LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER! So, Kabuto and Orochimaru totally attacked/betrayed Tsunade and went off to do nefarious things that involve using Naruto to break the seal to Otherworld because he's the only demon strong enough to do it on his own. Determined to save Hatsue, who Naruto believed to have been thrown inside the insidious Otherworld, Naruto breaks the barrier keeping the Otherworld Seam shut, but it turns out Hatsue wasn't even in Otherworld! She was outside the whole time, but now Naruto's acting all wonky because he just tossed her at Kabuto to force her into Otherworld and even went onto attack Sasuke! WHAT IS HAPPENING? (I did not include chapters before the last one because c10 and c8 have good summaries for it. Which reminds me, I still owe you summaries to make your life easier.)
xl: I apologize for the lengthy wait between updates. I'll try not to take so long next time...since I want to do to this story what I did with Redesign and spam you with updates until the story ends. I'm going to edit previous chapters, too. I gotta make it all as readable as possible for you guys.
Also, I was going to not post this until Friday, but I what is one day early? I owed it to you guys.
Expected another chapter this month (things are a little slow since I'm adjusting to school), which will hopefully be longer. This is basically me showing you what you should expect in the rest of the Otherworld Arc...which is going to be so much fun to write.
Thank you Aries01xD, AkashimaUchiha, and mikethepokemaster for reviewing. Thank you to everyone else that added this to their favorite/alert list, I appreciate the support.
I hope you enjoy the introduction to the second to last arc!
All I Wanted – The End of the World I
"If I told you what I was
Would you turn your back on me?
And if I seem dangerous,
Would you be scared?
I get the feeling just because
Everything I touch isn't dark enough
That this problem lies in me."
- - Imagine Dragons, "Monster"
( Part I )
Naruto did not understand the lesson. There were new symbols in the sorcery he could not decipher, though unraveling them was supposed to give him the biggest clue to solving the riddle from which the lesson was based.
He did not like it.
He was bored with it.
There were better things to do than sit around feeling stupid, but giving up was not one of his strong points. No matter how difficult or impossible the lesson was, he tried at it until he found a way. He came all this way at his previous master's request to learn from a talented Sage called Nagato, a man who like Jiraiya was a hermit.
"It is perfectly natural if you do not understand it," Nagato said, entering the spacious art studio where he had left Naruto. The walls were covered in blank canvases, several hanging as if they displayed the most wondrous work of art while others were left leaning against the wall. "That is the reason you are here. To learn."
Naruto sat in front of a long, wooden worktable surrounded by dozens of easels holding up empty canvases. Despite the encouragement, Naruto felt the urge to tear his hair out because the symbols sitting before him read like nonsense and nothing more. He did not understand the Sage magic, not well anyway. He had no gift for it. He understood his own natural abilities. Reading minds, reading faces. Those came to him as simply as breathing. Everything else was as foreign as learning a new language for the first time.
"I can do it," he told his teacher, refusing to give in. "I just need more time."
His redheaded instructor took a seat on the stool across him, setting his hands on the wooden surface. His eyes settled on Naruto's face and he was certain his instructor was reading him. Seeing in his expression, despite the determination set in it, that the task was proving difficult. Beyond Naruto's own expectation.
Naruto learned the basics in terms of the organic sorcery that was the Sage's strength with Jiraiya, but Nagato's lessons delved deeper. Into the intricacies Sage sorcery shared with the sorcery of any Otherworldly creature, whether it be dragon or fox. The three types of sorcery shared common ground, tracing back to like ancestors, which were presumed to be the extinct dragon race, the Tenryū.
But Naruto knew the tenryū race was not extinct. His mate was one and his best friend was another. Sadly, they had been caught by the Lotus Facility, an institute claiming to capture Otherworldly beings to keep the human population safe when they really wanted to use them to create stronger armies.
