still hadn't managed to channel his chakra into the water, or even outside his body.
Behind Nagato, on the beach, Kisame sat on a rotted log, surrounded by their things. His and Yahiko's sandals and weapon pouches, abandoned higher up on the sand; the Hiramekarei, carefully wrapped and lying next to the log; Chojuro's vest and their cloaks folded in neat piles; the nagamaki, on a patch of grass where the sand bled into dirt.
"Please show me again..." Chojuro gasped, looking towards him, his glasses hazy with water. "Just—Just one more time. I can do it."
Nagato was using nature energy to poke at his chakra, but carefully, to not disturb the flow of it. He had to innovate, because of the mist. He'd never used it like this, to wrap nature energy around chakra like grasping a handful of sand.
It was a complicated way to imitate what Konan used to do naturally—no matter how good he got at sensing, he couldn't tell what elemental nature someone had.
But it was exhausting. If he held on too tightly, the nature energy would be drawn into Chojuro's chakra network, to turn it into back into its 'natural' state. Too loose, and he wasted more energy trying to draw it from his surroundings than using it.
Chojuro's chakra felt like cold slime to him—liquidy, but also somehow shapeless. Like solid water. The closest thing he could relate it to was water release.
But he wasn't sure.
Nagato waded closer to Chojuro, shuffling through the water in a way he hadn't done in a long time. It made his dark pants even darker as water soaked him, and it made him feel childish, like walking on water was somehow more adult, but he felt—
He stopped, the water rippling and settling around his legs, and let out a long breath, because he was relaxed.
He was in Kirigakure, and he felt relaxed.
But there was no Root here, no people with Hanzo's ideals or their parents' ideals thinking that they were right and he was wrong, and the only way to fix Amegakure was with blood.
"Glasses is broken," Namekuji announced. Nagato blinked as Namekuji crawled up his leg, then his back.
"H—Hey!" Chojuro shouted in shock.
"I've tasted some weird chakra from you meat sacks, so when I say his is broken—"
"Broken how?" Nagato asked as Namekuji hung over his shoulder and ate his chakra.
He'd whined and complained, but came back around to being a sensor-nin in the end.
Namekuji peered at Chojuro. "Like a stick that bends the wrong way."
Nagato silently attempted to translate that into something that actually meant something but couldn't.
Yahiko had somehow fished up a long piece of driftwood and let it bob between him and Mangetsu. The beetle was gone, and Nagato didn't know if he'd lost his catch or gave up, but he watched him pull something from his pocket and hold it out.
Mangetsu eyed his hand for a few seconds, then held out his hand under it, and Yahiko dropped a pair of dice into his palm.
"Your slug means that it's unstable," Kisame raised his voice to say, before Nagato could start guessing.
Nagato turned.
Kisame leaned his arms on his knees and grinned at the attention. "The ability to become a member of the Seven Ninja Swordsman doesn't involve talent or training or status like foreigners think it does. It's decided the moment one is born," Kisame continued. "It's only based on compatibility. Take the Hiramekarei. Each wielder of it, as far back as our recorded history goes, has been born with difficult chakra, and by that I mean chakra that doesn't like to move away from the center of the body or change its shape."
Chojuro looked surprised.
"Such difficult chakra will only ever cooperate when being used with something that can force it to move and change the shape for the user. The more difficult the chakra, the easier Hiramekarei takes to it. It's why Chojuro there is considered something of a prodigy. Chakra like that only appears once in a generation, or even less than that. Or perhaps not, but the inability to use basic ninjutsu usually gets someone written off as a failure before they even begin. Some might even call him lucky."
"To be lucky is to be born in Byakuren," Mangetsu interjected with a toothy grin without looking up from the point Yahiko was scratching into the wood with a disassembled part of his fishing rod.
Chojuro's shoulders hunched.
"Don't take it personally," Mangetsu said like he saw. "I like you, but luck is decided at birth just ability is decided for people like us."
