A/N: Or...not?

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Original Nagato

Is it true?

Original Yahiko walked beside him, looking around at all the birds, deer and rabbits that they passed. The two of them were on their way to the bar where the demons worked. They had been paired together for this mission because it was a verified fact that they had different sexual orientations. Thus, a demon would only be able to incapacitate one of them at a time.

I thought he was slowly developing feelings for me. He has said that he does not desire me in that way, but… But I hoped…

Nagato shook his head. Stop it! This is a very important mission. There is no time to worry about relationship status! "Yahiko, are you bothered by the vague nature of our objective?"

"What's vague about it?" Yahiko asked in reply. "We know nothing about the demons except what we've heard secondhand. We've never met even a single one of them personally. That's a bad thing. I mean, the clones are generally reliable, and Sasori's sharp, but they could be failing to notice things. So we'll go to the bar, talk with at least one demon, and form our own judgments."

"What sorts of judgments ought we to aim for? Judgments of their attitudes towards us? Of their strength as a group? Of their wider standing? Ability to move against us? What are we to judge?"

"Knowing Konan, all of those things," Yahiko said. "You know how she takes in everything at once."

Nagato sighed. "If that was her intention, she should have joined us. You and I are too easily biased. We don't see all parts of a situation at the same time. She must know that."

Yahiko shrugged. "That incident she mentioned with the last demon to use their aura against her must have been something."

Nagato shook his head. "I trust her judgment. If having her there would cause more problems than it solved, then it is indeed better for her to be elsewhere. It is only that I am not confident entrusting my life to a golem."

Yahiko lifted his right arm. Little One hung upside-down in the crook of his elbow, watching the world pass by. Yahiko stopped walking and picked up Little One with his hands. Holding the doll upright and looking into its face with a smile, he asked, "Little One, do you promise to keep us safe if anyone tries to hurt us?" Little One nodded. Yahiko looked at Nagato. "I trust him!"

Yahiko tucked Little One under his elbow again and resumed walking. Nagato said, "I do not consider the dolls untrustworthy."

"What's the problem, then?"

"I believe that they sincerely try to help. Intention is not the problem. The problem is ability."

Yahiko sighed. "This again? Why do you have so little faith in the clones? They're weird and scatterbrained, true, but they have yet to make a mistake so colossally bad that someone dies and everyone else descends into villainy. I think they're very successful, all things considered."

"Did we attend the same meeting last night?"

"Huh? The vampire lady? You're bothered by what she said?"

"Of course I am. Doesn't it bother you? Something bad is coming. I feel it."

Yahiko frowned. After a period of focused concentration, he said, "I don't feel it. I've been alive for a lot less time than you have, so probably I'm missing something. Can you say more? What variety of bad should we be looking out for?"

Nagato stopped walking. "A variety that I've seen before. This meeting with the demons gives me an awful feeling of familiarity. Let us rest. I need to figure out what I'm remembering and why."

They sat at the side of the road. Yahiko put Little One down. The doll sat between them, modest and well behaved, looking around and wiggling his feet every so often. Yahiko patted his head. Nagato took in these details while scanning his memories of his past. Whatever memory he was retrieving must have come from that middle period between Yahiko's death and his own, the decades spent in depression and anger, which Nagato tried his very hardest not to think about now that he had recovered his senses. I don't recognize myself. I don't want to. All my highest ideals, all my dreams… It feels like I'm remembering a parody play someone wrote to mock them. But something in these memories is worthwhile, or I would not be getting this feeling. I must try to remember.

"Would it help if we talked a little about last night's meeting?" Yahiko asked softly.

"Perhaps."

"Alright. During the meeting, I thought it was strange that the vampires looked so much more disturbed than we did by that thing that Other Me said. But in retrospect, it makes sense. The exchange of blood is what defines them. They were probably shocked no so much by what my clone said as by the fact that he could say it so casually. What defines them matters little to us. I think that is why she finally realized that she simply could not judge us any longer. She's a vampire, and we're humans. We're just too different to live by the same laws."

Just too different. "Is it possible that the demons may feel the same way?"

"That they can't judge us? But they already weren't doing that."

