Disclaimer.
Authors' note:
Sorry for the delay but this chapter fought me. It wanted to go in so many directions and only a few led to coherent stories. Finally my brother pulled through for me and now we have the complete plot mapped out.
Enjoy the story folks.
...
The toad boss swung his massive sword, shearing into the monstrous construct of sand the abomination called its arm, neatly slicing it off.
Under normal circumstances this would have been enough for him to engage in a round of taunts aimed at enraging his opponent, rendering them inefficient. But after doing it fourteen times only to have the monster regenerate at each instance, mid-battle banter was the farthest thing from his mind.
On the top of his head, Jiraiya stood motionless with his palms together, anchored with chakra. A tailed beast wasn't something that he could afford pull his punches on, especially if he wanted to contain the collateral damage.
So Sage Mode it was. But since collecting sage chakra required that his relative velocity with whatever he was standing on be zero, he needed to call upon the sage elders of Mt. Myouboku if he wanted to fight while using it.
The toad sages were so entrenched in senjutsu that they had become a part of nature itself and summoning them took sage chakra as well. Thus Jiraiya was gathering sage chakra. And the sensory boost due to the natural energy suffusing his pathways allowed him to detect the massive deluge of a familiar chakra.
His head snapped around towards the source, causing his connection to the World to snap.
On the opposite side of the village where the burial grounds were located the day seemed dimmer. The color leached out of the area. Hoar frost coated the trees and crept outwards rapidly. Despair spread out in waves, almost corporeal in its intensity.
Jiraiya felt a tingle of dread even while separated by the length of the village.
Then came the screams.
Both human and inhuman.
The dementors' shrieks were akin to the noise of blunted chalk on blackboards, jarring in their intensity, while the humans just screamed. Screamed as their very beings rebelled against the sheer horror of the presence of over a hundred of the abominations.
Shinobi hardened by decades of war, treachery and slaughter were reduced to whimpering messes by the dementors' passing. Every traumatic memory, every painful experience was dredged up from the darkest recesses of their minds just as each moment of happiness they had ever experienced was torn out of their souls.
Village affiliations mattered little to the monsters that blighted the Leaf. Sand, sound or leaf, the dementors considered them prey and prey had no borders to shelter behind.
Profession, age and gender mattered even less.
Here a woman screamed till she lost her voice and then screamed some more. There a Leaf shinobi with grotesque scars all over his head sank down on his knees shivering with his hands gripping his ears in a futile attempt to block out the screams of his countless victims. Further ahead a child not yet a denizen of the world for a year hyperventilated its way to an early demise as its father took a jagged shard of glass from a broken window to his own throat to escape the oppressive presence of the dementors. And down the lane an old ramen chef's aging heart gave out before his courage as he failed to prevent or indeed slow the descent of a dementor's lips onto his daughter's leaving a soulless husk behind.
The terrors swept forward, draining emotion and vitality, making the leaf wilt in their wake and the Will of Fire gutter and dim with their passing.
It took the first of the dementors five minutes to arrive at the location of the strongest source of chakra in Konoha: the Ichibi. Five minutes of utter terror and chaos that ended the war as Sand, Sound and Leaf banded together under the banner of Humanity to wage war against its eternal foe: Death.
Fire, water, earth, lightning and wind rained elemental fury down upon the monsters. Scorching, drowning, crushing, electrocuting and slicing them apart.
It was futile.
Fire petered out, water froze, earth froze and then shattered, electricity danced across their forms harmlessly before dissipating and severed limbs and torsos disappeared in gouts of heatless purple flame before reappearing in their proper places.
Death apparently knew no demise.
….
They came in ones and twos and then in dozens, attracted by the miasma of madness and hate that permeated the air around the tailed-beast.
Gamabunta recoiled from the creatures and Jiraiya struggled to keep his composure as wave after wave of cold and despair crashed upon him.
They swarmed the Ichibi, circling the tanuki like vultures and swooping in to take rattling breaths that seemed to draw in more than just air. At their approach the sand froze and with each essence draining breath the sand lost its coherence a little more, flaking off in clumps.
The beast roared, panic tinging its voice and flailed around with its gigantic arms to rid itself its tormentors.
A massive sandy paw closed upon an overeager dementor and with a terrible roar acting counterpoint to the jarring scream the tanuki used a Sand Burial.
