Author's Notes:

I scaled Hidan's abilities way up. Despite Kishimoto's attempt to sell us on how threatening Hidan was, his gimmick was, while horrifying, honestly pretty weak. (It only works when he can spend the entire battle standing in one spot on solid ground, he needs to harvest his enemy's blood before he can activate his power, and it's worthless against any ninja who can move fast enough, or knows a non-lethal technique, to push him off the seal. It's painfully limited.)

~oOo~

Chapter 10:

A Violent Man

~oOo~

Hidan hated other ninja because they were fucking liars.

All ninjas enjoyed violence. It was what they were trained for. If they didn't like violence, didn't bask in their enemy's pain and flourish in fields of death, they didn't stay a ninja. But they still insisted on lying about it. They'd piss away time blathering about principles or justice or some bullshit like that, but at the end of the day, they were proud of how good they were at hurting people. They traded their whole reputation on it!

Hidan was the most honest man he knew. He didn't cite honor or horseshit philosophy or self-indulgent so-called justice as an excuse to hurt and kill people. He was proud of his skill, and like all true masters he understood that expression of a skill was reason enough to pursue it.

Violence was an answer that needed no question, and had no question it couldn't answer. It was always true.

~oOo~

Rin stuck around for a second damn week in South Marsh. She spent her time healing others and chatting with elders about the time before the war. Obito had panicked when he sensed ninjas approaching, but she stayed put even after he told her. It turned out they only wanted to know if she was really a Nohara.

Obito finally bought a mask, too scared of being recognized. He was more than capable of keeping an illusion up around himself at all times. But it'd only take one Uchiha or Hyuuga sent to investigate for that to fail. Plus, the option of not maintaining a perpetual illusion would be nice.

The mask was custom-made with the help of a craftswoman he found in town. It featured three large tomoe, two of them forming holes for his eyes with a third over his forehead, and a thin black circle connecting them, like a mature Copy Wheel, but it was pure white instead of red. He added seals on the inside to change the color of his eyes to white when he wore it. He couldn't hide the Kaleidoscope pattern—that form was too powerful to be completely hidden—but without the iconic red most people would never guess they were Copy Wheels. Rin told him it was silly and flashy and he looked like a ghost with it on, but he just shrugged. It wasn't subtle, but Rin already attracted loads of attention. He just didn't want anybody to recognize him.

He'd cut his hair, too. He'd had a barber do it, watching closely with his Copy Wheel on the shop's mirror so he could flawlessly do it himself after that. Rin approvingly told him he didn't look like a Madara clone anymore. Just Obito.

(He wasn't concerned with either the craftswoman or barber remembering his face. The entire experience would be a bit fuzzy for them, thanks to the illusion Obito kept up. It calmed them into not asking too many questions, and replaced his own face with an indistinct blur in their eyes. He'd paid them double because of that. It was one thing to disguise himself from a crowd of strangers, but another to mislead somebody he was working with.)

Obito followed when the ninjas who'd visited Rin earlier asked her to accompany them. Again, she brushed off his fretting, this time saying the Three-Tails didn't sense any hatred. The ninjas simply took her to their clan leader, a woman in her mid-forties just barely old enough to remember the genocide. Rin spent a long time talking with her. The other ninja kept trying to talk to him while he waited, so he just warped away.

When she was finally ready to leave, she cupped her hands and whistled loudly for him.

"I'm not a dog," he said, appearing anyways, startling the clan head. Rin shrugged, smirked, and reached up to poke his mask. Her hand passed through him.

"Yeah," she said. "You're more like a ghost."

~oOo~

Rin was trying to distract herself with a magazine. They were leaving tomorrow. She'd gotten her dream (sort of) of seeing her clan's homeland. Now she needed to help save the world. Now she needed to reach Hidden Rain with Obito.

She was terrified. To reach Rain by land meant crossing the Land of Waterfalls.

Hidden Cloud and Hidden Stone had treated Marsh Country as a military front, a point of strategic interest in the First World War. They'd been hostile and cruel towards Marsh's people. But it was Hidden Waterfall that'd slaughtered the inhabitants, harvesting every human they could to power their forbidden techniques.

Waterfall had never been punished. They'd never apologized, and never paid more than a sliver of a fraction of what they owed to the survivors. They'd spent the war as monsters, and never stopped. Rumors said they still practiced forbidden techniques, capturing and sacrificing every enemy ninja who crossed their borders.

Obito and her could always go further south, and cross the Land of Fire into Rain. But then Obito would be terrified.

"Obito?" she asked when he appeared again. Sometimes he spent whole afternoons in Authority. Whenever she asked him why, he'd always say he was just thinking.

"Yeah?" he responded.

"Are you willing to reach Rain through Fire?"

She assumed he was thinking about it. He rarely took off the mask since he'd gotten it.

"I'd rather not."

"Okay. I really don't want to go through Waterfall," she said. "I know I said I wanted to walk, but could you just warp us to Grass first?"

He nodded. He was grateful she didn't ask where he'd been this time. He was honestly in sort of a good mood right now, and he was afraid of explaining that he didn't like being here anymore. There were too many people. He was caught between instinctively, routinely stretching out his senses and how utterly tiring it was feeling 250,000 lives around him, how the sheer number of them overwhelmed all that made them unique, until they just felt like blank Zetsus, and how every alarm went off in his head when they did. In his worst moments, when it grew so bad he had to retreat into his dimension, he worried that if Rin were to try talking to him right then, she'd feel like a Zetsu, too.

