Naruto 40k Voidfall: Chapter 34 (Patreon)

This chapter was NOT commissioned by anyone. Just felt like writing it.

Chapter 34

Attempts at Peace

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Naruto moved through Konoha with the giant woven basket balanced against his hip, the scent of harvested blossoms trailing behind him like a warm breeze from the Land of Vegetables. Even fresh off a diplomatic mission, even still faintly sunburnt and smelling faintly of ocean salt and coconut oil, he moved with purpose: today he had gifts to deliver, and he was determined to make certain every woman precious to him received something worthy of the thought he’d put into it.

His first deliveries were simple only because the recipients were close at hand. Tenten, Sakura, and Konan had traveled the same path from the landing zone, sorting out small details from their return. Naruto presented each of them with a bouquet suited to her temperament — for Tenten, wild orange gladiolus tied with thin leather cord; for Sakura, pale pink peonies wrapped in medicinal-green cloth; for Konan, a sharp geometric arrangement of white orchids and indigo bellflowers, flowers that mirrored the precision of paper and shadows.

Konan, especially, looked briefly startled — then softened in a way he suspected she never allowed herself to do in public.

"Thank you Naruto. You could have given these to us sooner." she said.

"Yeah, why wait for the flight to be over?" Sakura asked.

Naruto grinned,

"Because I have lot more to deliver, and I want to do it all in one go." he said before running off. "I'll see you at the Hokage's office!"

He then bounded off with the rest of his basket swaying behind him like a farmer’s harvest.

Ichiraku’s was his first stop. Ayame looked up from wiping a counter, shadows clear under her eyes from her newly increased workload. Naruto presented her with a bouquet of bright red camellias and golden calendula — blossoms that symbolized gratitude and nourishment.

She laughed, genuinely, before pressing them to her face to breathe them in. For a moment she looked ten years younger.

“You always remember me,” she said softly. “Thank you.”

He waved it off bashfully, paid for a bowl he didn’t have time to eat, and jogged out again.

Ino was next — and this stop mattered, because of all people, she would know if his choices were thoughtful or embarrassingly amateurish.

He found her in her family’s flower shop, hair disheveled, eyes rimmed red. She looked nothing like Konoha’s star socialite; she looked like someone carrying something heavy alone. But when she saw him — saw the bouquet of midnight-blue delphiniums and snowy jasmine held out in offering — her posture cracked for just a breath, and relief washed through her colorfully.

She took them carefully, reverently, as though afraid she might crush them by holding too tightly.

“These are perfect,” she whispered, voice trembling. “Honestly… I needed that more than I want to admit.”

Naruto didn’t ask what was up with her. She would tell him if it was important. He just smiled, squeezed her shoulder, and slipped out again, because pushing now — while Asuma was gone, while worry sat in her expression like a bruise — would help no one.

Kurenai’s apartment was next. She opened the door slowly, as though pulled from a long and difficult night. Her hair was unbrushed, her eyes exhausted beyond makeup or illusion. When Naruto offered her a soft arrangement of crimson spider lilies and snowy baby's breath, she drew in a sharp breath and pressed it to her chest like something fragile, something sacred.

Her voice cracked. She thanked him in almost a whisper.

Naruto pretended not to see the tear that fell. He offered no questions, no commentary, only a gentle bow before leaving her with her privacy intact.

These were dark signs considering the concerns Team Asuma had brought to team Kakashi just a short week ago.

He went searching for his trio of apprentices to pawn a little bouquette of sunflowers and daisies to Moegi, but did not find them, so he went to his final stop before the Hokage’s office: the Hyūga compound — a place he always approached with a strange mixture of nerves and warmth.

He knocked at the gate, expecting one of the branch guards. Instead, Hanabi answered.

She opened the gate with bright eyes and a strange buoyancy, her face lighting up the moment she saw him — a reaction Naruto didn’t fully register because he was preoccupied with fumbling the bouquet he’d prepared. Lavender and soft blue water lilies, wrapped carefully in pale silk: flowers of sincerity and admiration. Hinata flowers, he called them in his mind.

“Hey,” Naruto greeted, lifting the bouquet. “Is Hinata around? I, uh… brought these for her.”

She snatched them greedily.

“She’s out with Father,” Hanabi said, her tone overly casual for someone suddenly hugging the bouquet to her chest as though it were a treasure. Her ears reddened almost imperceptibly as she held the flowers, eyes flicking anywhere except directly at him. “I’ll… I’ll give them to her. I promise.”

Naruto blinked, perplexed but untroubled.

"Thanks! Just make sure she actually gets them, okay?”

Hanabi’s cheeks deepened from faint pink to a soft embarrassed glow.

“Of course,” she said quickly — too quickly. “I’ll take good care of them.”

