A.N. Well, here it is. The seventh installment of The Prince of Souls. This installment highlights one of the main differences between an ordinary Mangekyo Sharingan and his, that have been hinted in the previous chapters.
As usual, any and all criticism is welcome.
Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling. NE belongs to Shimura Danzo.
Chapter 7 : Of Spiderwebs and Crazy Goddesses
Two Months Later
It was night, prime business for the Blunt Nodachi, one of the many shinobi-oriented bars to be found in the North East Sector of Konoha, which was where the clanless shinobi often took residence in. Built in the centre of one of Konoha's most populated districts, the Blunt Nodachi was one of the landmarks of Konoha Shinobi, and often venerated as such.
Founded late in the Shodaime Hokage's reign, the old bar had seen life in all its varying flavours. From new appointed genin, flushed with victory and ready to take on the world, raring at the bit to abuse the privileges of their newly found adulthood, to disillusioned shinobi, drinking away their woes after losing their comrades, suffering a debilitating injury, or simply seeing too much, all the way to the old veterans, the few shinobi who had enough sense to know when to quit, gathering around to natter on about their experiences to the new genin who had come to experience the novelty of alcohol. The Blunt Nodachi had the patronage of all, and it treated all equally.
It had seen many strange things in its admittedly long existence for a shinobi bar. It had been here that the Shodaime had first foisted off his paperwork on his brother Tobirama, the soon to be Nidaime. It had been here that Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara had had their last public row, before Madara went rogue. It had been here that the newly appointed Nidaime had come to drink and weep about the paperwork inherent to the position of Hokage. It had been here that Jiraiya and Hatake Sakumo had their famous dance-off, resulting in Sakumo being forced to abandon his trusty facemask and Jiraiya being forced to wear geta for the rest of his life. It had been here that the Sannin had their first public breakup, and it had been here that Orochimaru cried in public for the first, and last, time. It had been in the Blunt Nodachi that Gai had had smiled his only true smile, and it had been in here that young Sarutobi Asuma had screamed at his father before he left to join the Twelve Ninja Guardians of the Daimyo.
But never had the old bar seen a group quite this strange, as the group that had taken residence in the room 7. Said group consisted of the following; a seven year old human who was death-god presumptive and had a demonic entity sealed inside him, a chakra clone of said sealed demon who just happened to be a fragmented deity, a reincarnated Kage of the Village who just happened to be the father of the aforesaid seven year old and have a portion of said seven year old child sealed in him, the dead body of yet another Kage of the Village which was the puppet of the consciousness of the seven year old, and an irritated goddess who just happened to be the many-great grand aunt of the seven year old.
And the atmosphere of their private booth was heating up.
"No means NO, great-aunt!"
"Oh shut your trap, you little brat. I was talking to your father. I swear, Susano'o nii-san had much more sense than you would ever have."
"What did you say?"
"Looks like the brat is a little deaf as well, eh, Amaterasu-chan." Kurama, the size of a house cat and lying comfortably on Minato's shoulders, interrupted Naruto rudely with an aside to Amaterasu.
Amaterasu absently nodded, then paused, developing a tic in her brow. "Don't call me –chan!"
As the enraged goddess prepared to roast herself some fox, a sweatdropping Minato attemped to interfere, unknowingly saving the existence of the old Blunt Nodachi. Though if he did it to save Kurama, or because Kurama stood on his shoulder, meaning that he was liable to get caught in Amaterasu's rage, the spectators, in this case Naruto, did not know.
Regardless of his intentions, he came between the gritted teeth of the goddess and the smirk of the fox on his shoulder. "C-Come on. Let's all calm down, shall we."
"Shut up, Minato!" The shout came from both sides of him, from the fox, and from the goddess who seemed quite ready to release her limiters to smack down Kurama. It was this that Naruto interrupted, when he uncharacteristically pouted at the lack of attention he was getting. When even that failed getting the attention of the adults, he had had enough.
The others were disturbed from their three-way deadlock by a pair of hands slamming onto the table. "I still say no, Amaterasu baa-chan!"
The other males in the room stiffened, then slowly, mechanically, turned towards the goddess. The goddess who had stopped glaring at Kurama, to instead turn towards a petrified Naruto, her eyes glowing like the hot sun on a summer day. Amaterasu smiled sweetly at Naruto, who had just realized what he said, and was sweating bullets as he tried to dig himself out of the hole. "I m-mean y-your b-beauteous, y-young l-looking, uh… y-yes, y-young l-looking…"
"What did you call me?"
Minato looked at the imminent homicide, and deadpanned at Kurama. "… I pity you for getting sealed inside him."
