Author's Notes:
It will never stop being funny to me that "Mangekyou Sharingan" just means "Kaleidoscope Copy Wheel Eyes". Like, when the original Japanese audience read those words that's exactly what it meant to them. Shonen is deliciously corny and I love it.
~oOo~
Chapter 1:
New Shores
~oOo~
Rin was dead, and Obito was cradling her body against his chest. That was all he could really grasp.
Corpse-filled trees reached towards the moon. His old teammate lay unconscious ten feet away. There wasn't room in him for any of that, just his dead best friend in his arms and the pain in his eye.
That and...
And she was still breathing. A wave of chakra crashed into him, so thick he couldn't breathe. The hole in her chest healed shut. The wave collapsed and she opened her eyes.
Rin's first thought was that the Pure Land sucked. It was dark, damp, and she had no idea what the spirit holding her was. And she still hurt. Her chest and her gut...
Oh no. No, no, no. She was still alive. Her chest was sore but the hole was gone, and that thing was still inside her.
"Rin," whoever was holding her up said. "It's me. It's Obito."
It was dark and she could barely make out their silhouette against the moon. Whoever it was did have a Copy Wheel, their single eye strangely visible in the dark. But Obito's voice didn't sound like that, his hair had never been that long, and his Copy Wheel Eyes never had that pattern. Also, Obito was dead.
"Listen," she said, grabbing their shoulder. "They... The enemy put something—a monster—inside me. If I go back to Leaf it'll kill everyone. You have to kill me before that."
As she spoke, a roaring filled her head, a sound like waves crashing, and it grew louder and louder until she couldn't even hear their answer.
"I won't kill you," Obito said. He was panicking. Her death was burned into his Copy Eye, and he couldn't tell if it was past or future.
She couldn't even see them now. Water crept across her vision, pressing against her, filling her up.
"Take us back! Take her to Madara!" he screamed. In his eye her old death and a future one merged until oh sage she was dead right now.
Spiral Zetsu didn't find this loud, panicky Obito very interesting—it'd seen that plenty enough when it first met him. "Fine," it grumbled. It had already helped by replacing his arm and covering him like armor, so what was one more favor? Obito was still more entertaining than boring old Madara, and if it brought a second person home, things would get even more interesting.
~oOo~
A good plan succeeds even in failure.
Had Rin reached Hidden Leaf, the monster she carried would've destroyed it, killing her as it crawled out. Then Obito would come running back to him, strong and desperate and ready to ruin the world to undo the loss.
Had Rin's teammate sensed the monster and killed her before she reached Hidden Leaf, then Obito would come crawling back, stronger and more desperate than ever.
And had the monster seen fit to heal Rin, Obito would still come back, still strong and still so very desperate.
It was this last that brought Obito before him.
"Please," the boy said, "Lord Madara, you have to know a way to help her. There's something inside her, and it's trying to kill her."
Obito was still a fool. He failed to grasp that it was the monster that had saved her in the first place. Though he was correct that, without a seal, it would eventually kill her anyway. Either by slowly corroding her insides or by emerging all at once.
(It would be inconvenient if it emerged now. Fortunately, ever since this particular monster's first encounter with him decades ago, it was terrified of Madara's Kaleidoscope Copy Wheel. As far as this tailed beast knew, he still had it. It was for this reason that Madara had chosen this monster for his plan.)
"Madara, please," the boy repeated.
Obito was a fool, too, for begging. He was Madara's successor, and Madara Uchiha did not beg, he conquered. That the boy didn't even think to coerce him was an embarrassment.
There would be plenty of time to fix that.
Madara stood from his throne. "I do know a way to seal the monster." He strode towards the boy as imperiously as his 99 years would allow him.
Obito's face lit up. Madara cut him off before he could say anything.
"But you will be in debt even further than you were before. In return for this, you will sacrifice everything for the Eye of the Moon."
Obito nodded. "Yes, everything. Please, please, please, just help her before she dies again."
Three times a fool. The boy didn't realize that "everything" included Rin.
~oOo~
Rin pulled herself out of the water, coughing. This was also probably not the Pure Land, what with the almost-drowning.
So where was she? She was soaking wet, so was this a real ocean? (She tasted too much salt for it to be a lake.) Shouldn't she be cold?