"Thanks," she said. It was easier to read her magazine now that she wasn't fretting anymore. They were leaving tomorrow, heading straight for Hidden Rain. This was the last major city before leaving Marsh Country's borders, so this was the only place she'd be able to buy something like this for some time.

South Marsh was an odd mishmash of the cosmopolitan and the quaint. Despite being the second-largest city in Marsh Country, it still wasn't electrified. There were a few gas lamps in the densest parts of the city, but here on the outskirts Rin stood out in the twilight, reading her magazine by Fire Lamp technique on a bench. The magazine itself had been bought from a small store. It'd had magazines, glossy in wire racks, but they were a month out-of-date, and had only a couple copies of any given issue. Rin had watched as a group of teens, a little younger than herself, all pooled their money to buy one, which they eagerly shared. Watching them, Rin had realized how much she wanted to go home. Even when she couldn't.

"If life gives you lemons, what do you do?" she read aloud from her magazine.

"Make lemonade, of course," he said. He was suppressing his two years of training with Madara, forcing himself not to routinely sense everything. It was a bit like trying not to take a deep breath after emerging from a pool. He was in a good mood and he didn't want to ruin it with his paranoia. "What else are you gonna do?" He moved next to her. "Is this a personality quiz? Those things never get me right."

"That's because you lie and pick the answers that make you look good." She glanced at him. "I'll put you down for 'Throw them out and complain'."

He scowled at her, though she couldn't see it through the mask. "I would not."

She wanted to remind him he already had. For his eleventh birthday, Kakashi had gotten Obito a token gift — a replica of the Fire Shadow's official stamp (minus the sealing techniques that made the real one unique, of course). Obito, assuming Kakashi was mocking his dream of being Fire Shadow, had thrown it out, and loudly complained to Rin about it until she made him dig it out of the trash and thank Kakashi.

But Kakashi was still too raw a loss for both of them. She stuffed the magazine into her pack. She wasn't in the mood for it anymore.

~oOo~

It was night. Rin couldn't sleep and Obito didn't need to. They were quietly sitting on the edge of a bridge, sometimes staring at the sky, sometimes staring at the marsh several feet below them.

"I'm gonna leave. I don't like being out in the open," said Obito. I don't like feeling Zetsus everywhere and looking at you and seeing your death. His own dimension was the only place he felt safe enough to turn off his Kaleidoscope.

Rin kept looking at the stars. "I'm gonna stay. I like it out here."

"You should—"

"I'll be fine, Obito," she insisted, now turning to look at him. "We've been here for two weeks and nothing's happened. I'm a special jounin and I've been on more field missions than you have."

Obito nodded, slowly, and left.

The Three-Tails roared and it was like a glacier splitting in half. It was screaming like the night the living curse attacked. Something bad's coming.

"Shut up and tell me wherever it is," she said to the Three-Tails.

"No," it said, "I've had quite enough of you putting us in danger."

Rin was almost used to it. Its refusal hit her less like a tsunami and more like a rough patch of whitewater. She was getting better at swimming against the current.

"Too bad. It's my body and you're just along for the ride," she told it. She leapt to the top of the closest building.

The farthest edge of the city was burning.

~oOo~

It was the fastest Rin had ever run. She reached the already-dying flames and saw someone standing in the center of a pile of corpses.

It was a man, wearing black pants paired with a loose, open shirt, and holding a red, three-pronged scythe. He had gray hair, though he looked relatively young—maybe only a decade older than Rin.

He faced her as soon as she arrived. Killing intent cut into her. He projected it so casually, so easily, that Rin instinctively stepped back. It wasn't how strong it was, just the speed with which the man saw her and decided he wanted her dead.

Rin sent out five water clones, four pulling injured civilians away, one immediately charging the enemy. (Clones, mercifully, couldn't feel killing intent. They weren't even alive in the first place.) Rin herself stood at the ready. She was waiting to see how her clone fared.

"So this city does have ninjas," the man said as her clone attacked. "Thank fuck for that. I know some of the other priests disagree with me," he continued, boredly dodging the water clone's attacks, casually signing a fireball technique in between blocking her kunai with his scythe's staff. "But I really do think Jashin prefers quality sacrifices."

The fireball hit a Water Fang Bullet with enough power to turn it to steam and continue on to hit Rin's clone. "Hard-earned deaths gotta be more fuckin' valuable than these," he said, gesturing to the dozen or so corpses around him, "cheap-ass kills."

Rin was worried. The man had signed with only one hand, and spaced out the signs—make one sign, swing his scythe, make another—so he could still fight. She didn't even know you could do that.

"Hey!" the man whipped his head around, looking at an injured woman one of Rin's clones was approaching. Rin felt the killing intent disappear. The civilian gasped and cringed, and she knew the woman was now feeling it. Rin was doubly worried now, because killing intent was always personal; it took a real emotional investment in the violent death of your target. It shouldn't be possible to snap it around that casually.

The man flung his scythe at the woman. It was still connected to him by a thick, metallic rope that ran up his right sleeve. (It was probably a storage seal.) Rin charged at him as soon at the weapon was out of his hand while her clone dashed forward to intercept the blow.

This man was attacking South Marsh. He was another monster, taking another part of her heritage.

Her clone blocked the hit, stumbling back from the sheer force. (He'd barely flicked his own arm to throw. The cord connecting him to the scythe moved it for him. He was probably controlling it with his chakra.) It was destroyed anyways with a follow-up fire technique, her clone taking the blow for the civilian.

