Chapter 20: A Worldseed
"It began to seem that one would have to hold in mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition. The first idea was acceptance, the acceptance, totally without rancor, of life as it is, and men as they are: in light of this idea it goes without saying that injustice is commonplace. But this did not mean that one could be complacent, for the second idea was of equal power: that one must never, in one's own life, accept these injustices as commonplace but one must fight them with all one's strength."
-James Baldwin, 'Notes of a Native Son'
/Garasujo Apartments
/The Village Hidden in the Leaves
/Fire Country
Naruto Uzumaki
For what felt like the thousandth time, Naruto ran the pads of his fingers over the diamond on his forehead; staring again at his changed face. Maybe the width of his fingernail and about a half-inch across, Naruto couldn't decide if the tattoo of a diamond embedded in his forehead was a deep purple, or a light blue.
Perhaps it was the joy and certain knowledge that he'd succeeded in creating the Yin Seal messing with his emotions, but everything felt different. If this was what just the Yin Seal felt like, a tingling lightning bolt in his veins, he'd sign right up for whatever that bitch could throw at him.
Tsunade wouldn't teach him, she'd said. Not yet anyway. But that was easily overcome. She'd told him to prove himself worthy.
He would.
He would do whatever it took to impress that old hag. The memory of her prowess flashed in his head.
...old hag that absolutely annihilated an entire clearing with one punch!
Naruto shivered, a potent mixture of horror and longing coursing through him.
I'm surprised I'm not dead.
His finger did another pass over the smooth discoloration on his forehead; it felt like iron under his touch- frictionless and hard. When he focused his attention on it with chakra, Naruto stood before the ocean, with the gentle lapping of chakra at his feet, an endless sky and clear water radiating a sense of fathomless depth, menace and wonder in equal measures.
The Yin Seal.
Considering that he had put almost his entire chakra reserve into that thing; there was no wonder it felt like standing next to a lightning storm. Even the feel of his chakra was different; smooth loops and whirls, going exactly where they were supposed to go, no more chakra overflowing like stormwater surging against channel walls. Weird. Maybe the Yin Seal did more than he thought.
Was that even possible?
Noticing for the first time that he'd been sitting, staring at the wall in only his boxer shorts, Naruto started. This was Shizune's apartment and his tiny bedroom within it. He couldn't remember anything since his crazy fight with Tsunade. Naruto winced. Stupidest fight he'd ever been in. No way he was winning that, even if she literally stood there and took it.
A gilt-edged mirror, one that wouldn't look out of place in some stuffy old grandma's house, showed him a stranger. Smooth, unmarked skin met his fingertips as he ran his hands over himself, caressing his face, running over his sharp cheekbones and lingered on a space that originally had a faded white scar from when he'd tripped as a child and smacked his chin on a side table running from Yojimbra. One of the many times he'd almost wrecked himself in meaningless games played with Mifune's most loyal lieutenant and one of the people Naruto cared about most. Naruto assumed Yojimbra was gone; killed by either the Nine-tails or The Conqueror himself.
The evidence of his life in Iron was gone; the evidence of a life of battle, a life of blood and betrayal, of the hundreds of thousands of hours he'd poured into learning the sword, gone. His life before, with Yojimbra and the single-minded survival mode training he'd gone into during his traumatic experience in the Colosseum.
All of it; gone.
How?
Shouting edged in on his thoughts. Shizune!
Sighing, realizing who the probable recipient of the rough side of Shizune's tongue would be, Naruto quickly spotted some clean, folded clothes and dressed, almost tripping with one leg stuck in his shorts. From the sounds of it, the altercation was very much one-sided.
Sliding his head and hands roughly through a rough white tee, he crept out of the room and came to a stop against the edge of a wall at an angle to the living room.
The voices jumped from garbled syllables into discernible words.
"...missed six months of Academy training; how is he supposed to take the Field Exam for graduation in such a short time frame?"
Why would he have to sit for the Field Exam? He wasn't allowed in the Academy as long as his chakra problems persisted. Mikoto had said that to his face. How could he have ever forgotten that? Let alone her after she'd yelled at him?
The feeling of his chakra was… different, though.
Was there something he was missing?
"He'll have to make do. Headmaster Sato has been monitoring the situation; and Naruto. The man stormed into my office and demanded he be allowed to try. Get him a tutor. I don't care. As long as he succeeds, Sato and I will be satisfied."
"You're a real bitch, you know that? Do you have no sympathy whatsoever? Naruto almost died just trying to get Tsunade's attention. He needs to be prepared properly, not just thrown to the wolves. He's not a lamb for slaughter!"
"It will no doubt surprise you greatly that this is not the first time I've heard that epithet pointed in my direction. Such is the life of a woman in power, Ms. Kato. As you well know. I don't make decisions at the behest of my obviously whimsical and flighty personality. This is a careful and considered request."
The dryness and tight anger in her voice gave him pause.
