Chapter 47

Itachi is one scary motherfucker, Gaara said to himself as his clone dispelled itself, ending his stream of information from the fight between the Akatsuki and the two jinchuriki. Watching that had taught him one key thing. As he stood now, Itachi and Kisame would run circles around him. It didn't matter whether he was one of the strongest active kage or not. All that mattered was that the Akatsuki would kill him the m moment they decided to get serious about him. Both he and Han had struggled to contain Son Goku, and Kisame had done it all with one manoeuvre. Tailless tailed beast, indeed. Han was one of the deadliest taijutsu fighters, Gaara had ever got the chance of witnessing, and Itachi ran circles at him before catching him in genjutsu and ending the fight there.

It would have been impressive if it weren't so scary at the same time. He zoned out of the conversations between his strike team as they flew back to Suna. The truth was that he couldn't bring himself to care about how their experiences in Suna had gone when his mind was consumed with one single thought; how do I get stronger? He knew that he wasn't born with the same benefits as demigods like Naruto and Sasuke. But the reason he'd stayed away from selecting either of those bodies was because he didn't want to have to deal with the destiny baggage that came with living either of those lives.

Hagoromo had clearly been watching the reincarnations of his sons for a while, and the last thing he'd want was Ninja-Jesus on his tail. Besides, Gaara knew the fact that his life would be less his own than it would belong to others was going to piss me off. Still, he had a plan. He'd said so for so long. And only held himself back from implementing it out of a desire to get to the upper limit of what he could achieve on his own. Sure, he wasn't there yet. He had leaps and bounds left to grow by before he'd be knocking at the door of his full potential. But he no longer had the time to let the slow march of progress take its course.

For whatever reason, good or ill, the Akatsuki had made the decision to go after the tailed beasts earlier than they did in canon. If Gaara could be certain that Sasori would be the one sent after him, then he'd sleep easily, but the fact that Deidara was dead threw one hell of a wrench into things. The fact that he would not be certain who he was facing until they were face to face with him meant that he had to become strong enough to tell the lot of them to fuck off. Yes, that included Pain. And so Operation: Rebirth was born.

XXXXXXX- ONE MONTH LATER

"Are you sure about it?" She asked for the seventh time in the past hour. Gaara knew that she only did it out of concern for him but that still didn't mean that he was blessed with the patience to deal with having his motivations and decisions questioned at every turn.

"If I wasn't, we wouldn't be here. Now get it over with" He replied tersely, patience long worn thin. In the month since he'd returned from Iwa, Gaara had spent every spare second studying a single thing. The Sharingan. Kakashi Hatake's Sharingan, if we were being more specific. Well, more like Obito Uchiha's, but there was no need to split hairs over such a minor matter. A month of study, and while I was nowhere near an expert on the Sharingan, I knew much more than I did at first. I was also pretty certain that the eye was not going to go blind by the time I began using its mangekyou ability. My theory regarding how Obito could use his ability nonstop was that Hashirama cells let him heal almost constantly from the Mangekyou's desire to blind itself.

For myself, my plan was to let my new seal do the job for me. It wasn't anywhere near the strength of a hundred seal that Tsunade had on her forehead but I'd been working on it for a while now, and it was something to be proud of. Near instant regeneration of the eye was the main function of the seal. The connection between the eye I'd be implanting and my chakra network would run through the seal first. The complex display of years of fuinjutsu training sat on my forehead as an unobtrusive black dot. The Blessed Seal of Theótita. It had four key functions. Firstly was that it was going to act as a bit of a dam for my chakra. It had the passive ability to leach on my chakra reserves, taking the unused excess for itself, but just like Tsunade's strength of a hundred seal, I could funnel my chakra into it as necessary. Its second function was that it could heal the sharingan I was going to implant in my skull. How? Well, I had to rethink healing as a whole.

When a healer healed, they encouraged the body's natural healing with chakra. That was why even after healing some wounds, scars would remain to show that the wound had once been there. A rare few, Tsunade and her apprentices among them, had the power to heal by promoting cell division to heal beyond the bodies natural limits. That was more regeneration than pure healing, so to speak. There was a third, lesser known and rarely implemented means of healing that I was implementing with the Blessed Seal. Where other forms of healing pushed the body forwards, this one dragged it back. The Seal of Theótita had two functions to aid this- one, it could scan the target completely, in this case, Kakashi's eye- two, it could reject any damage or change done to the target, seemingly reversing the flow of time to return it to its original state. It wasn't an easy thing. The more damage the eye took at a go, the more chakra the seal required to pull off what it was doing.