Before Rin had closed the distance, she'd run into his cord, which suddenly had a lot more slack—enough to twist and bend to block any thrown kunai and keep her from getting closer. She saw she wouldn't reach him in time to take advantage of his weaponless state. She signed to body swap with a water clone even as he pulled his scythe back into his hands and his killing intent snapped back to her.

He dashed forward to cut her down. It was very close. Rin wasn't the fastest signer, but she swapped just before he swung his scythe into her. His scythe sliced into her clone and it burst into water.

She ran forward, approaching from his side and signing for a Water Prison made from the water her clone had left, but, again with one hand, he signed a fire technique and evaporated the water. She kept running forward anyways, closing the distance as much as she could. Close combat wasn't her forte, but a scythe would be awkward to use within punching range.

The scythe's cord came at her. She sliced at it with her chakra scalpel, but couldn't cut it; it actively repelled her chakra. (It either had seals or it was just incredibly dense with chakra.) She did manage to knock it away, and she fended it off and forced her way forward.

The man had already been smiling but his smile grew wider as she fought him.

"The best sacrifices always fight back," he said. He caught the kunai she was thrusting at his face in between the prongs of his scythe and swept the staff outwards, knocking her off her feet. Even as she fell, she signed an illusion, rolling left while the illusion made him think she'd rolled right. The scythe's head came down with her, cutting into the ground.

The cord moved the scythe for him, pulling it back up faster than any arm could. While the scythe lifted back into his left hand, with his right he blurred through signs and spat a stream of fire at the illusion-Rin.

This was the awkward part. Constant small illusions, like what she'd just done, could give her an edge in combat. They also took effort to maintain. It was massively distracting, splitting her attention between keeping the illusion up while still fighting normally. It could easily slow her down enough to negate any advantage.

She still managed to slam a kunai into his jugular. He turned and blinked at her. Pain—real pain, not illusory pain—could often break illusions.

"Huh," he said. "You're actually half-decent. Looks like I have to get serious."

Rin tried to leap back from the unknown. He should be dying and unable to talk, given the wound in his neck. Not standing and speaking.

He was too fast. Rin was unprepared—she was only a special jounin, and close combat and sheer speed had never been her thing. The scythe's cord wrapped itself around her feet, holding her in place, even as he swung the scythe into her sideways.

A clone swapped with her. It'd barely been fast enough. Rin felt her arm bleeding.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw armed civilians approaching them. "Stay back! You can't handle him!" she yelled at them.

"Wow, you're mean," the man complained.

Rin wasn't sure if he meant her implying the city's defenders were weak or denying him more kills.

"Who are you? Why are you doing this?" she demanded. "What do you want?!"

"I'm Hidan," he said, seemingly pleased to be introducing himself. "Just a faithful priest of Jashin and a simple pilgrim, preaching the word of death to the living."

"You're doing this for a cult?!" she shouted.

"We are not a fucking cult!" he objected. "Jashin is real!" He looked thoughtful for a moment. "The god of death is real. Violence is his worship. And ninjas are pilgrims of death in a world of the living."

Rin thought that sounded exactly like something a cult would say.

"You've been clever so far," Hidan said, letting go of his scythe and leaning it against his chest, "but death still comes for us all." He put his hands together in a mockery of prayer.

Rin and the last two of her clones rushed him in that moment. They hit him all at once. The two clones drove kunai between his ribs and deep into his right eye, while the real Rin hit him with Paralyzing Current. It was a precaution, since he seemed to handle normally lethal injuries just fine. This way, the other two could attack him until he really did die, while he remained helpless.

"Well I guess that answers that question," said Hidan, clearly unconcerned. He hadn't even bothered trying to slow her down with his cord. "Guess I can't be paralyzed. By the way, thanks for the blood," he said, nodding towards the cut in her shoulder.

Hidan didn't attack. Instead, a seal spread out around his feet. His skin changed color, turning pitch black, with white tattoos forming a crude skeleton across his body.

"Curse Seal: Death's Blood Possession"

Rin felt electricity coursing through her. What?

Her upper right side and her right eye hurt like somebody had just jammed kunai into them.

"Aw, it was too late for you to stab yourself," Hidan said, sounding very disappointed. "But feel free to keep wiggling those fucking kunai around in me."

Rin released the current (she could still control her chakra, even paralyzed), and leapt backwards. Hidan put his hands on his scythe, and pivoted it into his own side.

What?!

Rin's clones burst into water and she landed on the ground. She was bleeding. Something had ripped into her left side, and it hurt like hell.

"Ugh, fuck," she grunted, signing an illusion to hide the pain from herself. She stood up. With her right hand, she held a kunai at the ready, and with her left she pressed healing chakra into her wound.

"You know, I'm feeling real generous tonight," Hidan said. "So how about I show you fuckers the next stage? Everyone should have the honor of being consumed by Jashin!"

Again he pressed his hands together. "Curse Seal: Death's Controlling Doom."

The seal around his feet lifted up from the ground like an oily snake, bleeding red haze. It writhed, like it was alive. It grew, encompassing the small island they were on, the marshy water around it, and the buildings across from that. Like the smaller one, it formed a circle, containing a perfect triangle with points touching the inside edges.

"Agh, fuck, this hurts," he whined, picking the kunai out of his body.

Rin shuddered at the pain she felt, but quickly built up the numbing illusion. Taking away the pain didn't improve her chances much. She could be distracted by the pain or distracted with maintaining her own illusion.

"Is that another living curse?" she asked the Three-Tails. It'd been mercifully quiet during the actual fight—it wasn't stupid enough to try and bother her in combat, thank the sages— though when she listened she could still hear the storm in her head.

