Divergence 1
"A mother's heartfelt wish."
"Uwah!"
—a babe's cries. Followed by the rumbling and shaking of the room, then the sound of a sweet mother's hymn.
"There, there," Kushina whispered. She leaned above the child, her form shadowing him from the light, and her red hair cascading around him. There was a silence, a lull in the tremors, and she took that chance to say, "It's going to be alright, Naruto."
Just as peace came in, the tremors came back. And once again the cycle of a babe's crying and a mother's consoling began anew.
Kushina never moved from her position. She promised that she wouldn't let her sight be away from him for any moment, and she never went back on her promises. It wasn't her way, dattebane!
Her child was still crying. The woman named Uzumaki Kushina was at a loss as to what to do. The crying of her child was telling her something, yet she couldn't grasp what it meant yet. She was only a mother for a few hours!
None of the books she bought told her what to do when a demon came in to wreck your village!
Minato left them too!
That yellow mayflower who's more of a wife than a husband! That doormat!
That…!
Kushina didn't know when her eyes started watering, nor did she know when tears started flowing out. What she did know was that her tears dripped unto her child's forehead, the bead sliding down his head and onto the mattress below.
Kushina watched as Naruto's eyes opened for the first time. His big eyes, almost too big for his head, unveiled a dark ocean blue.
"Huh, Minato's eyes are brighter than yours," she said, smiling. "It seems you've gotten my shade. Too bad it isn't my violet."
Kushina laughed at her joke, while tears escaped from her eyes, taking away her pains and miseries with them. That's what she thought, anyway. Grandma Mito always told her that the reason people cry was that the tears take away from the pain. She had told her that when she heard the news of Uzushio's fall, and since then, Kushina had never cried.
Why would she? When she didn't want the pain to be gone, because pain from loss was the only thing she had left.
She hadn't cried when the bullies degraded her constantly.
She hadn't cried when the Shinobi from the cloud taken her away.
She hadn't cried when she fought against countless ninja at all sides.
In her mind, crying would only take away the pain, and she'd forget everything.
It seemed, Uzumaki Kushina thought, that she had enough. She wanted to feel better. She wanted the bottled up pain to go away, to disperse with the wind.
The past cycled again, and this time it was her new home that was burning to the ground. She thought of it as cruel. The gods were cruel in their choice for entertainment.
The room rumbled, but this time, she noticed, Naruto didn't cry. He was content with watching her, probably wondering how a mother could cry.
So she wiped her tears away. She wouldn't give them the benefit of being entertained by her pain. They can go find someone else to bother, dattebane!
Biting her thumb so that it would bleed, she began drawing a spiral upon herself and her little boy. As she did this, she recalled her grandmother's words, hearing them leave her lips.
"When making seals, intent is the only thing needed, Kushina. What people fail to understand is that any symbol can be made into a seal, and you don't need to learn whatever the symbol everyone agreed upon does; only that it makes it easier to make a seal."
With the spiral in place, she concentrated on giving it a meaning: to make sure that they'd never be separated again. Her head spun, and her nose began bleeding. It was vague. Vague seals only cause headaches; her grandmother would've chided her, it's almost impossible for one person to make a vague seal.
"One must firmly believe that the seal would do whatever they want it to do, otherwise the chakra you give it would be inert."
Even as her brain started ripping itself apart, she held steadfast. Her hand, imbued with chakra powered by her beliefs, traced the spiral her son had on his head. The seal glowed, signaling her that it was complete.
"The seal should glow when it completes. That means that whatever you made would do what you wanted it to do."
Tremors once again shook the room. Her head pounded upon her mercilessly. Her nose kept bleeding and her eyes teared up once more. She felt her existence ripping itself apart. Yet, as she stared upon her son's eyes, her determination to finish this only grew stronger.
"Now you may think that it's easy. And that it seems like seals could do anything, but you'd be only half-right on the latter—and wholly wrong on the former."
She placed her hand on her forehead.
"Humans can't meddle with anything that the world deems impossible."
With it, she placed her belief that she would never leave him. That she'd always be there with him. That she'd always protect him. The World and the Gods tried to reject this heartfelt wish, but they couldn't.
"Only beliefs strong enough, and without doubt diluting it, and without hesitation, could pierce through the limits the World places on us."
For it was a mother's earnest wish.
Fire and brimstone.
She was seeing it before her, fantasy becoming reality.
