Under the dark of the new moon fire came to Konoha. It marched from the horizon heralded by beating drums and the howling of the wind. For three days and three nights the people of Konoha had stood vigilant at the walls of their village. Sleep had eluded them, food had become ash in their mouths, and the infernal cadence had pressed on their minds. They had come to know what it meant, what it promised. It was an agonisingly slow countdown to their deaths.
It was on that third night that they saw for the first time the sea of lit torches. It blotted out the stars and stained the sky the colour of blood, a great sinuous snake of men that burned the forest in its wake as it drew closer and closer. The drums too grew louder. With every thump it halted the blood in their bodies. They could see them now, three dark timber frames with glistening skin stitched from a thousand creatures. They stretched up into the night, at the height of five men, on the backs of great wheeled daises pulled by a thousand ropes. A great ogre stood at each, striking the skin with mallets of carved bone, their sweat misting off their bodies in the cold winter night.
Then came the chanting. It was a harsh, guttural, tongue that struck the ears and kissed the flesh with the smouldering scum of dread. Beneath it all was a low muttering, not of words but something else. It came from the faint shaking of the earth, the rattling trees, of rivers crushed underfoot. The wind came and carried with it the stench of the teeming mass of bodies, an avalanche that came at the pace of a glacier, implacable, unstoppable. It stunk of ash and old blood.
The first of them broke through the tree line over a kilometre from the village, in ordered columns, their blades held on their shoulders and glinting in the fire light. By the thousands they kept coming, faceless, wearing monstrous masks mottled red with rust. They were clad in thick mail and hardened leather battledress festooned with pouches and loops carrying the tools of war. This was the vanguard, the elite. A circumvallation of one hundred banners, a thousand soldiers apiece, formed around Konoha. Each banner was emblazoned with a unique symbol, an eight legged woman, a fork-tongued cat, an eye in the centre of a palm, a corpse hanging from an upturned coffin. There was only one that stood taller than the rest, only one that stood apart in prominence, the colossal banner of a nine tailed fox.
Then, in a single moment, it all came to a crashing halt. With a crescendo of the drums a hundred thousand feet slammed into the earth in one last crump, announcing that they were here. The silence was deafening and left a palatable void in the air, still for the first time in three days.
Upon the walls a pink haired woman stood at her post, her tea green eyes stained yellow by the sea of fire. Her hand rested on the makeshift battlements, built atop walls that should have never seen such a sight. It was clenched, painfully so, as the wood creaked beneath her fingers. Around her was a maelstrom of organised chaos. Men and women hauled messages and supplies, barrels of kunai, shuriken by the case, baskets of soldier pills, and inked paper by the ream. The shouting was constant and unending.
"There you are Sakura."
The woman turned her neck and frowned at the approaching figure. He was half cast in the dim light leaking from the shuttered chakra lamps and with each step he seemed to almost float through the shadows.
"What do you want Shikamaru?" She said.
The man shrugged and leaned against the battlements, peering out at the besieging army. He then rifled through his pockets and pulled out a crumpled pack made from folded leaves. At Sakura's questioning look he grimaced.
"Every scrap of paper made in the last three months went to the sealers." He said. "I'm just glad they weren't pulling apart the cigarettes."
He pinched one between his lips and patted his flak jacket for a lighter.
"I thought you quit." Sakura said.
Shikamaru just gestured over the wall.
"I don't think it matters anymore." He said.
He then proffered the pack to her.
"No thanks. Not even now." Sakura shook her head.
A moment later she joined him, leaning against the battlements and just counting the points of light. The ping of the battered metal lighter was soon followed by the click of it closing and the acrid scent of burning tobacco. They spent the next few minutes in silence as the ash floated away in the wind.
Throwing the burned down butt over the wall Shikamaru spoke.
"You should be at the hospital. Not here." He said.
"I know." Sakura replied. "But…"
"Even if he's out there, you won't see him from here." He said.
Sakura laughed, the bitter kind. It came from the heart, not the stomach, and it burned every inch of the way.
"You're right." She said. I'll see you later."
Standing straight she walked towards the stair well but as she reached the first step she paused for just long enough to say one more thing.
"Don't die."
Shikamaru just nodded.
When Sakura made it to the bottom of the wall she wrinkled her nose. The stench of the city was clinging to everything it touched, a miasma that had only grown thicker with time. For weeks a steady stream of refugees, their lives carried on their backs and whatever beasts, had been pouring into the shinobi city, driven forward by the threat of death and the promise of safety. Soon, a city of fifty thousand had swelled to almost double that number along with every animal and ounce of food that could be scrounged from the surrounding country. It was the smell of shit. Human shit, baby shit, animal shit, rotting shit, there was no end to it.
