[OP: "Cold is the Night"--The Oh Hellos]

The heroes looked and saw Naruto and Hinata were by Neji.

"We're too late!" Momo gasped. "Oh no..." She covered her mouth.

"I think I'm gonna throw up," Camie said, covering her mouth also.

The boys didn't say anything.

"Hey." Shine ran and grabbed Momo's arm. "It might not be too late."

"Huh?" Momo said.

"It's amazing what He can do," Shine said. "I've seen it before. We can at least try. Come. I refuse  to let this be the end of it. The whole point of us removing the curse mark was so that he didn't have to die for this reason!" [That and Naruto healed Might Guy but couldn't heal Neji because...different injuries? I guess that makes sense.]

Momo didn't understand how she could be so fierce at the idea of death itself, but Shine started to lead her towards Neji, and the others followed.

Mabui followed also, but really because she had nothing else to do.

Hinata was talking to Naruto, but she'd just stopped and glanced up at them.

Then she stood up, holding Naruto's hand.

"We have to keep fighting," she said.

Naruto nodded. "Yeah."

Then he let go and walked forward, to where Sakura was.

"Sasuke will be here any sec..." Camie said in a small voice. "I still felt like I'm gonna be sick."

Hinata turned to them, her face betraying she was upset. "I'm sorry... I just...feel like if you'd been close to us, maybe this wouldn't have happened, but that's a selfish thought."

"Babe, can you get the spikes out of him?" Shine asked Wally. "I think I'll throw up if I try."

"Yeah...sure...don't look," Wally said.

The all glanced way, except for Mabui, who had, of course, the training of a ninja not to be squeamish about this kind of thing.

Wally pulled out the spikes at top speed, and then he said, "You can look now."

"He looks a bit more peaceful after that..." Hinata said.

"Hinata, go help the others," Shine said. "Leave Neji to us."

She nodded and walked away.

"Let's move him," Shine said.

So they did, back to their shield.

"I suppose it might be that he's not dead yet," Momo said. "It takes a bit for... Well, we can try."

She held out her hands and began to murmur some words. Her hands glowed.

Shine put her hand on Neji's head. "We did not come this far to lose you now. Come back to us."

"I just realized, since you removed his curse mark, we have no way to know if he's dead yet or not," Dabi remarked.

Mabui had a strange look, but she was too stunned to ask them what they were doing. She looked back at the Tailed Beast. "Is that Madara?"

"One of 'em is," Bakugo said darkly. "And Obito. The punks. Oh, and look, there's the other one."

Sasuke had just appeared.

"I can't believe he had the nerve to show up here," Shoto said.

"Those of you who are not helping, you can go keep an eye on things," Shine said. "I want to follow the action."

"Yeah, okay," Camie said, more meekly than usual. "I guess you'll take care of Neji."

"This outta be good," Dabi said.

They walked around the other fallen ninja, shuddering but not looking.

"Fahm, I'm starting to wonder if I'm cut out for this hero stuff," Camie said. "Can you imagine seeing this all the time?"

"It won't be all the time," Bakugo said. "That's the point of being a hero...but every now and then you're gonna be too slow. Even All Might was..." From Bakugo, this bit of realism was surprising, and it made Shoto think he was more affected by this experience than he let on.

"But are we gonna be, like, traumatized by this?" Camie asked.

"The reality is you would have seen this sooner or later working for UA," Dabi said. "Even fighting us in the LOV. So if you think you're traumatized now, you'd have been anyway. At least here it wasn't your fault, if that makes it any better."

"It might," Camie said. "But, like, not by much."

Dabi shrugged.

When they got close to Sasuke, he was talking to the Leaf ninja, who were indignant that he was there.

He had just claimed he was going to be Hokage, and the others were protesting.

Camie glanced back at Shine.

To her shock, she saw that Neji was standing up now, next to them.

"Guys," she hissed at the others. "Look! They healed him."

They turned.

"Oh, thank God..." Shoto said in a low voice.

