.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time,

the expression of real suffering and a protest

against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature,

the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.

It is the opium of the people.

In the Suna night, there is peace and quiet.

The moon sits high in the sky over settled dunes. A cluster of charcoal-stained clouds rolls over it, skewering the light like a slice of cheese.

Not a thing stirs.

Then, chaos.

.

.

"Know your rights!" is the voice that shatters the silence.

Akari stomps on the roof of the home she stands on, listening as her voice bounces around the stone structures like a bouncy ball. "Free yourself from the chains! Demand equality, demand equal food rations!"

She watches candle lights flicker to life through circular carved windows. A hush of voices joins hers.

"You deserve to have what the bourgeoisie hoard!"

A few people come out of their homes, but from within the little rounded structures, she hears a voice shout to her, "Shut up asshole!"

"The red voice cannot be silenced!"

"We'll see if you still feel like that when I shove my shoe up your ass," another voice shouts at her from one of the homes. She sees two women standing a few homes down in rumpled linen pyjamas, their hair messy and eyes squinted.

"Try it! I dare you!"

One of the women scowls, looking ready to follow up on the threat, but the woman beside her settles a hand on her arm. "Come on, let's go. This idiot's not worth it—come back to bed."

The other woman grumbles but allows herself to be led inside.

"Cowards!" Akari shouts at them. "Fight for your rights! Fight for those who can't fight for themselves!"

"C'mon," another woman says to a man standing beside her. "Let's go back to sleep, too."

He waves a hand at her. "No, wait. I kinda wanna hear this."

"Yes! Good! Open your mind and your heart to the red voice." She clears her throat and takes a deep breath. "Let me introduce all of you, on this fine evening, to the concepts of wage slavery, the distribution of wealth, and the dangers of the free market!"

.

.

Akari slips through the doorway, secure that she's lost her tail.

.

.

She holds a bucket of red paint in one hand and a brush in the other.

The village is spread out around her. She's at the highest point she could find, perched on the centermost point of the village where all of the walls come together. Down the walls, she can see another close with a tub of paint in hand, as well, who had the same idea.

Akari glances down at the brush.

She tosses the brush and chucks the bucket up into the air. She produces a kunai with an explosive seal trailing off of it and chucks it at the tub. It connects with the bucket mid-air and the entire thing punctures, sending the red paint spurting out of the tub and all over the rock huts laying below with sad chunks of plastic interspersed in it.

The other Akari shouts something at her and a second later repeats the action to much the same effect.

Below them, a few dozen huts are covered in red.

Success.

She watches the other Akari cackle and hop off the wall and disappear into the sea of huts. She scans the village, prepping to follow when she hears the telltale tap of sandals on stone behind her.

Without another thought she ducks down and rolls forward, coming up in a crouch a few feet away. A Suna ANBU stands where she had been, kunai outstretched.

"Too slow!" she sings.

The ANBU's posture loosens, like a parent who's caught their kid reaching into the cookie jar and is annoyed but unsurprised.

"You can't keep me down! Scummy secret police—"

This time, she's not fast enough, and the ANBU catches her with the tip of his kunai.

She watches herself disappear into a puff of smoke and sparks, then nothing.

.

.

Akari pauses, her back pressed up against a wall as she slinks through the basement dungeon. The memories of the clone rush back to her.

The ANBU are definitely onto her, then. She figured, with the fact that the labyrinth has a notably thin guard, but it's good to get confirmation. She expects she'll have another few clones out of commission soon.

She flips her hand through the seals and a messy clone pops up in front of her. Its hair isn't quite formed right and it's missing an eye—she's stretched thin, with seven clones running around at this point. She's kind of glad that it's only got too-short hair and no right eye.

"What in the fuck—"

Akari shakes her head. "Shut up," she hisses. "We're in the middle of fucking covert ops, here."

"Whoops."

"Go on," she says, gesturing down the hall. "Down the hall that way, two lefts, a right, a left, three rights, straight. Keep going up. You'll pop out of a grate in the middle of the village. I don't care what the fuck you do, just, you know, the usual rules."

"Cool."

And off the clone goes.

Akari heads back off in the opposite direction, deeper into the labyrinth. Given how many cliche medieval vibes this place is giving her, she's fairly confident that if she gets to the bottom of this shit hole, she'll find the old man.

