AN: alright, not really a decisive response, so I guess we're doing this mostly chronologically. Mostly.

Takashi couldn't recall ever actually setting foot in Fire Temple before, but it was somehow familiar and exactly as he expected it to be: imposing, austere, stuffy.

It was not the sort of place he ever expected to see her.

And yet, not ten minutes after wandering in the front gates as a tourist/pilgrim, he spotted her despite the loose hood over her distinctive hair and the unnaturalness of her garb. The plain beige robe was a far cry from ripped jeans and skin-tight tops in jewel tones, and her face was bare without the coppery eyeshadow she favoured and the dark rust lipstick.

Despite everything done to mute her, she was still exotic.

She made every limb in his body cold with nerves and his heart thud painfully loudly.

He did not want to do this again. Not again.

Always, always, the power imbalance between them. It grated at him, the knowledge that he held her life in his hands, literally. Procedure dictated that he should end her, clean up the loose end. Another procedure, one more forward thinking, clamoured that he should have brought Arisa with him to clean this up.

And yet…

His ability to end her had died in their third year together. Oh, he had pushed it down and hidden it from himself and everyone else beneath the facade expected of ANBU, but there had never been any way he could have put a kunai in her brain without fumbling.

All she had to do was look at him.

The worst part had been knowing of his power over her; he had never been able to fool himself into thinking that they could be equals of any sort while on the mission. He had been her team leader. And so every offer she had made had been a blow, tempting and repulsive at the same time. Always, always the strings attached, the hidden motives that he had refused to get tangled up with.

It had been even worse only two months ago. He had held the power of knowledge and memory over her even as she had circled him, all unknowing, trying again to melt his resolve not to dishonour her by not meeting her on equal footing.

It was hard. So many years wasted because of circumstances he couldn't change. He hadn't been willing to give her false hope either, knowing that the situation likely would never change in her favour.

Because in the end, she was just a civilian dancing on a string. A pretty songbird in a cage.

But he knew what her lips had tasted like ten years ago.

Those dark, rich eyes spotted him, and she froze. He wasn't sure if Tenzou had helped her connect the dots somehow, but he saw her lips move: Mamoru. It was his turn to falter. What would she do now that she knew both of his faces? It shouldn't even matter—he was in charge here, the one holding all the cards—and yet she held him in place with her eyes as she hesitated for a while before walking towards him, cautious.

Her recent lifestyle had been good to her: she was a little more wan than he remembered when she had last flirted at him and somehow managed to make him laugh, but she was still so much more than she had been as Hiromi. Hiromi had been stifled by the chains of their arrangement: the location, the society, the role, the food, the turmoil. Eiko had glowed with contentment in the life she had carved out for herself. Back in Kirigishi, she had looked old for her age. Now, she could have passed for three years younger.

Thirty-three. She was thirty-three.

And he was forty-three, so much of his life behind him.

"Takashi," she whispered when she got close enough, studying him with wide eyes.

He didn't know what do to. Smiling would be dishonest and crying would be too bold. He settled for a whisper in return. "Mae."

Her eyes widened further, and she shook as she clasped her opposite upper arms in an attempt to hug herself. He wished it wouldn't have been such an insult to comfort her somehow, but it was. It always had been. Fury raged against Tenzou for making him come here and face her again, for making him play with her life like a puppet master yet again. Why couldn't he just trust Tsunade-sama to handle this for him?

But he couldn't. He wouldn't.

Mae's life was his responsibility. It had been since she had first performed all those years ago with him for that hotel receptionist in Tanzaku Gai while Seiichi and Yuji waited in the hotel room.

He looked so… so lost. Mae (Eiko? Hiromi? Gods, she was so confused, but at least her life had forked after she had turned seventeen and the last few years had definitely been Eiko's. It was just that all those years in between had doubled somehow with completely different memories.) had never seen him look that way before.

Not that she wasn't just as lost. She wasn't even certain of her motives anymore. Was the reason she had wanted to lick her way up his sternum only a few weeks ago been because of the subconscious traces of the memories she had only just regained? Either way, she still wanted and had never gotten.

Intolerable.

Takashi and Mamoru looked so different: it baffled her that it was the same man, and yet, with her memories back, she remembered how it had taken her months to not startle at Hiromi's appearance looking back at her from the mirror. She had known both faces for years now, though Mamoru's for much longer, but it was so hard to overlap them. Even the look of the eyes was different: different lines, different wrinkles, different expressions.

