Back home.

After Hisame leaves: "So, wanna head to Suna? Or - anywhere, really."

"I'm not that eager to go back. Suna's survived without me for this long."

"Yeah."

"I kinda burned a lot of bridges in Konoha. Guess we could just find somewhere scenic to settle for a bit."

"You have some chakra studies to catch me up on."

"I do! All the Six Paths chakra stuff, and Nine Tails is pretty sure we can do anything - possible with chakra? With it eventually."

"Depending on the duration of 'eventually', that sounds variably useful."

"Yeah. 'Sorry but you gotta meditate a thousand years first' would be at a minimum pretty boring."

"In a thousand years, we'd have a good shot at just learning to use regular chakra to do whatever we want."

"Probably! Really mostly useful if it's a short cut."

"Mm. Does the fox think he knows how close you are?"

"Unfortunately, the Sage already knew all this by the time the Tailed Beasts were around, so he doesn't have a scale on how long it takes anyone to learn. But I'm already able to use some of it, and he thinks most of the rest isn't far, probably 'terrifying Sage' on a scale of years or decades but 'same weight class as foreign Hisame' closer to a few months..." His expression goes distant. "Apparently you might learn it faster? Fox thinks Six Paths chakra is pretty similar to what's in the Pure Lands, so I had a whole big stumbling block trying to learn to feel it at all, but passing through the Pure Lands should give you some kind of sense for it?"

"At least getting killed is good for one thing."

"And horrible for just about everything else! Let's not do it again, please."

"Not planning to. Wasn't planning to the last time either, for the record."

"We'll have to keep ahead of any competition, then."

"With Akatsuki gone, we're in the running for the most dangerous people in the world, you know."

"Always someone out there who can surprise you."

"Not for long."

"Maybe we'll just have to expand the definition of 'out there,' then."

"You want to form your own merry little interdimensional band?"

"I'm - not really happy with this world. It needs to be fixed, there's - so much wrong - but I'm having trouble seeing why I shouldn't just throw my alt at it. He's - probably in a better position to actually do the fixing, anyways."

"I wouldn't want to just... Hare off, if I didn't have an alt floating around, but since I do - I guess it depends on where you want to go?"

"It might be fun to see other worlds. Once we've worked out how to travel there."

"Could meet all sorts of new people."

"And all sorts of new magic."

"New techniques are always fun."