That was the reason he was here racking his brain over strange new formulas and Sage sorcery because he understood that he alone would not be enough to rescue Hatsue and Sasuke from that awful prison. Long ago, he was told he could not rely completely on his abilities as a kyūbi and that idea was absurd to him. Having nine tails and nine abilities, none of which he could use without dangerous consequences, was one of his greatest disappointments in life. It made him wonder what the point was in having been born a kyūbi if he would have so many restrictions. He figured it would have been easier to have been a Sage all his life…until this lesson gave him a preview of what that life would have been.
"You are fortunate, Naruto," Nagato began, smiling kindly. "Kyūbi are notorious for their falls. Being part-Sage gives you a great protection against that."
The kyūbi and their fall from grace had been the subject of one of his first lessons with Jiraiya. When Otherworld prospered, the Tenryū governed the skies as reapers, the Sages were the keepers of life within the forests, and the Kyūbi in the mountains were in between. The three species lived peacefully in Otherworld before the Tenryū Wars started.
Neutrality was important within the kyūbi. The body of a kyūbi was trained to stay half-mortal and half demon. It was better to stay more human than demon in their case because if the scale tipped in favor of the demon, a kyūbi became different. Their demon had a will and it had a proclivity for all things forbidden. The thought alone was considered taboo, so kyūbi were trained to maintain a balance within themselves so that they did not become monsters.
"It's not to say you are not immune," Nagato continued. "I do believe there will come a time when you will feel tempted to give into the demon in you, but you must remember that you are part-Sage. If you drop your defense, you can get them up." Tapping along the surface of the table at the strange symbols written on a piece of cardboard, he drew great emphasis. "This is your answer."
Nagato was speaking mandarin to him. If there was a sage sorcery capable of breaking down explanations or translate foreign phrases to him, he would welcome it, but he knew that was impossible. Sorcery was about the intricacies. All the little details.
"This is a special formula your father created to help you maintain the balance your body needs to keep from succumbing to your demon side. This is the seal Jiraiya put on your demon energy," he explained. "As the last living kyūbi, you are the strongest demon alive, but that comes with a price. You do not want to find yourself paying that price or you might not ever return to who you are now."
"What does this do?" Naruto asked, seeing circles and shapes and a language he could not read.
"It uses your sorcery to put a seal on your demon energy and only through it will you be able to access your kyūbi power," Nagato said. "You won't ever be able of using all your power to their limit, but you won't need to. You can simply amplify them using sorcery and you won't see difference between it being fueled by your demon energy or not."
Naruto nodded, grasping the gist of it.
"With this, you won't need to worry about the facility," the redhead sage continued. "You will always appear more human than demon as you have your entire life. This is the key to lock and unlock your demon energy. You need to know how to rebuild it if it's falling apart."
"Isn't there a way for me to control my demon energy so that it doesn't consume me?" Naruto asked curiously. Surely, someone must have tried it and discovered something.
"Once you are consumed by your kyūbi energy, your only desire will be filling the void in you," said Nagato. "Kyūbi are beings of power, so you will always seek more power. Stopping you in that state would be impossible."
Hatsue crashed through the surface of a violet sea. The powerful impact stole the air from her lungs and welcomed a rush of poison water to take its place as she was dragged into a pitch-black darkness. She was certain she would drown, and as an immortal, constant death by drowning was painfully exhausting. The facility made sure she had firsthand experience in that matter. The further she sank, the more the temperature dropped and it made her fear that it would only grow colder. If it did, she would never leave this strange sea.
She was in a foreign world with a water snake and a kyūbi. Yes, the latter was her mate and it should have been natural for her to feel safe with him, but she could not shake the feeling that seeped into her pores the instant the Otherworld Seam opened under the force of his power. It had coiled its way into her bloodstream, freezing all in its wake, and threatened to stop her heart.
She did nothing. She allowed the sea to swallow her.
Hatsue dazed at the glittering surface when it was struck by a second impact and the light shattered into violent ripples. She followed the direction in which the other person had fallen and watched Kabuto righting himself and kicking at the water to swim upward.