So, she keeps going.

.

.

"I want you to make chaos."

The genin raises an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

Akari shakes the baggie of ryo, raising an eyebrow. "Chaos. C-H-A-O-S. You know, the concept. Opposite of order. Or do you need me to break it down baby-style?"

He scowls. "Want my help or not, smartass?"

"Want the money or not?" she challenges.

"Just… just get on with it."

"Get people riled up. Grab their attention. Try not to let it be anything traceable, don't go getting yourself in trouble. Also, avoid getting mixed up with any ninja and don't hurt anybody, don't bother any kids, blah blah blah. Don't be stupid. Just… be a distraction."

"Why?" he asks.

"I have things I need to get done."

"... what things?"

"Why do you care?"

"Do you think I'm stupid? You're a foreign ninja giving me money to start shit. Is that supposed to look like it's not suspicious?"

Again, she says, "Why do you care?"

His entire face shutters closed, the curtains yanked shut on his emotions. "I'm not a traitor."

"Why not?" she asks. "What has this village given to you? You starve while your leaders feast."

Even in the dim light from the moon, largely blocked out by the village walls behind them, she can see how hollow his cheeks are, the glassiness of his eyes. In rumpled clothes and bent posture, the genin embodies what she has come to recognize as the oppressed worker.

Interestingly, at her words, he stiffens, rising to his full height. "Why should they have to starve? It's not like five people eating enough could keep the entire village from starving. I'm happy to let them have enough so they can keep working and pull the rest of us out of this mess, especially Lord Kazekage. He's worked harder than any of us to bring this village back from the brink—he needs the food more than I do."

Akari cocks her head and considers him.

Curious.

Well, she supposes that not every worker has the spirit of the comrade in them.

She slips the patchwork baggy back into her pocket. "I mean, that's fair, man."

And not wanting to risk him getting in the way of her plans, she slips forward and strikes him where his shoulder and neck meet, knocking him out before he can blink. A new trick, one she realized she needed in her arsenal.

He crumbles to the dirt in a heap. She leaves him there to be found by the ANBU and heads off before they can catch up to her.

.

.

Akari's wrong—she gets to the end of the labyrinth and the room at the end does not, in fact, have the old man in it.

So, she retraces her steps, making another three clones on the way, one of which stays behind with her to open doors and snoop around. A few of the rooms end up being occupied, and she ends up knocking out the skeleton crew of guards left behind.

She finds the old man at the midpoint.

The door blows off its hinges thanks to the explosive seal placed in the middle of it. She drops the wind jutsu she has around it, containing the shockwaves and energy and sound in a bubble of wind, and as the remnants of chakra fall away she watches the explosion's remnants disperse like a balloon having its air released slowly through the spout instead of being popped.

He sits surrounded by seal-etched steel bars on the bare stone ground. His posture is meditative, his hands settled loosely in his lap and his legs crossed, the pot sitting a foot in front of him.

She notes his bald head and long beard. The barbarity of his situation, not a single amenity in place to meet the most basic of needs. The ice-cold dampness in the air.

Then she recognizes the robes around him and a long, annoyed groan escapes Akari.

The man opens his eyes. "Oh, hello," the man says. His voice withers and shakes like it's come out of a cobwebbed phonograph. "Who might you be?"

"Are you fucking serious?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"I just—a monk?" Akari says. "You're a monk?"

"I do believe so."

"I didn't think they even had that kind of dumb poo-poo shit here!"

He tilts his head. "Poo poo… shit."

"Oh, fucking…" She groans again. "There's no time for this. We'll deal with this later. We need to go now, or they're going to—" Before she can finish, she feels them pop another clone.

"And where might you be taking me, my dear?"

"Kumo," she says.

"Ah. Thank you for the effort, but I believe I will pass, for now."

"You'll… pass."

"Indeed."

Akari stares at him. "You'll pass."

"Yes, that is what I said."

"Okay. Why?"

A small smile takes over his face like he's been presented with a mangled macrame owl gift from a child. "My dear," he says. "Why would I trade one prison for another?"