"I—I wasn't," Chojuro managed to say, looking uneasy. "At least not... It's just, no one's ever told me that about my chakra, and I've never thought of myself as… lucky."
"Between you and the slug—Namekuji, was it?— one of you would've been able to figure it out eventually but—" Kisame stopped, then shrugged. "I suppose there's no explanation for why I decided to tell you."
There was. Her name was Oka.
"But, about the Hiramekarei, there's only been a single exception to the rule of its users," Kisame said. His eyes flicked to Mangetsu.
Mangetsu shook his fist and dropped the dice in a way that made them roll to a stop just before they fell off the edge. "Hey, Chojuro, I've been wondering, how'd you end up mixed up in this?" he asked, casual and light, taking the stick from Yahiko to scratch a point on his half of the driftwood.
Kisame leaned back and said nothing to being ignored.
"You have a bounty like Terumi, but no kill-on-sight order like her," Mangetsu added.
Nagato paused. "She has a kill-on-sight order?"
Mangetsu responded by pulling a thin gray scroll from his weapons pouch. He tossed it back carelessly and answered, "It's only for show. All hunter-nin know that you can't kill her without bringing her before the Mizukage first, but it sends a bad message all around that all immunity takes is catching the eye of someone in the daimyo's court. It makes people think that they can do it too."
Nagato caught the scroll and turned it over in his hands. It was thinner and shorter than his own scrolls, and the paper felt thicker, but it seemed like the fuinjutsu for 'storage scroll' was universal.
He unsealed it as Mangetsu looked around Yahiko at Chojuro, waiting for his answer, and caught a small gray book, looking at the hiragana for 'water' in white on the cover.
He quietly tucked it into his pouch for later. He'd look at it with Yahiko and Oka when they were together again.
Chojuro fidgeted. "Lady Terumi..." he trailed off, tucking in his knees "I might've been born in—" he stopped, then tried again. "It was never like what people think it was. Ao thinks I had it easy, but I was never a person to my brothers. I was a baby when they were running our family business, and then I was… the successor or the next wielder, but no one ever explained anything to me. All I knew was the Hiramekarei. Lady Terumi was the first ninja, no, the first person I met that wanted to know about—about me. Not my potential. The Lady wouldn't even let me use the Hiramekarei until my stamina was up to her standards, even though that made a lot of people angry. Not that you weren't a good sensei to me Mangetsu-sensei, but..." he trailed off.
Mangetsu only asked, "Ao? You're talking about Headhunter Ao?"
Chojuro's smile vanished and he looked guilty suddenly, like he'd just revealed a secret.
"Everyone knows he defected with her. She's skilled, but she couldn't have outmaneuvered the hunter-nin without him," Kisame answered for him.
Chojuro breathed out in relief, while Nagato only wondered to himself how Mangetsu didn't know if 'everyone' did.
Mangetsu whistled appreciatively, looking at Chojuro again. "How'd she get him in on this?"
Neither Kisame nor Chojuro answered him.
"Fine, but one more thing. How'd you end up on that island? Time outside the village starts to blend after some time, but I still would've heard about it if the Hiramekarei disappeared. It would've been me who had to retrieve it."
"Lady Terumi, she kept me as far away from all of this at first," he said hesitantly, taking off his glasses to rub at his eyes. "But right before she defected she... the last thing she taught me was how to escape if I ever felt like I needed to. She told me about a cargo ship that would smuggle me. I don't know the details, but Lady Terumi promised the captain a favor. He left the village not long after he helped me, and the captain the rain—uh, Nagato and Yahiko—met on Nankai wasn't used to Lady Terumi yet. That's why it was easier than usual for her to make him do what she wanted."
"I get it," Mangetsu said, his tone neutral. "You're not listed as a traitor because no one knows whether you're dead or alive. You just disappeared one day. That right?"
Chojuro hesitantly nodded.
