Killing Off the Blue Uchiha

by Foy the Snooze Button

Living life in the third person, the Blue Uchiha always knew he wasn't the hero of his own story. He was just going along for the ride, until his scars refused to let him forget. Now, his friends see a melting pot of epic proportions. They fear the worst and paranoia takes the place of concern. Something regrettable needs to be done. Uchiha! Naruto, Hunter Ninja! Naruto

7. Chapter 7

HAPY NEW YEAR!!!

Here's to a prosperous and hope-filled New Year, everyone :D

COLOSSAL shout out to RedRazorFlash, Tyrese, SkeenTheDream, Yamajiji, Spenge,JJjulian, Eminated, shinobinoyami16, Antex-The Legendary Zoroarc, paulagustin101, puzahx2, CrookedKing1996, HITSUPERGUY, ankur2005, BJJF691, TheBrokenTool, 777torn777, geraldsha, LeviDragon, OmegaRealism, Laigro, AG732, Darkwave20, Tohka123 and TigrezzTail. You're all fuggin fantastic!

XD

This chapter contains character death-

Hey, hey, hey! Let me finish! Do not throw that shoe.

-Just…read to the end, if you can…

Enjoy!

CHAPTER 7

He hadn't slept, not even a little.

It was constant correspondence with him, his Network and his Accountants.

At times, it was difficult to remember what he had said to whom and so on, but after a while Naruto found his groove and the letters flowed easier and faster.

His contacts and connections were panicking, not out of fear of being discovered but because their benefactor had hinted that his life was in inherent danger, he didn't say from who but he did say that he needed them-his friends and close acquaintances outside of Konoha-to stay resolute and to not worry about him but to prepare ahead of time to receive Itachi as the new person they would be reporting to once he sought them out when the boy turned fifteen.

It was regrettable that Blue had woken them up in the dead of night, only for him to give them this kind of news.

The Uchiha Sniper maintained this blizzard of letters to his Network, while still keeping a level head and drawing out specific orders to his two Accountants; they were to absolutely not stop or reduce his current investments into those companies he had money in, but rather to increase when they judged there would be profit. This was all in the purpose of increasing his savings.

That wouldn't be a problem.

His Fire and Iron Accountants were good family men and he already paid them handsomely, there wasn't a reason for them to go against his orders. They pledged to keep doing what they were doing and multiply their sole clients billions more and more, until the time came for his accounts to be opened for his nephew. Though on Itachi's twelfth birthday, the Iron Accountant would personally come to Konoha to inform him of the trustfund, and that his uncle had willed him his billions.

They weren't exactly pleased to hear that their blue eyed client had projected his own death but they were professionals.

He had given them a job and kami damn it they were going to see it through.

Blue had also given the Iron Accountant financial freedom to hire as many and as highly ranked muscle he wanted in order to feel safe during their trip to Konoha.

Naruto emptied all the blueprints, schematics and sketches he had ever made in his whole life and sent them to the Iron Accountant, receiving a confirmation of delivery half an hour later as well as a complete log of the items received. It wasn't that Blue didn't trust the Fire Accountant with his drawings; it was that Minato could dig into the bank and convince the Fire Daimyo to lock his account on whatever sketchy grounds he claimed. Using the Iron Account was safer because Iron country was neutral, people tended to not look twice at any transaction coming from there, but the stark opposite was the case for Fire country transactions.

He wrote that the funds going to Hidden Sound in Frigid country were to double, though in a way that his mother wouldn't notice; Orochimaru wasn't interested in her son's money, she had enough of her own. Still, it didn't feel alright for him to not leave something for her.

Same for Yugao; the cat lover didn't like him giving her money, and she made it clear how self-sufficient she was by paying for both of their food whenever they ate out on many of their food runs, so Blue had to be creative in what he was going to leave behind for her.

The restoration funds for the villages of northern Fire country too were to keep going indefinitely.

Once again, his Accountants reassured him that his accounts and all the transactions were untraceable and undetectable, explaining how it was so in simple words. And once again Blue had to trust them; he had been a billionaire for two years and no one outside of Yugao, Kushina and Minato had found out, so it was safe to say they were doing a good job.

Then there was a matter of the safety of his Fire Accountant and the state of his Account once the Hokage twisted the arm of the Director of the Fire Bank in order to uncover the blue eyed marksman's account. There was a high chance that the Accountant would be violently interrogated with the aim of releasing all of Naruto's bank statements.

Knowing the Fire Accountant, the man wouldn't budge.

Client confidentiality and a personal responsibility would screw his lips shut.

Blue told the man that he should keep his ears open.

The very moment he heard that he, Naruto "Blue" Uchiha, was dead- even if it was mere speculation-he should transfer everything in his Fire Account to the Iron Account. After doing that, he should pack up all his and his family's things, hire security on Naruto's tab and then move to Iron country, where his Iron Yakuza contact would receive the man as well as his family. Naruto had a contact in the Fire Country Migration Office, Fire capital, that could get him clean travelling papers that would get him and his family through border security and into Iron, depending on how hastily the accountant acted. The Fire Accountant would be with Naruto's Iron Yakuza contact, the high ranking red haired ronin, and she would protect the Fire Accountant and his family for a while until the heat died down, doing so without getting the man or his family mixed up with Yakuza business.

She owed Naruto and samurai, ronin or not, were always good on their word.

The ronin woman voiced her displeasure at him taking his demise so lightly.

The Fire Accountant was free to relax and laze around while he was under protection; he would pay the man his monthly salary, but the man had chosen to work in the Bank of Iron country. Blue reached out, once again, to his contact in the Fire Country Migration Office and said the man should help him alter the travelling papers so that his Fire Accountant could work wherever it is he was going. It was going to cost Blue more money but it was worth it if the papers did what they were made for.

Naruto apologized profusely for the inconvenience.

The last return letter he got from the Fire Accountant was that it was fine; his wife's family were from Hidden Saltwater, his and his wife's parents were late and the rest of his relations-cousins and nieces-were in a boarding school in Iron country, so the move to the neutral nation of the samurai wasn't a bad thing for him, seeing as it would finally give him the chance to see his family.

The blue eyed Uchiha had initially planned to space out these letters within the span of seven days; one day for one Hidden Village and their countries plus Iron country, then the remaining two days for smaller hidden villages and less popular countries.

Blue was good at multitasking. It came with being an inventor, but his fingers became cramped with writing. Making a shadow clone took a large chunk of his chakra, chakra he needed to stay awake and attentive. Unlike Kushina and Minato, who could spam as many Shadow clones as she wanted, Naruto wasn't so lucky to have massive chakra reserves but he could say that he had a fairly sizeable amount to keep him out of trouble.

Another reason he wanted to space out his letters was because of his vision.

