When Kakashi had been informed that his team would be taken on an adventure with Jiraiya to find Tsunade, it had been a bittersweet feeling. On the one hand, he was excited for them to be going out on that kind of mission with someone as legendary as Jiraiya of the Sannin. On the other hand, he would've wanted to be out there with them. They were still his team, and he still wanted to look after his kids, especially with everything going on around them. Then again, perhaps it was because of everything going on around them that having Jiraiya looking after them for the moment was best. There were far too many unsavory characters with their sights set on his team for one reason or another.
Speaking of, his one visible eye was trained on two of such characters digging into a plate of dango at a small tea house. They weren't drawing much attention despite their rather gaudy and conspicuous attire, which put Kakashi even further on edge as he watched them from his spot leaning against the wall of the building. How they got in without tripping any of the alarms was both curious and troubling.
"Yo, Kakashi!" came the familiar call of Asuma as he approached. "Surprised to not see you with your squad. Figured you'd be taking them out to lunch for a solid month after their performances."
"Sasuke, Sakura, and Naruto are off on their own activity," Kakashi casually replied, but a minute twitch from one of the cloaked interlopers drew his intense scrutiny. "It'll just be me for a while."
"Sounds nice," Asuma chuckled, though his gaze intermittently landed on the mysterious duo, as well. "I cherish any break from my team I can these days. I don't know exactly what happened, but your kids scarred them in the Forest of Death, and now Ino only ever wants to train into the ground. What did you do with them before the finals, anyway?"
Kakashi's eye remained on the duo inside before it trailed back to Asuma. "Not enough."
Asuma didn't outwardly respond to that, but it was clear that he could read between the lines. Instead, he took a long, solemn drag of his cigarette before exhaling the smoke into the air above them. "Have you seen Guy recently?"
"No, and it worries me," Kakashi answered.
"Yeah," Asuma sighed in agreement. "Saw him briefly at the funeral, but he's been a ghost since then. Similar story with Kurenai, but I can at least track her down most of the time. The dead look in his eyes when I did see him that time was just… haunting."
Kakashi sullenly nodded. "I owe it to him to reach out. He did the same for me, after all."
Then, he looked back into the tea house at the now empty table with their dango and tea left abandoned. "'Bout time we get going."
Asuma nodded, and the two flickered away in pursuit of the two invaders. They caught up in no time, cutting them off on a path beside the Naka River. The ensuing standoff resulted in a developing sea of tension that could have been felt miles away.
"You guys aren't from around here, are you?" Asuma broke the silence. "What are you doing in this village?"
"Is it because I'm blue?" the taller one asked with a hint of mirth in his gravelly tone.
"Maybe," Asuma noncommittally replied.
"It's been a long time, Asuma, Kakashi," the other spoke up, and Kakashi recognized the voice.
That recognition swiftly brought his headband up to expose his Sharingan. "So, that's how you two got into the village undetected. Itachi Uchiha…"
Having already been identified, Itachi removed his straw hat and exposed his infamous face to the world. Kakashi was already as tense as could be, but Asuma was now right there with him.
"Well, since we're introducing ourselves," his partner chuckled before removing his hat as well. "The name's Kisame Hoshigaki. No doubt you've heard of me, Copy-nin Kakashi."
"Real bold of you to waltz back in here after what you did, Itachi, and with another S-rank criminal to boot," Asuma said, getting straight to the point. "I know you didn't come all this way in that getup for no reason, so out with it; why are you?"
"Wouldn't you like to know?" Kisame replied with a sharp grin.
"I would, yeah," Asuma bantered back.
"We're after the legacy of the Yondaime," Itachi answered seemingly unbothered, drawing a curious side-eye from Kisame.
"Is it wise to come right out and say it?" Kisame questioned.
"There's no one here that's going to be able to stop us," Itachi shrugged. "The Hokage is dead."
"Fair."
Kakashi's glare narrowed. "So, it's Naruto you're after, or is it just what he contains that you want?"
Itachi hummed. "Ever the astute one, Kakashi."
"Right, well," Kakashi began, "could you, like, not go after him?"
Silence fell over the area as Itachi, Kisame, and even Asuma peered at him incredulously.
"…No," Itachi finally answered.
"Oh, well… it'd be a lot cooler if you didn't."
"I'm not doing this with you, Captain."
Kakashi nearly chortled, but his Sharingan remained locked onto Itachi's. "It's funny that you still call me Captain."
"Force of habit from whenever you were being intentionally aggravating while I served under you, which was often," Itachi replied.
"I had to ensure my squad maintained their humanity somehow," Kakashi shrugged. "Without it, what even were we?"
"Indeed," Itachi nodded. "Unfortunately, I gave up my humanity when I butchered my clansmen."
"And I gave up mine when I stabbed a Raikiri through my teammate's chest, so we're kind of in the same boat, right?"
"No, we're no-" Itachi began with a twitching eye before he paused and took a breath. "No, you know what, I refuse to let you get under my skin any further."
His Sharingan began to spin, slowly picking up speed as if they were going to transform. "In the meantime, you can take the next three days to think over your poor life decisions."
Kakashi audibly chuckled this time. "Trust me, I've been doing that daily for nearly fifteen years. No amount of genjutsu torture can beat the frustration of completing an assassination behind enemy lines after downing an entire bottle of absinthe in the hopes that either the bottle or the mission would kill me."
Itachi's Sharingan stopped spinning entirely, and he was left plainly staring down his former superior. "You are truly sucking all of the fun out of this."
"At least one of us is having fun, then."
And just like that, Itachi could take no more, turning right around and walking away. "Kisame, kill them. We're leaving."
"With pleasure," Kisame grinned, whipping Samehada off of its latch and charging forward, only to be met by a brutal kick to the face that came right out of nowhere, surprising all four men present and jettisoning Kisame down the path like a lowly tumbleweed.
"Guy??" Asuma exclaimed at the sudden entrance, and there stood Might Guy in front of them, a hardened expression that while not unfamiliar to them was still unsettling to see in place of the youthful exuberance they were accustomed to from him.
"I've already sent word for the ANBU, but it'll take some time for them to get here," Guy informed, slamming his fist into his palm. "Until then, we'll just have to hold them off ourselves."
Meanwhile, Kisame shook the stars out of his vision after coming to a stop beside Itachi. "Damn, he kicks hard. This should be fun."
"No, we're pulling out," Itachi declared. "We didn't come for a protracted battle, as tempting as it may be. There's no use fighting a war right now without our target in our grasp."
"I suppose," Kisame disappointedly hummed.
