Kushina's head stayed above the water, bobbing in the placid ocean waves.

It hadn't—

It hadn't seemed so bad, to be a jinchuuriki.

Well, that was a lie.

She'd been furious.

Furious that she had to leave home, furious that her life was being taken from her to learn how to act as a human cage, furious that she would never be known as anything other than the kyuubi's container, furious that she had to leave behind her friends…

She had just been furious.

But she hadn't really—

She hadn't thought about the monster's thoughts on the matter.

Hadn't really thought the monster had thoughts.

And now…

Now she did.

He had a name.

Opinions.

Siblings who he thought of as siblings.

And she…

She was still his cage.

She was still his prison, just as much—no, really, far more than—he ever was hers.

He was asleep, now.

Slept a lot, even when he was still rampaging across the country, far deadlier than any storm, but just as much a fact of life.

He was asleep, and Kushina had another two days before she had to be back on the frontlines, and Minato was away (had something 'big' to go do), and Kushina had run to the water's edge, thrown herself into the body separating her from her home.

Sakura mentioned that the avatars would probably be finished sometime this year, but she had full-time work on top of this.

Tsunade was pretty sure Kushina could safely give birth with only 'a few' modifications, but she had full-time work on top of this.

Kakashi was busy growing up, busy dealing with his own monster who, as it turned out, didn't even really understand Fire's language yet.

It was just her.

And the stars.

And the several ANBU standing awkwardly on shore.

And Kurama.

And Kushina had been busy, had been working on helping Minato deal with his ever-growing pile of paperwork, but she'd also been spiraling, a little.

And when Minato had left, and when Kurama had woken up, muttered something about yet another failed attempt at Peace, at how his mother had been equally obsessed…

Kushina had just wanted to go home.

Uzumaki was too far away; the ANBU would stop her.

But this? The edge of the ocean?

They let her stay, and Kushina stared up at the stars, and remembered her mother, just as Kurama had remembered his.

When dawn began to rise she'd return to Konoha, get back to work, but until then…

Until then she'd float, here, in this vast nothingness, and hope that the cold surroundings would bring some form of peace

.

Some summons, though very few, were considered 'noble.'

Jiraiya had learned, after months and years, that most people assumed 'noble' meant summons that were more human, that were more powerful.

That was not what it meant.

Noble summons were those who ruled over not only their domain, but also others.

Sensei had such a summons; his monkey contract allowed him not only to summon monkeys but also apes and a select few other animals that Jiraiya couldn't differentiate between.

(They all looked like monkeys to Jiraiya.

(He was just smart enough not to say that out loud.)

And then there was Jiraiya's summons.

They, too, were a noble summons.

In theory, in theory he was capable of summoning all amphibians—toads and frogs and newts and even more.

And once, he had been.

Once he'd even had salamander summons he'd considered friends.

And then…

Then there'd been the fight with Hanzo.

And Jiraiya, in the heat of the moment, forgetting the explicit rules of his contract—

He'd summoned some of those salamanders.

Hanzo was not just known as a salamander because of his venom; he'd also (clearly intentionally) reverse-summoned himself and contracted with the salamanders directly.

And—

Well—

Both the salamander and the noble toad contracts utterly forbade a summoner attempting to use them against another salamander summoner.

Jiraiya hadn't been able to summon any but the toads since, and even keeping that was a gift of Gamamaru, who had believed Jiraiya was necessary for some things. (Gamamaru had admitted in recent years that he was less sure than ever that he was right. Jiraiya… did not like to think about that.)

As far as Jiraiya knew, Hanzo had been similarly limited; if he could still summon salamanders, he certainly wasn't doing so in combat situations.

Both of them burdened by less than a second's worth of actions.

Both of them unable to forget that fight.

Now Jiraiya was in Fire's Capital. He was drinking, and partying, and learning so, so much, and it was nice to have this break, nice to let his brain stop whirring a mile a minute with could-have-beens, but—

But he'd gotten drunk, last night.

Actually, truly, drunk.

And he'd stumbled off alone, pretended he couldn't feel Shin's eyes on him.

And he'd tried, once more, to summon a salamander.

To summon Hanzaki, who had been his first-ever non-toad summons.

And failed.

He still remembered being a genin. Tsunade, when he'd tried to talk to her, told him that what he recalled was fantasy, not reality—a sort of flowery version of what they had actually experienced—but he didn't think so.

He remembered shoving Hanzaki in their faces, so proud of himself. He remembered Tsunade rolling her eyes, leaning back so the salamander didn't touch for a single moment the layers of makeup she'd put on to prepare for her date with Dan.

He remembered Orochimaru reading through Jiraiya's summoning contract, moaning on and on about how lenient it was compared to most.

He remembered Sensei smoking his pipe, answering Jiraiya's questions with questions of his own.