The training fields were now mazes of tents, latrine pits and burning piles of trash and almost every tree was cut down for timber, to burn or to create fortifications. Konoha had changed in the space of a few months and was now just an ugly scar on the earth.
It wasn't long, using her shinobi speed, before Sakura reached the main district of the city, the location of the administrative and military centre of the village. It would have only been a few more short dashes across the rooftops before she arrived at the main hospital, but before she could do so she was signalled by a fellow shinobi.
Unknown to the pink haired girl a lone rider approached Konoha on the back of a gargantuan wolf. She was clad in red, a long tabard that split into nine sections tipped with gold, and a wicked triple bladed scythe held in one hand. Her face was obscured by a red iron mask, forged into the shape of a smiling fox. Only the slim line of her jaw and her crimson lips peeked out from under the cowl. She came to a halt in front of the city and raised a fist to the sky.
"Konoha." she shouted and her voice carried the distance with ease. "I begged my lord. Oh how I begged him! On my knees I implored him. Let us wash away this filth before you in a tide of blood. Let us drag them from their homes, from the embrace of their mothers and sisters, and pile their corpses in a bonfire to your glory. Let us, your grand host of a hundred banners, parade through their streets and pave them with their bones."
A gasp escaped from between her lips and a shiver ran through her body as if in orgasmic bliss at the very thought. Then abruptly she went rigid.
"But no." she hissed as if the very words were poison. "The Lord is too kind. A kindness I would have withheld from you, the underserving... The Lord demands parley. Be grateful."
With her words spoken she turned away upon her mount and sauntered back amongst the besieging host.
It was an hour later that the great gates of Konoha opened. Its aperture displayed the silhouette of a single woman and as she stepped over the threshold of her home every eye fell upon her. She walked the distance between the two opposing forces, the walls casting a shadow over her path, and not a single step was misplaced or given in hesitance. Then, as she approached the army before her it parted like the maw of a colossal beast.
What lay within its belly was a palace of silk, a maze of fabric screens that mimicked the corridors of a fortress. A thousand scenes played across their surface, wrought in metal and ink, scenes of past victories and of a ten-thousand-year glory being built one deed at a time. When she finally arrived in the final chamber Sakura felt her heart seize.
Before her was a throne, a ziggurat of dark timber embellished in fine silks and furs. Dozens of embroidered pillows, some larger than a man was tall, were scattered over its steps and the heavy scent of incense coiled through the air.
Nine guards were lounged upon the ten tiered structure, some did not even sit up at her entrance and no two shared the same appearance. Yet they all had one thing in common. They wore red iron masks wrought in the visage of a fox and tabards of some impossible fabric that defied the eye's comprehension. The first of them, the woman who had rode upon the wolf, had nine sections to hers, the last had only one. Still, there was only one thing in Sakura's mind and that was the figure at the apex of them all.
"Hello Sakura."
"Naruto..." It came out as barely a whisper.
The boy she had known, who she had kept in her memory, who had slowly begun to fade away well and truly died in that moment. The man before her exuded an apollonian strength, an atavistic recall to an era when demons still walked the earth and chakra was yet still raw and surging with chaotic power. She could feel it pricking against her skin, the energy that came off him in waves. It scared her but also hardened her heart to what she wished was still true, that Naruto was still just Naruto. Yet even with all that there a piece of Sakura that twisted when she saw that he was still wearing orange, an orange haori worn over the shoulders of a matching kimono.
"You know, I'd love to catch up with old friend, have a chat, share a meal and all that" Naruto said. "But we're both busy people so I'll try to keep it brief."
He stood and started to walk towards her, filling the room with the sound of his heavy footsteps on the hollow structure beneath his feet. Sakura could only swallow thickly as he approached. He was taller than her now.
He smiled and pulled her arm around the crook of his own and began to walk out of the room with her in tow.
"I really think you should surrender." Naruto said. "For both our sakes. There's no need for unnecessary loss of life you know."
It took several long seconds for Sakura to find her voice.
"You know we can't do that…" She said.
Naruto frowned. He never could hide his emotions, he wore them proudly and loudly, often yelling whatever the hell he wanted to the heavens. He didn't yell now, instead he slowly came to that familiar cheeky grin, the whisker marks on his cheeks accentuating the lines of mouth.
"Not even if I promised to spare all the civilians?" Naruto asked.
Sakura chewed her lip and looked at her feet padding along ground.
"The Hokage is determined to resist you to the last man, woman, and child." She said.