She snapped out of her trance and raised her arm in his direction. She was going to drown him. She closed her eyes and left her body in corporal form. She swam with a swiftness that caught him by surprise when she took him by the leg and shoved him under her before kicking him in the face. He recovered quickly and retaliated by pressing his hand to her chest, sending a burst of water through her that forced her corporal body flying out of the water and into a sandy shore where she lost control of it. Her corporal body faded away in a swirl of wind and sand.
Hatsue regained consciousness in her own skin and watched Kabuto leave the water. She followed after him, kicking her feet to propel her body forward. She broke the surface of the sea, taking in a deep breath of cold air before coughing up the water she managed to swallow.
Kabuto stood with his hands on his knees, breathing haggardly, dripping from head to toe. His dark eyes watching her every move, his body language read cautious.
"What did you do to him?" she demanded, her voiced echoed vehemently, drifting as high as the sky. "What did you do?"
The silver-haired man did not answer. He continued catching his breath.
She joined him, pulling herself over the edge. Every inch of her body drenched and trembling. She asked him the same question a second time, this time at a reasonable volume. Though, she did not think her demand was unreasonable. She had a right to know. She would torture it out of him and that's what she planned to do as soon as she got to her feet, feeling them sink into the sand.
Hatsue felt her flesh start to scale as she gave into her demon energy, allowing her body to return to its true form. "What did you do to him?" she yelled, stomping towards him, sand swirling around her. "Tell me!"
She did not give him the opportunity to offer an explanation when she was an inch from attacking. Only her claws did not meet their target when he dissolved into water. She turned quickly, watching water gather into a puddle several feet away from her that expanded vertically into Kabuto's shape, remolding him into his physical form.
"You giant water snake! I am going to eat you!" she threatened, feeling her head throb as her horns pierced through the thin skin beneath.
Kabuto smirked.
She attempted against him again, but came to a sudden halt. She sensed a high concentration of power behind her unlike she had ever felt before. Ice ran through her veins. She recognized that feeling of dread. She experienced it moments ago.
Hatsue whirled around and came face-to-face with Naruto. Every muscle in her body tensed when his eyes met hers, but the moment was fleeting as he looked past her to Kabuto and spoke to him.
"I sealed the Seam, but Sasuke and Ino made it in before," he told him. "Find them and then find me."
Kabuto disappeared into the water.
Naruto caught her gaze again, this time he held it and reached out to touch her. She flinched, her claws biting into her palms. The scales that had begun to form across her cheek retracted until they disappeared, as if her own demon were cowering before him.
He tilted his head curiously, almost baffled. "Are you afraid of me, Hatsue?"
This question again. Wary of him to the point of fear would have been a more accurate description. She had sensed the pull of the Otherworld as Naruto broke through the seal keeping the gateway to it shut, and in his energy, she had felt the change when it had occurred. He had done something that made him feel different to her, though he did not look changed.
His expression fell. "You are."
She thought it, so he knew. He could read her without accessing her mind; he could see it etched in her expression no matter how she hid it. That was one of his core abilities.
He took a step forward and she took one back. "I wanted to save you."
Her instinct screamed for her to run, but it wasn't the one dealing with his overbearing presence so it could keep yelling at her to go if it wanted, she was going to stay paralyzed whether she liked it or not.
Naruto reached forward, pressing one hand to one cheek as she sealed her eyes shut. His other hand came to the other side. He came forward and the heat radiating from him was so familiar and felt so good after she had taken a dive into the freezing violet sea, but something was different with him. She could not pinpoint it or gauge whether it was good or bad, but it was there and it was frightening.
She realized then that she was terrified, more so than she initially cared to acknowledge.
"Hatsue," he said, leaning forward to rest his forehead on hers. "You don't have to be afraid. Nothing's changed."
"We should not be here, we should be in hiding somewhere where we will never be found," she whispered, the edge creeping into her voice. "We should not be here. Otherworld is poison. We will die."