He really was a master.

Hiromi really had been a cardboard cutout in comparison to Mamoru.

Holding them side by side, Mamoru had been more sarcastic, more willing to joke with his family, whereas the Takashi Eiko knew was more solemn, more guarded, and pained. No wonder though. He had been watching her carefully. Not being able to truly set aside the mission…

Well, she wasn't sorry. It wasn't like he'd set Seiichi aside either.

Tenzou had begged her to stay put, had sworn he would send his father to her to explain everything and to help her, but now that it came to it, she was still on the fence. Part of her wished she had just kept running, because the way she wanted to push Shimura Takashi against a wall and suck him off without even the possibility of reciprocation was a bit disconcerting. Seeing him break down and get off because of her would be more than enough now when last month it never would have been. Last month, Eiko had wanted him to want her back desperately. She still did, but it was of secondary importance now.

She had never been a prude, had never denied herself her sensuality or sexuality, but Eiko had always felt wrong about wanting Takashi the ninja. She knew why now: being rejected so consistently for so many years by Mamoru and the man beneath had been a blow to her confidence. She remembered seeing the woman who had rejected him—a freak with white eyes. The Hyuuga woman had been elegant, stately, sorrowful, and yet poised. Regal.

Whether she was sexless as well wasn't something Eiko had ever had the chance to find out other than the fact that the woman had two children with her husband.

Mae figured she knew what he was expecting her to ask, given how things had ended for Hiromi. She decided to partially oblige him. "You were the carter who brought me to Konoha, weren't you?"

He nodded.

She deliberately reached out, ignoring how he tensed, and cupped his cheek. "Your laugh made my head tingle." Rubbing her thumb over his cheekbone as he stayed stock still, she chuckled. "It was your laugh that broke it, you know. Fractured it until the pieces started coming through." She let her hand drop from his face, but she made sure to caress the tip of every finger over his lips on their way back to her side and enjoyed the way his eyes involuntarily darkened.

She let the self-satisfied smirk turn the corners of her lips just so and watched his gaze catch there for just a moment too long.

This was so very satisfying. She wanted to shiver with the accomplishment of it, but that would be setting the bar very low.

Turning abruptly, she strode towards one of the sedate fountains in the courtyard, resisting the urge to sashay or put more swing in her hips. Not too much too soon. She sat on the ledge of the fountain's pool and patted the space beside her, and he obligingly sat down as well: tense and closed off and much farther away than she had wanted him. To artificially close the gap, she swung one leg up onto the ledge, her robe hiked up well above her knee to make it work, and looped her arms over the angle of her knee and rested her chin on the cap. "So."

His focus softened slightly, and she knew he was using his peripheral vision to take in the whole picture.

She just barely kept her smile from growing teeth. That's right. I have awesome legs. I know you know that. I'm just reminding you that they're still awesome even without my jeans.

"Mae." He sounded slightly pained and a lot rebuking. It was a very familiar tone. Mamoru had used it a lot to shut her down.

"Takashi, kindly shut up. I can sit how I want. We both know you have way too much self control, so you'd never actually look, which is a pity. You're totally missing out. And if somebody else looks, well, fuck them. They only get to touch if I say so."

He sighed and dragged his hand down his face in exasperation. "You're going to scar the poor monks."

Now she smirked. "Nonsense, it'll do them good. Temptation is good for the soul. Firms the purpose if you manage to hold out, and if you don't… Well, I'm definitely one of the nicer temptations out there. Why on earth would they want to be monks if they could have me? And hair, of course."

He scoffed quietly, but she knew that amused glitter in his eyes. She knew it very well, because it was what had broken the block when the flames were fanned into outright laughter.

But she had questions. "Are you here to kill me?"

That snuffed out all the warmth in his eyes.

Her heart thudded so hard in her chest as the silence stretched out that she could swear it was making her whole body rock with each beat. Shallow breaths.

"No," he said at last, firmly enough that she felt weak with relief. If it was a lie, it was one he performed well enough that she took it as truth, and that was good enough. "No, Mae, I'm not here to kill you. Not you, not Eiko, not the shadow of Hiromi."

"Oh thank fuck," she whispered. "Where's Yuji?"

She was less than impressed when he shrugged. "Difficult to say. He travels faster than just about anybody these days, and no one can be really certain of where he's going or why. He's attempting to be a free agent, so his mobility is essential to staying that way."