"About that," Kakashi's voice came from behind them, revealing a clone that had snuck up behind them with a kunai in hand. "I don't think we'll just be letting you leave."
"You seem to be under the impression that you have a say in the matter," Itachi said as his hand full of shuriken poked out of his sleeve, but the shuriken were simply a diversion for the drills of water that shot out of the river and converged onto the clone.
Simultaneously, Kisame unleashed a Water Shark Bomb at the group that was met by an identical jutsu courtesy of the real Kakashi. The two colliding water jutsu exploded in an unrelenting shower that obscured the battlefield, but Guy, Asuma, and Kakashi were undeterred as they sprang into action, charging right through the torrent. Another Dynamic Entry found Kisame's face the millisecond he became visible behind the water, stunning him just long enough for Asuma to appear beside him and slash his face with the wind chakra enhancing the range of his trench knives.
Their small victory proved to be just that, however, as Kisame disintegrated into a puddle to join the water soaking the path. Nearby, Itachi had been viciously pressing the Kakashi clone in a battle of kunai before breaking through his defenses one good time, which was enough to pierce the clone through the heart with his kunai and dispel it into a puddle of water, as well. However, any moment he would've had to acknowledge that win was stripped away when a crackling fist holding an equally crackling kunai emerged from Itachi's chest. Behind (and inside) him was the real Kakashi with his Raikiri illuminating the area.
"Maybe those eyes aren't as keen as you believe," Kakashi dryly quipped, practically mocking Itachi's earlier self-assuredness.
In response, Itachi merely turned his head to gaze at him in his periphery, sending him perhaps the most unimpressed quirk of an eyebrow that Kakashi had ever received before his body burst into a murder of crows.
Kakashi deflated, and his Raikiri petered out with a defeated sigh. "Yeah, point taken."
"Damnit," Asuma cursed once it was clear that both were gone. "They must've used that jutsu clash to swap themselves out with decoys while they gave us the slip."
"Seems like it," Guy sighed. "Let's track them down before they make it too far out of the village. The ANBU should already be on high alert."
Asuma nodded and leaped into the trees to head back towards the village proper. Guy was about to follow suit, but Kakashi's voice paused his advance.
"Hey, Guy," Kakashi called out, stopping him in his tracks. "After this is taken care of, how about a race around the village's walls?"
It was an odd and perhaps inappropriately timed inquiry. Still, a pang of hope shot through Kakashi when Guy slightly turned to face him with a small smile.
"Sure."
"Y'know, it's nice to be able to get away from the village," Sakura shared with a contented sigh as Team 7 meandered behind Jiraiya down the path toward Shukuba Town.
"I think I should be the one saying that," Naruto joked from beside her. "Bet the village is throwing a huge party for my absence."
"Could you blame them?" Sasuke didn't pass up the opportunity to jab at him from his other side.
"Bite me."
"Y'know, kid," Jiraiya cut in, looking back at the three genin as they walked, "it's probably best not to worry about the opinions of the villagers right now."
"In a, 'the lion doesn't concern himself with the opinions of sheep,' kind of way?" Sasuke asked with a quirked eyebrow.
"Erm, not exactly," Jiraiya denied, making a mental note of that mildly concerning attitude. "What I meant was that you have a lot on your plate through no fault of your own. All three of you do. Agonizing over the village's acrimony will just needlessly hamper your development at a critical time like this."
"You're saying that like you know something that we don't…" Sakura pointedly mused.
"Alternatively, should you insist on wooing the populace of Konoha," Jiraiya quickly continued, skipping over Sakura's comment entirely, "a grand, heroic display never fails to capture the hearts and minds of the average villager, especially when it's in defense of their home. Gossip about escapades during war and S-rank missions travels surprisingly quickly."
Then, Jiraiya grinned, a boisterous air seeping out of him as he began to strike a pose. "Hell, it's one of the reasons I'm so world-renowned. One day, you three could approach even a sliver of my fame!"
The three utterly blank stares he received in return nearly made him fall over. The unimpressed air continued as Team 7 kept walking.
"All we know about you is that you're a pervert who tried to get Naruto out of his clothes," Sasuke deadpanned as they passed by his downtrodden form.
"That was completely on the level, I was checking his seal for any damage!" Jiraiya insisted as he caught up to them. "Besides, I only have eyes for the ladies."
"Ladies that probably want nothing to do with a perv like you," Naruto sniped.
"Women don't just refuse the Gallant Jiraiya," he animatedly guffawed. "Because of the implication."
That stopped the three dead in their tracks, and now Jiraiya had their full attention. A confused "Huh?" from Naruto, a mortified "What??" from Sasuke, and an indignant "Excuse me?!" from Sakura followed.
"What?" Jiraiya asked.
"What do you mean by that, exactly?" Sasuke carefully inquired.
"Think about it," Jiraiya began almost conspiratorially. "Shinobi are like gods to civilians. Because of our chakra capacities and training, we're capable of doing things that they can literally only dream of. If you're in a situation where you're getting steamy with someone who could realistically tear you apart with their bare hands and then incinerate any evidence that you ever existed, what are you gonna do, say no? It's part of the allure."
"That's…" Naruto trailed off.
"Really dark," Sakura finished, slightly inching behind her two teammates and away from Jiraiya. Team 7 was growing more and more relieved by the second that Shukuba was finally in sight.
"No no no, it's not," he quickly tried to assure her. "I mean, it is, but you're thinking about it the wrong way. Don't misconstrue my words."
"What's there to misconstrue-" Sasuke started grilling him before Jiraiya cut back in.
"If she says no, then the answer is obviously no," he clarified. "But the thing is that she's not gonna say no; she would never say no because of the implication."
"…You've said that word, 'implication,' a couple times now," Naruto hesitantly spoke up. "What's the implication?"
"That things might go wrong for her if she doesn't sleep with him," Sasuke answered, and Naruto practically teleported in front of Sakura with his arms protectively splayed.
"N-not that things are gonna go wrong for her!" Jiraiya rushed to clarify.
"But she's thinking that they will," Sakura argued, her voice atwitter with unease.
"Erm, kinda?" he nervously confirmed before pointing at her. "It's not like you'd be in any danger!"
"So there is danger, then!" Naruto accused.
"No, no! I'm not gonna hurt any woman! Why would I ever hurt a woman??"
"We're almost to town, let's just keep going," Sasuke declared with finality, putting a merciful end to the discussion.
Naruto and Sakura gladly acquiesced and power walked beside Sasuke toward Shukuba. Jiraiya just sighed in dismay that his attempt to build some sort of rapport with Naruto ended so horribly. Just far enough away to evade detection, a ROOT-nin that had been tailing them since they left the village idly wondered if he should ask Lord Danzo if Jiraiya should be placed on a list.
