A/N: Alrighty, here's the first chapter of a fic that I've had in the works for a bit. I will try to update this as regularly as I can, but please keep in mind I write as a hobby! That said, I will still strive to make sure this fic gets finished and isn't left abandoned. Enjoy!
Oh, I also don't own Naruto.

Chapter I: Changing Hands

Naruto watched cautiously as Nagato trembled with sweat on his brow, eyes shut tight, head bowed, and hands held in the Serpent seal. His hair had changed from a deep, dark red to white, and he looked as though he was on death's door, more so than he was before. Naruto hadn't seen anyone in this bad of shape since he dragged Sasuke back from The Valley of the End, and he and Sasuke had both taken a pretty thorough beating from one another. Nagato's blue-haired companion, Konan, only looked on; an expression of worry painted on her normally stoic face. Naruto knew he had just performed a taxing jutsu, but he wasn't sure what it did or why the woman seemed to be concerned.

"What just happened? What was that jutsu?" he asked.

The woman spoke, her voice calm despite her concerned expression, "Gedō: Rinne Tensei no Jutsu." The blond looked at her with a confused expression.

"Nagato's ocular power is one that can govern life and death," she continued.

Naruto's eyes widened as he began to understand. "You don't mean…" he trailed off.

Konan averted her gaze to the ground. "The villagers that were killed will be revived, one after another," she spoke placidly, though her face and eyes betrayed a sense of sorrow.

Nagato held the hand seal as he raised his head and opened his eyes slowly. Naruto watched as those purple ringed eyes focused intensely on him. Nagato spoke in a tired voice, "I'm still in time to revive those I've killed since arriving in Konoha. It's the least I can do for them." Naruto only stared at Nagato incredulously. The man who sat in a machine that let him control the six bodies he had defeated earlier, the very same man who was responsible for so much death and the destruction of his home, was now saving everyone whose lives he had cut short. Though Naruto's blood was boiling, he felt relieved that those same people would be back. He couldn't help but feel a small amount of gratitude, but he didn't show it.

Nagato released the hand seal. His breathing was labored, but he somehow mustered the strength to speak. "War inflicts death, injury, and pain to both sides. The death of someone dear is hard to accept. We convince ourselves that there's no way they could die," he said with tired determination as he slowly lowered his arms, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth onto the machine. Konan glanced quickly at her companion before resting her gaze on the blond Konoha ninja in front of them. She remained worried, but her expression relaxed slightly as she acknowledged the truth in Nagato's words.

"It especially can't be helped with your generation; you don't know war. You may try to find meaning in death, but there is only pain," Nagato raised his eyes to look at Naruto as he continued.

"An unbearable hatred, senseless deaths, eternal hatred, and a pain that does not heal. That is what war is," he said as Naruto watched him, listening intently, his expression unwavering.

"Naruto…this is what you will be facing in time," the skeletal man stated. Naruto's eyes widened.

'What does he mean by that? Does he somehow know what's going to happen in the future? That would be hard to believe, but after everything that's happened here today, I really wouldn't put it past him," he mused to himself.

Nagato took a deep breath before he closed his eyes and chuckled softly, "You and that book, it feels like someone set it all up. Or, perhaps, it was the work of a real god," Naruto only stood there, watching Nagato carefully, still not showing any emotion.

"It seems my work ends here, Naruto," Nagato said wearily, as his eyes opened once again. "I believe you can bring true peace in my stead." Naruto's eyes widened as he took a small but sharp intake of breath. He noticed Nagato's eyes change ever so slightly, softening almost imperceptibly, but the blond knew that Nagato's last statement carried more weight than he let on.

Those were his last thoughts before he felt his eyes grow immeasurably heavy, his knees turned to jelly and gave way beneath him. The world spun as he suddenly felt himself in a state of freefall. It was slow, agonizing, he had lost control of his body. "…care of…him…Konan," he thought he heard Nagato say. His vision darkened and he felt nothing as he hit the ground with a thud.

He hadn't noticed the one-handed seal that Konan made, and he didn't feel the wave of chakra that knocked him out cold. She walked over to the Konoha ninja, looking over her shoulder at Nagato. This time, there was apprehension in her voice.

"Are you sure about this, Nagato? Do you really trust him that much? Especially with…" she trailed off. 'I truly hope this boy is who Nagato thinks he is. If he isn't, then this will all be for naught,' she thought to herself.

Nagato gave a weak nod before speaking, "I do, Konan. He and I are not so different. He reminds me of myself, and a bit of Yahiko," his voice trailed as he said the last part, but Konan heard him, and blinked back a few tears at the mention of their friend. He was right: he was a bit like Yahiko, determined to bring peace to this cruel shinobi world. She only nodded before kneeling and carefully laying Naruto on his back, quietly remembering Yahiko and who he was.