"Eh, I knew they could," Bakugo declared as if he hadn't been worried.

"Good, that was starting to piss me off," Dabi said.

Mabui, who'd followed them again, turned to peer at Neji, and then she gave them another look.

"I know, right, girl?" Camie said to her. "This healing thing is rad as frick."

That didn't clear anything up for that poor woman.

Feeling greatly relieved, the heroes were able to turn more to Sasuke's words with less stress; however, the situation was still pretty bleak.

But focused more on the moment, they did find it hilarious when he said for the second time he'd be Hokage, amidst the host of objections.

Camie and Bakugo started laughing.

Sasuke had not noticed them till now, but he turned, and the look on his face was priceless, especially to Shoto, who was glaring at him.

"Eh? Oh, hi again, guys," Naruto said.

"Where have you been?" Sakura glared at them crossly. "We've been getting beat up, and you were nowhere to be seen."

"We've been here the whole time," Shoto said. "Just trying not to interfere too much." With a disdainful look at Sasuke.

Sasuke glared at them, coldy. "What are you laughing at?"

"You're so stupid," Bakugo said. 

"Yeah, bro, that's literally a laugh and a half," Camie said. "Wait, weren't you kidding? You were kidding, right? That was even dumber to hear in person than I thought I would be. I mean, you, Hokage?"

Sasuke glared at her also. "I don't even know who you are, but what right do you have to mock me for my statement? You're not even from Leaf..."

"Uh...we're not exactly voting for you either," Shikamaru said. "But right now this seems like a waste of our time. If you're going to help us, fine, for now."

"Shikamaru is right," Hinata said. "Anyway, all of us should...try to be worthy of being Hokage in some way."

"No, no, don't try to justify it, Hyuga," Dabi said. "It was a stupid thing to say, and he's an arrogant prick. We all know it. Let's move on and focus on the real enemy."

Hinata looked at him strangely.

"Anyway, girl, look." Camie tugged her arm and pointed back.

Hinata turned, and then her eyes got huge and she smiled.

"Fine, Sasuke." Naruto wasn't paying them any mind. "I'll become stronger than you to become Hokage."

"You getting this, Cotton Candy?" Dabi asked Sakura.

"Don't call me that," Sakura said tightly.

She joined the two boys. "But if we're all going to start saying things like that, then I might as well say I'll become Hokage also. I can compete with them now."

Sasuke didn't seem remotely interested by this, and Naruto only gave Sakura a faint smile in agreement.

[My sisters requested I change Sakura's line to be less stupid. I tried, so you're welcome.]

The Tailed Beast had sent small clones of itself out to fight them, to stall for time.

The shinobi began to attack them.

Naruto and Sasuke had no trouble destroying the monsters. Sakura grabbed one by its hand and then crushed it.

She declared that she'd achieved a new level of strength.

Naruto was scared by that, you could tell.

Frankly, so were most of the other ninja.

Sasuke just chuckled. [He actually did that.]

"Did he just laugh?" Shoto said oddly.

"He's never laughed before," Dabi said. "I guess he's lost his mind."

"He did laugh when Naruto confronted him before," Camie recalled. "But not like that... Dang, you know, I think he was a little into that right there."

"What? No, that's disgusting," Shoto said.

"Just saying, bro." Camie shrugged.

"What a nightmarish thought," Dabi said. "I'm going to suppress that thought right now."

He released a blast of fire on one of the Beast clones.

"Agreed." Shoto incinerated another one.

"Got to hell!" Bakugo blasted another one of the beasts away.

"Man, the guys on this team have massive issues," Camie said.

* * *

Momo had been ready to cry when Neji had suddenly blinked up at her and then sat up.

"You're okay?" she said.

"I...what happened?" Naji felt his chest. "I thought I was dying... I fell asleep...but then I was awake... I heard your voices. I didn't realize you were here."

"Sorry, we were late," Shine said. Her tone showed that she was more stressed then she'd let on.

"Whew, that was close." Wally was wrung out too. "Welcome back, kid."

