From the Ashes
Prologue: Victory Is But a Prelude to the Next Battle
At the end of all things, Naruto sat among the ruins of battle. Weary of both physical and mental stress, the blond's shoulder seemed to sag underneath some colossal weight as he stared off into the horizon. For miles around, there was nothing but flat clearing and the occasional scattered rock, his own handiwork. Far above him, several massive birds of golden chakra floated through the sky, their ethereal shrieks of victory echoing through the cool morning air of a new dawn.
"Even in the end, you still had the right ideals. Even if you had to become the villain, you still had all the right ideas," Naruto spoke softly as he stared down at the slowly dissipating body of Uchiha Madara, brought back the the Impure Resurrection technique, "In the end, there always needs to be a bad guy, huh?"
Madara simply sighed as he stared up into a sky which had a shade of blue he had never seen before, "Don't make me out to be a saint. In the end, you were all pawns of a checkerboard I played,"
"Still, this will mark the beginning of a new era. One that you will never receive credit for. One that you will never be able to see," Naruto grimaced as he pulled out a half-smoked cigar and a lighter.
A half-hearted flick of his wrist didn't quite give him the flame he needed as he tried again. When he met success, he lit the cigar and took a long drag, exhaling the smoke as he leaned back onto the ground. Uzumaki Naruto simply grinned somewhat as he stared up into the blue sky, enjoying the sense of liberation.
'Not even a cloud in the sky,' the Uzumaki chuckled to himself softly.
"Hashirama and I disagreed on how the shift of power between all the villages would occur. Hashirama thought peace would come if all powers were equal but he failed to see what I saw," Madara grunted as he reminisced about old memories, "Hatred that was seeded everywhere continued to upset that balance and those wars always broke out. It was necessary to stop it by reducing the power of each village, even Konoha. I attempted to take the Kyuubi and use its chakra to seal every other tail beast away but the blasted Senju misinterpreted my actions and our disagreement came to blows. He won. Yes, he won that fight but I won the battle by seeing the future. I saw how his actions would lead to my plans coming to fruition,"
"I have been vilified and will die a dishonorable death in the eyes of others. I can see why Nagato betrayed me and believed in you now. You understand what I tried to do, even though the means to the end are not the best. But they have served their purpose. Just like how the rotten leaves must be culled, so too must the diseased parts of our world be pruned. This dies with you, Namikaze Uzumaki Naruto. With my death and disappearance from the world of Shinobi, so too shall the legacy of hatred finally disappear,"
"My everlasting legacy of uniting the villages in a common enemy shall be a monument to all my sins and a reminder of what must never come to pass. Safeguard it. Use the blasted Will of Fire that idiot, Hashirama, was always preaching about and make sure that this new world is guided in the right direction,"
With that, the last of Uchiha Madara disappeared into ashes swept away by the wind. Naruto lay there for a while before sitting up and taking another drag on his cigar before flicking the butt away, trudging towards civilization.
"All you damn Uchiha bastards are the same. In the end, you guys are nothing more than the self-sacrificing saints that everyone never knows about," Naruto sighed as he brushed off some dirt from the jacket, "Wonder if I can get some ramen by today,"
Author's notes: This a random drabble that I was thinking about where nothing is ever what it seems to be. To be honest, I was thinking about a complete story to this. But that's for later drabbles.