"The man himself is a living curse. What you see is merely an expansion of what he already is," it answered.

That wasn't a very helpful answer, but then again, it hadn't been an especially helpful question.

Now she felt a second killing intent, coming from the seal itself, and the feeling was soon joined by growing horror at what she was facing.

"Jashin is hungry," declared Hidan. "And it looks like I'm absolutely fucking right. Death really does prefer quality. None of the poor shits from before were enough."

Obito appeared at her side. Hidan shot a fireball at them. It passed through them.

"He's standing on a curse seal, so if he's hurt, so am I," she said in a single breath. Obito nodded.

Quietly, she asked him, "Is there anything you can do?"

"I don't know," he answered, speaking via illusion.

Rin, unfortunately, couldn't do two illusions at once and had to talk normally. "Can't you warp the scythe out of his hands and move him off the seal?"

"I can't warp anything without phasing us back in," he said. "Even with two Kaleidoscopes."

Well that sucked. Untouchability combined with an unstoppable interdimensional attack sounded really nice at the moment.

"I don't know how you're still standing just after body flickering. And was that fireball-passing-through thing an illusion? That's a nice skill," said Hidan, dropping his scythe. Then he pulled a short rod out of another storage seal in his sleeve and flicked it, tripling its length with two spikes popping out of both ends.

Hidan narrowed his eyes. The killing intents spread to both Obito and Rin. "You know what else is nice? You're standing inside my seal."

Hidan stabbed himself through the femur. Rin screamed as a hole appeared through her right thigh, but the pain was swiftly numbed by an illusion from Obito. No longer distracted by the pain, she heard screams from nearby. How many civilians were inside the circle?

Hidan stared at them. Probably because Obito was totally silent and motionless. "Are you a damned ghost?" the man asked.

Obito shrugged. "I guess you never thought you'd meet another unkillable ninja," he said blandly. Getting stabbed like that actually did hurt, though that was being smothered by the same illusion he was using on Rin. But his right half was still plant, and getting stabbed through there wasn't that big of a deal. (Especially now that he knew he could survive getting his heart ripped out.)

"We'll see about that," said Hidan, smirking. He signed.

"Fire Release: Funeral Pyre."

Hidan was on fire and they were all burning.

Obito tried to call out to Rin, but the sheer intensity of the flames overwhelmed him, burning him so fast he could only focus on staying alive.

The fire grew and spread past the seal.

"Oh yeah, that's the good shit!" said Hidan. He was still standing and speaking, little more than a skeleton with embers in his ribcage. "But I'm just getting started!"

He clasped his bony hands together. The seal grew even more, encompassing more of the city.

"Curse Seal: Consumption Rebirth."

Hidan's body grew back. People outside of the fire were screaming and Rin knew he was sacrificing them to rebuild his body. Then Hidan's body kept burning, and he endlessly pulled lives away to keep healing.

Obito couldn't process anything. He didn't want to use Izanagi, so he was pouring everything he had into growing his own body back. He was rapidly draining his reserves, and he might have to use Izanagi once he was out anyways. He didn't even notice the spike in chakra right next to him.

Rin was calling the Three-Tails, asking for power. Its sea smothered the fire. Its current pulled her down and she couldn't hear any more screams or feel any more pain.

Hidan felt the girl's chakra grow, so strong even a non-sensor like him could feel it, and he only grew more excited. Then the most incredible killing intent slammed into him. He almost staggered. It made him laugh, because this was pure joy.

"Who better to sacrifice to Jashin than one who seeks to kill?" he said. Hidan had never felt this much killing intent. He'd almost drowned for a moment, but it was magnificent, like swimming in blood. This was why he'd become a ninja. "So come at me!" he said, spreading his arms in welcome.

Rin charged Hidan, three tails of chakra growing out of her. She slammed into him and more people screamed. Rin snarled as the monster's chakra hurt both of them. Obito drained his reserves faster.

She bulldozed Hidan off his own seal. It moved to follow him, but the water around Rin rose up to the seal's level and tailed beast chakra poured into it, smothering the seal with a foreign power.

When they were outside the city, Rin slammed him into the water with one hand, trapping him in a Water Prison. She reared her head back and forced more power than she'd ever felt into a single point just above her. She tilted her head back down, the solid sphere of chakra lowering with her face, and fired.

Hidan was incinerated. There was no tsunami from the explosion as the water around her simply vaporized.

Rin walked to the closest island and collapsed.

~oOo~

It took a while for Obito to heal and even longer for Rin to wake up.

"Rin?"

Rin opened her eyes. She was sore all over. "Obito?"

"Are you okay?"

She frowned. "How many died?" She assumed Obito had a rough idea, just from how many fewer lives he sensed.

He hesitated. "Over a thousand."

Rin closed her eyes again. She'd only been in South Marsh for two weeks, but it was a part of her heritage. This land was something precious to her.

Hadn't everyone suffered enough?

"When it rains, it pours," she mumbled to herself.

~oOo~

Rin healed as many as she could after the attack. Which is to say, she didn't heal nearly enough. Obito rebuilt as many burnt-out buildings as he could with wood release.

Rin had to take breaks. Healing was slow and careful going, interacting with patients was draining, and her chakra reserves had never been particularly large. She felt exhausted in every possible way. It'd been a long time since she felt like that. If all she needed was more chakra, if she weren't so burnt-out, she'd be tempted to call up the Three-Tails for more chakra. But only tempted. She remembered the burning feeling of the Three-Tails healing her the night Black Zetsu attacked, and the feeling of her own skin dissolving into the monster's chakra as it coated her last night. Her skin was still raw from that. She didn't trust its chakra to heal.