The group continued on into Shukuba, and its reputation as a notorious pleasure district in the Land of Fire immediately became apparent. Inns, food stalls, bars, brothels, and gambling houses abound as they meandered through the town. Even street performers dotted every corner, adding to the pile of vices looking to pilfer any money they could from passersby.
Eventually, Jiraiya led them to a hotel and bought two rooms. "Alright, you three, we're gonna stop here for the day and rest your legs, and then we'll keep going tomorrow-"
He trailed off when he spotted a drop-dead gorgeous woman wandering by the entrance of the hotel, and his eyes bulged out of his skull when she sent him a sultry smile and wink before walking away.
"Change of plans," Jiraiya hastily said before stuffing Team 7's room key into Sasuke's hands. "You three go up and work on your chakra, gossip, or whatever it is that you kids do. I'll be back later!"
With that, Jiraiya vanished after the woman, leaving a trail of dust in his wake.
"Let's just be glad this one's consenting," Sasuke muttered.
"I heard that!" came Jiraiya's distant shout.
"Why do you get to have the room key?" Naruto grumbled as they began walking to their room.
"Because I'm older, taller, and better looking," Sasuke jabbed with a smirk.
"Hey!" Naruto indignantly shouted, but he couldn't actually dispute two of those claims. "Sakura, back me up!"
"I mean, you have started closing the height gap," Sakura shrugged.
"See?" Naruto grinned in vindication for a moment before her statement actually dawned on him. "Wait a sec…"
Despite the annoyance at the roundabout denial of him being attractive, he couldn't fight the fond smile amidst Sakura's laughter and Sasuke's own smile. Soon, they entered their room, and after putting their bags down, they made sure the door was locked and that they were finally alone.
"Alright, now that we're away from any prying ears," Sasuke began, turning to Naruto. "You said your clones found something during the finals. What was it?"
Naruto nodded and went into his bag, retrieving the notebook that had been causing him so much grief.
"They found this," he said, displaying it to his teammates. "The journal of Mito Uzumaki."
"Mito Uzumaki?" Sakura questioned, pondering the familiarity of the name before it came to her. "As in the wife of the Shodai?"
Naruto nodded. "And the first holder of the Kyubi."
Sasuke and Sakura were taken aback by that, and Naruto allowed them some time to ponder the many implications of that knowledge.
"So, Konoha just makes a habit of doing this is what you're saying," Sasuke finally said.
"Not just them," Naruto lamented. "Every village does. All nine of the biju are sealed inside someone for the village to weaponize their power. 'Maintaining balance between the nations' and all that. Gaara was one. Hell, he was literally One."
"That… explains way too much, honestly," Sasuke remarked.
"So what does that mean for you?" Sakura inquired.
"Well, it goes back pretty far," Naruto sighed, opening the journal. "I come from a clan, apparently. The Uzumaki were close to the Senju or something back before the villages were formed. They lived on this far-off island surrounded by whirlpools, but Mito moved to Konoha to get married to the Hokage."
"Was she the only one?" Sakura asked.
"Yeah, but only for a while," Naruto confirmed. "She sealed the Kyubi into herself after the Shodai fought Madara Uchiha, and then she kept it within the village while all the other biju were sold to the other villages. Like I said, 'maintaining balance between the nations.' She was the only full-blooded Uzumaki in the village until she got really old and they decided it was time to transfer the Kyubi into another vessel."
Neither Sasuke nor Sakura missed the way he just about hissed that last word.
"So, another Uzumaki was brought to Konoha from the clan's island for the sole purpose of containing the Kyubi," Naruto continued, now much more dour than when he began. "I can only guess what happened after that because Mito finally croaked. That's part of why I agreed to this mission, actually. Tsunade is her granddaughter, so she ought to have some more info about her and the girl Konoha brought over to house the Kyubi."
Understanding flitted across the faces of Sasuke and Sakura. If Mito Uzumaki was the first person to hold the Kyubi, and Konoha saw fit to bring other Uzumaki into the village to hold the Kyubi, then it was easy to piece together the sordid implications that were bothering Naruto so deeply, especially when considering that he was led to believe he was a nameless orphan of little to no importance his entire life.
"What happened to the rest of the clan?" Sasuke asked.
"Library says they were attacked and wiped out during the Second War," Naruto shrugged. "As far as I know, I'm the only one left."
"Well, welcome to the club, I guess," Sasuke muttered, only to flinch when Sakura's fist pounded into his skull.
"Really, Sasuke?" she chastised.
"Shouldn't I be the one welcoming you?" Naruto amusedly pointed out, and Sasuke had to concede that point. "While we're all here, there's another thing I need to tell you guys about…"
"Is it as bad as being a designated sacrifice in a long line of designated sacrifices?" Sasuke asked, this time dodging the next swing from Sakura.
"Probably worse, to be honest," Naruto answered with a forlorn sigh, garnering the full attention and concern of his team. "You know how my cursed seal is a little different from you guys'?"
Upon their nods, he continued. "Well, the full truth of it is-"
Naruto halted at the sudden knock at the door, and each of them sent a curious glance toward the door. If it was Jiraiya, then he likely would have been speaking through the door by now, and no one else should have known they were there.
"Hotel staff, maybe?" Sakura supposed before hopping to her feet and walking to the door. "I'll check it out."
Regrettably, there was no peephole, so the only way to see who was there was to open the door and take a gander herself. In doing so, she was met with a blazing pair of Sharingan dispassionately staring right through her. It only took her a few seconds to work out who this was, and it took less than half of that to work out why he was there.
"Sasuke doesn't want to talk to you," was all Sakura said before slamming the door in his face.
Befuddlement was the word of the day, and that was all Itachi and Kisame felt once the door slammed shut and locked. Itachi could do little more than blink his astonishment away as Kisame craned his head in his direction.
"Should we…?" Kisame inquisitively began.
"No, no, I'll respect it," Itachi shook his head. "They don't want to talk, so it's best if we leave for now and try again another time."
With that, Itachi turned and walked away from the door to head back down the hall from which they came. Kisame nearly followed him out of habit before he came to his senses. With an irritated huff, he grabbed Samehada from his back and smashed through the locked door with it, leaping into the room.
"Alright, brats, we're here for the damn jinchuriki, so if you don't want me to shave off your legs-"
Kisame's annoyed tirade died on his tongue when it occurred to him that no one was in the room with him. His surprise grew into further aggravation when he spied the open window and curtains billowing in the wind.
