'I'm dying,' he thought as he lay face down on the ground, watching with one eye the figure lying not fifty meters away from him.
He was almost completely out of chakra, and that last clash between their two techniques had left him with massive fatal wounds all over his body. The collision of his Blaze-enhanced Chidori and his rival's Rasengan had obliterated what remained of the opposing statues at the historic Valley, as if symbolizing the end of the transmigratory feud of the two brothers.
So the cycle had been broken…but at what cost? He was supposed to bring a revolution to the cursed world of shinobi after killing Naruto, his one remaining bond. With that, the cycle would end, his power unmatched, and he would become the World Shadow.
But he underestimated the optimistic fool. It didn't even make any sense. He had absorbed all of Naruto's chakra and that of the Nine-Tails within, but the damn idiot had somehow pulled more chakra out of nowhere.
And now they were both going to die. Kaguya had been sealed so the God Tree's chakra absorption was no longer active. But without the Six Paths power, nobody could end the Infinite Tsukuyomi even if Kakashi and Sakura managed to physically cut everyone out of the God Tree cocoons. In the end, Madara's stupid plot to trap the world in perpetual simulated Heaven had succeeded against all odds.
Lying in a quickly growing pool of blood, he shut his visible eye, too tired to fight anymore, waiting for the inevitable.
Images of his life began to flash through his mind.
He blew the biggest Fireball he could as Father watched behind him. As he finished, he turned around to look at his father, giddy in anticipation of finally meeting his expectations.
Blood splattered as the tanto sliced into the flesh of his father and mother before they crumpled lifelessly to the ground. He couldn't turn his eyes away no matter how many times he had already been forced to watch this scene.
He read the hidden documents with a blank gaze under the flicking candle light. So the clan was right to accuse that man of murdering their cousin after all.
He looked away before pushing his lunch box towards the dead last. He knew it was breaking the rules, but that's what a teammate was supposed to do, right?
He dashed in front of the useless blonde idiot on some strange instinct, as if his body moved on its own. If the dead last had just stayed outside, he wouldn't be a pincushion now…but he has to admit he was a little grateful that the idiot was so ready to run unthinkingly to his side.
He disappeared without a sound and gracefully knocked her out from behind. He knew what he was and what he had to do and he had no regrets leaving everything behind.
He stared down at his scratched head protector and the unconscious boy that lay on the ground. He turned around and walked away. It wasn't because the idiot had missed on purpose and hit his forehead protector to prove a point, he tells himself. It's because he just doesn't want to follow the same path as that man. He would find his own power and surpass that man in every way imaginable.
He shrugged off the bits of snake skin and emerged from the shadows in the dark. He took one glance at the frozen white-haired medic-nin before walking away. He was strong enough now and it was time to fulfill his ambition and destiny, to avenge his clan.
He stared in shock at the fallen body of the man who murdered his clan. Then the shock turned into a chuckle, and then to full blown laughter as he passed out in glee. He had done it. At last the ghosts of his family could rest in peace.
He cried with tears of blood as he stood shakily on the rocky shores. His whole life had been one lie after another. But now his eyes could finally see far enough to glimpse the truth, and with the power his brother had left him he would make them all pay.
He cried with tears of both happiness and sorrow as his brother dissipated into a million lights. Who was really to blame for the tragedy of the Uchiha? Was it the clan, for fighting oppression through rebellion? Was it the village, for defending the majority through tyranny? Was it Itachi, for preserving peace through sacrifice?
He met unflinchingly the gaze of the ancient spirit and declared his righteous purpose: to break the cycle and bring revolution to the ninja world.
His grey transmigration eye flashed open again and his whole body trembled.
'No, it won't end this way! I won't allow it!'
The world still needed him, to break them out of the Infinite Tsukuyomi. And, knowing Naruto, the fool would pull another miracle out of nowhere and stand back up to win this fight. But, he couldn't allow that. If he let the usuratonkachi win this, then the endless cycle of pain would continue. The world would fall back to the old ways as the surviving shinobi taint the future with their bloody system.