He remembered feeling like a team.

(He knew what Tsunade meant, really, because even then none of them had considered each other best friends. He knew what Tsunade meant because he'd used to escape to his friends' apartments, rant about how stuck-up and snobby she was, about how superior and elite Orochimaru acted. He knew what Tsunade meant, but that didn't mean there wasn't good.

(Jiraiya missed the good.)

And now…

Now his team was gone.

Oro had gone off the deep end, just like Jiraiya had always warned he would. If Jiraiya ever caught up to him, he'd have to kill the man. His former teammate. His former friend.

Tsunade was blitzing around the country, performing minor miracles everywhere and only ever stopping in Konoha to dote on her niece. They only talked about the manatee, about what to do with Konoha's secret third tailed beast. She didn't want to talk about Orochimaru, and Jiraiya found it difficult to think of anything else.

Sensei was busy, now, busy with his family, busy with diplomacy (he left the Capital only two days after Jiraiya arrived… he'd be back for the Spring Session, he'd promised, but one of his sons was getting married.) He didn't want to talk about Orochimaru either, only said that he wished he'd been better for them.

When Jiraiya asked him about possibly redeeming Orochimaru, Sensei had sighed, his wrinkles deepening as he avoided Jiraiya's eyes. "He willfully altered his mind, Jiraiya. He intentionally attacked my son, performed so many illegal experiments, tortured children… I don't know if there's anything left to save."

"He returned Obito!"

"Before he operated on his brain," Sensei said firmly. "And only to get Minato to refocus, because he had no interest in Konoha doing worse in the war, requiring him to return to the frontlines. And even then he'd killed a number of Uchiha and Hyuuga already, made them seem like frontline deaths. There was, perhaps, more wrong with him than we were willing to see."

"I just—he was never really very nice, was he? Maybe he just needs to be reminded that lives mean something!"

Sensei still wouldn't look at him. "I have made a great many mistakes in my life, Jiraiya, and many of them were because I wanted to think the best of people. You know that my mind was invaded for a number of years, but that is not why I chose to forgive Danzo even knowing he was plotting against me. That is not why I did not retaliate when my brother, raging in hatred over the death of his only daughter, a daughter I sent to the frontlines, tried to kill me in my sleep.

"You remember as well as I the results of uncovering the kidnappings from the orphanage, Danzo's body with its implanted Uchiha eyes.

"You remember as well as I the ANBU killing my brother just as he slipped the knife in my side, his second attempt far more effective than his first.

"I am tired, Jiraiya. I am tired of being wrong. The Hospital, the Researchers, Tsunade, and Minato all agree that there is nothing left to save, and that is all there is to it."

He'd left, then, and Jiraiya had gone drinking.

Even outside of his team, outside of his summons (he could still hear the Toad Sage's voice, the somber way he said the prophecy may have been misinterpreted)—most of his friends were dead, killed in one fight or another. Those that weren't were married, had kids, didn't live (or want to live) like Jiraiya did.

His information network was more-or-less automated, now, or as good as; Taida might complain about being overworked, but the three before him had all quit and he hadn't so it clearly wasn't that bad.

Nobody needed him.

Nobody but Orochimaru.

And he'd spent the past weeks engaging in hedonism rather than helping, but what was the point in doing anything different?

All his student wanted to do was kill his friend, and all Jiraiya wanted to do was keep some part of any of the relationships he'd once thought he had.

Jiraiya just wished he knew what he'd done to be so alone.

.

ANBU Deer wasn't a Nara.

The thing was, certain animals had very, very strong associations with certain clans.

If someone saw an ANBU Cat, everybody would expect them to be an Uchiha.

That meant people were liable to treat you as an Uchiha, for better or worse. So when you got your mask, if you wanted to have one of those animals, a beast associated with a particular clan (or even a particular person), then you needed a very good reason.

The thing was, everybody saw the deer mask and assumed Nara (except, of course, for current and former ANBU.)

That was useful, in ANBU Deer's case.

"Was that really necessary?" the Hokage asked mildly, and ANBU Deer smirked. Nara worked with shadow, so when enemies saw the mask the very first thing they would do was try to remove all the light.

"You'll forgive us for an abundance of caution," the Tsuchikage rejoined. "You are dangerous enough on your own."

The Hokage gave nothing away. Why should he? Leave them to their misconceptions.

ANBU Deer had his Sensei's back.

"If you need your security theater. You wanted to meet?"

"I am tired of being at war, as was your plan," the Tsuchikage said.

ANBU Deer… hadn't expected him to be so forthright. Based on their reactions, the two guards the Iwa leader had brought also hadn't expected it.

"And yet…?" the Hokage added leadingly, because that clearly wasn't it.