That… That sounded bad. "Free agent?"

"He took your disappearance and the end of the mission very badly. Ended up abandoning Konoha."

"Oh fuck," she whispered, clutching at her shin involuntarily. That was— She couldn't even— "Oh gods." Sheer terror. Her son was a fugitive from Konoha. "How is he still alive?"

"He has advantages I still can't tell you about. Best you work it out from gossip. I have the feeling you'll be hearing more about him soon enough."

He tried to sound blasé about the whole thing, but she thought she could see fear in him as well. Not reassuring. "You haven't hunted him, right?"

"I can't answer that question." Which was as good as a yes as far as she was concerned.

She scowled at him. "If you are ever connected to bringing him down in any way, powerless though I am, I will end you in whatever way I can. You know that."

He regarded her steadily, which was not helping the frothing, protective rage roaring in her chest. It made her drop her raised leg back to the ground and slam her palms on the stone ledge instead, teeth bared. She knew that he could break her neck so quickly she wouldn't even have time to know she was dead, but Yuji was her son. That finally prompted a reaction. "I have never doubted your devotion as his mother."

It was a shit response, but at least it meant her pathetic threat was acknowledged. It was even more disheartening to know that there was no way she could go to Yuji. If he was hunted, she would just be something that slowed him down and tripped him up. She couldn't be that. Not ever. And she couldn't somehow get word to him that she was waiting desperately for him to come to her, if even for only a couple hours. The message could get lost and she knew that she would be a chain around his neck.

Just like Mamoru had wiped her clean to avoid.

"Konoha knows I exist."

He nodded.

"Why haven't I been used yet to bring him down?"

He hesitated. "Your existence after the mission was only known to five people: me, the monkey agent, whom you lost when you left Konoha, Tenzou, who recognized you in Konoha, Atsushi, who was never told exactly where you went, though I believe he spotted you in Konoha once, and the Sandaime Hokage. As far as I'm aware, the Sandaime didn't share the details with anyone except perhaps my superior. Tsunade-sama knows, but she has never mentioned you to me in that context. Again, there are complications to Yuji's existence that make pulling you out a double-edged sword, at least in Tsunade-sama's eyes. Atsushi-san has passed away, so really, only Tenzou and I have been keeping an eye on you, to the best of our knowledge.

"If others in Konoha learned of you, I cannot guarantee they would care enough about the consequences not to try to use you against Yuji, but it truly is a terrible idea in the long run. The outcomes could be… Well, terrible doesn't cut it. Yuji's relationship with Tenzou and me was damaged by our actions at the end of the mission and other circumstances more recently. Yours, though, is pristine, at least so far as I can tell."

"You mentioned your superior, that the Sandaime told him."

"Possibly. His position in the chain of command is such that I would expect him to have been informed. I cannot validate that though."

"And you're not worried about him not agreeing with Tsunade?"

He actually snorted. "No."

Oookay then. "So all I can really do is keep on with things, huh? Hope the situation doesn't shift enough that I'm usable and that Yuji stumbles across me someday. Maybe slink farther away into the shadows, in case someone you don't know about has caught on."

"That really is your best course of action if you won't submit to having another block put in place."

"You offering that as a choice?"

"I shouldn't. I should force it on you again. You're not a good enough actress. But your part is small this time. You're part of the scenery. You're too close for me to be certain though, so I do urge you to go through with it if you're not willing to move more permanently to a safer distance."

He had a point. She didn't run into many ninja given the crowd she ran with, but there were some, especially among the younger set. If she slipped up… She reached out and brushed her thumb over his lips, holding him still with her stare. "You'd never let me even kiss you if I went back to just being Eiko." She remembered with humiliating clarity how he had tolerated her walking her fingers down to his belt that one time, cool as a marble statue and just as into her.

He frowned at her. "What makes you think I'd let Mae do it any more than I'd let Eiko?"

She smiled just slightly at him. "Because you want me to and because I want to. Because I know who you are. And because, ninja or not, I know how to kiss better than you do. More practice. Better control." She let her smirk loose before rising to her feet. She saluted playfully and sauntered away, off to find something to do far away from him.

As much as she liked his stare drilling into her back, she didn't think either of them were ready to have him watch her the way she really wanted him to.

The woman behind the mask of Snake–28 was slipping away. Itachi watched it happen hour by hour. It wasn't a hard stop, but it was measurable.

