Nighttime carried along with it darkness, comfort, and sleep. The ninja that populated the Elemental Nations found comfort in the darkness, carrying out their missions under it's cover. The people without an affinity for chakra, or those who weren't ninja, slept peacefully in their soft beds. Or at least most did. Yet for Konohagakure, on this eve, no citizen was at peace and no ninja were comfortable. Except for those that were dead.
The Kyuubi, most powerful of the Bijuu, was raining sheer destruction upon Konoha with seemingly nothing to stop it. The night was still young yet the death toll was already far too high for a ninja village. Already, there was almost as much loss for Konoha as when the First Great Shinobi War struck. A figure that the man standing before the monstrous creature had no intention of letting rise. Except, maybe, by one number.
The Yondaime Hokage, Minato Namikaze, winced at the force of the Kyuubi's roar. It didn't help his ears either, with him standing directly in front of the beast. He stood alone to face the brunt of this roar, all of his soldiers having been sent back when he'd arrived.
His breathing was laboured and his cerulean eyes half-lidded, the night had been one disaster after the next and he had exerted himself far too much, draining himself of most of his chakra. And to think it had started so well, Kushina had given birth to his baby boy and they were given the luxury of joy for all of five seconds before it spiraled out of control.
The only warning he'd received was that of the midwives bodies collapsing on the floor, if they'd still been alive they would've been drowning in their own pools of blood. The poor women never stood a chance against the masked man who claimed to be Madara Uchiha, Konoha's first missing nin. He'd already slain all the ANBU that had been positioned to guard the room where Kushina gave birth. Then the man did the unthinkable, holding Minato's newly born baby as a hostage to separate him from Kushina so that Madara could remove the Kyuubi from her.
And Kami damn him, it had worked.
Minato was grateful to whatever god was looking upon them that Kushina had survived the extraction and he'd taken her, along with Naruto, to a safehouse as Minato faced off against Madara. Fortunately he'd managed to drive off Madara after a short but fierce battle, though not before relinquishing the Sharingan wielder's control of the Kyuubi.
He'd sworn to himself not to shed tears over what had happened next.
He now stood facing the most powerful of all the tailed beasts, a being that was believed to be made of pure malice, hatred, and wrath. His shallow breathing felt erratic and forced, as if he was scared to breathe the same air as the Kyuubi, and he prepared himself for what he knew to be his final battle.
He just prayed that Kushina could forgive him for what he was about to do.
For what felt like hours he had debated what he would do with the Kyuubi, there was no way that he could kill the beast, as he'd heard that killing a Bijuu through conventional methods had no effect on them. They would just reform into their full power within a scant few years. He'd laughed without humour at the thought of resolving this peacefully, letting the monster leave as in turn it spared his village. Such ideas were an impossibility, unfortunately, when put into practice. He wouldn't even be a smear on the ground.
That left him with only one option, really. He had to reseal the Kyuubi. He downed a soldier pill to replenish his chakra, his third one for the night, knowing that the consequences that would normally cripple a shinobi wouldn't apply to him soon enough.
Mind determined and heart heavy, he launched himself at the Kyuubi, throwing a single three-pronged kunai at the beast. And with a single jutsu one kunai became a thousand as his Shuriken Kage Bunshin no Jutsu took effect. And when there were a thousand of Minato's kunai littering the battlefield, Minato was no longer limited to being in one place.
He'd show the Kyuubi why Iwa cowered in fear at the mention of "The Yellow Flash".
In a flash of brilliant gold he appeared on the face of the nine tailed demon, a Rasengan already formed, and slammed his second most famous jutsu into the eye of the fox. The demon's next roar was one of pain, and Minato quickly flashed away before the fox could regain its bearings and attack him. The fox's chakra surged outwards in a pulse that dislodged all of Minato's kunai from the Kyuubi's body. Eye bleeding, gaze furious, the full force of the Kyuubi's malicious intent focused onto the yellow bug that dared attempt to harm the mightiest of the bijuu.