Naruto was half-blind.

Using Inferno didn't take a toll on his sharingan, seeing as it was chakra-intensive, but it was that he had used Projection twice in his whole life; first was to test it out and second was in Zyouki.

Projection took a quarter of the functionality of his sharingan, which was a polite way of saying that it took away a quarter of his overall vision. The outline of faces, buildings and objects blurred greatly and the air shimmered annoyingly before his cerulean blue eyes, as if the little light that could enter his eyes was wasted on illuminating the chakra in the air rather than people's faces, and how he had been able to hide his current state was that he had a keen sense of hearing, a good memory for voices and he was also a good chakra sensor, able to differentiate person from person or recall where he had 'felt' that kind of chakra before. Buying groceries and weapons were a chore though, more so than they were supposed to be.

Being half-blind wasn't detrimental to being a marksman or a long range master or even. This is because the lenses on Crystalline's scope that made the long range weapon leap to hundreds of miles away with subtle adjustments from its holder, were able to clear his vision spectacularly. He had acquired these lenses from a travelling merchant from Sunagakure but the blue eyed man had so far been unable to find the man again so as to give him more of those miraculous lenses, not even his contacts knew where that merchant had disappeared to. It then became a choice on whether or not he could use his chakra sensing skills and detailed memory to hide his condition or to sacrifice the sights of his long range weapon to make a pair of glasses.

Yugao knew he was half-blind but it appeared no one else knew.

He hid it because Blue wasn't a fan of being pitied.

Blue knew braille-mostly self-taught-but that form of writing wasn't going to be useful to him in writing letters, so he heavily depended on his Mangekyo sharingan to heighten his ocular perception and sharpen his vision.

He wasn't using any jutsus and he wasn't using his evolved eyes on a daily basis, so it was fine.

There was a noticeable dim in the quality of his sight using his blue Mangekyo sharingan but that didn't affect his ability to see the world clearly, testament to the otherworldly vision and perception clarity provided by the Mangekyo sharingan.

His Mangekyo sharingan swirling sluggishly in their sockets, Blue turned to the wall on his right, where that very evening he had nailed the map of the entire elemental nations.

He couldn't help it.

He smiled.

Using thumb tacks, he marked down the location of every contact and connection he had on the continent. Red for contacts and green for connections, and they dotted the map in their dozens, maybe even hundreds.

He had worked too hard, too long and sacrificed too much to gather this much trust in his friends outside of the village for it to simply slip into non-existence at his inevitable demise. This wasn't just about his network of informants but on the human connections he had made on his journeys around the continent. It wasn't about the billions upon billions stock piled in his accounts and spread out across the country as investments.

He replicated the locations of his people on a smaller scale map rolled out on his desk, marking the network down with a red and green marker, using a blue marker to draw a hidden pathway that led directly to Hidden Sound in Frigid country, where his mother and the Iwa orphans were living in relative peace and quiet. He marked out Hidden Sound with his black marker and wrote on the back of the scroll in legible handwriting that Itachi could go there, to his birth mother, and he would get whatever answers he wanted concerning the fate of his uncle.

He wrote a few other things too on the back of the invaluable map of Blue's Network.

When he was done with that, the last thing he wrote was that one of his friends, Yugito Nii, was a powerful Kunoichi and she had expressed her intention of protecting him, Itachi, if he so much as called for her. Like his other friends outside, Yugito wasn't too pleased to hear Blue preparing for his own death, given that he was a twenty year old male at the prime of his life. She called up his unanswered promise of considering them entering a 'couple-like' relationship, how she was saving up to get her own place in Hidden Saltwater and how she wanted him to be there, at least to see her. It had taken a few dozen letters to placate her, telling her that he needed her strength to look out for his nephew alongside his mother.

Presently, Kumo citizens could enter Konoha and even though Yugito would take a while to get her travelling papers to Konoha from the Kumogakure Office of Migration. Unfortunately, Blue didn't have anyone there that could make the process faster and less traceable, so Yugito would have to do it on her own.

Blue owed her more than she owed him, but the blonde jinchuriki of the Nibi no Nekomata wasn't counting that.

He needed her help watching Itachi's back and, even though he told her in plain, strong words that she should not come to Konoha until after he was gone, she was compelled to do what she could because he would have done the very same thing for her, no questions asked.

It was unfortunate for Blue's friends in Konoha that they neglected to remember the mental sacrifices he readily made for them, and the things he could very well do.

He rolled up the scroll and stored it into a blue tinted scroll container of the same size, capping it securely and keeping it where Itachi would surely find it.

Under his desk.

Blue was the one that invented his own security measures-cameras, mid-range launchers and such-so he knew very well that his nephew snuck into his library almost every day, taking one of his advanced books from the shelf and sitting on his desk chair, pretending to him and failing adorably.

The boy's feet couldn't even reach the ground and what he was read couldn't be comprehended in the slightest, no matter how hard he squinted, so he would get bored and aimlessly dig around his uncle's desk.

The man got off his chair and stretched, popping his shoulders and rolling his neck, groaning in relief all the while. He took down the map on the wall and ripped it up, tossing it into his metal dustbin and he flicked the fingers of his right hand into two hand seals, tapping his fingers on the torn up contents inside the bin with his red tipped, red gloved fingers. The map smouldered slowly, emitting a small amount of smoke and crackling before his sky blue orbs.

Blue's face remained devoid of emotion as the map burnt.

When he was sure there was nothing but ash inside the bin, he covered it with the dustbin lid and left his office, closing the door after himself and securely locking it, knowing full well that Itachi would return as soon as school ended and find a way into the room to mess around.

School.

Blue rubbed his eyes, still not sleepy, and he waltzed casually to Itachi's room. He rapped his knuckles on the door and peered inside. "Get up, time for school."

The boy didn't give much resistance; only a scathing, drowsy glare from underneath his blankets and a muffled childish curse towards his uncle, skittering outside as the blue eyed man narrowed his eyes, daring the child to say what he wanted to say louder. Itachi wasn't a morning person and even though Blue gave his nephew leeway, he didn't take too kindly to being cussed at by a boy thirteen years his junior.

The boy passed his uncle, stumbling to the end of the upstairs corridor and slamming the bathroom door shut. Soon after, he heard the rush of tap water and the boy yelp when he realized that the shower needed a few more seconds before hot water came out. Blue chuckled to himself and stalked to his room, throwing open the door and passing his bed, where a rhythmically breathing lump laid, sleeping without a care in the world, when just the other night she had been unable to sleep after watching a horror movie.

"I take it you're not going home yet."

The purple haired woman groused in response, an audible, incomprehensible rumble that the blue eyed Uchiha somehow understood.

