59. Homecoming

Story Start: Hokage Office

Tsunade had a migraine. Rubbing her fingers at her forehead, the fingers coated in green healing chakra, she said skeptically "Aliens."

"Yep, aliens, hence the communication silence. Either you didn't believe us and sent another team to try and capture us so that way we could be sent to the looney bin or you DID believe us and the information inevitably gets leaked causing a panic." Naruto said.

Tsunade gave him a gimlet stare and said "Just so you know, because I can easily foresee that second one have happening in a shinobi village, causing a massive load of paperwork, you get off on the lack of communication this once. You pull that stunt again though and I WILL hogtie you three with your chakras sealed and toss you to the paper pushers for a month as their gofers."

Matto and Heza showed the appropriate levels of taking that threat seriously. Naruto, the almost certainly screw slightly loose nutcase that he was merely snickered a little while giving her a thumbs up.

Tsunade gave a deep sigh before she straightened and said "Alright, moving on from the aliens bit, you said you managed to grab some new tech for our forces?"

"The engineers on the Infinity have been working on reverse engineering a few flying machines we grabbed, Admiral Matsuki was given a newly completed warship we swiped right out of the shipyard the night before its crew was supposed to start boarding, oh, and I brought back a few alien corpses for study that had honest to sage cloaking devices on them."

Naruto tossed a sealing scroll to Tsunade who looked at it with intense interest for a moment before putting the scroll into her pocket. She would be doing the autopsy on those creatures personally.

Putting her attention back to the others, Tsunade nodded and said "Excellent, now Matto, I believe that it goes without saying that your 'S-class' explosive seal is NOT to be passed around and only used in times of war."

"Of course ma'am. The only other person who knows anything about its design is Naruto since it was his clones that placed them at their targets." Matto said with a nod.

"Good, keep it that way." Tsunade said. She opened her mouth to say something else before her head cocked. A moment later she smirked and said "Ooh Naruto, it seems your fiancé knows your back."

Naruto was already turning to the door of the office, having picked up the familiar chakra signature rushing through the building at the same time Tsunade had. Indeed, moments later the door was quickly thrown open and a lavender and cream blur shot into the room and practically slammed into Naruto, the blonde swaying backwards a bit with chakra sticking his feet to the floor keeping him and his 'attacker' up.

"Hey Hinata, I'm guessing you missed me?" Naruto asked with a grin.

"Yes!" Hinata said, squeezing Naruto even harder before she looked up at him with wide eyes and continued "I was so worried, no one's heard from any of you for SIX MONTHS! Rumors were flying around that you wouldn't be coming back!"

"Rumors of our demise have been greatly exaggerated my dear." Matto drawled causing Heza to snicker.

Hinata though glared at the two as she said "It's not funny! How would you feel if the person you're supposed to marry, his team, and an entire Leviathan class ship's crew disappeared for no known reason for half a year?!"

"Well, considering that I doubt I'd be marrying a dude..." Matto started only to yelp as Heza mildly slapped the back of his head.

"Sorry about him Hinata." Heza apologized with an apologetic smile and continued "But yes, when put like that, I imagine that I would be rather worried myself."

"I'm sorry too Hinata, we wanted to send word back but we couldn't risk letting what we had found cause panic back home if the wrong people learned what was happening." Naruto said.

"And what did happen? I mean, you guys were just sent out to stop one ship weren't you?" Hinata asked, turning back to her fiancé with inquisitive eyes.

Team Maelstrom all glanced at Tsunade with inquisitive expressions and the buxom blonde huffed irritably as she said "Two months after your deployment rumors started flying about why an up and coming Rapid Response and Heavy Assault team had been gone from the village for so long. Somehow someone with loose lips found out what your mission was supposed to entail and within a day every Jounnin seemed to know about it, a week later even some of the Gennin were trading theories."

"Good to know the rumor mill of this place is working just fine." Heza said with an amused huff.