Nagato shook his head. "No… That isn't quite what I meant." He returned to his effort to remember. A while passed. He made no progress. None of the political agreements he had made as leader of the Hidden Rain struck him as relevant, nor any of the contracts he had signed as leader of the Akatsuki. The hidden memory that bothered him was buried so deeply he wouldn't find it if he sat there for hours. "Yahiko. I am sorry; I cannot remember. We'll simply have to stay on high alert. Scout out the bar before approaching the demons. If there is anywhere an attack force could be hiding in ambush, abandon the operation."

Yahiko nodded and picked up Little One. They stood. "I just have one question. This bad thing you sense: is it related to the vampires or the demons?" At Nagato's blank look, he explained, "You first mentioned it in relation to what Soye said, but now you're letting your lack of memory influence our approach to the demons. Who should we be concerned about? Or is it both of them?"

"...Both. I am thinking of one, then the other, and feeling no difference between them."

They resumed the walk into town. They had not gotten far when they heard footsteps running along the road behind them. They turned to meet Clone Hidan. "Ah, nice, glad I caught ya," he said while panting for breath. "I heard you were on your way to talk to the demons. You're gonna want to hear what I just heard."

"What is it?" Yahiko asked.

"Teknos, the demons' new leader - he stumbled across our friends the Hatakes by accident while exploring seemingly unowned structures located in the forest. Why the fuck would he be exploring the forest when demons are normally homebodies? Maybe he was looking for us. The Hatakes said they were nervous having the demons visit because Teknos seemed like a strong leader, the kind that could hurt them if there was a conflict. The Hatakes want us to test the demons, push at them a bit, the way we've been pushing at the vampires, because we're the local crazy people and we've already beaten a demon in a fight and we're less likely to be in any danger."

A chill ran down Nagato's spine. "In other words, you have reason to suspect that they are hostile and/or preparing themselves for hostile action?" He exchanged a look with Yahiko. By the look on Yahiko's face, they were thinking the same thing. If that is the case, then one doll will not be enough to protect us.

"Sasori has not reported anything of the sort," Yahiko murmured.

"We don't know shit about what's going on with the demons," Hidan said plainly. "So I'm coming with you."

Nagato blinked. "You?"

"Yeah, me. The one who threw a demon through a fucking wall when she tried to touch me. The one they're piss-scared of. Like Ruta said, I'm the ultimate fallback position."

"Alright," Yahiko said. "That will help. Thank you."

They resumed walking. Roadside grass turned to concrete sidewalk and the street began to fork. They made a right turn. "What happened the last time a demon tried to use their aura power on Konan?" Yahiko asked.

"It backfired. They were trying to get her to stop attacking, but she actually has no problem physically injuring people she's attracted to."

"Oh." Yahiko sounded no happier to learn that than Nagato was. If only I could erase the memory of hearing that...

"I wonder what would happen if one of the demons tried to use their power on Other Me. He'd probably maul them to death. I wonder what demon blood tastes like…"

Nagato raised a hand. "We know enough. Thank you."

"Just sayin'. She and Other Me are good people to put on the front lines if it comes to war."

"Let us hope it does not." There's that ominous feeling again. "Hidan, how did you interpret Soye's strange behavior last night?"

"It felt good, like something loosening, like she'd always been resisting us and she stopped. Why d'ya ask?"

"It seemed to me like a premonition."

Hidan shrugged. "Resisting makes you weak. Going with the flow makes you stronger. I'm glad to see the vampires getting stronger, even if it does mean we'll have to be more careful around them."

Nagato opened his mouth to ask a question. Yahiko beat him to it. "How much resisting have the demons been doing?"

"Uh… Jack and shit. We haven't hardly talked to them. There's nothing to resist." Hidan tilted his head. "Well, no, there's the general upsetting of divine balances in this portion of the universe. That's why the first demon attacked us - she was trying to resist the shifting balance, trying to force everything to go back to the way it used to be. The demons haven't been attacking us, but maybe they're still tiring themselves out resisting the inevitable in some other way. Who knows."

"Trying to force everything to go back to the way it used to be."

Yahiko and Hidan stopped and looked at Nagato. Yahiko peered into Nagato's face. "Did you remember something?"