For his family, for his brother, for all the ninja who had died to reach this day, for all the unborn children who would suffer needlessly under the shadow of conflicts they would never understand…
He had to fight on and finish the revolution. The future was in reach…he couldn't lose now. This time, he would be the one to pull off a miracle!
He didn't know how to cast the technique properly, but after seeing it with his Sharingan, he could at least try to do something, anything.
Power coalesced in his eyes, his body trembled, and a wave of chakra blasted outwards, distorting the world.
'Izanagi!'
'I'm dying,' he thought as he lay on the ground, watching with one eye the figure lying not fifty meters across from him.
He was almost completely out of chakra, and that last clash between their two techniques had left him with severe burns and irreparable damage to his internal organs. Even if he had the Yang power to regenerate all this, he didn't have the chakra to do it. The last clash of his Tailed Beast Planetary Rasengan with his rival's Chidori had obliterated what remained of the opposing statues at the valley of the end, as if symbolizing the end of the transmigratory feud of the two brothers.
So the cycle had been broken…but at what cost? They were supposed to work together finally unite the world in peace. Wasn't that why Sasuke came back to fight on the Shinobi Alliance's side? Wasn't that why the bastard said he wanted to become Hokage?!
But that didn't happen. Instead, Sasuke wanted to kill him and start a…revolution? And he wasn't strong enough to win. It didn't even make sense! He was working perfectly with Kurama and almost defeated Sasuke, but he somehow pulled all sorts of new Rinnegan techniques out of nowhere. They'd been fighting Obito and Madara and Kaguya non-stop for the past several days, so when did he manage to learn them all?
And now they were both going to die. Kaguya had been sealed so the God Tree's chakra absorption was no longer active. But without the Six Paths power, nobody could end the Infinite Tsukuyomi even if Kakashi and Sakura managed to physically cut everyone out of the God Tree cocoons. He could just imagine the smug spirit of Madara telling him, 'In the end, true peace prevailed. Everyone is enjoying their happiness, so just die gracefully already.'
Lying in a quickly growing pool of blood, he shut his visible eye, too tired to fight anymore, waiting for the inevitable.
Images of his life began to flash through his mind.
He watched as the other children ran to their parents with smiles on their faces. As he caught the eyes of any parent, they would always look away. Nobody would acknowledge him.
He looked over at his rival who was sitting at the docks by himself. He hated that guy for always being better than him, but he thought deep down that maybe they could understand each other.
He ran like the wind dodging this way and that way. As the horde of ANBU passed, he let out a chuckle, which slowly turned hollow. He still couldn't do the clone technique, and he knew he'd fail the exam tomorrow. But he was a great ninja even without that technique, why couldn't they see that?
He knew the truth at long last, the reason he was so despised. Yet he was not alone, not completely, it seems, for his sensei had defended him with his life. Now, he realized it was his turn to do the same, as he put his hands in the cross-seal and prepared to unveil his newest technique.
He heard the bastard pass his ambition onto him, saw the life leaving the bastard's eyes, and felt his blood boil. He was burning all over and the world looked red. He snarled in his crimson haze and turned his bloodshot gaze towards the masked ninja who killed his best friend.
He shut his eyes tight to brace himself for another finger flick. But to his surprise he received on his forehead not a flick but a kiss. As he opened his eyes and heard her acknowledging his dream, he couldn't help the smile that burst on his face. He would become a respectable Hokage some day.
He watched her cry and couldn't bear it anymore. That bastard had some nerve leaving Team 7 behind. But he'll bring him back, that's the promise of a life time!
He watched as the life returned to Gaara while the old hag dropped dead. He could hardly believe that Gaara became the Kazekage so quickly, only to have it taken away. At least he got revived…but…that could have been him. Akatsuki. That's the name of the people after him.
He felt his heart pounding as he heard the news. Sasuke killed Orochimaru, and he was going after Itachi? That means…he could come back to Konoha soon, right? They could be a team again!