She would trail behind them, keeping that boundary that Hinata required. Originally, she had poked and prodded it, wandering in and out of the specified range quite deliberately. She had laughed when particularly deep incursions had led to Hinata reacting badly, and that loss of the zen-like state she had used to find the range with Hinata that first day made Hinata's reactions worse.

But the zen-like state started being normal.

And the incursions tapered off.

He had considered boredom or professionalism, but the theatrics that made her recognizable still came up sometimes during the periods he dropped back to check on her. He was something like her team leader since he had accepted her companionship on this journey, so he felt responsible. He was curious besides.

Attempts to probe her for more information about his mother's possible interference had ended in chuckles. The knowing look in her eyes began to fade into something cold and brittle.

It was as though a person was disappearing.

On the afternoon of their second day of travel together, a fair ways into the seemingly endless stretch of desert that was this area of Wind, she flared her chakra in staccato pulses and began to drop further behind.

He called for a slow to the pace and dropped back to check in with her, Kakashi-san and Hinata's curiosity a physical weight upon him as he drew within range to see the delicate curls of green around the eye slits of her mask.

"What is it?"

"Here is where we part ways." She slowed to a halt, her manner suddenly grave. There was a strange hollowness about her as she closed the gap between them at a walk, appraising him with golden brown eyes. "Walk with one eye before and one eye behind, young politico. You have three eyes between you of Sharingan and two of Byakugan. A tempting prize."

A gloved hand reached out, fingers stretched towards his left eye socket, and he struggled not to lean out of her reach as she ended up brushing her fingertips against his cheekbone.

She suddenly grabbed the crystal of the Senju necklace. "That boy… Why are you wearing a ghost's necklace? Another Senju ghost." She had done something very similar when he had checked on her solitary camp yesterday night; similar phrases, similar motions, yet she didn't seem to notice at all.

He tried to answer a little differently this time. "Snake–28, it is the promise that I will become your Hokage."

She laughed and tapped his nose. "Mikoto-kohai eyes beneath Hokage hat. Yes, yes. Of course." She shook her head and seemed to come back into herself a bit. "It has been boring travelling behind your team, Uchiha Itachi. No shadows to slay. No clouds to trouble the sky. No game to play. But you don't like my games, do you?"

He frowned at her. "I don't believe they are even fun for you anymore. Do you retain enough to make the decision I saw in you when we left Konoha?"

That white and green mask tilted to the side. "What is there to decide? We are ninja. We are death. This is the game we play, and everyone else always loses. Civilians are not good at our game. I don't think she was very good at it either." There was a sinister pause, and she peered detachedly at a gloved hand that looked very, very wrong. "I got better though." Her eyes flicked back to Itachi. "My opponents didn't. I always get such boring opponents.

"If you become Hokage, will you give me opponents that are more fun to play with, politico-kun?"

That angry mass in Itachi's chest he had been ignoring lurched, but he pushed it back down. "You will have to wait until I get there to find out." He tried to find the hidden person in her eyes that had disappeared over the last couple days. "You will decide?"

In response, she left a spray of sand arcing northward.

Snake crouched on the side of a tall building near the eastern edge of the wealthy district, watching Port Mure stay busy and alive despite the stars above it and the lateness of the hour.

"No one may sleep," she trilled again and again.

Electric lamps and crude torches, she saw evidence of them and every stage in between holding off the darkness in the stinking streets of this city, doing battle with the cold and distant light of the heavens, drowning it out until the sky was just black.

"But my secret is hidden within me,

my name no one shall know…"

Less than a kilometre away, the six towers of Clan Yiri loomed. Lights glowed in scattered patterns along their sides as inhabitants resisted the urge to sleep.

One of those lights was hers. She should have grinned, but the poor ventilation of her mask had made her lips crack something awful.

And really, what was the point.

"Vanish, o night!

Set, stars! Set, stars!

At dawn, I will win! I will win! I will win!"

Snake mechanically went through the motions of the game with the coming of the sun.

(There was something she was supposed to remember about this round…)

Report to the local Konoha outpost. Check.

Konoha maintained a presence in most of the major cities on the continent, covertly. It was very rare for a city to be deemed so dangerous to be caught in that no more than a single agent was monitoring it.

(Something someone had said…)

Port Mure, being such a hub for trade, had the biggest Konoha presence of all the major population centres outside of Fire Country. The local chapter maintained a front as a fabric store, but Snake didn't bother going through the motions of pretending to be a customer or a delivery person. That had stopped being fun.