She takes a second to consider. "Yeah, okay. Fair. I mean—look, man. You don't have to come to Kumo, alright? You can—I don't know. Go chill in a fucking monastery," she says, only just managing to not gag on the word. "All I ask is that once I get you out of here and we're not being chased by Suna, you let me plead my case. Talk to you about the state of jinchuurikis in the world and try to win you over. That's it."

"Your bargain is my freedom in exchange for a conversation?"

"A political one. And a moral one. I have, like, a thousand different—" Another clone pops. Akari shakes her head and the proverbial swinging blade of doom drops down an inch closer to her head. "Right. Yeah. A conversation."

"Hmm. Very well. I believe that is a fair deal."

"Alright," she says. "Great. Now, how to get you out."

"Oh, that?"

"Yes, that. I don't know jack about seals."

He chuckles.

The old man pulls himself up off of the floor and dusts off his robe. He steps towards the bars, unconcerned. The skin on his hand is crinkled origami paper, soft and worn, in sharp contrast with the unyielding metal as he wraps his hand around the bars. There's a flash of chakra and the sealwork is scorched off the metal. His arms glow blue and he parts the cage like it's made of cardboard.

"You could have left that entire time."

"Perhaps. But to what? And at what cost?"

"Holy shit," she breathes. "I can't wait to sit down and talk with you."

His bright green eyes twinkle. "The feeling is mutual, my dear."

.

.

They slip out of Suna amidst the chaos.

People are shouting and bright red paint is splattered all over the otherwise bland, ugly stone structures of the village. And, for a split second, Akari catches sight of a fully naked ninja streaking across the rooftops, screaming incoherently the whole way. A couple of ANBU follow hot on his trail.

"This was your doing?" the monk asks.

"Some of my best work, I think," Akari says. At the clear judgement on his face, she rolls her eyes. "Look—I didn't hurt anybody, alright? I just made a bit of a mess. I had to keep their attention elsewhere somehow."

The old monk hums but doesn't respond.

They take an old side route out of the village that the monk leads her too. A few Suna ninja go down in their wake, but all in a strictly non-lethal manner, as per the monk's ruling. Akari has no interest in arguing.

.

.

Rasa works his jaw and glares daggers at the wall across from him. "Run through it again."

"At two in the morning, Akari slipped out of her room and headed towards the middle of the village. She was followed at a distance as per your instructions, to investigate where she went without allowing her to identify she was being trailed," Haru says. "Upon reaching the middle of the village, she created five separate clones."

The room around them is lush, annoyingly so for Rasa. He has no doubt the daimyo puts him in rooms like this on purpose—the man never misses a chance to rub it in Rasa's face that he and his sycophants in the capital want for nothing.

He adjusts the finely woven cotton nightclothes, almost uncomfortable on the overly plush bed as Haru stands a few steps inside the room, a shadow painted on the bamboo walls in stark black by the candlelight at his bedside. A breeze rolls through the room and the flame sputters and sends ripples through the shadow like a rock dropped in water.

"Unable to follow all of the clones and discern which was the real one, two of the agents trailing her each picked a clone and followed it while the third went to gather back up. However, neither of them followed the real Akari. More agents were brought in to canvass the village for her, leaving behind only a handful of guards in the underground base."

He didn't have to ask why they didn't leave a more robust guard retinue behind—with the amount of seal work on the cage, there was no way she should have been able to access Bunpuku. The only person who had ever broken through those seals was the seal master herself. It would have seemed pointless to leave behind more than the bare minimum when they didn't know yet that that was where she was headed.

And Rasa doesn't think Akari is the one who broke Bunpuku out. She might have the ability to stir up chaos but she's no seal master, nor does she have the strength required to bend metal like it's putty. Bunpuku must have gotten himself out, somehow, and she was just there to facilitate.

Haru pauses, her head inclined to Rasa, and he gestures her on.

"It appears that she implemented her clones to distract us. Every time we tracked one down and destroyed it, another would pop up. Eventually, the clones became clear as they grew more and more deformed, but by the time we dispersed all of them and returned to the underground base to see if she had gone there, she had broken Bunpuku out and the two were headed towards a section of tunnels believed to have been sealed off."

"Did you follow?"

"Yes, Lord Kazekage," Haru says. "They are being tracked on strict orders to not engage unless instructed to do so by you."

