Chapter 1: The end?

Warning: This contains MinaNaru! And this is an action story, so do not expect any fluffy moments, though there will be a few. Just that there WILL be a few emotional roller-coasters, a lot of flashbacks, and maybe some yaoi as side pairings. If there is mistakes then I will be happy if you point it out because English is my fourth language. I speak Mandarin, Shanghainese, French, English, and currently learning Latin.

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of Kishimoto-sensei in any way and form, and I do not own the few Latin quotes that will pop out here and there. I however own the plot and the Ocs, as well as the description of some places and the characterization of some less-known characters in the original anime/manga.

Ok, this A/N is really getting too long...

This is my second story , so... here you go! Just so you know, I DON'T own naruto, my name isn't Masashi Kishimoto!

UPDATED 2015-09-23

The update for the second chapter should be up soon, I`m sorry that there will be differences between this chapter and the next for a few weeks.

The smoke, rising steadily from the ashen ground, filled the air with a putrid scent of decaying, dead bodies. There just wasn't time for burial anymore. It was war, loss and blood and hope for another morning that wouldn't come, hope that was losing against despair and the slowing pump of adrenaline. The sky was a midnight blue, covered by thick clouds, grey and dark but never raining as if the sky refused to wash away the blood, dripping with sins and broken promises.

He was tired. His seemingly bottomless resources of chakra were empty, but it didn't matter anymore, not after the death and the blood, not after her. All that mattered was him and the will to kill, the revenge that was there but almost unreachable. At first, the rising of the sun kept him aware of the changes of time, but eventually, that too, became meaningless as the world and the sounds around him began to slowly merge together. He simply do not have any time to care about those insignificant things anymore. All that mattered was the auras of his friends behind and around him and the man standing in front of them, menacing, smug and utterly terrifying in a twisted sort of way. Uchiha Madara had gone mad in his quest for peace and power, and at the end he was proud of the suffering he first longed to erradicate.

Uzumaki-Namikaze Naruto wasn't going to let that go on any longer.

Suddenly the sound of thousands of birds chirping made its way to Naruto's ears, loud in the almost empty battlefield covered in corpses. No matter how he covered them, the clatter of battle still resonated in his head, filling his thoughts with the cries of people dying, all dead but still alive in his mind. He painfully raised a fist to the sky, and looked up to those grey, shadowless rain clouds. Just as he felt another chakra signature fade away behind him, a single drop of water hit his face, sliding down his scarred chin as a tear would, leaving a clear trail on his bloodied features. Anguish took over as another comrades fell, this time beside him. It was the last of the Suna troupes.

Suna had fallen.

This one also won't live to see the daylight resurface from Madara's jutsu...

He knew, he knew that grief mixed with pain was slowly tearing his mind and soul apart as he felt every of his men's spirit struggle under Madara's dark chakra. He knew that there was not a single chance they could win. Not a chance against that man... why do they still fight? Why do they have to die like this? Why...

"Naruto!"

The cry, this time so close to him, uncharacteristically desperate but all too familiar, woke him like a bolt of lightning. Sasuke... smiling reassuringly to him, Naruto decided to stop pondering on now useless questions and make himself useful. Locking eyes with his long time friend and brother, the blond cracked a wide grin and shouted at the sky and beyond.

''GATHER YOUR FORCES FOR A LAST ATTACK, AND PUT EVERYTHING YOU HAVE IN THIS BLOW!"

His call was answered with many tired grunts from his decimated troupes, but still less than he expected. Madara's insane laugh resonated behind, telling him that it was all futile, that there was no hope. Had that many fallen?

The world was really crumbling around him...

Naruto shook his head. It wasn't the moment to be desperate. Nodding in a silent agreement to his dark haired subordinate's unspoken plan, Naruto took his hand within his own larger one and squeezed gently. Who knows, maybe this will be the last time they'll be allowed to do such an intimate thing. With their remaining stamina, all the anger and the rage rolled into one, they made their way around Madara, way too slowly in Naruto's mind as the madman's darkened eyes followed their movements easily. The Uchiha look at them with an annoyed look as if they were no more than flies to his mighty existence, arrogant to his imminent victory.

''Sasuke...'' Naruto's voice was barely above a whisper, but Sasuke move according to the silently understood order. His burning red eyes met his leader's steel blue ones once more, and they ran forward.

"Ready?"

''More than that, Naruto-sama..."

"Very well." He let relief slip through his words. That's right... He still had Sasuke. Even if the world died away, even if the Heavens cried tears of blood, even if he himself drowned it the bloodied soil along with her... Sasuke will be there. Always.

''Haaaaa...'' Naruto exhaled, preparing himself for what will be his last attack, one of the most powerful jutsu he had barely a year ago but now nothing to what he could do days before. Withdrawing more chakra than he could feel, he rushed forward with his palm extended toward his best friend, forming another Rasengan. Naruto felt his consciousness waver; it won't be long before his body failed him, the adrenaline having nothing but cold, empty rage to run on, and even that was running out as the grief stubbornly held back by sheer will began to chip away at his mind. Black spots began to dance before his eyes as he forced out another wave of chakra, his control slipping for all but a second before tightening to mold it into something more, edgy, dangerous, and all too familiar to this torn battlefield as it rolled in a whirlwind of sharp blades.

Just a little more...

And he released his hold on the chakra. It spun wild, uncontrolled and free, and Sasuke accepted it, struggling to merge the Rasenshuriken with the blessed black fires of Amaterasu and threw it, leaving them completely exhausted and void of chakra. They should be dead: but they were standing, too stubborn to let go yet desperate to rest. They knew however that the black shield of the man will protect him, and he will probably come out without a scratch.