"I should get back into the fight then," Neji said.

"Not if you're going to do things like that!" Shine grabbed his shoulder and gave it a yank. "Next time hit the spikes aside. Don't jump in front of them!"

"I wasn't sure I had enough force..." Neji protested.

"We did not save you from the damned curse so that you would just do something like that," Shine said. "Self sacrifice is beautiful, but only when it's necessary. Be less careless with your safety. Do you think you're not worth anything but as a protector?"

"I think he gets the point, sweetheart." Wally put a hand on her arm. "Maybe just be glad he's okay."

"I thought I was going to see another student die in front of me," Shine said, in a different tone, "and not be able to help them."

Neji and Momo both looked at her more somberly.

"But we got it today," Wally said, gently. "Today was not the day to lose someone again. That's good, right?"

"The day is not over yet," Neji said. "If we do not want to lose anyone, we have to give the fight our all."

"We can't keep going like this." Shine shook her head. "We're tired. I don't know how the ninja do it. I want us to pull back until Naruto and Sasuke and Sakura have bought more time."

"Pull back again?" Momo said.

"Getting involved here nearly just got you all impaled," Shine said. "This is not our fight, clearly. We're not suited to it."

"I'm not sure anyone is suited to this fight," Neji said. "But if you feel that you should back out..."

"I do agree that we can't keep this up for hours," Wally said. "Maybe we should wait for a real opening again. We might have jumped the gun here. We should find Gaara. He's probably still on his way. See what's going on there."

Shine nodded.

Then she moved towards the other heroes.

Momo stood up. "I never realized," she said in a low voice.

"Realized what?" Neji said.

"Shine is so fearless," Momo said quietly, "and strong, and most of the time I never see a crack in her armor. But there is one thing she's scared of, and that is losing students and friends and being able to do nothing. I don't think that happens to her often, but I take it when it does, it's hard to deal with. This war is stressing her out more than I thought. For us, we're all used to being in large fights and not being able to focus on everyone at once, but I guess when your job is working with individuals, not being able to protect them all is difficult."

"I understand that feeling," Neji said. "Even so, she's not acting that afraid...cautious perhaps, but I agree, for her, even that's unusual. All of us have some area we are not sure of."

"To be honest, Neji, I'm afraid also," Momo said. "Afraid that this fight might be too much for us heroes and our skill level."

"It's not your fight. Maybe you should just retreat," Neji said. He didn't know if they could handle it.

Shine had come up to meet the boys and Camie.

"Hey," she said, grabbing Bakugo while he was exploding something. "Stop."

"What?" Bakugo stopped. "We're destroying these a--h---s."

"This is a diversion," Shine said. "Nothing more. The real trouble is still coming. You're going to use up your quirk too early. The ninja can handle the decoys. Pull back. We need to wait for our moment."

"If you say so..." Shoto said, stopping.

He was getting tired.

"Whatever." Dabi actually was starting to feel the effects of long term quirk usage and was shivering.

"I'm down with that." Camie fanned herself. "Not like I'm doing anything here anyway. But check that out--Madara is just sitting this fight out waiting for Hashirama."

"Oh, yeah," Shine said. "I should have fun with that."

Sasuke intended to confront Madara himself, and when Shine started that way, he followed her.

"Are you going to undo his reanimation also?" he asked.

"On him? I would never get the chance to," Shine said. "I suppose Wally and I could, if you want us to."

"No!" Sasuke got in front of her. "I'm going to stop him and protect Leaf."

Shine laughed oddly.

"Why...why do you all keep doing that?" Sasuke glared. "Isn't this what you want anyway?"

"I never actually said that," Shine pointed out. "That's all you. Why would I care if you protect Leaf or not? You're just funny, that's all. Flattering that you suddenly care what we want, though."

"I don't," Sasuke said. "But you're getting in my way. I seem to recall you once warning me that you would not interfere with me again."

