The battlefield was rendered silent for that moment, that small eternity of time between the beats of the heart of the world, not even the wind daring to whisper across the scarred and pitted landscape, the combatants frozen, some in shock or surprise and others in anticipation. Even the summons, the ancient beings who once ruled the world before Man in time immemorial, observed quietly, knowing, feeling how the very world itself watched the unfolding events with bated breath. Fate looked down at her great work, smiling as she quietly gathered her threads, her fingers dancing as she rewove the tapestry that told the history of the world. Beside her stood Brother Destiny, quietly smiling into his tome as his sister played out the role she had unknowingly been fated to fulfill.
There had been the sound of flesh meeting flesh, his arm trembling with the impact, and yet, his attack had not been successful. Kabuto had not been using his chakra scalpels, he didn't want to kill his target, merely knock her unconscious, and even then his attack had been blocked by the most unlikely source. Gone was the smiling and energetic boy he had seen while he had been embedded in Konoha, his blue eyes filled with mirth and wild abandon as he used the village for his personal amusement; in its place was something foreign and -though he would never admit it- intimidating, the once crystal clear eyes had become dark and focused on one sole venture, Kabuto's defeat.
Naruto didn't smile, didn't smirk, nor did he even bother shouting out his attack. His eyes took in his opponent's stunned state and his mind immediately leapt into action, his hands darting out in front of him as he forced his chakra to obey his will. Kabuto reared back in surprise as he saw the formation of an orb of pure chakra, his senses exploding as they attempted to warn him away.
Naruto had seen Kabuto in action against Shizune and realized that he had no way of matching the older teen in combat unless he held the advantage, and even his speed -something which he had honed and improved to great extent during his younger years as he outran various angry Chunin, Jounin and ANBU, having once managed to outrun Lee's crazy sensei when he had dyed all the man's outfits eye-blinding orange- was nowhere near close to Kabuto's own.
And so, as he charged forwards, he swept the Rasengan out in a cleaving motion, his eyes lightening slightly as Kabuto had dodged right into the direction he had been bringing the Rasengan to bear from, only the silver-haired teen's training and experience saving him from getting hit by the deadly technique. Unfortunately Naruto had not calculated what would occur should his strike miss, and his forward momentum caused him to stumble as he overstepped his target, Kabuto taking advantage of his vulnerability to reach out and slam his chakra scalpels into Naruto's leg.
The blonde struggled to get to his feet, only to collapse onto his knees as his leg gave out beneath him. His eyes watered as his mind was bombarded with waves of agony, his leg throbbing and pulsing in pain. Kabuto smirked down at the blonde, impressed despite himself at the boy's spirit and determination. He knew full well how much pain his strike was causing the boy, as he had learned through experience, his desire to know exactly how pain he could cause leaving him with no-one to rely on for accurate measurements save himself. Yet not only was the blonde conscious, he had remained coherent enough to attempt to get back to his feet.
"Don't bother trying to get back up, I shattered your femur and there is no way you can properly fight without it." The teen couldn't help but gloat over his triumph, with both of his opponents defeated, his target still insensate, and his master successful in holding his own opponent even with his arms unusable, their victory was assured. "Tell me, are you afraid of me? Do I make you want to run and hide, to flee to where I can't find you?" Kabuto laughed as Naruto once again tried to get to his feet, falling back down almost immediately.
"Of course you do. After all you are nothing special." Kabuto paused as he pulled out one of the ninja cards he had used at the Chunin exams. "Actually, that's not true. You are special, because you should have never become a ninja, in that way I suppose you are special; as the only absolute failure to graduate the Academy."
Kabuto walked forwards and gleefully swept Naruto's legs out from under him, easily avoiding the boy's retaliatory punches. "See, you can't even stop me from knocking you over, how can you possibly think you can defeat me? Face it, you have no skills, no training, your speed is lackluster, your strength is negligible, the only thing that you have going for you is that you. Won't. Give. Up." Kabuto punctuated his words with a sharp kick at Naruto's sides, his smirk growing as he took pleasure in the sight of the boy who had derailed his master's plans suffer. Eventually the boy ceased moving, Kabuto giving him a few extra kicks for good measure, before he stopped and observed his handiwork.