He ran out of the office in shock. They were lying, they had to be! How could the old pervert die? Why did Tsunade send him to fight the leader of Akatsuki alone?! He punched the wall in rage. Is this what Sasuke felt like that night, why his life's ambition was – to kill a certain man?
He held the book his hands as he laid flowers on the grave. The entire village was destroyed and thousands died. But somehow he found it in himself to forgive Nagato…and his fellow student decided to believe in him, reviving everyone he killed. As he held the book to his chest, he silently promised. If there's such a thing as peace, then he would find it.
He met unflinchingly the gaze of the ancient spirit and declared his righteous purpose: To break the cycle, and find peace for all shinobi and every country in the lands.
His blue eyes flashed open and his body froze.
'No, it won't end this way! I won't allow it!'
The world still needed him. He had to break everybody out of the Infinite Tsukuyomi. And knowing Sasuke, he would somehow manage to get up and claim victory, just like last time. If he let the bastard win this, then the world will go down a terrible path. With the death of shinobi leaders, the cycle of hatred would continue, and Sasuke's unmatchable power would only rule the world in terror.
For his teammates, his parents, his village, and everybody that passed their dreams onto him and gave up their lives to put their faith in him…
He had to get up and win! The future was in reach…he couldn't lose now.
He knew he wasn't supposed to do this without enough chakra of his own, but he was going to die anyways, so it didn't matter.
He synchronized with the flow of the world and let its torrent flood him with its power. But he didn't try to mix it with his own chakra to form Sage mode, because he had none.
Nature chakra converged upon him like air rushing to fill a vacuum, and his form exploded into a gigantic mass of chakra.
"Even the Sage is a naïve fool…did you really think I would die so easily? I always have a backup plan…" A voice rasped as a hand struck out from the rubble.
As he emerged from the ground, the battered form of Madara Uchiha stumbled forward. After waiting for the Sage and everyone else to go away, the transcription seal in his right eye once again activated in response to a trigger he quietly set up during his "last words" with Hashirama. His right eye was now permanently closed from Izanagi's sacrifice, but fortunately he could simply rejuvenate it later with the Six Paths Yang power by using his remaining Rinnegan with the Gedo Mazo's chakra, as he had discovered when he had done this the first time around. Of course, the Gedo Mazo was gone now, but it was just sage chakra he needed, which he had learned how to manipulate earlier in the fight against Hashirama.
A more pressing issue was that his body wasn't quite out of danger yet. While the Izanagi turned his dying body into an illusion and reverted him to before Kaguya took over, that didn't return the Ten Tails back to him as it had been sealed away. So he was still a former jinchuuriki doomed to die. But nobody seemed to remember that Madara also absorbed the miniature new Shinju Obito created so that its "flower" would substitute for Obito's lack of the Third Eye needed for the Infinite Tsukuyomi. That Shinju bought Madara almost a day's worth of time to live before it ran out of lifeforce. He had deliberately allowed himself to die faster by suppressing the Shinju in order to avoid suspicion, but now that they had all left, he was free to act.
Suddenly another figure emerged from the ground and solidified into a Zetsu-like being with a spiral mask.
"Good work, Tobi. Now come…"
Tobi dutifully obliged and unravelled himself, only to overlay his body over Madara and began symbiosis.
"Now then…time to rejuvenate the Shinju…"
He sat down crossed legged and brought his hands together in a seal. Wooden branches emerged from the ground and attached themselves to him, as his Rinnegan pulsed with power. Soon, chakra from the God Tree began flowing into Madara, a mixture of human and nature chakra, rejuvenating the Shinju within.
"UUWWAAAAAGHHHH!"
The gigantic thing that had previously been Naruto screamed as it blew up to unfathomable sizes. Sasuke watched in horror while his failed Izanagi continued to warp his body and everything around it in an uncontrollable spasm. Exotic chakras were dancing around, leaking from the thing that was Naruto and the black seams that appeared where the Izanagi warp mixed with the nature chakra and the light of the Infinite Tsukuyomi.