Flashes of explosions, flickers of flames and smoldering rock thrown away from the vicious monster that rampaged close enough to let her see it in all its terrifying glory. Nine swiveling swishing swarming tails and a body of a fox with elongated ears to hear the death it had caused.
It was chaos.
But, for those who happened to catch a glimpse of her amidst the destruction, as she sat on the railings of the balcony, they'd be surprised. Her swinging feet dangled above the rails,, hands at her sides, as she looked at the desolation with pristine tranquility.
Draped in amaranthine moonlight blues and scintillating reds of embers, the two lights waltzing upon her, she was an impressionist painting of emotion contrasted by her neutral expression. Like a lake undisturbed as the sun rose above. The galewinds never touched her form, nor did they ruffle her white kimono, nor blow her midnight hair behind.
A gust of wind blew and the sound of disturbed leaves falling alerted her to a presence near her.
"Chihiro-san, may I use your balcony?" a voice spoke from behind her.
"You may do as you wish," Chihiro spoke quietly, not a single spike of emotion influencing her voice from her amid the chaos. She knew who it was.
"Take absolute care not to damage the Archives in any way, however." She waved her hand.
"Not to worry," he answered, and she turned around to see her unexpected companion.
Brandishing in the midnight colors, he crouched on the rails, hands running through myriad ninja-signs.
Then, sinking his teeth into his finger to draw out blood—a sacrifice to materialize beings greater than he—and then lining his hand with the ichor , she saw him strike his palm on the wall below the railings, his body swinging in an arc.
—pop!
Smoke bubbled out of his hand.
The summoned being appeared floating in the air, carried by the clouds coming out of the ninja's hand, before settling on the the railings next to her, its feet grasping the marble like hands.
Her fingers clenched, nails digging into her palm. It was him. Sasaki Chihiro hated that monkey, pretending to be the king of the apes, while the true ruler was indisposed.
"Sarutobi!" A voice mired with the echoes of simian grunts bellowed in anger. "How many times do I have to tell you not to summon me on the side of things?"
Sarutobi chortled. "Too many to count, old friend," he said.
Vitriol screams echoed from the slaughter.
His face dimmed, growing solemn. "Enma, King of the Apes, the One Appointed by the God-sage Son Goku to Await Him, I ask you to lend your hand, and become a weapon of choice."
The monkey-"king" nodded.
Looking from her vantage, she caught the monkey royal hand a scroll to the ex-Hokage, who took it in his palms and made it disperse away. Then, the old monkey declared, "My soul is yours to use as you see fit."
Another blast of haze and the Monkey transformed into a staff. And like the instant he appeared, the past Hokage of the blazing Village Hidden in the Leaves seized the staff from the air swiftly. The pole lengthened and grew in his hands, becoming as great as the Fox ruffling the Leaves.
She huffed. Son Goku didn't become a staff, he used one. That monkey irritated her more and more by simply existing, like an itch she couldn't scratch. Shaking her head, she looked at the retired kage's features.
A grim look cast on the old Hokage's features.
The air shrieked as the gargantuan object rose upwards quicker than it could displace itself. Clouds impelled away from its path. The pillar held by the venerable man stabbed the heavens themselves, claiming it and changing it as it saw fit.
The former Hokage hadn't labored at all in bearing such a cumbersome object.
Seeing many things in her ancient life, from seeing one man creating a village to his brother shifting rivers from their usual course to run on said village, there was few things that could surprise her.
The Hokage's abilities weren't part of those things.
Like lightning, it rose, and like a bolt, it fell, and the crack of thunder boomed as the beast crashed towards the ground. And the ground shook, and cheers erupted from the relieved frontline shinobi.
A hammer of God.
"It's the Third Hokage!"
"With him here, victory is assured! The God of Shinobi is with us!"
"Thank the heavens!"
Then, the so-called God of Shinobi spoke. "Men! We must focus our might on the beast, now is not the time for respite. The battle had yet to be won! If we falter for even a moment, the beast will recover, so fight
His voice calm and clear pierced through the sound of crackling wood and falling buildings, stronger than the breath of the beast blowing boulders, echoing from nowhere and being everywhere.
—fight for the will burning in your hearts! Fight for your homes! "
He spoke to the heart.
And their hearts beat as one, like a drummer who had picked up a drum from a battlefield, who began to beat a song of war.
That was what she thought, as her heart drummed in her chest. She heard his words and they echoed in her mind, kept there by the resoluteness of his tone, and the promise of victory.
