And, very quickly, a small squad of heroes from another age. (One of them, Kushina, hugs Naruto.)

"Welcome!"

"Thanks for the return. Now, what's our plan?"

"It's a work in progress."

"At this point we have seven undead - Sasuke I know you hate the Third, but he is a good fighter - plus at least me, Karin, and Sasuke, and whoever we can pull from the Leaf and Sand teams. Probably at least one medic. Plus, Cam, who is mostly invulnerable and can make arbitrary material objects."

"Akatsuki's got eight members, though one of them's maybe kind of on our side. Ish. One of them - Nagato - has the Rinnegan and is going to be the hardest fight. One of them, Konan, can control paper, and will probably be using that for seals, especially explosive tags. Those two are unlikely to directly take the field. The others are the zombie duo - Hidan and Kakuzu - who are kind of immortal. According to Hashirama, Kakuzu needs to be killed five times to keep him down, but can maybe be bribed. Hidan can survive arbitrary injuries, and if he cuts someone, any injuries that happen to him also happen to them. We should put undead against those two. The next duo is Deidara and Sasori. Sand passed on some stuff about Sasori - he's a puppeteer, can control hundreds of puppets at a time. Probably also a good fight for an undead, since you guys aren't susceptible to poison. Deidara's a bomber. Last duo is Uchiha Itachi and Kisame. Itachi's allegiance is up in the air. Kisame's one of the Seven Swordsmen, and has Samehada."

"If the Akatsuki are split up, we should stick a sensor with each team. Right now, that means Tobirama, Karin, Mito, and me and Kurama."

"Creating arbitrary material objects does have combat applications," Cam points out. "I'm just not practiced at them."

Mito speaks up.

"I remember Kakuzu. He's greedy, and mostly concerned for his own advancement. Hidan - those powers sound like a follower of the way of Jashin. I should be able to seal him, or at least disable his powers. I would recommend myself and Cam against those two. Cam, to bribe Kakuzu, and myself, to handle Hidan, as well as Kakuzu if he's stubborn."

"What am I bribing him with?"

"He was fond of gold and money thirty years ago. I suspect anything he parses as 'ridiculous wealth' will work."

"I suppose it's not a good time to worry about the effect on the local economy."

"I doubt one miser, no matter how suddenly wealthy, could destabilize that much."

"Yup. Could even be that the place could use more liquidity. I can provide cash."

Naruto names local currencies and gives a sense of scale for them, then.

Cam notes these.

They end up deciding to put Kushina and Tobirama in the versus Sasori and Deidara team - they hopefully will work well together, and should be able to neutralize Deidara especially if Deidara starts blowing up landscape. Kagami and the Third are set on Itachi and Kisame, with Karin as their sensor - Kagami should be able to flat out negate a lot of Itachi's powers, Itachi might obey the Third, and also the Third and Kagami have fought alongside each other before. Naruto, Sasuke, Minato, and whatever other backup they can scrounge will be on a more flexible basis, to either move against Nagato and Konan (if they move) or to reinforce someone else.

"Everyone should be aware that I will vanish if Sasuke dies. I'll come right back, it'll just take a bit."

"I'm going to try to avoid dying, but it is a risk," Sasuke says.

Mito says that if Cam does vanish, she's fairly sure she can handle both of the zombie duo on her own, but she'll summon Minato if something goes down.

"Are the undead ontologically dependent too?"

"Shouldn't be. If I had them under my control they'd be bound to their last order, but I don't, and they won't dismiss when I die."

"Cool, so that's just me."

He nods.

"Possibly we should now figure out where to go and summon Minato to get moving. We don't know what kind of timeline we're operating on."

"Let's find out where we're going." Surroundings of all their opponents...

Their opponents are not conveniently clustered, unfortunately, so the groups are going to have to split up. Nagato and Konan are in Rain. Deidara and Sasori are in a river-heavy area between Fire and Wind. Hidan and Kakuzu are the closest to them, actually fairly near Orochimaru's borders. Itachi and Kisame are in southern Fire.

"Are you all going to hoof it, am I the only person who needs a shuttle?"

"Minato can probably move us all faster than a shuttle; he can take passengers."