Meanwhile, Madara had just fed his Shinju an impressive volume of chakra from his connection to the God Tree when he felt a disturbance in the air. Looking up, he saw a blurry sky with black cracks roaming across the red Rinne Sharingan moon. He reached out with his senses and found what appeared to be the source of a massive chakra anomaly and the telltale signs of an Izanagi whose field of effect seemed to be encroaching far beyond the user's body. Before he had any time to ponder on the potential consequences of such an improper use of the technique, suddenly the world shattered like glass and all was dark.
Naruto awoke with a fevered gasp. His vision opened to reveal a familiar scene, the dank recesses of his mental sewers.
He pushed himself up and glanced around, finding nothing but murky waters. Feeling disoriented, he ran towards where he remembered the seal should have been to check on his partner.
Before long, he came to a stop before a towering cage with thick black bars blocking the way to the dark depths of Kurama's prison.
'Something's seems off…' Naruto thought as he shook his head to try and clear out the fog that seemed to impair his mind.
"Hey, Kurama, you okay in there!?" Naruto shouted as he grabbed and shook the bars.
There was a moment of silence before a powerful roar blew him back.
A single slitted eye appeared from the dark. The voice of the Nine-Tails boomed, "How do you know of that name!"
Naruto's face scrunched up in confusion before he shouted back, "Your other half told me! I thought you knew that already!"
The red eye blinked. Then the voice growled in continuation, "Lies! I would never tell human trash my own name!"
"What's gotten into you? There's no time to be arguing about this, we're about to die here in case you forgot!"
"Fool, I already healed your worthless flesh sack! Now tell me the truth or I will rip you to shreds!"
Shocked at the news and the sheer hatred he was feeling from his partner, Naruto involuntarily stepped back with wide eyes. Then he looked at the huge metal bars again and froze.
'What the hell?! This is my old seal from dad before I unlocked it with the toads!'
His eyes roamed back to his surrounding sewers. "N-no, this is wrong, what's going on?" He shut his eyes and rubbed them furiously before opening them and found that nothing changed. His breaths grew ragged as he felt his heart pounding.
The full form of the Nine-Tails came into view as it clawed at the bars with a mighty swipe, roaring furiously. The cage shook violently as red miasma blasted out towards the still boy.
Naruto turned and ran before the miasma could reach him.
'If you don't remember, then I'll just have to save you from your hatred again! Wait for me, Kurama!'
Madara awoke with a fevered gasp. His vision opened to reveal an unfamiliar scene of total darkness.
As he molded fire chakra to start a small light and verify whether he was blind or simply in a lightless environment, he noticed some oddities with his body. It felt weak and pathetic, while the chakra came slowly like wading through quicksand.
Confused, he reached in with his senses and found the Shinju drastically weakened from what he last remembered, almost dead even, and his connection with the World God Tree gone.
As the firelight technique lit up on his palm, he saw his shriveled skin, tattered clothes, and sickly chakra, before his stolen Sharingan eyes roamed around to take in the stone walls and stone throne he was sitting on.
'This is…the room that I ordered Tobi to store my corpse in.'
He pushed himself off the throne and lumbered to the back, where a single black cord jutted out from the ground. Grasping a hold of it, he connected it to the chakra gate in his navel area and reached out hungrily for chakra.
'Damn! Not a single one sealed yet…'
Throwing the cord away, he pressed his hand onto the back of the throne, where nine seals were inscribed. Activating one of them, he sighed as the pleasant flow of chakra entered him, staving off what he knew to be impending doom as his chakra levels surged. He had left these seals here as a backup in case he urgently needed the chakra, as he knew that if the Rinne Tensei technique was used without enough power, his body would still be that of a nearly dead old man, and there was no guarantee that the gedo mazo would still be here by the time Obito managed to resurrect him.