Blue made his way to his wardrobe and took out a pair of black shinobi pants, a dark shirt and his red gloves from the top of a cabinet next to his bed. "I'm making breakfast. If you want some, then when I get out of the shower, get in, clean yourself up and come down."

" Ughhhhhhh."

Blue chuckled with his eyes clothes as he threw those clothes over his shoulder. "No use whining. I'll be making pancakes."

The woman sat up immediately, her eyes furrowed sceptically. "With-"

"With blueberries, yes." He confirmed with a knowing smirk, waltzing out of the bedroom as soon as he heard his nephew call.

"Bathroom's free!"

"I'm heading in." he said from his door, seeing the boy pad his way to his bedroom, hair wet from the shower and his lower body wrapped in a large purple-black towel. "Do you want me to drop you off in school?"

The boy stopped by his bedroom door and looked down briefly, gripping the doorknob. Then he nodded a little. "If you don't mind…if you're free, that it is."

"No problem, kid. Are you with your stuff?" he took his time going to the bathroom and the boy answered.

"I came with them yesterday, Blue."

" Uncle Blue."

"Uncle Blue."

The man sighed. "Just…go get ready."

Ten minutes later, the blue eyed man burst out of the bathroom, wearing the clothes he had selected from his bedroom and running a hand through his dampish black-blonde hair, tucking the clothes he had formerly been wearing under his arms. He dumped those clothes into a laundry basket right next to the bathroom door and rolled his shoulders as he trudged down the hall, ambling down the stairs and cracking his neck. Itachi was already in the dining room, scribbling into a notebook with his brow creased thoughtfully, flicking his eyes to another book every few seconds and then writing more. The man scoffed with a smirk.

"Late homework?"

"I was tired yesterday, ok?!" the boy exclaimed defensively, not pausing from his schoolwork and reddening with embarrassment as his uncles deep rumbling laughter floated through the air as the Uchiha Sniper tipped his head back amusedly, savouring the prodigious Uchiha's rush. "Gimme five minutes and I'll be done with this."

"Don't rush it, ok?" he tousled the seven year old child's hair as he passed him into the kitchen. "Experiences like these build character."

"Late homework builds character?" Itachi called curiously.

"That panic you're feeling right now." Blue said humorously, getting out pancake mix from the pantry, some fresh blueberries from the fridge and preparing his stove all the while. He moved about the kitchen with practice and ease and it took real effort for the boy to not turn his head and watch the older Uchiha cook. It made the child wonder how the man could be such an infamous shinobi while still being a good cook. The man poured out a glass of orange juice and came back into the dining room, the room adjacent from the parlour, and he dropped it on the table beside the boy. "You don't want your teacher screeching at you, huh."

"He has an annoying voice."

The man laughed lightly and ruffled his nephew's black hair again, re-entering the kitchen. "Need any help?"

"I've got this. Thanks, uncle." The boy replied. A short while later and the man dropped a plate of pancakes before his nephew, placing another plate before a newly arrived Yugao, fresh out of the bathroom. The boy mumbled his thanks as he began stuffing his face once his uncle handed them forks. The man rubbed his red gloved hands and drank down a glass of orange juice, looking over at the work the boy had done as he stood next to Itachi.

The man hummed. "When did they start teaching poison-to-weight ratio in First Year?" he asked as he saw Itachi's homework, where the teacher provided the weight of various animals and humans and the boy was to inform him of the exact amount of poison- whichever poison that was, Blue could only guess-that would bring them down within half a minute. "This is too advanced."

"You learnt it in your First Year, right?" Itachi asked with his mouth and the man thumped the boys head for speaking with food in his mouth. The boys eyes search the table and found Yugao's and the woman, mid-bite, winced.

"It was different for us, Itachi. There was a war and they wanted us out front as fast as possible." She said slowly, not wanting to hurt the boy's feelings. The swordmaster also didn't want to say that neither she nor her uncle were unprepared to learn that sort of advanced knowledge. Yugao looked at the man, perusing his nephew's homework with sweeping cerulean eyes. "Did he get them right?"

"Oh, he got them all right. Unsurprisingly." Somehow, Itachi found his chest puffing out proudly and he sat up straighter, shovelling his pancakes into his mouth. He put the notebook and textbook into the boy's schoolbag and zipped it up, strolling around to the kitchen and dropping his empty glass into the sink, rinsing it out. The clock in the parlour, above the television, read 07:10AM. "You'll be late for class if we don't head out now."

"You're not having breakfast?" Yugao wondered aloud, also cleaning her plate and putting it on the dish rack, helping Itachi with his own.

"Nah, I'm not hungry. Too much on my mind." he found Itachi slipping on a pair of sandals by his door, saying. "I'll buy you a bento on the way."

"Ok."

The older Uchiha put on a pair of black sneakers with bright red soles. The shoes fit his feet snuggly. In the place he bought his shoes, one of the employees knew his taste and knew exactly what to get him; footwear for an active person that he could also wear out for hanging out. He had recommended the place to his best friend, Yugao, and she was now putting on her own pair, white sneakers that had purple-pink whisker-like designs on the sides, which fit well with her dark purple hoodie and jersey shorts.

"My place is along the way." She said, drawing his eyes away from her shoes. "I promised Kureanai I'll call someone to fix the bathroom sink, our washing machine and look at our TV for us." She looked up, seeing if there was anything else she and her only roommate, Kureanai Yuuhi, needed fixed. "Oh, and there was a power surge from last night that blew out the fuse for our apartment and we've got no light. We tried asking Kureanai's boyfriend for help," Asuma Sarutobi. "But he's got no idea how to do anything round the place."

Yugao snorted, giggling at Asuma's expense as the blue eyed Uchiha watched her with an amusedly raised eyebrow. Meanwhile Itachi raptly listened to the purple haired cat lover make fun of her roommates boyfriend.

"He didn't even pretend to know what he's doing. I think he even made things worse; our bathroom's flooded now, so…" Her eyes then lit up and she faced her best friend, grinning ear to ear and playfully jabbing his side with her pointer fingers as she finally realized just who she was talking to. " Heyyyyyyy~."

"Yeah, yeah, I'll be there later." Blue rolled his eyes, holding his right hand out to Itachi and the boy reluctantly placed his left in it, as Blue held his left fist to Yugao. They were at the entrance gate of the Uchiha clan before they knew it. "My tools should be in my shed; I'll come back for them and head to your place after I drop Itachi at school."

Blue sent a strong gaze to the hard faced clan mates assigned to be gatekeepers for that week, seeing the black-blonde uncle leave the clan compound with a non-Uchiha beside him. They withdrew their seething looks and reproached themselves at his subtle glare, an expression that went over Itachi's head but not out of Yugao's notice.

The two Uchiha chunin bowed in greeting to the indefinitely suspended tokubetsu jounin and mumbled their apologies.

