Myrmidon Chapter 37
A Reason To Live
"There's something I don't understand," Mereum said, and the Hokage shrugged. The sun was beginning to set; they hadn't stopped walking.
He'd been having a good time. It was strange to think that, but Naruto was an interesting person to talk to.
"Sure you do," the shinobi said, and the King glanced at him. "It's just another lesson about partnership. That's why I told you it."
"Focusing on one thing like that could be dangerous, don't you think?" Meruem said. "Just partnership, over and over again. I could get bored of the repetition."
Naruto laughed. "It's what saved your life," he said, and the King almost laughed with him at the truth and absurdity of it. "If you hadn't had that empathy in the first place, I would have killed you, remember?" He stopped, and so did the King. "Hinata didn't kill you for herself, not for you," he said, more serious than before. "I'm the other way around. Keep that in mind, right?"
"Right," Meruem said quietly. He'd grown too comfortable around Naruto just over the course of the evening, even knowing the man could have been his executioner. He had a disarming way about him. "Yet, I'm still uncertain. It sounds like you're in charge of the Shinobi Union, but you insist that's not the case." They started walking again, crunching grass under their feet, and their chakra sparred. Meruem was finally beginning to understand how to more completely control his aura; at the very least, it was no longer recklessly clashing with and invading the chakra of those around him.
"Right," Naruto said. "I'm just one of the Five Kage. You've already met Gaara."
"He's not your equal," the King said bluntly. Naruto smirked.
"He's smarter than me," he said. " He earned his Village's trust, and the Kage position, when he was fifteen. It took me until I was almost twice that age." He stroked his chin. "You already know strength isn't everything, so what are you playing at?"
"Strength isn't everything," Meruem said, "but if you helped form the Union, and you are stronger than all of your fellow Kage. It would be trivial for you to control it. Even more trivial for the others to decide that you deserved to control it, or to foist it onto you to avoid responsibility if they themselves were weak or unsure."
"It's about trust," Naruto said with a shake of his head. "We didn't build the union to control the Villages. We did it to prevent further conflict between them."
"And yet, you alone could wipe out the other Villages." Meruem shook his head. "Trust seems arbitrary."
"It is," Naruto admitted. "It can be, I mean. This is all new to all of us. Less than twenty years old. We made the decision to start over with a fresh slate; to forget all the horrible things that the Villages had done to one another for the last couple generations and just start over." He gave the King a meaningful look, his chakra rolled. "Like with you. That's where that trust comes from. We all want this to work. No one wants to go back to the days of sending their kids off to die."
Meruem slowly nodded. That made sense to him. Yesterday, humans sending their children to their deaths would have elicited no reaction for him, but today, he could feel the desperation and sincerity bleeding off of Naruto as though it were his own. If the alternative was returning to endless war, a little trust could go a long way.
Besides, his thrust had been slightly facetious regardless. He'd seen the Juubi in Naruto's memories, and the woman it had transformed into, when he'd inquired about the greatest threat the man had faced. The Hokage had personally saved the lives of every ninja in his world: he'd forged that trust with his own blood and sacrifice, keeping them alive in the face of a living apocalypse. Who would not entrust their lives to him, after that?
"I understand," he said. "Forgive the question. It was ill-found."
Naruto smiled. "You can't have any ill-found questions right now," he said, mimicking the King's pronunciation. "That's the whole point of this. Like Hinata said, you learn or you die."
"Am I learning?" Meruem asked, and Naruto cocked his head.
"What do you think?"
What did he think? He was certainly a transformed creature, compared to the day before. If the Meruem of yesterday had met the Meruem of today, he probably would have called him an enemy. Tried to eat him. No two Kings could exist at once, he'd told himself. They would have to collide in a violent holocaust. What a depressing outlook. If that had been the case, he never would have been able to have these conversations.
"I believe I am," he said after a minute of introspection. "But I do not know if I will do so fast enough for Hinata."
Naruto frowned. "You've only seen the part of her you brought out. Not her most attractive side. I promise, she's more patient than you'd think."
Meruem had seen that, but he found it hard to believe. The Hinata he'd known his whole life was a remorseless slayer who'd slaughtered Ants by the dozen; it had been a bizarre experience for him to realize, and experience, that she thought herself the farthest thing from a killer.
It was the same kind of self-deception he'd partaken in. That thought was new, but only because it was the culmination of hundreds of similar ones over the last day.
"I know," he said. "I'm sorry."