Kabuto began to walk back towards his target, his hand glowing with chakra, only to come to a sudden stop as a voice called out from behind him.
"Hey, who do you think you are, turning your back on me?" Kabuto's eye began to twitch as he slowly pivoted around on his heel, his incredulity and disbelief at hearing the voice growing exponentially at the sight of the whiskered blonde -scuffed, scraped and bruised, but steady and defiant- standing upright, though he awkwardly favored one side of his body. The blonde had a smirk of his own as he noticed his opponent's aggravation, though it quickly faded as he turned his head to spit out a mouthful of blood.
Naruto shook his head and let out a laugh, a cold, joyless, hollow thing that seemed wrong coming from his mouth. "You know what, I actually agree with you." Kabuto furrowed his brow in confusion, to which Naruto let out another laugh, though it possessed a great deal more life to it than before. Jiraiya narrowed his eyes as his eyes slid away from his former teammate towards the blonde. "You're right, I'm not Sasuke-teme, or Lee, or Kakashi-sensei, or even Neji-teme. The most training I've gotten in my life was the month break before the finals, and even then I didn't spend the whole time in training, but you know what? That doesn't matter, because I never gave up."
Naruto reached up and wiped a spot of blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. "As long as I'm breathing, I will never stop fighting. I swore that I would become the Hokage, and I won't let anything stop me from keeping my word, not even you." Naruto grinned and beckoned to Kabuto. "So come on, let me beat your punk ass already so I can the old lady home. Unless you don't think you have what it takes to beat me?"
A snarl tore itself from Kabuto's lips as he dashed to Naruto, the blonde barely having time to blink before he was sent tumbling head over heels from the devastating backhand he had received, his mouth spouting out blood as his cheek's split. Naruto shook his head to clear it from the fog caused by the impact as he slowly got back to his feet, his weakened leg trembling under his own weight.
The blonde's eyes flicked behind him for a moment, briefly settling on Tsunade's still form before returning to stare at Kabuto. "Hey granny, I hope you're ready, 'cause I'm about to collect on our wager." He slowly raised his hand into the single, familiar, hand-sign, his chakra thrumming through his body, straining for the release that it seemed to know was soon to occur.
"Kage Bunshin!" There was a brief pop as a small cloud of white smoke appeared next to Naruto, the air whipping up to disperse the obscuring cloud before dying down again. Tsunade's eyes widened at the ridiculous tactic, or lack thereof, and neither was she the only one. To those watching it was obvious that the gap in skill and speed between the two shinobi was far too great to be bridged by a mere shadow clone, especially when the blonde had only created a single clone.
Kabuto smirked and began to charge, once again appreciative of the massive overconfidence the blonde held in his abilities. His eyes narrowed slightly as he came closer and closer, yet the neither the clone nor its creator moved from their positions. Behind them Tsunade had finally become roused from her stupor, her voice desperate as she begged for Naruto to dodge, to move, for him to do something other than just stand there. Kabuto's kunai thrust forward, piercing flesh with a tremendous spray of blood that stained the ground crimson, Tsunade letting one final scream of despair.
"You know, I'm pretty sure that you're supposed to actually kill your target when you go all in like that." Naruto smiled cheekily as Kabuto choked on his own fury, his kunai having pierced out the back of Naruto's hand, his own held tightly by Naruto's. The jinchuuriki smiled and chuckled as his eyes traveled to where the kunai had punctured his hand. "I'm also really getting tired of how it always seems to be that my left hand keeps getting stabbed by kunai, though I will admit the first time was my own fault, but honestly."
His eyes returned to Kabuto and the smile vanished from his face. "Heh, you want to know a little secret?" Naruto leaned forward and bared his teeth at the older teen. "You made a big mistake, because I only need one hand for my attacks." He leaned back and held out his hand, his chakra bursting into the air above his palm as he let slip its constraints, the clone next to him shaping it, giving it form, and a deadly purpose. Kabuto's eyes widened once again, though for the first time since the battle had begun, the first time in years of being in the middle of battle, he felt fear blossom in his heart.