It wouldn't do well to irk the man they and their clan respected.

Blue had power and his clan respected power.

The purple haired farm girl-turned-Kunoichi bumped his fist. "I owe you one."

"Yeah, you do." They slapped hands after the fist bump and then shot finger guns at each other. It was a handshake they had come up with the day before they left the village for the war, when they were eight and had just graduated from the Academy.

"I'll go and tell Kureanai you're coming to help us out." She waved and hopped away, shouting over her shoulder with a wave. "See you later, Naruto!"

Not being a ninja anymore didn't mean Blue was exactly available all the time, but in spite of being a fairly busy person, he was always true to his commitments.

Itachi raised an eyebrow, mind still on their odd handshake, but, oddly enough, he decided not to comment on it.

His Uncle Blue and Yugao had been great friends for longer than he was alive.

They had history.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Arriving at the gate in front of the Academy, Blue felt a tingle run up his neck.

Someone was watching him.

His senses stretched out and he picked out the person, squatting down at the top of a tall apartment building and watching him as Itachi collected a bento box with both hands, bowing politely to the homemade bento vendor that had stationed himself before the gate of the Academy. This person wasn't the usual watcher, comprising of Kakashi, Tenzo and Hayate but of someone he was positive he had never met before.

Blue prided himself on his memory and the person staring down at him from a hidden position at the top of the building was someone he hadn't encountered before.

Earth affinity chakra, wearing dark clothes and bearing a white, featureless mask; that was the picture Blue's senses painted for him in his head as his half-blind eyes glimpsed briefly in the spy's direction, making it seem like he was searching around for someone.

The person had been tailing him since the moment he left the Uchiha clan compound.

Naruto had to give the person credit for not alarming any other ninja.

"-Blue?"

Naruto grumbled on reflex and clenched his nephew's hand a bit tighter, not uncomfortably so. " Uncle Blue."

"Uncle Blue." The child corrected himself. "Is there something wrong?"

The man made to tell the boy that it was nothing, but he was unable to say anything as a familiar redhead stepped out of the entrance of the Academy, ushering students into the school. Her purple eyes brightened as she saw him and she waved gaily, trotting to them.

Kushina was in a sleeveless, crimson red, knee-length dress with a gold sash, black leggings and comfortable looking ballet flats, underneath the dress was a tight, long sleeved black shirt and she wore the Leaf forehead protector on her head.

"I know how this looks." She began, wearing a cheeky grin as the black-blonde haired man lifted a suspicious eyebrow.

"It looks like you're stalking me, Kushina." he said frankly.

Kushina scratched the back of her head with a slight smile. "I may be retired from active duty but that doesn't mean I can't teach."

"I thought you were an art expert or something."

"I buy fine art, doesn't mean I'm an expert. Besides, I've got too much free time on my hands. I got this job two weeks ago and I'm one of the teachers in Itachi's class."

Blue looked down at Itachi and the boy blinked up at him, the tired lines on his face less pronounced. "And you didn't tell me this?"

"You never asked."

"Kami, Itachi." Blue exhaled, pinching the bridge of his nose. The semester started a handful of months ago and Itachi hadn't once commented on the new class sensei he had gotten late in the semester after the former one had been caught reading a porn mag of pregnant women by a Third Year.

It was a whole issue.

The children hadn't been told why the man had been laid off.

The boy shrugged to his uncle's low exclamation.

The man released his nephew's hand and urged him towards the school. "Don't be late, kid."

The boy jogged to the school, one hand firmly holding the recently purchased bento box. He turned a little and waved. There was a slight smile on his weary face and the shadows under his eyes lightened significantly. "Bye uncle!"

"Bye!"

"So…" Blue's cerulean eyes were drawn back to the petite redhead as she idly kicked a stone.

"How was your night, Kushina?" Blue asked, tilting his head to the side and wearing a lopsided smile.

The Uzumaki scoffed. "Minato barely stayed thirty minutes after you left."

"Huh…wonder why…"

"…I'm thinking of getting a divorce." Naruto started at her words, more so at her sardonic laugh. "Marrying him wasn't my smartest decision." She sighed and her shoulders slumped. "Getting so worked up about him when I was younger…it wasn't worth it." Blue was silent, slowly pushing his hands into his pockets and patiently staring at his childhood crush with a gradual frown coming onto his lips. Kushina self-consciously smoothed down her dress. "Say something, Blue."

"Then what?"

"Then…we can hang out more…" she smiled shortly, hesitant. "It doesn't have be anything… serious. I'd understand if you don't want to date me, I just…" she teetered in place, unsure of how to go on. "I just…want us to be friends again."

"You're willing to get a divorce…just to be friends with me?" she nodded firmly, her purple eyes steeled and her expression displaying her resolve. Blue closed his eyes for a second, calming himself. Then he opened them. "Think about this for a second-"

"I've had two years to think about it, Naruto." She said, calling him by his name instead of his nickname. "Since I got married, I've been thinking about it."

"Have you told anyone else about this?" his face lowered and he said under his breath. "Have you told Minato?"

"You're the first person." She replied in a hushed voice, her eyes lowering. Her hands clasped behind her and she barely stood on her toes. "I know it sounds hasty, but I've made up my mind. You can't convince me otherwise."

"You're willing to cause a scandal, isolate yourself from everyone and make that yellow man-child- I mean Minato-mad…just to hang out with me." He stated with a raised eyebrow, mildly confused. He then shook his head. "Do you know how crazy that sounds?"

"Yup." She chirped, overlooking the remark on the hidden childishness of her husband. "Is that enough to show you how serious I am?"

"I've got a clue." He answered amusedly, pursing his lips and looking up as the Director of the Ninja Academy came to the main door of the school and crossed his arms tersely. "Looks like you're late." he placed a finger on her lips, shushing her. "Don't say you'll quit." She huffed and pouted, even as the finger on her lip went down to her chin, tipping her head up a little and he smiled slightly down at her. "I've got somewhere I need to go now."

"…I was hoping you'd kiss me…" she whispered airily, not leaving the soft hold he had on her chin. She smiled slyly and took a small step closer, placing her hands on his hard abdomen. Her breathy words stirred something in Blue. "Are you going to kiss me, Naruto…?"

Blue's smiled softened and he pressed his lips to her forehead.

It wasn't what Kushina was looking for, not exactly, but she shuddered at the warmth that poured over her whole body, from the spot on her forehead to her feet, it was a feeling she couldn't even describe. She closed her eyes and her mind imprinted this sensation on her heart, emboldening and affirming the affection she felt for this man. Her knees weakened and Blue's other hand went to her lower back to keep her from falling.

Kushina Uzumaki, at that moment, couldn't care less about the sort of scandal that would erupt when the Director told the Hokage of what had happened.

