40 - The Kage Summit

Yurei materialized and landed calmly on the ledge of Sun Star's cave, where Rina, Kessho and Henka were in the middle of Cards Against Humanity and Hoka was blowing fire at the wooden table.

"See, that was 14 seconds!" the girl shouted, whirling back to face the other three. "I win, clothes guy. Pay up!"

"If we count the time it took for the table to light on fire, that's 17 seconds. So you don't win. You pay up," the blond argued, crossing his arms and looking up, unimpressed. "Rina, you get the point."

Yurei was mildly curious why Kitanai was not present in the cave. Regardless, he ignored the active attempt at property destruction and strolled further into the cave, phasing directly through Kyomu's door because he couldn't be bothered to open it. "I did as instructed, Konoha appears to have been attacked by the Akatsuki. The Hokage is comatose, and one of their elders has taken over to travel to the Five Kage Summit."

Kyomu's expression shifted to a frown. "In that case, I believe the alliance is temporarily null due to leadership changes."

"That appears to be the case." Yurei's face remained blank as he stood by the door.

The red haired man did not stand up from the chair by his desk. "Stay put for now. I doubt the new Hokage will bother us."

"Understood."

"Sasuke is what?" Naruto demanded, causing Kiba to back away. "Calm down, don't ask me, I'm just telling you what I heard!"

"Woah, woah, am I missing something? Who's Danzo? Is he the actual Hokage or is this until Tsunade-sama wakes up?" Fuyuka questioned, knowing next to nothing about politics. "One of those old guys in the background, right?"

"That's correct," Kakashi replied calmly, not as expressive as the others.

"Sai," Sakura turned to their pale teammate. "You work for Danzo, right? Tell us about him."

The taller boy paused, before slowly shaking his head and displaying the cursed seal on his tongue. "I apologize. I'm afraid that's impossible for me. As a member of Root, this will paralyze me if I speak of Danzo or Root."

Sakura flinched at the sight. "Why would Danzo put a cursed seal on his own subordinates?"

"It avoids information leaks and keeps the village safe," Sai insisted. "I'm sorry I can't help more."

As the conversation on Sasuke resumed, Naruto was soon put at sword point by an angry looking Kumo kunoichi with dark pink hair and a more calm-looking Kumo shinobi with spiky white hair.

They (angrily) explained how Sasuke had joined the Akatsuki and kidnapped their master, the hachibi Jinchuriki, causing Sakura to break down crying and the Kumo nin getting even angrier.

"Look, stop fighting and shut up," Fuyuka interrupted. "You're getting nothing out of us if you wave a sword at us and yell at us."

"Fuyuka, wait," Naruto interjected, turning to the two Kumo ninja. "Your master was kidnapped by the Akatsuki... was he a jinchuriki? A jinchuriki like me?"

The pink haired girl faltered, stepping back. "How did you know? You're also..?"

"That's right," Naruto replied with an uncharacteristically calm nod. "And the Akatsuki tends to capture jinchuriki alive, so your master might still be alive."

Which was how Naruto got dragged onto a whole rescue side quest to the Five Kage Summit with Kakashi and Yamato to talk to the Raikage.

With Tsunade comatose and Danzo out of the village to the Summit, Fuyuka had nothing to do apart from the usual village repair stuff, which she was too lazy to do.

So she decided to drop by the hospital.

"So, is Shigetsu dying?" the blue haired girl questioned bluntly, helping herself to a chair and crossing her legs.

"If I abruptly leave, then it will be a highly painful process until he dies. I opted to weaken the healing, allowing it to be a slower process," Miyabi replied, her violet eyes glinting in the dark room.

"Hey, since the Hokage is comatose, has Danzo given Shadow Star any orders? Or are you guys free to do whatever?"

Miyabi narrowed her eyes suspiciously. Fuyuka had a record of loopholing rules, so subtly people don't notice. "I hope you're not planning anything... but yes, right now we have no specific orders."

"Shigetsu's pets," Fuyuka replied. "They're still out in the wild. I want to bring them back to Konoha." (read: I want a pet piranha already damn it)

"I'm not sure that's the wisest decision, but..." Miyabi whipped out a notepad, scribbled a few words on it, and handed it over. "You had to have inherited your rulebreaking from someone."