His mind instantly calculated the likely trajectory the attack would take and began to gather as much of his available chakra as he could into his torso, sparing only just enough to manifest his chakra scalpels with his free hand, his eyes dancing with dark intent as he reached forwards, just as Naruto brought to bear one of the weapons that had made a man a legend of his own time.
The two attacks did not meet in the middle - rather they slid past each other like the smugglers in the dark waters of Wave supplying the people with necessary supplies during the dark reign of Gato - an neither did make contact with their targets during the same instant, the jinchuuriki's Rasengan impacting first, as Naruto had begun to move mere moments before Kabuto did. But in any battle, in any event, it was those little moments which made the world a difference. Kabuto's eyes widened as he felt his supply of chakra being consumed at an incredible rate, not only his skin but his internal structure being torn to pieces and ground into a bloody pulp by blonde child's attack.
His movements were frantic as he stretched his arm forwards, trying to avoid letting it touch the deadly orb of chakra, his fingers extended as far as they could as he pierced Naruto's chest with the bare tips of his chakra scalpels. He grit his teeth as he leaned into Naruto's attack, his blood and flesh slowly but surely turning into a bloody mist that swirled around the dueling shinobi. His movement bought just enough room to fully penetrate Naruto's torso, his fingers deftly directing his chakra to slice and dice through the vital organ hidden deep beneath the surface.
Kabuto began to grin as he felt his target's chakra begin to fluctuate only to curse as the fluctuation disrupted the careful equilibrium of the Rasengan, the attack exploding in an uncontrolled burst of chakra that sent the assassin from Oto hurtling backwards, his movement coming to a sudden stop as his back met with a boulder too solid to break with the impact.
Bereft of the support of Kabuto's body, Naruto collapsed bonelessly to the ground. Kabuto struggled to free himself from the circular indentation he had been embedded within, his breathing heavy as he continued to pour his chakra into the wounded sections of his body. He eyed the fallen form of his opponent once before turning back to his original target, the other blonde staring at him in shock.
The renegade shinobi let out a bitter laugh as he took a halting step forwards, relishing the flinch he garnered from one of two women to have ever earned his teacher's grudging respect, and the only one yet among the living. Kabuto looked around the battlefield with a careful eye, noting the struggling yet barely mobile form of the Slug Sannin's apprentice lying off to the side.
Once more he took the opportunity to boast over his triumph and his skills, something he had only rarely been able to use to any major extent during his time undercover in Konoha. The genin was likely dead already, as he was more than certain that he made far too many holes and cuts in the boy's heart for anyone, even with his own regenerative capabilities, to properly recover from.
"Heh, you might have caught me by surprise, but looks like I'm the last one standing. My healing abilities are so strong they have become regenerative, allowing me to use my chakra to recover any wound I take." To emphasize his point he straightened himself upwards, displaying the torn hole in his uniform to world, as well as the unblemished, if slightly red, skin beneath. "You on the other hand, you don't have a hope of surviving more than a minute or two now that I've ruptured to your heart with my chakra scalpels."
Kabuto began to take another step forwards, only to find the world spinning before his eyes as he fell over onto his chest. He let out a wet and sickly cough that stained the ground before his face red. Shit, the silver-haired teen winced as he used what little of his chakra was left in his body to run a passive scan, that attack was far stronger than I anticipated. I've used up all my chakra and I haven't even fully healed myself. At least the brat is down for the count.
Perhaps it was chance, as Lady Luck had taken quite a liking to the young blonde, or perhaps it had been Fate's last little card to play, but as Kabuto lay there on the ground, waiting patiently for Naruto's slow breathing to cease as his heart finally stopped, he was rendered utterly and completely witless as Naruto sputtered out blood, his hand weakly rising to his face to try and clear it, as his chest began to rise and fall with a faster, yet irregular, rhythm. His heart, though weakened, continued on beating, Kabuto's attack having barely missed causing a critical injury by mere inches.