"Why did you let me go last night?" she asked the Three-Tails during her first break. "You could've taken over."

"You think your friend would've left me alone? He would've chased me to the edges of the world, either to save you or capture me for the Moon's Eye. And if not him, then Hidden Mist, who believe they 'own' me," it rumbled. "You are the least awful human out of all of them."

"Thanks?" she said. It wasn't much of a compliment. "I guess I don't have to ask your opinion about humans."

"All humans are vile," it said.

"That's a bit much," she said defensively.

"The killing intent flowing through you last night? It wasn't mine. It was all yours."

Rin frowned at that.

"All humans are vile, and inside every one of them is Hidan," it continued.

"That's not true!" she shouted back at it.

"Ha!" it rumbled like a thunderstorm. "I have been on this earth for 5,700 years. Each generation of humans has treated me the same. They beat plowshares into swords and turn fishing boats into warships. And every one of them— yes, including you—looks at me, at the sea itself given form, and sees me not as a great well of life, but a means of violence and domination."

Rin didn't know what to say. It was a harsher take on humanity than she'd heard before, but it didn't sting that much. Because...

Because she saw the Three-Tails as a tool and a burden, not a living, worldly being. She sighed. It was right.

"I'm sorry," she apologized. It didn't answer back.

Rin went back to work. She was a ninja. Even self-assigned, this was still a mission to her.

Obito disappeared shortly after her talk with the Three-Tails. He didn't know how to heal. He reappeared when she sat down for another break.

"There are others like Hidan," Obito said.

Rin froze, then slowly turned to face him, staring at him intensely. "Others?"

"I mean, in general. I visited Madara's archives. The 'Cult of Jashin' has been around for a while."

"Are they all immortal?"

"No, that's a, uh, resource-intensive process," he said awkwardly.

"What sort of process?" she said tersely.

"Jashin demands—"

"Jashin isn't real," she bit out. She refused to believe a god that evil existed.

He paused at that. "A cult member can obtain immortality by killing 4,000 people," he finally said.

She just stared at him.

"Only the most devout priests ever go on such a, uh, 'pilgrimage' as they call it. They're very rare. Even making just a small army of immortals like that would cost too many people; they'd be noticed and stopped before they finished."

"How often have they needed to be stopped?"

"Every few decades another one wanders out of the Land of Steam."

Rin didn't know much about Steam Country, other than it was famous for its many hot springs and geysers.

"Can they be stopped without..." Rin choked, "without a tailed beast?"

"They can't be killed, but they can be imprisoned. If they stop killing, Jash—the immortality eventually fades and they die normally."

Rin nodded. "Thanks."

"Rin?" asked Obito, concerned. Under his mask, he was frowning. He had a suspicion... Had Rin been channeling killing intent last night? It was the first time he ever thought she had. He could only guess—he'd been occupied with healing himself, and it was hard, even for a sensor like him, to detect killing intent that wasn't aimed at him— but he didn't like the idea. Rin was willing and more than able to use violence if she felt she needed to. But she'd never been driven by the need to brutalize her enemy.

"It's fine, I'm not gonna go running off to slaughter them, if that's what you're asking," Rin said, guessing his worries. "But if I see an opportunity, I'm taking every damned one of them down. They're no different than Waterfall."

Obito was all right with that. They were unlikely to run into any Jashin cultists again. He didn't like it when Rin lost control to the Three-Tails, and he absolutely knew she'd use it on them.

~oOo~

It was another night. Rin still couldn't sleep and Obito still didn't need to. They vigilantly patrolled the city.

The Three-Tails' voice snapped, like a frozen lake with too much weight on it. "Hidan is back."

"What?!"

Obito had sensed Hidan, too, and warped her to him. Rin couldn't see like Obito could in the dark, and made a Fire Lamp. (Last night, she'd been surrounded by the handful of gas lamps in the densest part of the city.)

Hidan strode out of the marsh, walking on water, and into the light.

"All right you fucking motherfuckers, I'm absolutely pissed. Do you know what I had to promise Jashin to get him to bring me back? I have to make the Holy Pilgrimage all over again! Do you have any fucking idea what I have to do to rack up that many kills? I can't take my time to savor the unique deaths anymore—no fun at all!" He paused, then smirked. "Not that I really mind the killing."

Hidan was already coated in black and highlighted in white.

"Don't! The curse seal!" the Three-Tails boomed, but before Rin could say anything, Obito sucked the arm holding Hidan's scythe into Authority.

Both Obito and Rin fell to their knees in pain. Both their right arms were missing.

"Ah-ah-ah, kids," gloated Hidan. "I don't know what that technique was, but I do know that you are fucked."

The curse seal rose up around them from the water.

~oOo~

Rin was on her hand and knees in pain. She blinked, and she saw craggy tide pools under her hand. She looked up and saw the Three-Tails.

Rin's upper left arm carried the Three-Tails' seal. It was what Madara called a "Two-Element Seal," and it was nothing more than a yin-yang symbol, circled by some writing. It felt like blood was gushing from it. But when she looked at the ground beneath her, it was stained with ink and not blood.

"Do you want him dead?" the Three-Tails rumbled.

Rin kept staring at the blackening rock by her hand. "He can't be killed," she mumbled. "And it won't bring anyone back."

