Chapter Text
Naruto sighed from where he was slumped in the little corner of the deck that he’d claimed for himself what felt like a lifetime ago. He could hear the creaking of the ship that’d become oh so normal in the days? Weeks? Months? However long it’d been since he’d – they’d – ended up here. Wherever here was. Hi no Kuni it was certainly not. Nor was it Mizu no Kuni, Tsuchi no Kuni, Nami no Kuni, Yu no Kuni, or well, anywhere that any of them were familiar with that had a coast. Which was most countries (even ones that no longer existed outside of old stories and history texts). To be fair, it wasn’t like any of them had ever spent much time all that far out to sea; even Hoshigaki Kisame and Hozuki Suigetsu who’d originally been part of the very much not landlocked Kirigakure before going nukenin, hadn’t really ever ventured out into open waters.
Hoshigaki Kisame. Now wasn’t that just a trip and a half. Being stuck on a boat (even if it was a fairly large and nice boat) with five S level nukenin, all of which had seemed to have been out for his blood because of what he was. At least he wasn’t alone; he still had Kakashi-sensei, Sakura-chan, and Ero-sennin in his corner. And hey, he even managed to find Sasuke-teme!. Ok, so Sasuke was still on that whole brother killing clan avenging quest thing, and was still denying the whole Team Seven thing, That had to count for something right?
A small explosion went off just far enough away from the ship to not interfere with anything, blowing a brief hole in the ever-present fog that’d dogged them from the moment they’d all woken up on the ship. Naruto couldn’t even be bothered to work up enough energy to flinch at the sound of the blast; he was that bored and the explosions – courtesy of the other blond on the ship who was apparently equally as bored – were a regular enough thing at this point that they’d all grown way too used to them. Which was a bit worrying since that meant that they were becoming too desensitized to a very real danger. The other blond wasn’t the only ninja who used explosives (Naruto was learning how to make exploding tags from Ero-sennin. The results were… interesting… to say the least) and any ninja who ignored a danger simply because they no longer saw it as a danger was all too often a maimed if not dead ninja.
(Naruto probably shouldn’t be letting down his guard like this. He was basically surrounded by enemies and unknowns who were apparently allied with his enemies with only a scant handful of allies on his side that he could count on to have his back. Sure he and his allies had a lot of power at their disposal – Sakura-chan was only came off as weak because she was being compared to some absolute monsters when it came to sheer power; a bonfire vs. a goddamned forest fire if you will – but the other side was just as stacked with powerhouses. The main reason that Naruto and his allies hadn’t been on the receiving end of a curb stomping battle was that the enemy was basically two different factions who seemed to want the other one dead as much as they both wanted Naruto’s group dead. Well, that and everybody pretty much agreed that getting revenge on whoever thought that stranding them out in the middle of the ocean on a ship was a good idea came first. The intergroup murderous intent was still there (Naruto was almost supernaturally good when it came to turning enemies into friends, but it took time and was pretty much rooted in an empathic response to other people’s traumas. It didn’t tend to work too well when the underlying cause didn’t stem from the near complete lack of qualified therapists) but had mostly settled into snarking at each other and some rather violent ‘sparing’. It was an uneasy truce to say the least)
-_-
Jiraiya idly glanced around the deck of the ship from his place at the wheel. Tobi was up in the crows nest like usual, although he was laying down and ‘cloud’ watching instead of making a comically dramatic show of playing lookout. Naruto was slumped alone in the little corner he preferred when he didn’t have anything else to do. Sasuke was on the opposite side in his corner, glaring at his brother, with Juugo sitting quietly next to him. Both Sakura and Karin were out on deck near but not too near Sasuke engaged in quiet conversation. Jiriaya couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but he knew from past experience that it was some sort of bizarre combination of passive aggressively possessive sniping and generalized medical consultation. Kisame was roughly mid-ship at the port side railing doing some fishing while Itachi sat next to him either napping or meditating. Suigetsu was busy reforming from the puddle Kisame had smacked him into when the boy had annoyed the older ninja a bit too much. Hidan was dead on his tarp near the bow with Deidara hanging nearby making small clay birds that he sent off into the foggy sky only to have them explode after a few minutes at semi-regular intervals. Kakashi was holding the mast up with his nose firmly planted in a book. And Orochimaru… was standing off to his left not really doing anything but still managing to be fairly annoying just by existing. To be fair, Jiraiya was probably annoying Orochimaru by existing just as much. It was something they just kind of started doing back when they’d been younger and still on the same team (before everything fell apart and Orochimaru had turned into someone nearly unrecognizable. He’d always had that scientific spark; that thirst for knowledge, but he’d gotten so lost somewhere along the way. And now he was an unethical even by ninja standards monster).
