Chapter 49

Turns out that when the going got tough, Cyclops could absolutely haul ass with the best of them. He covered the distance between them and the doujutsu user in seconds, with Mangetsu doing his best not to fall behind. Cyclops leaned in with a stab of his kunai. The man weaved out of the way, letting the blade move past him. Mangetsu took a step before jumping into the air for a second. The air was a dangerous place for a ninja. He stabbed down with the blade held in his left hand. The kiba sword cutting through the soft earth as the man moved backwards. Every movement quick and fluid.

Cyclops moved back into the fight. Lashing out with a high kick. Cloaked man blocked with a single forearm. Mangetsu flowed and moved around cyclops to stab with the blade. A black rod appeared in the way to block his stab. Mangetsu smiled. A quick application of his chakra electrified the blade. He felt his smile die on his face as the electricity flowed into the rod and disappeared with no effect. He was forced to jump backwards as the same rod lashed out right at him. Cyclops remained close, stabbing with the kunai and transitioning to taijutsu attacks seemingly at random while the Cloaked man weathered the storm, dodging or blocking all the attacks. Ox → Snake → Ram, he weaved the seals in quick succession before breathing out a torrent of mist. Thick enough that he couldn't see anything farther than a foot in front of his face. He heard it as Ao jumped backwards and disappeared into the mist.

"Formation Two" He whispered into the mist, knowing the Cyclops would hear it. Standard procedure was to enhance your hearing the second the kirigakure no jutsu was activated. The hunter non would not have forgotten that. He quickly tracked down the position of the cloaked man. Cloak 4, he decided to call him. He was standing in the mist, unmoving. How silly, Mangetsu thought. He would not be the first to try something so foolish though. Hoping he'd be able to see the attack coming if he focused all his senses. Ridiculous.

"Eight points: Larynx, spine, lungs, liver, jugular, subclavian artery, kidneys, heart. Each one will kill you. Where shall I strike at?" He asked rhetorically, projecting his voice into the mist just as his elders had taught him. He felt the form in the mist shift for a second and smiled besides himself.

Dead. He body flickered through the mist and stabbed right at his opponent's heart with both blades. Somehow, his opponent dodged by leaning backwards until his torso was parallel with the ground. Before Mangetsu could swipe downwards and cleave him in two, Cloak's legs lashed upwards. He felt the kick force him backwards and took the pain with nary a grunt before disappearing into the mist again. He felt another presence in the mist as he heard a pop of displaced air. A large fucking presence. Kuchiyose? He scowled within himself and surrounded his body with chakra in preparation for what was to come. The kiba blades, held at both his sides, flashed with power. He electrified the entire mist for a few seconds and then dove at where he knew his opponent would be. Paralysed, he was sure. He dove. The next second he felt something slam into his body and he was sent flying backwards.

He struggled to hold on to consciousness as he felt his head begin to leak blood. This was bad. Very fucking bad. He felt the wind around him stir as his mist was blown away. A single jutsu, he surmised. He rolled around, struggling against his body's natural desires all the while. He managed to open his eyes only to be met with the sight of Cyclops engaging in taijutsu with Cloak 3, the leader. He could see that it was no fight. Especially as Cloak 2 joined in on the fight. Cyclops was the premier hunter nin Kiri had ever produced. But even he couldn't face up against the two of them at once. They sandwiched him between them. He took a punch from one that knocked him right into the path of the other to receive another hit. He didn't stand a chance, and Mangetsu almost breathed in thanks when they finally put him out of his misery. One of those strange black rods punched through Cyclops' throat as he jumped right at Cloak 2. He pulled himself deeper into the stab to grab a hold of the man with what was undoubtedly the last bit of his strength. He formed a single hand seal. One that Mangetsu could recognise everywhere. He would never be able to tell if it was the blood loss from his head injury or the shockwave from the explosion Cyclops triggered that tossed him into unconsciousness.

XXXXX- HEAD JOUNIN MEBUKI

She weaved out of the way of a sudden strike that had been aimed at her heart, wondering for a second how the situation had gotten so bad. She'd come to work today, expecting another droll day where she had to read report after report from spy after spy. Since Iwa had been basically taken off the map by the Kazekage, not a day had gone without her being forced into one or ten meetings. Some times, there were even meetings that would be scheduled to take place simultaneously with her being shuffled from place to place. Trying to figure out how they could take advantage of the fall of one of the Five was not an easy thing to do and they had a lot of thinking and talking and planning to do before anything could come together.