"You would think that they would have better things to gossip about." Matto said, though the slight smirk on his face showed that he wasn't as annoyed as his words would make a person think.

"You would think." Naruto said in agreement before he turned back to Hinata and said "It's kind of a long story Hinata, and not just time wise." Glancing back at Tsunade, he continued "And I'm not sure if I can actually tell it at the moment either."

Tsunade frowned for a moment before she gave a dismissive gesture and said "Tell her under a secrecy seal or jutsu, but otherwise keep it to yourselves for the next month. That should give the Daimyo plenty of time to come up with a response to the information you've brought along with how much if any information is to be spread." She glanced down at her desk where some paperwork was and waved her hand in a shooing motion as she said "You brats can go now by the way, but I want written reports in three days."

"Yes Ma'am." Team Maelstrom said with salutes before they and Hinata left the room. Naruto's statement of "Come on guys, six months of nothing but what the Infinity's chefs tried to pass off as food has me craving Ichiraku's." had Tsunade openly snorting even as she focused on the report from one of the border outposts in front of her. After a month long mission with her generation of Team 7 on the LFNS Phoenix escorting the Daimyo she knew damn well that despite popular opinion Navy Chefs could in fact cook a meal that was both nutritious and had some actual flavor in it.

Time Skip: That Night, Naruto's Apartment

Hinata had been understandably clingy for the rest of the day, so when Naruto woke up to the sound of someone tapping on his window, it was to the sight of Jiraiya waggling his eyebrows with a grin. Rolling his eyes, Naruto lifted the blanket up showing that both he and Hinata were both fully clothed in pajamas. The grin on Jiraiya's face remained in place even as he pointed up to the roof of the apartment building before leaping out of sight.

"Can't you ignore him?" Hinata asked, eyes still closed, the veins around them receding. Anyone who said that she had a whine in her voice was a damn liar and that was the story she was sticking with.

Naruto chuckled and kissed her forehead before he said "Sorry Hinata, this is probably important."

"It better be." Hinata muttered earning another chuckle as Naruto slid open the window, closing it behind him and quickly leaping up to the roof. Once he was sitting on the railing next to his Godfather he asked "So what was so important it couldn't wait until the morning?"

"While you were out at sea Akatsuki made a pretty big wave of their own." Jiraiya said solemnly as he handed over a photograph.

"Damn, what the hell pissed them off so much?" Naruto asked as he looked wide eyed at the picture that showed a massive crater, parts of buildings inside showing that the area USED TO BE a town.

"From what I could gather after the fact one of them went after the Jinchurikki of the Six Tails and didn't take no for an answer. And as you can see, he didn't care about collateral damage either." Jiraiya said with a frown.

"When'd this happen exactly?" Naruto asked with a matching frown.

"Two months ago." Was his answer.

"Damn it." Naruto muttered even as he heard his father angrily mutter "I'm going to rip them apart for taking out Saiken like that."

"So what's the game plan?" Naruto asked.

"We've already sent notices to all of the other villages with Jinchurikki warning them that Akatuski's stepping up their game. Whether or not they take us seriously is questionable though, especially since Stone's been known to actually use their services before. Which is ironic considering one of the members we know about is their S Rank missing nin Deidara." Jiraiya said with a minor snort at the end.

Naruto's frown briefly twitched upwards at that and he asked "So did you manage to get a description of the guy who did this?"

"Not much, only person to see what happened and survived was a five year old girl who had been climbing a tree outside of the village. All she could see from that point was that the guy had orange hair and the black cloak Itachi and Kisame had been wearing. Oh, and apparently the guy was hovering up in the air when he flattened the village after the Jinchurikki went beast mode." Jiraiya said with an unhappy frown.

Naruto grimaced and said "Fighting people that can fly can be such a pain in the ass."