"Request- command, you mean! You're expecting too much."
"No, I'm trying to push him to his potential. He's overcome so much; and it's prepared him to overcome still more. The Conqueror wants him, for whatever reason, and so does Orochimaru. That scares me more than The Conqueror's interest. I don't know why, yet, and I will find out, but I have my suspicions and I will not let them have him. For any reason. Do you understand? I will not let them have him."
Shizune was quiet. The clink of porcelain meeting porcelain met his ears.
The Hokage came for tea?
Or to meet with him? What? What was this?
The black-haired hospital administrator sighed, then. A sound of understanding? Or frustration? Naruto couldn't tell without seeing her.
"Competence is to be his armor. I said that to Sarutobi and he vehemently disagreed. Why, I'll never know. That, to this day, remains one of the only things I had on common ground with Danzo."
Shizune scoffed.
"As I am given to understand, the pressure that Nakata put Sato under to reinstate the boy almost caused our Headmaster to buckle- yet, as I am constantly reminded, the difference between a lack of skill- as in the Lee boy's case and no ability as in Naruto's is too wide a gap to bridge. Nakata still disagreed. If Nakata thinks he could have done well regardless of his handicap- there exists no cloud of doubt in my mind that all the teachers will do their utmost to bring him up to speed. The rest, as they say, is up to him."
Naruto scuffed his feet on the ground to generate some noise and popped out. Neither of them were startled.
He stood there, looking at the two of them for a moment.
The moment stretched like the interminable wait for the ramen water to boil. Blonde hair swished against his neck as he faced Shizune.
"I can handle myself Shizune. Thanks… uh, for the thought."
Naruto turned, meeting the Hokage's unfathomable dark eyes fully.
"You said the Field Exam is happening soon? The Graduation Exam as well? Why so soon? It's barely been a year."
The Uzumaki knew very well why they were pushing up the Graduation Exams. Food shortages, long lines for gas, there wasn't a single industry in Konohagakure that had not experienced some sort of effect from the blockades or the skirmishes along their eastern and western borders. More than that was the way people spoke; hushed and conspiratorial. Scared. Fearful.
Naruto overheard the local butcher, at their favorite place that Shizune sent him to pick up choice cuts of beef for their usual Thursday dinner, speaking in hushed tones with several customers. Most of it was nonsense, but some of it connected with the rumors he'd been overhearing in Shizune's conversations.
Fire Country would be smashed between two fronts; the northwest and eastern fronts. Everyone was desperately, foolishly optimistic.
A single surprise attack from the inside decapitated Iron; Fire would fare no better.
"War waits for no one- you know that better than most. The fires are stoked and both Mist and Earth Country are… making motions. We're on heightened security. We need all the soldiers we can muster without dropping our standards. You either pass or you fail."
The implications of her statements up to this point hit him, hard, one after the other.
"Wait- I'm in?"
That meant-
Mikoto waved a confused hand.
"Tsunade claimed you should be in perfect health, aside from some residual fatigue, which Shizune confirmed, correct?"
Shizune nodded, her face tight. Naruto was too busy trying not to drown in overwhelming joy to see.
"Did you not notice that Tsunade healed you?"
Pushing and really looking at his chakra system; the power obeyed him as if he'd never lost it. He felt the torrent of chakra reinforcing his limbs, strength flooding him; muscles tightening to iron in his body, his grip like steel, the world stuttering around him as he channelled the flood in his veins properly now, an act like riding a bike as he, cringing still in anticipation of pain, activated the Lightning Mark.
No pain- no rusty knives carving him up from the inside like a winter ham, no instant migraine, just beautiful, pure joy pulsing in time with his chakra.
Smoothly and easily did it obey him, igniting the true power of his seal for the first time since he'd envisioned it in the Gutter. A blueish-white haze, a corona of venting ozone and plasma channels conducting the million-degree heat in his veins surrounded him suddenly, flickering jets of sheet lightning streaking around him in low-key, almost indiscernible tiny bolts, zig-zags of snapping light.
The drain is suddenly much more burdensome than he remembers.
At the back of his mind, the chakra felt alive, like it wanted to be shaped.
The feeling was of longing, of a firm belief that it was incomplete. Was that the Lightning Mark itself?
Naruto flowed through a series of static blade forms with perfect control; where before he was a man fighting against a storm-tossed tide, painfully buffeted at every moment, while wrestling chakra that resembled a dragon more than anything else. Now he was the dragon, floating through incredibly difficult and precise movements. Pretending to execute his last opponent with effortless ease and a steel-clad elbow, he couldn't help but notice that he still felt drained. Lesser. Exhausted.
Was that because he was still so out of shape?
His chakra channels felt sore, the same sort of pain that one felt after working out for the first time in a long time; acidic and sharp. Not the rusty knife horror of out-of-control chakra, thankfully. But an existential, spiritual soreness no less.