Fuyuka glanced at the handwritten note dubiously, which read 'Shadow Star mission: find pets in the wild. Signed by Shadow Star - Miyabi Hoshino, Miracle, the Fate Defier'

"...half the page is a flowery signature," the blue haired chunin pointed out bluntly. "But cool. Time to go zoo collecting."

"Bring Kogane with you, this is technically a Shadow Star mission," Miyabi called out as the girl walked out of the room.

You could complain that Fuyuka was going animal hunting when something like the Five Kage Summit was going on. 'But author-san, can't we see the cool fights at the Five Kage Summit?'

No, you're going to watch Fuyuka, Yozora and Kogane look for a dying blond's pets whether you want to or not.

"Stop complaining, Kogane," Fuyuka snapped after her older sister whined about the wind and proper bird-riding wind-proofing for the umpteenth time.

"I'll complain if I want to complain," the black and gold haired girl retorted. "Just because eagle-riding is slightly faster than walking doesn't excuse the wind here. My hair keeps getting into my face."

"Oh, shut up and just tie it or something."

"Sorry, Kogane-san, I can't summon anything bigger when I need to summon three," Yozora interjected, not wanting a Hoshino Civil War in the air above Konoha. "Once we get there and split up, I can get you a dragon or pegasus."

The argument went on until the three Aquila set the trio down at where used to be the Tsuyoku's mini-village. There hadn't been too many people in the first place, so now there was nobody left.

"Here's a list of Shigetsu-nii-san's pets," Yozora explained, holding out a sheet of paper with some drawings and notes.

"He has a pet... uh, orange banana peel?" Kogane questioned dubiously, pointing to what indeed resembled an orange banana peel on the paper.

"Uh, that's Jiyu, he's a golden furred chimpanzee," Yozora replied, sweatdropping. "I don't think my drawing is that bad."

"Oh, no, it's not bad. I can totally tell this is a..." Kogane narrowed her amber eyes as her gaze drifted down the paper. "Uh... geometry dash triangle?"

"Piranha."

"Oh, right."

Fuyuka sighed, facepalming. "I'm off. Meet back here in two hours."

The blue haired kunoichi found her first two blondie's zoo animals in the form of a brown wolf curled up under a tree. She poked it a bit, until it opened one eye, letting out an annoyed grumble.

"Shigetsu dying. Konoha," Fuyuka said, unsure how much human language the pets understood. After all, Shigetsu communicated with them via telepathy.

Shinku slowly stood up, nodding in understanding before heading towards the center of the ruins.

"Smart wolf," Fuyuka muttered, returning to her search.

By the end of the set time, Fuyuka had found Tabiki the fox, Umi the wildcat, and to her delight, pelican Fukuro and none other than Ikari the piranha. Yozora had found Kanashi and Yokina thanks to his flight, as well as Chisai the lizard. Kogane, having never met the animals, only managed to find Jiyu, who had been panickingly grooming his fur in one of the abandoned houses.

"Is that all of 'em?" Kogane asked, sliding off the constellation pegasus.

Yozora raised his pet guide, since he could actually understand the drawings, glancing at the band of animals before matching them to the image. Finally, he nodded. "Yep, that's them all."

Fuyuka cracked her knuckles. "Great, let's get back to Konoha. And see what we missed."

Poor Kitanai.

Rina and Kessho encountered one Makoto puppet when sent to investigate, and they got an orange dragon riding, scythe wielding helper. Kitanai, who was trying to buy goddamn furniture because Hoka keeps burning them down, gets two.

"Titan and Siren, my favorite combination," Makoto's voice introduced from within the male-appearing puppet dressed in silver armor, holding a simple sword and shield. Beside it, Siren was dressed in blue robes and a stupidly wide hat.

This wasn't a lucky day either. Sand manipulators clearly perform worse when there's no sand, but he usually made do with dust that could count as sand. But today, the brown haired man happened to be on a mountain.

He wove a hand sign, readying for battle. "Don't break the furniture."