"Pot, meet kettle." Jiraiya said with a smirk earning a snort from his godson. Turning serious again, he said "Anyways, back to what we're doing, more specifically what you'll be doing now. General consensus from me, Tsunade, and Shikaku is that if you encounter anyone in their uniform then you flood the area with as many clones as you can then get you and any allies the hell out of there, preferably by reverse summoning your group to one of the summoning realms." Naruto started to open his mouth but closed it when Jiraiya raised a hand and said "Kid, you're good, no one's saying otherwise, but even as good as you are, you aren't S-class quite yet. And while Shadow Clones are one HELL of a force multiplier when we put your chakra capacity into account we can't take the chance that they wouldn't be enough to keep you from getting snatched up. If you see one of those bastards while you're on a mission then you run, am I clear?"

Naruto scowled even as he nodded and said "Clear."

Jiraiya nodded as well as he stood up on the railing and said "I'm going to be heading back out of the village first thing in the morning. I only came back when I heard that the Infinity had finally made port. I'll send a message with one of the toads if I get anything concrete membership wise."

"Alright, be safe." Naruto said as he also stood up on the railing.

"Hey, it's me." Jiraiya said with a smirk.

"Exactly." Naruto said, lips twitching in a smirk of his own.

"That hurts kid, right here." Jiraiya said, patting his chest with his left hand, though his smirk was still in place. The pair chuckled and Jiraiya reached over and ruffled his godson's hair as he said "Go get some sleep kid."

"I would have been asleep still if you hadn't shown up." Naruto mock grumbled even as he leaned forward to give Jiraiya a hug before he made his way back down to his bedroom window. Soon as he was inside Jiraiya leapt off the building, traveling across the roof tops to the hotel he was staying at.

Naruto meanwhile slipped back into bed pulling Hinata closer with a severe frown on his face.

"Bad news?" Hinata asked even as she snuggled closer.

"The worst, but unfortunately nothing I can do about right now." Naruto said.

Hinata sighed and said "That kind of news is the bane of all Shinobi. Want my advice?"

"Always." Naruto said.

"Do your best to make a mental box to place the news in, lock it up tight, and only let it out when it's relevant, otherwise it's just going to distract you from everything else." Hinata said, yawning afterwards.

"Sound advice to follow, though hard to put into practice." Naruto agreed, giving a yawn of his own.

Hinata hummed tiredly in agreement before her breathing evened out as she allowed herself to fall back into Morpheus' grasp.

Naruto gave a sigh and closed his own eyes. But instead of going to sleep, he went into his mindscape.

Opening his eyes again inside the room holding Kurama's cage, he looked up at an absolutely livid biju. Without a word, the world around them shimmered before turning into a massive cityscape scaled for the multistory kitsune. Kurama let out a wordless roar and began demolishing the cityscape. Naruto gave himself a phasing ability allowing all of the debris that came his way to pass through him, merely watching as Kurama let the burning rage in his body run its course.

When the fox finally stopped its rampage half an hour later, he padded back over to Naruto with anger still in his eyes, but it wasn't burning anymore, it was the cold calculated fury that could be stored for a later time when it could be put to better use.

"Kit, when we meet these bastards again, I want control of a clone." Kurama growled.

"Of course." Naruto said with a nod.

Kurama let out a snort and turned around to stalk off, and Naruto wordlessly turned the decimated cityscape into a large forest in an attempt to help his adopted father further calm down. That done, he left his mindscape and tried his best to follow his fiancé into sleep. It would take him quite a while before he was able to do so.

END

Author's Notes: I know that the Biju aren't grabbed until after the time skip in canon. This ISN'T canon. And to anyone who says that the biju have to be snatched in order, I point you to the fact that Nagato went after Naruto BEFORE Sasuke went after Killer Bee. Anyways, I wanted to show that just because the main character was gone for six months didn't mean the bad guys weren't up to something themselves.

There's a new poll up on my profile, have a gander at that if you're up for some self-reflection. Next story I'll be working on is Time Traveling Prince, will try to get started on that within a few days, just need to watch the relevant episode(s) first. Anyway, that's all on my end, see you guys.