Kurama did not answer immediately, instead choosing to stare at the beating that Naruto was receiving with a haunted look on his face. "…It's your fault."
…
…
…
One Day Before
It was dark in the abandoned Konoha Sealing Chamber, on the outskirts of Konoha. The imposing structure, created entirely using a single carved out block of granite, had been commissioned by the late Uzumaki Mito in order to serve as a lab for fuinjutsu research. However, it had soon fallen into disrepute with the lack of use of the dying art; the youngest person with any fuinjutsu ability beyond making exploding tags, which were basically just deliberately unstable tags, was the cyclopean jounin, Hatake Kakashi. With the only regular user of fuinjutsu in the village, Jiraiya the Frog Sage, out of the village indefinitely, for all intents and purposes Konoha was devoid of sealing experts. Which was exactly why its current squatters, which were two Hokage, one reanimated and the other revived, chose the place as their headquarters. Of course, of the two squatters, only one actually lived there; the other just lay around being the dead body that it was until Naruto could actually use it.
Currently though, there was just one visible inhabitant in the cave discounting the Nidaime's dead body, and that was a seven year old that was currently busy turning the air blue with his swearing.
"Really, Godling? While it is terribly amusing to listen to what you are going to do to your own eyes, I am trying to sleep. So please, pretty please, stop shouting before I come over there and kill you!"
And that was the second entity, of which the only thing to be seen were a pair of incredibly crimson eyes with slit pupils that glowed in the gloom of the cave. Who was promptly ignored as the seven year old continued to yell at current subject of his ire, his eyes. More specifically, the Mangekyo Sharingan that adorned his eyes. The sound of teeth gritting followed a growl, before a small, lithe form slinked into the dimly lighted area of the cave. The figure was that of a fox, sporting a blood red coat and nine furry tails that swayed hypnotically behind it. And it had a tic on its brow, its claws were cutting gouges in the granite floor and its jaw was clenched.
"Na-Ru-To!"
The swearing figure turned around to look at the fox, a demented expression on his face.
"Leave me alone, Kurama! This is your fault! Your bloody pink eyeis the most bloody useless piece of crap bloodline ever – Yooooow!"
"That should teach you to badmouth my creation," Kurama huffed as he spat out Naruto's blood from when he had savaged his leg. "That you are entirely too stupid to understand the magnificence of the Mangekyo Sharingan is in no way my fault."
Naruto stared at him. "Tentacles," he stated flatly.
"Oh, come on! Kit, you promised!" Kurama yelled, his tails converged to cover his behind and his mouth.
Naruto was about to make a witty comeback when he was interrupted by a new voice. "Now, now, children. Stop fighting or you get a time out." He smirked "Though I'll really like to hear the story about the tentacles."
"Hey dad."
"Why won't you die already, you bloody blond bastard?" Kurama mumbled through his tail.
Minato smirked at Kurama's greeting, while said fox had stopped glaring at Naruto to glare at Minato, still covering his behind with his tails, showing clearly that he was not Kurama's favourite person. "Eh, you know, tried that – got boring pretty fast. Plus I like annoying you way too much to actually die."
Kurama flicked his ear at him - a sure sign of irritation – and chose to ignore the last sentence. "How did that happen anyway? I mean, if it was simply because of the divine chakra, old corpsy there would also be alive, wouldn't it?" He asked, pointing one claw at the corpse of the Nidaime that was on a stone slab nearby. "So how come this idiot came back from the dead to annoy me?"
Minato also looked intrigued as to the reasons. Naruto merely stopped grumbling and pacing to note, "There are a few indications to the cause."
Kurama and Minato stared at his pacing form, waiting for him to continue.
"…"
"Just tell us already, you insufferable brat."
Naruto stopped his pacing again to speak, "Well, it's rather obvious. How did dad die?"
Minato shared a look with Kurama. "I offered my soul in exchange for the sealing, had my soul torn out of my body. That's what you're looking for, right?"
Naruto sighed. "And who did you offer your soul to?" He stared at the pair, willing them to get it so that he wouldn't have to speak further.
Kurama got the hint first. Naruto could tell when he realized it by the comically widened mouth and the popped out eyes. He was wordlessly pointing between Minato and Naruto, apparently dumbfounded by the revelation. Naruto merely sighed again and started to pace, uttering a muted "troublesome".
Minato was still staring at him, uncomprehending. Naruto stared back, disbelieving, until he met Kurama's bemused gaze. "I can't believe you ever became Hokage," Naruto snorted at Minato, who looked offended by the comment, just as Kurama finally found the strength to speak.
Minato found his voice. "Hey! Naruto, don't you dare speak to me that way!"