She stood up and looked around. The mist was so dense she could barely see ten feet out. She was almost choking on it, and as she breathed it in she realized it was thick with chakra. She panicked for a moment, afraid it was poison, but calmed down after it proved to be heavy and unpleasant but not lethal. At least, not in the short term.
Through the mist, she could see the dock she stood on and two wooden pillars holding it in place. (A floating dock, technically, built to rise and fall with the tides, but that still didn't tell her a damn thing about where she was.) She placed her hand on the closest pillar, feeling the wood's grain. This wasn't an illusion. She was too clear-headed and there was too much detail.
Proper illusion techniques were twofold, draping the victim in a blatant unreality while forcing their mind into panic, lethargy, or red-hot fury so they wouldn't question it. Small details like woodgrain were a waste. If she could notice such things at all, then she was too calm for the illusion to work. Calm enough to debate with herself whether it was an illusion. That meant she could fight it.
"Release!" she said, forcing her own chakra to spike. She held it in, letting it corrode the foreign chakra in her mind and body. Nothing.
No illusion was invincible. Chakra that could weave into the mind and senses was too fine and delicate. It should've been easily shredded by that.
Option one: she was facing an illusion master so skilled they could repair the illusion before she could destroy it. She didn't even think that was possible.
Option two: she had been flickered several hundred miles to the nearest ocean. That was also terrifying; even a master of the body flicker couldn't move more than 100 miles.
She wasn't in the middle of the ocean, right? This thing had to be connected to the shore. Right?! Where was she was this real why couldn't she feel the monster anymore... She was panicking for real now and started running along the dock. She didn't know what would happen if she reached land but she couldn't stay surrounded by sea and mist.
She reached land. It was steep and rocky and pitted with tide pools. She ran but mostly tripped uphill until it crested.
And she saw it. The thing inside her, one eye shut and the other open. She flung herself back as it snapped forward, jaws pulverizing down through meters and meters of rock as she rolled down to the waterline.
Even as she stood to run further it was lunging forward, trying to crawl out of its pit and into her ocean.
~oOo~
Kakashi groaned as he opened his eyes. He was still alive? Where was the enemy? And why did Obito's eye hurt so damn much?
He saw the current moment perfectly, Copy Wheel recording every little detail for him to recall later.
And he saw Rin dead, his hand, wreathed in lightning, thrust through her heart. Saw her eyes close, saw her body slide off his arm and collapse to the ground.
He'd already gained his third tomoe when he lost Obito. That was the image burned into his Copy Wheel before this—Obito, his entire left half crushed under a boulder, right eye socket empty and bleeding after giving his one exposed eye to Kakashi.
"I'll become your eye. I'll see the future with you," his stupid teammate had said. It was a stupid thing to say, trying to atone for Kakashi losing an eye thanks to Obito's stupid plan.
It was the greatest and the worst birthday present he'd ever gotten. It was his most precious possession.
Gone. He saw Rin dying instead. Teacher had said trauma awakened the Copy Wheel, each new tomoe marking new power paid for with a new horror. Kakashi had never seen more than three tomoe in a Copy Wheel Eye, and never heard anything of a level beyond that.
He pressed his forehead plate down over Obito's eye. He had never been more grateful for the seal teacher had placed on it. He couldn't turn off the Copy Wheel like a natural wielder could, but the seal suppressed it enough for him to endure.
He didn't need the Copy Wheel to see—didn't want the Copy Wheel to see—that the enemy was dead. A dozen jounin, all black ops, and all run through with wood.
He walked into the center of four trees, ones which had definitely not been there earlier. They spiraled up to the moon, fifty feet high, seeping blood from another two dozen ninja—the trees had grown through their bodies.
What the hell had happened?
~oOo~
It was done. The seal was in place. Madara straightened, now stiff from bending over as he made the seal.
"Obito," he said.
The boy looked up. Earlier, he'd been hovering by Madara, Copy Wheel watching as the old man made the seal. Now he sat on the ground, next to her cot (formerly his), knees pulled to chest. He was missing his arm again, Spiral having left them out of boredom, but Madara could just graft a new one using a spare Zetsu.