"Goddamnit!"
"We need to find Jiraiya!" Sakura declared as Team 7 bounded across the rooftops of Shukuba away from their hotel like frantic blurs.
"The hell is that pervert gonna do??" Naruto balked.
"Act as a distraction while we get the hell out of this town!" Sakura shouted back.
"Fair enough-" Naruto conceded before the fishy figure of Kisame appeared on the rooftop in front of them, cutting them off. Before they could turn around, Itachi appeared behind them on the edge of the rooftop they were standing on, blocking their escape.
"Nowhere to run, brats," Kisame cooed with a sinister grin.
"It's been a long time, Sasuke," Itachi smoothly greeted in a tone as dead as the children whose closets he dragged them out of.
Sasuke's body went numb at the sound, and he slowly turned to face the source of the nightmares that had plagued him for over half a decade. For the first time since that horrific night, Sasuke was face-to-face with the man who butchered his family.
"Itachi…" Sasuke growled, his fully matured Sharingan spinning to life to match his brother's. "You've got some nerve coming back here."
Itachi blinked and scanned around the town. "I don't believe we're in Konoha anymore… unless they've added a few new brothels I wasn't aware of."
"You know what I mean, you piece of shit!" Sasuke seethed. "You come to finish the job? I thought I wasn't worth killing."
"You weren't then, and you're still not," Itachi coldly dismissed, causing Sasuke to grind his teeth in fury. "We're not here for you, foolish little brother."
"Hand over the jinchuriki, and maybe you all will get to keep one of your legs," Kisame ordered, his sharp-toothed grin growing even wider. "Total."
Sakura and Naruto inched backward until they bumped into Sasuke and each other, leaving the three of them back-to-back-to-back.
"Any ideas?" Sakura shakily asked her teammates, fully accepting that they were way out of their depths.
"Just one," Naruto muttered. "Both of you, grab my jacket."
He only felt one hand tug at his jacket under Kisame's evermore malevolent grin. "Sasuke…"
"I'm not running from him," Sasuke spat through gritted teeth.
"Sasuke!" Naruto lowly hissed. "Orochimaru creamed us, and these guys are from a whole group of people like him. This ain't the time!"
"A grou- what??" Sasuke prattled in confusion.
"I'll explain later, shut up and grab on!" Naruto ordered, and Sasuke begrudgingly did so. "Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu!"
"Here we go," Kisame scoffed as an enormous cloud of smoke emerged from the roof, but even he was taken aback by what he saw next.
Nearly a thousand clones of Naruto were present on and around the rooftop, igniting a cacophony of confusion and mild panic from the surrounding townspeople. Just as quickly, two-thirds of the clones transformed into Sasuke and Sakura, and the sea of clones dispersed into a swarm blanketing Shukuba. Every rooftop, every road, and every corner of the town saw Team 7 scuttling by for their lives, truly igniting pandemonium on the street. Nestled deep within the swarm was the real Team 7 quickly making their way past the city limits and away from detection while their pursuers were busy.
"Good thinking on your feet, Naruto," Sakura complimented as they bounded into a wooded area just outside of town.
"We can hide out here while we wait for the heat to die down," Naruto said, and they finally let him go. "All that racket should have the perv's attention, so he'll be looking for us, too."
"Or maybe we get lucky and they kill each other…" Sakura muttered, drawing the surprised gazes of Sasuke and Naruto. "What? I didn't forget that he's your deadbeat godfather."
Deciding to switch gears, Sasuke pivoted to Naruto. "What did you mean by 'a whole group'?"
"Right," Naruto sighed. "Anko-sensei warned me about a group of missing-nin just as strong as Orochimaru that are hunting me down, or I guess they're hunting the Kyubi down, so me by extension."
"Ah, so another bunch of S-rank psychopaths after us for one reason or another," Sakura animatedly groaned. "Just fantastic."
"Us?" Naruto blinked. "They're just after me."
"And you think we're gonna let them take you?" Sakura asked as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "They're gonna have to take down all of us if they want you, Naruto."
"Hn," Sasuke grunted with a nod. "Team 7 sticks together."
"Touching, but ultimately pointless," the gravelly intonation of an irritated fish-man came from behind a nearby tree, setting the three on edge once more as out stepped Kisame. "Isn't that right, Itachi?"
"Pathetic," Itachi balefully remarked from his place sitting on a tree branch above them. "I instructed you to foster your hatred, Sasuke, not become an even greater disappointment."
"You don't get to dictate my life, you parricidal cockroach!" Sasuke shot back with enough venom to take down the entirety of Kumo.
"Haven't I already?" Itachi countered. "You live your wretched existence alone because of me. You latch onto paltry bonds because of me. You will grow your hatred because of me. Your eyes have certainly grown stronger, but they're nowhere near the level of mine."
"I'm not like you!" Sasuke spat. "I'm not a psychopath that cares about nothing but himself. I'm not gonna throw away the lives of the people I care about just because you have some twisted designs for me!"
"Then perhaps you need a reminder of your only worth in this life," Itachi said, his Sharingan spinning into the haunting pattern of his Mangekyo as he dropped from the tree. "Or maybe I'll simply deprive you of your found family by killing the girl and taking the jinchuriki."
Faster than anyone could blink, a Chidori flared to life in Sasuke's palm. "Try it."
With the tension reaching a fever pitch, Kisame raised his sword, Naruto prepared for another Shadow Clone blitz, and Sakura fingered two handfuls of senbon from her coat.
Itachi, meanwhile, let loose a dry chuckle from behind his cloak as a developing shadow was steadily cast over the area. "You will never escape your fate, foolish little brother-"
A few things happened in an instant. For one, a red blur zipped into the fold and snatched Team 7 away from the immediate area. Simultaneously, orange chakra bloomed around Itachi and Kisame right as Gamaken in all his giant, magenta glory slammed into the ground they were standing. Shortly afterward, however, Gamaken painfully rolled over to expose the sight of Itachi's Armored Susanoo shielding himself and Kisame from the attack.
"Forgive me, for I'm very ungraceful," Gamaken apologized before reverse summoning back home, likely to sit on ice.
Team 7 was deposited on the ground, and Jiraiya stood protectively in front of them across the way from the Akatsuki duo. Itachi's Susanoo dispelled, revealing two trails of blood trailing down his cheeks from his eyes.
"You really gonna wear your eyes out, Itachi?" Kisame questioned in genuine concern. "I'm down if you are, but I just wanted to be sure."
Itachi reassessed the scene now that Jiraiya was in front of them. "We're leaving. Again."