Naruto waved him off. "Yeah, I get it. Let's keep going." They both looked back at Peijing, the sun setting behind it. "Anything else on your mind?"
"Yes," Meruem said. "But someone's coming." He pointed, and Naruto followed his gaze. There was indeed someone coming; an old man wearing a medical gown and not much else. The chest was stained with red, and Meruem frowned. Despite the obvious blood, the man was coming towards them with definite purpose. Several miles behind him, high in the sky, a blimp floated, directionless.
Naruto changed directions, walking towards the man, and Meruem followed him.
What could Isaac Netero want, Meruem wondered. He'd happily gone along with Hinata's decision to spare Meruem; it was obvious that he respected her immensely. This was the Hunter who had destroyed his clone in Peijing, and brought such ruin to the city. Why was he here, wearing a hospital gown stained in blood, and looking at Naruto with such a determined, single-minded look? It would be insanity to attack the Hokage for countless reasons, but what could be worth coming out here like that to talk about?
"Meruem," Naruto said, his voice low, when they were only a hundred feet from the Hunter, who kept coming. "Back up, would you?" Meruem complied, and Naruto raised his voice.
"Netero!" he called. "Are you alright?"
"Wonderful, Hokage!" the man called. He was exuberant. Meruem had never heard the Hunter so happy. He stopped, and so did Naruto, only fifty feet apart.
"I won't accept your surrender, Naruto," Netero said, and prayed. Meruem started. Was he insane? Was this Hunter insane? What could he possibly be thinking?
Netero's Nen rose behind him, roaring with gratitude and fury, and blew all the grass flat for nearly a mile around with the force of its aura. Naruto tilted his head, his chakra stirring. Meruem could feel it vibrating throughout the Hokage's body, ready to burst out at a moment's notice.
"So, I hope you won't accept mine," Netero said, and then his Nen attacked.
###
Two hours after Hinata spared the King's life, Netero found himself standing at the foot of Knov's bed. He'd made his way back to West Gorteau, where both of his injured subordinates had been taken after they were wounded. They were both ensconced in the most advanced and prestigious hospital in the entire Union, as befitted Hunters who had almost given all they could.
There was no indication when Knov would wake up. His leg had been severed, and all of his remaining limbs had been broken, along with his ribs, pelvis, collarbone, and a dozen other bones. His face had been smashed in, and his skull cracked. If Knov had been a normal human, he would have been dead twenty times over.
But Nen was a spectacular gift, and so long as Knov retained the will to live, he would eventually recover. But for now, he was just a rattling body wheezing through a ventilator, small and frail in his bed.
Netero looked down at the body of his subordinate, and didn't feel much. Knov had almost died, but the 'almost' was all that mattered there.
Why, he thought to himself, am I this man's superior? I don't even feel guilty.
He left the room and paced the halls; Morel's room was on a seperate floor, for less critical cases, and as Netero walked, he pondered his doubt.
He was Knov and Morel's superior because he was Chairman of the Hunter's Association, obviously. Netero began climbing the stairs, staring out the wall-length windows at the sun-soaked city of Ceoal. But why had he taken up that position? Some days, he could barely remember. He'd become a Hunter searching for more strength, and he'd hunted anything that could challenge him in his youth.
Well, in his seventies, but that had been over fifty years ago now. Netero often found himself thinking of what most people would consider advanced age as his 'youth'. It was an amusing consequence of such a long life.
He'd built his reputation as the world's strongest man, and in the Association as the most powerful Nen adept alive. He'd returned from not one but two expeditions to the Dark Continent that had killed men and women who were smarter, braver, and more noble than him by dint of that strength. When the Eleventh Chairman had resigned, he'd used that strength to ensure his victory in the vote, challenging his competitors to personal duels until they'd all withdrawn.
Why had he done that? What had driven him all those decades ago to seize the position of Chairman, when all he'd sought was strength?
Netero reached the top of the stairs, and turned left. An orderly in the hall saw him and flattened themselves against the wall until he passed. He must have been scowling, the Chairman realised. What a lapse in self control.
He'd wanted to be stronger, of course. He wanted more power, more influence. He wanted more people to know and fear his name. He wanted to be able to direct Hunters, as much as one could direct an organization as fiercely independent and jealous of their privacy as the Association. Netero had wanted the people who he'd defeated to stare up at him in envy, his strength over them apparent and indisputable.
But, having watched the most remarkable duel of his long life just the day before, Netero realized as he reached out for Morel's door that he'd never really been interested in the actual duties of the Hunter's Chairman.
