impact

Luna couldn't breathe. A vicious chakra smothered her, the biting wind had turned into a hurricane she was unprepared for.

It felt almost like the dementors' presence, but while the dementors had been cold, this was vicious and burning. She gasped, trying to catch her breath. Distantly, she heard Sasuke crying, and then Itachi comforting him.

She crammed her feet into sandals as she ran outside and beheld the Nine Tails.

The Fox was huge, rising into the heavens as if to brush the stars with its own flames. A crimson, corrosive aura and a snarl that shook her, making her break out in a cold sweat. Its eyes were crazed, taken over, and Luna—

She wanted to curl up into a ball and hide, but something inside of her needed to get closer. The Kyuubi was destroying everything, it was dangerous, but something inside of her screamed at her to go. So she ran.

No one saw her as she slipped through the gates and out into the burning city. Her chakra cycled through her muscles, aiding unconsciously. A burning beam fell too close and she jerked back and doubled around and she didn't have time, she needed to reach—

Desperate, Luna tried to run faster, faster, it was too far away…

(What it was she didn't know, just felt a sense of dread greater than the malice of the Nine Tails.)

And then there was a familiar feeling surging through her body, a squeezing feeling, as if she were being turned inside out—

And with a crack, she Apparated.

She arrived on the fringes of a clearing, where the hurricane was slicing into her skin as she coughed up blood, feeling a sense of horrible vertigo—as if she were at the edge of the world and falling into a void of nonexistence. The world she was in didn't seem to take kindly to a magic user. Her smile was thin and sharp, a strained thing as she threw up a crimson wave.

She arrived just in time to see Kushina chain the Demon Fox.

Her eyes hurt, she wanted, she wanted—she could see the blood dripping out of the redhead's mouth—Kushina wouldn't be able to hold the fox back for much longer.

In that moment, she was driven to her knees by a surge of unwellness. Luna coughed, dry, hacking coughs, and more blood stained the grass. Her magic felt contaminated, her eyes weren't focusing. She heard Kushina and Minato talking, but the sounds blended together, and she couldn't make out the words.

Then Minato began to make handseals, flashing through in an act of desperation. He finished, and smoke began to appear behind him.

It solidified into a visage of a man in a cloak.

A man with green eyes.

A man she had last seen four years ago, when she had died for the first time.

She stepped forward, and time slowed, stilled, and green eyes snapped to her small, bloodstained form.

"Harry?"

"... Luna? What are you doing here?"

In a flash, she understood that the train station had not happened yet for him. (Time was odd and never a constant—Harry had spent an eternity and no time at all acting as Shinigami.)

"Chasing nargles. Why are you here?"

"He summoned me to seal the demon inside of him."

"No…" she whispered. She closed her eyes in pain, not again. "What's the price?"

"His soul. I'm sorry Luna."

She opened her eyes again. They were shining with unshed tears. "Please take care of him, Harry."

A ghostly hand reached out and brushed against her cheek.

"I will, I promise."

Time sped back up.

Harry reached his hand through the Hokage and dragged half of the Demon Fox into Minato, sealing it to die with the man who smiled.

The fox shrunk to half its size, and Kushina's chains loosened—the Fox roared outrage, and its scream pierced Luna, pierced her thought—Minato arched his back with the pain of the sealing and Luna could only watch horrified as a ritual altar appeared and Minato put a baby, no (Luna's eyes widened) his baby, on its surface.

But the fox was moving. Toward the child.

"MINATO-SAN!" Luna screamed.

Their movements so fast they blurred past time, Minato and Kushina threw themselves in front of their baby.

The claw of the Kyuubi sliced straight through them and stopped inches away from their child. They were never more beautiful, never more horrific, never more awe-inspiring, than in that moment. It was the height of the climax in the play and the actors were arrayed perfectly (horrifyingly), completing an invisible contract.

Luna rushed towards them, ignoring the pain from the contamination of her magic. Her eyes began to glow red, a lazily spinning black dot in each one of them and she began to weep.

(Chakra began to drain, her use of it leading dangerously low, her lifeforce seeping out as she burned the scene into her memory.)

Harry watched the proceedings with a heavy heart and inscrutable eyes. (There had been another pair, a long time ago, that had made the same sacrifice, for the same reasons. He had never met them, but perhaps…)

She reached them, gasping, her body about to collapse.