"Are you ready, Konan?" Nagato asked his blue-haired friend. He looked at her, remembering everything they had been through together. He remembered their time in Ame, their time with Jiraiya, their time with Yahiko. He smiled inwardly; he felt an immeasurable gratitude to his two friends. They were more like siblings to him than friends. Konan turned to him, her amber eyes soft but determined, and gave him a nod. She knew what she had to do. Nagato nodded back.

"Take my eyes. Give them to him. He'll do what I couldn't do. What we couldn't do…" he trailed off, his voice held undertones of acceptance and disappointment in what the Akatsuki had become. Konan rose and started towards Nagato, and he spoke with his last breaths as she did.

"Thank you, Konan…thank you for the bread…thank you for being my family," he said with a weak voice as his eyes shut for the last time. Konan looked upon the man she came to see as a brother, blinking back long-withheld tears.

"No, Nagato, thank you," she shakily whispered as she took him and laid him down next to Naruto.

Konan took a deep breath to relax herself. She wasn't a medic nin by any means, but she had knowledge of first aid and treating wounds of different sizes from her time traveling with Yahiko and Nagato. She had minimal knowledge of medical ninjutsu and only learned the basics of Mystical Palm thanks to Jiraiya telling the trio about his teammate, Tsunade. This, however, was something she had no knowledge of, outside of basic anatomy.

Her first thought was to reach for her kunai but thought better of using something so large and unwieldy for something so delicate. She then had the idea of using her paper to make a scalpel. She knew she could make her paper razor sharp, and she had much better control of her paper than she would a kunai. She breathed a sigh of relief knowing that she had surmounted that obstacle.

She knelt and gently opened Naruto's eyelid, afraid to wake him despite knowing he would be out cold for a long while. Her hands were shaking. She tried to steady her breathing. 'I can do this. I have to do this. For Nagato. For Yahiko. For the world,' she told herself. She focused as she gingerly worked her floating paper scalpel into Naruto's first eye socket, severing its connections, and carefully removing it with her still shaky hand. She quickly moved to his other eye, repeating the procedure, her hands only slightly less shaky. Holding the eyes of this boy, seeing their bright, sapphire blue irises outside of his head, feeling their weight in her hand; it was one of the strangest things she'd ever experienced. She shook her head, pushing that thought aside, as she went to Nagato and carefully removed his eyes, making sure to keep them as intact as possible. For a moment she marveled at them. She never realized what the Rinnegan did to a person's eyes, how it completely changed the eye from white to purple, how the concentric circles were somehow embedded into the sclera, unable to be removed. She breathed a sigh of relief, only to notice her hands were covered in blood.

She stared at her hands in utter shock, one holding Naruto's eyes, the other holding Nagato's.

'Don't faint don't faint don't faint don't faint dammit!' she thought, as she took a deep, quivering breath to calm down. She was no stranger to violence, no stranger to blood or death, but something about this made her skin crawl. She pushed those feelings aside as she got to work, gently opening each of Naruto's eyelids once again, carefully sliding Nagato's purple orbs into place. She drew upon her knowledge of Mystical Palm and focused, trying to stop the bleeding as best she could and to repair the muscles and optic nerves. Sweat beaded on her forehead as she focused on pushing the healing chakra into Naruto.

'I pray this holds together long enough for him to get proper treatment, otherwise this will have been for nothing,' she thought to herself. She felt the connections repair themselves to a point where they were salvageable, and she tried to stop the bleeding enough so he wouldn't lose too much blood. Despite her efforts, he still looked like hell; blood had run out of his eye sockets and onto his temples. Konan cursed her lack of proficiency, but she knew he would be in good hands. One of his teammates was an apprentice of Tsunade, or so she heard. She set him against a tree close by before going, wincing at the fresh blood leaking from his closed eyes. It ran down his whisker-marked cheeks like tears. She looked over him one last time before going to reclaim the bodies of Nagato and Yahiko. She wrapped their bodies in her paper before she dispersed the paper tree that she and Nagato had been hiding in. She summoned her paper wings and journeyed back to Amegakure with the bodies of her friends. Only after she buried them both did she sit down and allow the dam holding her emotions back to break. She cried until she had no more tears, letting herself mourn the death of her brother. At least the rain would mask the sound of her sobs.

Kakashi found him against a tree. Not that it was particularly difficult, as his orange tracksuit and blond hair were like a beacon for anyone trying to find him. He breathed a sigh of relief that he had found his student, but his relief turned to shock and concern as he approached Naruto and noticed all the blood on his face.

"Naruto!" he called out to his student; no response. Kakashi cursed under his breath, expecting the worst, but was hoping it wasn't so. He landed in front of Naruto, looking over his student with an expression of worry in his one visible eye. Naruto was motionless, and it looked as though he wasn't breathing. Kakashi gently shook the boy by his shoulder, which caused him to grunt. Kakashi let out the breath he had been holding.

