STEP BY STEP BY STEP
Underlined - English
‘Italicised’ - Thoughts
In Text Bolded - Tailed Beast
*Bracketing Asterisk Around Italicised Text* - Thoughts in verse. Specifically, raps.
Dear all, you deserve better.
And I have taken so very long to deliver. Sorry. I can’t promise it won’t happen again...
But I’m trying.
NARA SHIKAKU
“This isn’t going to work.”
The first words out of my son’s mouth to me in nearly a week and it’s that. Ah, family love.
Shikamaru ignores the glares sent his way with a practiced air that speaks of many years not giving a damn about what other people think. Part of me is proud, but most of me is focused on how intently his eyes are locked on the map in front of him.
“This isn’t going to work,” He repeats absentmindedly, to the displeasure of the room.
“Are you just going to repeat that all day?” Kiba demands with a Tsume-like growl, “Or do you want to provide something useful to the discussion?”
So alike, yet so different. Tsume knows better than to interrupt a thinking Nara with the expectation of speed or heightened success rates. She learned that the hard way during the Third War.
Shikamaru ignores Kiba, and the rest of the room, for another six minutes and 45 seconds - his hands leaving the edge of the table around minute two to form his familiar thinking gesture, and his eyes closing at minute six - before looking up at the shinobi gathered and waiting with varied levels of patience.
“This plan is hinging on the presumption that we do not have enough information on Danzo and ROOT to properly undermine him: that isn’t true.”
Inoichi sit forward abruptly, “How do you mean?”
Shikamaru grinned wickedly, the familiarity of the gesture giving me hope, “Well I recently noticed this tail of mine….”
NII YUGITO
I’m shocked into consciousness with a wet cough and a sharp pain in my side, before hands I don’t recognize are on my side -
“Easy!” A foreign, accented voice soothes. “They’re gone. Bee’s right next to you. I’m a healer.”
I want to object, insist that she - whoever she is - doesn’t need to waste her chakra on a jinchuriki that will just heal on her own soon … but the ministrations are oddly soothing. And if I could use the excuse of a healer to feel maybe a little more human, I wasn’t going to push that away. Yet.
Cracking my eyes open, I immediately see that Bee prone right next to me; obviously, he had been treated before me and we had been lined up so whoever woke first would have a full view of the other. Common treatment techniques for injured veteran shinobi, but not a civilian practice. Who was this woman?
I turn my head to the other side - my left - and catch sight of long, silver hair just a tad too bright to fit in with the Land Of Lightning natives. It takes one second, two, for me to realize -
“Okurimono?”
The question tumbles out of my mouth before I can stop it, and when she just smiles at me in return …
The mysterious storyteller has taken off her bandages, leaving a breathtaking face. Her cheekbones are sharp, her nose narrow and defined, and her eyes so wide and expressive … it's an almost ethereal effect. She looks more like a goddess come down to earth, with her hair falling into a halo around her.
And her eyes - looking at them makes my heart catch a little. Her eyes are bright red - fresh blood red - but beautiful all the same. She’s a demon come from hell. She’s a spirit trapped on Earth. She’s -
Impossible to describe, ageless in her otherworldliness.
Maybe the blood loss is just getting to me. Or I’m just entirely too gay for this.
Okurimono - storyteller, healer, spirit - is smiling as she’s knitting my flesh back together.
“Yes,” She affirms, smile tugging at her lips. “That’s me. Bee was up an hour ago, but he drifted off again. You will both be fine.”
Good. Good. That’s good.
With a grimace, I push myself up on my forearms - ignoring Okurimono’s admonishing look - and have to suck in a breath at the bolt of pain racing up my side. My apparent medic only sighs, but - clearly knowing she wasn’t going to keep me down for long - only reaches out and supports my back as I reach a sitting position.
All around me - us - is chaos. We haven’t left the hamlet, it has just crumpled and burned around us. The last vestiges of blue flames flicker out around the foundation of what was once the inn. The hitching posts and carts are crushed and splintered, their carcasses desolate.
And the corpses. The clearing left by the hamlet is full of corpses.