"Yeah, I don't think so," Jiraiya rebuked before flipping through a sequence of seals. "Let the Swamp of the Underworld sort you out!"
However, the flames of Amaterasu ignited on the ground where he would've slammed his palms, forcing him to disengage and leap back with the others. When they looked back at the trees, Itachi and Kisame were long gone.
"Damnit!" Jiraiya cursed, and then he looked down at the black flames on the ground. "That's no ordinary fire, huh…"
Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura watched on in varying levels of curiosity as Jiraiya pulled out a scroll, scrawled a lengthy sealing formula into the parchment, and activated the fuinjutsu to seal the flames away into the scroll for analysis later.
Once he was finished, Naruto figured that it was the right time to grill him on something pressing. "So, when were you gonna tell me about the group of criminals that are after me?"
Jiraiya looked back at him with a sheepish expression. "I suppose now's as good a time as any…"
"Save it, I know now," Naruto just waved it off and walked away, rejoining his team as they proceeded back towards the frazzled town.
Jiraiya sighed. "Let's get the hell out of here."
Hanabi was no stranger to pain. As a Hyuga, she trained extensively in the Gentle Fist even at her age, and that meant frequent sparring with her father, Ko, or any other clansmen chosen to oversee her training when her father could not. In fact, in the past, there were plenty of instances where her sister would forget that she was holding back and tag her a few good times before easing up. Those were the moments where they nearly felt like equals. Those brief moments were those that Hanabi cherished.
They were but memories now. She'd never experience them again.
She would make him pay dearly for that, which was why she was gladly writhing in pain in the dirt of Team 7's usual training grounds at the feet of the strange woman that offered her dango that one time.
"On your feet, brat," Anko beckoned. "I know you still got some more in you."
Anko Mitarashi had apparently handled much of Sakura's combat training, and she was appropriately ruthless. Even landing a glancing blow on her was proving to be an impossibility, and Anko certainly didn't know the meaning of pulling punches. Hanabi loved that shit.
…Her father would kill her if he heard her use that language.
"Ease up on her, Anko," the other woman in the training grounds with them, Kurenai Yuhi, spoke up. "She's not even out of the academy yet."
"The pain is good for me!" Hanabi heatedly contested.
"See? The pain is good for her," Anko grinned. "She knows what she wants."
Kurenai sighed. "It just seems a little much."
"No, I must do this," Hanabi insisted, straining to drag herself to her knees. "I must grow stronger, strong enough to find him and make him face justice. I have to make her proud."
She could see the concern radiating from Kurenai's gaze, and it was reminiscent of the way she remembered her looking at Hinata the scant few times Hanabi saw Kurenai collect her for training. Hanabi met her crimson stare with as much fiery determination as her little body could muster. Hinata's memory would live on through her, and she would be avenged. No amount of pain would dissuade her from her ambition.
Kurenai sighed once more, though this one was imbued with more strangled emotion than the previous one. "Far be it from me to stand in your way, but I don't want you to overdo it and end up burning yourself out. You're more than welcome to come to my team's training with Kiba and Shino when Anko or Team 7 aren't available."
Hanabi was not going to pass up more avenues for training when they were being handed to her. She eagerly nodded, and Kurenai chuckled.
"Or even if you just get tired of Anko's torture," she added with a sly smile.
Anko scoffed. "Please. I haven't even brought out the snakes yet."
Hanabi paled. "Yet??"
"You know it's dangerous for us to congregate like this, especially in light of recent events."
That statement, spoken from the mouth of an aged jonin, was a sentiment shared by most if not every person in the spacious dojo. Scores of Branch House Hyuga were piled into the room in secret for a "clan meeting" urged by a few of the younger, more spirited jonin in their ranks. Situated at the back of the room was Koga, who had a pretty good idea as to what this meeting was about.
"You're correct," one such jonin, Hoheto Hyuga, admitted, wearily combing through his top knot with his hand. "Fortunately, Lord Hiashi and the elder council are in another meeting, no doubt still arguing over what to do with us, so the Main House will be preoccupied for a time."
"Still, it is best if we do not spend too much time here lest we incur suspicion from wandering eyes in the compound," said another young jonin, Iroha, she believed his name was.
"Right," Hoheto nodded before addressing the room. "So, Neji; we all need to discuss this."
"What is there to discuss?" an older voice within the crowd spoke up. "He lived all of our dreams and then vanished."
"It's very likely that he's dead," a young woman whom Koga recognized as the usual maid for the main family, Natsu, lamented. "We don't just get to retake our freedom."
"We can't be certain about that," Hoheto replied. "We haven't seen hide nor hair of him since the invasion. The elders would have already demanded a swift, public execution for his actions against the main family by now."
"Where else could he be besides rotting away in an ANBU cell somewhere underground?" an exhausted man popped into the discussion. "You don't kill a clansman, violate their dojutsu, and then expect to make it out of the village alive."
"The ANBU would have handed him over to Hiashi by now for the clan to exercise their punishment, given the nature of the offenses," the first jonin, Hareyaka, added his two cents. "It's standard procedure when involving clan matters such as secret jutsu and kekkei genkai."
Iroha sighed in budding frustration. "So, we do not know if he is alive or dead, nor if he is in the village or not. The lack of ceremony suggests he is alive, but the Main House is proceeding in a way that would indicate that he is dead and dealt with. Is he Schrödinger's Hyuga?"
"Listen, the facts are this," Hoheto regained the attention of the congregation. "A Main House elder was killed by the Gentle Fist, and one of his Byakugan was pilfered. Neji's body was never found, even amongst the dead of the invaders. He had already killed the clan's potential heiress, so it isn't unreasonable to think that he wouldn't go all the way with it and kill an elder, as well."
"But how?" another older man questioned. "Lady Hinata was one thing; say what you will about the Main House, but she would have never raised a hand against any of us, much less activate the seal like the others. Lord Hinome, though, wouldn't waste a second. The only way that could have happened is if Neji got the drop on him, which, given the setting, isn't likely."
"That is not the only way."
The attention of the room landed on the owner of the new voice, Koga herself. The nonstop back-and-forth was growing tiresome to endure, so she figured that she was uniquely qualified to put a merciful end to the discussion.
"What do you mean, Koga?" Natsu was the first to ask.
"It is more than possible that Neji took Hinome down himself," Koga reiterated.
"Preposterous," someone balked within the mass of Branch Hyuga. "Do not entertain the thought that an injured Neji killed him before he could even raise a finger."
"That is not what I'm saying," Koga replied. "I was not present for his bout with the Uchiha, so I do not know how he sustained his injuries, but I witnessed and treated my fair share of grievous wounds during the war."