Whilst the attack had elicited a great howl, Minato was all too aware of how useless his move had been in landing a critical blow on the Kyuubi. He dodged away from the fox's swipes and then the beast leapt up like one of his toad summons, and came down with enough force that the shockwave levelled most of the trees in the dense forest they fought in.
Minato had, of course, managed to flash away from what would have labelled him as 'The Yellow Pancake'. Yet he was unable to escape the sheer volume of debris that flew about after the fox's jump attack. Though his injuries were mostly minor, Minato's leg sustained a deep gash from a particularly sharp piece of timber. The injury, Minato knew, would mark the end of him before long if he didn't hurry with his plans to finish the fox.
Minato rushed his hands through signs, silently saying his goodbyes to his family, as he prepared what was undoubtedly his deadliest technique. He clapped his hands together and felt his chakra take shape as he shouted the name of his technique, "Shiki Fujin: Reaper Death Seal!" A spectre appeared behind him, floating, with purple skin, horns, and shaggy white hair. The being was draped in white cloth, and if Minato turned around to look into it's eyes he was was certain that his soul would flee in terror.
The Shinigami stood with Minato Namikaze, and they stood together against the Kyuubi.
Together they disappeared, replaced by a flash of yellow. They reappeared on the head of the Kyuubi, where Minato had placed the seal for his Hiraishin when he'd slammed the Rasengan into the eye of the beast. Minato commanded the Shinigami to take ahold of the Kyuubi's soul whilst the demon shook violently, trying to remove itself of the flea on its fur. The arms of the Shinigami pushed through Minato's abdomen and the Hokage shuddered as Death touched him.
The Kyuubi's struggling grew more destructive as it felt the hands of Death grab onto it's very essence. As the Shinigami tore what made the Kyuubi be out of it's body, Minato began the process of sealing the Kyuubi into himself. Against a god, the Kyuubi's struggles were uselessly in vain, the beast's fate was sealed inside of Minato. Minato felt his lifeforce slipping and hurried to finish the sealing process. With a shout of "Hakke Fuuin: Seal!" The Kyuubi's massive form swirled inside the newly made seal on the Yondaime Hokage's abdomen.
With the Kyuubi gone, Minato found himself falling from a great height, the barrier he'd placed around the battleground to prevent the fox's escape came crumbling down simultaneously.
In the destruction of the barrier, several figures rushed towards his descending form. Normally Minato would have been able to use his Hiraishin to teleport safely on the ground. "Normal" didn't really apply to him now, after he'd sealed the strongest Bijuu inside his gut.
And so it was that instead of a graceful landing through teleportation he was caught mid-air by his predecessor.
As they landed he weakly smiled at the old man whose strength belied his age, "The battle's over, Sarutobi-san. I got it… Sealed in my gut." That was all Minato made out before he burst in a coughing fit that tasted strangely like copper.
He stared listlessly as the man that groomed him to rise to the position of Hokage flapped his lips noiselessly. Minato could make out none of it; why was Hiruzen not talking? He watched on, disconnected, as several medical shinobi laid their glowing hands upon him. Useless. All their caring efforts were useless on one that cared no longer. He'd made his pact, sold his soul for the village's safety and he was content. He would pass away in peace and he would be remembered as the hero of the leaf. As his consciousness dissipated he felt content with his life, though that contentedness was joined by the stabbing sorrow of his failure. He hoped that they would notice the seal and burn his body, he wanted no trace of that monster's existence to linger on as a part of him.
It's a shame that destiny doesn't work like that.
Minato was a soulless corpse, yet he was not empty. What remained inside of him, what lingered on at the end of his existence, was chakra.
But the chakra wasn't his.