"Well, I totally agree with the kit," Kurama choked out through his guffawing at Naruto's comment. "Seriously, think, you blond bastard. You give your soul to the Shinigami at the exact same time that the entity that took the soul, for a lack of a better term, died. The Shinigami's fragmentation would mean that he had no time to absorb your essence, meaning that you were stranded in the human world. So you probably stuck around as a fragmented soul, unable to go to the afterlife but not truly alive either, stranded in the Human Realm." He laughed a bit more at Minato's expression, which was stuck between righteous anger at his son and exasperation at himself. "Personally, I find it pretty funny that the guy who tore apart my essence got his torn apart as well." He continued grumbling. "Did you know it hurts when you seal a guy like that, you bloody idiot? I swear, no Uzumaki would have been that stupid."
"Oh, come on! You were attacking my shinobi!"
Kurama was quick to retort. "Well I'll like to see you not lash out when, directly after a Genjutsu was removed, you find yourself being attacked! I was disorientated!"
Naruto simply sighed. Sometimes, living with their bickering was, to parrot the Nara, 'troublesome'.
…
…
…
Later on, as the fox and the shinobi continued to act out one of their frequent arguments, Naruto retreated to the Sealing Preparation room, which Naruto had commandeered upon their acquiring of the base as his office and the map room. In here he could be sure of relative solitude to plan his next move, as his father did not come within fifty feet of the room, in his revulsion of the 'paperwork curse', and Kurama was uninterested in the goings on of the elemental nations as a whole.
The Elemental Nations were in an interesting state at the moment, Naruto mused, as he studied the large map of the continent hung on the wall in his room. Many of the countries were coming out of their respective battles and strengthening their armies, but many of the countries were not yet in a position to directly wage war yet. Therefore, most countries were scrambling to strengthen their defences, streamline their command process and root out traitors. It was also the time when promoters of various agenda came out of the woodwork, and silent coups took place. This was also the time when people selected sides, and smaller villages created coalitions to withstand the might of the militarizing great five. However, this time, there seemed to be something out of the ordinary as far as the militarization went. The anomaly were the plentiful missing-nin that currently dotted the landscape of the Elemental Nations currently, often leaving trails of destruction in their wake.
The missing nin population in the elemental Nations had burgeoned in the years following the Third Shinobi War, and in a stark contrast to the previous war aftermath scenarios, they had not been hunted down. The reason for this had been simple; the Third Shinobi War had been much more exhausting to the shinobi villages than the two previous wars, and the respective villages had not had the manpower in the midst of their own respective crisis' to track down a few deserters. Even Konoha, which had emerged relatively unscathed, had not escaped this; they had barely started the tracking of their own deserters when the Kyuubi attack had forced all personnel to return to the village.
Thus shinobi as notorious as Orochimaru the White Snake of Konoha, Sasori of the Red Sands of Suna, Hidan the Sacrificial Murderer of Yugakure, Momochi Zabuza the Demon of the Mist, Hoshigaki Kisame the Tailless Tailed-Beast, and Kurosuki Raiga the Thunder of the Mist from Kiri, Kurohana of the Granite Chain of Iwa, Kohaku of the Yellow Lightning of Kumo, were roaming the countryside, along with shinobi who had never been officially declared missing but were not in contact with their original villages such as Senju Tsunade the Slug Princess of Konoha, Utakata of the Six Tails of Kiri, Han of the Steam of Iwa, Kuromaru of the Forge of Kiri, and Ryuu the Floating Hermit of Kusa.
This meant that the Elemental Nations were currently on a lit fuse, with ambitious leaders looking to further their own ambitions and errant powerhouses wandering around wreaking havoc. This was what he intended to harvest. The abundance of selfish leaders would keep themselves busy, while his subtle machinations would keep any one side from overpowering the other. Meanwhile, his subordinates would gather around, creating support. But that wouldn't happen immediately; he needed time increase his own personal power, not to mention his ascension and all the problems that would bring. After all, the Deva Realm wasn't a very peaceful place either.
Anyway, he needed to focus his attention right now onto one specific location; the Land of Fire. Situated as it was, with its rich natural resources and its central location, it was the primary target of many nations vying to increase their power. This naturally meant that they were constantly under threat of invasion, and as loath as Naruto was to admit it, the attempts had been as low as they were solely due to the efforts of the Sandaime Hokage. However, now that Naruto was trying to cut out his own part of the landscape, the first thing he had to do was to reduce the influence of the Sandaime Hokage in the Land of Fire. Naruto was playing for keeps, and he would see the end of this!