That was the key reason why the seal was still considered incomplete in its present state. Presently, it only fed on my reserves. My eventual goal was to acquire a cursed seal for study so I could figure out how the things managed to drag in nature chakra to power their functions. Once I had that, the Seal of Theótita would have a source of virtually unending chakra at its beck and call to ensure that nothing ever overcame its power and managed to damage the eye. Currently, according to my calculations, the seal could heal all the damage that consistent use of the mangekyou's ability would cause, but would drain me to death if someone ever managed to slash the eye in half or whatever.

Now, the question I got from Chiyo when I gave her the rundown was why wasn't I just using the seal for my entire body. The answer was obvious to anyone who looked at it for longer than a second. The seal returned things to status quo. If I used it on my body, then any gains from training would be turned to naught instantly.

The final two functions of the Blessed seal were that it could both power the Sharingan's constant drain with its chakra so I left my reserves delightfully unmolested, and serve as a power source for ninjutsu if I ever needed it to.

"Are you ready?" Chiyo asked, and I settled for glaring at her. She took that as my reply and her hands glowed green as she reached down and plucked out my left eye. I felt none of the pain as the numbing effects of medical ninjutsu kicked in almost instantly.

She reached down again, and began the simple surgery to connect the sharingan to my optical nerve and get it up and running. What really needed to be studies was just how doujutsu worked in this world. For some reason, they were extremely easy to just plug and play. It was almost like they'd been engineered to be as easy to transplant as possible.

That proved to be true in this case as the moment the eye was installed and plugged in, so to speak, I could see right out of it. It was something to get used to. My right eye was leagues behind my left as the sharingan rendered everything in a startling high definition. I could pick out specks of dust as they flew behind the screen we'd sanitised for the surgery. I could pick out the most minute expressions on Chiyo's face as thoughts ran through. It almost felt like I could just reach out and pluck the thoughts right out of her head. Thankfully, before I could succumb to the temptation to try, a blue screen overtook my vision.

_NOTICE: Foreign Intrusion Detected. _

_Player has implanted a sharingan in his left eye socket. Perception + 10; Wet Tinkering + 20; Intelligence + 5; Genjutsu + 60; Endurance -10. _

I read through the notification and dismissed it immediately after, turning back to Chiyo. "I assume that everything has gone according to plan". I said.

"See for yourself" She replied, tossing me a mirror.

Staring across from me was my face as it had always been, free from marking or scar. The only difference was that where my right eye was a calm teal, the left was a fiery red, glowing with the passion that the rest of the world had learned to associate with sharingan wielders.

"Perfect" I replied. Now, it was time to test this bitch out. Before that, though "What do you think of the formulas I submitted to you?" I asked her.

"The idea is ambitious, but I am not so sure about the side effects, and risk of crippling yourself permanently by going down that route."

"It's fine. While I was in the throes of your amnesia, I had an idea or two. I should be able to blunt most of the side effects with some further fine-tuning" I said to her. 20 extra points in wet tinkering was nothing to scoff at. I could already see dozens of ways that I could have been better, more precise, with transplanting the Dead bone pulse into Shira. I could see even more ways of harnessing the explosion release kekkei genkai I'd stolen from Iwa. Transplanting it to promising academy students would be just the tip of the iceberg.

It took all that I had to resist the urge to collapse into uncontrollable cackling. Chiyo might try to kill me again if I did.

XXXXXX- JIRAIYA OF THE SANNIN

He wasn't expecting a parade or anything. Certainly not a festival or national holiday in their name, but he would have at least expected some more gratefulness on the part of the detestable Taki elders. They'd saved the village's sole claim to fame and here they were being cantankerous old codgers- he had Tsunade to thank for that delightful bit of phrasing.

They'd left Orochimaru with Naruto and Shizune at the hotel room to avoid causing offence, and now the bastards left them waiting outside the meeting room. He could already tell that by the time the clock struck twelve, signifying that they'd spent an hour waiting, Tsunade was going to break the door open and barge in. The patience she was presently displaying was impressive but any idiot could tell it was wearing thin.

"Legendary Sannin?" A head poked out of the council chambers five minutes before the clock struck twelve.

As they were literally the only ones in the waiting room, neither of them bothered to reply. "Please come in. The Elders will see you now." In an eye blink, Tsunade had covered half the distance between them and the door to the meeting room, dragging him along for the ride.