Hiruzen grieved at the loss of his successor, he had fought honourably against Konoha's enemies and had paid the ultimate sacrifice in conjunction with bringing down the Kyuubi. I pray that your child grows to be as powerful as you so as to protect Konoha from harm, Minato. And know that I will guide him the whole way on his path to glory. Hiruzen pledged to the dead Yondaime.
"Minato! Where is he? Where's my husband?" His grievance was cut short as yells erupted from a familiar high-pitched voice.
An exasperated female with lively red hair burst onto the scene, causing a ruckus among the medical shinobi who tried to stop the clearly agitated woman from reaching the bodies of their Hokages; none of them had known of the Yondaime having a wife, let alone being in a relationship with anyone, so this woman seemed clearly mad to them.
Hiruzen, sensing the distress of both parties, commanded the shinobi to stand down as Kushina rushed to her lover's side. He allowed her time to grieve over her loss; he could not imagine the emotional pain she would be going through, to have your husband die on the day you birth your child.
Kushina wept and shouted at the corpse, "Minato, you idiot! How could you- how could you do this to me? To us, everyone… You can't leave me alone!" she begged the corpse, hysteria colouring her tone.
Hiruzen knew to intervene, he'd seen far too many shinobi break to let Kushina continue uninterrupted. "Kushina, Minato gave his life for this village so that we could all live. He paid the ultimate sacrifice so he could protect those important to him, and that includes you. He won't come back, and that's the sad truth, but he would certainly not want for you to cling to the memory of him. He would have wanted for you to live on to protect this village, to protect your family. You have a child now that you need to care for and nurture, you can't do that if you stubbornly hang onto a ghost. You need to mourn your loss, yes, but do not become caught up in your self-pity. We need to look to the future now. That child of yours, he is your future now."
The Sandaime's impromptu speech seemed to wake something in Kushina as she froze momentarily, straightened her back, rubbed at her face with her wrist and turned to face the aged leader. Hiruzen saw an emotion he'd never thought to see there in her deep purple eyes. Despair. It was the only emotion that she portrayed and it seemed to encompass all of her existence; like a black hole, a void where no light could reach, despair controlled her every fiber. Certainly she tried to hide it, wiping her tears and straightening her back in an attempt at professionalism, but to Hiruzen's wise eyes he could see the truth. "Naruto," she croaked, clearing her throat before continuing, "Minato and I, we named him Naruto, we… I mean that, he… Naruto's gone."
Well… that explained the despair. "Kushina, I am deeply sorry for your losses, I myself have lost too many precious people. My sensei, my friends…" Biwako... "I am sure, however, that wherever your son is, he's in a better place." Hiruzen reached out to touch her shoulder in a comforting gesture.
Kushina snapped and twisted her body around to smack away the old man's outstretched appendage. "That's a Kami damn lie, dattebane! He's with that bastard Madara, the one who caused this whole fucked up mess…" her anger evaporated as she crouched down, head in hands and gently sobbed.
Hiruzen lowered his arm, still raised from having to signal the ANBU to not attack the Uzumaki woman when she'd lashed out. Confusion marred his brow as he looked down at the woman, "Kushina, could you possibly explain? You can't mean to say that your son was stolen from you and Minato, only very few people even knew about the event. And not one of them would've given out the information. And the only Madara that I can think of is the Uchiha who founded Konoha together with Hashirama Senju. But that was over a hundred years ago, so I don't see how that could possibly be him."
"It was him… It was him… It was him…" Kushina muttered to herself, not seeming to hear the old man's words.
Hiruzen sighed, knowing that he wouldn't be getting anything else out of Kushina until her mind had began to heal. He gently placed his hand on her head and forced a genjutsu to take place, increasing her drowsiness until she fell asleep.
He handed Kushina's unconscious form to an ANBU member with orders to take her to the Sarutobi compound that had been left thankfully untouched by the Kyuubi's violence. He would have to deal with her later, but for now she needed rest. After giving birth, and having the Kyuubi escape from her, it was a miracle that she still held onto life.
