Back in the Elemental Nations, things were moving at a fast pace as the five kages returned to their respective villages to debrief their ninja on what went on. All of them could feel the familiar breathless sensation in their chests that associated with the coming of a huge event. Each of them could compare this feeling to when they first graduated from their own ninja academies, got their first promotions, rushed to their first battle, and even waiting to meet Lunaru Fenris.
They knew that this feeling shouldn't be ignored as if what they understood of the treaty they all verbally agreed to was true, then their world would change drastically.
The kages had received an update from the ambassador over the communication piece given to them that she would visit each of their villages with a rough draft of both the trade treaty and the non-aggression pact, as well as open up discussions on the privatized facilities the Spectra would build on Uzushiogakure, such as the prison, the orphanages and housing, hospitals, and schools. She informed them that she would be coming by a couple of times with a new draft until they all could settle on a finalized treaty.
The kages weren't ones to look a gift horse in the mouth at this unbelievable opportunity though it did irk them something fierce to know that their rivals were getting just as good of a deal. Good deals or not, one does not just simply throw aside dozens of generations of practiced lifestyles and mannerisms.
𖦹𖦹𖦹
Sarutobi managed to settle himself in his office seat and finally let out a long breath that'd been building up since the start of these extra-terrestrial events. Honestly, could you blame the man? He's an old ninja who's lived through two wars as the head of his clan, the leader of his village, and head of his family and within the past two days, his life has been turned upside down.
1. The Kyuubi somehow escaped the seal on Kushina and razed a quarter of the village to the ground, including his wife, before—
2. —his successor as Hokage obviously gave his life to resealing the Kyuubi into either Kushina or her baby as that would only explain the sudden disappearance of the fox and why Minato's body was dead with no signs of any fatal damage.
3. The woman who most likely holds the Kyuubi again, as well as her child, who just happen to be the princess and future heir of the Uzumaki clan respectively, are missing with no sign of their being anywhere around the village.
4. As he's scrapping together all his assets to rebuild a semblance of order and construction within his village, the damn sun of all things decides to keel over and die but not before leaving their planet with an all-consuming gravitational vortex as a final 'fuck you' present.
5. ALIENS! LIFE OUTSIDE THEIR PLANET! These people were tremendously advanced as they were able to drag the ninjas' entire planet and moon through a rip in the very fabric of space and time to transport them to a young, identical sun a galaxy away!
6. The aliens picked a helluva time to send their leader down to the planet to explain what occurred while at the same time masterfully maneuvering the five great shinobi villages into one large, interconnected non-aggression treaty that they could ill-afford to break, thus bringing an official stop to hostile actions between ninja villages for the first time in documented history. Sure, there will be those rogue ninjas, as well as bandits, insurrectionists, and radical groups, but the villages as a whole were looking to having to behave or else the alien leader Lunaru Fenris would swoop down on them. Sarutobi would have felt like an angry child at the way he felt basically powerless in front of her had he not seen what her people were capable of.
7. Lunaru Fenris drops a bomb on them all by announcing the accidental discovery of an off-branch group of descendants of her people from thousands of years ago being the Uzumaki clan, whose war-ravaged graveyard of a city they just happened to camp in. That would certainly explain how just plain weird and crazy the Uzumaki clansmen were in comparison to the average ninja. They more than acted like aliens; THEY WERE DESCENDED FROM THEM! This leads him to his final headache.
8. Lunaru Fenris has asked that all Uzumaki found be informed about their relationship to the Spectra and given a free chance to reunite with their progenitors, whether it be temporarily as a visit or to stay. This is the problem as he knows that word would eventually reach the Spectra about the royal Uzumaki bloodline's last member being last seen in Konoha not even a few days ago, married to the formerly—now deceased—leader of Konoha, and is now missing. Kushina's clan name wasn't a secret to the other villages either as she was one infamous woman during the Third Shinobi World War.
Sarutobi reached under his desk and pulled out a sake bottle and a saucer. He was gonna need some help in handling all of the stress. Looking down at his desk, he saw it covered in papers of reports concerning death tolls from the Kyuubi attack, as well as property damages, reports from border control, reports from ANBU units who were working their hearts out to make sure there were no enemies sneaking into Konoha as well as searching for any missing persons, and reports from the Uchiha Police Force concerning the arrest of several looters and rioters.
The weight of the village's reality was settling heavily on his shoulders. He hasn't even had the time to mourn the death of his wife. His shinobi have been working so hard to bring Konoha back that they've not had the time to mourn their own losses. Everyone had lost somebody close to them the other night. He would hold off on any mass funerals until they were sure all the bodies that could be recovered were and identified.