"Introducing, Jiraiya the Gallant, one and only Toad Sage, and Tsunade the Legendary Healer- Two of the Students of Hiruzen the Professor, Late Third Hokage of the Village Hidden in the Leaves" The secretary said as they walked in. He almost preened at the flattering introduction.

He stared across the table at the elders of Takigakure. Right from the beginning of the meeting, things had been set for failure. First of all, he hadn't noticed it at the time, but the announcer had failed to recognise them as the valid envoys of Konohagakure. Even worse, their obvious leader was spilling a bunch of bullshit that wanted to make Jiraiya pull out his hair and stab the man with it.

The village leader in name only, Shibuki, was content sit back and watch as they got insulted buy his council of advisors. What a fucking coward, Jiraiya assessed in head.

"So what exactly are you saying?" Tsunade asked, a clenched fist being the only sign of her very obvious fury. It took a lot of audacity for these village elders to do what they were doing. Pissing off S-rank shinobi with nothing to lose was a surefire way to end up in a shallow grave with a painful journey there.

"What I am saying in exact and unequivocal terms is that we cannot support you in this civil war of yours, to supplant the Hokage of Konohagakure. It is only even out of respect for your previous deeds that we have not sent word down to the Hokage himself and agreed to take this meeting" The one who went by Hizuki said in a voice that made Jiraiya itch to separate his head from his shoulders.

"Have you not listened to a word we've said? Danzo killed Hiruzen. He's no rightful Kage of Konohagakure. You would be taking the right side in this" Tsunade said, arguing. She was always the more determined of them. Jiraiya could already tell that there was nothing they would be getting from here. Nothing useful, definitely. Just another rejection out of the near dozen they'd managed to stack up.

"We only have your word for that, and even if he did, he has still been confirmed as the Hokage by the Daimyo, has he not?" The same man asked again.

"So you will not be helping us" Tsunade surmised

"Even if we could, we would not be able to. Shall we send dozens of our Jounin off with you to die in an ill-thought civil war in exchange for nothing? Based on your promises alone? Surely you see that there is nothing we can do for you" Another council stepped in here, perhaps sensing that there would be no stopping Tsunade's fury if that idiot opened his mouth another time.

"Is that your word on this Shibuki?" She asked, turning to the actual leader of the village.

"May-maybe you should ask one of the major villages. We really can't help you with this." Tsunade scoffed audibly and stood up. Jiraiya joined her.

"We will not be forgetting that Taki broke faith this day" She said as she turned to march away with him hot on her heels.

"So what's the next step?" He asked her when they'd finally put some serious distance between them and the village government building that housed the council's meeting room. Under the shade of the great tree, he could not get as good a view of her eyes as he should have, but he could still see a glint in them. A very familiar glint. People always remembered him for being the prankster of the lot, but little who lived in their younger days could deny the existence of Tsunade's mischievous streak.

"We seek a major village, of course. One of the big 5. Or big 4, since we can't really head back to Konoha to look for help in overthrowing the damn Hokage." She said. He was about to reply to her when a tadpole suddenly appeared at the corner of his vision. That was the code that he and Naruto had developed for communicating with each other when they were separated.

"Back to the hotel. Now" He told Tsunade before disappearing in a body flicker. Keeping to civilian speeds had been a concession made for the peace of mind of those who watched them, but after how that meeting had gone, he couldn't really care less about that. Especially not when Naruto was trying to get his attention. Logically, Jiraiya knew that it was not an emergency. The code they had for emergencies was a much more visible thing. No one would ever manage to miss Gamabunta appearing in the middle of a village.

Nevertheless, they made it to the hotel in good time, diving through the open windows to land in Orochimaru's room in unison. His room was where both Naruto and Shizune had set up shop in their masters' absence since he was the most secure place to be in the village apart from aforementioned masters.

"I got a letter, Ero-sennin" Naruto said at their entrance, already far more used to their antics than he'd been a scarce few months ago. Jiraiya, against his will, smiled at the nickname even as Tsunade chuckled and walked forwards to ruffle the boy's hair and pick up the letter.

"It's for me, you brat" He said on noticing the code in which it was written. Looking at the ink smudges on the edge of the paper, it was clear that this missive had been written with some amount of haste. It was also written in the most basic version of the coded language he used with his spies in Tsuchi no kuni.