Instead, she ordered a pot of black tea at the shop at the end of the block and waited.

(Words in one ear…)

She nodded briskly to the elderly woman who came to sit at her table. She had probably met this agent before, but Snake was very used to not recognizing Konoha people. Her lack of memory was useful at times; this particular woman was quite off-putting. She managed to look down her nose at Snake despite how they sat with eyes at nearly the same height.

"You are slower than expected. Sloppy."

(…Out the other?)

Snake sipped her tea and stared blankly at the bitch; it was not worth her time to project a lethal aura with this one. Better to make it very clear how little this small woman's opinion and existence mattered in Snake's cloudy world.

Apparently, her point got across. "The Yiri have a very controversial visitor. There are rumours he will be around for a long while, that they are giving him living space. A very powerful guest. One that should be ours."

Snake blinked slowly and deliberately.

"The container."

Ah. That eliminated some possibilities, but it wasn't anything debilitating. She knew how to stay out of the way of bijuu and jinchuuriki, unlike her damn fool kohai. Both of them now, unfortunately, since Tsunade had gotten Kakashi mixed up in this particular jinchuuriki mess. She shrugged.

(Something about spite?)

"Firing him won't accomplish what they hope," the woman grumbled.

Snake shrugged again. That plucked some memories, something her favourite kohai had told her in Konoha… Yes. Yes. That was familiar. She had decided something… What had it been again?

(Desert flowers? What flowers grew in a desert? It was a fucking desert.)

Oh well. Didn't really matter.

"Any competition?"

The woman held forth her cup, and Snake mechanically poured. Some traditional and formal motions slipped in. Probably from some training she had been given. She couldn't recall, as usual. Didn't matter. "Not in particular. He's not the most gregarious of men, but he is earnest and his people do their best to keep him on good terms with the others in his merchant block. They've accomplished a lot for this city. He holds a lot of favours and is known to be in the Daimyo's good graces for paying his taxes properly and making Port Mure capable of swelling his coffers even more."

Get to the point. Snake just stared.

(She had known something. Someone had given her words. Someone?)

After clenching her jaw, the old woman shook her head. Leaving two bills on the table, Snake finished her tea and left without a word, though she did take the notes the woman had managed to slip into the satchel she had propped by her feet just for that purpose.

Study notes from local agents. Check.

(Decided something. Had decided something for herself. Why did it nag at her now?)

There were the usual points in the notes: age, medical history, usual haunts, financial status, social connections. The last section was much, much longer than usual, but it wasn't relevant to her work, at least not this time.

She wore henge and rented a room with a view, a view with windows that opened. She drifted through the city along the paths in the notes.

She waited.

She killed a few muggers that were too stupid to live, punching in their tracheas and watching them struggle to breathe for a while before ending them. Their wheezing had been worth a giggle. A short, mechanical one.

Days?

She wandered some more.

(Why had she decided anything? It never meant anything.)

She spotted him entering a restaurant from the notes. A favoured business meeting spot.

She wandered the area, straying well out of range a few times as best practice for stalking targets with potential guardians dictated.

(She never remembered. Memory like a sieve.)

And when he left with his entourage, she noted him pass her in the street and twisted chakra without handseals very carefully as she inspected some lentils. A clot formed.

The walking dead man staggered.

Collapsed.

(This was… She just couldn't remember if this was what she had decided or not.)

His entourage tried to be helpful, but she had been thorough. She shadowed their progress through the streets to a medical facility and was not surprised when the medic was not competent enough to recognize exactly how doomed his new patient was immediately. It quickly became apparent to him, however.

It was inconvenient how the dead man lingered in a coma as his brain swelled in the aftermath, but that would soon end.

Target dead. Empty checkbox. For now.

(In the end, it didn't matter. Only the game mattered.)

Not as involved as some of her other missions, but the coma was annoying. Strokes were tricky. They had to be done just right to kill immediately. Lingering for a while was expected, but it was another boring part of the game.

It did give her time to stab some other would-be muggers though. The way that heavyset one had sauntered…

The lumpy ridges halfway down her left forearm had somehow forced their way to the centre of her attention until he was a broken lump at her feet in an alley not too far from the docks, his mates leaking drool and blood or bile.

She had cleaned her switchblade, a civilian knife she had bought just for carrying around as cover in Port Mure, on his pants as he breathed raggedly, wetly.