"Makes some sort of sense. It was assumed you'd been somehow kidnapped and the Hiramekarei stolen and most likely sold to another village," Mangetsu reasoned. "Probably done by Terumi herself. Couldn't be that you were being ransomed, because any demands for you, or the Hiramekarei would've ended with all of your family dead. But since no ransom came, they thought it better to keep quiet and keep their heads. Besides, that kind of shame so soon after what Konohagakure did? Loyal Byakuren would have their own civil war among each other if it got out. So they reported you gone but the Hiramekarei safe so they wouldn't be punished too harshly. You think they transformed something into a replica?" he asked Kisame.
Chojuro frowned, but still stayed silent.
"How nice it must be to be the daimyo's favorite," Kisame mentioned to no one.
Chojuro's eyes went down to the water, unwilling to respond.
Mangetsu stared at Kisame until Yahiko nudged him, and he eventually turned back to the game and scanned the board.
Kisame shifted his weight on the log and it creaked loudly.
Chojuro's hands clenched at his side at the sound, betraying his fear even as he still avoided Kisame's searching eyes, and Kisame grinned wider.
"I have a question of my own," Kisame said. "What do you plan to do now, Chojuro?"
"What I... plan to do...?"
"About the rain-nin and Mei's so-called revolution," Kisame casually explained. "I should've asked instead, what do you plan to do knowing what they plan to do?"
"What—I—nothing?"
The log creaked again and Chojuro tensed.
"I don't think I ever had the chance to tell you how much I hate liars, did I?" Kisame asked.
"I'm not lying!" Chojuro said through his teeth, his head jerking up as he continued, "Lady Terumi, she started all of this to force a change. She stepped up to lead because no one else was going to or wanted to. The Lady didn't have an easy life, but she had enough status to become my sensei, even though she specializes in ninjutsu. She could've just stayed quiet and let the purges happen. But she couldn't. Yes, the Lady wouldn't like that they've made their own plan, but she wouldn't stop them. As long as, once this is all over, the Lady and people like her can feel like Kirigakure is their home again—as long as that happens, it's okay."
He broke off, heaving for air, and it was the only sound for a few seconds.
"Well, well, maybe you do have a backbone," Kisame said eventually, sounding mildly impressed.
Mangetsu looked at Chojuro out of the corner of his eye, studying him like he'd never seen him before. And maybe he hadn't. At least not who he was now.
"He might be broken, but at least his mouth works," Namekuji observed.
Nagato choked, turning his head to cough into his sleeve to hide a sudden laugh.
"Since we're sharing so much," Yahiko spoke, scratching down a point in the driftwood under Mangetsu's watchful gaze. "So, Kisame, how'd you know Nagato was an Uzumaki? The red hair I get, but I remember you said something about the feeling of the ocean in Oka's chakra. Are there more Uzumaki out there?"
Kisame shifted his gaze to him. "No," he said after a while, then stopped, seemingly considering whether or not the rest was worth responding to.
Chojuro leaned his head on his knees.
Eventually, Kisame said, "It's not something people speak openly about. But there's a library in Gengetsu with restricted texts that explain why they're all gone, if you don't mind using a little force to get to them, but if your question was about whether I've met any myself, then also no, but Samehada has. I get—let's call them impressions—of the chakra she's last eaten when she shares with me. From that, you have enough clues to guess at what her former master had been last doing before she became my partner."
"Huh," Yahiko said.
Nagato saw Kisame's eyes flit to him, like he'd be able to tell how that made him feel just by looking. He should have an opinion, he mused to himself, but he didn't. He had never known the Uzumaki.
Once, a long time ago, what Kisame said would've ignited a fire in his chest. Anger on behalf of his mother. Angry that he'd never get a chance to meet them and have them tell him who he was.
But he wasn't any of that. He was curious about the Uzumaki as a clan, about the knowledge they had and if he or Oka were anything like them, but that was all. He cared to the extent that everything he learned about them filled in holes about himself, but he didn't need the Uzumaki to feel like he was someone.