"I…" the redhead swallowed thickly, her tongue too heavy for her mouth and her purple eyes swirling dizzily. "I…get off by three."

"…See you then, Kushina."

He stepped back slowly and her grasping fingers didn't seem to want to release him. He walked backwards a few steps, his left hand in his pockets and a slight smile on his face as she watched him go. There was a sad light in his eyes, a downward dip in his countenance, not directed at her but at himself, something that seemed very strange. He gave her a last two fingered wave and turned around. Her eyes followed him till he merged into the sparse crowd milling far outside the Academy.

Naruto "Blue" Uchiha didn't make it to three.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Training ground 4

The place Blue made his way to was to the furthest reaches of Konoha's northern border, dangerously close to the tall walls of the village for it to be seen through the thicket of trees and foliage.

His senses told him that there was no one but him within a half mile radius.

Except for the masked watcher, of course.

He stood at the edge of the training ground and ran his pointer and middle finger up his right inner forearm, manifesting a Storage seal drawn there with invisible ink and pulling out a large package that at first looked like a mass of shadows, before its form became more defined.

Crystalline.

His right hand held the grip of his long range weapon and hoisted it up, wedging it between his right shoulder and neck, supporting his hold with his left hand on the barrel. He closed his left eye and he wiped around, facing the wall of the village and squeezed out a single needle projectile as the masked shinobi fled, finally realizing what was happening.

Blue didn't need his sharingan activated to predict the zigzagging escape.

The needle dug into the masked man's lower back, piercing the spine and permanently paralyzing him from the waist down. The person slammed into a tree as the force of the needle propelled him forward, his legs now completely useless.

Blue lowered Crystalline with an unimpressed sniff, his face was clean of emotion.

He sealed the weapon back into his left forearm and approached the downed shinobi, flicking his eyes around and confirming that no one else was around. He bent down and stared at the silent, dark clothed man lying on his back. There were no telling clues on where the person was and the person's chakra was as unfamiliar to him as it was when he was still hiding.

Blue's eyebrow quirked up when he didn't hear the almost familiar blubber for mercy pouring out from his victim but rather he noticed a slow blink from the mask's eyeholes.

"…Who sent you?"

"The Shadows of the Leaf Village." Was the muffled reply. Blue wondered how much pain the man was in and how much of it he was suppressing; the place the senbon was lodged in was a vital nerve that transmitted orders from the brain to the legs, and the artery his needle had run through was a major one that flowed blood to the legs. Cutting the circulation meant an indescribable world pain. Naruto tilted his head to the side, seeing the blood pouring out from the senbon-hole. "The Roots of the Great Tree."

"Is that so?"

"Traitors have no place in this village, monster." The man said in a dull drone. His right hand went to his mask and Naruto's eyes narrowed. "For the sake of this Great Tree…you-"

Blue shook his head, grabbing his wrist and stopping him from taking off his mask. "Give me a name."

"…You brought this upon yourself, monster."

The Hirashin seal tag underneath the ROOT ninjas mask activated.

They were gone in a yellow flash.

As soon as Naruto's feet touched down, the bomb vest the ROOT shinobi was wearing under his clothes went off.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Blue's mind worked a nanosecond a minute.

He looked down as the flames crept up his feet and the concussive force came soon after, racking his bones. The entire universe slowed to a lazy slither as his cerulean eyes churned, warping within itself and activating, forming the three tomoe base for of his doujutsu.

Then his eyes evolved.

Despite the pause in time that the blue eyed Uchiha was seeing, the reality was that he had no more than half a second to prevent himself from being incinerated into nothing.

There was no time to look around for a safe distance to Project himself.

The explosion rose up to his ankles and his feet lifted off the ground at the violent upward push of the bomb. His fingers meshed together, flicking into the Dragon seal as he performed the third and most powerful of his blue doujutsu's unique abilities.

"Reflection."

He closed his right eye and his left bugged out, bleeding heavily after his muttered words.

The fire burning his feet stopped and the world stood still, then the explosion reversed its steps and returned to the ROOT ninja's body.

Blue grit his teeth and braced himself as the explosion went off under him, though super suppressed into a heavy pop, blasting open the corpse like a balloon and spraying the blood outwards, away from the Uchiha man.

Naruto looked up and covered his now milky white left eye with his hand, profusely bleeding as it was, and the right Mangekyo opened and flicked around as his senses reached out, drawing an accurate picture of his current environment, the exact location of every blade of grass, every stone, every particle of dust floating in the air and every sliver of chakra.

Blue didn't like it when his friends claimed his brain was similar, if not the same, as that of the world's latest super computer; it made him sound less human and needlessly put him on a pedestal of expectation in most situations he was put in.

It didn't help that it was the truest, closest comparison people had to comprehend the sheer processing speed his mind spun through.

It didn't matter that his doujutsu was activated.

A tenth of a second after redirecting the explosion, the one eyed Uchiha had a vivid map imprinted in his brain.

He knew where he was.

He had been here before.

They were on a tall cliff on the north western-most edge of Wave country, the place he had saved his Iron Yakuza contact from falling from to her death. There were jagged rocks at the bottom and the waters crashed angrily into the side of the cliff, spitting up light sprays of water that hit the black-blonde Uchiha's back. There were scorch marks beneath him, where the suicide bomber and his ashy remains blew carelessly in the loud, hollow wind.

Still holding his blind left eye, Blue lowered himself into a guarded stance and ground his teeth as more white masked men and women landed before him in a wide semi-circle.

He wasn't looking at them though.

He was looking over them, at the grim faced Yondaime as he flashed through a set of hand seals. An artificial mist manifested with fuinjutsu had been raised directly behind the Fourth Hokage, saturated with chakra and making it difficult to be seen through.

He couldn't use Projection anymore, not when he couldn't see any viable means of escape. They couldn't have known about his Projection jutsu, so the wall of mist was meant so there would be no outside witnesses.

The blue eyed Uchiha slipped underneath a katana slash for his neck, rolled backwards and slammed the soles of his feet into the chest of a masked Kunoichi, throwing her off the cliff and right onto a tall, pointed rock, snapping her spine and killing her instantly. He released hold of his blind eye, exposing the waterfall of blood that washed down half of his face and the milky white blindness inflicted on him from using Reflection. He batted aside a kick, grabbed the assailant by the top of his head and smashed his knee into their chin, not caring much to recognize the person's gender. He came down agilely from the rising knee and yanked out a handful of shuriken from the recently killed shinobi, throwing them over his shoulders without looking in quick succession.

Cli-cli-cli-clink-cli-clink!

Thunk-thunk!

Ack-argh!

