Purpose
March 1st, 15 years After the Kyubi Attack
Sasuke had awoken in an unfamiliar place, within a body that he recognized as his own while he felt it filled of a chakra that couldn't possibly be his: yet it answered with the smooth grace that his own life force had been cultivated to. Endless exercise had brought its fruits long before the beginning of the last Shinobi War, and the uninterrupted stream of battles had only brought it to a more refined level.
The unfamiliarity of the environment had done nothing to quench his self-hate, the unending pit of guilt that clawed at his heart with a soul-deep hunger.
The Last Uchiha had awoken into a familiar body, with an unfamiliar chakra, in an unknown place, with only one known presence sitting in a relaxed posture in front of him.
Ino is safe and sound with the Konoha forces, you didn't harm an hair on her pretty head.
Those were the first words that had left Daiki's mouth: under the unfamiliar sun that shone unmercifully above them, his blue armor had glinted along with his unblinking eyes, and Sasuke, while disbelieving, had been forced to reconcile the truth that he recognized falling from the older shinobi's lips with the memories of... of... The wet lurch of bones crumbling within the torn lungs of the victim, the sizzle of boiling blood, the cried out *gasp* that was to be the last sound those lips would ever utter...
"It was necessary for you to truly feel that anguish, that guilt, that hurt." Daiki wasn't apologetic as he spoke, but there was a genuine sorrow on his features, something that the Last Uchiha hadn't needed his Sharingan to verify.
He wanted to doubt it, and the 'why?' had slipped by his lips before he could recall it, and he loathed the answer he received. That he was unwilling to believe.
Yet, Sasuke's chakra had never been so powerful: where he before could command waves of molten fury barely restrained, he now directed an icy river of refined purpose, and he felt as a secondary instinct those 'special skills' that Daiki had mentioned. Like activating his Sharingan, the further abilities of the Mangeyko were there, asleep, but ready to awaken in a moment of true need.
Then of course, Daiki had to steal the ground from under his feet just as he was coming to terms with the possibility that what he had been told had been the truth: Itachi did what he did to save the entirety of Konoha, to prevent the Fourth Great Ninja War from being sparked by the civil war your father was blindingly aiming for, and to save your life.
Sasuke had almost attacked the S-rank shinobi without thinking.
Then those two had appeared, and they were impossible to be mistaken: after all, he had grown up with their faces watching over every action he could ever think of.
Tobirama and Hashirama Senju were as different in personality and looks as they were identical in their love for Konoha, the first was furious about the implications of what had happened to the Uchiha while the latter was so sorrowful that even the sun felt dimmer, the rustle of the nearby outcropping of trees muted, as if in mourning.
With the first and second Hokage kept under the unmerciful scrutiny of the Sharingan, Daiki had proceeded to spin a tale of betrayal that stemmed many years before either of them was born: and to the newly discovered might of his eyes, the Last Uchiha had known that he was being told the truth.
Itachi killed your clan to prevent a coup.
The truth was as unforgiving as the edge of a blade, and it was cutting up Sasuke from the inside.
The coup would have sparked civil war despite its success or failure.
Sasuke could feel the heaviness of those statements puncture the relief born from believing in Ino's wellbeing.
So soon after the war, Konoha would have been picked apart by the other Great Four.
He could see the chain of events unfold exactly as it was being projected: and it was further availed by the weighty gazes of Tobirama and Hashirama Senju, the latter of whom had bowed deeply, fat tears falling from his war eyes as he independently assumed that the failures of those born after him where his to shoulder because he had been unable to properly transmit the Will of Fire.
And then, it had come the harshest, most terrible truth of them all: Even then, Itachi could not bring himself to kill you, and so he made sure you'd be driven enough to achieve greatness, and he planned since then to die at your hand, so that you could lead a rebirth of the Uchiha, free from the guilts and stains of the past.
Once those truths had been revealed, the two resurrected Hokage had retreated from the premises, leaving Konoha's most recent missing-nin alone with the infamous Last Uchiha.
It was maddening, how much everything he was being told could make sense: "You said Ino is fine." Sasuke was surprisingly relieved that his voice didn't waver when he spoke her name, even with those images rising so readily into his head, "But how did you make me believe it? Genjutsu isn't..."