It had somehow been very fitting.

Gloria held her father's limp hand and trembled as the doctor tried to explain why such a healthy, robust man like her father had suddenly had a stroke without warning. He tried pointing the finger at stress, and while that was valid, he had been under no more stress than normal.

Her husband held her when she strode out of the ward and into his arms.

"Please convince me it's a natural stroke," she whispered, clutching at him. "Please."

"They can't be behind everything," he tried.

She didn't even dignify that with a response.

Her feet carried her to a door and her fist began knocking urgently. "Yuji-san, please! There is a favour I have to ask of you!"

She dragged him to her father's bedside, ignoring his awkward shrugs and guilty look. "There's no sure way to tell," he repeated. "Chakra dissipates outside the body."

"Please just try."

"I'm not a Hyuuga or an Uchiha. I can't see chakra."

"Please."

He sighed and looked down at the pale shadow her father had become. He passed his hands carefully over her father's head and neck and down his trunk and each limb in turn. "Ku-man?"

Gloria forced herself not to cringe away when a fox's head formed over Yuji's own and bent down to sniff carefully.

Uchiha Itachi stared down at the valley that Wind Temple stood in, a tiny blip in the perfect lines. "Hinata?"

"It goes so deep," she whispered, both eyes activated. "I cannot see into it. They have some kind of barrier, stronger than the one fuzzing places in Konoha. With those, there is static and mild seepage, wisps of impressions. Here, there is a void. I can see the halo of boundary though. Chakra powers it." She turned to meet his regard with one blank white eye. "I think Kyuubi could raze this valley again, and the place would still be here."

Hatake-san whistled. "No chance of us breaking out if they decide they want to keep us, huh?"

She shook her head. "Not with force, Sensei."

That gave Itachi pause. He had been expecting to have trouble getting in, but getting out hadn't even impinged on his awareness. Arrogant of him, apparently. "Hinata, I hate to ask this of you, but it might be better if you remain out here."

She frowned at him. "Why?"

"It is very unlikely that they don't know what you are and that they will approve of you entering their barrier since once within, nothing will be hidden from you. Also,"—and here he had to choose his words carefully—"they worship Kyuubi and the other bijuu here. I do not know whether Kyuubi left some mark on you that they can see and whether he marked you in a positive or negative fashion. I would rather we not find out."

"You want me to stay out here," she said flatly, quietly furious if he were any judge. "What if they know something that could help me?"

"They worship Kurama-san, Hinata. Anything he does is divine."

She hissed something under her breath, something that might have been "Then maybe I don't want to go meet these maniacs."

"I will evaluate the situation as we go and see if bringing you in is feasible, but until then, remain out of the temple." He turned to the other jounin. "Hatake-san, I know you are partly here to safeguard Hinata while we are out of Fire territory, but I think it prudent that I do not enter alone either. Please provide a bunshin as you see fit." He left it at that and bounded down the steep valley walls.

The well-oiled hinges let the massive double doors swing outward silently, and Itachi pulled them both as wide as they would go and wedged them open with stone before stepping onto the threshold. "Anyone?" he asked under his breath.

Hinata, standing on the wide steps to the landing before the doors, clicked her tongue three times against the roof of her mouth without opening it, visually obscuring the source of the noise.

Itachi cast his eyes over the murals and pillars, looking for traps, but he doubted he would recognize them, even with his Sharingan. Trace chakra breached the surfaces here and there before sinking back into stone or tile or wood designs. It was like watching a pod of dolphins. He held Hinata's gaze briefly before taking a wary step forward. Hatake lingered by the door and beside Hinata before one of him trailed after Itachi.

When Itachi reached the first set of pillars, he stopped, clapped twice, and bowed. He was familiar enough with Amaterasu's symbols that he felt comfortable performing this small bit of respect. Raising his head, he let the tomoe in his Sharingan spin as he raised his voice. "I am Uchiha Itachi, ninja of Konohagakure of Fire. I come not on behalf of my village, but to fulfill of quest given to me by Kurama-sama, the Ninth, the Purifying Flame. He and I struck a bargain within Uzumaki Naruto, who styles himself Yuji, two years ago in the Red City. I have one condition remaining to fulfill to keep up my end of the bargain, but it lies outside my current understanding of the world. I have come to Wind Temple in hopes that the monks here, who too know the Purifying Flame, have advice on how I can best keep my word to him.