"I can bring destruction to those who deserve it. So I'm offering you. Give yourself to me completely. You can end his cruelty and violence, if you let me." Finished, the Three-Tails quietly stared at her with its one open eye.

After a long silence, she looked up at it. "I want him stopped. For good," she said, face grim.

The tide rose. It rose and kept rising, the dock floating higher and higher, until the ocean was taller than even the Three-Tail's head. Rin let the tide push her past the chain seal towards the beast. Both its eyes were open and burning red. It clapped its paws together, crushing her between them.

All she felt was ocean.

~oOo~

Obito saw Rin dive underwater. Her chakra—no, the monster's—spiked, then kept going up and up and up.

Obito was worried. This was what the Nine-Tails had felt like. (It wasn't quite as much chakra, technically. It was like comparing a large sea to the entire ocean. One was definitely bigger, but both were so far out of scale with mere humans that it didn't matter.) Had she given herself to the monster completely?

The water swelled up beneath them, and a massive pair of jaws crashed into Hidan from below.

Hidan leapt out of reach and signed. Obito immediately warped out of the seal's range, recognizing the handsigns.

"Funeral Pyre."

Hidan caught fire but nothing else happened. The Three-Tailed Turtle remained untouched, massive and impervious. It roared and charged Hidan.

"YOU THINK YOU CAN SET FIRE TO THE SEA?" it roared in a horrible mix of Rin and the monster's voices.

Hidan dashed out of reach, laughing, body rapidly reducing to ash-covered bones. It made him look even more like death. He signed and pointed at the monster. "Lightning Release: Fire Starter!" he crowed.

Lightning struck the Three-Tails. Small tongues of flame sprang up where it hit, but they were quickly smothered by the water chakra that constantly leaked from monster's shell. It roared in pain and fired a ball of solid water chakra at Hidan.

He dodged it easily. The Three-Tails dove underwater. Hidan landed on the water, pyre extinguishing, and held his hand before his chest, praying with one hand.

"Curse Seal: Consumption Rebirth," Hidan said. His body healed in a moment. He grimaced. "I know, I know, Jashin. I owe you four-thousand and one sacrifices now."

The water swelled up around him. He leapt as high as he could into the air, his hands already done signing another Fire Starter. The swell grew faster and higher, meeting him a dozen yards in the air. A massive clawed foot reached out and grabbed his legs.

"Drown."

It was Rin's voice only. The monster pulled him down to the bottom of the marsh, underneath the swell.

Hidan found that he couldn't move. Chakra bled into him from the water, neutralizing his own chakra and sucking the heat from his body. Water Prison. He wasn't worried in the slightest. He couldn't drown; he was immortal!

Then he felt the chakra get denser. The monster poured chakra into the prison. It kept pouring until even Hidan could tell his prison held more chakra than the monster. Or maybe that was just because it was smothering him until he couldn't tell.

Rin felt all the monster's power drain away into the prison. Then she was left, standing on the bottom of the marsh, her hand on a Water Prison so thick with chakra it was physically glowing and she couldn't even see Hidan inside it. (She was a ninja, she could last a while underwater.) She tentatively pulled her hand off the prison. It remained even after she broke contact with it, sustained by the sheer amount of chakra it already contained.

She swam up to the surface and stood on it.

"That Water Prison will last for half a century," the Three Tails told her.

"Was that all your power?" she asked it. How much had it sacrificed to make that Water Prison?

"I sacrificed nothing. My reserves are infinite, the same as any other tailed beast," it answered.

"But the Nine-Tails—"

"That Water Prison contains my total output over half a minute. Those with fewer tails can push out less. Those with more tails can push out more."

"Rin?" Obito interrupted. She blinked and he was standing on the surface next to her. His arm was already growing back. Rin guessed hers had grown back when she transformed into the Three-Tails.

"I'm fine, Obito," she said. She glanced down at the water. "Did you read how long it takes for their immortality to wear off?"

"One or two years, at most."

She smiled wearily at him. "He's not a problem anymore, then."

They went to Obito's dimension. Rin was tired and she wanted to sleep.

~oOo~

Rin couldn't sleep. She was bone-tired and restless.

She needed someone to talk to. Not Obito, someone older. An elder.

After her grandmother, there was one she wanted to talk to more than anything else. Someone she believed had the answers she desperately needed.

She pulled the crane contract out of her pack. She knew reverse-summoning was possible. And she'd done this before, when she'd first signed the contract almost a year ago. She unscrolled it and pressed her hand where she'd pressed it the first time, and thought as hard as she could for the cranes.

In a puff of smoke, she was in Kushiro Marsh. It was daytime here, but overcast and snowing. She concentrated for a moment, building up fire chakra in her body to counter the cold.

She didn't see any cranes, so she just kept wandering.

"Can you tell me where the Empress is?" she asked the Three-Tails.

"You are being frivolous," it said. "And no."

"I'm being human," she insisted. She started running across the water, hoping to run into someone. She did, very nearly smacking into Aitenojotei's legs.

"Rin?" the giant crane asked. "What are you doing here? Is something wrong?"

"Something bad happened, and I need somebody—like, an elder—to talk to," she said.

"I'm available," he said.

"Um, I was really hoping for the Empress."

He stared at her for a moment. "I have no authority—"

"Fuck your authority! I'm just—Marsh was attacked and hundreds died and I just need..." she trailed off. She was trying not to cry. She was on the verge of breaking. She'd handled being stuck underground with a dangerous hermit and a fucked-up friend, she'd shrugged it off, looking towards to a better future. She'd handled the Three-Tails, being attacked by and attacking her best friend in turn, but now it was all weighing down on her and she just couldn't shrug it off anymore.