It was in between meetings, moving from one to another that she had caught a glimpse of him. A clerk, nothing more than a paper pusher, his appearance told her. But the way he walked in between the members of the class around her had been suspicious. It was that suspicion that made her alert enough to dodge the stab that struck out of her as the man transformed from into a child with two fingers stretched out and aimed at her heart.

The gentle fist, her mind supplied with time to dissect the stance he had taken. Konoha were making a move, it seemed. But sending a child to do this? She'd have thought that when they eventually came for her head, that it would be Sharingan no Kakashi or the Green Beast that would be sent for her. One child, and as she dodged out of the way of a sudden katana swipe that would have cleaved her head from her shoulders, she amended the thought. Two children would not be enough, she thought to herself with an inner chuckle while signing at her guards to go fortify the village's defences.

This was most likely a distraction and if Konoha thought they would find Kusa to be easy pickings, then they'd be proven dead wrong. They'd learned a lot from the third war and even if most of their plans were geared for an Iwa invasion, they'd be just as effective against Konoha scum.

She moved backwards, taking step after step to angle herself in such a way that she could keep an eye on both children in her crosshairs. That was when she noticed something else. The second boy looked very familiar. Scarily familiar. Anyone who had ever had the displeasure of running into Uchiha Itachi wouldn't have any difficulty recognising his little brother.

"You look identical to him. You're like a mini-Itachi, kid" She said, and then the boy roared at her words before charging her. She couldn't even figure out what had prompted the sudden stupidity.

A sword swipe came for her head. She leaned backwards. Expert chakra control allowed the few sparks that branched out from the blade to hit her with no effect, seamlessly channelling the lighting chakra into the floor. The boy's teammate was not far behind. She back-pedalled to avoid two quick swipes while preparing for a harder fight than expected. A more rewarding one, definitely. In both their heads lay eyes that would be of paramount value to Kusa. Even better, keeping them alive would give her her own versions of the Uchiha and Hyuga clans in time. Wouldn't that be one hell of a way to ascent to big 5 status.

She went on the attack, dropping a senbon into either hand from within her sleeves. The Hyuga boy danced well, dodging out of the way of her first stab, but falling prey to the second that hid in the shadow of the first. His form burst into the smoke of a well executed substitution as she channelled chakra through her body to take hold of the lightning release jutsu that hit her and direct it to her palms before she fired it right back at the Uchiha boy. He dove out of the way, giving away the shallowness of his skill with the element. Oh how she would have loved to clash with the boy's sensei. The famous Lightning Cutter had to be one hell of a jutsu. She was one of the few in the world that had cut a lightning bolt before and she knew it wasn't a mean feat.

Her hands met for a second before she stomped her foot on the ground. The Hyuga boy was sent flying right back out of the hole he'd dug in for himself. "Subterranean voyage will not work during combat with a stronger adversary. Anyone stronger than a chunin knows how to detect and punish it." She said.

The Uchiha, Sasuke she remembered from the reports, ran at her. He aborted his run at the last second and jumped backwards while grunting. She smiled to herself. Not completely stupid then. He weaved a familiar set of seals that she matched at the same time.

"Fire Release: Great Fireball Jutsu" They said in unison. His ball, bigger than hers was the first to give way when both jutsu hit each other and exploded in a fiery conflagration. The Hyuga tried to take advantage of the chaos to rush at her but she tossed both senbon at him, forcing him to change the angle of his approach. When he finally made it to her, she was the one with the advantage. His thrust was avoided with contemptuous ease. She jabbed at him. Once. Twice. He dodged both. The small fire balls the Uchiha sent at the both of them hit naught but air as she slammed into the Hyuga and tossed him backwards while dodging out of the way.

"You have terrible teamwork" She said with a rueful smile. Weren't Konoha ninja supposed to be really good at that? That was why her sensei had tossed her aside, wasn't it? Sent her back to the Corps.

"And you talk too much" The Uchiha thought he was smarter than he really was. She turned in time to dodge out of his stab before kicking him in the face and sending him backwards.

"Your speed, strength, chakra, and reactions. They're all chunin level. Together, the both of you have no chance against me."