"What does it say?" Tsunade asked, clearly reading something on his face as he read through the letter for the second time to make sure he hadn't made any mistakes in deciphering the code. He knew he couldn't have- so familiar was he with the code that he could have written it while half asleep and high on enough intoxicants to drug an elephant, don't ask questions. But still, the news was just that surprising. He didn't answer until he had completed his third read as he used this one to try to gather his thoughts so he could deliver the news in the most efficient way possible.

"The Fifth Kazekage, Gaara of the Desert, led an attack on the Village Hidden in the Stone. He maimed the fourth Tsuchikage, Kitsuchi, and in a fight against the Village's Jinchuriki managed to cause the release of the Yonbi. Much of the Hidden Stone village was consumed in the conflict. The infrastructure repair costs are estimated to be in the billions of yen" He said briefly, not mentioning the bit about two men with cloaks of black and red being seen leaving the area with both of Iwa's jinchuriki. He'd assured Naruto that he would have time to prepare, and there was nothing to be gained from making the boy feel unnecessary panic. He'd tell Tsunade and Orochimaru about it once they put him to bed.

"So what do we do next? The number of great villages we can seek out just went down to three." Tsunade said, making Orochimaru scoff.

"I maintain that we don't need any of them. I have an army back in the hidden sound village that can help us with what we need. The three of us working together would make short work of that old cripple" He said, tone haughty and slimy as ever.

"I agree, but how would we match up against the Second Tsuchikage? Or the third? Especially under edo tensei? It wouldn't be a fight" Jiraiya said with a long suffering expression on his face. This was not the first time they would be having this argument.

"I doubt that whatever stooge he's had learning the jutsu would be good enough to bring them back at anywhere even remotely close to the peak of their powers. Besides, if you're so worried about that, you shouldn't have forced me to release the jutsu in the first place" The snake said, rising from his previously relaxed position on the couch to get in Jiraiya's face.

The toad sage assessed the situation with an easy sigh before saying, "I wouldn't have made you do that if you'd told me that Danzo forced you to teach the jutsu to his Root agents, would I? Besides, that jutsu is an aberration, a mockery of nature and all that I stand for. I could not abide having it cast by one in my vicinity." He said, refusing to back down from his teammate.

"If you two are not going to fight it out, then you might as well step back from each other" Tsunade said, stepping in between them and defusing the situation with the ease that came from having spent decades as the only thing between the both of them and all out combat. They heeded her orders and she smiled in satisfaction.

If there was one thing she'd noticed in this team reunion was just how the dynamics had changed. Instead of Jiraiya being the one who constantly attempted to pick a fight with Orochimaru, it was the other way around. She placed the blame for that squarely on the seal that both men bore on the right side of their upper bodies. Not the seal itself, but how it got there. She hadn't gotten a real answer from either man, but piecing the brat's words together gave her enough of an idea.

After Jiraiya released Orochimaru from Danzo's fuingenjutsu, he had them both returned to the Toad realm. Freshly released, Orochimaru wasted no time in trying to claim his freedom and Jiraiya's life on the way to it. Everything she'd heard and deduced about that fight told her that it had been as one-sided as a fight could be. Already in that famed sage mode of his, Jiraiya unleashed the beating of his life on the Snake summoner. Even when Orochimaru had been going for the kill and Jiraiya had been fighting merely to disable, the Toad Sage had handily claimed victory. After that, binding them both with the seal had been easy for him.

Tsunade herself knew that if she and Jiraiya fought while going all out, then the Toad Sage would invariably come out the victor. While she'd spent years wandering the countryside, and Orochimaru spent the time on his sick experiments, Jiraiya had become the most successful active shinobi in Konoha history, completing hundreds of S-rank missions where most Jounin failed to complete even one across their entire career. That experience had given him strength. Enough strength that the dead-last from the academy was now the most powerful of them all. Their Hokage, she'd sworn. Both she and Orochimaru were in agreement on that one fact. Jiraiya, as the one who brought them together, had shown that he was willing to do whatever was necessary for Konoha's future. He was the one that the Jounin, Chunin, and Genin of the village would lay down their lives for. He was the inheritor of Sensei's will of fire, whether he liked it or not.

"The question still remains, where do we go to seek for help?" Jiraiya asked, getting them back on topic.

"If it's a choice between Cloud, Mist, and Sand, then there isn't much of a choice, is there? And no, Orochimaru, Sound isn't an option. Even with Stone's help and the element of surprise, you still failed to take the village." She said, shutting down her teammate's idea before he got to voice it a second time. He scowled, but the lack of retort showed that he understood.

"I still don't trust the Kazekage brat" Jiraiya said, needing no time to figure out her proposed course of action.