"I think I told you at the cave that not everything is about you, you little brat," Shine said. "Get out of my way, or I'll knock you out of my way. You're too old now for me to care that you're younger than me, so move."

"I'm not going to let you interfere," Sasuke said.

"Sasuke..." Shine sighed, "the funny part about you thinking that you have any say over what I do is that you already rejected ties with us. That means I don't have to follow your requests. That's only for our students."

So saying, she held up her sword, and a large piece of wood fell on top of Sasuke--or would have if he hadn't jumped aside in time.

Shine just walked past him and over to Madara.

Sasuke followed her, but he knew from before that trying to touch her would likely not end well for him and wasn't sure about attacking in earnest.

Madara was sitting out the fight with an annoyed look.

"Oh, it's you." He looked down at Shine. "You lied to me. Hashirama didn't show up till now, and he's not waiting to fight me."

"I'm sorry that hurt your feelings," Shine said in a babying voice that Sasuke couldn't believe she had the nerve to use.

Madara didn't seem to care though. "It doesn't matter. They'll never stop that Beast. Once they get bored of it, we'll fight, after I kill off the others."

"As usual, you Uchiha have flawed strategy," Shine said. "I think your grandson has some words for you, actually, but before he does, I had a question: Why are you doing this? What is in the Tsuki no Me for you?"

"Interesting that you would ask," Madara said, condescendingly. "Usually shinobi just fight me. I was planning to tell Hashirama about it."

"He's busy. I was hoping you wouldn't mind telling me first. I like to learn about people's philosophies," Shine said.

Sasuke made a gesture at her of disbelief. Which she ignored.

"I have time to kill," Madara admitted. "Well, an ignorant shinobi like you wouldn't know this, but it goes back to how the ninja first obtained chakra. There was a--"

"Tree?" Shine interrupted.

"What?" Madara paused.

"Something about a lady stealing the fruit of chakra that gave man the power of gods...?" Shine tapped her chin. "It was...really incoherent, when I learned about it, exactly how it worked, but wasn't that something like it?"

"No one knows about that." Madara was stunned. "No one but me and Hashirama... How did you learn?"

"I believe that's for me to know and you to wonder," Shine said sassily. "But what reason do you have to care about this story? You use more chakra than anyone else."

"Exactly. Mankind stole power. We should return it," Madara said. [That was his professed motive, however little it made sense on the show.] "Chakra has led to nothing but increased misery. As many as desire peace, just as many desire war."

"I see... So war started because of chakra?" Shine inquired innocently.

"Well, no, there was war before that. Chakra just made it more dangerous," Madara said.

"And your position is, then, that mankind is too dangerous to be allowed to use chakra?" Shine said.

"My position is that it's not our power," Madara said. "So we should return it. To the tree."

"I see..." Shine said, in a tone that Sasuke, on his very limited acquaintance of her, was fairly sure was a trap. "That is very like a story I have, in my own ancient texts. There was a tree there, a tree that was said would make people like God, knowing both good and evil--not chakra, per se. In that text, mankind already had spiritual power, and it was a matter of directing it."

"Well, that is a strange difference, but it's not important," Madara said.

"I think it is," Shine said casually. "Because both accounts certainly cannot be right, and yours is clearly the more flawed one."

"How so?" Madara said. "Yours would just say that good and evil knowledge is the cause of all disputes between mankind."

"Yes... Is that not clearly the truth?" Shine raised an eyebrow.

Madara paused, as if turning it over. "Well...it...is too simple. But either way, mankind is incapable of peace."

"Well, that is too true," Shine admitted. "Mankind is not for peace on their own. But you seem to mistake the matter to me. You think that it's because some people just like to fight and others don't, but it is not that simple. If you looked at the members of any war, even this one, you'd see that there are people who only fight because they have to, to try to maintain peace, and there are those who are forced to fight and make war by some ploy of others. Such as yourself. Your war to end wars here seems like more of the same. And you are setting yourself up to be the savior of the world. But you aren't saving them from the real problem of mankind, the good and evil inside our hearts at war. You want to save them only from ever having to fight that war out for themselves... Humans will pay in blood for every bit of progress we make towards true righteousness, but to not progress at all, never to move? It's something worse than dying, and so you will wipe out the entire world just so you don't have to witness the suffering of others who did not ask you to do this for them. You, who could have died and let the world muddle on without your oh-so-wise guidance."