Naruto's blue Mangekyo burned in its socket and he ducked a grab for his face, rose up inside the attackers guard and cracked his forehead onto the masked man's own, dazing the ROOT ninja. Blue swept under a tanto strike, making the blade user inadvertently decapitate their own comrade and giving Naruto ample time to palm strike the persons gut, shooting up with an uppercut that dislocated the persons jaw and smashed their teeth, lifting him off clear of the ground and into another incoming ROOT ninja. He pulled the airborne person by his belt, bringing his back down to earth, swept him completely around by the same hold on his belt and dug both of his fists into the injured man's chest, shooting him into the path of three dark clothed ninjas that had attempted to ambush him from behind.

The emotionless ninjas could only scream as they hurled over the edge of the cliff to their watery demise.

The Uchiha crossed both of his forearms and flicked his wrists. A fistful of shuriken appeared in his hands, as if my magic for there was no burst of chakra smoke, and he threw them at the Yondaime, doing so over the heads of the waves of ROOT ninjas dashing at him. Danzo's ninjas tried to stop their progress, leaping up in hopes of taking the ninja stars in place of the Fourth Hokage but then the shuriken would change directions as another ninja clanged against it, curving and weaving through the crowd until the red hot ninja weapon found its way deep in Minato's shoulder.

He needed to concentrate and the jutsu he was performing punished the user if it was gotten wrong.

Yet, the blonde Kage only grunted in pain as the weapon severed a few muscles, faltering a little in his blazing fast sequence of seals but continuing with only one hand when the other was deemed too damaged to be used again.

A bonfire of rage exploded in the Namikaze's head; his blue eyed rival's first tag on him had immobilized an entire arm and he couldn't retaliate.

Not until now.

A podium of bones erupted from the ground before him and a single ROOT ninja took their place in front of it.

Without much regard for the lives of the ROOT ninjas that were distracting Blue to the best of their ability, the Yondaime Hokage clapped his hands together and held it as a mass of darkness rose behind him, one that wore a pale Noh mask that bore a creaking, grisly, wide open grin and gaping, empty eyes.

"Reaper Death Seal!"

Minato mentally directed the hands of the Shinigami around himself and through the masked man before the ivory dais, sealing their fate.

Danzo's men gave way, jumping out of the way of the speedily reaching hands of the Death god and fighting to suppress their cold shivers at the hideous sound of the Shinigami's chattering laughter.

Uhehehehehehehe~

Naruto's one good eye bugged out at the horrendous sight surging towards him.

There was nowhere to run.

"Reflection."

The Shinigami's hands hit an invisible barrier and bounced back, uncontrollably flying back to its sender.

Blue's right eye paled with blindness, making him unable to see as Minato flashed to the back of one of Danzo's many disposable shinobi, forcing that ninja to take the fall for him and granting them instant death with the grasping hands of the Death god. The Uchiha though was very well able to sense it happen and the throbbing pain from his unseeing white eyes served to only reorient himself, keeping his mind focused on his current predicament and the blood rushing from his right eye poured down to his chin, the bleeding of the other one had now dried.

The blue eyed Uchiha refused to let the blood loss topple him.

"You're like a cockroach, Naruto." Minato growled, holding his control of the Death god and sacrificing yet another unfortunate ROOT ninja to the Shinigami's hands in order to appease it for the Uchiha's audacious act of repelling its deathly reach. As long as there were people to sacrifice, the Shinigami would keep itself back from sucking out its summoner's soul.

He pulled out the shuriken lodged in his shoulder, flexing his right arm and pushing his chakra to reconnect the severed muscles; by any stretch of the imagination, Minato Namikaze didn't have the rare Regeneration ability but Tsunade Senju, the famed Medic that had observed Orochimaru's Regenerative ability from afar, had taught Minato a way to use his chakra to hold together severed muscles or use his chakra to glue fractured bones together, long enough for him to get a medic to properly heal his wounds.

The medical jutsu was called Bone-Muscle Reattachment technique and it required a superior amount of chakra control to sustain for prolonged periods of time.

Though created by the Slug Sage herself and made known to all of Konoha's Medics, not many people could correctly perform this technique.

Shaking his head of the sharp jabs coming from his reconnected muscles, the Hokage brought his mind back to the matter at hand.

The Grim Reaper was perplexed, more so than him.

Not even Death itself could fathom how a human was able to defend against itself.

Mesmerizingly black scales ran down Blue's blind eyes and his black-blonde hair smoothed down and became feathery.

"I won't let you kill me so easily, bug."

"Know when you're defeated." The Namikaze grunted to himself, lowering his stance and keeping the single seal that had the Death god remain visible and tangible. "This will only prolong your pain. I'm guessing your eyes are useless now." He said, seeing the paleness of Naruto's formerly blue eyes. He smirked sharply. "What can you do now?"

Flames ignited around Blue and the heat ebbed out of him.

Minato didn't have the time to get his wits together, not when after the explosion of heat and fire he found a hand wrapped around his neck and a palm slammed into the centre of his chest, imprinting a clear five-fingered hand through his clothes, on the festering skin of his chest. He exhaled hot air, quite literally, and agony was the only thing he breathed out as the fire monster's hand melted into his neck.

The Death god's hands tore down and entered Naruto's sides, hunching over and cackling gleefully at now being able to touch the formerly untouchable Uchiha.

The Yondaime kicked Blue back, giving himself space and the Shinigami's hands had a firm grip of the Uchiha's soul as the long range expert bounced on his back numerous times and just stopping himself from rolling off the cliff.

A light spray of water met Blue as he staggered back to his feet, visibly in pain from the two ethereally dark hands dig into his sides.

He could not see but he knew, without a doubt, that the blonde Kage's throat sported riskily deep burn marks, ones that would scar for the rest of his life, and there was a hand print on Minato's chest, where Naruto's palm strike had connected.

Naruto had marked him for death.

The demonic visage of the man standing close to the cliff would serve to haunt Minato for the rest of his life.

The story of how this monster had torn apart Kirabi of Kumogakure was severely understated.

For another person to be able to close the distance faster than the Yellow Flash could dodge could not be humanly comprehended, and yet the fire monster had marked the Yondaime with the flames of hellfire.

"The Flames of Hell have marked you for itself, bug." Blue snarled evilly, his serrated maw cracked upwards with a terrifying ear to ear grin and his blind eyes curved up with demonic joy.

Blue's next uttered words drove the fear of kami into his envious soul.

"I will return."

"Enough of this." Minato panted shakily.

The Shinigami tore out Naruto's soul.

A luminously blue-black spirit twisted and bellowed out of its original body, enraged, as the Death god held it with both hands.

The Uchiha's senses, in his last few minutes, saw the Yondaime command the Shinigami to carry his soul closer.

"Seal him into me." Minato ordered strongly, at his wits end and low on sacrifices to the Death god. "I want his knowledge."