It was the sound of Naruto's gasping breath that finally served to break Tsunade from her catatonic state. Her eyes were wide with panic and fear as she scrambled to the side of the stricken jinchuuriki, her hands glowing emerald with her chakra as she tried to heal the wounds in Naruto's heart. Her thoughts were spinning at a furious pace as she used her chakra to stitch back together torn muscles. No, I won't lose you, I can't lose you. Not after Nawaki.
...Not after Dan.
Tsunade hastily tried to blink back the wetness in her eyes as memories and images rose unbidden to sit before her mind's eye. She shut her eyes together tightly as she could and yet she still felt a single tear leave a glistening trail down her cheek. She bit her lip to keep herself from sobbing openly as the image of Dan, his eyes still filled with life while his hand gently cupping her face as he wiped her tears away with her thumb, filled her thoughts, so much so, that she almost felt as if she could still feel his hand gently resting itself against her skin. For a moment, she was almost willing to let herself be lost within her memories, only for the sound of hoarse whisper to shatter her reverie.
"You know, a lady as beautiful as you shouldn't-," the whisper broke off into a cough as Tsunade refused to open her eyes; refused to face the world that caused her so much pain and had cost her so much. "-you shouldn't cry. What would people back in Konoha say if they saw this, eh Tsu-kōgō?"
Her eyes went wide, the sound of someone using the pet name she hadn't heard in more than a decade once more sending a shock running through her system, to find a pair of smiling sapphire eyes staring up into hers as Naruto's hand gently wiped away another tear. The teen smiled at the stunned look on her face, his bright eyes practically glowing.
"Looks… like I won…" His eyes began to close, his eyelids softly drifting shut as his mind shut itself off while his body healed itself. Tsunade blinked away another upwelling of tears as she lifted her necklace from around her throat with shaking hands.
Tsunade's voice was a quiet whisper, her words made rough from sheer emotion. "I… I guess you did." As distracted as she was, Tsunade failed to notice her hands slowly begin to steady as she gently pulled the necklace over Naruto's head, the pendant softly settling on his chest. Tsunade allowed herself a satisfied smile at the serene sight beneath her.
It was only her years of shinobi training and experience – supplemented with over a decade of dodging incredibly persistent debt collectors and unhappy loan sharks – that warned her of the sudden attack from behind. Even that only gave her enough warning for her to place herself in the direction of the sudden strike..
"Hmm," Orochimaru leaned forwards and whispered teasingly into Tsunade's ear, his eyes – as were hers and a paralyzed Jiraiya's – on the blood soaked blade that protruded from her chest, "I was aiming for the brat, but I suppose that getting you out of the way first is just as acceptable."
Tsunade let out a choked gasp as Orochimaru removed Kusanagi, the blade coming free of her chest in a spray of blood that soaked them both, a large portion landing on Orochimaru's extended tongue, blood which he gleefully lapped up. Fate grinned bitterly from on high as, unknown to the combatants, a splash of blood landed on Naruto closed eyes. The blonde stirred in his unconscious state, his face twitching as it tried to displace the offending substance.
Orochimaru knocked Tsunade to the side with the flat of his blade as he slowly advanced towards the insensate jinchuuriki. His face was blank – a trait he had developed during his younger years – as he brought down the razor edge of Kusanagi in a downwards strike that was guaranteed to hit.
Blood fountained into the air in a great torrent, and for the final time, Orochimaru cursed the stubbornness of his former comrades and their students as he was forced back by someone he had thought defeated.
"What does it take to kill you people?" He spat with as much venom as he could muster – which, considering his nature, was a considerable amount – as Tsunade shakily stood in front of Naruto's body, her wounds fountaining blood as almost as fast as she could replace it with her own medical chakra. While she couldn't match the outright regeneration displayed by Kabuto, she was more than capable of sustaining herself until she activated her trump card, if it came to that point.
