With death came a daunting, ever-expanding stretch of everything-but-nothing. It was empty, hungry and a not-quite-void that sought to fill itself more. Yet it was also full, full of all the life that had come and gone, full of hope and despair and trust and reason and lies and fear. It bore no color and it had no shape. It was neither light nor dark, good nor evil. It did not bend to the conformity of manmade time. It was stagnant but ever changing.
A contradictory existence that encompassed his everything and made his tiny, tiny soul tremble in the realization of its infinitesimal size in comparison.
Then he knew fear like he never had before. That wide, gaping chasm of all-but-not sucked him in and pressed down on his little self. The sheer pressure broke his soul apart into tiny fragments and pulled each sliver into its ginormous existence until they were too little to remember they had once been part of a whole.
Time passed very different inside and outside and within and without the thing that was both something and yet not anything at all. It could have been forever, or shorter than a hummingbird's heartbeat. Either way, it was enough for all those tiny pieces of his soul to slowly claw itself back together again.
It started slowly, each trembling piece gravitating within the void towards other pieces closely. Oddly like fragments of a thought slowly coming together, their speed increased with their size and by the time it was half formed again, he had little longer to notice before he was pulling himself up and out of the body of nothingness.
He was both the same and different from the self he had been before entering. It was like being born anew, fresh and crisp, and ready to take on the world for all its dangers were worth. But his memories were fractured and hazy and the last pieces of his soul were falling back into place.
It was coming together though, slowly. He stared down at his nails, fascinated with their black nails. Even in death and through the ordeal of being shattered and reforged, his soul had kept the form he could last remember. His hair was still pulled back, away from his face, and brushed his shoulders with every unsteady breath he took. Even his clothing had come with him and his eyes still blazed strong and hard with the Sharingan.
When he remembered his clan's dojutsu, he recoiled mentally and called upon his chakra. It surged and bounded to the surface to heed his call. Its urgent response almost had him tripping over air, but the sensation in his eyes ceased and he lifted his head.
There was a sudden, pregnant pause within that empty nothingness, and he was no longer alone.
A bit to one side, there now stood another man. His hair was also dark and pulled into a tail just below his name, but his eyes were white and veins pulsed strongly around them. Hyuga, his mind supplied. He would know those eyes anywhere. He tried next to recall this specific man, for he was certain he at least knew of him. The memories were sluggish and came back to him like wading through mud.
The Hyuuga prodigy was older than he personally could remember, but the air about him was much the same if a bit softer now. He could not tell if that was something time and age had done to the man, or whether the time spent within the Void had softened his edges.
Red spinning tomoe met bulging white and they could see each other through the other's eyes. They could hear the myriad of thoughts dancing about the other's mind. It was only then that they both realized the entire voice was still flowing within, without and through them.
They reared back from the unpleasant sensation of a shared mind with almost practiced synchronization.
The moments that they shared the same thoughts and the same mind was enough for them to exchange the intimate memories that had surrounded their individual deaths. And, if they felt for the subtle connection they still had to the void beneath, around, and above them, they could still tap into each other.
It was so that Uchiha Itachi and Hyuuga Neji met for the first time in the afterlife.
The utter silence of that world continued to stretch on and on, and if gave them time to sink into a new normalcy. Then something changed.
A strip of light tore itself into existence before them and it slowly expanded. Growing taller and wider, it collapsed into a gaping, arching doorway and through this doorway, a slender figure descended.
It could not be fit into the confines of human distinction, despite its attempts to squish all of its entirety into a humanoid shape. It was covered from foot to head in colorless cloth and the strips bent and bowed in a nonexistence wind.
"I am," said the thing, voice resonating in the darkness and permeating into the very corners of both their souls, "and I am the Overseer. The Balance. The Fate of All Things."
The deceased shinobi were geniuses in their own right, and even this impossibility did not stump them for long. It was not unnatural to think it natural that there was something, someone governing all that existed. Therefore, they nodded carefully, cautiously as they could not speak.
"I am here to offer reparation." It continued without pause, monotonous and haunting, "The Multiverse has expanded faster than was initially anticipated and errors caused the Fate of your world to be cut short." The thing swept out a hand and it pointed a long, impossibly long, finger toward one side. A glowing sphere of light budded into existence at the tip of the long digit and began to grow.
Drawing a vertical light, followed by a horizontal one to bisect the first, another window was drawn into existence in front of them. Still it continued to speak. "Uchiha Madara was never meant to survive long enough to meet Uchiha Obito. Hyuga Hiashi was never meant to give up on his quest to seek an alternative answer to the Hyuga Seal."
The window of light pulsed softly and it extended both "hands" as though to cup its existence between them. "I cannot fix the past of your world. I am but the Overseer of Equilibrium. However, it remains fact that you were born to be the strongest manifestation of your lines since their origin. This allows some leeway. I may not be able to personally interfere with the Fate of your world, but I can send you back, back long before everything began and you can fix this. But, there will be one thing I need from you first."
What? Both their souls all but cried out, minds and bodies frozen in silence and desperation.
"A girl," it said plainly, gripping both sides of the window it had created. The window pulsed once and grew as the being tugged each corner. Within the portal, a scene painted itself in pale light.
It was a house. The walls were bare and white as snow, and it had scarce furnishings and resembled the kind of safehouse a shinobi was always prepared to abandon. The architecture was significantly different from that which they were used to but the largest point of interest was the girl wandering the house aimlessly.
She drifted from one room to the next on silence feet and could not settle in one place. When she finally curled on the sofa with a blanket, she was overcome with a series of coughs that had blood pouring from her mouth. She did not cry, and she paid the expulsion of fluid little attention. She was resigned to die. Yet, the brilliant light of chakra exploded out of her body like a waterfall.
Her entire body was saturated with enough chakra to temporarily blind the two dojutsu users as they became more aware of her light.
"She was born in the wrong world," the creature said while seeming to fold the window back into a single line before it too vanished into nothingness. "She is one of the errors that slipped through the multiverse. She was to be born in any world but the one she is in."
Both had questions they wanted to ask, but they could do little more than wait, so they settled.
"Her world has no chakra, and she is the only being in existence in her world to produce it. Her soul itself has begun to overflow with the influx and soon her chakra with smother all other bodily functions. She will die. If she were to die now, her power would either explode and take her entire universe with her, or implode and make her soul a godly entity."
"Save her soul and she will be the key to saving your world. Do you accept?"
The Hyuga and Uchiha exchanged impassive glances and simultaneously sighed then nodded. Even if their questions were not answered, it would not change their decision. They would do anything to save their world, to save those who were precious to them.
"Good," the being said with a hint of something particularly pleased hanging in its aura, "Her world cannot sustain your bodies at their current state, so I will fashion you a vessel that can survive. Become hers, and she will save you."