The first salvo in his plan had been carried out by his father just recently, which was the decimation of a Suna team and an Iwa team in the Ishigakure - Iwagakure border. This meant that a diplomatic incident was imminent, which would probably include Suna distrusting Konoha and accusing Iwa, Iwa accusing Konoha, and turning away Suna's attention to Iwa instead of Konoha. This would lead to Konoha losing the official support of its only ally in the Five Great Nations, Suna requesting more aid from Orochimaru in preparation for an upcoming war with Iwa delaying Orochimaru's own plans regarding Konoha, and Iwa delaying opening its borders even further. This would hopefully delay plans all round, as he hoped to keep each nation off balance and unready to fight in the years to come.
…
…
…
He was at the Main Sealing Chamber, it was around 6:30 pm, and he was starting to think that his eyes would pop from excess chakra before he ever completed the task.
Seriously, the Mangekyo was the most uncooperative doujutsu ever.
When he started the attempt to summon the flames of Amaterasu, he had been fairly optimistic of his chances to do so by the end of the month, at least.
Until now, all he had accomplished was to scare Kurama and Minato so badly that they would no longer come to the tests. Kurama had yet to forgive him for the tentacles.
From what he had found out, the Mangekyo functioned simply as an extraterrestrial summoning, summoning objects from across dimensions and across time. Usually the bloody thing would have a limiter, a certain set of frequencies that the Mangekyo was limited to summoning. Now however, after destroying the avatar of the doujutsu, those limiters were gone, leaving his Mangekyo an open antenna.
Honestly, the fact that the Uzume came to him was a minor miracle in itself, as was the fact that he could replicate it later. He suspected the deity herself had some hand in it, though why she would bother was a mystery.
However, he had had many unexpected summoning in this chamber, from summoning a gigantic creature with a reptilian head and flippers (what sort of name was Nessy, anyway?) to summoning the tentacle monster that had scarred Kurama, and him, for life.
Oh, well. Might as well try again.
He pushed chakra into his eyes, and felt the now familiar feeling of time slowing down as the Mangekyo worked its magic. Then came, as usual, the activation phrase, and by now he was far too involved to stop. "Harry!"
A red beam issued from his eyes, and almost before he had a chance to duck, an ornate sword that had been mounted on the wall slid out of its scabbard and came careening towards him.
What in the name of the Rikudo Sennin?
Whoever that guy he tried to invoke was, that guy had to be suicidal.
He gave an uncertain glance towards the now still sword, before shrugging. No matter, that was still not the worst summoning by far. He recalled the tentacles, and shivered.
He glanced once more at the sword, and shrugged. Once more onto the breach!
This time, when he felt the familiar feeling of time slowing down, he also felt an unfamiliar pressure in his mind. Too late to stop now. "Amaterasu!"
Finally!
The long awaited black flames issued from his left eye, his right eye closed involuntarily. Then the flames turned white, and were ripped from his control. What was happening?
The now pure white flames were cocooning the clearing, and still issuing from the eye, negating his doujutsu. The flames licked his body, caressing him but not burning. The flames were building up into a pillar of flame in the centre of the room, and the spiritual pressure was increasing.
The first indication that Naruto had that a person was in the flames was the hair. Though the pure white flames he could just make out raven locks that fluttered in the flames. As the flames died down a vision of beauty was revealed to his sight. Long, straight, raven hair fell past her shoulders and framed her face, with ivory white skin suffused in a slight blush, and a face that could almost be described as thin, with piercing golden almond shaped eyes and pouting lips, were the prominent features in the now revealed beauty. She was garbed in a formal peach and crimson kimono, and set in her hair was an intricate golden tiara with a symbol, which was reproduced in the kimono intermittently, a circular symbol made of three black tomoe curled onto each other on a white background. With slight surprise, Naruto recognized the symbol.
It was Amaterasu.
Well, it wasn't like he hadn't anticipated the visit; once a human with divine powers was detected, Kurama had been certain that there would have been a flood of divine entities to see the newest member of their community. He was just surprised that it was Amaterasu.
He stepped forward to greet her, slightly surprised at her unexpected visit, when…
"Squeee! Aren't you my cutest nephew ever! Don't worry, you're aunt is going to take care of you, little cutie!"
Cue facefault.
"I'm going to hug you, and dress you, and make you go on little play dates, and ooh! Let me squeeze your cute little cheeks!"
Sigh. He just knew this was the Mangekyo's fault. Maybe he could get dad to use the Sharingan to mind-wipe him, because –
"Ouch! My cheeks are supposed to be attached to me, obaa-chan!"
For a moment, silence filled the room, everything freezing in place.
A sudden ripple of something like killing intent flashed across the room. "What. Did. You. Say?"
As the most assuredly crazy goddess approached him again, this time with a pulse in her brow and a forced smile, Naruto backed against the wall.
"Curse you, MANGEKYOOOO!"
