The sealed kunai

Chapter 54: Entry Wound

The first day of the meeting drew to a close and the four hidden village kage in attendance left to return to their lodgings until the next day. In the end it left Tsunade with her two bodyguards for the meetings, Naruto and Yamato, and Gaara along with Kankuro and Temari in her office to discuss amongst themselves.

"So aside from you and myself Naruto..." Gaara said, starting to speak, "There are Yugito-san and the Raikage's brother as the only jinchuuriki left to take. We still have Kisame Hoshigaki's corpse, but we haven't learned anything from it yet. I do not think we will reveal any secrets of an Akatsuki nature from his body so we are planning to release it to the Mizukage to do with him what she will. A gesture of good faith for the alliance."

Tsunade nodded, "Same goes for us as far as Hidan's head goes. Interrogation can't bring up anything from his mind. I knew that such a powerful group of shinobi wouldn't be easy to pull information from, all the same though... we've been stuck waiting for them to make their moves since day one. Orochimaru was easier to go on an offensive against than Akatsuki."

Sometimes Naruto wished it would just be that easy, that there was just an instant win button, but the world didn't work like that and there was no such thing as a glorious march to victory in a war. He wished that there was some place to find and charge down to finish off Akatsuki. Even if he still wasn't able to do so he wished there was one. Amegakure was the only place he figured there was that could be seen as an active Akatsuki stronghold, and heading there even with an attacking force would be a daunting task.

Being reactionary had almost bitten them in the backside repeatedly, having to wait for very dangerous and scary people to make the first move, but there were no real alternatives. The one time anyone tried being active against the Akatsuki Jiraiya lost his left arm and Naruto took the beating of a lifetime that neither of them should have walked away from.

"So there are no known locations of activity?" Gaara questioned, "You haven't been able to pull anything at all from Hidan?"

Knowing enough about this situation since he was the one that brought Hidan's head to Konoha in the first place, Naruto answered, "Nothing but abandoned little hidey-holes with nothing there." All Hidan ever got as far as information went were marching orders; go here and kill that, or go there and take that jinchuuriki. He was never told any plans in advance which was probably for the best since out of all of the members he would be the easiest to take alive due to the difficulty in killing him, "Hidan's a bust on the information."

"Talk about a buzzkill." Kankuro said, rolling his shoulders out, "So now it's like all four of our villages met up at a joining path in the tunnels of a spooky cave... just to face down a big dead-end. Great. All four of us stumbling around in the dark trying to find our own asses. Sounds like fun."

Temari flicked her younger brother in the side of the head to get him to behave somewhat, "He has a point though. All this alliance is doing at this point is just specifying that there's a problem out there we need to work together to solve. No one knows anything that the others didn't beforehand."

That much was evident by the basis of the meeting that had taken place that day. All that had occurred was basically the laying out of the four attending villages' run-ins with Akatsuki, "Still it's better to have each other covered than going forward with a knife always at our backs." Yamato commented, "Even when Kirigakure didn't have to help us. With no jinchuuriki they don't really have a stake to protect in this."

As far as the day's events went it was enough until tomorrow. The talks could resume then. There was no need for Konoha and Suna's leaders to talk amongst themselves as if it were a private conversation, "Naruto, would you mind having the Kazekage and his siblings stay with you until the end of the meetings? It would probably be a more personal touch than letting them stay in a hotel."