It was only after the ANBU member had disappeared that Hiruzen's attention fell onto Minato's moving corpse.
Hiruzen did a double-take as his successor began the painful process of standing up without any chakra in his body. But that wasn't true, Hiruzen realised, the only chakra that should be in Minato's body was… The Kyuubi's.
The dead Hokage's body went flying as Hiruzen's fist collided with it, eliciting a slew of curses from the dead man. "How dare you take control of him!" Hiruzen thundered, his face a storm.
The surrounding ninja could only watch in disbelief as their former Hokage fought with their dead Hokage, who was seemingly able to move and speak. As Minato's body landed, snarling in fury and glaring with eyes of crimson, one iryo-nin pieced it together.
"It's the Kyuubi!" The shout was enough to snap several of the ANBU into attention as they launched a volley of kunai and shuriken at the Kyuubi's vessel.
The weakened bijuu was unable to escape the barrage and ended up taking most of the projectiles, sending its human form collapsing onto the ground face-up.
Hiruzen's hands sped through signs and as he held the final sign, tora, he shouted, "Today marks the end of your existence Kyuubi! I'll make your final moments those of regret for ever attacking Konoha! Katon: Gōryūka no jutsu!"
The aged warrior released his breath through the hand-sign, creating a monstrous amount of fire in the shape of a dragon's head. The inferno rushed to incinerate the Kyuubi vessel's body, surely turning it into ashes to scatter in the wind, when Minato's mouth twisted into a smirk.
In a flash of brilliant gold, the dead Hokage vanished.
The rain poured down in a way that would be deafening had the inhabitants of the village it dropped onto not grown used to it long ago.
A cloaked man stepped out of a skyscraper's dry interior to stand on what appeared to be a balcony shaped as a stone mouth. Standing on the granite tongue he closed his eyes and allowed the rain to wash over him, causing his spiky orange hair to droop. Should he will it, he could stop this rain. For as long as his chakra would hold out anyways. Yet he simply stood there, absorbing the feelings that his real body longed to experience again.
His mind remained static, and his body unmoving as he once more attempted to infuse his chakra into each individual drop that flew down onto his village, hidden in the rain. He began to feel a connection, he'd almost linked-
"I come bearing news, Pein."
The voice of a man who had not been there infiltrated Pein's mind; bringing his focus out of the rain and behind him, to where the voice emanated from.
Pein's face, pierced in an intricate way, showed no emotion. Nothing was given away. The only signs of his acknowledgement was the opening of his eyes, purple from the iris to the sclera and patterned like ripples in a pond.
Pein turned to face the man that had spoken, phrasing his reply in the same motion, "You've just come from Konoha. Would the news be pertaining to the Kyuubi Jinchuuriki?"
As he faced the shadowed form, Pein frowned. He could see the ever-present light blue aura of chakra outlining the man's form, an ability that his eyes gifted him, and saw, where he believed the man's arms to be, a second aura. The shape was small enough to be a child's, yet the depth of the pools Pein perceived were deep enough to belong to a Jōnin.
Before Pein could continue with his thoughts, the newcomer answered Pein's question. "In a way, yes. The Jinchuuriki has been freed from her prisoner, however I was unable to capture the Kyuubi nor destroy Konoha. The Yondaime Hokage made himself a nuisance. But that matters not, for we will simply be able to take the Kitsune out of whomever Konoha chooses as its next host."
There was a lull in which the rain was the only sound present to the two as it continued pouring down onto Pein, who had not re-entered the building. Yet over the roar Pein could make out the soft breathing of the form held by the man. Eventually the bout of non-speaking came to an end as a new voice restarted the conversation, "And Madara, who is the child you hold?"
Pein's eyes drifted to his blue-haired companion, recognising the concern in her amber eyes. Pein knew that look was for the infant that Madara cradled, an action that was foreign to his understanding of the man.