He shrugged at the odd reaction — chalking it up to Hyūga weirdness, as he always did — and waved goodbye before she could muster the courage to say more.

With his basket lighter, spirits lifted, he headed toward the Hokage’s tower, unaware that Hanabi Hyūga stood in the doorway behind him long after he’d left, staring at the lilies as if they were a poem meant for her alone.

Naruto, naturally, suspected none of it.

He simply continued onward, humming under his breath, ready to face whatever chaos Tsunade had brewed up in their absence.

-

Naruto pushed open the door to the Hokage’s office and found that the rest of the mission team had already finished their debrief. Exactly as he planned.

Kakashi stood off to the side, hands in pockets, Lee radiated a kind of polite impatience as only he could, and Konan and Nagato waited near the desk with the quiet dignity of foreign dignitaries who understood they were being dismissed. Sakura and Kakuzu stood on either side of the door reading. Sakura some medical text, Kakuzu what looked like a spreadsheet.

Naruto marched forward, holding the final bouquet like an offering to a queen. He set it down on Tsunade’s desk beside the mission reports Kakuzu had so meticulously forced him to rewrite, and produced Haruna’s scroll with a flourish.

“Last one, Granny,” he said, nudging the flowers toward her.

She took them with a sigh that was half-annoyed, half-touched.

Tsunade tapped the scroll.

“And what is this?”

Naruto shrugged.

“Her offer. Trade stuff. Agricultural goods. And whatever she wants in return.”

Shizune raised an eyebrow.

“It’s not you again, is it?”

“I don’t know! I didn’t read it!” Naruto insisted, jabbing a finger at the still-intact seal. “See? The seal is fresh as a daisy.”

Tsunade broke the seal with her thumb and unrolled the parchment. Her expression shifted as she read—first neutral, then contemplative, then a slow grimace that made Sakura lean in with preemptive dread.

“It’s not my hand in marriage, is it?” Naruto asked, only halfway joking.

“Yeah, it isn’t that… right?” Sakura added, voice hovering on the edge of panic.

Tsunade snorted.

“No. They want to formally join the Allied Shinobi Nations—expected, considering the circumstances—but they also want two shinobi posted to their country. One able to produce rain like Nagato here… and one Wood Style user.”

The room filled with a chorus of pained hisses. Even Naruto, who rarely understood political stakes on the first go, winced. That was a steep price. Maybe steeper than they could afford.

“Wait,” Naruto said, brow furrowing. “Wood Style can grow, like… plants? Produce? Flowers? I thought it was just wood. Like trees and planks and stuff.”

“It can,” Tsunade said. “But again: it’s a tall ask. We only have two in the entire village.”

Two? Naruto blinked. He’d only ever met the mysterious masked ANBU from the Ork war. Unless someone had a secret kid or something—

“Moegi is out of the question,” Tsunade muttered. “Shizune, summon Kinoe.”

Naruto nearly choked. One of Naruto's three personal students? Shy, quiet, never-raises-her-voice Moegi? Wood Style? She’d never said a word. They again, she was the humble type.

Nagato shifted slightly in his wheelchair.

“As for rain… only I can create storms across a broad area.” He said it without pride, simply stating fact. “But I can loan a contingent of genin who specialize in cooperative weather jutsu. They can maintain rainfall over farmland if properly instructed.”

Tsunade nodded and began drafting her counteroffer on a second sheet.

“I’ll include that in the counter-offer. Anything else before I dismiss you all?”

Naruto looked at the others—Sakura, Kakashi, Lee, Konan, Kakuzu, and Nagato. They all gave the same answer with the same shrug: no.

Tsunade rose, smoothing her robes, and faced Nagato directly. The atmosphere shifted in the room—politics giving way to dignity, respect, and something almost ceremonial. She bowed deeply.

“Thank you for joining us in this joint operation, Lord Amekage. Your cooperation is appreciated. We hope to work with you again.”

Nagato braced his hands on the armrests, pushed himself up, and—despite the tremor in his legs—returned the bow. It was stiff, painful, and sincere. For a brief, startling moment, Naruto felt a swell of pride in him, like watching family stand up straighter than their suffering wanted them to.

-

Naruto jogged a few steps to catch up with Nagato as the group dispersed, falling naturally into stride beside the Amekage’s wheelchair.

“Mind if I walk with you?” he asked.

Nagato gave a small nod

“Of course.” his distant uncle said. "Your company is always welcome."

"And that's from all of us." Kakuzu added. "You've made quite an impresison on the whole of our organization."

Naruto scratched the back of his head bashfully.

Konan drifted a few paces behind them, her steps silent, allowing Naruto to push Nagato. Kakuzu trailing like a disgruntled shadow counting the value of every minute wasted. Together they crossed the administrative courtyard, sunlight warm across the stones, the distant hum of the village washing over them like a familiar tide.