He poured his saucer to the brim before downing it like a Senju. Just in time as three people in particular he didn't want to fool around with at this moment. The 'Three Elders', a title that has fooled them into believing themselves equal in status or fame to 'Hokage' or 'The Three Sannin', walked into his office. They were his former teammates back when they all were still genin. All of them had been very capable ninja back in their time and have since their retirement taken up positions as advisers to him seeing as there really weren't anybody else around who'd been through as much as he has.
The first one, as well as the most dangerous, was a man who embodied and embraced the ideals of what a 'true ninja' was. Shimura Danzo wore a tired but disciplined look as he tried not to let how hectic these past few days and nights have been. He had been much too busy to attend the meeting in the Fire Capitol. Sarutobi empathized with the man who he shared strained relations with as just a couple of weeks beforehand, he'd suffered an attack by a hitman when on his way to a meeting with the Kazekage.
Now, despite his age, Danzo was no pushover as a shinobi, but he was attacked by none other than the S-rank missing ninja/bounty hunter Kakuzu, a ninja even older than any of the elders. No one should ever underestimate old ninjas who have lived as long as that in this world, especially if they can still retain their S-rank status despite being over 100 years old.
Luckily, Danzo had Orochimaru as his security detail and the two aged and experienced ninjas were able to drive the ancient shinobi off but it came at the cost of Danzo's right eye and arm. Thankfully, Orochimaru was nearly unmatched as a medic and was able to save Danzo from bleeding out. Though he'd saved the arm, it was completely useless until they could replace it with something, perhaps a puppet arm.
When they had made it back to Konoha and given the report, Sarutobi was quick to inform the ANBU commander who was surprised by the appearance of an S-rank missing nin within the Land of Fire's borders. A report was filed to the Daimyo who was always to be notified whenever an S-rank threat was within his country. Nobuhiro-sama was notified and was quick to lend divisions of samurai to aid in doing a sweep of the country.
Back on track to Danzo, the man believed in stealth, subterfuge, sabotage, assassinations, deception, etc. He preferred the shadows rather than the light as it was always the hand one couldn't see that was the true danger.
The other two elders weren't nearly as much as a threat but they could give him a fierce headache from time to time. Utatane Koharu was an elderly woman with grey faded hair, a lightly tanned complexion fitted with wrinkles, and a slouch in her step. Unlike her body, her eyes remained as sharp as a hawk's even after two decades of retirement. She would often butt heads with him on many approaches, commonly allying with suggestions from Danzo to try to pressure him. She may not have the physical threat of Danzo, but she had her hands in many of the workings of Konoha.
Homura was an equally old man with short, spiky grey hair, glasses over his aged eyes that fitted onto a tanned faced laced with wrinkles from age and stress, and a slight hunch in his upper back that causes him to lean forward a bit whenever he sits down, his signature white poncho covering most of his top frame.
Hiruzen gestured for them to pull up a chair from the side of the office. They did and Sarutobi brought out three more saucers that he filled with his own stash of sake. The three elders looked between each other and eventually downed their drinks as well. The alcohol slightly burned their throats but it brought a little bit of comfort in these confusing and hard times.
"I have to say, it's been years since we've all sat down and shared a drink," Homura announced.
"Not since Tobirama-sensei was still alive," Koharu added with some melancholy in her voice.
"I'd imagine you have something very important on your mind besides the aftermath of the Kyuubi's rampage, Hiruzen," Danzo said. His voice was neutral and you couldn't really see much emotion behind his eye. "It's not often I see you drinking on the job."
The Sandaime Hokage was silent for a spell before clearing his throat. "I've gone over your reports and I've come to make several decisions based on those reports and the recent developments regarding the alien presence on our planet."
Their attention was undivided when he spoke of the aliens who apparently saved their world and even brought their entire planet into orbit around a similar sun as their old one. The climates were a bit different now but not by much.
"I wanted you all to get comfortable since this news is a doozie," Hiruzen explained.
Several explanations later
"And that's all that we could talk about with the time as apparently something came up that demanded Naruko's presence," Hiruzen finished. The other three people were both amazed with an equal amount of skepticism.
"You do realize that she could have just fed us all lies and we'd be none the wiser since we have no way to disprove any of it?" Koharu asked. The Sandaime nodded.
"—and yet she was able to name a number of very accurate traits of the Uzumaki clan despite not having been here during their time," Homura countered. "It seemed like too much of a coincidence to be one."