"And yet," the Tsuchikage finished, "you are dangerous. Very, very dangerous. Allowing you even a minute of peace to further grow—well, would you feel safe?"

"Yes," the Hokage said.

The Tsuchikage snorted. "I figured. You really haven't taken over most of Kiri, have you? Over expansion is risky, and even your little inventions don't create more people out of thin air. You could've reduced your Academy requirements, your chuunin requirements, but you didn't, and I'd thought that was because you were less bereft of manpower than it seemed… but you're just soft-hearted, aren't you?"

The Hokage responded easily, a smile in his voice. "Guilty. That is not to say that your offensive has not had its consequences, of course; many interwall jobs that would have previously gone to ninja have become increasingly more civilian."

ANBU Deer knew that. Groundskeeping was, for instance, previously a genin chore. Now it was still run by ninja, but almost everybody that did the actual work were civilians, with tiny little Academy underlings to help out after school.

Mail service, too, had become more civilian; there were enough seals, enough demands that it was no longer worth it to use genin within village walls; if something wasn't so confidential to need ANBU transport, there was a daily mail service run primarily by civilians. Departments could also send off their own people to do the work, but a lot of the low-level stuff was being done by people who hadn't ever graduated from the Academy, who couldn't even walk on walls.

The pattern continued, over and over, and ANBU Deer understood why. They needed bodies, and within the walls, at least, there were a great many seals that lessened the danger inherent in using civilians to help run a ninja village, allowed ninja to devote their time to riskier tasks.

He just didn't know why the Hokage was admitting it.

"Oh, we knew you had to have made some changes. Still, we thought eventually you would have to start understaffing more and more over time, exposing chinks in your armor."

Is this what clandestine kage meetings were about? Unreasonable openness?

"Kumo certainly thinks so," Minato agreed.

"Oh, so they have started their attacks? That was the rumor."

"I would've thought they told you directly."

"No such luck, I'm afraid. Both of us have been very, very busy managing our sides of the war, and neither of us… agree, much, on priorities."

The Hokage had once told ANBU Deer—when they were Sensei and Obito, obviously—that he agreed with far more of Kumo's policies than Iwa's; Kumo emphasized education a lot more, and allowed for far more social mobility too.

He also told ANBU Deer that he thought Iwa had vastly better tacticians, better information networks, and better propagandists.

He'd respected both, found elements of each distasteful, and told ANBU Deer to never, ever treat their behavior as not without merit. Their choices may not be ones ANBU Deer agreed with, they may be seen as correct or incorrect years down the line, but they weren't made in a vacuum, and ANBU Deer could learn a lot from truly understanding other's perspectives.

The Hokage laughed. "I'm here because of a lover's spat between the two countries nipping at my heels?"

"If you want to think of it that way, who am I to stop you? My point is this: I am quite certain that you can manage as you are for years, even decades yet, and you have yet to even engage your nation's Samurai.

"I have no interest in wasting resources by spoiling them against such an immoveable obstacle, but I am also beholden to preventing your threat from growing.

"And yet, as I said: Konoha is stretched thin. Quite thin."

The Hokage inclined his head, waiting for the Tsuchikage to continue.

"Your alliance with Suna is also fraying."

At this, the Hokage laughed.

It was sudden, sharp, and Obit—ANBU Deer hadn't been expecting it.

"You want to trade allies?" the Hokage said.

"Well, why not? Suna's gone sour on you, and you still haven't moved against them in any way we've noticed beyond the obvious trade manipulations. That's security enough for my people."

"I really have no interest in expanding Fire territory."

"And what of your successor? No, it would have to be an alliance."

"Would not breaking our alliance with Suna subsequently weaken this theoretical alliance?"

"Sure, if you broke it. I am not saying you have to."

"You are not going to war with Suna?"

"I have equally little interest in Wind's territory. It is true that we continue to spat over disputed arable land in the West, but at this point that is primarily an argument for the Daimyo; both think of it as their territory and have managed to do so, concurrently, for almost three decades. It is unlikely that Iwa-Suna relations will worsen in the immediate future, and the winds of tomorrow will blow tomorrow."

ANBU Deer had been expecting something about peace when the Hokage had told him of this meeting, of his intention to bring his student with him, but he hadn't expected a proposal of an alliance.

He wondered if his Sensei had.

"If we are to talk details, I would prefer to do it where I can see what we're writing," the Hokage said.

"I suppose we are past the point of worrying that you would take advantage," the Tsuchikage agreed.

Silence, and then both gestured to a guard.

ANBU Deer immediately pulled out the scroll his Hokage had discreetly signaled for, and opposite him one of the Tsuchikage's guards did the same.

Was this actually happening?

Were they actually going to make a deal in a cave in the middle of nowhere, with only five people in the room, only two of whom would actually speak?

(By all accounts, the answer was yes.)