And the ex-Hokage's voice had been heard by everyone.
Raising his staff again, he swerved it to the left, smacking the beast to its side and making the buildings in that area fall crushed.
The thereafter beast was then peppered with all manners of jutsu and explosives. The shinobi, opportunists that they were, wouldn't let opportunity slip away from their hands. With gusto, they continued their barrage, unrelenting.
Yet it looked as if the beast felt nothing of it and continued to rise, snarling with its fearsome visage.
The ex-Hokage merely raised his staff up high again and brought it down.
The ground underneath cracked and opened.
She winced. Her mouth opened and air left her, taking away her shock and pity for the beast. It needed to be that way, for the Hokage started lifting the staff once more high above the air, above the clouds. It fell again.
Again and again, the old soldier brought his weapon to kill the beast, and again the beast rose up beaten, but breathing.
She kept closing her eyes, opening them as soon as she did, while her hand pinched her forearm. The repeated beating had the ground open its jaws, eating the creature alive. There was no mercy for the beast, who mercy had not, with the old man raising the staff again to mark the creature.
She stopped herself from looking away, when whirring winds and the sound of a thousand guns shooting at once blasted.
Some shinobi took as a cue to start crushing the beast. They carried everything they could get their hands on; whether it was large boulders or broken down rubble, they delivered it in with the brutality of an animal defending its home.
She had been observing the battle the moment the Kyuubi appeared in the village out of nowhere and had seen the ineffectiveness of jutsu in injuring it. Thrown objects won't even harm it. It was futile and would only serve to bury the beast in rubble.
But they did so, still, if they couldn't do anything else.
She covered her ears; a vein-curling screech from the demon's maws forced the articles of rubbish and the staff from reaching it. It was tired, it seemed. There was a hiatus in the struggle, as the men and beast were steadying themselves. She could only wait in anticipation.
Finally, a column of clouds appeared behind the beast, growing higher and higher upwards, with a roar shouting, "Out of my village!". A beast veered to the left, its nine tails swing with it, only for a fist to escape the clouds and bury its head to the ground.
Her breath left her in awe.
The demon slipped under the fist and moved again to pounce.
It stopped.
Her brows rose, as the beast was immobilized mid-jump, its claws stretched outwards, maws open and nine tails blossoming out like a flower behind it, frozen in time.
She was further confused by the patch of darkness crawling upwards, as if the shadows themselves have come to life, and watched as the adumbrations covered each inch of its body in abyssal murkiness.
Then, a second fist came from the smoke, arriving from the vapors that concealed the giant man from the beast, hints of vapor riding on the fist.
The fist crushed the beast's jaw. A straight uppercut as the beast flew back; the owner of the fist appearing from the haze, holding a stance with two fists guarding his face.
He launched himself at the beast. Feet thundering as he beared upon the downed animal. Wearing a suit of armor that wouldn't be far off from a Samurai's garment, he hammered on the beast, each beat upon it a drum to jump her heartbeat along. A knight vanquishing devilry, like the stories told.
She found herself in awe.
Many cheers erupted from the frontline. The arrival of the clans, from what she could see, lightened their spirits.
Very faintly did she hear a whisper pass by her. The wisp buried itself inside the old man still carrying the staff, with him nodding as the only indication that it wasn't just a trick of the light.
She turned her head back into the battlefield. Increasing her vision, her eyes shifting violet with blue ridges, she searched for the origin of the wisps.
There was a person, his form distinct from the rest of the crowd, glowing in the spiritual light, draping him in a translucent milky white form. The aura he held showed an aptitude for the phantom arts, and the number of wisps he sent out and received was enormous—
Oh.
She understood now.
Such power. In the hands of humans.
There was a reason after all.
She finally understood why the clans were special. Why the brothers always insisted that the clans were important when they came to talk to her about their lives. Why they insisted that she learn about them.
She had agreed, of course, she had nothing to do, and that was new information.
Thus she knew what they could do, but this was something that she did not know.
A spiritual beacon.
A controller of shadows and darkness.
A veritable giant.
Things that were written in fiction.
She was snapped out of her musings when a whirr resonated from the battlefield.
Her eyes saw two massive drills appear from the ground and from above. The one that came from below were made by smaller drills clumping up, while the one from above just appeared out of nowhere, like the giant and the shadows from before.
The two drills met at the center where the Kyuubi was sandwiched in between.