"Have you already forgotten the events of your Chunin Exams?" the rhetorical question landed on the shoulders of the Uchiha like a shower of iced water, and of course, his mind filled itself with the terrifying appearance that Daiki had cut back when he had first intercepted Orochimaru, "There is more to being a Sage than mere physical power."
Before he could ask for the S-rank to elaborate, Sasuke noted his own reflection into the Blue Armor of the S-rank shinobi sitting in front of him: "What is this?" he pointed to his own forehead with a sudden spark of anger in his tone.
Daiki was entirely shameless in his open, carefree smile: "Something to prevent overzealous bloodline hunters from taking your eyes." the laconic answer immediately quenched the Uchiha's rage. He was simply overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by the relief and hope intrinsic into believing that Ino was safe, that he hadn't... that he couldn't...
Sasuke shook his head, his eyes staring vacantly in front of him. He was overwhelmed by the feeling of his own rage thundering across his body: a fury that had been carefully and constantly fed for most of his life, until it had been turned into a new direction by Daiki's words and actions before and right after the Uchiha had made chunin, overwhelmed by bottled and denied feelings that perceived the chink in his armor, and that elbowed, clawed, and screamed to be let free.
Lastly, he was overwhelmed by the feeling of being utterly lost: in peace or war, he had known the lines keeping the world in a pattern that made sense.
Now Daiki appeared with Tobirama and Hashirama at his beck and call -and not for an instant had the Uchiha believed that the soul hidden behind the eyes of the First Hokage could be shackled to another's will- to deliver that one truth that shattered every belief that had brought Sasuke where he was.
Almost as an afterthought after all those impossible truths that had been delivered to him, Sasuke sat back down on the cot he had awakened on, and crossing his arms, he asked: "So there is a Caged Bird Seal on my forehead?"
"It will disappear and become invisible any day now." Konoha's last missing-nin shrugged unapologetically at Sasuke, "And it's called Gleipnir Seal, nobody is going to deep fry your brain with it, it will simply destroy the eye leaving your orbit, or if a foreign soul takes residence into your body."
"Why?" Sasuke's hands came resting on his knees as he desperately sought out something to to that could shield him from the unmerciful stabbing truths that he was continuously being stabbed with.
"There is a danger inherent in inherited power, versus any power that is earned." Daiki seemed to be delighted by his own word-play, but he maintained a serious tone as he distractedly scratched on side of his head, the short bond hair rasping loudly against his fingers: "Maybe you'd eventually wish to leave your eyes to your progeny, and while that might work if they've been raised up properly, it'd set up a precedent that'd eventually birth an out of mind tyrant: anguish and sheer hurt are as good of a key to this kind of might as any I could conceive, as from being hurt, we might learn wisdom."
"If you are so worried for the future, why not kill me outright?" the Uchiha barely restrained himself from painfully dragging his hands through his unkempt, dark hair, "If my bloodline is so dangerous, why would you allow me to live?" even with his newly awakened power, Sasuke felt it clearly that against Daiki, who had the open support of the hidden away Tobirama and Hashirama, he stood no chance.
"Well, frankly, I offered a free vasectomy to both you and Itachi." the S-rank med nin grinned without an ounce of shame, "But I know Itachi can be trusted not to sire a new Uchiha Clan without being extremely careful about the kind of children that are being raised, you on the other hand..."
"Me?" Sasuke replied tonelessly, keeping the flow of chakra through his body -and more importantly eyes- steady and ready, as he wasn't particularly enjoying where this conversation was going.
"If I'd made you sterile, Itachi would have killed me."
Once again Sasuke felt the jarring tilting of his world-view: how was it that it was so easy to believe Daiki, a man that he had barely any relationship with, a shinobi that had openly abandoned his village only to ally with a kinslayer. He did what he did to save the entirety of Konoha, to prevent the Fourth Great Ninja War from being sparked by the civil war your father was blindingly aiming for, and to save your life.
Sasuke discarded the inopportune image of Ino from his mind as he tried to focus on the here and now: it wasn't like he had ever focused on anything but catching up to Itachi to avenge his clan, then why it was that he felt a stab of dread now that the mention of being unable of fathering children had so uncaringly passed him by?