Unfortunately, the seals would not be enough. He had chakra, but the body was still aged and would die within months if he did not recover more vitality as the body could no longer produce chakra on its own. Hashirama's healing prowess which he recently learned could prolong his time by reducing cell damage and enhance regenerative growth factor, but it was not capable of increasing the hard limit on somatic cell division. To reverse the aging process, he would need to direct that chakra with Six Paths Yang Power, which could only be activated from the combination of sage chakra and the Rinnegan or chakra from all nine of the Tailed Beasts.
He sat back down on the throne and quietly contemplated his next steps. It was obvious that he had somehow gone back in time together with the Shinju and transferred back into his old body, reviving through the lifeforce of the Shinju. But the exact moment he arrived was unclear, he had no allies he could trust with the knowledge of his return, and it was entirely possible that the brat who cast Izanagi had also returned. He was in no shape to fight even Black Zetsu, let alone one of the Sage's chosen champions.
Closing his eyes, he resigned himself to the safest option, and began gathering nature chakra to form the sage chakra needed to feed the Shinju in his body. It would never mature with the pitiful amount of Yin and Yang chakra he had access to right now, but the Shinju could still generate the unique chakra of the Ten Tails.
'This time for sure…the world will know peace!'
Sasuke awoke with a fevered gasp. His vision opened to reveal a cloudy sky with heavy rain. Glancing about, he saw the towering statues of Hashirama and Madara at the Valley of the End, only slightly damaged instead of the obliterated mess it had been when he had cast Izanagi.
He pushed himself off the ground and saw the body of Naruto lying face up. Then his eyes widened as he noticed that Naruto looked no more than thirteen. His eyes darted to the scratched headband beside Naruto's prone form and froze.
'This is…just before I went to Orochimaru?'
He grasped his forehead as he felt a headache coming on, followed by a sharp pain in his eyes. The moment passed, and he channeled chakra to his eyes, activating his mature Sharingan in an attempt to see through any illusions cast on him. Finding nothing, he channeled even more chakra to unleash the Mangekyou upgrade.
However, nothing in his surroundings changed. Shocked, he called on his Six Paths Yin Power and activated the Rinnegan, which momentarily flickered into existence, again showing nothing abnormal in his surroundings, before a piercing pain in his left brought him to his knees and the Rinnegan forcibly shut off.
His hand flew up to his eye and found blood.
Stunned, he removed his hand and looked at his bloody left palm with his remaining open eye. The crescent moon of the Six Paths Yin Power stared back at him. It was slightly faded, as if the power was weakened.
'That's right…if I'm really back in time, then I don't have Itachi's eyes for the eternal Mangekyou and I don't have the Senju cells from Kabuto to control the Six Paths Power…'
He stood back up and looked down at Naruto. It was the perfect opportunity to get rid of his final bond.
Then he looked at his left palm again.
'No…I might need him to seal Kaguya again, if things don't go well.'
He could not kill Naruto until he acquired the Six Paths Yang Power, which he had no idea how to get, or killed everyone that could cause Kaguya to be revived.
Then he turned and jumped away.
'Itachi…I found my answer from the Kages…I can only hope you'll understand.'
A/N: I've had this idea partially written up for a long time. I never felt satisfied with the way that the ideological conflict was resolved in Naruto. Sasuke's revolutionary wasn't ever explained, and Naruto never seemed to actually have an answer except to stop everyone else's plans. I also disliked the way Madara seemed to almost repent at the end. If it weren't for Black Zetsu, he really would have won...
That said, if the three continued fighting after the Infinite Tsukuyomi, there wouldn't have been any real substance given their ridiculous power levels. Hence, I introduced the time travel element. Each of the three faces different challenges for returning to full power, because only their souls and some of their chakra came back with them, not their bodies. They also have different strategic constraints aside from their personal power. I think that sets the stage for an interesting conflict.
Unfortunately, I can't promise this will be any more than a one-shot as it's just an idea without much of a plot fleshed out. If you have any ideas on how each of these players should move, let me know. You are also free to use the elements of this idea for your own story. Just make sure you tell me about it because I really want to read a good story that can do this idea justice.