It had dazed the beast!
A beast that she knew from her archives to be nearly invincible, a beast carried with itself the apocalypse!
A youkai blessed by their patron god to be nearly as equal to Him!
She had to calm herself. As her breathing steadied, she recalled a number of books regarding the creatures. They were often filled with grandiose wordings and mudded vaguity. But she couldn't fault the writers.
She knew books were written by men, and men made mistakes and tend to embellish things when they wrote, and they probably were powerless to stop a Kyuubi from rampaging. So they wrote such words to associate them with it.
They also tended to ramble about how their first time with a kitsune was the best time of their lives and they turned into wanderers searching for a lucky catch.
Those stories always ended with the person never finding them.
There was one she recalled that had one so obsessed. Finding kitsune was a dream of his. Everything became a means to the end, and one by one his life fell apart, like bricks of a bridge in an earthquake. Discouraged, he sought immortality.
He found a way to never die, in reaching the Hourai Mountain peak, where the moon-people were said to grant immortality to those who passed their challenge. Through his determination, he passed the impossible ordeals, and was granted immortality.
Then the heavens cast their gaze upon the man.
They were angered by his obscenity in life. And punished him for it. He was turned into a god, a god with nothing to his name.
And because a God of Nothing gets nothing, the god became sickly and bedridden, unable to walk the lands in search for a kitsune. And like most fairy-tales, it has a moral, if you look close enough.
This one had "don't be lustful" as its moral lesson.
She laughed. Her voice milfed by the battle.
Thus was the Tale of the Foxhunter.
"Thank you for letting me use your roof, Honored Librarian."
A voice broke through all her musings at the wonders she saw before her. It was Hiruzen, thanking her for letting him use her roof as a platform. Why choose this particular building though, a question that went silent.
"Other buildings aren't as sturdy as this building, and I'd rather not further the destruction created to the village already." Providentially, the Hokage revealed it to her. That still left a different mystery neglected.
"Of course, I don't desire to ruin your library, Chihiro-san, that's not what I intended."
"I think nothing of it, Lord Third." She said, feeling a trifle exposed of her depth. "Your battle provided some more insight to the capabilities of Shinobi that books do not show, frankly, it was surprising to see what you can do as opposed to being told of it in verses."
"I certainly hope that the embellishments of my accomplishments didn't dilute reality you see now, I've always been leery of people scribbling concerning me," Hiruzen said, his voice a dancing lilt.
"It did dilute reality, though not in the way you would expect," she quickly appended, as soon as she saw him lifting an eyebrow at her on the side of the structure.
It was disorienting, and she felt the need to change her frame of reference.
"The embellishments do not, in fact, embellish your abilities. They undermine them. What I see now, I recognize, is the exacting fact, and it's more grand and magnificent than the verses of praise sung in your name."
"Ah yes, but some of them are fictionalized, so I wouldn't believe in them often," he spoke.
"Those certainly are a problem. I just wish I could move out of this library to see the world in my own two eyes again," Sasaki Chihiro sighed longingly. "But that's neither possible nor probable.
"Hiruzen! We are wasting valuable time," the gruff voice of the monkey in the staff boomed. "We're going to need to get closer to the beast to push it out, the clans are doing well enough by themselves, but soon they will run out of chakra, and our undermanned village full of chuunin pencil-pushers isn't going to push it out."
"You better listen to the monkey-regent, Hiruzen, he speaks wisdom. Glad to know that Son Goku's choice wasn't done out of stupidity," the librarian said, her words were sharp knives cutting through the conversation. Moreover, it cut through the Monkey-king.
Which was her goal in this. She still couldn't accept him as the King of the Monkeys.
"I'll ignore what that bitch of a librarian said for more important matters. Come Hiruzen, before I destroy that woman," the monkey regent spoke, his words decorating the air with unsubtle hostility. Threats like that weren't going to faze her, that much she knew, for the fact that the monkey king cannot touch her.
It was her territory. The library they stood upon was older than the village itself, its architecture of years passed, before the circular style of building became the norm in the village.
Easily distinguishable from afar, with the ivory columns reaching up to carry the multiple red wooden roofs sloping downwards to a tilt, and triangular windows made of clear glass and marble statues garnishing the sides, and the balconies that stood upon smaller walls. And a clock was ordained at the very top.