She swallowed, steeling herself for her next words. "My brother pushed his squadmate out of the way of a paper bomb cluster and took the blast head-on in his place. When I got to him, the explosion had burned his Caged Bird Seal right off… along with seventy percent of his face. He ultimately did not make it."
She sighed, idly noticing many in the room offering solemn glances and understanding from the older, war-hardened shinobi in the room. "Neji's injuries were surely not as severe, but the possibility remains that his seal sustained similar damage."
She did not mention that she had actually seen the damage done to Neji's seal with her own eyes. There was no reason to implicate herself in Neji's escape if there was anyone present who would slip some info to Hiashi. Simply being in the room already made her a coconspirator if the Main House was set on pushing the issue.
"I was present for the Chunin Exams," the veteran Hareyaka spoke up once more. "Sasuke Uchiha employed Kakashi Hatake's signature lightning jutsu, the Chidori, and clashed it with the Palm Rotation. The end result was obscene damage to Neji's face, his eye and forehead in particular…"
He peered back over at Koga once more. "Are you suggesting that the damage somehow freed Neji of the Caged Bird Seal, and Lord Hinome did not activate it because he simply couldn't?"
"I am merely saying it is not outside of the realm of possibility," she noncommittally stated.
"But we've been searching for methods of removing the taint of this seal for generations!" one of the much older, retired shinobi heatedly interjected. "If it could be undone by removing the skin it's grafted on, we would have done so long ago!"
"Yeah, it's deeper than just skin," a young teen added after clearly working up the courage to speak for the entire affair. "It's basically etched into our brains, isn't it?"
"Not necessarily," Koga answered. "It simply attacks and overloads the chakra pathways in the brain by proximity, but the nature of burning a seal into your body means that it has its roots pretty deep into the tissue on the skull. I cannot say one way or the other if damaging that area sufficiently deeply would get under the anchors of the seal; my brother was not alive long enough to test it, but perhaps Neji was."
"And if so, a failure of the seal would have frazzled Hinome enough for Neji to strike," Hoheto theorized.
"Who's to say that it did not frazzle Neji, as well?" Iroha countered.
Before the room could devolve into anxious, disjointed murmuring, Hareyaka cleared his throat, silencing them all. "We should probably disperse and reconvene another day. Any longer and we all risk garnering suspicion. We at least now have options to potentially explore."
Team 7 had been on the road with Jiraiya for nearly a week. They'd enter a town following a lead from a previous town that would ultimately go nowhere, usually at an underground gambling den, tavern, or combination of both. Somewhere along the way, though, they'd get some new info that resulted in a new lead to follow, one that would drag them to a new town and ultimately go nowhere. With each adventure, the collective patience of Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura was wearing as thin as the walls of the inns they'd stay in that did nothing to muffle a drunk patron's elephant-like snoring next door.
Suffice it to say, the three were each nearing their wits' end, to make matters even worse, the Kyubi was doing nothing to distract Naruto from the infuriating rigmarole.
"When did your lowly, human woes become my problem?"
'When the Yondaime decided we'd be bosom buddies for life.'
"Refer to me as that again, and I will flay you."
The Kyubi's tone told Naruto that it wasn't simply a threat, but the seal kept him from directly harming him… right?
'…How are you gonna do that, exactly?'
"Try four tails of my chakra and find out."
Naruto paled and opted not to tread any further, eliciting a deep, menacing chuckle of satisfaction from his tenant. Luckily, Jiraiya came through with a distraction.
"Alright, we'll grab a bite to eat here," he wearily sighed as they approached the entrance of a tavern.
"Shouldn't we keep looking for Lady Tsunade?" Sakura questioned. "If you're right about what happened at the castle, we're the closest we've been this entire trip. What if she leaves before the night is out?"
"She won't leave while the festival is happening," Jiraiya waved her off as he led them into the tavern. "It gives her good enough cover to stay under the radar. Provided she doesn't go on a random winning streak and gets spooked, she won't leave town just yet- holy shit, Tsunade?!"
His sudden outburst drew their attention to the opposite wall of the tavern where the object of their search just so happened to be sitting beside a black-haired woman and a pig, and she appeared just as if not even more flabbergasted.
"Jiraiya?!" she exclaimed, and then her head flopped onto her table with a long-suffering sigh. "Fucking hell, this just isn't my day."
Tsunade already seemed annoyed with Jiraiya's presence. Naruto could definitely relate.
"Finally, I've been looking everywhere you," Jiraiya declared, dragging Team 7 along with him as he walked to the and slid into the booth. "And Shizune, you've really grown into something beautiful!"
"Eyes over here," Tsunade snapped with a dangerously narrowed glare, and Jiraiya quickly complied. "Why are you looking for me?"
"What, can't check up on my old teammate and friend?" Jiraiya playfully asked back, but the mirth wasn't reciprocated.
She sighed again. "Seeing one of you was bad enough. I'm not nearly drunk enough for both of you in one day."
Like a switch had flipped, the joviality in Jiraiya's expression vanished, and the serious air that Naruto had only seen at the encounter with Akatsuki returned.
"So, Orochimaru was here," he asked, seemingly confirming a thought he already had.
The mention of his name struck all three of them, and now their full attention was on the conversation. Tsunade's gaze flickered over them, and Naruto could have sworn that it lingered on him for longer than the others before it returned to Jiraiya.
"What's with the brats?" she diverted the conversation, leaning her head on her fist. "I doubt you took on a whole squad again."
Beside Naruto, Sakura perked up. "Oh, I'm Sakura Haruno. It's an honor to meet you, Lady Tsunade."
A hard nudge to both his ribs and Sasuke's on her other side brought them into the conversation, as well.
"Sasuke Uchiha," Sasuke plainly greeted without any extra pleasantries.
"Um…" Naruto floundered for a moment despite himself in the face of potentially his only living relative. "I'm Naruto Uzumaki."
Again, Naruto could have sworn that her eyes flickered in recognition for a microsecond before returning to normal.
Then, the black-haired woman with the pig beside her sent them a kind smile, giving him no more time to ponder that. "It's a pleasure to meet you all. I'm Shizune."
"It's lovely to meet you, too, Shizune," Sakura greeted in kind, and Naruto was just glad that at least one of them was the diplomat of the team.
However, Naruto spied Sasuke briefly staring at Shizune as if he was taking in the entirety of her visage, and then he quickly looked away with faint red dusting his cheeks.
"No fucking way…" Naruto muttered in mild shock that gave way to unabashed chortling, and Sasuke shot him a glare so withering that it would have decayed an entire field of flowers.