He opened the door, and Morel jerked up in his bed in surprise.
"Chairman," he said as Netero entered, looking around. "I wasn't expecting you." He put a book down; Netero did not bother to read the title.
"You seem to be recovering well, Morel," Netero said, and the big man shrugged.
"I won't be walking for a while," he said with a light wheeze in his voice. "But it could have been much worse."
"Without a doubt," Netero said, walking past Morel and looking out his window.
The man stared at him, and Netero didn't bother answering his unspoken question.
He'd never been interested in being Chairman, only the prestige and power of the position. As the strongest man in the world, he'd had to content himself with amusements and perversions in the position. He had shackled himself, watching as the world moved on, looking for a worthy opponent and unable to find one. Netero found himself looking back at his tenure as one of stasis.
He'd tried to keep things the same. To keep himself on top, even though that had not been his desire. He'd used his power to forbid further expeditions to the Dark Continent because it had been antithetical to his vision of strength. He'd expanded the Hunter Association, welcoming in any creature in human skin that was strong enough to claim themselves as a Hunter. He had perched at the top of the world, undisputed and too powerful to be openly questioned, and slowly withered. In that comfortable existence, Netero had forgotten the sound of his own heartbeat, the thrill of adrenaline pulsing through his veins.
He hated it. Looking out the window, Netero hated himself.
"Chairman?" Morel hesitated. "Netero?"
Netero glanced at him, and something in his gaze made the man stiffen.
"I don't think," Netero said, his tone low and deliberate, "that I have any further interest in this."
Morel blinked. "Excuse me?"
Netero sat down on the windowsill, crossing his arms. "This business with the Ants," he said. "I'm done."
"Chairman…" Morel said. "I don't know if you can… do that."
"Why not?" Netero asked. "Would you stop me?" He grinned, and Morel flinched. "Do you have the strength?"
"I don't-"
"This is not out of malice," Netero said calmly. "Hinata decided to spare the King's life." Morel nodded slowly, obviously not fully understanding. "We had a little tribunal, her, her husband, and myself, and decided that the King could be rehabilitated, given his previous behavior." He stared back out the window, watching the population below. Tiny people, going about insignificant lives. Like ants.
"I don't disagree with the result, but I realized something during the discussion," he said. Netero had always been an entirely self-sufficient man. He had even survived off nothing but his own Nen for over two years, drawing sustenance from his impossibly independent spirit. He did not know why he was telling Morel this. Most likely, he just wanted someone else to understand, or to not understand. Either would bring him some measure of happiness.
"The Hokage said that since he was strong, he had a duty to find a solution to the existence of the King," Netero continued. "And that made me furious."
"How, Chairman?" Morel asked. "If that's what he believes…"
"I have no problem with him believing that," Netero said, tapping his chin. "But he helped me realize that's not what I believe."
'With strength like yours? You are beyond duty!'
"So… what do you intend, then?" Morel asked. Netero shrugged.
"This is a complicated situation," he said, "and truly, at my age I have no taste for complications. I'm going to resign."
Morel sat back in shock. "But… if you do that-!"
"Oh, calm down," Netero scoffed. "I understand it might be shocking: I've been Chairman since before you were born. But it's the simplest solution to this situation. I will take the blame for the Association's failure to adequately suppress the Ants; the honor of Hunters will remain intact. You and Ging can clean up here. I'm sure you're adequate to meet the challenge."
Morel's eyes narrowed. "You're sacrificing yourself for the rest of us."
"No," Netero shook his head and smirked. "That's a coincidence. I'm simply sick of this nonsense." He turned to leave. "Call Ging, and the Union leadership. You can think of yourself as my hand until I officially resign, if that helps you wrap your head around it. Tell them the situation. I leave the rest to you."
"Where are you going?" Morel asked. "What are you going to do?"
Netero stopped, turning back. His Nen burned along his body, pricking Morel with hundreds of invisible needles. "I've spent the last half century distracting myself with garbage, paperwork, and leadership." He spat out the last word as though it were a curse.
"I'm going to make up for lost time."
###
Netero woke up five hours later, shifting his arms and legs as consciousness gradually returned to him. He looked around; he'd been laid down in a bed inside a recovery room wearing only a hospital gown that gave him a measure of dignity and nothing else.
He sat up, and his chest flared. He didn't grimace; he'd felt pain far worse than this, and couldn't regard it with any respect. His arms and legs shook, and he stilled them. Nen began flowing throughout his body once more, his will driving it once more, and he went from feeling his age to weightless and stable once again.