The entire village was built like spires. The Hokage Tower was the tallest and in the middle, like tornado spinning upwards into the sky, imposing and breath-taking. Her library, however, was built like a spear, long and high, to pierce the vault of the heavens and spread its riches to anyone who climbs her tower.
It would only get higher as more books arrive, too. Soon, the building would be taller than the Hokage Tower, and since Hashirama wasn't here anymore to cheat, she'd finally win their silly competition.
If only he was around to see her win though.
Breaking out from that train of thought, she looked around for the God of Shinobi, only to find out that he had left. Whispering wind blew past her ears, and the sounds of battle grew evermore louder. Shadows grew sharper as the flames grew brighter.
Increasing her vision once again, she searched for him, in the flames, in the rubble, in the squads of shinobi that riddled them.
Then, he came out. His shadow was distinct—no one had a weapon the size of Enma. The God of Shinobi wielded him with with finesse unrivalled anywhere on this continent, sashaying, swirling, and twisting around the many limbs of the beast like a ballerina performing her climatic finale. The staff in his hands, despite being a tower piercing the heavens, ghosted around the many obstacles in its path.
Hit after hit; the Hokage was not limited to her building anymore. She could see his lithe form twisting and the staff dragged to hit the beast's head. With the numerous distractions around the beast, the Hokage could now afford to be reckless in his attacks, wreaking havoc upon the besieged beast.
It was a battle between two monsters.
The eldritch tails snapped straight whenever a hit was made. Claws swiped at the nimble kage, who dodged and turned at the last moment. He jumped on the arm, his form a blur as she tried to track him-
An explosion appeared behind the horror-
The Hokage appeared in front of the beast, floating in the air as his arm cocked back, the staff elongating once more taller than the highest mountain peaks. His form was shadowed by the fire. That image immortalized itself in her mind.
A Fire Shadow.
Despite his small stature, it seemed that he grew several sizes larger than the beast, for a moment.
A flash, and the beast's head turned upwards staring at the heavens. The Hokage landed softly, his back straight and holding the staff he carried into battle.
In that moment, she respected his power, his determination, his strength. In that moment, she had seen in prove himself to his predecessors. In that moment, he had proven himself to her.
His staff was short again, no longer the towering weapon it once was. That was a moment, before the staff exploded in size, in front of the Youkai. It pushed it over to the gaping holes, but not beyond it.
A mountain of cloud, bubbling and swirling, appeared in front of the Hokage. A giant came out, the size of mountains. It bulled the fox-demon, forcing it out of the village completely; his footsteps were like drums of war the weary shinobi screamed elated.
Another puff of smoke, and the giant was gone. And like that, the screams of elation grew dimmer while the fires grew stronger. It would take a miracle to stop the beast, to push it out of the Fire Country, to force it to heed.
She shivered in fright.
This was what caused Inari to be punished. What caused him to be barred from the Heavenly Capital forever, and what caused the Counsel of Eight Million Gods to resent him. He, along with eight more gods, who partook in the corpse of the Tenth, cast down to Earth.
A cold wind blew, carrying the leaves from the shunshin with it.
It carried them far; the height of her home and the heat from the fires further away made the wind blow strong.
And it disappeared.
A flash of red—sounds of flutes being blown too hard being carried with it, and then the leaves disintegrated, leaving behind blackened ashes cradled by the wind.
Her eyes followed the beam of light.
A trail of destruction, and future tears, opened along its path. The Four Great Kages, ones who shadowed the village, protecting it as they stood firmly against all those who would harm it, saw the rapidly approaching beam of death in regal stoicism. Unafraid of their destruction.
Or unafraid because they knew what was to happen.
A tear in reality appeared before the faces, characters of indescribable form pulling the hole wider, and the beam was eaten by it.
An explosion—
She turned. From nowhere, an explosion eclipsing the moon's light appeared, its painful red glare doing away the softer blue hues of lunar essence. At awe, she thought of battles described in books, of lesser known ones, way before the time now, where explosions and fire raged, and found her image of them lacking.
She couldn't fault herself, nor the authors who described them, for nothing could compare to destruction manifest.
Yet even with the new developments, the battle was far from over. If anything, the battle reached its rising action. Much more close to the beginning than it was the end, she could only pray for the departed souls to rest easy afterwards.
She turned. The clock in her tower rang eleven bells.
It was time to rest.
Minato stood overlooking the burning leaf.