The Shinigami giggled mysteriously.

"One as weak as you is unable to hold a soul as powerful as this."

Naruto's soul thrashed, roaring vengefully as the body collapsed onto its knees.

Death took matters into its own hand and divided the soul into two.

It tipped its head back and the mouth of the mask unhinged as it consumed the blue soul.

"What the hell are you doing?!" Minato roared.

"This soul…" it rumbled deeply, holding the other half of Naruto's soul with its other hand. "…I have embraced it before…"

"Give me his soul!" The Hokage spat ravenously, the greed overcame him at the prospect of absorbing the blue Uchiha's knowledge. He repeated. "Seal him into me!"

"You will suffer."

Yet still, the weakened soul the Shinigami was holding was too powerful to be contained in any other mortal vessel than its original body, and this blonde human ordering him, Death itself, wanted to cage it within his body as if the blue soul was some sort of tailed beast.

Tailed beast.

It was as correct of a comparison, if any.

Half of the blue soul weighed as much as that of a tailed beast.

Minato wrested control back as the very last ROOT ninja's soul was dragged out their body, sacrificing its life by orders of Shimura Danzo.

The Shinigami pushed the blue soul into Minato's body and a readily drawn seal activated on his abdomen, where the Uchiha's soul was placed in.

It was the complex seal for Cage.

The Namikaze flicked his fingers into the Ram seal and the seal pulled Naruto's soul inside, merging within itself.

"Nine Demonic Shackle Seals of the Netherworld."

Mito Uzumaki would have been disgusted at the use of that jutsu, meant to restrain and cage the Kyuubi no Kitsune but instead use to enclose the soul of a frighteningly powerful human in what even Death considered a weak vessel. It was the seal used to contain the Nine Tailed Fox within Kushina Uzumaki, modified and improved since it was first used by Mito, the First Kyuubi Jinchuriki.

Minato's pride was struck that even in death; Blue had gotten one over him.

It finally hit him, as he keeled over in tremendous pain, at the magnitude of power that the blue soul contained.

He accidentally released hold of the Shinigami but instead of slipping back to the underworld, as was where it resided when it was not in the land of the living, the Death god stared down at the blonde Kage as he roiled on his knees, grasping his abdomen and yelling as every cell in his body was set ablaze.

With what little self-awareness the prodigious seal master had, he sat back on his knees and dug his fingers into his abdomen, into the seal, and he drew another level ten restraint seals over the Kyuubi restraint seal, using the blood dropping from his ears. His fingers moved, as if they each bore their own consciousness and knowledge on what to do, and Minato tightened the seal, cutting off access from his own chakra network and separating his own mind from that of the blue soul, essentially placing a brick wall between them and sparing his body from the sensation of being dunked in a vat of flesh corroding acid.

He'd have to think of something else to squeeze the intellect out from the blue soul sealed within his body.

Steam wafted off his body and the hellfire marks left on his neck and chest throbbed, reminding him of the blue Uchiha's vow.

I will return.

The man shuddered at the sincere hatred that had rumbled through each word.

"No…" he muttered, shaking his head and cradling his stomach with his right hand, shakily getting to his feet and limping to the kneeling Uchiha by the cliff. "No, you won't."

Blue's white eyes were open and his shoulders sagged, enough for his knuckles to be on the ground.

His face had long since shifted back to normal, no longer taking the villainously reptilian image of his other self.

The blood creeping down his eyes had stopped but the red liquid leaked from the corners of his mouth, dropping lazily on his lap.

He wasn't moving.

He wasn't breathing.

Minato realized, with a surprised jerk, that he was alone.

He looked around, wincing at the sharp pains coming from his stomach, before his sky blue eyes settled on Naruto's form.

Naruto "Blue" Uchiha was dead.

Minato jabbed his chest. "I win, Naruto." He breathed heavily, having to close his eyes to force down the ache of the rankling blue soul inside him, battling against the Yondaime's chakra, the hundreds of restraint seals and Minato's own soul. The Namikaze Hokage smirked proudly and laughed, an empty sound that echoed around despite the crashing waves at the bottom of the cliff and the hollow wind blowing about. " Me, Naruto." He poked Blue's chest, yet the Uchiha didn't move, or at least topple to the floor, as all lifeless bodies would; it stayed rock steady in that kneeling position, staring with eyes that could not see at the gloating Hokage, but Minato wasn't too disturbed by that. " I. Win."

He didn't get a reply and he didn't expect one.

The deal with Danzo was that he would get Naruto's sharingan and some DNA samples, preferably blood.

Minato scoffed.

"Like I'll give them to you, old man." Minato said to himself, deciding to dispose of ROOT soon after his return. He then debated whether or not to take Blue's eyes but shook his head. "His eyes probably don't work anymore."

His next task was placing a hand on Blue's forehead and sending a short pulse through the dead body, searching for Storage seals.

He found one on both of Blue's inner forearm, on the back of his hands and a large one spread out on his back, all of which were etched onto his skin with invisible ink. The seal that caught his attention was the one was the inner left forearm.

As his fingers inched there, a blue snake leaped out of the dead body's forearm and slithered away, faster than Minato's injured body could chase. In its venomously fanged mouth was a scroll and the Namikaze could hazard a guess that the scroll contained Crystalline and the two mid-range launchers.

"Shit!" he tumbled onto his side after the snake, his legs unable to get up and keep his weight for much longer. The blue snake found its way past the fuinjutsu mist and out of the level ten Chakra Distortion seals that kept Orochimaru of the Sannin from reverse summoning to her sons position or reverse summoning him out of there. Minato didn't know that the Snake Lady had tried with the persistence of a frenzied mother to rescue her child, rather he cursed foully. "Fuck, damn it!"

He could virtually hear Blue sniggering at him, enjoying that, once again, he had gotten one over Minato, even in death.

…Or was that the blue soul sealed in his gut.

He added another Restraint seal, blocking sight and sound for the foreign soul within his body.

"There are other ways to get my hands on Crystalline, Naruto." The man grumbled as he used his right hand to push him off the ground, onto his feet. "Don't forget… I'm not the one that lost… I'm not the one that's dead."

He looked up quickly as a particularly large wave smashed into the cliff, driving up water and spraying them. The man inhaled the sea breeze and breathed out, feeling a large weight on his shoulder eased off, for the first time since he first saw the Blue Sniper.