XXXXX- GAMER OF THE DESERT

The sharingan was the ultimate cheat code. Like it was just so easy. Learning, fighting, thinking, it made everything that would have previously been hard, or even slightly difficult, almost playfully easy. For example, learning techniques. The sharingan was known as the copy wheel eye for a reason, but what I'd learned was that it wasn't just a copier. Like the doujutsu had two basic abilities when it came to understanding techniques or movements. First of all, there was the basic copying ability. It came as a result of adding the sharingan's photographic memory with the preternatural chakra control the eyes could enable. Just by witnessing a technique being performed once, the sharingan would let its user use it with the same level of proficiency that it had witnessed. Of course, it had limits. I couldn't do something to copy a technique that required more chakra than I had. It wouldn't work or would just kill me. I also couldn't copy a technique that required more chakra control than I had available.

The sharingan enabled preternatural control but only in certain ways. For example, when I copied the mud bullet jutsu, I didn't have to concentrate to manipulate my chakra to carry it out. The sharingan did it for me. But it didn't give me better chakra control on its own. When I watched Chiyo perform the mystical palm, I didn't automatically gain the ability to perform it with the same level of expertise since the reason her version of the jutsu was so good was because of her highly trained chakra control. The moment my control would get good enough, however, I'd get to skip the years of trial and error and small iterative improvements to being able to use the jutsu at her level.

The second way the sharingan enabled copying was even arguably the more broken form of the ability. Understanding. The Sharingan allowed its wielders to understand things. With this eye, the workings of the universe became clear to me. I saw how chakra flowed to cast genjutsu on a target- how it moved to trigger ninjutsu- and even how it leaped from end to end to enhance certain taijutsu styles. Every part pf it was laid bare before me and that meant I could understand it. It didn't do shit for kekkei genkai, but for every other form of ninjutsu, I could understand how the jutsu themselves worked, and even alter them as needed. That was why my skill with genjutsu grew so quickly. The Hidden Sand village had a strong population of genjutsu users, and having the experts ply their craft before my eyes made it ridiculously easy for me to learn the tricks they used. With how powerful the sharingan itself was when it came to illusions, having the expertise of people who had spent decades learning the craft to rely on meant that I grew by leaps and bounds. So quickly, in fact, that genjutsu had gone from that ninja art I never bothered with ,to forming an essential part of my arsenal- especially when it came to fights against those weaker than me.

"Kazekage-sama. A message from the barrier corps" Mebuki said as she walked in. I turned away from the scroll I was ravishing with my eyes to look up at her. She'd changed a lot in the past year. Just as I'd grown, so had she. The only difference being that where my growth was accelerated by drugs and supplements, hers was mostly in terms of behaviour and not physical. She now wore proper office clothes instead of the scrubs favoured by off-duty doctors at the hospital. Appointing her as my right hand woman years ago had been the right choice. The only choice that had made any sense, and it showed. She was loyal to me- helped me keep the factions in the village in line- and did all that while being one hell of a secretary. She was basically half of what kept Suna running even as I devoted hours every day to my projects.

I would probably have faced a coup for my less than outstanding leadership skills if I hadn't been such a great kage where it counted. The money from Iwa had gone to erasing much of the poverty in Suna. Social programs funded by Iwa's war chest had been uplifting the economy. The best part was that I could control a lot of the adverse effects of splashing cash everywhere. Inflation for one, was easy to control. I just had to implement some reckless economic policy that was easy to make in a dictatorship where I had absolute control over what was made, how it was made, and where it was made. Buying all the food brought into the village and selling it at chosen prices was just one prong of a comprehensive social welfare program funded by Iwa's immense wealth, grants from the Daimyo, and income from bounties.

I opened the scroll and ran through it with my eyes before smiling. A year ago, I'd have hesitated at what the message could have implied. Conflict against two of the legendary sannin and the Kyuubi jinchuriki at the same time. The thought filled me with excitement. I didn't know why they'd be picking a fight or what they hoped to achieve with it, but I hoped to have fun and see how far I'd come.

XXXXXX

They were good, he thought to himself, watching them traverse the desert. It was obvious that Naruto was the first timer in their bunch, but even still his movements were practiced and smooth. None of them were as good as those who saw the desert as their home, but their attempt was passable. He flexed his chakra and dispersed in a rush of sand, only to coalesce into his physical form right in front of them.