In his hand was the fabled Hiraishin kunai, a weapon of destruction, a weapon of killing. Minato knew what his weapon could do, he knew that in using it, he was killing lives. Lives with families waiting for them, with loved ones wallowing in anxiety, with friends readying their welcome home party.
It wasn't a weapon of protection.
No matter how many lives he may have saved, he still ended one life for it.
One to save ten, ten to save a hundred-a burdensome philosophy.
He stood there, lamenting his inability to save, for all his strength, his myriad of abilities, he couldn't stop everyone from dying.
This was his failure.
His knuckles turned white. It was only recently he had become Hokage, only recently did he promise to protect, to destroy all that those who would harm his village, and only recently had he failed.
He failed in his promises.
Most importantly, he failed his wife.
His beautiful redhead wife. Amethyst eyes mined from the deep, as deep as he found himself dragged in whenever he looked into them. Her homely smile and honest expressions were truly worth the effort breaking her out of her tsundere shell.
All for that smile.
Protecting that smile.
And his cute baby boy, whose smile he had yet to see.
It was all that masked man's fault. Though it may be his fault too. The cycle of hatred is a cycle, there was no start nor no foreseeable end. Someone's fault or another one's fault, it depended on how far the cycle went, how far it had rolled over the innocents.
It was fucky like that.
Jiraiya, for all his faults, explained the concept pretty well. That didn't mean that it wasn't hard to understand. One had to have a very circular and roundabout logic, like a cycle, to understand the cycle of hatred.
Or that was what he told himself.
He still wasn't sure what it even was.
Or what the King was in the Third's speeches.
All he knew was to substitute those terms with the things he understood, like seals and loved ones, and that was enough for him.
He understood seals. They were pretty straightforward, all things considered. Put variables here and put a containment here, put into field and input chakra, bam! A perfect seal. Of course there was the messing with powers beyond his understanding bit, but that wasn't important.
He understood loved ones. That was another straightforward concept. The people you love and adore were your loved ones, the people you hate and despise were your enemies. He had a few of the latter too.
All his realizations had led him to the penultimate conclusion.
He wasn't the child of prophecy.
He wouldn't bring peace into this world.
Startlingly, he knew that the child of prophecy was almost impossible to even exist in this world.
How would you stop the cycle of hatred? It was a cycle, perpetually moving until the death of this world.
Until oblivion comes and takes you into its maws.
He shuddered imperceptibly. He saw oblivion. He didn't touch it. He couldn't touch the place where demons lurk underneath, where ever-present hunger maws at you even when you were gone and eaten. It was a place no sane man would wander through willingly.
He himself only stumbled upon the spaces between spaces during his testing of the Hiraishin.
He himself knew that the child of prophecy wouldn't be able to stop that.
So the child of prophecy couldn't exist.
The same way the entity of oblivion shouldn't exist.
As he mused, he dodged. Moving faster than the hand that was going to reach him, his feet skidding on the ground as he slid behind the masked man. He grasped the head and-
He felt himself being ripped apart. Space sucking him inside whatever rip the man made. His body stretched out like noodles, there was only one thing he could do-
He flickered.
To anyone watching him, it looked as if he rode light, and moved along with it. In actuality, however, he did not ride light. He became it.
His body turned into photons, sucked into a rip into space and time he made, and coming outside of it as the fold reversed and flattened. His body turned back into their regular particles, elements, and self.
Then his soul came in to inhabit the remade body once more.
The Man in the Mask followed him, it seemed, or had he followed the man? It didn't matter. The battle never finished until one is bleeding dead on the ground. There was no surrender.
No mercy.
This was the world that he was born into. What the world Naruto was born into. He could only hope that he survives, to protect Naruto, but with the Kyuubi rampaging in Konoha, it was a hope better left out of the cage in his heart.
Blows exchanged. He couldn't touch his enemy. The man seemed to be away from him, yet close at the same time, like he was merely chasing a shadow.
Sparks flew, he had parried a blow to his head from behind. His only weapon against the man, it seemed, was his instinct and experience, though if it was an effective weapon remained to be seen.
Turning, he caught the man. Or so he thought, until his hand slipped into the sleeve, once again grasping the shadow. Frustratingly, the man disappeared again in a swirl of broken space, to who knew where he would appear again.
He scanned the area. The lake, perhaps?
Above him appeared a swirl of darkness. The Man in the Mask came out, his chain swirling around him while his hand stretched out to reach the Fourth Hokage.
Just before he touched the Hokage, the Yellow Flash disappeared.