Aitenojotei looked over his shoulder, where the freezing mist was thickest. It was like he was silently asking for permission.

"Kindness in a cruel age," he mumbled, so quiet that Rin didn't quite pick up the words.

"What?"

He looked back at Rin. "Hop on," he said, bending down to her. "I'll take you."

~oOo~

The snowy mist was actually thicker than her mindscape's.

"Does she really live here?" Rin asked. She'd never traveled this far into Kushiro Marsh.

"Her Imperial Majesty Tanchoujotei is very old, and still has many duties," said Aitenojotei. "At times she prefers solitude. And we're here, so you should get off now."

Rin jumped down to the water, splashing a little because she was tired and jumping on the water's surface was harder than walking on it.

"Your Imperial Majesty," said Aitenojotei, "One of our summoners would like an audience with you."

"Which one?" a voice said in the mist.

He was silent for a moment. "We've only had one in the last forty years," he said softly. Then, louder, "Rin Nohara."

"Is this the same Miss Nohara whom my daughter was complaining about?"

Rin felt very self-conscious now.

"Indeed."

"And what is so important that she interrupts my rest after walking in the Grey Lands?"

Rin's eyes bugged out. The Empress could go in the Grey Lands? And come back out just like that?

"War," he said simply. The mist seemed to loom closer.

Rin was even more uncomfortable now because she didn't think of it as a war.

"I'm tired of war, Aitenojotei. When you find me a summoner who is as tired of fighting as I am, then you should bring them to me," said the Empress.

"I don't want a war council or anything!" Rin burst out. "I just... I don't know what I'm supposed to fight for anymore."

There was silence for a moment. Rin was afraid she'd overstepped her bounds. Well, more than she already had by coming here.

"Tell me, young Rin, do you know of Kouketsu and Chuujitsu Nohara? They knew the value of violence: nothing."

"Yes!" Rin said, excited to hear the Empress mention her family, despite how tired she was. "They're my grandmother and great-aunt!"

"Then the Nohara have changed. I'm disappointed. The old Nohara clan would've never become fighting ninja."

"That's not fair!" Rin cried out. "They refused to fight and they still died! The couldn't even defend themselves! They couldn't even defend the people they were supposed to be helping! That's why I'm a ninja! So I can protect myself, and others!"

The mist grew thicker and closer. Rin wondered, if she reached out and touched it, would it feel like a crane's feathers?

"I just..." Rin started. "I just don't know if it matters anymore."

"Tell me who you've protected, young Rin," said the Empress.

~oOo~

Dan Kato stepped up to the podium. Every jounin stood at rapt attention.

"I know I'm not Minato Namikaze," Dan said. "I wasn't chosen before him, and was only reluctantly chosen after."

The Three Greats, Lord Third, the heads of the Four Noble Clans of Hidden Leaf, and Kushina Uzumaki stood behind him.

"I'm a poor replacement for a ninja who was truly great. I know that, you know that.

"But Hidden Leaf itself remains great. I'm only as strong as you are. We stand greater than we ever could alone. That's the Will of Fire, and every Fire Shadow before, and every Fire Shadow after, believes in that." Dan paused.

"Minato Namikaze hoped to bridge the gap between nations. I'm the lesser man, and can only dream of bridging the gaps within us.

"I hope to bridge the gap between clans and the clanless," continued Dan. "I am both. I was born clanless, but with a bloodline. I grew up with no clan, and now grow old as a Senju."

Behind him, Kushina snorted. Forty was hardly "old". Especially by Uzumaki standards.

Dan continued for only a little longer. It wasn't much of a speech. He was a little surprised he'd gotten so many jounin votes, actually. Perhaps they recognized the qualities a Fire Shadow needed to lead Hidden Leaf.

Dan was not a violent man, but he was prepared to do violence to protect what he believed in.

That's what being Fire Shadow was all about. True, violence should be avoided if at all possible, but the Fire Shadow was a military leader, and it was their fundamental purpose to channel the collective will to violence of the almost one million ninjas of Hidden Leaf as productively as possible. To protect what was worth saving.

~oOo~

Behind him, Fugaku was silent, outwardly calm, and inwardly furious. The Uchiha had been cheated—again—out of the Fire Shadow office. They were the greatest clan in all of Fire Country! The role of Fire Shadow was owed to them.

The jounins' choice for the new Fire Shadow was doubly infuriating. The first two Fire Shadows had already been Senju, and the third was their student, which was practically the same thing. (The third was also a Sarutobi, which meant two of the Four Noble Clans of Hidden Leaf had preceded the Uchiha.) The fourth had been some no-name civilian-born kid—no clan at all! A clanless ninja picked before the great Uchiha! Now the Fifth Fire Shadow was both civilian-born and married into the Senju.

Yes, technically, Dan Kato had a bloodline. A new bloodline, one nobody had ever seen before but was frighteningly powerful. Fugaku dismissed this. Proper bloodlines were obvious and would manifest even without ninja training. But Dan's "bloodline" hadn't manifested until he was already an experienced chunin, and it'd appeared slowly in fits and spurts—less like a bloodline and more like any old ninja skill. He and his sister were the first in their family to become ninjas. No one knew if they were the first of a new bloodline, or if the Kato had always had it, hidden even from themselves.

It made Dan soft, like Minato had been. Fugaku appreciated violence because he had millennia of heritage to interpret it through. Clanless ninjas were interlopers in a sprawling, eternal history of war.