"We are in hiding. This can be our home," he said, grinning excitedly. "We can stay here together. Nobody will bother us ever again. We could be free."
Hatsue pulled away. "No."
"Hatsue—"
He took her by the wrists and it was strange—strange to feel his touch on her skin, strange to feel his emotions go against his instinct's desire for another mate. She did not resist being embraced by his warm body, enveloped in his arms so tightly, nor did she refuse his mouth when it sought hers, despite the shock of rejection that made them want to recoil away from one another.
God! Hatsue moaned as he slanted his mouth over hers. Her entire body shuddered while his hands roamed across her back, one had trailed up fingers splayed between her shoulder blades and the other had inched its way down her lower back. His emotions poured into her body, the stinging pain that radiated from his body and doubled in hers to coincide with her instinct's refusal of him drowned, buried in the undertow of his desire.
He was suffocating her. Yet she could not resist.
But her instinct was screeching its warning, praying she listened. Before he accomplished tempting her any further, she did.
Hatsue snapped out of it and pushed him, disengaging her body from his with an audible gasp. "Stop," she shouted, breathless and aching. "I do not want to be here. I don't want to be with you."
As she spoke the words, she felt something clench in the center of her body. She blinked, everything slowing down, knowing she was surrounded by water, but as she opened her eyes, she stood in the middle of a stone courtyard covered in roots.
In a blink. She had disappeared.
Hatsue turned all the way around. The ruins of an ancient structure sat behind her. It was something vast and gigantic, but desolate and eerily cold.
"Shit!" she cursed, searching her surroundings in the midst of her panic. "Did I just teleport?" Groaning, she once again looked towards every direction. Naruto was nowhere in sight radiating temptation. "I just teleported…"
The prospect served as a reminder that she had no idea where to go from there, but she set her mind to go somewhere. She was not going to sit around and wait until Naruto found her again and put his hands on her like that. She would not be resisting much the next time. Her traitorous body would never allow it. It had a hunger and that hunger had a name.
Hatsue recalled Naruto mentioning Sasuke and Ino. The thought of finding the two drove her forward to search for them. She planned to locate them before Kabuto did.
Sasuke rose to his feet. He managed to steer their landing to a mountainous area they could use for cover, but they crashed straight through an ice mountain and rolled onto a snowy plateau. He raised his chin, inhaling deeply. His nose wouldn't be good in the cold, but if he caught Hatsue's scent, he would be able to follow it even if it were fading.
Ino hugged her body, shivering violently against the freezing winds. She surveyed her surroundings, looking up at the pale, cloudless sky to the surrounding white mountains and the glimmering violet sea that separated this island from one overflowing with trees.
"Is this Otherworld?" she asked, teeth clattering.
"Yes," he answered. "This is Otherworld."
"It feels strange, doesn't it?"
Otherworld had an overbearing presence as if it were an entity with its own will, but Sasuke knew better.
"No," he said. "That energy you are sensing is Naruto."
"Naruto?" Ino frowned. "But his energy is different. Airy." He possessed a special sort of contagious energy capable of making anyone feel better. It was light and feathery. It was like the heat of sunlight after a terribly cold day. She hated the fact that he was a walking contradiction growing up, being of brash and annoying personality while having a magnetic energy that drew everyone to him. Everyone's personality matched their aura. That was how she learned about aura, one of the cornerstone in sorcery.
Hinata had an aura that was difficult to pinpoint as it was as timid as she. This made her seem more human than a pure-blooded kitsune. It also irritated Ino as a child not being able to decipher her demon signature, believe her to have some form of special power that hid it.
Kiba had an ostentatious aura that had a natural inclination to irritate. This made it difficult for him to make friends that weren't animals. Of course, there were people tolerant of his sort.
Hatsue was peculiar in a satisfying way. She was a little blend of deception, which made her a black hole where happiness went to die, but that applied better to her younger, high school self. Her aura recently, while still difficult to decipher or see (even through her eyes), was like the earth beneath one's feet. Sturdy. Like a quiet, blatant strength.