Netero rolled out of bed and made his way to the door, bare feet padding silently on the hospital floor. Just before he reached the door, someone opened it, nearly bumping into him.
"Ah!" The man exclaimed, stumbling backwards as Netero almost ran him over. He had dark skin and worse thick glasses; his name was Maz, and he had been one of the surgeons Netero had hired over a week ago to implant the Poor Man's Rose in his chest. Now, he had been just as instrumental in its removal. "Chairman! You're already up!"
"Yes," Netero said, gesturing with one finger, flicking to the side. "Move."
"Chairman," Maz said, looking Netero up and down with obvious alarm in his eyes. "I understand you may be impatient, but we just opened your chest up, yes? Even you will need a day to recover."
"Not necessary," Netero said, pushing past him and through the door. The doctor paled.
"You've already ripped a stitch!" he exclaimed, and Netero lazily looked down. The man was right: there was a dribble of blood making its way down the inside of his gown, starting just above his solar plexus. He hadn't noticed it; he must have torn the stitching when he'd rolled out of bed.
Netero shrugged. "I'm not willing to waste any time," he called back, as Maz scrambled after him down the corridor. "I have an appointment to make."
"Chairman, I insist-!"
Netero stopped and looked over his shoulder, and focused his Nen into a spike that struck Maz in the chest. The doctor gasped, falling to his knees and clutching at his heart. It wasn't enough to kill him. Netero had no wish to kill an innocent man, especially one who'd just performed critical surgery on him. But for a moment, the man's heart stopped as his instincts told him he'd just been killed by an invisible force, one that was impossible to resist.
They stayed that way for several seconds, Netero standing in the corridor and Maz on his knees, clutching his chest. The man who would not be Chairman for much longer smiled.
"You're not strong enough to stop me," he said, and the doctor looked up at him with terror in his eyes. "Understand? If you're not strong enough to stop me, I can do whatever I wish. That's how the world works."
He turned away, making for the stairwell. "Follow me, if you wish to accomplish nothing."
Maz didn't, and Netero left him behind.
He climbed the stairs, heading for the hospital's roof. It hurt a little to move, but it was an ignorable discomfort. His gown grew more stained with his own blood, but Netero knew it wasn't enough to be worried over.
The door to the roof was rusty, and took a push to swing open. Netero had arrived in West Gorteau by airship, and the blimp was still there on the roof. It was a small craft, only meant for a crew of three and up to ten passengers. Right now, it was empty.
That wasn't a problem. Netero entered the blimp, settling down in the captain's seat. He'd lived a long life, and learning to pilot vehicles of every sort had been one of his many amusements over the course of it.
The blimp lifted off after several minutes, and Netero leaned back in his seat, relaxing and gathering his Nen. It was audibly thrumming, he realized. His Nen was excited; tossing away his hypocrisy had set it free. He felt young and strong, even more so than when the King had attacked him and he had surrendered himself.
Now, Netero was not content to surrender himself. He had accepted himself. He set the blimp's course east, towards Peijing.
Towards the Hokage.
###
The moment Netero threw the first punch, he knew he'd made the right decision.
His soul sang, joyous and free and overflowing with gratitude. Isaac Netero had spent so long living a shadow life, existing as something he was not and could not be. He was not a killer, a tactician, a politician, or a leader. He had been and always would be a martial artist: he was a man who fought to improve himself, to measure himself against others, and to hone his soul in an unforgiving crucible.
By throwing that punch, attacking the leader of a foreign nation for no reason, he'd cast off all his shadows and pretensions, and burned his hypocrisies to ashes.
You are strong! If you are willing to accept the consequences, do whatever you want!
For the first time in decades, Netero laughed, not with cruelty or a mocking lilt, but with pure joy.
His 100-Type struck out, and Naruto Uzumaki met it with his bare fist. Netero wasn't astonished to see the Hokage punch away his attack with his bare hands; it only brought him more joy, more gratitude. It had been staring him in the face the whole time: this was the opponent he'd been waiting to meet, all those years. He'd been too preoccupied watching his own world to look beyond it.
Strike! Netero threw thirty blows with his Nen in a single second, and the Hokage stood his ground, his fists burning with their own golden energy. His aura surged out as he realized Netero was serious. If the Hokage didn't defend himself, Netero would knock him down.