He was someone because Oka had always looked at him like he was, even before he realized it.
He didn't need to know the details of what happened. He'd seen enough reactions to him to piece enough of it together. Orochimaru, looking at him like he was surprised by his existence; Mei, telling him how valuable he was. And he still remembered that storybook he used to read Oka when they were both tiny, about the red-haired princess who fled as her home burned behind her.
Their mother.
He didn't even know if Oka remembered that, but he also knew that even if he told her about it, she'd listen and take in his thoughts, but she wouldn't really care. It was ancient history.
So Nagato made those connections, but kept them to himself. Still, he did appreciate Yahiko asking on his behalf.
"I'm sorry," Nagato said to Kisame instead, pretending he didn't see Kisame's quick, confused blink as he fully turned around, shin-deep in ocean water.
Kisame tilted his head like he hadn't heard him quite right.
"When you came and agreed to spar with Oka, I should've trusted you," Nagato said.
Kisame blinked again, his grin becoming smaller as confusion pulled at his expression.
"I followed you," Nagato soldiered on. "Because I was afraid of what you could do to her, but—" he broke off with a sigh and just said, "You've shown me more trust than I deserved."
"Have I?" Kisame asked, like he didn't believe it. "You acted as any normal person would've in that situation. I don't think you need a reminder of the state I left her in," he reassured him, like he wasn't sure why he needed to.
"That told me that you would've brought her back alive," Nagato retorted. "Her wounds might've been worse, but not lethal. What you did to her looked worse than it was."
"Downplaying your own skill?" Kisame asked curiously, leaning back.
"How much information is in the chakra you get about someone else through Samehada? Because if it's everything, then you knew I was a medic-nin when we met," Nagato pushed on. "That was the first time I met anyone who could absorb nature energy. It was instinct to use medical chakra to try and find what was wrong, so I know."
Kisame didn't respond.
Nagato idly rolled up his sleeves, not hot, but humid and wet, like the air was sticking to him. "It was unlucky, or lucky, that you did that to me first," he added. "Everything has to have a limit, even a chakra-absorbing sword. You didn't say that she only gives you chakra when you need it."
Kisame was silent, and then he shook his head. "You're a lot like him," he finally said, tilting his head towards Mangetsu without moving his eyes. "But you don't pretend to be dumb."
Nagato paused, but wasn't surprised. After Mangetsu guessed why Chojuro wasn't in the bingo books and Chojuro didn't correct him, he was starting to suspect that Mangetsu had known exactly what he was doing the day they met.
"Did she tell you to apologize to me?" Kisame asked.
Nagato smiled. "Does that sound like her?"
Kisame said nothing.
"Why are you trying to convince me that you meant to kill her?" Nagato asked.
Kisame grinned, but it looked as thin as glass. "I would've if I didn't have her summon to play with," he said with an edge, but it sounded automatic. "Why do you feel the need to apologize to me then, if not for her?"
Nagato paused, really thinking about it. "Because I misjudged you. It… wasn't fair. We're intruders. We came here to make the village more unstable. You had every right to kill us, and you would've been acting as a shinobi of Kirigakure," he reasoned. "It'd be like if you snuck into Amegakure and didn't trust me for finding you. Because I'm a sensor-nin, I judged you based on feelings, before we ever spoke. I don't want my apology to be accepted. I want to start over too."
Kisame said nothing for a long time, then surprised him by shifting his eyes away, but still didn't respond.
It could've gone worse, Nagato mused to himself.
He heard a sudden splash and looked over to see Yahiko batting water at Mangetsu, who seemed baffled as the spray hit him.
Mangetsu was frozen, one hand half-raised as if to block an attack and the other around the handle of the Nuibari.
The driftwood was cracked in half.
Mangetsu looked completely dry as he forced his hand away from the handle. "What'd you do that for?"