And why was it that now the only thing he could feel at the mention of his brother was frustration intermixed with a hope that grew steadily brighter? Where had his hate gone? Where was his unmatched, purposeful loathing?
"Grieving for lost rage won't help you in deciding about your future."
Jarred back into the here and now, Sasuke once more dominated himself long enough to not snap back, and mustered enough control in order to organize his priorities. While he wanted to see Ino with his own two eyes, he had more or less decided to trust Daiki: his story was too unbelievable to be a made-up one, the presence of Tobirama and the uncontrollable Hashirama impossible to fake, and most importantly, the Last Uchiha wanted everything he had been told to be true. He longed for it, perhaps without even being aware of how much of his heart Daiki could divine simply by looking the younger shinobi in the eyes.
Still, he needed to confirm, maybe it was irrational, but he needed to see that man: "Where is that man?"
"Busy with a task while I took care of you." the S-rank missing-nin answered easily, his features shifting to allow for a knowing smile.
Sasuke fully rose to his feet then, and his expression grew thunderous as some echo of his decade-old rage awoke: "He's onto whatever you've done to let me awaken this power?"
Supremely unconcerned by the threat implicit in the Uchiha's stance, Daiki openly changed the topic as he glanced towards the distant horizon: "As you should have figured out by now, there is a precise purpose behind every action that I took since I first became a Fire Guardian, back when I was named chunin."
Brisling at being ignored, Sasuke's kept a tight rein on his impulsive need to throttle the vastly more powerful shinobi: "And that'd be?"
Something changed then: as if flipping a coin, the carefree, occasionally sorrowful but always undeniably human Daiki vanished like mist under the sun. In his place was a man that wore his features and clothes, whose chakra thrummed with the same power, but whose expression had turned into something sharp and unforgiving, eyes alight with a flame that could not be quenched. The S-rank missing-nin rose his left fist in front of his face, and staring at the Uchiha from above his clenched knuckles, his voice sang with the faith of the zealots, with the unshakeable might of a mountain range that would not be moved.
That being that was so different from the open and bright Daiki was someone that could have donned the cloak of monster that Konoha had tried to drop on him without showing the barest hint of care, that creature was someone that was closer to Biju than to a shinobi, and it was so only because of his resolve.
After a heartbeat of silence in which Sasuke felt his eyes spin into the Sharingan and into something more to answer to the perceived threat, the idea wearing the body of Daiki spoke a single word: "Revolution."
The Uchiha felt his hear hammer against his ribs, and executed all of the exercises he knew in order to not give away just how much that sudden change had freaked him out. At Sasuke's forcefully expressionless face, a mask that was meant to hide the shiver that Daiki's expression had caused, the S-rank missing-nin merely grinned, and just like that, the coin had been flipped once more, the revolutionary was again the shinobi, the human, that the Uchiha had known before.
"You said that... I... that man would have killed you for operating on me without my consent." Sasuke tried to retrieve some control over the conversation, even if the awareness of being more or less powerless weighted on him. He was in front of the shinobi that had outright killed a Jinchuriki during his chunin exams, the one that had delivered Samehada back to the Mizukage, the one who freely abandoned everything he knew without an ounce of remorse. And who knows what else.
"Well, he would have certainly tried." Daiki was once more in a cheery mood, "But everyone is free to make their own choices, and so I want to make sure that you're aware of this... possibility, this opportunity."
Knowingly taking the bait, Sasuke finally managed to quench down on the power of his eyes, which lost their red and spun back into their usual dark color: "Opportunity to?"
"To leave this world better than how you found it." the words fell like they were an obvious, foregone conclusion, "To engineer a brighter future that will define the next Age."
Under the grey, almost timid light of a sun hidden by the clouds, the rain fell like the endless drumming of the fingers of a distracted god, while there was no wind to divert the trajectory of each drop of water, and the smoke of the houses of the small village was simply scattered into nothingness.
Karin was eating on her own in one of the abandoned houses of the village she had found herself in: since her return from the Summon Plane -and she felt a flutter of pride in her chest when she thought about how she had managed to gain the trust of Enma and his clan- she had been more or lest abandoned to herself. For the first time since her first and only visit to the Capital of Hi no Kuni, she was on her own.