Naruto struck back, punching and kicking Netero's attacks away, and the martial artist only laughed and threw more. His soul was burning with satisfaction, less than two seconds into the fight. Arms constructed by chakra grew from Naruto's back, and they clashed fists with the 100-Type dozens of times, an enormous and deafening exchange of violence and excitement. A hurricane of energy was forming around them; Netero saw the King take another step back as every blade of grass for an additional mile was flattened by the force of the exchange.
In this kind of fight, there was no time to exchange words. Netero prayed and his Nen roared and surged faster than even he or the Hokage could consciously track. They exchanged over one hundred blows in less than three seconds, neither willing to back down from their starting position.
There was no time to exchange words and yet, as their matching golden auras slammed into one another with the force of shifting tectonic plates, shattering the earth and driving away every cloud in the sky, Netero was sure he heard Naruto's voice, saw the words in the Hokage's eyes.
"Alright," Naruto Uzumaki said, his chakra exploding violently out in every direction. "If this is what you want."
He understood.
Netero's lips spread in an uncontrollable smile.
He understood!
Netero did not surrender himself to the gratitude that boiled up inside him at the Hokage's acknowledgement. He accepted it, took it into his soul and Nen as fuel, and used it to launch another hundred attacks.
This was a fight determined purely by instinct. A thousand times, Netero's Nen and Naruto's chakra clashed, each meeting of their fists more violent than the last. On the thousandth and one, Naruto began advancing.
Unable to conceive of backing down from the challenge, Netero stepped forward as well. The 100-Type went with him. It was growing larger and larger, fueled by his martial spirit, driven to the absolute limit of what Nen was capable of by Netero's fervor in the face of an unstoppable opponent.
I know you can do better than that. That was the mutual statement of their advancing upon one another. C'mon. Stop messing around. Show me your limit.
Netero's whole body was glowing with Nen, and Naruto's with chakra. They were transforming into binary stars, slamming countless attacks into one another, so many the naked eye could not possibly track them all.
In the seventeenth second of their duel, an eternity in a clash like this, Netero roared, and one of the 100-Type's impossibly numerous and fast attacks struck the Hokage in the side. The Hokage went flying, carried away by the force of it, but before Netero could change his attack pattern and follow up the blow, the Hokage landed faultlessly on his feet and began running. He was no longer content to simply advance upon Netero in a straight line, two titans determined to meet at a terminus point of mutual destruction. The Hokage ran, circling Netero and creating an eye-watering illusion of a circle of golden fire.
Netero began striking out, even faster than before, fifty attacks a second, an impossible number devoted to swatting the Hokage once again, and in response Naruto put his hands together. One Hokage became ten, all hunting Netero with such speed that the ground beneath them lit on fire and was churned to dust by the speed of their passing, even with the soft touch of chakra.
He was doing better, Netero thought in the null space where his consciousness had gone, unable to keep track of his body's own movements. He was fighting with more spirit and clarity than he ever had in his long life before. This was exactly what he had wanted. At that moment, he was nothing but himself.
Their exchange of endless blows continued. Netero was trying to attack the Hokage directly, but the shinobi seemed happy to only strike at Netero's attacks. The field they'd stood in had been transformed into a wasteland, blown to pieces by his gratitude and Naruto's graciousness. The Hoakge's fists and chakra met the 100-Types in every possible configuration that Netero could conceive. The Chairman's heart was beating faster than he could ever remember it going. Nearly three beats a second, he was sure. He had not been this alive in decades.
Yet, he yearned for the Hokage to strike at him, instead of his attacks. Until that happened, this would just be a glorified spar, not a true battle.
Naruto sensed his intention.
The Hokage shifted his strategy. Half of him stayed close, pressuring Netero and forcing his 100-Type to keep them at bay as they took turns attempting to snatch his body from the midst of his Nen construct. The others fell back, forming disks of screaming azure chakra in their hands.
Projectiles! Wonderful! Naruto began bombarding him with both ranged and physical attacks, driving Netero's instincts to the limit as he dodged and slapped both projectiles and clones out of existence without a thought of mercy. The disks were fast, even faster than the Hokage himself. When he struck them from the air, they left deep gouges in his Nen's hands, like a laceration from a knife too sharp to hold. Netero perceived them as blue lines instantly drawn through space, each containing enough energy to kill him in a single hit.
And they would kill him. The Hokage had understood him, as only two warriors could. He had taken Netero's message to heart; he wasn't holding back. If Netero slipped up here, he really would die.
He felt no fear. The danger only inspired him to greater heights. Thirty seconds after throwing the first punch, Netero's spirit peaked, and his Nen with it. Unable to be drawn back down into reality, his 100-Type began attacking over one-hundred times each second, and persisted until the battle ended.