Nagato swallowed. "These demons: we know next to nothing about them. We know what abilities they have. Those abilities seem weak, at least in a field of open combat - but we have not the slightest clue how they're really using those abilities. Might they be more useful in subterfuge? With an intelligent leader -"

"Madara," Hidan said. "Old Madara. The one you knew. The one who played you and Konan like puppets, played everyone like puppets really, started a whole fucking war, just because he wanted everything to go back to how it used to be before someone he cared about died."

"Yes." That is why I couldn't figure out what I was remembering. It was not one specific memory. It was a generalized memory, encompassing all those years of my life.

"The demons are friends though, allies. R-right?" Yahiko looked extremely confused.

"We used to have a specific demon we talked to," Hidan muttered. "Why don't we take a detour by Sasori's shop? Pretty sure he has that demon's number in his contacts."

They headed north towards the auto shop. Nagato's mind raced. Am I becoming paranoid? Am I seeing reminders of Madara in a situation that really has nothing more than a superficial similarity? I hope so…

The two originals hung back while Hidan opened the door and walked right in. They found a middle-aged woman talking to a young woman seated behind a desk, arranging what sounded like a routine inspection. They hung back against the wall and averted their eyes until the conversation was concluded and the middle-aged lady walked out. The young woman stepped out from behind the desk without them needing to say anything. "I'll get Sasori."

"Yup," Hidan replied. She vanished down a hallway. "Poor Sasori. First Ruta calls out to attend a super important family political meeting, then I lose his laptop, then we show up in the middle of the day. He's just not getting a break."

Nagato looked at him. "You lost Sasori's laptop? Where?"

"I left it behind at the Hatake camp, along with two of the dolls."

"What?"

"Not deliberately! Sasori said he had a feeling like I needed to have his laptop today, and I already called him. He said whatever happened to it was probably meant to be."

"Does the laptop have any incriminating information on it?"

"We don't do criminal shit! Of course not."

"Fine then. The dolls. You left half of our doll force in the hands of a separate group. Why did you not immediately retrieve them?"

"Konan said they were gonna be retrieved by portal at any second! Manta'll get them."

"Given how today is going, that seems extremely careless of you."

"Little One agrees," Yahiko announced. The doll in question was frantically wiggling. Yahiko sat him down on the ground, where Little One proceeded to run back and forth looking very alarmed. "Let's have Little One summon them back. That way we know for sure they're safe."

"Who's safe? The other dolls?" Sasori asked, emerging from the hallway along with the young woman. "Why do we think the dolls are in danger?"

"We don't!" Hidan replied. "The Hatakes are perfectly friendly. I was just with them. I have feelings-powers. I would know."

Sasori chuckled. "True, but they might not be safe from the dolls. Let's summon the dolls back. We don't want to risk them setting a wolf's tail on fire."

Little One opened a portal large enough for a person to step through if they stooped. The first thing to come through the portal was a sound. Specifically, the sound of someone saying, " - if we didn't have enough to worry about!"

Someone else said, "Konan is sensible (most of the time). She won't blame us. Let's take them home and explain everything."

A third person asked, "What was that thing you said under your breath just now?"

"Er, she has some days when she's more easily frustrated than usual. But even if today is one of those days, still, the best thing to do is take these dolls home and apologize."

"What about that thing?"

"Take that too."

"How? I'm not touching it!"

"What's that next to the dolls?"

"Good grief," Sasori muttered. He knelt in front of the portal and called through it, "Hi, hello, this is Sasori. Our dolls can open portals at each other's locations. We're trying to retrieve our missing dolls. Why are you all sounding so panicked? What's going on over there?"

Warlic and Solis waved at him. They looked unworried and unharmed. Nagato knelt down beside Sasori for a clearer view. They saw a pair of legs walk into frame. Then the person who the legs belonged to knelt, showing Nagato a face he'd never expected to see in person. Hatake Sakumo. Konoha's White Fang. This version of Sakumo wore no Konoha headband, but looked as ninjalike as his original would have. It might have been a temporary effect of being forced to handle what sounded like a crisis. Clone Sakumo cleared his throat. "The dolls started using the laptop. We let them, which was a mistake. That was an hour ago, and now…" He gestured at something that could not be seen through the portal.