"Tsuki-chan? What are you doing here?"

It was Minato, the blood dripping from his lips which twitched up into a light smile despite the scene (and Luna could almost believe that they were in the hospital), his breathing ragged.

"Minato-san…" she whispered.

He smiled tiredly. "Thank you for your words. I don't think that I ever thanked you for that day."

Luna smiled back, soft and sad.

Kushina grinned at her and began to tell her son her last instructions. Luna listened, every word branded into her mind, so she could tell the baby when he grew up.

"Ano, Tsuki-chan? Could you pass on a message for me?"

She nodded. Blue eyes held steady as he struggled to get the words out, as he tried to quell the coughing.

"Tell Kakashi Hatake, the Copy-nin, that it wasn't his fault and that I thought of him as a son… Tell him that I love him… and to reach out to others. Tell him… not to drown himself, and that the rule book is not always right… and to be careful and to live. Could… you please do that… for me?"

Luna looked up at him with weeping crimson eyes and promised.

Minato sighed, a release of some sorts, and closed his eyes for a moment before opening them. They were filled with a new sort of determination now.

"Thank you, Uchiha Tsukiko."

Kushina leaned back, resting her head on his shoulder. Her voice was softer, quieter than Luna had ever heard from the loud, exuberant redhead.

"I'm sorry Minato, I used up all the time we had left."

He merely smiled and said, "It's okay… Hello, Naruto. It's your dad; listen to your motor-mouth mother for me… I love you."

Kushina look a little desperately to Luna.

"Tsukiko-chan, could you please tell him we loved him?"

She nodded, promising.

Kushina bared her teeth, a sharp, fanged thing of defiance, and hardened her eyes.

"Now."

Minato brought his arms around Kushina and touched their son's stomach.

"Eight-Trigram-Seal!"

Luna saw Harry help Minato finish the seal when it wasn't quite complete and draw the Demon Fox into it. She watched as the black shapes appeared on the baby's—no, Naruto's, skin—and she watched as he began to cry. She watched as Minato and Kushina fell when the claw of the Kyuubi disappeared and as the Third Hokage rushed in. She watched as Kushina asked him to protect her baby and as she told the old man her son's name.

And she saw Harry, looking so so tired yet also bittersweet, take his payment. As he gathered the parents' souls, he moved past Luna before he disappeared, touching, for a moment, his forehead to hers, comforting in a way only someone who knew her pain better than she herself did could. He gave her a warmth from home, from her world.

Luna took a deep shuddering breath, her eyes flickering back to normal. Her chakra levels were almost spent, and she swayed, lightheaded and awfully sad.

It was then that the Third noticed her.

"Child! What are you doing here?"

For a moment, Luna smiled sadly: that was the third time that question had been asked of her that night.

Then she lifted her face.

"There was a Death God."

She looked up at the stars. Harry had promised.

"And a Fox Lord."

She sighed. The Nine Tails had been deathly terrifying, menacing, in a fatal, too real manifestation of a demon.

"Minato-san became a firefly, and Kushina-san laughed with her last moments."

There had been a terrible beauty in the scene.

"And then there was an emptiness."

The Third looked at her with weary eyes.

"What is your name?"

"Uchiha Tsukiko."

But that wasn't her name; her name was Luna, and she was named for a goddess.

"How did you come here?"

"I held onto Minato-san."

The Third thought Hirashin, but Luna knew that it was her magic that had latched onto Minato-san's soul. That she had felt the Master of Death, and her friend, and wished upon a thousand fireflies.

The Third took her, leaving behind a shadow clone to take his place, before anyone else could wonder at the small, bloodstained child.

A/N: And that's all for the absurdly fast updates. These were prewritten chapters, and while I do have the basic outline of the next decade or so of Tsukiko/Luna's life, I will have to actually sit down and write them. The next chapter will hopefully be up in a week, but beyond that? We'll see.

(Also, I tend to write as a form of escapism from the horrors of real life, but unfortunately, pragmatism demands that I take care of my overwhelming responsibilities. This might lead to me not getting around to writing as much, so feel free to review and ask that I update if it has been longer than two weeks—but please don't ask before that. Oh and please review in general too! It make me happy.)