Rasa clasps his hands together, his elbows rested on his knees.

Bunpuku must be taken alive. Should he be killed, the tailed beast will be released and then the village is out its beast regardless. But attempting to capture him alive complicates things, as does the fact that his companion is a ninja of unknown skill. She is well known for her antics and affiliations to the leadership of Kumo; little information exists about her fighting abilities.

It's too risky to try and engage at this rate.

But that doesn't mean he can't benefit from this situation. What would the new Raikage say if he found out the agent he sent in as a negotiator ended up kidnapping Suna's jinchuuriki?

"Tell them to pull back."

.

.

"So you're telling me," Akari says, squinting in the firelight, "that you talk to the Ichibi regularly?"

"That is correct."

"And it's cordial?"

"Indeed."

"Huh."

Bunpuku smiles. "He has been my friend for many years, child. All I had to do was show him the same kindness I show any other living being I encounter."

"Your friend," Akari says. She hums. "And I assume the feeling is mutual?"

"I would hope so."

"Our jinchuuriki's been attempting to do the same thing for a while," she says. "Not sure he's had much success."

"It was no easy feat. A tailed beast is a creature scorned—their trust must be earned like any creature that's been abused. Slowly and with good faith."

"How long did it take you?"

"Oh, perhaps ten years. I have been his vessel for almost twenty, now. We have had much time to build a relationship."

She lets out a low whistle. "You care about him?"

"I do."

"And you want what's best for him?"

"To what extent I can, yes."

Akari tilts her head, intrigued. "Explain."

"I am not Ichibi," he says. "I cannot truly understand what is best for him—only he may do that. I could never hope to comprehend the millennia he has seen and lived, and how this imprisonment must have affected him. While to us, the decades that have passed since the village's inception seem significant, to Ichibi it has been but the blink of an eye."

"Then would you agree that the most decent thing is to allow him to choose for himself?" she asks. "To set him free so he can do that?"

"Is setting him free allowing him to choose for himself?"

"Of course it is. Somebody can't make a truly free choice while stuck in chains."

Bunpuku hums. He stares down at the flames and pokes his stick into the embers. The fire releases a burp of sparks, sputtering happily, and Akari takes another bite of her rabbit.

She had offered him a skewer but he refused. He's vegetarian. Which, even only knowing Bunpuku a few choice hours, is about what she'd come to expect of the man. She might think he's dipshit for wasting his wisdom on religion, but at least he's principled.

"An interesting perspective to pose," he says.

"One you disagree with?"

"I have not yet decided."

"But if you knew it was what he wanted, if he told you himself that he wanted to be free, would you be willing to end your own life for it?" she asks.

"Would I put myself to the blade for him?"

"Yes."

"I believe I would," he says. "But his feelings on the matter might surprise you."

Akari leans back a bit, watching Bunpuku through narrowed eyes.

How she can feel so much respect but so much scorn for one person at one time astounds her.

The first person she meets willing to go to commit for his ideals as powerfully as she is on this topic and yet, on another, she disagrees with him on such a fundamental level. She doesn't understand it. Though, she supposes that's not a bad thing. That's the whole point of free thought: he can believe in his whatever dumb spiritualistic shit he has and she can deem it as dumb garbage idiot shit.

She sighs. She takes another bite and considers him while she chews. "What are you going to do now, then?"

He quirks a feathery white eyebrow. "Already given up on bringing me back with you?"

"Not like I'm going to physically force you," Akari says, shrugging. "And you've not been convinced by anything I've said so far. Besides, just because I didn't convince you now doesn't mean I've given up entirely. I'm just going to recalculate and try again."

Bunpuku laughs. "I look forward to your future attempts, my dear."

A/N: So this is the last chapter in the backlog. We're officially caught up. Meaning that this fic joins my queue and I can't promise when, exactly, it'll be updated next.

For right now I'm working through my commissions and then after that, we'll see. This one is going to sit high-ish on my priority list because there's only another three or four chapters for it based on my outline, so there is that. But I also want to finish On Freedom and Other Formalities, get another chapter of Child Borne of Spring done, and maybe some Fade to Black. Only time will tell.

But for now, thank you all for your support for this fic!

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