Her mocking tone came out here.

Sasuke, against his will, almost had to admire her gall. Madara could crush her like a gnat if he wanted to, if she was not able to release the jutsu on him in time. And she was mocking him to his face. No one else had dared to do that.

He noticed that her teammates had come up to listen to this, but none of them were moving to attack.

"But our power is not our own," Madara said.

"I notice something interesting in you say that," Shine said, with a derisive look. "You yourself will keep your power in order to enact this jutsu. You will simply suppress everyone else's."

There was a pause while Madara likely tried to find a non-hypocritical way out of what she just said.

"It's always that way with people like you," Shine went on, not waiting for him. "You act righteous and well meaning, but you're always hypocrites. A true leader will sacrifice himself before others. All of you shinobi disgust me with your sacrificing your people and your families and your souls before you'll ever give up one shred of your power."

And here she gave Sasuke a look that could have melted the flesh off his frame and then turned it back at Madara.

Madara was not used to being mocked or scorned by anyone, not even his worst enemies, and it had the same effect on him as the other arrogant shinobi Shine had met so far.

"How dare you look at me narrowly like that?" he said. "You, a small, weak woman, what do you know of power? What do you know of sacrifice? What do you know of peace?"

He suddenly leapt off the ledge he was on to stand in front of her.

Her team frowned at him.

"I will show you what power is," Madara said, his eyes spinning as he adjusted his sharingan.

https://youtu.be/qQ39HEYysOA

["Playing With The Big Boys"--Prince of Egypt--I kind of feel like this really fits Madara's persona.]

Sasuke would have done nothing to stop him from using it, but he expected her team would.

"Shine?" Wally just called. "Feeling anything?"

"Only disgust," Shine said, with no trace of fear.

"Okay, good." Wally gave her a thumbs up.

Madara waited for the genjutsu to set in...and nothing happened.

It was as the DJs had suspected--both their psychological and their physical differences from the ninja meant that their minds could not be played with so easily by them. Genjustus relied too heavily on the use of chakra, which had no direct effect on them.

Shine felt dimly that a dark force was in the air, but it did not enter her mind itself--more like it was dark electricity that she could feel pulsing through the air in front of her, like you feel electricity before a lightning storm.

After nothing happened, Madara said, "You're resistant to genjutsu? Even the Mangekyo?"

"It would appear so," Shine said with unconcern. "Do you use force to win every argument? I expect as much from you and the others, but it's not very encouraging if your philosophy is only enforced by power. That's not a very compelling worldview."

"Is that a burn?" Bakugo asked.

"I'd say so," Dabi said. "That guy can go suck an egg. Shine's never going to respect him or acknowledge him as a threat."

Dabi chose the right words to piss off a ninja.

"Oh, is that so?" Madara turned to him. "Perhaps you're less immune then?"

But his sharingan had no effect on Dabi either, to Dabi's relief; he'd hate to be played by the Uchiha.

"Interesting." Sasuke was not that concerned, but he was taking notes. "So that doesn't work on you? How do you have that kind of immunity?"

"I see no reason to explain that to you," Shine said. "Besides--" With another scathing look. "--you don't listen to anything I say anyway."

Sasuke got mad at her and forgot that she was standing in front of his own ancestor.

"You told me I would regret my path," Sasuke said, "that I would pay in blood for what I did, that Orochimaru would never allow me to accomplish my goal."

"And I'm 3 for 3 on those," Shine said.

"Ey-oh." Camie fist pumped. "She was right on all of that, bro, and she didn't even know yet what was gonna happen."

"To be perfectly fair," Shoto said, "we don't know that he's regretted his path yet, but the other two, we do."