This unnamed settlement - this outpost - had 20, maybe 25 people living here. To come and see Okurimono’s show, another 30 traveled to see.
With the instincts only year and year and years of training could give me, I counted the bodies with one fell sweep of my gaze. 61 bodies littered the ground. 61 bodies of children and farmers and families and travelers. And those were only the ones large enough to count.
My breath catches in my throat, and I don’t even object as Okurimono lays an arm across my shoulders and pushes me back to the ground - tearing my eyes away from the visage of a dead child gripping a ragdoll and forcing me to instead look at the unforgiving night sky.
I give into the darkness.
UCHIHA SASUKE
“I don’t like this.”
I snort, glancing at the Dobe. Trust Uzumaki Naruto to cut to the crux of the matter.
The room full of shinobi and clan heads on the other hand…
“And what exactly is that supposed to mean?” Shikamaru demands harshly, on edge and exhausted after spending hours and hours planning with the shinobi collective on how to capture this ‘Sai’ and get information out of him.
“Down, boy,” I drawl on reflex, Noa’s old automatic response to when tensions would rise too high. I almost regret it when the Nara heir flinches, but I push on through - it shut him up after all. “That isn’t what he meant and you know it. Let him rub a couple brain cells together - it’ll take a sec.”
Ino snort, and I think the Hyuuga Clan Head is hiding a smirk, so I count my snark as a win while Naruto gets his thoughts together.
“The Akatsuki are targeting Jinchuuriki,” My teammate parces out, words deliberate and slow as he attempts to vocalize the instincts he relies on so heavily. “Three weeks ago the Kazekage was attacked and nearly killed for his bijuu. Shukaku would’ve been removed and used for kami-knows-what and Gaara would be dead if not for a modification that Gaara and I made to his seal years ago to reduce the strain the seal had on both of them. Akatsuki were counting on a different type of seal, and couldn’t extract Shukaku before Konoha’s aid arrived. It was a fluke, but also a tell - evidence that even though the now-dead Akasuna no Sasori and Iwa no Deidara were in the know about aspects of village security and details in Suna, but not enough to intimately know about the aspects of Gaara’s seal.”
Naruto scans the room, taking in the gathered shinobi. He locks eyes with me, a silent prompt.
“You think that because Akatsuki attacked with such a poorly formed plan, that they’re getting desperate.”
It isn’t a question, but Naruto nods anyway: “That’s the thing. Why not wait? Why not get more information? Why now? Why not years ago? Why not Konoha or Kumo or Taki? Renyard, the Fox, has told me he’s lost contact with 4 and 5 from Iwa, and 7 from Taki. It makes no sense.”
Shikamaru seems to have caught on, his eyes glazed as he looks at the map of the Elemental Nations in front of him. “Something is pushing them. A deadline that’s making them reckless. Something that is making them make last bids that may or may not go well, but need to be attempted anyway. They’re desperate.”
“What are you getting at?” Kiba asks Naruto, worrying Akamaru’s ears. “That Akatsuki should be our priority?”
“Hn,” I grunt, drawing the attention of the room. “If they’re desperate then they’ll get sloppy, but if they get sloppy then it’s easier for Danzo to step up and utilize the power vacuum.”
A moment of silence.
“So we need to speed up the timetable,” Shikamaru concludes, eyes dancing frantically over the map. “Naruto, keep us updated on whether any further bijuu are taken. Ino, we need to get Sai - tonight. Naruto, stick around incase we need to break any of those damn seals Danzo is known for. Once we get him, Inoichi-ji-san we’re going to need to get him to talk and fast.”
He looks up at the room, face grim. “Now scatter,” He orders tiredly. “We’ve all been missing for too long.”
OKURIMONO
Once Bee and Yugito drop back under and stay under, conditions stable, I let myself breathe. And then I slap some seals on them to keep them under.
And I turn my attention to the two forms strategically placed out of view of the two Kumo shinobi, both bound and contained within the barrier of silence I had erected around them.
‘Thank you Ruto, for the custom made tags.’
I stand, brushing off my filthy kimono, and walk towards the two members of the Akatsuki I had captured.