"I'm more interested in the implications of this non-aggression pact she wants to make with each major village," Danzo announced, his eye closed in concentration. "By appealing to the natural reasons we wage wars and offering her people's ability to gather the necessary resources, any war from here on out between us will be because of personal offenses and feelings. Should we accept this pact and a nation attacks another, they would have no reason to justify their war unless it is in response to an assassination or something else."
"So if they don't have a good reason, they will be seen as incompetent to both rivals and clients, as well as have their trade connections with the Spectra cancelled as they would take an attack on one of their clients as an attack on them," Sarutobi concluded. "The only loophole is that if the belligerent nation can provide proof of cause for their war then the Spectra wouldn't mind."
"It would be a brilliant way to profit from our wars," Koharu stated. "Adaptable crops. Water. Metals. If the Spectra hold true to their trade promises, then all of the hidden villages would have all the materials they'd need to support full scale wars given the right justification with the only thing determining the scale and number of wars being each village's availability of manpower."
"A disturbing thought, that one of the possibilities of this trade union is to fatten us up for us to kill ourselves eventually due to our own machinations. Two issues that remain to be determined are the reactions the Spectra might have if one nation is destroyed in a war as that would be a loss of a client, and what the Spectra ultimately gets out of this. Naruko is truly a shogi master as she gave away nothing that would hint towards any hidden benefits to her proposal. We're simply grasping at straws here."
As foreboding as that theory was, it was simply a theory and not fact. They all could just be paranoid given the nature of their lifestyles and Naruko's offer actually be genuine but none were willing to bet on it.
"How about we discuss the issue of them acquiring Uzu no Kuni?" Homura asked, hoping to alleviate the tension from Koharu's grim theory. "That land was our late ally's and ownership was assumed by the Fire Daimyo."
Sarutobi snorted. "What can we discuss? Kushina was the heiress to the clan and she's been missing since the Kyuubi attack, along with the child she was going to give birth to that night so Konoha can not claim ownership of the land without her to support it. It's rumored Tsuchida-sama and the Fire Daimyo share a lineage with the Uzumaki clan given their hair color and longevity but any attempt to request a blood test would have the metaphorical hammer brought down on us for such an invasive request.
We have a sample of her blood in the hospital, so the most we can do is petition for a blood sample from a Spectra and see if there are any similarities but that's a fat chance," Homura said. "Plus, no doubt their blood connection would have diluted over the hundreds of years. We would need them to provide a blood sample from one who's alive during that time and kin to one of the Spectra who took shelter on our world."
"And since Kushina was of royal lineage, she would have been the most ideal Uzumaki sample to compare to whomever they would scrounge up. How any efforts have been made to ascertain her whereabouts in all this commotion?" Danzo asked, hoping to make some kind of headway in this meeting.
"Unfortunately, no," Sarutobi said with a grimace as he down another saucer. "Kushina and her child left little of where they could have gone. There was a splotch of blood stained in the grass which could have been from a bleeding body but there were no pieces of body left over and since ANBU had arrived at the site moments after the Kyuubi's disappearance, it couldn't have been from carrion feeders. The body of Minato was found buried not far away and his grave will remain guarded and its body disposed of to prevent any of the other nations from finding and desecrating it.
Since Kushina had retired due to her pregnancy, and considering we don't know the full nature of Kyuubi's escape and her disappearance, we can't label her a missing nin for fear it will either not be her fault and will send word out of two loose Uzumakis. While the other nations will hesitate to act on that considering Lunaru Fenris' claim, they would not back down if they could keep her capture and containment a secret from the Spectra. I've ordered all spare ANBU teams to continue searching for her, even in surrounding villages within the Hi no Kuni. Danzo, I'll be relying on your Root division to scour the nation in the worst case scenario of missing nin, bandits, or minor villages catching wind of our crippled state to try and infiltrate or attack us."
"This is all a clusterfuck," Homura lamented, downing his saucer and getting his old teammate to refill it. "While Naruko's claim of relation is a proverbial sword hovering over the head of any nation who would attempt to harm or capture Kushina and the heir of the Uzumaki clan, her notoriety will certainly capture the curiosity of Naruko and her people and lead them to Konoha should Kushina not even attempt to contact them and we would only be able to lie for so long before they catch on."
The four elders sighed as they let the silence take over them for a moment. It was only broken finally by Koharu's statement.
"Damn Uzumakis are always so much trouble. Dealing with them is always a damn monkey's paw."
A sentiment shared by the other three.