"I would think he'd have to once he found out it wasn't for the reason he thought," Momo said. "Though in reality, it's still mostly all true."

"I'm still on the part where he bought into what Obito said," Shine said. "I mean, Obito has never lied to anyone else to start a war."

Pause.

"I see you know Obito pretty well," Madara said. "But he is necessary."

"He's a bitter, cynical, former idealist," Shine said. "The only thing about him that surprises me is that, as an Uchiha, he was ever anything but that, since you all seem to have a penchant for bloodshed. I think that's genetics or something, isn't it?"

"According to Tobirama," Sasuke said.

"Well," Shine shrugged, "there are ways to heal that. Family curses can be broken. All it really proves is that, as I thought, the sharingan was always a messed up power and should not be used. Which...duh. Look at the things it does--they're all evil. But likely it started off good. Most powers do. Humans allow themselves to be corrupted by evil too often."

"I had heard that not everyone was the same," Momo said. "Surely not every Uchiha is driven mad by their powers."

"I shouldn't be surprised a power that you have to suffer that much to activate would drive you mad just by activating it," Shoto said.

"That's what happens," Bakugo sniffed. "So duh."

"But why are you speaking to Madara and Sasuke?" Dabi asked.

"We were comparing worldviews," Shine said. "His account of the Garden of Eden is quite twisted. They think that war was here before man tried to steal the power of God, but there would be no reason to have war without knowledge of good and evil, and no reason to steal power without temptations. So it's a very convenient account, and it doesn't explain anything about mankind. It's a cheap version of the story that was clearly meant to cover the real problem and make the hearer think that containing people's power would solve everything. A convenient lie of the devil, isn't it? Make mankind weaker--they're easier to overcome that way. Control their minds so they cannot use their hearts to believe for themselves what is true."

"That is shameful," Momo said. "Even a pagan society might allow someone a choice of what to do with their lives, but to have no life? No thoughts? Nothing? That's not even living."

"None of you understand," Madara said.

"No, jackass, it's you who doesn't understand," Bakugo said. "You don't understand what life even is. No surprise, since you're already dead, and what does it matter what you do to anyone else? It'll never give you your soul back."

"Like, is that what he wants?" Camie said. "To be alive again? But he's not really gonna be alive again, not with the shady as frick powers. That's cap. We all know it."

"I grow tired of you," Madara said. "You're reminding me of Tobirama."

"He does seem to have the most common sense of any of you," Shine said.

"Tobirama hates the Uchiha," Sasuke interjected again. "It's his fault things turned out this way."

"A: Madara was a crackpot before Tobirama did that and is part of the reason he thinks so poorly of Uchiha," Shine said. "B: I can agree with you that it wasn't fair to the clan, but are you one to talk? You're siding with your brother, the one who wiped them out. Seems like you and Tobirama basically agree, don't you?"

Sasuke opened his mouth...and then shut it again.

"Bro, did you even actually believe that?" Camie said. 

"Or do you just hate Shine and you want to call her out?" Bakugo guessed.

That was pretty much it. Sasuke was tired of Shine treating him like he was laughable and thought he'd had her on that item.

But as he hated his own clan nearly as much as Itachi had by now, after what he'd been told about them, he had no leg to stand on.

"We need to find Gara," Wally reminded the kids. "Shine and I think that you guys are going to tire yourselves out if we keep fighting the small fry here, so we're gonna wait it out again. I admit, I'm running low on juice again too. We can't go all day and night like these guys can."

"You all are very useless," Sasuke said meanly, "if you aren't ever around when there's a problem."

"Guy-who-lost-every-fight-he's-ever-been-in-outside-of-exams says what?" Camie said.

"What?" Sasuke didn't understand what she meant.

"Oh gosh, that worked!" Camie said.

"No, wait, he won that one against Naruto," Bakugo said.