Contemplating that, Naruto stretched himself to examine every inch of his chakra system. Everything… worked. Perfectly healthy. Yet there felt like one black spot where the Nine-tails had been. Separate, and now extremely noticeable, was Kaguya's black presence. Not menacing, weirdly enough, but heavy and somehow more than. Like a part of her transcended the physical and the spiritual.
He could almost see her red smile on a throne of bone in his mind's eye.
In a flash, he resolved to speak to a tenant about paying rent.
Tool Creation wasn't enough. Not anymore. Naruto was painfully aware he was a one-trick pony.
Shizune interrupted his line of thought, "...have lower than normal reserves till you adjust to having the Yin Seal constantly pulling chakra. Though I truly doubt you'll notice."
Naruto felt strong, felt powerful for the first time since he'd put his hands on the Seal of the Nine-tails and sentenced himself to what he thought was death.
More pressing though-
"...what about Tsunade? Does this mean she'll teach me? She healed me, right?"
Mikoto gave Shizune a look. Shizune gave it right back. The Hokage spoke in the same calm, clearly held in the icy grip of her will.
"I'll leave you two to speak. Naruto, I've cleared everything with the Headmaster and I left the details about your re-enrollment with Shizune."
Clad in her ceremonial red and white robes, she looked regal- as poised as any queen. Mikoto paused, speaking in tones Naruto would be hard pressed not to describe as warm. Black eyes crinkled at the edges.
"I'm glad to have you back, Naruto. Kushina would be proud."
The door closed.
Naruto felt off-balance, caught off-guard by that comment. The Hokage was such an aloof figure that to feel any kind of human element was… strange. Nice, but strange. Kushina would be proud. Well, I hope so… mom.
There was silence in the apartment, each caught in their own thoughts.
The next words, with a hesitance that was not normal for Shizune who was well-practiced with delivering difficult news as a medical practitioner, wiped away all the good feeling like an eraser on a chalkboard.
"My… former sensei wants nothing to do with you. It was everything I could do to get her to heal you. She thinks you don't deserve the technique."
He was a cored-out apple, hollow with the bittersweet victory.
"She's a hypocrite, so don't listen to her."
Of all the outcomes that he'd scoured over and wrestled with, he'd never imagined she could give him exactly what she wanted, without him learning the technique, and then made him feel like an unmoored ship in a storm in the same motion.
"...I should thank her."
"No, you really shouldn't. She didn't do it for you."
"Still- she healed me, that deserves something."
Shizune drove a heated gaze into him like awls.
"She's gone, run away again like a fucking coward and I'm done making excuses for her grief and irresponsibility. No one can find her. Mikoto says she's out on assignment, but I'm not sure I buy it."
The two of them were quiet; equally unsure what to say.
Or if anything should be.
"I'm… head of the hospital now, so I… I'm sorry. I won't have any more time to teach you directly like I had planned."
Naruto feels strange.
Cheated out the prize he sought, but satisfied.
An unpleasant mixture that he couldn't describe.
Her words registered and he spoke without really thinking, "That's okay. I… understand."
Naruto slid into the chair that Mikoto had been standing behind. He stared at the porcelain cup with a slight smudge of a dark maroon lipstick on the rim. He put his head in his hands.
"So, what now?"
The new head of the Hospital looked helplessly at him, raising her hands. "You're into the Academy, that's for sure- if you want it, that is. Are you sure you still want it?"
Words tumbled over themselves escaping his mouth. "Of course I still want it, are you crazy? What the hell have I been working so hard for?"
At that, Shizune seemed to feel better about things because she smiled at him, a quick twist of her mouth. Naruto cleared his throat.
"How long do I have left before the Exam?"
"A little bit less than a month; our best estimates of intelligence say that is all the time we have. Nothing concrete. Supposedly Jiraiya is coming back- maybe he'll know more."
Shizune glanced down at her watch and started.
"I have to head out." She paused, looking at his face, squinting. "Are you going to be okay?"
Naruto didn't hear her, caught in his thoughts. She repeated herself.
He started. Then smiled, something close to what he thought reassuring looked like.
"Yup. Why wouldn't I be?"
She hesitated, before setting her cup down. Clearly struggling, she swallowed what she was going to say before nodding. Naruto didn't even notice when she left, as he was so deep in his thoughts, mind churning.
I have so far to go and very little time to do it in… so far to go…
#
The path to true strength was a winding road carved into a mountain of which he couldn't see the summit. The closer he got, the further away it all seemed.
Which is why he found himself contemplating the pure insanity of actually speaking with the clearly deranged 'goddess' in his stomach. Setting aside the likelihood of him hosting an entity that achieved god-like status, which was so close to nil it was laughable (but most importantly was not zero) and given that she'd attacked him once, ranted and raved like a madwoman, and urged him to lay waste to the guards during his stint in Dhumrais Prison, this was- at best- ill-considered.
Not to mention she'd already killed him once...