"I know. But we aren't exactly spoilt for choice. He already has reason enough to have a bone to pick with Danzo and he's clearly shown that he's strong enough to hang with the best of them and come out swinging. He has strength, motive, and he's also young. He's the perfect choice."

"I know you think he'll be easy to manipulate, but trust me Tsunade, there is something foul in those eyes of his"

"I don't care. We need help. He'll give it to us. Orochimaru, your vote?"

XXXXX- TEMARI OF THE DESERT- TWO MONTHS LATER

"Faster" She heard him bark out as he weaved around Shira's stabs. She scowled and opened both her hand fans to their maximum before sweeping them at him, causing a swarm of invisible wind blades to get sent at her annoying little brother. She hoped that being stuck in the middle of an exchange with Shira, he would be unable to dodge in time, but those hopes were all for naught as he leaned out of the way of one of Shira's bone blades before slamming a palm into her teammate's midsection before he could react in time.

Shira was sent flying off, out of range of the attack, and Gaara merely smirked at her before he did the bloody impossible for what felt like the seventieth time in this training session. He jumped in the air and contorted his body in such a way that not a single one of the invisible blades touched him. The glowing red eye in his left socket spun at them, as if it were mocking them.

XXXX

"Kai" She heard from beside her and turned to see Kankuro with his hand on her shoulder as Shira and Gaara fought each other a few metres away.

"Sharingan genjutsu?" She asked Kankuro, already knowing the answer to her question. Her brother settled for a nod as she scowled in annoyance. It was the seventh time she was getting caught like that, and even Kankuro who often hid behind his puppets had been caught a few times already.

She'd thought that getting him to make the concession of not using his sand manipulation or any of his ninjutsu would give them anything close to a fair fight, but even that was not enough. The glowing red eye he sported as he fought Shira to a standstill using nothing but pure taijutsu was just the ultimate cheat code. Even with Shira's new ability to control his bones, it was all he could do to remain in the fight as Gaara refused to allow himself to be pressured by the older boy.

"Is this how the Senju felt? Fighting against the Uchiha?" She heard Kankuro ask. It was probably a rhetorical question, but one that she still felt the need to answer.

"Very few Uchiha got as good with the Sharingan in their entire lives as Gaara has managed to in the past two months. Add to that the fact that his sharingan is fully evolved where most Uchiha never lived long enough to achieve that, and you'd get a thoroughly different state of affairs." She explained, making him nod. From the moment Gaara had shown up at home with a different person's eye in his socket, she'd torn into all the information they had on the clan and their famous doujutsu. Not immediately, of course. She'd dedicated some time for chastising him for undergoing life altering surgery without even so much as informing them of what was going to happen. They were his siblings, damn it.

Not for the first time, Temari cursed her father for forcing Gaara to grow up without them

He never learned the value of family as a child, so focused and used to working on his own. He'd been confused as to why they'd been upset at him for not telling them. Yes, there was nothing they could have done to help with the procedure, but there was still some peace of mind that would come from having it be known to her that her brother would inform her whenever that kind of thing had to happen. Terrible situation or not, the implanted Sharingan had been one hell of a boon for Gaara's combat ability. She had no doubts that Gaara was one of the strongest people in the world even before getting the fancy new eye, but implanting it had taken his combat process to whole new levels. His growth was nothing short of explosive. She got the privilege of watching some of his kenjutsu lessons with the ANBU Commander, and the word 'lesson' seemed to fit the situation less and less with each passing day. At first, they had been evenly matched, with the ANBU Commander holding back by some fair margin. That margin had now more or less disappeared, and when they crossed blades, they did so as equals.

It was a bit scary to watch how he could easily match and nearly surpass someone who had spent their whole life training the craft just with a few more lessons with those fancy eyes. Watching Gaara had made her realise one key thing. Itachi Uchiha needed an award of some sort. The Uchiha clan wrote truly too dangerous to have been allowed to live. Even if just a mere 10% of their number showed as much skill with the Sharingan as Gaara did, then they'd be in for a world of hurt.

She watched as Gaara shuffled backwards, looking for all the world like he was dancing with his opponent to avoid the multitude of stabs that came from Shira's movements as he wielded bone blades that stuck out from both his fists, elbows, and chest. Shira's new kekkei genkai had also been another matter of contention. She couldn't believe that Gaara had somehow figured out how to transplant kekkei genkai, and then used it on her classmate who had not a single drop of ninjutsu talent. For some reason, that lack of ninjutsu or genjutsu talent had no bearings on Shira's ability to use the _Dead bone pulse_. He wielded the powerful kekkei genkai like he was born with it.