Fury twisted Orochimaru's face as he lowered his blade for a moment. "I will cru-" He broke off as he heard a quiet moan, his brow twitching as he could see his target open his eyes. I, his thoughts were cold as he raised his sword once more, am going to have a very, very short discussion with Kabuto after this, and he had better have a good reason for performing so pitifully. His eyes narrowed as tried to take a step forwards, only to find Tsunade took a step of her own, just far enough to retain the distance between the two of the. The Snake Sannin tried to side-step her, only to find her mirror his movements once more. The pair settled into almost a dance, each taking a step and the other copying or reflecting the action, their focus solely on their opponent.
Naruto winced at the light, his eyes taking a moment to readjust to the bright sky above, during which he pondered over what had caused him to wake, as well as why he had fallen asleep in the first place. A shadow moving across his face caught his attention, and when he found the source, he found his body, as beaten and battered as it was, trembling with fury. While he couldn't properly tell the full extent of Tsunade's wounds, he certainly didn't recall them happening while he was conscious, and based on the way she was standing and the position of the wounds, she had taken them while protecting him.
Protecting him.
The idea itself seemed almost laughable. She had no reason to sacrifice herself for him, she had made that abundantly clear when they had met in the bar, and, to be honest, he was pretty sure that no-one had any reason for protecting him anymore, now that the Old Man was gone. Well, Jiraiya probably had orders in case the Hokage had died, but consider how little he was willing to teach Naruto, with how often he ducked out for 'research', the blonde was pretty sure he didn't care either.
But she did.
She cared enough to take wounds that would have laid low any other mortal, and she stood tall despite them, in despite of the odds, in despite of fate. Naruto had no idea why, but something inside of him burned, a furnace that had been starved for fuel for years now filled to overflowing, and it burned. From within the extra-dimensional pocket that was the seal within his soul, the Kyuubi opened its eyes, and in the darkness of its prison, it watched, it listened, and it felt.
Never before had it felt such rage from its jailor, an emotion tied so closely to the restraints and limitations of the seal that bound it, and yet, at that moment, as if feeling the hand of Fate moving her pieces across the battlefield and into place, the Kyuubi did not desire its freedom. A being of almost inconceivable age, it had watched history be written, and rewritten, and it knew, that at that moment, it was about to see a new chapter come to life before its eyes. Dark lips peeled back to reveal razor sharp teeth taller than a man in a terrifying facsimile of a smile. There were limits to what it could do, but so long as they were beneficial, according to the seal's rather limited regulations, it could do anything it desired.
Jiraiya's head snapped upwards, though he regretted the action immediately when his body flooded his mind with pain signals, as he felt the arrival of a presence on the battlefield that hadn't been seen in the world for over thirteen years. His eyes snapped over to where both of his old teammates stood each other down, completely unaware of what was rising mere feet from them. He couldn't see any outwardly visible signs of the presence with his eyes, but to his Sage-senses, it was a gigantic star in a desolate field of black. To his senses Tsunade was the closest thing nearby he could compare it to, her own chakra reserves incredibly advanced after decades of sustaining her trump card and supplying it with power.
Naruto lifted his arm slightly, placing his palm on the ground to give him leverage as he wrenched his body upwards. For the first time in many, many years, Jiraiya almost felt pity for his old teammate as he caught sight of brilliant crimson eyes hidden beneath a curtain of spiky blonde hair. He turned his head away from the sight that was sure to occur, his heart hard as he uttered a quiet prayer of regret for the soul of the poor little boy that had allowed himself to be swallowed up by a monster.
Both Orochimaru and Tsunade had been so focused on each that when Naruto finally staggered to his feet it they failed to notice him. They did notice the miasma of deep red chakra that radiated off of him though, both coming to a sudden stop as they turned their eyes towards him. Naruto's face echoed the Kyuubi's own grin as he brought his arm up, his mind flashing back to a collection of old, near ancient scrolls he had discovered hidden under some loose floorboards in his apartment back when he was too young for the Academy, his hand reached upwards as his fingers stretched towards the heavens.
Naruto stared at Orochimaru, his eyes dancing in dark amusement that had the Snake Sannin worried, not for his life - even if the boy could manage to cause his body enough harm for it begin shutting down, he would still be able to slip out of it and away from the battle - but rather that he was giving Tsunade time to recover. The errant Senju though was still rather stunned at Naruto's sudden return to functionality, as his body was obviously not even healed enough to properly keep itself upright considering the way his legs were trembling. It was willpower and chakra alone that sustained the blonde teen as he stood in defiance against Orochimaru.