For a tense moment, the battle seemed to stand still. And in that silence a soft crackling sound could be heard. A layer of ice was forming on the fist that held the dementor. The ice spread like flames on paper till the entire forearm was frozen solid.
Then the arm shattered and suspended amidst the shards of ice that glittered like diamond dust was the mangled body of the fell creature, dripping black blood.
Then time seemed to flow backwards as the blood flew upwards, back into the creature and its skin knit itself back together. The twisted limbs untwisted and broken bones became whole again. Finally its shredded cloak came together around it, shrouding its hideous features again.
Then with a chorus of outrage the dementors attacked again.
The Ichibi roared and screamed and thumped its stomach time and again sending burst after burst of pressurized air at the monsters but against its indestructible foes it fought a losing battle.
The beast shrunk and shrunk till with a desperate howl, it disintegrated into sand and dove back into the safety of its seal.
Gaara awoke with a gasp of pain as the tanuki's chakra slammed into him.
The dementors screamed with their triumph and dove towards the cowering boy when all of a sudden, they stopped.
Each hollow eye in Konoha turned towards the Hokage tower and without so much as a sound, every dementor abandoned its private battle and took off at a high speed towards it.
…..
Hinata Hyuga inspected the pristine white ceiling of the hospital room with dull lavender eyes.
The sounds of battles were barely registered over the vicious internal tumult that ravaged her psyche.
Naruto Uzumaki Namikaze had been an ideal for her. A paragon of how to behave when the entire world was dismissive of your worth. In fact the new revelations showed her how he had it even worse than her.
He was a fallen prince unaware of his heritage till his dying breath. Hated and shunned by the very villagers he protected day after day and yet. Yet he stood up after every fall and smiled.
Oh that smile. That act which went beyond a simple baring of his teeth. It was a ray of sunshine in the dark. And it was something she had fallen in love with.
Yes she admitted it freely now when it was of no use, when he was beyond her reach forever. She had fallen in love with the boy who refused to bend or break.
But, where was he now? Cold and lifeless six feet under the ground. For all his strength of character, for all his idealism and for all his grandiose dreams he had died. Not with honor, not in a blaze of glory but in a training accident.
Yes, she realized it now that reality was hard and those who challenged it were doomed to failure. She exhaled softly, giving up her hopes with the air that left her lungs.
She would live, she owed that much to his memory to not end her own life, and wallow in mediocrity. Demeaned by her clan, sidelined in favor of her sister, hated by her cousin and a disappointment to her father.
As she tracked her future she realized that she would survive for the rest of her life, not live it.
The door opened with a bang, jarring her out of her musings.
A tall man with the symbol of the Sound village on his forehead protector entered with kunai drawn. His eyes fell upon her injuries and then upon her eyes and tracked upwards to her unmarked forehead.
His smile said it all.
She watched him with a blank gaze. So this was how she would meet her end. Oh well, maybe she would get to meet him again. That would be nice.
As the grinning shinobi tensed to lunge at her, both their eyes were drawn to the pale skeletal fingers with black claws that wrapped around the door frame. The frost that spread out from it and the intense sense of dread that emanated from the figure that entered the room brought the Sound nin to his knees.
Unfeeling, hollow sockets met empty lavender eyes. Time stood still for a single moment before the hooded figure turned away from her, deeming her a poor meal.
Its fingers hooked under the trembling man's chin before it bent down and its dead lips met his.
Suddenly its head jerked back as its sightless eyes fixed upon the far distance.
Then it was gone.
When they found her later, she looked up at them with a gentle smile. She was seated cross-legged on the floor with a drooling, soulless Sound nin's head on her lap and a gentle hand caressing his locks.
Her eyes were dead.
…
Hiruzen had managed to seal both the first and second Hokage and was engaged in a battle of wills with his former student.
The Shinigami hovered behind him with his arm through his chest and clawed fingers digging into Orochimaru's soul.
The traitorous snake was fighting back with the Sword of Kusanagi which he was digging into his erstwhile mentor with his mouth as Sarutobi's summon, Enma, tried his best to keep the sword away from the aged Hokage's vitals.
Then came the dementors.
The nether worldly monsters congregated around the fiery barrier that separated them from their master. Then one of them touched the barrier that had immolated many a desperate ANBU. The black clawed finger sizzled but did not burn.