At this point, their conflict did not resemble any sort of fight between two humans. It was essentially a natural disaster, or the detonation of a weapon of mass destruction, which destroyed anything that dared to approach it. Naruto and Netero had become the center of their own aura-generated gravity, drawing each other into countless clashes that shook the atmosphere and produced sonic booms that could be heard from hundreds of miles away. For another twenty-five seconds, the entire population of West and East Gorteau was subjected to hundreds of impossibly loud thunderclaps stacked upon one another.
Netero could not stop laughing. He had never dreamed this would be the result of him accepting his hypocrisy. He had been unable to imagine that his Nen would rise to the challenge like an eager animal after being chained up and restricted for so long.
This was all he had wanted.
But, fifty-five seconds after he'd thrown the first punch, he realized how wet his hospital gown was.
His heart was beating like an entire band of drums, and his whole body shook and shone with his radiant Nen. He was practically being carried away from the world by his aura; it threatened to overwhelm and vaporize him. All of his stitches had torn; he was spilling more and more blood down his chest every second.
It would not be enough to kill him, but Netero realized, in that null space, that he was going to start slowing down. He was not a fount of infinite energy.
Meanwhile, Naruto was showing no such signs of fatigue. The Hokage wasn't laughing, but he was smiling, meeting the 100-Type blow for blow with his chakra. A faint face had begun to manifest behind him, burning and ephemeral ; an enormous crimson fox with teeth larger than a human.
It was that face that convinced Netero to commit absolutely everything he had to the fight.
As suddenly as everything had started, the 100-Type stopped, all of its arms raising up. Naruto froze, not understanding Netero's actions, and the Chairman hacked out a laugh.
His Nen vanished, whipping away in a moment, and he prayed one last time, slowly and deliberately, taking up a full second. He shoved every ounce of his considerable gratitude and ambition that he had felt over the course of the last minute into his Nen, completely emptying himself of all desire and conflict.
He imbued it all into his 100-Type, which rose from the ground behind Naruto. The Hokage turned to look at it with obvious shock, and gently, slowly, gratefully, Netero's soul swept down and encompassed the Hokage in his infinite grace and gratitude.
'Thank you,' Netero thought, and the 100-Type opened its mouth so wide that its face vanished. Deep inside it, a cosmos of Netero's desires shone, brighter than any star. It slowly grew, ready to burst from the construct's mouth.
'You completed me.'
And yet, just a hundredth of a second before his Zero Hand would have unleashed all his Nen, his entire soul, onto the Hokage with a single, merciless scream-
The 100-Type's hands shattered.
Netero caught a glimpse of teeth, of red. That was it. Before he could even blink, or settle his prayer, Naruto was standing in front of him, less than an arm's length away.
"Hey," the Hokage said, reaching out. He placed his glowing golden hand on Netero's blood-soaked chest, and Netero felt his heart pound against it. He was suddenly aware of his body; of his heart, the pain in his chest, how all his limbs ached. He was shuddering, every breath an ordeal that he might not be able to repeat.
"Don't throw your life away like that." Naruto smiled.
"You still have plenty to give."
Netero stared at the man and marveled at his arrogance. That wasn't his to decide. He could do whatever he wished with his life.
But, he thought, Naruto had a point. This did not need to be his last fight. Even if he never surpassed it again… Netero did not want his existence to end less than a day after he'd rediscovered it.
He nodded, and the 100-Type collapsed to dust behind the Hokage, drifting away in the wind, and Netero was left an old, exhausted, heavily bleeding man in the middle of a wasteland of his own making.
He'd lost.
He wouldn't have had it any other way.
###
Several hours before Naruto and Netero met in the field, one of Naruto's clones whipped away in a flurry of golden smoke, leaving Neferpitou alone. The Ant who had once been a Royal Guard watched him go with a sigh, before turning around. The Hokage's clone had been talkative, and Pitou had possessed zero, perhaps negative, interest in speaking with him. That hadn't stopped the man from chattering, asking her all sorts of questions, none of which Pitou had answered.
Why she would care about speaking to one human and not another was somewhat of a mystery to Pitou: in a sane world, they would have been equally pointless to her. But she had been thrown away. This was no longer a world she could understand.
Because of that inherent insanity, Pitou trudged up the hill behind her. The man she was looking for wasn't at the top; he was sitting halfway up it, both his eyes closed and his hand resting on one of his knees.
Pitou came to his side, watching him. The shinobi gave no indication of acknowledging her existence.