Naruto rubbed the back of his head and scowled.
"Danzo, of course he is, that stupid bastard." He muttered.
Then he brightened considerably and stood just a little bit straighter.
"Well that simplifies things a lot." He said and sped up the pace. "There's something I want to show you, something that I was working on for a long time, and you know these people-"
He waved his free hand around nebulous manner.
"have gotten so used to stuff like this they don't really get impressed anymore. Oh I mean sure they pretend, but even I can tell when they're being polite because I'm their boss."
Sakura kept listening as Naruto babbled on and on as they walked. There were all sorts of short snippets of stories told in classic Naruto style, lacking detail and key information, and despite the situation Sakura felt a warm wave of nostalgia. Of course, back then she would have never let him lead her around like this, but then again who could have known that this would come to pass.
"We're here." Naruto said.
Sakura looked up and found herself in a large clearing. Somehow along the way she hadn't seen a single soldier yet now she saw almost four hundred of them in a flurry of activity around an enormous edifice that dwarfed the trees around it.
It was the greatest single piece of ironwork Sakura had ever witnessed. It was an enormous tube of black iron, fifteen meters in length and six in diameter, seated on a wheeled carriage reinforced in bronze. Just the carriage dwarfed the men around it, none of them managing to reach even half way up its height. One of the works the soldiers were doing was building a wooden frame around the apparatus from rough cut wood. Others still were digging wide trenches and channels that circled the mysterious object.
As they approached closer Sakura's shock soon turned to awe. Every spare inch of the tube's surface was carved with intricate seals, some so fine in their detail that they could only be seen as the slightest knurling upon the metal. Even just the time it would take to do such a thing without regard to the necessary expertise, was insanity. There had to be at least a hundred and fifty tons of metal alone.
"Took me three years, but it's finally finished." Naruto said. The pride shone through his voice.
"What is it exactly?" Sakura asked.
"Oh you'll see." He replied. "I'm about to have a demonstration for my important guest."
They eventually moved to an observation platform at the rear of the apparatus, some five meters up and behind the tube. Sakura had discovered that while the other end was open, the side that there were currently standing near was closed, with a giant seal array inscribed on its surface.
It was not just the two of them standing there, however. A complement of a hundred soldiers stood at attention on the ground below, and Naruto's nine personal guards had joined them on the platform.
Then Sakura heard the moaning, not of pleasure, but of pain. Then she saw its source. A man, bound in chakra supressing chains and wearing little else, was led out into the clearing and towards the apparatus. He was led down between the two parallel rows of men standing at attention and as he passed she could hear the rebukes. They spat and kicked at him, swearing and jeering as he struggled to walk. His leg was clearly broken and other wounds marred his body. Sakura could only barely keep watching.
"Why are you doing this to him?" Sakura whispered.
"The bastard was an officer in my Army." Naruto replied. "But he was caught raping a civilian. This is his punishment where he can atone for his sins and still be of some use to me."
Finally, through the gauntlet of his former peers, the man was led up to the closed end of the tube and pushed with his back flat against it.
Then Involuntary yelp escaped from between Sakura's lips.
They were crucifying him, driving long iron nails into multiple places along his arms and legs. They were piercing his Tenketsu specifically, the nodes from which chakra was released from the body, as they pinned him tighter and tighter to the matte black metal.
"By the sage… this is inhumane…" Sakura said.
She knew the man standing next to her was no longer the Naruto she knew. Despite the affectations, the personality, there was simple something deeply wrong when a man could watch these kinds of acts with a smile on his face. Of course she had heard the stories, the rumours, and in darker times she had hoped Naruto truly was dead and it was simply Kyuubi wearing his skin. Perhaps she was right.
Blood was now flowing freely and the cries for mercy had deteriorated to wordless whimpering. Yet it seemed the torture was still not over.
Another executioner approached, a long metal pole held in both hands. Its tip was like an oversized cattle brand, a long rectangular shape with eight wicked spikes in a strange vertical configuration. Sakura could make no sense of it until it was plunged into the body of crucified man. Then her eyes widened as chakra flooded the clearing.
"You forced open his eight gates!" Sakura said.
Then, just as suddenly as it appeared, the spike of chakra faded away to nothing as the black iron started to glow. A thousand spider lines of pale blue appeared on the tube, flowing from the self-immolating man to every other element of the seal that was carved into its surface. It was absorbing the man's chakra, every last drop that his eight ruptured gates were pouring through his flesh. The power greater than that of a Kage.
It was only a matter of minutes before his body became reduced to ash and the tube, once again, became inert, black, and cold.
Then Naruto just said one word.
"Fire."