Nagato barked, "Warlic, Solis. Levitate whatever he is gesturing at to a position in front of the portal so we can see it."

The dolls did as they were told. What they levitated into view looked an awful lot like Sasori's laptop, but it had an exploded monitor, tiny ghostly hands reached out from the touchpad, and it was making a constant whirring, clicking sound accompanied by flashes of light and electricity. "Um, um, excuse me," said yet another voice. Sakumo moved aside, allowing a young man with messy brown hair to sit in front of the portal. This person said, "The dolls used the laptop normally, got onto Youtube, and started watching videos in Russian. That kept them busy for a while. But then they got bored and wanted to move to another site, and they got really frustrated at having to use the touchpad, so they put a magic matrix over the touchpad and folded it up to the main screen. I think they were trying to turn the screen into a touchscreen so they could use the laptop like a tablet. But all that happened is that the overlapping matrices screwed with the colors. The screen displayed all sorts of weird colors, and the dolls tried to use magic on it, and that just made everything worse. The more light magic they applied, the brighter and more colorful the screen got, but it also sounded like electrical systems inside the computer were going crazy. The fan was intensely audible. Also, they hadn't undone the linkage with the touchpad, so light magic was feeding back into that and making it glow. They summoned a sword to cut the linkage, which made the screen overcharge and explode. I told them the laptop was only supposed to run electricity, not magic, so then of course they tried using energy magic. I smelled something burning. I told them to stop, it's gone, there's nothing you can do to make the laptop work again, it's dead. I probably shouldn't have said that last part, because then they got the idea to -"

"Oh dear fucking Christ!" Sasori looked horrified. "Don't tell me they -"

"Yeah, they tried to reanimate it using darkness magic. The darkness and energy elements sort of fused, I think. That's the only way I can explain why the circuits are running constantly now. You can hear them, right? It mixed with the light magic left over inside the touchpad, turning the touchpad into a very touchy ghost. I'm honestly scared to find out what else might have happened." The person pulled out his phone as he said this and pressed a few buttons. "Oh, dear, our wifi's flickering in and out. I don't know if magic can infiltrate the Internet, or if the laptop's activity is sending really weird signals to the router, or what."

Sasori barked, "Warlic, Solis, make a bubble around the laptop to cut it off from the internet. Completely insulate it. A lightning strike should be able to hit that bubble without having any effect on the laptop." The dolls made a bubble in a grayish color, like stone. "Pass the bubble through the portal."

Warlic and Solis did so. Little One was too busy holding the portal open to catch the bubble, so Nagato reached out. He whispered, "Bansho Tenin" while backing away, causing the bubble to follow him, then stopped it with another burst of chakra. He then maintained his chakra in a constant steady stream, holding the bubble in the air. It hurt. Neither of his force jutsus were meant to be used continuously. Nagato put on a stoic face, resolving to keep it up long enough for Little One to drop the portal and take the bubble from him. If I can hold out that long…

Sasori ushered the other two dolls through the portal, thanked the people on the other side, then told Little One to drop it. The dolls took over levitating the bubble. Nagato dropped to his knees, gasping, cradling his hands against his chest. "Thanks for catching it," Sasori said to him. "Dammit. My laptop's corrupted by magic. What do we do? I do not want to put it down. Putting it down might pop the bubble, and I don't want it coming into contact with any other electrical appliance or with the internet, but we can't levitate it indefinitely."

"That bubble looks gray like stone," Hidan observed. "Maybe we can encase it in stone."

"Alright, I'll ask Kakuzu. Using Stonemaker Jutsu in combination with something else, something to wrap the newly-made stone around the bubble, might work."

"No." Nagato looked up. "I have something better."

.

"Chibaku Tensei!"