Not that Fugaku was an inherently violent man. If violence was truly a natural instinct, like some fools believed, then humanity would've killed itself off at the very start. Violence was merely the greatest tool a ninja had. The will to violence was more important than any killing intent. Many ninjas never honed their killing intent into a weapon, but all ninjas (all real ninjas at least) used violence.

Killing intent was by its nature very personal, a manifestation of your monstrous desire to hurt the person in front of you, to make them suffer and die violently. Many ninjas preferred detached professionalism—their actions were never personal, just necessary. But at the end of the day, hateful and impersonal ninjas alike destroyed their enemies. Violence was every true ninjas' specialty, and they were exceedingly good at it.

Because violence was the only power that mattered.

~oOo~

Rin talked. She talked about everything, about the Marsh Country genocide, about her choice to become a ninja, about the Three-Tails, about Madara, about Obito, but most of all she talked about Hidan. Because out of all of these things, Hidan was the only one she couldn't understand. The other things were sometimes personal, sometimes terrifying, but she could grasp their purpose. Hidan was an aberration, one so alien and pointlessly horrifying she couldn't fathom why he'd done what he had.

When she was done, the Empress spoke. "All ninjas are defined by violence. It is their sole reason for existing."

"But—"

"They value it so much, they forbid civilians from learning how to wield chakra. They were given a gift that is capable of anything—healing as easily as it hurts, creating as easily as it destroys, bringing comfort as easily as pain—and can conceive of it only as a weapon.

"After 5,000 years of turning peace into war, of taking plowshares and beating them into swords, you have the gall to come here and ask why one ninja literally worships violence? Practice the art of war enough, and you birth a cult of violence. Hidan was an inevitability, not an aberration."

Rin stood there gaping. The Empress' words echoed the Three-Tails', but she couldn't brush them off this time. The Empress' gravity held her in a way even the Three-Tails couldn't.

"I'm sorry," Rin finally said, quietly. It was all she could think to say. Before today, she'd never thought about her world like that.

The Empress sighed wearily.

"You are very young, Rin. You never thought to question the very system you exist within because no one ever taught you how," she said.

"There isn't anything right I can do, is there?" Rin half-asked, mostly-stated in a quiet voice. "If I stop being a ninja, I'll just get killed. If I keep being a ninja, I kill others. I can't change anything."

"I never said you couldn't defend yourself," said the Empress. "And you can do something."

"Like what?" asked Rin. It probably wasn't anything good.

"You cannot move the world. No one can—not alone. And if you were to accuse it, righteously, no one would listen. But you can live in dissent. Be human in this most inhuman of ages. Be merciful in this cruel age. Listen to the people others throw away."

Rin stood in silence. It was all she could do.

"You should go now," said the Empress. "I have nothing more to say and you have nothing more to do. Spending the night awake will not make your crisis, or the world, any better."

Rin bowed, thanked her, and left. Thanked the Empress for what, she wasn't sure. The world seemed a lot bigger now, and not in a good way. More like she'd realized the small weight pressing down on her was actually an enormous mountain, so vast she couldn't really comprehend it, and there was nothing she could do. She would never get out from under it.

In a puff of smoke, Rin reappeared back in Obito's dimension.

"How'd it go?" asked Obito.

"I'm tired and I don't wanna talk about it." She flumped down next to him.

"Oh. Okay," he said.

At least she had company, stuck under this massive weight.

~oOo~

Author's Notes:

Mercy in a cruel age. Human in an inhuman time. That is why I'll never write a "dark" Naruto. You can't destroy a system without rejecting the very terms it tries to set.

The challenge of this story is that it unironically presents cool fight scenes, but also acknowledges that the only true happy ending is one where fighting is no longer the ultimate purpose of ninja, where Naruto doesn't grow up to feed his own children into the very system that destroyed his mother's clan and his best friend's clan. It's less a balancing act and more just blatant hypocrisy.

Part of the Empress' speech is adapted from a very well-known quote by Thomas Merton. It's one of my favorites.

And yes, I wrote it so that Obito's Kaleidoscope can't phase and warp at the same time, even with both eyes activated. I mean, he's already formidable with both abilities, letting him use them at the same time would make him grossly overpowered. I can write much more interesting fight scenes if Obito's constantly forced to choose between offense (projected warping), defense (either eye's phasing), and teleportation (personal warping).

It took me a while to figure out how to handle killing intent. It doesn't actually appear that much in canon—the Naruto wiki itself can only name two examples— but I don't mind the emphasis that other fanfics place on it. I just didn't want it to be a generic "badass projector," because for me, in a good fight scene, badassery is a quality to be actively demonstrated, not merely signaled. The way I imagine it, killing intent creates a sort of mild paranoia in the target, a simultaneous feeling of being hunted and that death is imminent. It's only crippling to an inexperienced ninja, or when its source is way out-of-scale compared to humans (e.g. the Nine-Tails), but even to experienced ninja it can still be a mild distraction and give a small edge in battle.

The way I use it in this story is a way to explore character. Hidan worships a god of death, so killing intent comes very easily for him. For most ninjas, on the other hand, killing intent requires a single-minded drive to attack their enemy (e.g. Zabuza). For others, they're too professional to ever get that emotionally invested in fighting an enemy (e.g. young Kakashi or any member of Root). Others just can't bring themselves to be that mean (e.g. Might Guy). When, and against whom, a person projects killing intent says something about their character. Not a whole lot, but it's a small detail I feel worth including.