Being completely honest, Temari had never had many doubts about Shira being the strongest of them all but that gap had grown in just a few months since he got released from the hospital. She looked down at her hands, and the fans clutched in them. Kankuro was shaping up to being a legendary seal master of renown; Shira had a kekkei genkai that allowed him fight almost evenly with Gaara who had a sharingan. Both her teammates were leaving her behind, and it felt like there was nothing she could do about it. Sure, she had her fans. Yes, Gaara made them to be legendary weapons on par with the legendary blades of the Hidden Mist, but a weapon would only ever be as powerful as its wielder, and she was thoroughly lacking in that regard.

Her moments of reflecting prevented her from seeing the conclusion to the fight between them, but she heard the sound of bone breaking ver clearly. She looked up and found Gaara holding one of Shira's bone blades to his neck with the latter on his back on the sandy floor.

"You held back" Her teammate grouched. Her brother merely smiled in return.

"Using genjutsu on you when you have such little resistance or even potential for resistance felt too much like cheating, so I had to do things the old fashioned way" He said while tossing the bone blade away before reaching down with his hand to help Shira to his own feet. Accepting the peace offering, Shira took the hand and was returned to his standing position almost immediately.

"That bone sure did heal quickly" Gaara mused idly.

"It was a clean fracture." Shira said, hand on his chin. "You stamped on it at an angle to make sure that the break would be as clean as possible. The bone probably began melding pretty much immediately after I landed on the floor" he theorised.

"So, what do you think you did wrong?" Gaara asked, getting to her least favourite part of these sparring sessions.

Whenever Gaara beat them regardless of what restriction they placed on him, he'd add salt to the wound by insisting they went over their preferred strategies and the happenings of the fight immediately afterwards.

"I didn't guard my feet well enough" Shira said, making Gaara chuckle.

"No. To this eye of mine, you were full of openings. If you'd guarded your feet, I'd have gone somewhere else instead. What you did wrong was the same thing you've done wrong in almost every practice session in the three months we've spent working together on getting your combat up to snuff. You're reinventing your entire fighting style to take advantage of the dead bone pulse, and while I don't condemn you for that, you also have to realise that you can't use both fighting styles at the same time. You can't fight in the way you did before getting the dead bone pulse. The differences caused by four protruding bones on each of your extremities means that you have to switch things up a bit…" She zoned out as Gaara got into more and more detail on taijutsu. Sure, she knew that hand-to-hand combat was a key skill for every shinobi to learn, but she'd never excelled at it. And she also couldn't deny the truth. Taijutsu bored her. It had too much repetition, too much effort required for even the most minute improvements, and nowhere near the amount of flair that good ninjutsu could display.

Her other gripe with it was that she was shit at it, but that was neither here nor there. Gaara was calling her attention.

"What I did wrong is obvious, I kept meeting your eye." She said, hoping with all her heart for him to just nod and move on after her admission of fault.

"Wrong. Funny enough, what I used against you today was a trick I saw Itachi Uchiha use on the five-tail Jinchuriki back in Iwa. You see, Han is- or was- an experienced shinobi. He'd definitely fought more than a few Uchiha in his lifetime. He knew not to meet the Clankiller's yes, and yet he did precisely that. It's confused me for a while but now I have a theory. Right before their eyes met, the Uchiha blasted the Jinchuriki with a fireball jutsu that the hardy jinchuriki walked right through. It confused me. It wouldn't take a genius to figure out that the Gobi Jinchuriki would be highly resistant to fire release. Itachi clearly didn't have enough chakra to just waste it on futile efforts. So now I have a theory on how he did what he did and why. The fireball jutsu was both a distraction, a taunt, and a hook. He expected Han to walk through it. He anticipated it, in fact. That's why the fireball was laced with a genjutsu. Not anything ambitious. Just a minor genjutsu that made the Gobi jinchuriki meet his opponent's eyes for a split second. It was enough to end the fight there…"

"That's what you did to me" She cut in, interrupting the tangent that Gaara had begun to go on after realising just exactly what he was getting at.