Sasori, Yahiko, Hidan, and the young woman who Nagato had yet to learn the name of watched from the rear doorway of the auto shop as Nagato gently tossed a small black sphere into the air. It came to a stop directly over the bubble holding the corrupted laptop. At first, nothing seemed to happen. Then the dolls ran away. Nagato had previously instructed them to flee the second they felt that their levitation was no longer needed to hold up the bubble. He put some distance between himself and the bubble too, just in time for dirt and sand to rise from the auto shop's rear parking lot. Attracted to the black sphere, earth and plant parts and small stones flew into the air. They struck the magic bubble but did not break it, instead sticking to it, accreting into an earthen shield that grew thicker and thicker. Nagato had only given the jutsu enough power to form a sphere the length of his leg in diameter, so it caused far less destruction than his last use of Chibaku Tensei had. Even so, Sasori's rear parking lot was devastated. Most of it was now a shallow crater. It was not possible for the majority of vehicles to drive in it. Once Nagato verified that the sphere was stable, he walked some distance away and pulled up large quantities of earth to fill in the crater.

"How long is that thing gonna hover in midair?" Hidan asked.

"After the initial formation of the sphere, there is a period of compaction. The length of that period varies according to size; for a sphere this small, it will finish compacting in only a few hours at most. Once it is fully compacted, it will be as dense as bedrock. At that point, the focal entity will disappear and this sphere will fall to the ground as an ordinary ball of rock subject to ordinary physics."

Once the parking lot was passable again, everyone came out to inspect the ball. "What does this gravity ball jutsu get used for?" Sasori asked. "It seems uber-specialized, good for coating things in solid rock and not much else. Who would invent such a thing and why?"

"There are many, many reasons to seal things inside solid rock in the world we come from."

Hidan grimaced. "Youch."

"Amazing!" the young woman said. "It's also pretty easy for ninjas to crack open solid rock, right? So things that are sealed like this can be retrieved anytime?"

Nagato asked her, "Forgive me, I cannot recall your name. What is it?"

"Oh! It's Laurie."

"Laurie. This usage of the Chibaku Tensei is extremely weak. True mastery of the technique allows one to create celestial bodies. Those require extreme force to break, beyond the means of any individual shinobi."

Laurie opened and closed her mouth a few times. "But why would anyone want to create celestial bodies…?"

"That is what this technique was created to do, for the reasons I mentioned earlier."

"The name makes sense now," Hidan muttered.

"What reasons are those…?"

Sasori touched Laurie's shoulder and shook his head. "You really don't want to know."

Warlic poked the sphere. The dolls were standing on each other's heads, and he was the one on top. He flailed his arms before leaping off, landing on top of the ball and clinging to it with all four limbs and probably some magic. He wiggled his way to the top, where he was perfectly balanced, stood up and cheered. The other two dolls also cheered. They levitated themselves into the air and tried to balance on it all at once. By clinging to each other, they just barely managed to do so. Nagato patted Solis' head.

Hidan heaved a great big sigh of relief. He said to Nagato, "Thanks for covering for my mistakes. I owe ya."

Nagato raised both eyebrows. His original would never say such a thing. "You are welcome. I am honored to be able to protect us all from problems such as this."

"Yes, it's amazing!" Yahiko agreed. He nudged Nagato's arm and smiled in the way that always made Nagato feel fluttery and warm. Nagato couldn't help but smile back.

Sasori decorously waited several seconds before saying, "So… I don't imagine this was your original reason for visiting my shop."

"What was our original reason?" Hidan asked aloud. "Oh! Right! Sasori, you have one of the demons from the bar as a contact in your phone, right?"

"Yeah."

"Give them a ring."

Sasori did so. He held his phone to his ear for a long time, then lowered it with a frown. He tried again, this time making the phone louder so they could all hear it ringing. Again, the call was never answered. "Maybe he's busy."

"When was the last time you made contact with this demon?" Nagato asked.

"Eh… A while. I never call. I usually just text. I am told what the demon I'm supposed to meet will look like. When I show up, I meet them. Lately, I've been meeting with whatever demons are most motivated to talk to us, so, I don't know when I last saw the demon that gave me this number."

"And there is no way for you to be sure who is texting you to arrange the meetings."

Sasori narrowed his eyes. "You think other demons are passing around the phone that this contact information belongs to?"

"I think we know nothing of the demons' normal cultural practices, nor of any new practices that they might have…adopted."