"Sasuke Uchiha," she said. The man didn't move, but she sensed his chakra shift slightly at the words. His aura was so heavy that even a minute adjustment like that was as obvious to her as the wind changing directions.
"Kill me."
The shinobi opened his eyes, regarding Pitou with his curious mismatched stare. He didn't say anything, and Neferpitou felt frustration boiling in her stomach. She took a step forward, raising her remaining arm. She couldn't threaten him, but she could make a show of it.
"You made a mistake, saving my life," she said, her hand trembling. Her lips almost stumbled over the unfamiliar words. "Please correct it."
Sasuke watched her coldly. Then, after a moment of consideration, he stood up, pushing himself to his feet with his sole arm and towering over her. She glared up at him.
"Why come here?" Sasuke asked, his body language completely neutral. Pitou frowned.
"The others refused to kill me," she said, and the shinobi narrowed his eyes. "You are the one who made the mistake. It is your responsibility to fix it."
"You are not my responsibility," Sasuke told her, his voice harsh. "I removed you from danger for the same reason I did not kill you when I was going to speak to the King; it was unnecessary for you to die."
"If you had killed me and the others, it would have been for the better," Pitou said, and the shinobi cocked his head. "The King threw us away for our failure. We are all less than nothing now."
Sasuke shrugged. "That's unfortunate," he said, and Pitou ground her teeth. "But I'm not going to kill you." He turned to leave. "If you want to die, kill yourself. Don't try to throw that responsibility onto others."
Kill herself? Sasuke's words threw Pitou's consciousness into a hole.
Kill herself. Why hadn't she just killed herself? She'd been pondering it for the last day, but hadn't found herself able to act on it. Why could that be? It would be easy. Her hand wandered upwards, coming to rest against her chin, and she considered the simplicity of pushing hard enough to pop her head clean off. It would take only a modicum of effort.
'You're not like us.'
She stayed like that, trying to push and finding herself unable to. How much of this was her, and how much of it was the gene-programming from the Queen? What use would a suicidal Royal Guard be, after all? Even when she'd been thrown away, all she could be was a servant of the King.
Neferpitou, struggling to end her own life, tried to shake the words from the past from her mind. Sasuke paused, looking back at her. Perhaps he was waiting to see if she'd take his advice.
'You have the right to ask if he's worth serving.'
"If you were going to do it," Sasuke said, and Pitou choked. "You would have long before coming to find me."
Neferpitou dropped her hand, staring into the man's peculiar purple eye. She felt like he was looking through her skin, right into her battered heart.
"I don't deserve to live," she said, and the shinobi frowned. "But I don't want to die."
"No one deserves to live," he said. Pitou flinched. "You were designed with a purpose, but you weren't born with it."
"That doesn't make sense," Pitou said, her voice quiet.
"Don't be an idiot," Sasuke said. "You were created to guard Meruem, but that doesn't mean that was the only thing you could possibly do with your life." He chuckled. "How old are you? Hinata said you were born only days before she arrived."
What did age matter? "About seventy days," Pitou said, and Sasuke snorted.
"Consider, perhaps, the slight possibility that with less than one-hundred days of being alive, you are not exactly in a position to know if you deserve to live or not."
"What would you know?!" Pitou suddenly screamed, her frustration boiling over, and Sasuke raised a single eyebrow. She stepped forward, her Nen shrieking. "If I want to die, who are you to question that?! At least grant me one thing! Repay me for what you took!"
"Like I said, if you want to die, do it yourself. Don't push your burden onto someone else. You have that freedom now." The shinobi's glare alone drove her back. "That was all I did back there. I gave you the freedom to decide if you wanted to live or not."
PItou screamed and charged, trying to scythe the man down, and Sasuke stepped past her, not even bothering to counterattack.
"This may surprise you," he said as Neferpitou shrieked and spun, trying to cut him in half, "but you remind me of myself."
"We are nothing alike," Pitou hissed, trying to figure out how to force the human to strike her down. "Unless you cannot see past a missing arm."
"I wanted to die, once," Sasuke said, and Pitou stopped, her strategizing thrown completely off track by the admission. The man was being honest; she did not have Shaiapouf's ability to read emotions, but it was obvious in his stance, his aura, and his tone. "Like you, I demanded someone take that responsibility from me."
He pinned her with his whirling red eye. "Like you, I was an idiot, and young. I didn't understand I was making a mistake because I didn't have the necessary context for my actions."
"Are you trying to teach me a lesson?" Pitou spat, and the shinobi shook his head.