'So all this is still for naught...'

Everything. Everything they all had to go through, all of their suffering and loss untill now is to be forgotten and never remembered. If only he was stronger. If only he could have done more than this... what kind of leader is he, sending all of his men to a cruel and meaningless death?

But then, a surprised cry of agony pierced the air and made him jerk back to reality.

Somehow, their desperate attempt managed to land on the enemy and wound him, and maybe it was that arrogance that failed him, destroyed Madara, and made him commit that single mistake. Too exhausted to even think, Naruto let his body on auto-pilot and pushed forward, forming another familiar swirling ball of blue chakra in his right hand, pulling it right out of his soul, and he felt more than heard Kurama, the voice that had gone silent long ago now all but whispering, encouraging, urging him to go on.

It went through Madara's chest with a sickening splash, and Naruto watch with unspoken glee as Madara's eyes widened. But he knew it wouldn't kill him. It wasn't enough, not even nearly enough. The gaping hole in his chest - deep, that pierced through his body like Obito had been before he died too - was already closing, and Naruto saw the black chakra forming a protective barrier around the area. He desperately needed something else, something equally powerful. But everyone was lying on the ground, either dead or dying, and he can barely keep standing; even breathing was becoming more and more painful, almost unbearably so.

There just wasn't hope anymore.

He let gravity take control of his body as he fell to the ground, limp, almost abandoned. He was done fore, he can't do it anymore. Naruto hated to abandon, but what good would it do? It wasn't as if there even would be anyone left, even if they won. It would be empty. Now that victory was only in name and losing wasn't a far away concept anymore...

He just wanted to sleep -

Just in time to see a hand covered by electricity go through the enemy's head, burning it to ashes. Madara's blood splashed on his face, covering him in the dark crimson liquid, still warm against his cooling skin. Madara still stood, proud in his lifeless form, but then, tilted, almost unnoticed, unbelievably, then landed harshly on the spiked, dry earth. And was impaled with a sickening splash of blood.

And then there was another sound, tired and too loud, that of a body crashing down to earth just beside him.

"Sasuke...how?"

The raven turned his head toward him, a crooked smirk on his bloodied face. "What? As far as I'm concerned, you're not the only one known for pulling last-minute stuff out of your behind."

Naruto chuckled. For Sasuke to use the undignified word 'Stuff', he must really be... Happy...

"Haha... it ended. Right, teme?'' A rictus found its way to Naruto's lips, soon disappearing as Naruto coughed up blood. A cracked rib had pierced his right lung when he had impacted a rock wall, Marada having thrown him a few hours - or was it days? - ago.

"Hn."

"Back to monosyllabic sentence, are we? You never change..." Naruto glanced at him and looked at his cold, black eyes, the red stars he had grown used to permanently fading as Sasuke's eyes closed, blood slowly dripping down his chin.

"Hn."

The blond smiled sadly at him. ''How regretful... we will never get the chance to see this world prosper... Sasuke, let's meet again, ne?''

There was a long silence, and the answer was a whisper almost lost to the wind.

"Yeah, dobe..."

At those words, Naruto closed his eyes and simply relaxed. Surprisingly, the thought of dying was not nearly as frightening as what he had thought before. No sudden flash of memories, no Shinigami waiting for you to die to eat your soul, no regrets. What regret can you have wheneveryone you knew was dead? There was only a strange calmness. The wounds that had once pulled tears to his eyes, drawn on his scarred body, were now a dull pain, like a slight pull on the edges on his mind, insignificant but achingly there. The Uzumaki looked at the sky, and he wondered, with the curiosity of a child, if he would go up there or straight down to Hell. Probably the latter.

He only turned to glance at Sasuke, immobile and silent, almost beautiful in that twisted, cold kind of way only Sakura had truly learned to appreciate. But then she was gone too, exhausted as she struggled to save lives and too occupied to think of love. When Sasuke's chakra faded, because chakra simply does not die as it's only sucked back by nature, Naruto closed his eyes and felt his natural energy returning to the Earth like falling leaves. He laid there, contemplating as Sasuke's soul turned out to be a bird, its white and black wings spread toward the moonless night sky like those of an angel.

He wondered if his would look the same, and chuckled painfully at the mental image of a blond bird chasing angrily after a white and black bird in the forest surrounding the once great Konoha. The chuckle soon turned into a full out laughter, cruel and lonely, empty like the voice of a man who had too much to tell yet too old to be able to even whisper, with no one to witness. Naruto didn't care if his body protested at the sudden motion anymore. And just as suddenly as it started, it died down, the sound carried away by the wind to a desolate land, perhaps somewhere, where the war had not touched and destroyed.

"See you, teme..."

A few silent minutes after, the Rokudaime Hokage and last living shinobi in this world, followed his best friend in death with a peaceful smile. His blond hair, dirtied and caked with mud and blood, looked brown and ugly, but the shine hadn't disappeared. His face was calm and not longer collected, deep lines speaking of stress and grief carved into his features fading as his muscles relaxed.

Right then, Uzumaki-Namikaze Naruto no longer was human, and the blessed light of Tsukuyomi shone upon him.

Who knew that this will only be the beginning of the story of the most powerful human ever, one that ended a war of centuries old grudges by himself, paying a price that had saved the world but destroyed his most precious thing?

But the future is never certain, as it is created, shaped and destroyed by our choices...

Next chapter: New chance and a Goddess