"Oh, just defending my honor. Cheating was expected, we're ninja. But using ninjutsu to cheat is another level of disrespect," Yahiko explained, pretending he didn't notice Mangetsu's reaction.
Watching them gave Nagato an abrupt, childish idea. One he should've immediately dismissed.
Nagato moved back into the water as they talked, gathering as much water in his hands as he could carry, and slowly shuffled closer to Yahiko's turned back, trying to keep as much of it in his hands as he could.
Mangetsu leaned his arms on his knees and asked, "Oh, is that right? Where's your proof?"
"I don't know how you did it," Yahiko admitted, looking at the sky. "But what a coincidence that the water suddenly stopped being calm when I was about to win, and then went back to being calm after the dice fell into the water and disappeared. And because I had only had the one pair, you won."
"Those were your rules," Mangetsu reminded him. "They go under, you lose." His eyes finally flicked behind Yahiko to Nagato, but even if Yahiko noticed, it was too late for him to react.
Nagato tossed the water at him. Not enough of it had survived his awkward shuffling to do more than sprinkle over Yahiko, but Yahiko still stiffened. He spun around as Nagato turned to run and Nagato, as he took a step, remembered why ninja didn't run in water.
It felt like weights were tied around his ankles that dragged along the sand. Nagato tripped and fell onto his hands and knees.
"You're cheating," Nagato managed to say as Yahiko's shadow loomed over him. "I'm not on top of the water."
Yahiko paused just long enough to look at his feet and let himself sink.
"Can I use acid?" Namekuji asked, on Nagato's back.
Nagato opened his mouth to answer, then sputtered and coughed as Yahiko kicked water at him from behind.
"I'm going to spray acid at you," Namekuji decided.
"Your partner started it," Yahiko paused his assault to protest. "Besides, I'm still half-injured. Would you really shoot acid at an injured person?"
"Dumb, fragile meat bag."
"Fragile enough for you to not shoot acid at me?" Yahiko asked hopefully.
Namekuji dropped off Nagato's back to avoid being caught between them, muttering about being owed for this from both of them for his restraint.
Nagato tried to quickly stand, to make another attempt at escape despite the water actively working against him, only to gasp as Yahiko caught the end of his braid.
"Hair pulling?" Nagato hissed at him, his hands scrabbling back to grasp at his hair. "Are you a kid?"
"Ah, I must've forgot that water throwing is what adults do," Yahiko shot back. He let go, but just as quickly got his arms around Nagato's neck before he could make another attempt to move. "Let's be kids together, eh, Nagato?"
Nagato responded by kicking back hard at his knee.
Yahiko jerked his leg back immediately, tightening his grip as his balance wavered, and it was suddenly harder to breathe. Nagato barely had time to try and pull the arms away from his neck before Yahiko was trying to push him down into the water.
Nagato resisted, throwing his weight back as Yahiko tried to sweep his ankles, making them stumble awkwardly to the side together.
"Just take a little dip, Nagato, and tell me how the water tastes," Yahiko grunted, breathing hard, but still trying to wrestle him down.
Nagato itched to form a half-sign for a water jutsu. He kicked at his leg again instead.
This proved too much for the fragile balance Yahiko had as the tide pulled out and sucked the sand out from beneath his feet, and Nagato felt Yahiko tighten his hold as he started to fall, his flailing arms ignored as he was dragged backwards against his will.
The instinct to use chakra reappeared, but Nagato only shut his eyes right before they hit the water together, then felt Yahiko let go and shove away from him.
Nagato jerked upright, coughing as he rubbed at his neck, but all he heard was Yahiko laughing.
And then Nagato started laughing too.
His hair was a mess, it'd take hours for their clothes to dry, and they hadn't caught any fish between them, but Nagato couldn't stop.
He flopped onto his side and eventually said, "We still need to catch something."