Naruto was the only one to react, jumping backwards and lifting his hands warily. His stance was clean and polished. Definitely better than what Temari could remember from when he fought her at the chunin exams but that had been almost two years ago at this point. He had to be much stronger. Maybe even strong enough to present a threat.

"Jiraiya-san, I assumed that freeing you from your Kage's genjutsu would be enough to guarantee that you'd never attempt to attack me and mine, again" I said, projecting my voice while maintaining a light and airy tone. I couldn't care less for his motivations or what particular brand of insanity had infected him with the desire to face me in the desert.

"That's not what we're here for" Tsunade was the one to reply.

"Really? And what are you here for then?" He said, walking forward and dropping out of his combat ready stance. It was a feint, and they all knew it. A subtle genjutsu made the spinning sharingan in my left eye appear to all as a calm teal. The same shade as the eye that matched it in my right socket.

"We have an offer for you" Jiraiya said, taking the reins of the conversation once again. Tsunade did not hesitate to smoothly hand them back to him. An interesting dynamic.

"Well, I don't have all day. Begin speaking" I said.

"Your manners have taken a sharp nosedive, I see" Tsunade glared at him for his words, and when I did not reply, he thought flora few seconds before speaking.

"Danzo is a false Kage who broke faith with you. We will help you get into Konoha and assassinate him."

"Alright then. So it seems like you both aren't fans of the guy who killed your sensei being the next hokage, but what does that really have to do with me? What does all this have in it for me?"

"Danzo broke faith with and attacked you. He almost killed you and orchestrated an attack on your Daimyo. He even broke the agreement you had wit the third Hokage. You have as much reason to want to see him dead as we do."

"Do I? The only reason I have to see him dead is the whole not living up to the agreement I had with the old man, thing but apart from that- bygones can be bygones. If you want my help with the coup of yours, you're going to have to grease my fingers" I said to them with a leer. Truthfully speaking, I didn't like Danzo one bit. I'd honestly have preferred it if he wasn't the one in charge of the closest threat to me, but after taking Iwa off the board, I had substantially more leeway in negotiations. Danzo and his horde of edo tensei shinobi would always be a threat, and that was the only reason I was even listening to this but that didn't mean that I couldn't play hard to get. I'd fuck them either way- just had to make them work of it a bit.

"You don't see how Danzo is a threat to everyone? He is expanding the Leaf even as we speak. I know him, you don't. His idea of a peaceful world is one where the entire world flies the flag of the Hidden Leaf. If you think he isn't going to set his eyes on your village sooner or later, then you're dead wrong." He said, stepping forward. I matched him. We were now looking at each other, eyeball to eyeball. My growth spurt meant I wasn't feet shorter than him, but Jiraiya was a giant of a man. Even so, he towered over me and looked down upon me with a sneer on his face. I ached to cleave his head from his shoulders for the affront.

"Let him come then. Let him take the world and let him come for me and he will find the ninja of Suna ready to tear his intestines from his stomach and cast his ashes to the wind. I am much stronger than I was when he failed to kill me. Even as the three of you stand, I could kill you all without breaking a sweat" All I had to do was attack before Jiraiya got the chance to summon the toads and use sage mode. Naruto would not be a threat. Tsunade's strongest attacks were all blunt force. A sand body meant blunt force would do nothing to me. They'd die, and they'd do it quickly too. That was just the power that a year of training and the sharingan had given me.

"Sure you could, kid" The Toad Sage's retaliatory snort made me take half a step forward. There wasn't enough space between us for a full step. I could feel his breath on my face now. That was how close we were.

"Enough with the dick measuring contest" Tsunade barked out.

"Jiraiya, behave yourself" He took a step back and I turned to her.

"We will pay you. Four million Ryo" She said, making me bark a laugh.

"I raided the coffers of Iwa. I have more money than I know what to do with. You know what I want. We both know what I want"

"The land deal you had with the Third. We'll honour it." She said, making me scoff instantly and dramatically.

"You can't pay me with what you already owe. Try again." I said.

"We can't offer you any more land without the Daimyo"

"So you have to offer something that matters to me. I want techniques. I've heard tales of Konoha's fabled scroll of seals"

"You might as well ask to see me naked"

"Is that on the table"

"Nice try. Something else." She said.