"I'll tell them…you tried to run away and join forces with Orochimaru." He smiled and nodded his head, forming a story for how Blue had died. "You tried to flee the village but…I caught up to you in Waterfall." The Village Hidden in the Waterfall being diagonally on the opposite side of the continent from Wave country. "I defeated you…by myself…but, being the sore loser that you are…you decided to end your own life, throwing yourself off the cliff and into the water. There's no sensible way you survived." The Yondaime's smile broadened. "I didn't look for your body because…because traitors like you are not worth the trouble." He chuckled sarcastically. "They'll believe me." he shrugged nonchalantly. The fuinjutsu-made mist would remain for another week, distorting perception of the area and further covering his tracks. Anyone that came by would suddenly become confused and wonder away. It was that strong. Minato continued in a lazy drawl. "They'll believe anything I tell them. But you already knew that, right Naruto?"

Silence.

"Time for you to go." Minato sighed faux mournfully. "Can't have them finding your body, now can I?"

Nothing.

Holding his stomach with one hand, Minato hefted Naruto onto his shoulder. The blue Uchiha wilted from the stiff kneeling position, hanging lifelessly.

"Goodbye, I guess." Minato Namikaze whispered. "This…whatever we had…helped make me stronger. So thanks…I think." he laughed and used the hand cradling his stomach to face palm. "I'm here wasting my time on a corpse. I've got better stuff to do."

And he tossed Naruto's body clear off the cliff.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Naruto once told his nephew that his kill count was piled up in the thousands.

It was an idle response to Itachi's claims that he was a pacifist, like him, but Blue had too much blood on his hands to think of himself as a peaceful person.

He couldn't recall all his kills.

They were just too many.

Whether he sniped them down, brought about their demise using traps or crushed their skulls in with his own bare hands, the multitude of murders he had committed, by order of the Hokage and as was his obligation as a Shinobi of the Leaf, was an errant blur to his mostly mechanical mind.

A part of his mind had condemned him, told him he was irredeemable and that escape from his blood soaked past was out of reach for him, so he fought tooth and nail, each and every day to make sure Itachi, his nephew , didn't have to go through the hell he had to go through for the sake of his village.

By giving the boy a home he could come back to when he was tired, hot food readily available to him, a broader perspective on their colourful, magnificent world and someone that no matter what happened, he could always confide, Blue prayed-even as he didn't believe in kami-that the boy would find the peace he was never able to have in all his life.

The blue Uchiha loved his nephew, just as much as his Orochimaru loved him.

In his final moments, as his soul vacated his body, he worried for them.

He didn't think, not for a second, that his sins would be erased.

He was a killer, through and through.

Even then, somehow all of his kills stood around him and ominously stared down at his kneeling form, the same position he had died in.

In the Shinigami's stomach, he was in an expansive field of white roses. A blue moon hung in the dusky sky and the air was still, as the people Blue had condemned to death mutely looked down at him.

Naruto's white eyes bled, a continuous pour of blood that didn't seem to have an end, and his gaping mouth, though unspeaking was wide open, gushed the red liquid from his throat and down his jaw, spattering on his chest and thighs, painting the white roses near him red.

His shoulders drooped and his arms hung limply, the back of his hands were on the ground and the palms faced upwards.

His head tilted to the side a little.

He couldn't move.

He couldn't hear.

He couldn't see.

He didn't care.

He lost track of time long ago.

The eyes of those he had damned glowed brightly, thousands of dots in that soundless limbo of death.

Then hearing returned to him, just enough for him to perceive the rancorous cawing of a murder of crows, flapping across the sky in their numbers.

Kaw-kaw-kaw-kaw-kaw!!!

The dead about him warbled and their bodies shrank, changing from human to three foot tall crows, able to easily see over the white roses with the very same eyes of Blue's own victims, not with the beady black eyes crows were known to bear.

KAW! KAW!!

A crow that was three times as large as him landed in front of him.

It had smooth, midnight black feathers, a streak of smooth yellow feathers that ran from between its eyes to its tail and six cerulean eyes, all open and bearing the dreaded doujutsu of the Uchiha clan.

It opened its mighty wings and flapped, the smaller crows-the ones with the eyes of his victims-did so as well, flying around the kneeling Uchiha in a blizzard of feathers and earth quaking crowing noise. The sky opened, showing a genial blue sky that was vastly different from the deathly black sky of the Shinigami's gut.

Blue stirred briefly, sleepily coming out of his catatonic state.

The blue moon blinked and everything went dark.

Naruto awoke on the isolated shores of Uzushiogakure no Sato.

Authors note

Jutsu List

Reflection: this is the third and last unique sharingan ability Naruto Uchiha possesses. As the name implies, it reflects any just thrown at it either back to the sender or in any direction Blue wants it to go at the cost of one eye. Similar to Izanami, Reflection is a technique that alters time and perception in the sense that any damage sustained while the attack is going on will be reversed and delivered back to whoever had sent it or to wherever Blue wants. As an example, the reality of the explosion from the ROOT ninja was that it had burnt Naruto's feet and broke all the bones in his legs but as this blast was going on, Blue performed Reflection and the attack, as well as its effects, was reversed. Any subsequent damage was prevented, directed entirely back to the ROOT ninja.

Blue can choose to increase the power of the reflected jutsu or to reduce it, and he decided to reduce the power so as not blow up the cliff.

A close comparison can be drawn between Naruto's Reflection and the Rinnegan's Preta Path's Chakra Absorption Barrier (a jutsu the Three Sannin can perform but is amplified by the rinnegan).

This ability can easily be mistaken as weak.

There is no limit for what can be reflected and the chakra cost is extremely minimal, like Projection. For example, a Spinning Tailed Beast Ball from the Kyuubi can be reflected with relative ease and it is likely a Ten Tailed Spinning Beast Ball can also be reflected, though this has not yet been confirmed. Rather, what is confirmed is that if any kind of attack meets the Reflection Barrier, Blue is at liberty to choose how powerful the jutsu returns to its sender.

A clear example of the sturdiness of Reflection was its ability to block and send back the Shinigami's hands. It should be noted that Death's hands cannot be blocked or dodged and Minato had been saved from dying by sacrificing someone else in his place.

Blue dislikes the use of this jutsu for the obvious reason that it results in the blindness of the eye that cast it. Knowing this, he saved Reflection for extreme life or death situations, specifically where Projection wouldn't be of any help and Inferno less so.

Blocking and reflecting the Shinigami's hands hints that Blue's Mangekyo abilities are outside the mortal realm.

Done!

O.o

Starting from the next chapter to the end of the story, the next "part" of this story begins.

What do I mean?

You'll have to wait and see.

Anyway…

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

As depressing as 2020 was, you all, my wonderful readers, made it especially great. You all are the best readers someone like me can ever ask for, and I truly, honestly appreciate all the love and support your dropping for each of my stories, since I started writing three years- and some change-ago, to now. It's funny how I remember how much fun I had writing most of my stories for you guys XD

Let's keep having fun this year.

Please and please stay safe, wherever you are in the world, and I'll see you when I see you.

Foy.