"Nah," Yahiko said, eyes closed. "I think I've accepted my death. There was this huge fish, you should've seen it. It was fast, and it ate my bait around the kunai while I was distracted and ran away. Humiliating."
They should've moved into, onto, deeper water the second after Kisame told them that mostly minnows were in the shallows, but then Chojuro wouldn't have approached him to talk, and Yahiko wouldn't have built a fishing rod, and Nagato wouldn't feel so warm.
Oka hadn't given them a deadline, so maybe he could blame her for this.
A shadow appeared over them, forming quickly into the shape of a person.
"Looks like fun," Mangetsu spoke suddenly. "You don't mind if I get a little revenge, do you?"
Mangetsu didn't wait for an answer.
Nagato sat up just as Mangetsu's body broke apart into water and splashed down like he was never there. Nagato felt a brief sense of surprise, before it collapsed into resignation.
He was too use to seeing things he couldn't understand.
Nagato only wondered about his anatomy, about what happened to his organs when he did that.
Yahiko splashed and choked beside him.
Mangetsu had un-liquified sitting behind him, Yahiko's head locked against his elbow.
"Can't breathe—" Yahiko began.
Mangetsu yanked Yahiko to the side and shoved him underwater to quiet him, and Nagato saw that he was missing the Nuibari. It was back on the shore, sticking out of the sand like a flag.
Yahiko went limp almost immediately, and Mangetsu tilted his head, holding him under for almost another minute before he raised his eyes to Nagato, who couldn't fake a reaction, because he knew that Yahiko could hold his breath for almost ten minutes.
Mangetsu refocused on Yahiko and let go to dig a knee into his back.
Bubbles came from the water, and Yahiko started kicking his legs and wriggling to try and free himself.
Nagato, amused, picked up a handful of water and splashed Mangetsu.
Instantly, the mist-nin went very still. Water dripped down the side of his face and shoulder before it was absorbed into his skin.
The distracted allowed Yahiko to roll out from beneath Mangetsu and lay on his back, breathing hard.
Mangetsu put his hands on his knees, stood, and said, "Guess you can be first if you want," and then the color leeched from his skin and his body fell apart.
Before Nagato do more than try to get up, he felt a hard tug on his ankles and he fell back into the water.
.
.
.
Nagato leaned down and hugged himself. He was shivering and tired and resigned to the fact that they wouldn't be catching anything.
Yahiko was spread out on the sand next to him, eyes closed, a hand covering his mouth. He was breathing hard, wisps of poison escaping through his fingers.
Nagato could feel the heat coming off him and it made him feel colder. He bent down more. Instead of mastering medical ninjutsu, he should've learned fire-style.
Mangetsu sat against a burned stump with his arms were crossed and his head was hanging down, his chin touching his chest.
Out in the water, Chojuro threw himself out of the way of a spray of acid, falling to his hands and knees for a second before he scrambled up. He glanced back as he started running again, then yelped as his shin hit a larger part of Namekuji and he tumbled down into the water.
Chojuro sputtered and coughed, but forced himself back to his feet before Namekuji could attack him again.
"Will Emon let me check your side?" Nagato asked, watching them.
Yahiko's bandages had been lost to the ocean sometime while they were trying to drown each other, letting Nagato see how irritated and red the long scar along his liver looked, but it wasn't deeply bruised like it would be if he had internal bleeding.
Which he wouldn't put past Yahiko.
Yahiko let his hand drop down and breathed poison. His eyebrows pulled together, then he shook his head. "Nah, she's too agitated," he answered. "Might have something to do with all the water in my lungs, but who knows?"
Even when they made a temporary truce and started working together, they still couldn't touch Mangetsu. But it wasn't something he'd take back.
The log behind them creaked and Nagato turned as much as he could manage without getting out of his slouched over position. Kisame was standing, looking out into the distance.
"I don't think I've ever seen him like that before," Kisame said curiously, like they'd been in the middle of a conversation, but didn't give any of them time to respond.