None of which availed him of his situation and may have even contributed to Kazan's death. A dagger-edge shard of grief bubbled up from where he was keeping it locked down in his mind and he shied away from the memories of his friend.
As usual, the rebellious part of him found culpability in the government; an iceberg-like section of him, of which too much of his feelings were hidden deep down, knew without a shadow of a doubt that power was like a lever. Mikoto, who had plenty of it- both personal, political, and economic- could have pried that lever anywhere she wanted and gotten her wish.
As nice and caring as she seemed, power had purpose in hands like that.
Naruto could have that same lever- could have had that same lever if he was stronger.
If he was stronger, Kazan wouldn't have died, Chiyo wouldn't have lost a limb defending him, Mifune wouldn't be dead, and the list went on and on.
How could anyone think the world was fair or just when those in power refused to honor their responsibilities to those less fortunate? Even the Hokage, for all her vaunted might, used it to keep the status quo. What was all this except the status quo? So what if Konohagakure self-destructed…
A deep traitorous voice, one that saw the horrors in the capitol and the inequality stretching deeply across the elemental nations, wondered at a world without the big five ruling things.
That bothered him.
That bothered Naruto a lot.
From the nightly reading he'd done in his father's journal, it seemed to him that his father had some of the same misgivings about the shinobi way- thoughts written down that aligned more closely with how Mifune felt than any modern Kage which had shocked him to his core.
Reading his notes felt… treasonous, after that.
Minato Namikaze had started to make strides changing the world, in his notes, he'd mentioned his plans; by first developing what he called Spatial Gates, derived from his Flying Thunder God technique, his dad had wanted to intimately connect every village in such a way that war would hurt all of them equally- thus disincentivizing conflict. A lot of his ruminations were high-level political discourse in which he was still struggling with; others Naruto struggled to decipher the other economic theories that he'd suggested as alternatives. Extending the hand of friendship to all the countries and working political and economic magic clearly was easier said that done- especially from someone who literally ran the system.
It didn't work, so far as Naruto could see. But again, his father was murdered before he could see any real progress.
Or maybe it just hasn't had long enough to mature?
Whatever the reason, Naruto was keenly aware of his place- and those like him that had had a similar stature.
Powerlessness.
The thread of his thoughts, whirling like they were, all came back to one concept; power and whether he had enough. A simple assessment told him that answer was no, as The Conqueror wasn't dead and nothing had changed in his life appreciably other than his own personal situation regarding his ability to wield his own chakra.
He'd moved eight steps back, that night with the Nine-tails, and now he moved nine steps forward. One ahead was nothing.
Time for him to take a qualitative leap forward.
Closing the door and settling himself cross-legged on his mattress in his bedroom, Naruto focused on the same feeling of falling he'd gotten in the caverns of Iron. Plummeting to meet that chained titan of a fox with her multi-choral voices that still haunted his nightmares. Naruto hadn't expected or been prepared for any of it.
So this time it should be easier.
Naruto zeroed in on the black presence in his seal and dove.
One moment he was in his bedroom at Shizune's, the next he found himself listening to Kaguya humming a pure-noted tune. The same open-air amphitheater ringed in titanic and majestic columns met his gaze and Naruto noticed even more details than before; the columns he'd originally thought were made of limestone, he now realized, were bone.
Worked bone that was all of a single-piece.
What kind of creature had bones almost twenty-feet tall?
Script, not fuinjutsu, occupied absolutely every inch of the columns.
Tiny and intricate, Naruto's head spun looking at it while his brain supplied him with a thousand whispers of meaning. The sight reminded him of looking directly into the sun, the light stabbing your eyes.
He looked away, but filed the information away.
Steps, leading down to an almost light-sucking black stage mixed with white accented spirals and whirls, were in the same white bone, again set with scripting.
Naruto sat quietly on one of the bench seats facing the platform where he watched the white-robed, rabbit-eared thing weave old, archaic Script into the same planetoid from before.
This time it was not small.
Perhaps it had been the size of two large men linking arms once, now it almost equalled the platform; a massive roiling, black-clouded, lightning-covered chakra sink. The depth and pressure it gave off scared him; the density of chakra felt like standing next to a transformer, the hum a thousand chirping birds. Like it was a whole world she was creating.
What was she building?
Ignoring the incongruousness of the tableau; the woman humming like she was doing laundry, Naruto really looked at her for the first time. Kaguya looked like someone had taken a massive straw and sucked the color out of her, leaving a bleached mannikin. There were new differences, however.
Pops of color on her robe; a scarlet trim at the edges of her martial artists robes, ringed with a series of almost tear-drop shapes of the same color as the stripe. White hair, hard-looking ears of bone, and perfectly opaque, snowy eyes; Naruto knew she was easily the most striking person he'd ever laid eyes on.
Murderous, but striking.