Sasuke and Naruto shared opposite auras. Sasuke's was as cold as the mountain they were standing, but one doubly reinforced by walls or a dome—one that repelled everything, like a photocatalyst lamp that killed all the moths that flocked to it.
"This is not Naruto," Ino decided. "This is like it wants to consume the world."
"That is Naruto," Sasuke assured, pausing as he wrinkled his nose. "He broke the seal containing his demon energy when he dismantled the seal that kept Otherworld closed."
"Are you saying he fell?" Ino still, knowing that meant he was lost to them forever. A kyūbi that gave into their demon energy became a slave to it and pursued the ultimate power. Her father used to tell her a story about that happening in Otherworld and that it resulted in a great shift within that world.
"Yes, and we better find Hatsue before he finds us," Sasuke said, feeling a jolt go through him when he sensed Hatsue's presence materialize across the violet sea among the island of trees. "And when we do, we need to leave Otherworld."
"But he sealed the Seam," Ino reminded him. "How are we going to break that if it took one of him to do it?"
"Hatsue and I should be able to do it," he said. It would require them transforming and sharing her gyoku between them. It would endanger Humanworld and its residents, but it would need to be done. "If you can seal the Seam again—"
"I can't do that!" she protested. "It took a group of sages to create the seal and twice that number to reinforce it as it weakened. I don't have that kind of power. You might, but I don't."
"You are going to use my power to see it done. Have you ever converted demon energy to sage energy?"
Ino stared at him wide-eyed. "No."
"Then I am going to teach you." Sasuke stated moving towards the ledge of the mountain. "Hatsue is on that island. We are going."
Ino jogged after him when her leg caught on something and she came crashing face first into the hard ground with a shout. She tried to recover quickly, but felt a weight bear down on her back, preventing her from doing so. The hairs at the back of her neck rose when that something coiled around her.
Sasuke whirled around to see Kabuto standing beside the fallen Ino with his long lizard tail wrapped around her. He unconsciously bared his teeth, irritated by the man's audacity to pin her down as he did.
Kabuto cast a look at the woman by his feet and then returned his eyes to him. "I should thank you really," he told him, a wicked smile spreading across his pale face. "Had it not been for your Sight, I would have never been able to lure Naruto out this far. Did you like the visions I sent you?"
He angered, understanding the mizuchi had tricked them all by sending him images of Hatsue near death, and cursed beneath his breath. "How?"
"That doesn't matter," said Kabuto. "Naruto wants to see you."
Sasuke watched the snake draw the clawed end of his tail along the base of Ino's throat as she whimpered in disgust, threatening him without saying a word. He needed her. He could not risk having her die.
Sasuke once witness the end of the world. He dreamt it. Watched it filter into his mind's eye like a never-ending movie.
A cataclysmic event decimated the world. Erupted from the torn space above the graveyard where his parents had been buried like a volcano bursting after hundreds of years without activity. It swept the quaint city where he had been born, where he had made the most of his memories up until the facility had stolen that luxury from him. It shattered buildings like a jackhammer slamming into a glass door and the fragments burned brightly as they fell from the sky to sear into the ground.
Humanity collapsed under the weight of a power so great, they died without realizing they were about to, but the Otherworld community lingered long enough to experience the feeling of being devoured. Devoured by a god-like power.
They learned the true meaning of being hopeless. It was a despair that bit at them like a savage animal, tearing them apart piece by piece.
He experienced the feeling of becoming food for a god.
Food.
Otherworld beings were reduced to being food.
Destruction spread throughout the planet in a matter of seconds, unleashed like a plague that left death in its wake. And emerging from Otherworld's gateway he saw Naruto, golden and powerful and smirking.
And he cursed his Sight upon awakening because not once had it been wrong, nor would it ever be.
.
.
.
( ...to be continued... )