He walked past them and onto the water. Nagato glanced at Yahiko, who shrugged back.
Chojuro paused as Kisame walked by, but wasn't given a single glance. Kisame eventually stopped at the edge of the steep drop-off that marked the end of the shallow water.
And then he lifted his hands together and rapidly made handsigns.
Nagato couldn't see all of them but counted nine, starting with dog and ending with him clapping his hands and holding them together. Still, he knew the jutsu. He'd seen it twice so far, first when Yahiko was trapped, and again when Kisame had captured the dog summon.
But nothing seemed to happen.
Chojuro dropped into a hasty crouch to avoid an acid attack while he was distracted, throwing his arms up to instinctively protect his head. Though if it had hit him, it probably would only sting, or at worst irritate his skin.
Chojuro frowned at Namekuji, who scoffed at him, still split in half.
"How well do you know Chojuro?" Nagato asked Mangetsu.
Mangetsu opened one eye, barely raising his head as he answered, "Enough." The 'why' was unspoken.
"He doesn't need to wear his glasses?"
Mangetsu raised his head to look at Chojuro and Namekuji, but didn't answer.
In front of Kisame, the water began to ripple and shake, sending little tremors behind him that spread to the shore.
Yahiko blinked sluggishly, in a losing fight with exhaustion.
"He can make out a shape to tell what it is without them, but that's not good enough for a member of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen. Byakuren must still fume about it," Mangetsu finally said. "Glasses are for people who can't fight anymore or never could. The research rats and the bookkeepers and the people who run businesses. Here, ninja have no faults. They aren't ninja if they do. But they couldn't deny him the Hiramekarei. Hoshigaki can say what he wants, but they test for the ability to become Seven Ninja Swordsmen before we ever know what a ninja is. He and everyone like him are too rare to be killed like the rest of us."
"Aren't you rare too?"
Mangetsu closed his eyes and only said, "Sure, but I'm not lucky."
The water began bubbling violently in front of Kisame.
Nagato watched Chojuro as he slowly, cautiously picked up the biggest piece of Namekuji from behind, trying to lift Namekuji above a wave that splashed his legs, trying to help, and Namekuji wiggled and hissed like a feral animal until he was dropped.
Had Chojuro been ten when Byakuren finally decided to give him the means to see better? Eleven? Twelve?
It made Nagato think of Matsu. He wondered if Hanzo would've done the same if he'd known that his son had a degenerative eye disease. Hanzo had been as prideful as any mist-nin.
A massive sphere finally broke the surface of the water, its shadow swallowing Kisame as it rose slowly, spreading until it covered Chojuro and Namekuji too.
Nagato's eyes widened at it, because it was bigger than the one he'd made before. It looked like a dark blue swirling sun hovering above them.
Chojuro stumbled back and fell, staring up at it, and Mangetsu raised his head, looking at it through one eye, expressionless.
As it hovered above them, Nagato saw movement within it. It was filled with a large school of fish the same color as the water with noses that were pointed like swords. They were at least as long as a child's arm.
The sphere stopped moving once it fully left the water, and Kisame stayed just as still. It was almost like he didn't want to turn around.
Kisame had to have heard it as Chojuro tripped over himself in fear, had to know that he and Namekuji were staring at him, had to feel how heavy the silence was.
Nagato said he trusted him, but the only one to prove it to him was Oka, and she wasn't here.
What did Kisame see when he did something like this in front of other people?
Nagato scrubbed a hand through his still messy hair and sighed, and stood, instantly missing the body warmth he was giving up. He wiped the shock from his face as he looked up at the sphere again.
He felt very small beneath it, and couldn't image how Chojuro or Namekuji felt. Nagato walked towards across the water towards them and picked up Namekuji, who'd put himself back together.
His chakra was twisted with apprehension, but Namekuji relaxed, almost instantly, as Nagato put him on his shoulder.