“Is Amegakure okay without you there?” Naruto asked. He tried to sound casual, but his eyes flicked with concern. “Not that I think it’ll fall apart or anything—just… you know.”

Nagato’s answer came calm and steady.

“The entirety of the Akatsuki is there. And the new Uzumaki.”

“Oh—right.” Naruto grinned. “How’s that whole Uzumaki clan revival thing going?”

Nagato let out a soft exhale that might, on someone else, be called a sigh.

“Progress has been mixed. Unlocking the Rinnegan remains beyond them. As expected. But the sealing arts have begun to cross-pollinate.”

“Cross-pollinate?” Naruto repeated.

He appreicated how he and everyone else were using flower puns, but when talking abouta trio of young, beautiful women, the term 'cross-pollinate' seemed a little crass.

“Karin and Honoka have succeeded in teaching each other the Adamantine Chains and the binding formations,” Nagato said. “Their affinity is strong. Naturally complementary. Tayuya is struggling—her gifts lean toward genjutsu and summoning. But she is improving.”

“Well,” Kakuzu said dryly from behind them, “two straight weeks training under the rest of the Akatsuki had better have yielded results. Otherwise we’ve wasted time, rations, and perfectly good threats.”

Naruto ignored him, staring off dreamily at nothing as the information clicked together in his mind.

Three new Uzumaki mastering sealing arts. Three potential Rinnegan candidates—no matter how far-fetched. Three people training under the literal monsters who once terrified the world.

A shiver ran down his spine, half anticipation, half dread.

Training under the Akatsuki… all of them… The knowledge he could gain. The brutal, merciless lessons. The kind that didn’t just make you stronger—but sharpened you in the same way a grindstone sharpened a blade.

“Man…” Naruto whispered, a grin creeping across his face. “That’s gonna be insane.”

None of them seemed to feel to the need to ask him what he meant.

They reached the plateau above the Hokage Monument, where Tsunade’s newly built airstrip stretched like a gleaming scar across the stone. Konan adjusted Nagato’s coat. Kakuzu checked their luggage one final time, as if expecting Konoha to steal a receipt.

Nagato turned to Naruto.

“Until next time.”

Konan bowed her head politely. Kakuzu merely grunted, which for him was practically affection.

Then Nagato pressed his palms together, and the air shimmered. With a quiet ripple, the giant green bird manifested—wings unfurling, feathers like emerald glass.

They climbed aboard. The bird kicked off, wind sweeping Naruto’s hair back as it rose higher and higher, circling once above the village before angling toward the horizon.

Naruto watched until even the shimmer of Nagato’s chakra vanished into the distant blue.

Only then did he stretch, roll his shoulders, and breathe in the warm Konoha air.

“Home,” he muttered to himself, hands folding behind his head as he headed down the path toward his apartment.

-

Naruto moved to push open the door to his apartment—and stopped. The door was already ajar.

He knew not to expect any burglars, or assassins, or even a prank. As a prankster wouldn't leave the door open. In fact, it was a very short list of people who would let themselves into his home, and three of them were inside.

Jiraiya was sitting at his table with the undead fourth Hokage, already halfway through a pot of tea he hadn’t paid for.

Hiashi Hyūga stood ramrod-straight beside the window, arms folded as though judging the décor with his daughter sittingt on his couch with her hands politely folded in her lap, cheeks faintly pink.

And at his kitchen counter—

“Madam Shijimi?” Naruto blurted, pointing as if expecting her to vanish if he blinked too hard. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be… I dunno—with the Daimyō or something? We're not exactly getting along last I heard.”

The pudgy noblewoman waved a silk-sleeved hand in the air as if batting away a fly.

“Pshah! Politics.” She clicked her tongue. “People get so puffed up, so full of their own importance. It’s all posturing and noise... until it isn't.”

She leaned forward conspiratorially, whispering as if sharing the deepest of secrets.

“It should never get in the way of helping young people find love.”

Naruto felt himself pink, and his gaze slid to Hiashi.

“…Is she the matchmaker you threatened me with?” he asked, trying to make his brain catch up.

Hiashi’s lips twitched.

“No.”

A new voice cut the air—smooth, feminine, bored, and animalistic

Naruto looked down to see Tora the cat looking up at him.

“I am” said the cat, tail swishing regally atop the counter.

Naruto stared.

Tora stared back, purring.

Madam Shijimi clasped her hands proudly.

“… right. Ninja cats. It is a mean prank of you to train Genin like that. Kakashi should have Pakkun and the gang of talking hounds cover for you some time.”

Tora sighed, long-suffering, as though she were the one frequently chased through forests by underpaid genin.

“Yuk it up boy, it feels like yesterday you and your green teammates couldn't even keep hold of me.” she said.

Her whiskers twitched with amusement.

“Now sit down. We have… compatibility matters to discuss.”

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