"Please, would someone please receive my plea?"

Itachi was met with empty silence, as he had expected. He kept his hands at his sides, palms up in supplication and in a show of nonaggression.

Fifteen minutes.

Thirty-five.

Fifty.

He could hear Hinata shuffling impatiently behind him, but he did not dare look back at her in case the motion appeared threatening. The Hatake with him had settled down into cross-legged indifference and was flipping through his damn book, but it was probably the best he could hope for. Hatake-san was irreverent most of the time, and at least he appeared nonthreatening this way.

There was only the sound of the wind, Hinata's impatient sighs, and the scrape of paper as Hatake-san turned a page for nearly three hours. The shadows began to stretch long and stark. The faint sound of Hinata softly snapping her fingers twice reached him.

Someone had departed.

Itachi didn't move other than his eyes tracing the dancing wisps of chakra. They were a multitude of colours and intensities: some were brilliant enough to leave an afterimage.

Finally, Hinata softly clicked her tongue five times, paused a beat, and then snapped twice more.

"Why do you linger by the door, ninja-san," a woman's voice called mockingly. "You perform the proper obeisance to Amaterasu-sama, but you do it from so very far away!"

"I know when I am outmatched," he said evenly. "Your passive strength in just this room is enough to hold even a bijuu as far as I can tell. I would like to meet in peace so I can best serve Kurama-sama; I cannot uphold my end of the bargain if I am trapped or worse. I have been warned that Wind Temple is not to be trifled with."

She laughed, high and full, from behind him, and he slowly and deliberately turned to face her. Hatake-san was on his feet, book nowhere in sight. Outside, Hinata and Hatake were standing with their tension visibly restrained.

The monk, clad in brown and orange, was pale, entirely bald, and thin faced. Her eyes were equally pale, though it was difficult to tell the colour since the source of light was behind her, the ambient light outside.

Illusion? Could this monk be so overconfident as to put herself in the midst of three ninja and a bunshin?

Given the little disappointed moue she made when none of the ninja made a move to strike her dead, apparently there had been some surprise in the wings. With a huff, she snapped her fingers, and the temple's great doors were suddenly shut without going through the trouble of swinging closed, never mind the earth wedges they had carefully put in place.

The Hatake with Itachi inside the temple also disappeared. There was not the slightest trace of smoke, just chakra being sucked into the floor.

"We may know Kurama-sama to be God, Ninth, but that does not obligate us to help you, Uchiha. We are well aware of your lineage and your clan's history, on both sides."

Itachi suppressed the urge to arch an eyebrow at that. It had never bothered him before, but it was a little disconcerting how both of his parents were from the same bloodline. How far back cousins had started intermarrying wasn't something he had investigated, but it did raise some awkward questions. And he did not know what other bloodlines had joined with the Uchiha, keeping all their children from having six noses or horns. "As I would have guessed, your knowledge outmatches my own. I only trace my lineage back to Madara's time; beyond that point, Uchiha is the only aspect anyone mentions."

"Madara would be the most recent of your relatives we have quarrel with, yes. For Kurama-sama's sake, if nothing else."

"Am I to be held responsible for the sins of my relatives, of my bloodline, back to the time of Kurama-sama's birth?"

She began to circle him, eyes he now could see were grey never leaving him. "And how else would you have it, Uchiha Heir?"

"Your information is a little out of date, I'm afraid. I am not the heir. I stand apart."

There was a long silence, and then she began to chuckle. The laughter grew until it was nearly a hysterical cackle. "Oh, you are serious, aren't you? Is that all it takes?"

He shrugged, a little uncertain about which way she meant that.

"And you did it without guarantees like a signed blood pact from Tsunade and the Fire Lord?"

It was his turn to chuckle. "It would be useless. They can appoint a candidate, but the jounin of Konoha will have their vote."

Her voice lost all mirth. "And you think aiding Kurama-sama will buy you votes?"

"If anything, being seen as a willing aide to Kurama-sama will drive votes away from my cause. But I gave my word, and I will honour it. Kurama-sama wants to ensure Madara cannot reappear in this world no matter how the ninja may try."

That stopped her pacing. She tapped a long, bony finger on her lips thoughtfully. "I see. Edo Tensei is concerning, especially since Madara had the opportunity to study it carefully. Any technique that attempts to harness the dead is fragile, susceptible to appropriation as a means of more permanent haunting. Especially with Matatabi-sama missing.