"Knock it off, you two," Sakura reprimanded them far more curtly than usual, and Naruto quickly collected himself, not wanting to push his luck any further.
He ignored Tsunade seemingly fond snorts at the interaction.
"So, what did Orochimaru want?" Jiraiya asked, steering the discussion back on topic.
"Nothing very much," she sighed, resigning herself to this conversation and pulling a deck of cards from her blouse. "We said hello, and that was that."
"That's not Orochimaru's style, and you know it," Jairiya said as Tsunade cut and shuffled the deck. "If you've seen him, then you probably heard about Sensei."
"He may have mentioned it," she replied, shuffling the deck once more before dealing him and herself each a hand of cards. "I'll ask again; why have you been looking for me?"
"The village needs a new Hokage," Jiraiya began, the air at the table growing more tense by the second. "They decided that it should be you."
Both Tsunade and Naruto froze, and even Sakura, Sasuke, and Shizune were thoroughly taken aback.
It took Tsunade a moment to regain herself, and when she did, she bore her gaze right into Jiraiya's. "Seriously?"
"Yes," Jiraiya answered.
Tsunade needed another, albeit shorter, moment to process that. "You came all this way and hunted me down to ask that?"
"Yes."
"I should break your fucking ribs."
"You could, but I'd still need a yes or a no."
The glare that Tsunade was sending Jiraiya over her cards could have killed small children. "No. Now get the fuck out of here."
Jiraiya snorted, a smile returning. "You said the same thing when I asked you out all those years ago. Verbatim, actually."
"My father had just died," she growled.
Jiraiya chuckled. "I always did have horrible timing."
"As well as a deeply problematic understanding of consent."
"Neither here nor there," Jiraiya waved off that comment, unaware of the thoughts of agreement going through the minds of Team 7. "I urge you to reconsider, Tsunade. You're quite literally the most qualified for the position of anyone in the world."
"That's tough; the answer is still no," Tsunade declined once again. "That village has done fuck all for me, and gambling my life away for a sham like the Will of Fire is a sucker's bet."
Naruto was taken off guard by the frankness and honesty on display, as well as the audacity of that statement. One look told him that his teammates were, as well. Hearing someone of the stature of a Sannin so cavalierly shit on one of the village's foundational principles was definitely unexpected.
"Calling it a sham is a little harsh," Jiraiya mused.
A derisive snort escaped Tsunade. "Don't bullshit me, Jiraiya. You've been around and seen enough. Whatever ideas the Will of Fire once conveyed are long dead and buried under the sludge Konoha keeps beneath that shiny veneer."
"The life of a shinobi isn't pretty," Jiraiya replied. "We know and accept that. That doesn't mean we can't have hope for a better future free of the darkness and hatred dominating this world of ours."
"Oh? A better future brought about by your children of prophecy?" Tsunade asked, and the way Jiraiya tensed showed that she had struck a nerve. "Tell me, Jiraiya, which one are you on now? Third? Fourth? I can only pray you're not dragging any of these kids to an early grave for that nonsense."
Jiraiya took a deep, long breath through his nose before slowly exhaling from his mouth. "You've changed, Tsunade. The years haven't been kind to you."
"I'm not as young as I look, Jiraiya," Tsunade scoffed. "I'm not the same bright-eyed bimbo you were so enamored with."
Spying a 4 of clubs ruining her shot at a royal flush, she dropped her cards into the table in inevitable defeat. "If that's settled, you can fuck off now. The brats can stay, though."
Jiraiya shook his head with a disappointed sigh, and then he stood up. "We'll call it a night and try this again tomorrow. Come on, kids, let's go grab some rooms."
"Wait, but we haven't ordered-" Sakura began, but Jiraiya's voice cut her off.
"We'll get room service," he said with finality, and Sasuke shrugged and slid out of the booth, followed by Sakura and Jiraiya.
"…You guys go on ahead," Naruto spoke up. "I'll catch up."
Sasuke quirked an eyebrow at him. "You sure?"
"Shizune, take them to our hotel and get them a room," Tsunade interjected, sliding over a wad of cash that she procured from the ether.
Shizune picked up what she was putting down and took the cash, grabbing the pig and ushering Sasuke and Sakura away with Jiraiya. That left him and Tsunade alone at the table, no one to distract from his self-imposed mission. He was in front of the granddaughter of Mito Uzumaki, potentially a wealth of knowledge about both his clan and what he really meant to Konoha…
Where would he even fucking begin?
Naruto cleared his throat, deciding to rip the bandaid off. "So, um, Naruto Uzumaki, in case you forgot-"
"I know who you are."
Of course, she knew who he was because he had already introduced himself, but it didn't come off like she was reminding him of that fact. The tone of her voice and the softness of her gaze indicated a sort of fond familiarity that he didn't quite know how to parse.
"…You do?" Naruto finally replied.
"You possess the Kyubi," she said without any fanfare, and Naruto inwardly cringed, now expecting the worst to come from this interaction. "Frankly, I'm surprised they let you out of the village. They never allowed that back in the day. Some shit or other about a containment seal within the bounds of the village. Honestly, it was stupid."
Naruto blinked. He certainly wasn't fucking expecting that follow-up. He was already having to recalibrate with seemingly every new line of dialogue.
"…How did you know?" he hazarded, but he felt he could figure out how based on who her grandmother-
"You have the same whiskers as my father."
Several seconds of Naruto blue-screening later, his mouth opened to speak, but no words came out. Fuck it, he was done trying to keep himself afloat treading through the conversation. He would simply lay back and float the rest of the way.
"What?"
"Your whiskers," she said, reaching over and lightly tapping his cheeks before he could flinch away. "He had the same kind."
It still took him some time to fully process that."…Seriously?"
"Mhm," she nodded with a small smile. "Same spiky hair as him and my brother, too. Theirs was brown, though."
Huh, well, that was… comforting? Enlightening? He didn't really know what to make of it, assuming there even was anything to make of it.
"How did your dad have whisker marks?" he settled on asking.
"Same way you presumably got them," she shrugged. "His mom was the jinchuriki before yours."
If he had blue-screened before, then his brain was now experiencing a total shutdown. He sat practically catatonic in his seat, dead to the world around him until the Kyubi literally unplugged and replugged his brain to reboot him. Blinking as his mind was functioning once more, he looked directly at Tsunade patiently and amusedly waiting for him to continue.
"So, Mito Uzumaki, your grandmother," Naruto began regathering his thoughts.
"Mhm."
"She was the first holder of the Kyubi, and the person that Konoha brought over from Uzu was… my mother?"