Colorless met dark violet eyes and they stared at each other for what felt like entirely too long. She didn't seem at all the same person. Her face was smooth, youthful and devoid of much expression at all, if he had to say anything. Two red dots, which weren't there before, he could've sworn, sat above her eyelids, also painted with a pop of the same maroon color of her robes trimming.
She looked wild, like a snow-white statue caught mid action.
Nor did she seem to give off an evil presence; but more just, a heavy one.
This time- instead of angry disdain...
"Have you noticed yet that your chakra operates like strings in an instrument?"
Her voice, throaty and full, didn't startle him.
The softness of it did.
No, Kaguya struck him as sad.
Long white fingers, nails painted bloody, dropped from the dark planetoid. She sagged, partially concealed, but poorly. The woman straightened, as if her posture was armor she was reluctant to doff.
"Pluck those strings and they vibrate. Strum them and you twist reality. Chakra travels in loops and whirls, not by accident, but by design. You poor things. So much you primordial souplings don't know- or didn't before I arrived so long ago. Authority and Chakra together- and you can do anything. Time however… time wears on one's sanity. Even for one such as I."
She smiled tiredly, unaware that the sentences were horribly condescending.
Apparently, she's been cooped up too long and can't function without being an asshole. Interesting. Looks like we have something in common.
He almost laughed.
"What are you? Since we've been so talkative and candid thus far."
Naruto was honestly curious.
Nobody he knew had horns. Perhaps it was a weird bloodline limit?
Kaguya's face cycled through emotions he couldn't identify; twisting into recognizable resignation.
"I'm an Aspirant; from the Otsutsuki branch clan, like I mentioned."
"What's an aspirant?"
Naruto heard the stress on the first letter, but didn't know if it was a title or just a description. She ignored him.
"This… How I ended up on your beautiful, verdant, lonely planet is a story thousands of years in the making and one that is full of youthful mistakes and not one I'm inclined to share at this moment."
Pulling the hems of her robes up from her legs, Naruto saw white skin as she moved towards him, settling her heavy robes around her as she sat on the edge of the platform. The movement struck him as oddly informal; like a young girl sitting on a dock in the summertime.
That was absurd.
He felt a sense of unreality from the situation that was wholly unrelated to the tableau: she was… different. Hard to say why that was and yet, he felt it was true.
"As for your other question, an Aspirant," this time he heard the highlighted emphasis, "...is what we call a being that has achieved a specific stage of Ascendency. There are… stages."
She waved a hand at him and her eyebrows rose.
"You all? Seed creatures. Barely worth the effort of extermination or tutelage."
Naruto cocked his head and bared his teeth.
Naruto wasn't afraid of her.
He remembered their first encounter, and while she was terrifying then, she seemed… less hostile now.
Much less hostile. Suspicion bloomed in his stomach.
"So that was why you called me your Seedling then. Makes sense. Though, if you're in my stomach, which you are, you could at least be less of an ass."
Her face tilted, clenching in the jaw, before relaxing and something resembling chagrin, if she could even feel that, flitted across.
She hesitated.
No rage. No insanity.
Interesting.
"I am… sorry. I forgot how rude it was to talk about another's stage of Ascendancy. And I apologize for scaring you earlier. Forgiveness. I have been away from true society and in this backwater Strand for far too long it seems."
Naruto did his best to ignore the rudeness of the 'backwater' comment.
Struggling to think of the point of talking with her, or what he was really after, all Naruto could think of was a thousand questions. What was a Strand?
But first…
"Why are you like this-"
Naruto swirled an idle hand around trying to find the right word, "...not so… angry? Don't get me wrong, I'm glad we're having a real conversation, but I'm just… confused. You were, at one point, ranting and raving in my head-and also murdered me?"
Now she really did seem remorseful.
A hint of red stained her face and it wasn't the paints.
"I was… locked away in that vessel, awake and aware, for a very long time, Naruto. A long time."
Folding her hands into the wide sleeves of her robe, which Naruto thought looked infinitely more comfortable than what he was wearing, she seemed to be choosing her words carefully. There was a long pause between each one.
"Stability is something to be carved out and it's taking me longer than I thought to regain some semblance of myself- let alone to rebuild my Throneworld. I was… unhinged from the events prior to my Sealing."
"What's a Throneworld?"
Irritation and contempt, a twist to her features, flitted across her face.
Naruto just gave her a blank warning look.
She aborted what she was about to say, visibly frustrated.
The woman sighed.
"A Throneworld is an ascendant realm controlled by my Authority and fueled by my chakra. We call them Worldseeds when you first step on to your Aspirant path and Awaken. I can regain myself safely with a fully functioning Throne."
"I've literally never heard anybody talk about this stuff. How do I know you aren't making shit up?"
She let out a moi of frustration.
"We're in yours already, do you not see?"
A hand slipped out of a sleeve and gestured all around. Naruto could see very well what she meant.