Madara showed no signs of having heard, seemingly absorbed in watching the unidentified child in his arms sleep. Silence took hold of all three of them and when Pein saw Konan about to speak once more, Madara replied.
"This is my son."
Well. He certainly hadn't expected that. Madara had always seemed so focused on his objective, Pein hadn't thought the man willing, or even capable, to father a child.
Unaware, or more likely uncaring, of Pein's disbelief, Madara continued, "I will be raising and training him in order for him to join the Akatsuki, to further our goals. I already sense in him the potential to see our plans come to fruition. However, as you know, I am a busy man. I cannot stay in one place too long, and taking care of an infant constantly will put a serious hamper on our plans." Madara paused at this moment to finally pry his gaze away from the child's face, and the crimson glow emanating from his right eye was unmissable in the darkness of the room, "He will stay here, at our headquarters, whenever I am gone. There will be no discussion about this. You will assist in raising him in any way you possibly can. Do you understand me, Pein?" Madara seethed out the shadowed threat as his crimson stare intensified, glaring into Pein's own luminescent purple orbs.
"Understood." There was no hesitation in that single word, which seemed to satisfy Madara as with a slight nod he looked away from Pein and resumed staring at his child.
Pein was contemplating how exactly he would raise the child, it wasn't as though he had any experience with such matters, when Konan's words brought his attention outwards once more.
"And what's his name, Madara? What are we to call him?"
There was silence at that, with the red-eyed man giving no indication of having heard once more, filling Pein with an unease that generally accompanied Madara's presence. Pein wondered if that was how his associates felt whenever they spoke to him and made a mental note to reflect on that at a later date.
Madara looked up once more; eyes locking with Pein's for the second time that night, two more times than Pein was comfortable with, and spoke simply. "His name shall be Tsuki Rin Uchiha."
With those words spoken, Madara gestured for Pein to move closer. Without a word, Pein obeyed, only noticing how heavy the rain was when it stopped touching him as he stepped inside.
When Pein was at arm's length from Madara, the newly dubbed father spoke again, "As it so happens, I have business to attend to at this present date. I shall return within two months, but in that time I expect the child to get used to this place and understand that this is his home." As Madara placed the baby into Pein's arms Pein didn't bother to point out that the boy would have no concept of home, or have the mental capacity to become familiar with a place for that matter.
With a single nod, and the displacement of air as it seemed to swirl inwards on Madara's form, Madara left. The only trace of him having been there being the child in Pein's arms.
And there was quiet once again as it became Pein's turn to stare at the child in his arms. In the lowlight, Pein's eyes adjusted to be able to see the child's features. The boy was a deathly, almost unhealthy, pale that seemed fitting due to his name. He had a slightly round face with an unusual birthmark of three whiskers on each of his cheeks. Looking at the boy's scalp he could make out a full head of spiky hair, which seemed unusual due to the boy's look of being a newborn. His hair was a dusty blonde to Pein's eyes, with black streaks running from the roots to the end tips.
Suddenly the infant began to squirm, and Pein noticed that the rain he'd been soaked in had gone through the blanket that Tsuki was clothed in. In his discomfort, the child began to wake uttering a soft wail before opening his eyes.
Half-lidded eyes stared up into Pein's own and Pein's mind stopped momentarily as he processed the crimson light emanating from the eyes of Madara's son. And then Tsuki blinked and they were replaced by a dark, almost navy, blue hue that proceeded to gain awareness of their surroundings whilst continuing to stare at the leader of the Akatsuki with the kind of curiosity that could only belong to a child.
The shock began to recede and Pein understood that he must bring the child up to share the Akatsuki's ideals. Because the child of Madara Uchiha that possessed a Sharingan as a newborn infant had the potential to be stronger than all of them. And as Konan took the child from his arms to attempt to soothe his cries, Pein had more confidence than ever that the Shinobi world would finally know true peace. And he, along with Tsuki Uchiha, would see that it happened.