"Yes."
Cerulean met honey-brown for a silent, lengthy moment. Naruto's gaze was searching; for what, he wasn't entirely sure. So far, as far as he could tell, Tsunade had been completely honest with him, which wasn't something he was particularly used to, especially without an ulterior motive at play. Hell, maybe there was, but how much did that matter at this point?
"You knew my mother?" Naruto finally asked.
Tsunade looked down at her empty sake dish. There were no more brief flickers of anything to glimpse in her gaze. Now, Naruto saw the regret dressing her like a veil. "…For a little while a long time ago."
He took in that response and kicked it around in his noggin, absorbing the forlornness of her tone. "I take it you two weren't very close, then."
"Regrettably, no," she sighed. "It was my fault. When she arrived in the village, I felt a bit jealous that she was monopolizing a lot of my grandmother's remaining time. I had already lost my parents and had just recently lost my brother, so Granny Mito was all I really had left."
"What about your team?" Naruto asked.
Tsunade gave him the flattest look Naruto had ever received. "You've met all three of them."
"Point taken."
Tsunade sighed. "No, that's not fair. Orochimaru hadn't gone off the deep end, and Sarutobi-sensei wasn't a bastard just yet. Or maybe he always was, and I just hadn't realized it. Maybe he and Danzo were more alike than I wanted to believe, and that's why they were such good friends."
She shook her head. "Sorry, I'm rambling."
"Don't worry about it," Naruto assured with a wave. "It's nice to have someone to talk to and get the idle thoughts out. All I have is this dumb fox."
Tsunade snorted. "Granny Mito used to say the same thing."
Naruto wasn't expecting that. 'Kyubi?'
"Not. A. Word."
'Off limits, got it.'
Coming back to the outside world, he refocused the conversation. "So, you and my mom… did things ever get better?"
"Eventually, when I stopped being so immature," Tsunade answered. "But our twisted shinobi world reared its ugly head again, as it's wont to do. I lost someone else, and I was a complete mess."
"More of a mess than right now?" Naruto joked, and he received a snort coupled with a bonk to the head for his troubles.
"If you can believe it, you cheeky fuck," she replied. "She was surprisingly there for me, even though she had every right to let me rot. Family was everything to her. Still, after a time, I couldn't bear to be in the village anymore, so I left with Shizune and never looked back. Hearing about her death was just added incentive to stay the hell away from that cursed village."
Naruto wasn't sure what compelled him to do so, but he reached out and placed his hand on top of hers on the table. She looked down at his hand and then back at him in mild confusion, and he tried to articulate without words that she wasn't alone and still had family that would be there for her. He hoped it was the warm and reassuring gesture that he never really experienced until very recently with his team.
It wasn't. It was awkward. It was incredibly awkward for both of them, and he retracted his arm with a muttered, "sorry," as silence enveloped them in the aftermath.
Then, the sheer ridiculousness of the situation crashed upon them, and bemused smiles developed. Muted snickering broke through those smiles until they eventually became chortles, and then those chortles steadily bloomed into a shared fit of genuine laughter. For the first time in decades, Tsunade truly felt like some of the pain that had been festering inside of her for so long was ebbing away.
Once the two came back down from their laughing fit, Naruto reset his gaze on his maybe-cousin. "What was her name?"
"Kushina," she answered. "Kushina Uzumaki."
"Kushina Uzumaki," Naruto sounded the name out, feeling it on his tongue with some level of reverence. "I bet she was really cool…"
"Not to cut in on your riveting family time, but you do have another task to complete."
"Right," Naruto muttered before looking back at Tsunade. "How much do you know about the clan?"
"The Uzumaki?" she asked, and Naruto nodded. "About as much as Granny Mito told me. Why?"
"Do you know where the Uzumaki Mask Temple is?" Naruto got straight to it, and Tsunade's face straightened.
"Why?" she asked with newfound sternness.
Naruto was undeterred, however. "The Yondaime only sealed half of the Kyubi inside of me, and he took the other half with him into the Shinigami's belly. I need that other half."
"What for?"
He pulled back the collar of his hoodie, exposing his cursed seal as Tsunade's breath hitched. "Let's just say that Orochimaru's handiwork had some very unintended consequences that could become disastrous if I don't find that temple soon. Do you know where it is?"
Tsunade regarded him closely for a solid ten seconds before nodding. "I do. After Grandpa Hashi died, I asked Granny Mito if there was any way to bring him back. She didn't really reply at first, instead just taking me on a trip to the temple and explaining what the clan's relationship with the Shinigami really entailed."
Seeing that she had Naruto's undivided attention, she continued. "Every mask in that temple is linked to the forces of death in some way. Some are naturally more powerful than others, and all require sacrifices of some kind. The one you're probably looking for is the big one."
"The big one?" Naruto questioned.
"The one that summons the Shinigami directly," Tsunade answered. "Other masks can create a sort of link between yourself and the death god for any number of uses, but this one allows you to fully bear witness to it. Of course, simply summoning it requires a chakra expenditure so massive that it'll kill most people who do it, and those that survive still have to mortally wound themselves in order to free whatever soul is trapped in the Shinigami's clutches. And even then, you'll still require a sacrifice for that soul to inhabit, and if one isn't there, it'll just inhabit you… once you're dead."
Naruto had gone as pale as the spirit they were discussing. "Oh…"
"The Shinigami is nothing to fuck with, kid," Tsunade warned. "The fact that the Uzumaki were able to harness its power in such a way made them exceedingly dangerous, more dangerous than their ridiculous fuinjutsu acumen already made them. It's no surprise that they were eventually sieged and wiped out. You don't just pull some eldritch shit like weaponizing the God of Death and not expect everyone to be fearful of your very existence."
Naruto filed much of that new information away for a later date. "But you do know where the temple is?"
"If you're planning on going tonight, I wouldn't bother," Tsunade crossed her arms. "It's far enough from Tanzaku that you wouldn't make it back here before Jiraiya realized you were gone."
"…Hypothetically," Naruto carefully began, and Tsunade was already wary of where he was potentially going with this, "how fast could you get there if you were carrying me?"
Tsunade studied him for a moment before coming to a decision. "You mind waiting a week?"
Naruto blinked. "Um, not really, but why?"
"Because that's how long Orochimaru gave me to make a decision."
Howdy
FFN has been in a perpetual state of decay for about decade now, so this is the best time to remind everyone that everything I post is also on AO3. Same username. If shit ever finally goes belly up over here, you'll find me over there.
btw I found that MLP battle shonen
Thanks for reading.