The world outside the columns was dark, deserted, filled with oddly shaped mountains; like enormous… were those swords? In the distance, white lightning shot up from the ground with no sound, just light. They illuminated a horizon line filled with millions of broken and pitted swords, black as night, but each different. He couldn't make much more out of it given the haziness of the area outside the columns. Was there a barrier of some kind here, shielding them from sound? Naruto could've sworn in the blitz of Script information on the columns he'd seen something like that. Yojimbra had said this place was his soul. Maybe she wasn't full of shit after all.
'This is all mine?"
"Yes. Why do you think you didn't die when I killed you? You have a little Authority in this place- and I am weak, yet. You write the paracausality laws here as the one with the highest level of Authority."
"Huh?"
"I keep forgetting you children haven't discovered this far yet. My how you've all fallen. Might as well be beating each other with sticks and stones."
A tinkling laugh.
"Shut up- I'm not the one stuck in someone else's stomach."
Her laugh cut off, but she didn't get angry. She nodded seriously.
"True enough."
Naruto moved on quickly, his thoughts whirling.
"What the hell is Authority?"
She didn't even look at him, watching the distant lightning with an unreadable look.
"Not useful for you at this stage of ascendency."
"Ugh."
Strangely, Naruto felt a kind of strange peace sitting here, watching the clouds move in Kaguya's Throneworld. He thought ten minutes had gone by, but it barely felt like anything. Time was strange here.
Despite that, he enjoyed how his thoughts moved smoothly.
One important question hovered at the edge of his mind.
The thing that started all of this.
"Why did Orochimaru want you? Why were you in a silver prison thing?"
Naruto cocked his head at her and waited for her answer.
"Why does anyone imprison another? My, that is… the rats who imprisoned me were scared. As for why this- Orochimaru?- wanted me, I have no idea. Your guess is as good as mine."
"Why?"
"Why what? You must be more precise than this, child."
"Why were they scared of you?"
A long moment- then, "Why?"
She scoffed, covering a faint hesitation.
"Why else? Fear of the unknown is the most primal of all reactions in lower life-forms like yourself. Fear breeds hate and misunderstanding. Hate breeds more intolerance."
Naruto just stared at her.
"Power without the ethical framework to use it corrupts, Naruto. Let's leave it at that. I found, to my deep shame, that Otutsuki are incredibly susceptible. I've meditated on nothing else so troubling in my time imprisoned within that sarcophagus. Failures can be as painful as physical maladies."
"Putting that aside, because I don't believe for a second that was the whole story: why can I communicate with you here? Or outside? Why are you in my, uh, my Throneworld?"
Kaguya smiled thinly, indulgently, like she'd forgotten how stupid he was and was now remembering.
"The ignorance of your people is truly astounding Naruto. I'm now completely unsurprised as a Strand you've avoided the wider existences before I found you all."
Naruto rubbed his head, "Wider Strand? No, no, I'm getting sidetracked."
Kaguya sighed.
"Had I my wish, I would've gone back and told myself to avoid this place. So much pain, so much effort, and so little reward…"
She drifted off, but refocused.
"There was a vacancy, in the… hm, how to say it in language you'd comprehend? Let us say there was an 'attached space' grafted by Script and Fuinjutsu onto your existing Throneworld. I took the space that your former tenant occupied."
The white-haired woman spread her hands and her smile.
"Here I am."
The implications of everything she was saying were hitting him like consecutive punches. Wider existences? She was claiming she was… like from another world or something? Another existence? That everyone had a Throneworld and it was just kind of… sitting there, waiting to be used. Naruto wondered if other S-class ninjas perhaps knew something that they weren't sharing? Chakra was our… soul? The philosophical implications were staggering. He was just a Seed, she'd said. Implied emphasis on it as a title. That was the first stage of an Aspirants path. What did the end look like? Where was she along it?
More importantly...
The idea of a Worldseed meant the Throneworld was a nexus of chakra, of physical manifestations of our soul. So, the Throne was a representation of… a deeper, spiritual view of who he was as a person, then.
What did it mean that his Throne was a barren, dark world filled with endless blades, script-circles, and white lightning? What more could he do with a fully developed Throneworld? The Tool Creation technique… did that have anything to do with it?
The whole thing was too much.
Naruto cleared his throat.
"Yeah, well, I'm getting pretty tired of ignoring you or listening to you ranting and raving in my ear like a lunatic. While I appreciate the sanity now, as well as the Tool Creation technique which definitely saved me a time or two, I'd like to have my body and mind back to just solo occupancy, thanks. I don't appreciate two-faced psycho's trying to kill me."
She considered him, her chin in her palm.
Naruto fidgeted.
"How can I get you out?"
"I'm almost hurt you want to get me out so quickly. We're finally bonding."
She waved away his response as he opened his mouth. "Why would you help me?"
Naruto, irritable with her interruption, stopped to consider.
"I'm not looking at it that way, in reality, I'm helping myself… because until you leave, you're going to be helping me anyway you can. If I'm stronger, you have a higher chance of successfully leaving this space. Yes?"
