Love Through Negotiation «COMPLETED»

Chapter 6

She snapped back to reality when she felt the cold, withered hand of her grandfather grab her elbow suddenly. Her breath got caught in her throat and her spine snapped straight. "Don't make a scene," he hissed so lowly that it was only audible to her.

The sound of her teeth grinding together assaulted her inner ears. She couldn't unclench her teeth no matter how hard she tried. Her face was screwed up in anger, though she doubted anyone noticed. All the people in the crowds were looking at each other or milling about with any number of differing emotions on their face.

She only had one emotion available to her. "But gramps-"

"If you make a single sound more, I will make you so heavy that you won't be able to stand for weeks."

Kurotsuchi bit back her tongue and closed her eyes. She felt a hot wetness on her cheeks. Was she crying? Too many emotions that she had thought were long gone began to bubble up in her chest. Sadness, anger, frustration, fear, doubt, and above all, helplessness. As she glared at the teenager next to her, him waving out to the crowd and blowing raspberries in an utterly humiliating display of juvenility and childishness, Kurotsuchi felt the most intense sensation of helplessness well up inside of her.

No, that's not right. She wasn't helpless anymore. She was a fucking adult now. She could do whatever she damn well pleased.

And it would damn well please her to shove a katana down his throat and look him in the eyes as he choked on his own blood.

Oh, it would please her greatly.

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Mei, being the one standing on the other side of Kurotsuchi, was the first one to sense the incredibly fluctuating chakra signature to her side. Mei glanced over and saw streams of tears pouring out of the girl's eyes like miniature waterfalls and a face that was more tortured than many of the people she'd seen dying on the battlefield. Something was very wrong.

As soon as she noticed this, she walked up behind Jiraiya and quietly said, "We have a problem," interrupting his speech mid-sentence.

Without changing his facial expression in the slightest, Jiraiya nodded ever so slightly and immediately pivoted away from the point he was making with promises of more minute details trickled down by the elite shinobi. By the time they had turned around, there were only four members of the contract standing in a line.

Kurotsuchi was gone, having brushed past her grandfather, leaving him flat on his ass on the ground next to a confused Naruto.

"What's going on?" he asked, looking over to where he had last seen Kurotsuchi's fleeing form.

Jiraiya took charge of the group, saying "Everyone, body flicker down to the room right now," in a stern and domineering voice.

The leaders and their charges paired up without a second buffer and vanished from the rooftop, leaving a citizenry confused as to what happened. Soon, they would begin to filter back to their homes with confusion, doubt, and trepidation in their hearts. Never before had something like this happened. Nevermind a 6-way marriage, few remembered a time when five kage were in the same general vicinity and there wasn't a war going on. The general populace would debate, argue, and whisper in hushed tones as to how they thought it was going to shake out. There would be a hundred different conspiracy theories by the time the sun set and a hundred more by the time the sun rose. Some could agree, some were indifferent, and others still couldn't accept allying with any of the other big five. The next week or so were of vital importance to the people's perception of how things might shake out.

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Naruto almost stumbled forward, but he was held steady by the grip of Tsunade. As soon as Onoki was down, she said "What's going on?" with a hint of frustration in her voice. Things had been going so well. What could have happened to exacerbate the ire of the girl from rock? Honestly, it was that girl that made her the most worried for the future of the alliance. The rest were either staunchly pragmatic or indifferent to the contract, but Kurotsuchi was excitable and acted on emotion in a way not wholly unreminiscent of the teenager whose shoulder she was grabbing. So when Kakashi brought the two of them in front of her, covered in tar and paint, but laughing their asses off, she couldn't help but feel a load lift off her shoulders a little bit. If they could work things out, then maybe peace could be achieved.