"You make the word 'adopted' sound so ominous."

Hidan looked around, then leaned in close and spoke just above a whisper. "He means that Teknos might be evil and secretly plotting against us and the demons that we personally made friends with back in the day might have all been imprisoned or banished or killed or something as part of Teknos' rise to power."

"Holy fucking shit," Laurie breathed. "Who is this Teknos person?"

"The demons' new representative for our Regional Guardian system," Sasori replied. "Give me a moment to think." He closed his eyes and counted on his fingers while whispering to himself. "Alright. The disastrous meeting in which I and the succubus I met with concluded that our so-called alliance had fallen apart took place about a week and a half ago. Less than a week later, I met with Teknos as the newly-elected Regional Guardian of the Demon Division. It has, in turn, been less than a week since that. Wow. It feels much longer."

Hidan looked at Nagato. "If you're right, then there must've been a huge coalition of demons who hated us waiting for their chance. Our lack of friendship after the NPCs woke up gave them the opportunity they were waiting for to swoop in and take control. Any demons who were fans of ours have either changed their minds or are shutting up and hoping against hope that we'll prove we're worth caring about."

"On the other hand," Yahiko cut in, "Whatever is going on with them might have nothing to do with hating us. Teknos might be part of a progressive faction that was pushing for the demons to change their ways. The Akatsuki might have inadvertently been propping up a more conservative faction. Withdrawal of support, then, allowed the more progressive faction to take over. The demons in charge right now might have nothing against us, no hard feelings at all, except for some suspicion as to our actual involvement in their internal affairs."

"Either way, the timing of this sequence of events sure does give one the impression that our withdrawal from alliance caused a big shift in the demons' politics," Sasori said. "Now's the time to prove that we learned anything, anything at all, from the last time we meddled in another group's politics."

"The vampires," Hidan clarified, just in case the originals didn't understand that, which they did. Nagato narrowed his eyes. Intuition told me that the vampires and the demons were linked somehow. This is how. The Akatsuki is facing similar situations with both groups. But will the results be the same?

Yahiko shook his head. "We shouldn't visit the demons right now, then. We need to regroup and strategize. Nagato and I know only a basic outline of what happened with the vampires."

"Excuse me." Sasori walked to the edge of the newly-filled crater, where his motorcycle stood parked. He lifted the kickstand and walked it over. Leaning on the handlebars, he turned to Nagato and asked, "In the plainest, least emotional, least abstract language possible: what do we need?"

Hidan raised a hand and waved it. Nagato nodded. Hidan said, "We need to know where the demons spend their time when they're not at the bar. They can't live there. Or, if they do, that would be something worth knowing too."

"The top five most frequently visited locations, as well as a general area where they sleep," Nagato elaborated.

Sasori rubbed his motorcycle's handlebars and said to it, "Alright. Today is Monday. Ask the bikes to gather as much of that information as they can by Saturday. That's five days. On Saturday morning, we'll set up a giant map of the town in the road outside our base. Have six bikes park themselves in the appropriate locations on that map at noon on Saturday."

"Ooh, the demon kid's gonna love helping us set that up," Hidan said with a grin.

Sasori returned his motorcycle to its parking spot. When he came back, the mood had shifted. Hidan was no longer grinning. Yahiko sighed. "I hope it turns out we're overreacting…"

Sasori shook his head. "The jutsus that our originals used never appear outside of a deadly serious situation."

Nagato and Yahiko shared a glance. Yahiko gulped. Nagato put on his most serious face. I was correct earlier. Now is definitely not the time to worry about my love life.

.

A/N: Canon jutsus appearing in an alleged Naruto fanfiction?! What lunacy!

Now to get serious...

I had no idea this was coming. I fully intended this week's chapter to be more of an ongoing storyline of stuff related to my personal life. But nope - the fic remembered that it was fictional, and started acting like it, and now a story-plot is happening that has nothing to do with what I thought was happening and I have no idea where it's going but it seems very exciting. But this does mean I'm not gonna get an answer as to what to do about my friend anytime soon. I guess the universe isn't going to give me such an answer. I'll have to find it for myself. Rats.

Well, let's get ready to enjoy the detour!