She cocked her head.
"Yes, that's true I suppose. But you can't handle what I can do as you are. Not even close. Nor do you have the… bodily enhancements necessary to do any of the basics. How much natural chakra have you accumulated to this point in your advancement?"
He looked blankly at her.
"Natural Chakra? What? I don't understand a single thing you're saying."
She focused and a sensation swept over him that resembled the inkling he got when someone was intensely staring at you, but this time, it had a spiritual weight to it that he could feel.
Afterwards, he couldn't avoid noticing her gaping at him. Well, it would be gaping on anyone else, but she was merely blinking rapidly.
"You have...taken in nothing? This is all you?"
"What?"
Naruto was quickly becoming annoyed. This was too much.
"Traveling is when you use your Throneworld to meditate and siphon natural chakra from the world to keep building a complete world. It bolsters your Authority and your reserves of chakra."
Kaguya spoke off-hand and seemed disturbed, her eyes darting to him. The look morphed into a considering one.
"Natural chakra is free-form, the stuff of soul matter, all around us. In and out of the gaps in reality, in and out of all natural things of Order. A deeper explanation would be the purview of someone with keener insight, namely, that would be a question for Judges."
"Huh? What are Judges?"
She looks irritated. Like she wished the conversation were over.
"Judge is a title- the classification given to those at the end of the path of Ascendancy. Aspirants no longer, but Judges. Arbiters of Laws of Causality. You'd call them gods, or kamis, or whatever pitiful nomenclature you'd like to attach to something that defies inherent description."
She waved off his follow-ups.
"As I was saying…"
Naruto threw himself backwards in his seat and smacked his face with his hand. His head was reeling and pounding now.
"The strings I spoke of are made of natural chakra; tied like those of a puppet to every known process in a Weave like spider webbing. The engine of reality churns constantly and we take in its power to grow stronger. This is Ascendancy at its most basic. You shinobi, it seems, have not taken but a single step along the path, wallowing in the shallows of the ocean that is the path of an Aspirant. I…"
"...you're telling me there are ways of gaining power outside of just… training? Or learning techniques?"
"Have you not been listening?"
"Yes, I have. Teach me."
"No. My goals have nothing to do with leaving behind an apprentice."
"Why not?"
"That is a story I'm not willing to share and what need have I to do so?"
"Well, I hate to break it to you but…" Naruto looks around as if searching for someone, "...you're stuck in my soul or whatever until I let you loose. Not to mention you've already told me, if you recall that your son is the Sage of Six Paths. Hagoromo or Hamuda or something."
She considers him, wincing.
"At some point I will tell you the story, but for now I propose we work together for mutual benefit until such time as we no longer occupy the same pitiful space, as you've already described. What say you?"
Naruto pretends to think about but blurts out agreement.
This is exactly what I was hoping for!
"Until then, what's our goal?"
Yet another hurdle for him to jump. What was one more in the grand scheme of things?
"First; we find my Will."
"You mentioned to me earlier to, 'find your Black Will.' Is that the one you're talking about?"
"Yes. They are like soulless automatons, scouts; vacuum darkness made form. They can travel very quickly. Very adept at infiltration and subterfuge. Skilled and dangerous for most practitioners not on the Nascent stage."
Naruto steeled himself to not ask any more questions, resolving to ask her later.
"I didn't have my own, when I first set out. I was assigned to him by the third Judge of the Vranel Clans, Basilikum Otsutsuki, Matriarch of Clan Otsutsuki."
"Who is that?"
Kaguya shivered and Naruto felt pure terror roiling off her. For a long moment, she didn't speak.
"They call her the Mad Queen as she contains ten billion souls woven of her chakra within her Throneworld. She alone could anchor our entire home plane to the Weave of Order."
Naruto waved a hand.
"Whatever. She's not here. Any idea where your Will could be? Does it have a name? How am I supposed to find it?"
"Zetsu, Will of the Vranel. He has the capability of allowing me a type of regeneration, in this Plane, using the Laws of your specific existence. Then…"
"Yes?
"We have to find my Kojiki."
That name… sounded familiar. Where had he heard it?
"It sounded like something I've heard before… nope. Lost it. What the hell is it anyway?"
"The Kojiki is an...amplifier. I can do almost anything with it in my grasp. I'll teach you to use it, which should be easy given your unique bloodline gifts, and I will separate myself from you using my Throneworld. To form a body and leave this place is my only wish."
Nothing sounded off with that plan. It's as good a plan as any...
"Fine, fine. Whatever. I'll help, but obviously I have things that I need to take care of before we go gallivanting off after something lost like that. It'll have to be after I take care of this Conqueror asshole."
"You consider him… strong?"
"Yes. Very. He made the Nine-tails look like a house cat."
"That morsel of chakra? A fine measuring stick for the Nascent stage, yes. But nothing compared to a Judge like my Clan Matriarch."
