The night was red.
Above the screaming and the tears of Konoha's people, a crimson shadow loomed: the Kyuubi no Youko in all its terrifying glory. Its immense form of bloody fur and swinging tails hung over all, a great beast of hatred and vile intent that made the stars quake in fear and the moonlight fade beneath its fury.
All that intent, all of that fearsome presence came to bear on a single man, a man atop a mountain: Namikaze Minato.
The Yondaime Hokage swept a hand through blond locks, tightened the hitai-ate around his forehead and grasped the infamous tri-tipped kunai in his palms as he stared the red-eyed beast down with resolute sapphire.
"You will not destroy Konoha."
Across the ragged stretches of his burning, broken village, the fox snarled, a low, haunting rumble echoing through the smoke and the ruin.
"You will not destroy Konoha."
The beast lifted its vast maw of jagged teeth to the sky and began to pull vast swathes of chakra in, nine tails rearing up behind it as an orb of dense energy formed above its head.
"You will not destroy Konoha."
The orb, glowing and expanding to titanic proportions, shrank into a single point, an impossible coruscating sphere. It descended into the waiting jaws of the monster below. Vicious, burning light emanated from within.
"YOU WILL NOT DESTROY KONOHA!"
The massive sphere ripped through the sky with the bellowing of thunder.
Minato's chakra flared.
A second away from annihilating the village in an unholy eruption of chakra, time and space bent. The orb, rotating in violent spirals of pure force, froze, caught between immense, explosive pressure and a hole punched in the fabric of reality.
Runes and symbols branched out onto nothingness, crawling along the surface of the air and the shimmering sphere itself and dragged, pulling it through with arms of coruscating blue.
The horizon, far behind the mountains and trees, trembled with waves of power beyond imagining. Chakra roared into the sky with a brutal surge. The heavens exploded with light.
The Kyuubi, enraged beyond measure, howled to the night broken by shards of blazing aurora. Sound stormed the air like a tempest's winds.
Then, it all became quiet. The vast, black echoes rolling through the dark stilled. The awe-inspiring inferno of chakra cascading down from above faded into the embrace of dusk. The storm of crashing sound settled into calm and steadfast zephyrs. Konoha crackled below.
Blood-red and brilliant blue witnessed a strange, disparate silence.
A drop of something tapped at the bridge of Minato's nose. Wind whistled by his ear. Grey swirls brushed at his eyes. Thunder rumbled in the distance.
Then all hell broke loose.
Alien peace died with the crack of lightning. The wind's whistle became a wrathful bellow. Clouds circled above in savage precision. Rain poured from the heavens.
The Kyuubi growled.
Drenched to the bone in a matter of moments, Minato felt something through the grey sheets draped over his shoulders. A whisper nudged at his senses.
A cloak, a mask, and a hand appeared in the ashen rain.
A swirl of something rippled in the fabric of reality around him.
The fight to save Konoha continued.
It did not end the way he wanted.
On a grassy plain held loosely by sparse, wet trees, Minato stood, barely. His legs, his arms and everything else in between shook. The slowing rain wrapped around them all. It fell smoothly through Kushina's soft red hair. It fell gently, peacefully, over Naruto's tuft of sleeping blond. It even fell over the Kyuubi's talon, marred with blood, forced through their bodies.
He felt it hold him up when his spirit could no longer.
A vision of death, the Shinigami itself, floated above, clutching his chakra, his soul. His earthly tether waned. To seal the Kyuubi within Naruto, he would be consumed.
It was a price he would gladly pay for his village, for his people, for his son. But it was not the way he wanted.
He wanted to hold his son and his wife in his arms, to pull them in tight and never let them go. He wanted to watch and smile as his son took his first steps, spoke his first words, won his first fight. He wanted to see all of those firsts with Kushina by his side, holding his hand and smiling just as proudly at their wonderful, beautiful child. He wanted to see him grow up, become a man, become a friend, a brother, a father to a family of his own. He wanted to spend his last days with the one who had been with him through all the blood and the tears and the war and the death. He wanted to pass away knowing he had done his part for Konoha, for Kakashi, Rin, Obito, Jiraiya, Hiruzen and Kushina.
And for Naruto.
The rain kept falling.
The chains of chakra Kushina had made rattled quietly, and the Kyuubi's claw twitched within him, but he felt no pain. It was all just drifting thoughts, memories of pain he felt instead. Those memories were secondary to the moment.
The spectral form in the cold grey air raised its ghostly knife.