'Thank goodness he's alive,' he thought to himself, relieved beyond measure. He ventured to examine the apparent wounds to his eyes, gently opening his eyelid to inspect the damage. As soon as he saw Naruto's eye, Kakashi gasped.

"This can't be…" he said under his breath. He immediately lifted his headband and opened his Sharingan eye to examine what appeared to be a Rinnegan eye. He channeled chakra into it and gasped again.

"He has it…he has the eye of legend," he said; he could hardly believe it. He opened Naruto's other eyelid and was stunned to see that he had not one, but two Rinnegan. Kakashi hoisted his student onto his back, quickly setting off to head back towards Konoha, or what was left of it. He knew he had to get Naruto to Sakura and Shizune.

"Naruto, just what happened back there?" Kakashi asked, knowing he wouldn't get a response any time soon.

Sakura walked through the ruins of the village, unable to comprehend what had just happened. She saw the bodies; she saw the destruction caused by that orange haired Akatsuki member. She heard the screams, the explosions, the groaning of buildings collapsing. She smelled the dust from said buildings, she smelled the smoke and ash from the fires, she smelled the blood from the dead and injured. Those sights, sounds, and smells were burned into her mind.

She remembered when Naruto finally arrived and fought Pain. She saw him stab Naruto, pinning him to the ground. She watched in horror as he threw Hinata around like a ragdoll, before he drove one of his rods through her. That was when she felt the air explode with a familiar chakra. After the explosion of chakra from the Nine Tailed Fox that nearly knocked her off her feet, the two fought furiously, and she remembered Naruto tearing after Pain into the forest. She immediately set off to look for survivors after Sasuke snapped her out of her trance.

While the village was still destroyed, the very same people she had seen perish were back, somehow just as alive as they were before the attack. She could hardly believe it. She even ran into Kakashi, who she embraced, glad to see a familiar face.

"Kakashi-sensei, where's Naruto? I haven't seen him since…well…since he…" she asked as her voice trailed off. Kakashi's visible brow raised.

"Since what, Sakura?" he asked the kunoichi, with a hint of concern in his voice.

"Since…since he went berserk and released that chakra again," she said, biting her lip and averting her eyes. Kakashi's eye widened at the mention of the Nine Tails' chakra.

'The Nine Tails? That can't have been good. I'll need to follow up with Yamato,' he noted as he continued to listen to his student. Sakura took a breath and regained her composure. "He fought Pain in that state for a bit before they both went into the forest," she stated, finally meeting her sensei's inquisitive gaze. Kakashi nodded, a determined look in his eye.

"Thank you, Sakura. I'll go look for him, since he could be hurt. It would probably be best for you to find Shizune if she's around and tend to the wounded. I'll come find you and Sasuke once I've found Naruto," he said before sprinting off towards the forest.

Sakura sighed to herself and wrung her hands. 'Naruto, please be okay…Kakashi-sensei, please find him,' she prayed. Sasuke was looking for survivors, while she was heading to the field hospital that had been set up to tend to the wounded. Sasuke had promised her he would meet her at the field hospital after he had finished his search. She walked at a steady pace; her emerald eyes never left the ground as worry gripped her heart like a vise.

Sasuke had been looking for survivors and pulling bodies from the rubble when it happened. He felt something strange. The next thing he knew, the same body he had just pulled from the rubble glowed green stood up on its own. Instinctively, he activated his Sharingan to see if it was a genjutsu, but much to his shock, it wasn't. The same person who was dead not even five minutes ago was alive and walking as though nothing had happened. He blinked a few times, mouth agape, before shaking his head to snap himself out of it. Looking around, he could see more people rising where green glows appeared.

'What in the world is all this? People are just coming back to life. Is this some sort of jutsu?' Sasuke asked himself, trying to reason his way through the events unfolding before him. His mind immediately went to his teammate and best friend.

"Naruto, what happened? What did you do?" he asked aloud, watching people once deceased walking once more, his expression stoic despite his surprise and disbelief at the situation.

'You'd better come back safe, you idiot,' he thought to himself. He was worried about the blond fool, but he would never admit it to anyone, not even himself. He made his way to the field hospital to find Sakura.

A/N: Thanks a bundle for reading! A couple things to clear up: Sasuke never left the village, as you can tell, he stayed thanks to his friendship with Naruto. Yes, I gave Konan the ability to use Mystical Palm. I know it's not canon, but I feel like she would have good control of her chakra. Plus, the wiki says she has Yang Release as one of her nature types, which is likely one of if not the type of nature release related to Mystical Palm. Also, this is fanfiction, so there. Fav if you enjoyed, leave a review if you feel like it. Chapter 2 coming soon! Thanks again!