The Masked Man twirled in the air, his feet landing on the ground with a silent thud. He scanned the area, searching for the blasted Kage, who seemed to disappear at the last moment every time, making the fight more difficult than it had to be.
He knew that the Hokage would be difficult to fight, but he thought that his skills would suffice, that his ability would render him untouchable. It did.
But the damned Kage was also untouchable.
"You're skilled." A voice said from behind him. He felt something prickling his back, and he reflexively went back to his own dimension. That was too close. "But, I've figured you out."
Since the battle started, the one known as Obito Uchiha, the Man in the mask, felt fear.
There was no denying it. The Yellow-haired demon was too smart. As the man's former student, Obitio Uchiha felt stupid for the first time in a long while. The most obvious thing about the man, as soon as you take away all his skills and achievements, was his intelligence.
It was this fact alone that the reality of the situation he was in began to creep in.
He was fighting the Fourth Hokage.
The only man who was feared by everyone.
And the man discovered his trump card.
He closed his eyes, forcing his breath to calm down. He opened them and saw that the Kage's arm was sticking out of his body. If he materializes, the Kage's arm would go through his body.
Escape.
The lunar light reflected off the lake, enticing his eyes to look at its pleasantness. His eyes strained themselves, signaling the usage of the Mangekyo, and before he knew it, he appeared atop of the lake, a minor wind jutsu letting him hover in the air before settling down on the water's surface.
He looked at the Kage in front of him.
What he saw crystallized in his mind, forever.
Hunched over, knees bent, and an ethereal bluish glow from the rasengan illuminating him while the harvest moon stared at his back, Namikaze Minato was terrifying.
The man from his memories, from when times were peaceful and joyous, his childhood youth, superimposed itself behind the man who decimated an entire army to protect his village.
And so Uchiha Obito felt doubt.
Doubt that he could kill the man in front of him.
Doubt that he could complete the mission Madara gave him.
Most importantly, doubt that he would even survive after everything he was tasked to do.
He hated that feeling.
He felt his cold breath from inside his mask. "You've impressed me."
Minato threw the kunai at the Masked Man. At the same time, the man ran towards him. The man that he thought of as Madara Uchiha had his arm outstretched to reach him, but this time a spike was in his hand.
They met at the middle.
An explosion of light.
Minato appeared on the lake.
The masked man had the moon glaring with utmost hatred behind him now.
The man disappeared in a swirl of darkness, while the Kage rode light and disappeared.
A light shined.
And the fox was no more.
Konoha was safe.
It was a time for jubilation. At last their efforts haven't been in vain. At last they could finally rest and tally their dead, mourn their loved one's passing away, and be thankful that they live to see another day.
Not all well wishes were granted on this day.
But a mother's wish was.
Cradling the babe within her arms, Kushina walked towards the gates of Konoha, her dress as red as her hair. She gait was slow but filled with temerity, and her eyes only on her child.
Once they got a little bit closer, Hiruzen could her cooing softly, her voice weak still. "We got out of there alive, didn't we, Naruto?"
Then she looked at the sky, watching the first rays of sunlight peek over from the Hokage Mountain. Her finger traced over the faces of the Kages, starting with the First and slowly moving right, before landing on one particular face.
"Look Naruto, that's your father! He isn't around here anymore, but I'll make sure that you grow up as big and strong as he is!"
"Kushina…" Hiruzen whispered.
Kushina's violet eyes landed upon him.
"Minato's gone."
"Is the Kyuubi…?" Hiruzen trailed off.
"Yes. Naruto is the new Jinchuriki." Kushina reached him. Carrying the babe upright, she showed the aging Kage the seal on the child's belly.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be," Kushina hissed. "It's not anyone's fault except the one who attacked us."
Hiruzen remained silent.
Sensing that the conversation had ended, Kushina began walking again. Turning around, he watched the woman pass the gates of Konoha, and disappear.
Hiruzen could only sigh.
It was quite an eventful day.
Before you get mad at me for skipping the battle with the Kyuubi, know that it has been done so many times that I've lost count how much I've seen it happen. And before you call me out on that battle with Obito, and saying that I'm a hypocrite for doing this, that scene was important.
It was important for Obito, who will be affected dramatically from the battle, and will be changed accordingly. I can only lament my lack of skill in writing that I do this. Please forgive this horrid writer for doing this!
You can PM on how much I suck on my discord. Xynovitch#3277