Chapter Seven:
Undoing
LXI.
I wanted him dead before, but for this agony I will write the songs of a thousand screams on his flesh-
LXII.
Power twists inside me, like millions of moths are bursting into flame and slamming into my flesh, over and over and over again-
I clutch the sides of my head, screaming.
LXIII.
I open a dozen eyes and scream with a thousand tongues for mercy that never comes.
LXIV.
Trying to force a jigsaw piece into a hole that doesn't fit, mash it in with a child's impatience in the hopes that what results will match your standards, is that what you want, Obito-
LXV.
I will not be denied my freedom.
LXVI.
I reach out, and grip white skin and a broken mind, and pull them into me, into myself.
Step one to the end, I think, before my world turns sideways.
LXVII.
I face a woman dressed in white rags, her mind shattered. My children sit in the seats of the arena around us, both human and bijū alike, all of them asleep.
Who is the puppet, in this equation? I ask the remnants of Ōtsutsuki Kaguya. And who the master?
I will destroy you and take my rightful place!
Wrong answer, I tell her, cheerfully. I made a promise, you see, to our children. And I must be in control to do so. But don't worry! You'll get to help.
I will kill you!
I laugh and shake my head.
That's not up to you, I say, and gesture to the side.
There's a girl standing there. Her hair is brown. Her eyes are brown.
Her smile is so polite.
Hello, Rin.
LXVIII.
It's my choice, Rin says, so softly, so sweetly. Isn't it?
It is. It always was, sister.
She smiles at me, like I'm the realization of all of her dreams and hopes.
She's not nearly as broken as Kaguya, and I realize then that she permitted me to take her, to rip tiny bits of her soul away and use them to repair mine. We are so much alike.
(couldn't get power on my own, so find someone else who can)
I meet her halfway, and I take her hand.
You made me wait.
Haha…I apologize for that, I say. I didn't even know I could do this, to be honest.
We reach out, together.
There are hooks the color of blood and flesh and the color of the river of the dead, as inevitable as the flow of the river Styx itself, and they drag Kaguya screaming to us.
(why is she so weak before us? who knows? who cares? opportunity is opportunity, after all)
Do we really have to?
It's for the best.
(her hunger rocked the world funny isn't it that she'll be eaten in turn it's nothing personal)
Then there are teeth.
And then there is blood.
LXIX.
The world is nothing but a melding twisting darkness, lingering with Kaguya's defiant (desperate) screams and the feeling of Rin's hand in mine as I sit on a throne of thorns.
Then even that is gone, and I am simply a presence in the darkness once again, but this time I am more-
LXX.
Brown eyes fight to open in the darkness.
Power moves.
The Jūbi howls.