He was trying very hard not to judge the boy for being so weak. He remembered when he'd gained his Kaleidoscope, all those years ago, and how tired he'd been.
"Show me your new eye," he said.
"How did—"
"Spiral told me. Show me the Kaleidoscope."
That was a lie. Spiral hadn't said a thing. Madara knew exactly what it took to gain the Kaleidoscope. He'd arranged for the boy's old teammates to be sent out, and let Obito leave to meet them. He'd arranged for Obito to pay the cost—arranged for Rin to die, for Obito to break, for him to gain the power.
Now he wanted the satisfaction of seeing Obito flinch as the Kaleidoscope showed, the loss that birthed it forever burned into it.
It was beautiful, like all Kaleidoscopes. Black on red, a three-branched pinwheel. The end of each branch bent back, clockwise, in a wicked hook, width rapidly narrowing to a line, which touched the middle of the next branch, the hooks' inner sides forming a perfect circle around the pupil.
"Did it hurt this much when you got it?" asked Obito.
"Yes. And before you ask, the image does not go away. That's merely the price you pay for this incredible power."
"Did you... when you got it, how did—"
"I watched my best friend die," said Madara. It had been more than worth the price.
~oOo~
She was sitting on the part of the dock farthest from the monster. She'd stopped running here, realizing that the monster wasn't chasing her. Besides, the alternative was to run on the water... forever, probably. She idly stuck a hand in her ocean.
Her ocean? Yes, this was her ocean. She was trapped with the monster inside herself, and everything here was hers, so to speak. However that worked. It made about as much sense as an invincible illusion or an infinite body flicker.
She looked at the horizon. Yes, her elemental affinity was water, but she still felt an endless ocean, with one dock and (what looked like) one small island was a bit much.
She heard the loudest roar yet, and leapt to her feet only to be slammed back down by a wave of pure chakra. For a moment, it drowned her more than the ocean ever had. It passed, and she heard only silence after.
Something had changed. The mist itself felt different, still thick but no longer choking her with chakra. She stood up again and walked towards the island, slowly at first, then running.
She reached the island. The last section of the dock was leaned up against the steep, rocky shoreline. And attached to a floating dock, that meant... Did her mind have tides?
She walked up the last bit of dock—too steep for a civilian but slightly easier than walking on water for a ninja. When she reached the crest, finally able to look at the monster, it didn't lunge at her.
It couldn't. Sitting in a sort of giant tide pool, it was hemmed in by tall cliffs on three sides, with the rocky shore down to the ocean forming the fourth side of its pool. And where once had been open air, there were chains. Eight giant ones, each link nearly half her body size, attached to the edges of the cliffs and shore, with one attached to another chain stretched across the tops of the cliffs. They converged on a single giant lock, two stories above her. The lock had no keyhole, just a piece of paper with the word "seal" on it.
This was her first good look at the monster. It was a giant turtle, its shell the size of a large apartment complex, its head about a third as wide. One eye was still shut, armored growths surrounding it, the other open. Still, she'd never heard of giant turtle monsters before.
"What are you?"
It roared, sound crashing on her ears like a tsunami, and reared three flat, armored tails, each the size of a townhouse. They slammed into the surrounding cliffs, dropping house-sized chunks of rock into its pool.
Nine tailed beasts of legend. Beginning with the One-Tail, each stronger than the last, with the Nine-Tails the most terrifying of all. Walking natural disasters, their appearance brought doom and misfortune, and, less poetically, death. Lots and lots of death.
And she had the Three-Tails inside of her.
She knew the legends; its mere presence was a terrible curse. But she didn't know what she was supposed to do. All she could do was wait on the dock again, near the shoreline, certain that the seal would hold but unclear about everything else. She needed time to think, away from this thing inside her, in the real world and not her own head.
She tried consoling herself. She was alive. Tomorrow was a new day. And when she woke up, maybe she could pretend it wasn't there anymore.
~oOo~
Author's Notes:
When the original Japanese audience reads Naruto, all of the terms have actual meaning to them. Realizing that really helped me appreciate Naruto more, since once you translate all the terms, you can understand just how silly and fun the original series is supposed to be. I think that's something that gets lost in a lot of translations of Naruto, so I'm having a bit of fun trying to recreate that experience by making as small a language barrier as possible.