He coughed out blood, turning his head to offer Tsunade a gruesome, yet calming, smile, before returning his attention to Orochimaru. "Slip away from this, snake-teme. Tsumetai ame dai uzu."
Tsunade's eyes went wide with recognition as Naruto quietly uttered the name of his technique, her body straining itself to its limits as she rushed to Naruto's side. She barely made it in time, the temperature in the air dropping rapidly as clouds suddenly appeared over the battlefield. The clouds began to swirl, the wind howling as it was whipped into a lashing frenzy, and in the center of it all stood Naruto and Tsunade, the only ones not truly affected by the attack the blonde jinchuuriki had unleashed. Naruto closed his eyes as he focused on recalling every last bit of the information contained within the scrolls, information that, if he hadn't been forced to search for under such circumstances, he would have likely never remembered.
He reopened his eyes and pulsed his chakra into the storm once more, and then the true nature of the technique was revealed. From the clouds poured rain. Not the rain that soaked Konoha during the spring and fall, nor the downpours that blew through Kiri, but rather a torrential downpour of such a magnitude that the ground couldn't absorb all the water, instead turning the ground from mud into a small lake that filled faster than it could drain away.
And then it began to freeze.
Orochimaru was caught off guard as the temperature dived once more, ice radiating out from Naruto faster than he could react. Tsunade, He winced as he found his feet chained to the ground. He growled in impotent wrath as he realized that not only did the blonde possess a technique he had never seen nor heard of before, he possessed one that had the capability of doing him a great deal of potential harm. He quickly weighed his options, carefully considering if it was worth fleeing with Kabuto before any irreparable damage was caused to them, before bringing down his blade on the ice that choked his legs.
Free from his constraints, the traitorous Sannin darted forwards, Kusanagi outstretched before him. Even if he couldn't kill both of them, he would make sure that at least one threat to his plans was ended. His concentration entirely devoted to sustaining and directing his technique, Naruto was unable to react to the sudden attack; but the mortal goddess by his side was, Tsunade stepping forward to block the incoming threat. She was hardly worried, after all, she had yet to use her ace in the hole, and any damage that Orochimaru did to her she could easily reverse. And she couldn't let Naruto's technique be interrupted; she had seen what would occur should that happen, back when her granduncle first showed an awestruck little girl one of his special techniques.
It wasn't even a technique, or at the very least, not a technique in the conventional sense. It required no hand-signs, nor any seals, thus rendering it immune to the Uchiha for which it had been developed to fight, but it could only be used by someone with both a large chakra supply, which Naruto easily surpassed the requirements for, as well as someone with an incredibly high aptitude towards the water element. She couldn't help but chuckle at the absurdity of it all; the person she had written off as being nothing more than a childish brat, and here he was using a technique of a legend.
Orochimaru closed the gap between the two Sannin quickly, his neck twisting upwards, as if to prepare for an overhead downwards strike, only to move his sword into disemboweling slash underneath Tsunade's raised guard. The blonde woman grunted in pain, her eyes smoldering as she slammed the back of her fist into Orochimaru's face, the impact blasting him backwards, his body coming to a stop a few feet from his subordinate.
Naruto quickly dropped the technique, with Orochimaru having been knocked out its effective range, and rushed to Tsunade's side as she collapsed to her knees. His mind was churning at a furious pace as it tried to find some way to possibly keep Tsunade from dying, as her most recent wound, compounded with the others she had taken while defending his unconscious body, was far too much for even her to shrug off. His eyes drifted down to his own body, taking in the unmarked flesh, and he was struck by an idea. He knew from the Academy that Medic-nins use their chakra to heal injuries, and since is own chakra seemed to be naturally regenerative, then it should work even better.