"Right, okay, that's like the last one he's actually won alone," Camie said. "Every other time he's bailed out by someone else, even against women, and we all know the women here are weaker than men...usually." With a glance towards Sakura who was still beating up those clones. [This is a crack at the show's sexism, not real life women. Don't come at me.]

"The kicker is that Sakura could have folded him, too," Dabi said, "if she'd just activated her invincible healing jutsu thing when they'd clashed."

"She could have after he left," Momo said, "so she didn't die...but I don't see why she didn't just capture him then."

"Sakura is a wimp," Bakugo said. "Not that she's not powerful, but she's got no guts to finish any fights. At least the girls in our class are better than that."

"And me!" Camie slugged him in the arm.

"You're not in our class, but sure," Bakugo grumbled.

Rather than stopping this conversation, Shine was choking back laughter at it.

"Who are all you odd children?" Madara said with vague curiosity. "Are you really this out of touch?"

"Says the guy who's waiting for his boyfriend to fight him in the middle of war," Camie said.

"What?" Madara got offended.

"Okay, and we're leaving now." Wally grabbed Camie's shoulder. "You kids and your big mouths are really gonna get us in trouble one of these days."

"Your girlfriend has the sharpest tongue out of this entire group," Dabi said.

"But I have timing," Shine countered.

They flashed away before Sasuke could get another word in.

He started to deal with Madara instead. Though, in fact he was distracted immediately, and Madera left, so the fight was delayed till later. [Which did actually happen, and boy was it a pain to try to sort through the order of events of this section. I spent 3 hours reviewing the show material just to get it straight, and I'm still going to have to simplify, or this arc would be another 20 chapters long probably.]

* * *

The team found Gaara still on his way towards the battlefield. He was amazed when they told him what had happened already, and they were not surprised when he told them about Orochimaru.

"We all agree we can't trust him," Wally said.

"Oh yeah," they all said.

"But for now, we have no choice," Gaara said.

"I really think there's always a choice," Shine said. "How soon do you think you'll be at the battlefield?"

"Unfortunately, it might be at least another 3/4 of an hour," Gaara said. "I was trying to conserve energy for the fight. Could you just send me there right now?"

"No," Shine said. "The way things are going, it's better if you're in reserve for them. Madara should not know all of the people he can expect to fight him. If that's okay with you."

"I can't force you to use your powers," Gaara said.

"Are you guys going to be able to keep fighting?" Temari noticed that the heroes looked pretty tired.

"I'm fine," Bakugo insisted.

Well, he was probably okay; Bakugo had the most endurance out of all of them, though Shoto had the longest range.

Dabi was already pretty much maxed out on his quirk, without time to rest and cool off. He felt a little feverish as it was, but he hoped it would pass if he didn't push himself.

"I'm not even helping," Camie sighed. "It's majorly unfair that this comes down to combat type quirks right now. Mind games aren't really doing a thing."

"You still have the most intel on the war," Momo reminded her. "What can we expect next?"

"I dunno exactly. It's kinda blurry from here," Camie said. "I mean...fighting Obito, and the Beasts getting harvested, and then he'll go for the 9 Tails... Good news, bae, Guy's fight still hasn't happened yet."

"Hmph," Bakugo snorted in a pleased way.

"Huh?" Temari siad.

"Assuming that all is the same," Momo reminded them.

"If we do nothing from here, it likely will have to be. What other choice do they have?" Shine mused. "But what can we do? This is getting to be over our heads."

"If you're saying that, we're in trouble," Wally said. "But I have to say, I can't see much more we can do except save people."

"Then go do that," Gaara said somberly. "And we'll handle the rest."

"I guess," Temari said. "At least you gave us something to work with. I hope I'll be able to help at all. It sounds like it's getting down to just the most powerful people."

"Well, Shikamaru usually has a plan," Shine said. "So be ready."

They nodded and took off again.

[I told my sisters that the DJ-team's experience of this arc is exactly what it would be like if you actually could go into your favorite movie: a lot of running around trying to figure out how to get to the action. It's like if you're not part of the plot, it's just going to happen around you until you can find an opening.]