They didn’t need to speak. Nothing had changed in the last… however long it was. It was hard to figure out the flow of time in this thick fog. The fog fully blotted out the sky, taking away their ability to use the movement of the sun or stars as a way to get a rough estimate as to how much time had passed. None of them had managed to pack a working alarm clock or watch, and as it turns out no matter how good one thinks one’s internal clock is, they’re still somewhat reliant on some level of external stimuli in order to work properly (and what did it say about the overall situation if Jiraiya was actually able to follow Orochimaru’s explanation. Advanced science-y stuff that didn’t relate back to funinjitsu tended to go over his head – not because he was stupid (because he wasn’t), but because he tended to be missing the fundamental principles and terminology everything was built on.
There was nothing to say that hadn’t been said before. Even the things that had nothing to do with them being on the ship. The questions. The accusations. The excuses. The whys. The hows. (The hurts that neither of them could figure out how to voice).
(Not for the first time, Jiraiya wondered if they were all dead and this was some sort of weird hell. Being a ninja was as far from a safe occupation as one could get. It was a little light on the torturing demons, and the atmosphere left a lot to be desired, but this… endless nothingness… was as painful in its own way as any traditional hellish torture. And it wasn’t like any of them were virtuous. They all had blood on their hands – some, more than others. You just crossed your fingers and hoped that the fact that the fact that you acted out of love for your village would counter act all the harm you caused; even a little.)
“So…” Jiraiya began as the uncomfortable silence began to stretch out even more than usual. It didn’t matter that there wasn’t anything (new) to say; he wasn’t talking to have an actual conversation, but to fill out the silence with something and maybe keep the ennui that had befallen them all ages ago and was subtly sucking away their very will to live at bay just a little longer.
“So.” Orochimaru said flatly. It wasn’t not rising to Jiraiya’s bait if simply because Jiraiya wasn’t baiting him. This time. (Later maybe, after they’d gotten well into their cups – provided they managed to actually find something alcoholic to drink. Orochimaru didn’t make a habit of carrying jugs of sake on him, and they’d gone through what Jiraiya had had on him a while ago, when the reality of their current situation had fully set in. Storage seals were great and all, but Jiraiya wasn’t so much of an alcoholic as to have multiple back up stores packed up just in case he was stuck in the middle of nowhere for way too long. As paranoid as they collectively were (and seeing as they were all more or less well seasoned strong ninja they were all pretty paranoid. Ninjas who weren’t had this nasty tendency to die if they weren’t at least somewhat paranoid), none of them could’ve foreseen their current situation.
-_-
“Do you think it’s genetic?” Sakura asked, tilting her head to the side as she watched Kisame fish off the side of the boat.
Karin shook her head no, “I asked Suigetsu about it before; it’s a clan jutsu.”
“Not Suigetsu, Hoshigaki.” Sakura said, “Although I have. So. Many. Questions. About the whole turning into water thing from a physiological standpoint. I mean, I know pretty much anything having to do with chakra and ninjutsu throws physics right out the window and into a conveniently nearby volcano, but…”
“Don’t know.” Karin said with a shrug, answering Sakura’s original question, “It’s not like I’ve seen any other Hoshigaki aside from Kisame. Suigetsu would probably know better since they were originally from the same village. But I wouldn’t exactly count on it. Things’ve been dicey in Kirigakure for a while with the shinobi wars, civil war, and kekkei genkai purges.”
“True.” Sakura conceded, “Even if it isn’t actually the result of his family line carrying a kekkei genkai, it certainly looks like it. And I don’t think even Tusnade-shishou would bet on the kind of people in the mobs going after those with kekkei genkais to know the difference between someone with a kekkei genkai and someone who just happens to look a little – or a lot – different. Which is kinda stupid when you think about it since most kekkei genkai that I know of don’t affect a person’s physical appearance.”
-_-
Tobi most definitely totally wasn’t taking a nap up in the crows nest when he was supposed to be acting as lookout. Nope. Not him. Tobi was a good lookout. Good lookouts don’t fall asleep while on duty. So he wasn’t asleep. No sir! (so take that). Sure there hadn’t been anything to see beyond the fog and the ship they were on for forever, but that could change. At. Any. Second. So he had to remain vigilant! And he had. And he was. And that meant no being asleep.
And he since he wasn’t asleep, he didn’t startle awake a big old fat plop of… bird poop… hit his mask (thankfully not over the mask’s sole eyehole so at least he didn’t get hit with bird poop directly on his face or – worse – in his only eye). Wait a minute… Bird poop… Bird poop meant that there had to be a bird somewhere close to the ship. Birds would go out to sea, but only so far before it so far became too far. Which meant that, if there was a bird out here where the ship was (and there had to be if he’d just gotten pooped on)…
Tobi excitedly got up and frantically began trying to peer out into the fog for wherever it was the bird had come from. And then he pulled out his telescope because while his sight was pretty good for a ninja (especially if he had his sharingan active), he wasn’t a Hyuga who could see for miles – even through the densest of fogs. And he was so calling hax on that (never mind that the sharingan was just as much hax as the byakugan).
No… no… not there… or there.. or… Wait! What was that, right over there…
“LAND HO!” he shouted excitedly, pointing at the very tiny indistinct blob of… something… that he could barely see well off in the distance through the fog only thanks to his telescope.