She had hunted or fished whenever she could for the first few days, only to seal away her new provisions in some scrolls in order to keep moving? Where to? Well, considering that she had appeared in the same area she had reverse summoned herself from, any direction was more or less the same.
A henge allowed her to keep hidden her distinctive red hair, but she wasn't any closer to finding Daiki than she had been when she first awoke prisoner of those... those... hollow-nin.
But where before she had been scared and immediately kidnapped, only to escape by her own merits, she now felt a different kind of strength in herself: truly, it was rather simple. Now she was the Summoner of the Monkey Clan, and she'd never be alone again. So when she felt the same kind of hollow group of people approach, instead of fear, she felt only a ready fury threatening to bubble out of her: She had been unable to feel them the first time because she had been caught off guard, and her skills would not have helped her in fighting them off.
How did they find me? Three of them approached from the south of the village, while another six were arrayed in a spread-out line in a sort of semicircle that covered from east to west. They differed from common shinobi in the same way a white and black image differed from a rich painting: they were real, of course, but there was also nothing to define them beyond the vaguest shapes that had been hammered onto their souls.
She quickly finished her rice with wild boar and immediately rose to her feet: her would-be attackers were approaching at a steady and controlled pace. This isn't going to be a sprint, but a long and drawn-out fight then?
Karin might be willing to fight and to not give in to fear: but summons or not, nine against one were odds acceptable only when you were a part of those nine, and this wasn't the case. She walked out of the abandoned house and she let the henge fade: her red hair quickly turned a darker shade as it grew wet under the rain, and her chakra churned violently in her gut.
She bit her knuckles and quickly smeared blood on her fingers: "I'm not alonethough."
She started with the necessary hand signs when the three shinobi approaching from the south vanished from her senses. The change was so sudden, so immediate, and with o transition from one state of being to one of ... not-being, that for a moment, she stopped.
And in that moment someone else appeared in front of Karin: someone she had felt before, back when she felt like she had just been forced between a rock and a hard place, and yet, someone that was completely different.
The shinobi in front of her wore a black cloud with a pattern of red clouds, and long dark hair framed a handsome face under a large straw hat that barely managed to hold back the rain: "Daiki sent me, padawan."
As Karin stuttered, her chakra briefly fluttering out of control while she took in the unmovable mountain of sharp ice that this shinobi was, the other six ninja that had been waiting for her fell in quick succession: during those seconds, the chakra of the newcomer didn't waver, and his expression didn't change.
Even so, Karin could tell that he felt somewhat irked at having to use such a term to make her trust him as an ally.
With a knowing smirk, she brought her hands to her hips: "Well, where is Daiki-sensei?"
AN
A much longer chapter: I hope I haven't been too verbose while managing to convey the emotional storm Sasuke just went through, some of the charisma that I've whipped up for Daiki, and Karin's sudden return to the frontline.
As we all know the story of what actually sparked the Uchiha Massacre, I opted to go straight for Sasuke's reaction, and to work through Ino's role by having the thoughts of our younger EMS wielder recall Daiki's words (I thought I made it clear that she'd be fine: Itachi is often brutal, but never meaninglessly cruel, and at this point of the game, he no longer needs to sell his image as 'all things Sasuke should destroy').
I experimented a fair bit with the perspectives in the first part of this chapter: I mean that I started it after the news were delivered, and that's why there are no references to what Sasuke and Daiki are doing with their bodies (I always strive to avoid the 'talking heads' conversations, but in this sort of small flashback, the focus is on the information that had been delivered), while I pick that up in the second part of their conversation, when I actually start to use direct speeches instead of an inner turmoil.
I ended that conversation with the mention of Itachi, which I've justified in the actual ending of the chapter, and the beginning of Daiki's recruitment pitch.
Have no worries Tony, the final clash will cover at least 3 uninterrupted chapters: those I had planned back when the MC wasn't even a chunin yet. (I kind of regret never expanding on Asuma's sub-plot, but it was a period in which I lost all interest for this story in favour of my many other fics, maybe I'll set that straight in an eventual rewrite).
So, in this chapter we have Sasuke coming to terms with the truth coupled with a bit of action on Karin's side, we see her new summons coupled with the infamous chains that she kind of deux-ex machina'ed in the ending sections of Shippuden.