"That's not my place. As I said, all I did was give you the opportunity to decide if you wanted to live."
"Then why tell me this?" Pitou asked. She began pacing, trying to understand what was happening."
"To see if you would listen," Sasuke responded. He didn't smile, but his aura grew a little warmer. "And you did."
Pitou stopped, and Sasuke turned to face her.
"You obviously want to live," he said. "You want to learn. You're trying to understand why you're alive, but at the same time you're overwhelmed by your pain, and trying to escape it. I understand all that." He raised one hand. "So throw away the King, like he threw you away."
"Impossible." Pitou shook her head. "That's impossible, you-!"
"Naruto already killed him," Sasuke said, and Pitou's heart froze. "Not literally, but the King you knew is dead. He died the moment Naruto forced him to surrender." The Uchiha shrugged. "He threw you away and died for his hubris."
"I can't do that," Pitou said, her voice growing faint. "I can't…"
"Then live the rest of your life in agony," Sasuke said with a shrug. "That would be your choice. At any rate, stop bothering me about it. I've got to focus. That's why I came up here for the quiet." He turned and began walking away again. For good this time, Pitou was sure. He wasn't willing to entertain her any longer.
She didn't want to be left alone. She didn't want to be left alone! Pitou started hyperventilating. She didn't know what to do. She didn't want to die, but she didn't know why to live, only that she wanted to. What was the point of living without a purpose, not even an infinitesimally small understanding of why she'd been born? How could anyone manage that?
'You're all a blank slate. You don't have a legacy.'
Wait.
"Wait," Pitou said. Sasuke didn't stop, and she yelled it again, unwilling to let him go. "Wait!"
"I said-"
"Forget that!" Neferpitou yelled. "Forget that! You said you were like me! Did you mean that?!"
The shinobi paused, not looking back at her.
"Of course," he said. "That would be a cruel lie."
"What did you do?" Neferpitou asked. "How did you go from that to this? To here?"
The shinobi looked over his shoulder at her. It wasn't a look of judgement, or arrogance; he simply regarded her honestly.
"I wandered," he said. Pitou listened intently, her Nen vibrating with her focus. "I traveled. I met strangers. I solved problems. I made myself stronger. I atoned."
He walked away, calling back. "There's no easy answer, Ant. But maybe if you search, you can find yourself a reason to live, instead of having it handed to you."
Then, he was gone. Neferpitou fell to her knees, the force of Sasuke's departure kicking up dirt and blowing back her dirty pale hair.
That wasn't the answer she'd been hoping for.
She'd wanted a revelation, like the one the King's birth had given her. Right now, Neferpitou desired nothing more than for her world to be righted, as it had been then. For Sasuke Uchiha, who had saved her life, to say something as simple as 'very well, die,' or perhaps 'then serve me instead.'
Instead, he'd left her alone on a hill with nothing but useless advice.
Grow stronger? Atone? Pitou had no understanding of what any of that meant. What good would wandering do her?
She started.
Though… hadn't wandering brought her here?
Pitou stopped, and considered the situation.
When she'd started walking that morning, she'd had no consideration for where she was going. She only possessed a vague aspiration to be somewhere else, where perhaps she would hurt less, or could die and escape herself all together. But by wandering, she'd come here.
Sasuke hadn't turned her world on its head as the King had, but he'd made her consider his words. She'd found those words by wandering.
What else could she find, if she wandered further? The King may have been gone, but that didn't mean it was impossible there wasn't someone or something else out there that could make her pause and consider, as Sasuke had. He was right. She'd existed for less than one-hundred days.
Pitou, in a moment of terrifying clarity, realized that she was tiny, that she knew nothing, and that she wanted to destroy herself simply because she did not know what to do next.
She remembered the infinite universe that she had perceived in the midst of the night, unable to sleep and drowning in recrimination, and to her horror realized that the stars, the cosmos, had not been ruminating on her failure. In fact, it held no regard for her whatsoever.
That had only been her.
If the universe did not care whether she existed or not, and if she was willing to accept the consequences, what would the harm be of living for however many days it took, in search of the same kind of purpose that had driven her through her first seventy? If she did wander, making herself stronger, looking for an answer after having been thrown away, wouldn't the only person who would have to live with that be herself?
Pitou stood on the hill as still as a statue for a long time, immersed in thought. The only thing that stirred her to move was the sudden onset of a monstrous thunder.
By the time she found the energy to look for the source, the furious sound was gone, and Pitou fell back into thought.