Nagato stopped next to Kisame, fully underneath the giant fishbowl, somehow feeling even smaller. "I don't think we have enough scrolls for this," he thought aloud.
Kisame only looked sideways at him.
Nagato could see groups of fish probing and pushing at the edges of the prison, probably just as mystified as he felt, but the water retained its shape, no matter how much they pushed at it.
"Do you have to clean your gills every time you wash your face?" Namekuji asked.
Kisame blinked at him.
"Wait, do mist-nin wash their faces?"
"I'm sorry about him," Nagato said reflexively.
"What's the point of them if you have a nose?" Namekuji asked.
"That's the water prison jutsu, right?" Nagato asked quickly, before Namekuji could ask something else. "How do you get out of it?"
"For you, you'd only need to use more chakra than the caster can use to keep you contained. Most can't, for obvious reasons. It takes chakra to keep the shape of a prison, and chakra to stop the ability to move. If you only do one, you need more chakra to keep the other," Kisame answered after a second, nodding up at the water prison and the fish trying to escape it. "Attack the shape and, while you still can't move, you're already free. It's a jutsu to torture the weak, or people who don't really understand chakra."
Attack the shape.
Yahiko had never seen the water prison jutsu before he was caught in it, but it had taken seconds for him to figure that out.
"And doing this handless takes twice as much chakra," Kisame continued. "The people that use this against you—that's how you spot the easiest prey. And they will. They'll see your hair and take it as an invitation to competition. They'll use entire teams to trap you, knowing how much chakra you have."
Nagato shook his head. "If they can keep me still, they'll be doing me a favor."
Kisame looked at him.
Nagato paused, but he'd already decided to trust him. "I can only take in enough nature energy to use offensively when I'm completely still," he explained. "It's called Sage Mode."
"It's no wonder Samehada is still so hungry for your chakra," Kisame said.
"Would you taste like fish or meat?" Namekuji asked.
Nagato folded his arms in his sleeves for warmth. "You can ignore him."
"No he can't," Namekuji said, offended.
Nagato smiled despite himself, and asked, "What will the hunter-nin do when they see this?"
Kisame's grin became sharper as he looked up and said, "They can come to me if they like, but they'll do it knowing they won't return alive. If I have to do this twice, I'll take it out on them."
Samehada shuddered slightly on his back, woken by his bloodlust, but Kisame didn't acknowledge her.
"Have you thought about what it means that Oka had me show all of you here? It sounded to me when she first brought it up that she wanted me to keep you safe from what lurks in our waters. You wouldn't know what is and isn't poisonous, or that these fish may not look it, but are razor sharp to the touch. She never corrected me, but safety can mean many things. You interpreted it as safety from the hunter-nin, with me sent to act as a guide to avoid where they patrol. But I'm starting to think she really meant for me to act as safety from the Uchiha. The other reasons may add to it, but that sounds like the closest to the truth. Family is an interesting word, isn't it?" Kisame asked, then said to himself, "People always go so far to protect those they call 'family'."
Nagato was stuck on a different word. "Uchiha?"
Kisame looked amused. "She didn't tell you?"
"Everything she told us, she did in front of you."
"In your code, I meant," he clarified. "But I suppose she also left that task up to me."
"In our code, we use our hands. Is yours different?"
"We don't use our hands in the way I think you mean," Kisame answered, but didn't elaborate.
"How do you carry around that much chakra every day?" Namekuji asked. "How have your coils not exploded?"
Kisame looked up at the water sphere again, ignoring Namekuji as he said, "I think I understand where she gets it from, her strangeness. It's you. You're strange too."
Nagato didn't agree. When Oka spoke, he heard Yahiko.
"This first," Kisame said when it was clear he'd stay silent, eyes flicking between him and the prison. "Then I'll tell you what she told me about the Uchiha."
A/N: quick shoutout to Guest, who gave me that last shot of motivation I needed.