Kushina's voice, strong and unfaltering, faded from his ears. Through the shudder that ran down her, he knew her tears had quickened.
Trembling, his hand found hers once more. Fingers folded over hers before they meshed together, entwined as they had been for the longest time. He could not feel it in his hand, but he felt it rumble in his heart.
"It'll be alright, my love," Minato whispered, struggling to find a voice. "It will be alright."
"I... I just..." Kushina murmured beneath the rain, "... we'll miss so much..."
He nodded his head, little movements up and down that she didn't see but he knew she felt. "I know."
"Naruto..." she reminded him.
It was his turn.
"Listen to her, Naruto," he smiled. "She knows what she's talking about."
Kushina uttered a quiet laugh. "Minato..."
"I know, I know," he nodded once more. "Naruto..."
He closed his eyes. "I hope... you can forgive us, Naruto... that you can forgive me. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. If there was more time... then, maybe... there would've been another way. I... I wasn't strong enough. But you will be. You will be strong enough, strong enough for all of this. All this coming calamity, all the pain of this world... you will be strong enough, strong enough to overcome it. I'm sure of it."
He opened his eyes, blue gazing out on a world of grey skies and clouds and rain that held his son in its damp embrace. Tears welled. "Be strong, Naruto. Be safe. Be happy."
One last bellow from the Kyuubi's jaw tore into the crying sky.
The phantom blade fell.
Chakra rushed around them all.
The Kyuubi was sealed.
On the damp, soft grass, Minato laid still, Kushina atop him, her breathing soft and steady and slowing. He could feel his body again, but feeling was fading. So too was his vision of a ceiling of grey.
How strange that nature recognised the disturbance, the sudden disaster that fell upon Konoha. The rain stifled the fires burning in the village. The winds cleared the skies of choking smoke and dust and ash. The lightning flashed in the distance when the people needed light in a time of darkness. But most of all, he had felt... anger.
There was rage in the rain and wrath upon the wind. It was as if nature itself had felt all the pain inflicted by the man in the mask on this night.
Cold began to seep into his skin, covering him from head to toe. Icy hands tugged at him gently, telling him it was time to go.
Not yet.
Something... drifted down from the grey. There were... lines, streaks of something in the air that wafted down from above in gentle waves, water on the shore at day's end. It flowed, spiralled, circled overhead and down towards... Naruto.
The lines and streaks of a colour he could not see enveloped his son. Invisible arms encircled him, held him close. A minute swirl of wind took hold of him. The rain dampening the cloth wrapped around him lifted and slid. Within a second, he was dry. The rain did not fall on him anymore, but past him.
The wind kept him dry, warm. Safe.
The wind will keep him. Always.
Minato's eyes moved slowly around. But there was no one nearby.
"Of course..." he whispered.
Quietly, Minato smiled as the hands of death pulled him away.
In the beginning, there was absence. There was absence of light and dark, heat and cold, life and death. Absence was grey. The moment disparity came was the moment absence died. Disparity was presence.
Presence began with the Five, flowed to the One, and split into the Nine. Such was the path creation took.
The Five were born at the beginning of everything. They made the World.
The foundation of all, the bones of reality, Earth was the body. Blazing with burning heat and scorching light, Fire was the heart. Vast and encompassing, empty and embracing, Water was the cradle. The bridge from heaven to earth, sky to sea, Lightning was the spark. Riding from the skies above and sweeping across all, Wind was the breath.
Together, the Five made life. Life was blood. The One was born of blood.
For time untold, the One remained untouched, and the cycles of the Five ruled supreme. But then the One gave birth to Chakra. Chakra flowed out into the World. The Five were put to sleep. What was left of the One became Nine.
For a thousand years, the World was steeped in change and Chakra; the Five slept.
But now Wind wakes, and the old World wakes with it.
Author's Notes
I published this story without first constructing a full idea of the world I wished to warp, so here it is:
What came before the Tree, before chakra, before Kaguya? What if there was a world long established before chakra changed everything, before it put that world to sleep? What if, at the tipping point of the age, the old world began to wake, and asserted itself upon the new?
The rules of this old world will be made known over time as the story progresses.
Fair warning, this is an AU. While some typical aspects of canon are still in place, some new aspects will be added, and a great deal of it will be heavily abstract. This story deals heavily in the concepts of nature, cycles, and creation. As such, it relies upon great swathes of imagery. Take that as you will.
Sincerest regards,
A238