"Precisely. Unlike Itachi, I have the reserves to just spread my chakra all about my surroundings. And the best part is that since all you were looking for was sharingan genjutsu, then you paid little attention to your chakra network when our eyes did not meet. Once I could get you to meet my eyes, however, there was little you could do about that on your own. Sharingan genjutsu is an effective, insidious thing. I don't even have to put in much effort to force you into a mental sleep. Or force you to replay a moment ad infinitum until you either realised, collapsed from mental strain, or got rescued by someone else." He said, rubbing a hand over the eyelid that now covered that red eye of his. When he opened the eye again, it took a phenomenal application of mental will to resist flinching at the sight. Yet, Gaara still noticed if the way his gaze on her softened was any indication.

"What else did you do wrong?" He asked her, changing the topic and moving on.

Temari sat still on the ground as she reviewed the fight mentally. Trying to figure out where she could have acted differently or where she could have been more effective with her actions.

"I can't find anything else" She said to him, expecting some form of criticism or condemnation from daring to suggest that she'd only made a single mistake. Instead, his smile widened and he looked upon her with such fondness and affection that she felt her cheeks light up in a bright red. This was the first time he was looking at her like that, and he walked forwards to plop a hand down on her shoulder.

"Neither can I. You fulfilled your role with perfection. There's not much more that you could have done with the arsenal at your disposal. That does mean that we need to work to widen said arsenal, but that's neither here nor there. You were amazing today, almost the polar opposite of our brother who's trying his hardest to blend in with the sand" He said, turning his attention from her to Kankuro seamlessly.

"Your head wasn't in it today…."

XXXXX- NEJI OF THE BYAKUGAN

"West, three hundred metres" He said, identifying their quarry with ease. There was nothing that could hide from these eyes of his, and after Danzo-sama took him under his wing, that statement had become more and more true with time as his range expanded nearly constantly.

"On it" His partner said, moving in a blur of speed that would have made Rock Lee envious. He cleared his mind of thoughts of his previous team. Danzo-sama would not be pleased with thoughts like that popping up while they were on a mission. Especially one of this level of importance.

He tracked his partner as the younger boy ran through the trees while leaving almost no sign of his presence of passing. When he finally arrived right above their targets, he executed his movements with a fluidity that would have made Neji's previous self jealous. He jumped right at one of them with a kunai clutched in his right hand. His other hand reached into the shrunken pouch at his waist and tossed five of the throwing stars at the other.

The tossed stars moved in such a way that it was nearly impossible for the Kusagakure Chunin to dodge them without abandoning his previous position and retreating. That retreat put him in no position to help his partner as he clashed with the Uchiha prodigy in a dance of furious taijutsu. Sasuke Uchiha picked apart the Kusa chunin, making the man look like an academy student. Flashing red eyes tracked every movement as he kept his opponent on the back foot. Neji turned his attention away from that fight, the conclusion already decided by destiny, and sought out the last target. The third scout had taken a less direct route back to his home village, hoping that would hide him from the Byakugan. What utter foolishness. Neji decided on a path for interception and moved.

In a matter of minutes, he'd caught up to the man. "Eight Trigrams: Vacuum Palm" He whispered, executing the jutsu seamlessly. The man, mid-jump, slumped down to the ground dead as the attack tore through his heart.

"I take it that you succeeded in the mission" Their immediate Commanding Officer said in greeting as they appeared in the command tent and executed flawless salutes in unison. All around them, the tent was abuzz with motion as dozens of chunin and genin scrambled to perform various administrative tasks. Sending a whole nation to war was not the easiest of things to do, and required so much administration that it hurt even Neji's genius mind to consider.

"Yes we did. All who saw the encampment now rest in the halls of Naraka" His partner, Sasuke, said. Neji leaned heavily on the emotional control that had been quite literally beat into him to prevent himself from rolling his eyes at his partner's need to use the most dramatic phrasing for every sentence. Neji was the Hyuga here, and Sasuke clearly had even him beat in terms of sheer dramatism.

"Perfect. We must be ready to move in the next 12 hours. Go get some rest and prepare yourselves. Your roles in the invasion are of paramount importance" The Yamanaka said, blond hair flipping over his shoulders as he turned to the rest of the room after dismissing them. He was one of the few hundred shinobi that Neji had seen appear out of nowhere in the aftermath of Danzo's ascension as Kage and take up positions of authority within the village.

If he gave the whispers in the wind any iota of serious consideration, then he'd believe the rumours that Danzo-sama had been in charge of some secret division of Anbu that were out of the control of Lord Third, and only after taking over the position had he decided to integrate them in the standard hierarchy. The idea was stupid beyond stupid, and he'd told TenTen so the moment she'd made mention of it. Lord third was undoubtedly the greatest Hokage that Konoha had ever had, and it was ridiculous to suggest that he'd ever be foolish enough to allow a whole division of special operatives beyond his control.