She again looked considering.
"Three Judges are here you know… lurking about. I felt them, for a moment, earlier. Funny. Time is hard to understand here with your specific rules of para-causality. I wonder who wrote them? Perhaps the Judges that reside here… I've always wondered about them."
"We're getting far afield, even though I have a thousand questions."
There were god-like beings here? Judges? What?
No, off-track Naruto! Focus!
"Very well, ask."
"Is there anything I need to know right now that will be immediately helpful?"
"Don't die. You carry us both. I'm not sure what will happen given the reincarnation Laws in this plane."
Naruto rolled his eyes so hard his head hurt
"Oh gosh thanks. Really helpful and not at all obvious- well, minus the reincarwhatever."
She paused.
"There is… one delicate piece I'd like to discuss. I know I've not been the most… palatable companion. But do allow me space to speak with you. You keep shutting me out and as I am, I cannot do anything about it. I cannot help you if I cannot speak to you.
He couldn't help how his face scrunched up in confusion. She sighed.
"All you need to do is relax your spiritual grip on the wall you've put up between us and you'll be able to hear my voice."
Seemingly reaching a conclusion, Kaguya nodded.
"As a further gift, I can… give you one useful thing. I can… well the best way to describe it is to 'make you aware' of chakra around you in a way you weren't before. I believe in your parlance they called it 'sensing.' In Aspirant terms, you are really just opening your spiritual senses. It is a sense like touch and feel; but works for the soul, on chakra. Like focusing or unfocusing your eyes."
Kaguya held up a finger.
"Be warned; this is not infallible. Anyone of sufficient power can veil themselves. My Will for instance. I'm sure this 'Conqueror' can as well- in fact, I'm certain."
Naruto chewed on that idea for a second. That was terrifying. The man could sense people around him?
A white-script circle, intricate beyond belief with jagged edged symbols stuffed in an array two feet across and two tall, made of chakra, but solid like it was Forged of physical material, snapped into being in front of him, hovering at eye level.
"Tuning you into it requires I impart a temporary muscle memory. Luckily for you I'm adept at such subtle manipulations."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"You'll see, though I should warn you that knowledge is oftentimes a curse itself. Ignorance can be a shield. It is easy to swim in water that contains sharks if you are unaware that they exist, is it not?"
A burning, searing pain erupted in his chest and spread into warm tingles throughout his body. After a minute, the feeling was gone and an awareness hammered him in the face, the painful shock of icy water.
Kaguya blazed in his senses like a dark sun.
Or he should say, the ebony planetoid pulsed with her power.
Naruto's own power dwarfed hers; swelling in his mind's eye like a tidal wave in a midnight ocean. He wasn't an expert, but he could already tell she was weaker than him right now, most of her power concentrated in her burgeoning Throneworld.
That made him relax- a bit.
She clearly didn't notice the byplay as she kept talking.
"I do have some good news, however, as you get used to your new sense."
Naruto was struggling to adapt to the flood of new information his spiritual senses were telling him.
He gritted his teeth. She just dropped this on me and-
"I can tell you where Zetsu is- rather a nice confluence, as a matter of fact."
Naruto felt his headache, now a migraine, worsen from the feedback.
His words were biting, each syllable snapped off.
"What's that?"
Kaguya smiled and all he could see was the red on her robes and face.
"Your Conqueror seems to have merged with my Will. I could smell him in the caverns as we fled. An unholy combination, wouldn't you say?"
Naruto's world was narrowing to a point- the point of a black and white sword bursting through Madara's esophagus and blasting out the back, spraying bone and spinal fluid.
Red on black and white.
A tapestry of violence written with a skilled hand. The song of a blade.
"We find your foe, we find my Zetsu. Convenient, no?"
Naruto smiled.
A/N: This chapter took me a long time. This conversation was a long time coming and I rewrote it like forty times in it's entirety. Some were better, some were way worse.
I'm not sure I'm happy with it, but I'm honestly avoiding true editing until I'm finished Book 1 and I can look back at the whole structure and then carve/rewrite. Any comments towards that end (help for rewrites or clarifications that you [my beta reader fight club!] would need to get the most out of this story) would be greatly appreciated! Big shout-out to VermillionVortex for insanely detailed (and equally helpful!) reviews, Mistical Ninja, Gordon's Ramsay, Maaz1748, Fuyuriku, and AkashimaUchiha. Your reviews all stood out to me- but there countless others. Thank you. They motivate me to think deeply and I appreciate it. For all the others- I appreciate even the one liners! I'm pretty active on Reddit and I finally say my fic mentioned. So that's a thing. But for how long this is, I don't have that many reviews. I'm wondering if its the fic or just the algorithm. Regardless, I'm glad you're all here!
I stopped this chapter early because I split it into two parts; originally it was 50 pages. SO. The next part covers most of the Academy and a few other bits.
Thanks!
-J.B. Macleod