"Alright then. I want him" I said, pointing at the Kyubi Jinchuriki, making the boy jump backwards in shock

"What?"' The main character of this story shouted, looking at me askance, and then turning to his minders when neither of them made any attempt to defend him from my gaze.

"We don't engage in slave trade" Jiraiya finally said after letting the boy stew in his shock.

"Not like that. I want to study his seal. And I want to do it for at least a week." I said.

I could see them mulling it over. And then they turned to each other- Jiraiya and Tsunade- and began making hand signs. I memorised everything with my sharingan but it wasn't a code I'd ever seen before. It didn't look to be something based on the standard Konoha code or even that used in any of the other villages. It was also very contradictory. Their body language should have given something away, but they'd used the same signs in what my eyes told me had to be about five different contexts. It was maddening.

"Okay. We've come to a decision" They said.

"Three days with the seal. That's all"

"And forty million Ryo." I added

"What happened to money not mattering?"

"Doesn't mean I don't want a shit ton of it" I said with a shrug.

XXXXXX

I stared at the seal. I'd been unable to make heads or tails of it just from my first look. The first day, the only thing I noticed was that the Eight Trigrams Seal wasn't of Uzumaki make. It wasn't an Uzumaki design, and that threw me for a loop. Sure, it was spirally, and definitely had some echoes it shared with the script I'd been studying for years now, but it wasn't the same. There were too many variations and alien additions for me to even claim that it was Uzumaki script with an accent- it couldn't have been. It was more likely that Kushina had taught Minato the Uzumaki script and he'd gone ahead to remake it with his additions and changes.

That was new. By the second day, I was sure that Minato was the kind of genius that no one would ever be able to match up to. I could tell now that I'd also been s scammed. Jiraiya and Tsunade had ha little problem allowing me have access to him because they'd known that there was little to gain from it. Or at least, there would have been if I didn't steadily see my fuinjutsu skill levelling up as I studied more and more of the seal. As more and more of it began to make sense to me after three days of careful and continuous study.

The spirals were very Uzumaki-esque. And while ten minutes ago, I'd thought them a stylistic similarity and little more, now I could see the functional similarities. They didn't perform nearly as many diverse functions as they did in the Uzumaki script. Instead, they did one simple thing. They dictated how chakra flowed from the seal. Three spirals in a triangular formation around one large spiral. The large spiral did one simple thing and did it well. Any chakra that tried to make its way out of the seal without flowing through one of the other three spirals was sent slamming back into the seal. Quite painfully as well. That explained how Naruto hadn't ever been influenced by the Kyubi in childhood or even immediately after.

"Stay still" I muttered as he began shivering. "It's cold" He replied, referring to the seal brush and ink that I used to mark out parts of the seal for me to pay attention to.

"Stick it through, kid"

"I'm older than you"

"I'm taller, so what does that matter?" I replied, shaking off my hair to pin him with a stare from my genjutsu'd eyes.

"Well, that's enough, I guess" I said after five more minutes of study and being unable to gain anything from it. I'd copied the seal down into my scroll so I'd study it further when my fuinjutsu skill was more developed, but now I was certain that what I was about to do wouldn't have any adverse effects.

"Good" Jiraiya said with a chuckle. "I see you didn't get what you were expecting" his smug smile made me incredibly pleased with myself for what I was about to do.

"Well, the time I negotiated isn't up, is it?" I said, pinning both of them with a look. Before Jiraiya could react, I'd turned to Naruto and grabbed him by the neck, forcing his eyes to meet mine. The genjutsu covering my sharingan dissolved as it spun wildly to go beyond the boy and into the seal.

XXXXXX

Darkness. Darkness, and then light. Red light. From one glowing ominous source. The Kyuubi no Kitsune. The water on my feet did nothing to hold my attention, so focused I was on the massive beast in front of me. It was malice incarnate, dripping with it in a way that II'd never seen anything be able to.

"What do you want?" He snarled, in a voice that reverberated through my bones.

"Just came to test a theory, fox" I said with confidence I didn't truly feel. My sharingan eye met his and he went silent almost instantly. It was like instinct. My eye saw the tailed beast, transformed to its mangekyou version and captured it in genjutsu instantly.

"Jump" I commanded, and the fox did exactly that. In one massive moment. It bent its knees, before uncoiling them in an instant and sailing through the air for a second before it all came crashing down.