Tsunade, unaware of the direction and final destination of Naruto's train of thought, shakily raised her hand as she formed the sole seal necessary to activate her Sōzō Saisei seal. She felt Naruto place his palm on the small of her back as his other arm wrapped gingerly around her wounded shoulder, smiling warmly at the comforting gesture, her chakra flaring for a moment as the seal began its work repairing her body.
She could feel her wounds stitching themselves shut almost immediately, the familiar pull on her chakra soothing. Her injuries almost fully recovered, she cut the flow of chakra to the seal to a mere trickle, yet the regeneration of her body continued unabated. Her eyes widened in shock as she tried to completely cut off the seal, only for it to progress further without any visible source of sustaining energy. Suddenly the flow was reversed as the chakra gem on her forehead absorbed the maximum amount of chakra it could retain, the rest being directed through the seal's pathways and into her body.
Her head whipped backwards as a scream of agony was torn from her throat, the sound echoing on long past the time when her lungs ran out of breath. She could feel her body warping and twisting as a foreign chakra ran through her, directed by the seal that had been her greatest achievement.
Orochimaru gave his former teammates and their apprentices one last look before sinking into the ground, his summons vanishing with him as he cut off the chakra keeping them present. Kabuto grimaced in pain as he forced his battered body to obey his will, his trembling hands barely forming the proper seals as he activated his master's special reverse summoning technique to return him to Oto.
Jiraiya alone was the sole witness for occurred next, and even he could not say with certainty what truly happened in the rain obscured battlefield. He had twisted his head around the moment he heard Tsunade begin to scream, catching sight of the remnants of an incredibly powerful water technique he had never seen before, only to find her and his apprentice-to-be shrouded in a cloying cloak of deep red chakra. He tapped into Sage mode for a brief moment, his senses stretching out across the battlefield in order to detect and locate any nearby chakra signatures - a trick he had picked up a couple years after learning too tap into Nature chakra, as well as the limitations he himself faced in utilizing it- and cursed when he found both Orochimaru and his own brat's signatures absent.
He climbed to his feet, his face a bitter image of pain as his body protested at the movement, staring into the crimson shroud of chakra as if it doing so would reveal the answers he sought. He wasn't about to try approaching it, he had tried doing so already and the chakra had mindlessly lashed out at him, and thus he forced to resort to waiting for it disperse on its own.
He was just about to back to town in search of sake and food - he wasn't worried since Shizune was there, and though she was injured she would have more than enough time to properly heal herself now that there wasn't any threat of combat, and she could handle anything that occurred during his absence - when the chakra began to fluctuate, tendrils of energy reaching off and flailing around wildly, often striking the ground and tearing up great trenches of earth.
The chakra began to slowly bleed off into the atmosphere, the blanket of energy slowly becoming more and more transparent. Once it finally vanished, and Jiraiya waited for a few minutes to make sure, as he had no desire to be hit by a chakra tendril that hadn't disappeared, the Toad Sannin approached the glass walled crater created by the burning chakra. He took one look into the depression before collapsing to his knees, his mind shutting down as it experienced one too many shocks in a single day.
For lying at the bottom of the smooth-walled crater in a tender embrace were two blondes, one female and one male, and neither any more than about fourteen years of age.
Kōgō - Empress
Tsumetai ame dai uzu - Freezing rain maelstrom
Sōzō Saisei - Genesis Rebirth
Wow, this is, in my mind, one of the most awesome things I have ever written... I mean, from Tsunade's reaction to healing Naruto, to the actual combat, to the dialogue, I feel like I have come so far from where I first started with writing. I hope you all enjoyed reading this, because I sure as hell did writing it.
So a while back I came across a rocking story, thing was, it was only one chapter, and it was already discontinued. So, I, in my unending wisdom, decided that I wanted to see it complete, as the premise was simply too good and too unique for it to go untouched. I sent a PM over to the author who wrote it about five months ago, asking for permission to continue it, and well, the results you see here before you.
The original Genesis Rebirth was written by the incredible author known as A True Radical Dreamer. The premise here is his, the setting is Kishimoto's, and everything else is going to be... interesting.
For those following Love and Remorse, I am going to be taking it down, in order to rewrite it from the very beginning like this fic.