"Well?" she called into the depths of the temple.

There was no obvious answer Itachi could observe, but she shrugged, paused, spread her hands, and finally nodded once sharply. "Right. Uchiha Itachi, former heir of the Uchiha. We hear your plea and judge the goal sufficiently worthwhile to contribute some advice.

"The bijuu–may they reign in glory for all the ages of the world–do not understand the nature of death aside from Matatabi-sama. He is the exception. Kurama-sama asked a very hard thing of you, a mortal human trapped within the cycle. As Konoha's Nidaime Hokage has proven, it is possible to pull things back to this plane, at great cost, but there is an enormous activation barrier and the Shinigami wins in the transaction since he gets both the vessel's life as well as the target soul back in the end. What you wish to do, in essence, is the reverse: nudge the soul farther along the cycle of the afterlife than it would otherwise have traversed in this timeframe. If you could get some leverage on the Shinigami, I'd say it's possible. But if anyone could get leverage on Death, they would probably be immortal by now.

"The way I see it, there are only two paths: get Matatabi in your corner or attempt to reverse engineer Edo Tensei to the point where you can twist it to becoming a push rather than a pull." She smirked. "Which do you feel would be easier?"

Itachi hoped Kurama really wasn't attached to that deadline. "The first requires me to locate Matatabi-sama and manipulate a cat bijuu into feeling gratitude or honouring some bargain. The second requires me to get the jutsu from my Hokage, learn enough about seals to take it apart, learn enough about the mechanism of death to reverse the force… Yes, the second sounds much more doable," he deadpanned.

"Kurama-sama must really not like you or Madara," she said with a merciless rictus grin.

Daichi frowned as something pinged on his awareness. On Tsunade-sama's orders, he had set an alarm ring around Kaijin Village to detect when chakra-users entered—a crude thing compared to the sophisticated net that encircled Konoha, but one that he was capable of maintaining alone. He had painted some of it before Matsuku Yasu, letting the old man see it as part of his lessons on "the picture jutsu", just the simplest of the functions, the most basic of modifier rings. It had some very interesting modules that Daichi thought were particularly elegant that had fascinated the civilian man as expected.

Tsunade-sama had been worried that ninja might target someone within the village. While that wouldn't have surprised Daichi given the reason a ninja was stationed here in the first place, what worried him was the implication that it would be Konoha people.

Konoha people not acting on the Hokage's orders.

Now there was a scary thought.

As he had once been the Hokage's counsellor on education during the period just prior to and up until halfway through the Third Ninja War, he had been aware of children leaving the system. He had kept careful track because he had been fighting specifically to make sure children did not graduate early or get sent to the front lines. The first stance had earned him Danzou's enmity and eventually Hiruzen's impatience as the war chewed through Konoha's ranks. The last message he had received from Konoha indicated that some of those missing children might be the ones coming.

Root.

With a sigh, Daichi rubbed the stump of his right arm and grimaced. He was entirely too crippled for combat—it was why he had retired into an advisory position in the first place, thanks to Hiruzen.

It just went to show how much his stance on the Academy had irritated Hiruzen that he had allowed Danzou to have him "posted out here to make himself useful".

Banished was more correct.

Still, he hadn't been idle. He hobbled over to a cabinet and, after unlocking it, pulled out three moderately thick books. Bookmarks he had added over the last few days let him find the correct pages easily. With a thread of chakra, he activated the book on his left. The thread followed his only hand as he tapped on the open page of the book to his right.

Chakra cistern connected.

Tracking and targeting activated.

Closing his eyes, he let Kaijin occupy his mind as the targeting seal sought the chakra-user.

People always underestimated fuuinjutsu. Even Hiruzen, who had let people call him the Professor of all things, had been more interested in ninjutsu than in the real beauty of fuuinjutsu. And the Yondaime might have figured it out with time, but even he had been foolishly hands on with it.

Well, it did take time to see beyond the ninja mindset. Decades in his case.

Whatever ninjutsu could do, fuuinjutsu could do better. It just took longer to set it up.

Unless you had spent the last twenty-five years preparing in advance.

There you are. One. Two. Three… Six, hmm?

His left hand pressed against a page in the book in the centre and he became the conduit between the seal and the cistern.

Life did like providing little surprises, even at his age. He had never thought that the seals he had written to use on the Matsuku Clan should the Hokage give the word would instead be used in their defence.

How ironic.