Good, I said to myself, sure that the tailed beast wasn't faking being caught in my genjutsu.

"Now, give me your chakra, Fox" I commanded as I stepped forward, opening the second seal I'd placed on myself. Not the blessed seal that healed my sharingan, but a more simple seal based on the strength of a hundred's ability to store chakra separate from the main chakra network.

The kyuubi whipped a tail towards me, and I smiled as it went through the first spiral, purifying the chakra of much of its malice. I accepted the chakra and allowed it flow into my seal, mission accomplished.

XXXXXX

The rasengan that Jiraiya came flying at me with exploded in mid-air as I thrust my own hand forward and matched the rotation of his chakra from the opposite direction. He was tossed back while I kept my footing with a quick application of chakra. I let go of Naruto and allowed the boy drop to the floor.

"Don't do anything stupid. The boy is alright" I told Jiraiya, waiting for his better sense to come through. He stared at me while walking forward. Naruto stood up, and wasted no time in running backwards, towards his guardian.

"What was that?" Jiraiya barked.

"I was testing something out" I said to him in reply.

"Testing what? Tell me the truth" I didn't like his tone.

"None of your business. Our business is concluded. You have lived up to your end of the bargain, I will fulfil mine. Stay in your quarters. We move out in 48 hours" I told them before collapsing into sand.

I was confident they wouldn't do anything stupid. Yes, Naruto had seen my sharingan. But that didn't matter. Even if Jiraiya would know where I'd gotten it, he'd either have the common sense not to bring it up or Tsunade would knock it into him.

I put it all out of mind. It was time for me to meet with destiny.

Ichibi no Shukaku, I thought to myself as I walked into the chamber that had been set aside for this precise purpose. It was the same one that Bunpuku had been imprisoned within before being sealed in the tea kettle. I knew that there was no chance of this going wrong. I wasn't as unprepared as I'd been the first time, and this time, I even had the sharingan on my side. Furthermore, I wasn't going to be meeting the Ichibi on my turf, I'd be going to seal to seek him out.

I pulled up my stat sheet, acknowledging that genjutsu had gained three points from my successful ensnaring of the Kyuubi no Kitsune, before looking at my meditation skill. Seventy-two. That was the number that floated next to it. Ceaseless practice in preparation for today had paid off. And even better, once I hit level seventy, a notification popped up, telling me I could now enter the seal that connected me to the shukaku at will.

"Enter Seal" I proclaimed out loud, and instead of a dark sewer, I found myself at the beach. The beach? I turned to look at the tailed beast and found him on an island. A small island, floating on the water. Now that I thought about the water, I realised just how much there was. Shukaku was contained in an island that looked just large enough to fit him if he stayed still and from what I could tell about fuinjutsu and what I knew about my seal, that water would scald like acid if any of his body fell into it. Worst, was that since he was contained in the seal, he had to remain in his true form and couldn't shed any mass to make his situation more comfortable.

"You bastard" He screamed right at me, but I ignored it as I commanded the sand on the beach to lift me up and take me towards him.

"Very comfortable with using the power I gave you, aren't you?" He snarked, making me smile. A wide, savage thing.

"You know there are many ways to subdue a tailed beast. By far the most comfortable for both parties would be me sitting with you to talk you down and build a friendship with you so you worked in my interests." Shukaku scoffed, and I mentally joined him. We weren't ever going to succeed with that. Shukaku was much too insane, and even if the seal's construction forced him to be docile- as docile as he could be, he would still never listen to anything I had to say. That was exacerbated by the fact that I had neither the time nor the interest to attempt to talk no jutsu my way to perfect jinchuriki-hood.

Instead, I'd be cheating.

"That's the most comfortable for the both of us at the same time. The most comfortable for me? Well, that's this. Obey" I laced the last word with chakra as my left eye began to spin.

His eyes met mine, and where there had been previously two black pools of malice, I saw mirror reflections of the sharingan in my eye socket. I didn't need to have him perform any tasks like the Kyuubi. He was mine. I could feel it. And then, I began working on altering the seal. If I wanted anywhere as good a deal as what Naruto had with Kurama in the anime, then I had work to do.

A/N; That's the bees-knees. Next chapter on the place of pa-tro-ns. Probably won't update next week to give myself a bit of breathing room to build up a backlog but that's not yet certain.