It was much more likely that Danzo was pulling his people from the more obscure areas of Konoha' military and promoting them to replace the people that the previous Hokage had relied on. It was reasonable, as well.

"Neji" He heard from besides him as he walked out of the tent. He turned to his new partner and teammate, Sasuke Uchiha.

"Hm?" He grunted at him, waiting for the Uchiha to explain what he wanted.

"I'll be at the stream if I'm needed" he said before disappearing in a shunshin. Neji wondered why he'd been told. Did the Uchiha honestly believe that there was anywhere in the vicinity of the camp that he would have gone to that Neji would not be able to locate him in a matter of seconds. Putting the thought from his mind, Neji jumped upwards to one of the large trees that hid the camp from view. One of the commanding officers, a man by the name of Tenzo, with the rare ability to use the First Hokage's kekkei genkai had created the cover that their entire camp relied on.

He was another example of commanding officers that had come out of the woodwork after Lord Fifth's ascension. It was a strange thing. To think that a kekkei genkai as storied as the wood release would have managed to lay under the radar so thoroughly.

Tenzo was no Senju, Neji knew this for a fact. Even as a branch family member, his lessons were comprehensive enough to tell him that there were no more Senjus beyond Tsunade, Hashirama's granddaughter. As a display of the kind of unity he wanted from the village, lord First had enacted two policies for his clan that saw them more tightly integrated into Konoha than any other. First of all, Senju clanswomen, more than any other, intermarried with the other clans, and even the civilians. At this point, virtually every clan that called the village home had some manner of Senju blood in their line. Not the Hyuga, but that was because of strict breeding requirements the main branch mandated to maintain the purity of the byakugan. The second policy was that the Senju, more than any other, occupied the front lines when it came time for war. Not even the Uchiha had as many clansmen on the lines for the First two great shinobi wars.

When the Second Great War went as far as it did, it was Senju genin that were sent out first. Famously on Lord Second's orders. Neji admired the selflessness and devotion, but the Senju clan was no more. Whatever he had against the main branch, he could not imagine a world without the Hyuga clan. "I heard you and Sasuke would be part of the first charge" Tenten said as a manner of greeting. He acknowledged her presence with a nod, before thinking over her statement that was really a question.

"Indeed. Lord Fifth wants us to gain valuable experience fighting shinobi from a hidden village. As the Village Hidden in the Grass is not one of the Great Five, even their Jounin would be nowhere near as powerful as the ones from back home" He said in explanation, answering both unasked questions.

"But what I really can't see is why we're even doing this in the first place. Iwa were the ones who broke faith during the Chunin exams and conspired with Orochimaru to destroy the village and Suna were the ones who snuck their Kage into the village and blew up most of it. If we were going after either of those two, I'd understand. But why are we going after Kusa?" She asked, looking genuinely confused. Neji weighed his options. What he knew had been told to him in confidence, but he'd also never been told not to divulge the information to others. As a fellow Chunin of Konoha, did Tenten not have as much of a right to know as he did?

"Iwa is gone. For the most part, at least. The Kazekage led a team of Jounin there, and in a fight with both of Iwa's Jinchuriki managed to destroy the bulk of the village. They are rebuilding but aren't going to be a threat for years. Suna, on the other hand, are strong. The Kazekage fought off the fully manifested Yonbi without sustaining any injuries. It goes without saying that we don't want to risk fighting Gaara of the Desert in the desert until our position is as strong as it could be. Taking Kusa is just one of the first steps in a longer war effort. We'll be in position to quickly advance on Iwa if they prove a threat, and it also lets us warn Suna that we won't sit idly by while they make moves" he explained.

"Suna is in the entirely other direction" She said, and Neji struggled to find the words that explained why their actions here would matter to Suna miles away. He wouldn't have understood it if not for years of lessons with the clan, and now with Danzo. He looked at his old teammate's face, black hair framing dark eyes and was saved from replying by a whistle.

"Change of plans" Someone shouted at him from below.

He acknowledged the summons and nodded to Tenten before leaving her side to the command tent.

A/N; Progress, progress, progress. That's the name of the game. Yes, Jiraiya is the strongest Sannin in this story. That's both my head canon and pretty well established in canon. Itachi beat Orochimaru with ease, but said that if both he and Kisame fought Jiraiya, the best they'd bet would be a stalemate. Next 2/3 chapters up on pa-treon now.