The dementor hissed in pain and then rammed its entire body against the offending barrier, followed by its brethren.
Steam rose where the undead touched the angry red flames of the barrier. The Sound Four trembled under the strain but held it up. A few dementors vanished in a puff of smoke as they ran out of chakra. The others pressed on even more maniacally.
The barrier flickered once, twice and then fell. The elite four of the Sound collapsed exhausted as the fell creatures swarmed over them towards the two shinobi engaged in their death match.
Sarutobi Hiruzen had accepted his death and was willing to sacrifice his life for the benefit of the Leaf. Orochimaru on the other hand clung onto life with a fiery tenacity. Survival against all odds was so deeply entrenched in his being that it had become a core tenet of his personality.
Thus in a battle of wills that pitted his desire to live against Sarutobi's loyalty to the Hidden Leaf, he was sure to triumph. Yet, this burning will was his downfall when the dementors came.
Both were exemplary shinobi, masters of their art and in the course of their long illustrious careers had faced a genjutsu specialist or two. They put up shield after mental shield and hid themselves away behind fake personalities. Orochimaru even retreated partially to his mindscape where he generally stored Kusanagi. Yet the wave after wave of soul-crushing despair that assaulted them forced them to their knees.
Enma disappeared in a puff of smoke as the dementors drained him of chakra and Kusanagi clattered to the ground from Orochimaru's slack jaws. Most of the dementors were hovering over the snake Sannin as they relished his will power as they drained him of his soul while Hiruzen had a much easier time of it.
The Shinigami sensed the weakness of its victim and yanked hard, pulling Orochimaru's soul into Hiruzen and sealing it. It removed its ceremonial knife and slashed through the connection between Hiruzen and itself, reaping his soul as its payment.
Just as it was about to phase out of existence it was halted by an anguished wail. It turned and its eyes met Naruto's and widened in surprise.
The air behind it rippled and the Shinigami departed the plane of the living. And with seventy eight puffs of smoke the remaining dementors followed suit.
Naruto's eyes reverted to their customary cerulean and the seals on his body faded as he sank to his knees beside the corpse of his pseudo-grandfather. And then in a puff of smoke he too was gone.
….
It was a strange end to a stranger war. The end did not come with bloodshed or violence. It did not end in a surrender or even a compromise. It ended with Sand and Sound and Leaf shinobi standing back to back, panicked eyes flickering left, right, up and down in search of the terrible, terrible foes that had laid bare their darkest fears and besieged their sanity in just a few minutes.
When the news came, in the voice of a Konoha jounin enhanced by a Sand nin's wind technique, that the Kazekage had been murdered and impersonated by Orochimaru, who was dead at the Hokage's hand, and that Sand was withdrawing from the war, there was a collective sigh of relief.
The proclamation that the monsters were all gone garnered boisterous cheers.
Sound, demoralized by their leader's death capitulated quickly after that.
Kabuto escaped with Orochimaru's body, Kusanagi and the Sound four with Kimimaro's help.
As Konoha rallied from its brush with annihilation and took stock of its losses, a disquieting rumor began to spread. Its source was a Hyuga ANBU that had been present during the final moments of Hiruzen's battle with Orochimaru. His Byakugan had revealed the connection between summoner and summoned that extended from Naruto to the demons that had terrorized Konoha and he had watched him getting reverse summoned by the Shinigami. His eyes had also revealed the lack of a chakra network in the boy's body and its reappearance when the last of the monsters had vanished.
Now, a lot of conclusions could have been drawn from this. The sight of Orochimaru resurrecting the previous Hokage and Naruto's escape from his grave could have been linked as Orochimaru resurrecting the Kyuubi jinchuriki to wreak havoc on Konoha. Or a quick body count would put most minds at ease that if not for the dementors, the loss of life and property would have been even more severe.
The newly formed positive perspective of Naruto Namikaze was pitted against thirteen years of mistrust directed towards Naruto Uzumaki and found itself on the losing end. The theory that found most credence was that the 'demon child' had formed a pact with the Shinigami to escape death and had offered up the Third Hokage's life in exchange.
By the time the last rays of the sun had painted the Hokage monument a bloody crimson an opinion had formed in the minds of most of Konoha.
Naruto Uzumaki had murdered the Third Hokage.
….
Heh heh heh!
NaiWrath out!