*Rapidly fills in plotholes-


The Kage Civil War #3


"Buffeting wind-"

"Lava plume!"

"Oh, fuck you!"

Haku hadn't realised how annoying it was to fight a spacer-type fighter until he met one he couldn't sneak up on. Seriously, all she did was spam him with ranged attacks, try and catch him in the boil release steam, and sicc a vapour dragon on him if he ever got close. "I've changed my mind." He shouted at her. "This isn't interesting, it's fucking stupid. I wanna swap out, can I take the Raikage instead?"

"Oh, no. You've made your bed, now you get to lie in it." Mei glared at him, from within her cloud of impenetrable bullshit. "And since when were you so vulgar?"

"Sasuke must be rubbing off on me." Haku sighed. "Not literally, disappointingly, but still. Ice clone jutsu!"

He summoned one copy of himself, linked arms with it, and threw it forwards.

Unlike the mirrors, it began to melt the moment it entered the vapour, but ran through a set of hand seals before it could be destroyed. "Ice release, Flash Freeze!"

Everything within a few metres of the clone dropped by about a hundred degrees C in under a second, taking the boil release from deadly to mildly humid.

Mei responded, launching another lava blast, but the clone threw up an ice mirror as it broke, catching the attack in mid air. The real Haku darted in, coming up behind through the harmless water vapour and jumping into the mirror, then out the other side. "Ice spear!" He shouted, summoning the weapon ready to yeet it at any projectiles she aimed at him.

Mei didn't shoot another lava ball at him. She jumped up, and threw a tagged kunai at the ground beneath him.

The explosion that went off threw him into an uncontrolled tumble rather than a graceful leap, and, yep, there's the fucking vapour dragon-

He pulled up a small version of the ice mirrors as a shield as the jutsu crashed into him, shoving him upwards, away, and then down towards the ground. He slammed into the floor and cried out, as broken shards of wood dug up into his back.

Haku's burnt fingers dropped the shield, and he rolled over to his front, looking up.

"HAKU!" Shouted Sai from the other side of the room, and Haku watched as the distracted boy got hit by a swinging branch of wood release, coughing up blood and being crushed into a wall.

"SAI!" Haku screamed back, forcing himself to his feet.

"Don't think you're going anywhere." Spat Mei from behind him, vapour spreading out towards him. "You still have business with me, sweetie."

Haku closed his eyes. Breathed out. And turned back to her. "You selfish, self obsessed, idiotic, childish, pathetic excuse for a Kage. I've put up with you for five goddamn years, and if you get between me and my teammates any more I am going to turn you into a fucking Pincushion!"

"Stubborn worm." She growled back. "You could have had wealth! Power! You could have had Me! What about that wasn't good enough for you?"

"I'M GAY YOU IGNORANT BITCH!"

He slammed his hands together. "Demonic Ice Dragon Jutsu!" Coiling up around him, the beast's cold scales crackled against each other, freezing all the moisture in the air around it, and it roared. This was the biggest, most chakra-exhausting, and most entirely ridiculous move he could pull out. He'd built it to try and counter the rasenshuriken, funnily enough. Flying up above Haku's head, it tore through the air down towards Mei.

"Lava dragon jutsu!" She countered, firing up her own strongest attack towards his, the drake glowing red, yellow and orange as it flew roaring upwards.

The two dragons met, and exploded.

What was left of the room's infrastructure just gave up, shards of roof and wall being thrown outwards as all the other combatants in the building were forced to pause what they were doing just to appreciate the moment.

Shards of cooled stone and boiling hot water fell down from the collision point, and Mei made a very crucial mistake.

She closed and shielded her eyes.

She brought up her vapour tighter and higher, forming a bubble of safety around herself as the explosion subsided, which had the unfortunate side effect that even when she opened her eyes, it was too thick to see.

You see, Mei was raised a privileged child. She had been born with an incredible gift, and taught to focus on training her elemental attacks above all else.

As such, she had never achieved more than a basic level of competence in her country's patented art. That being, locating opponents by sound alone.

There was a thud, and a cold hand landed on her shoulder.

"Hidden Mist." Said Haku. "Hiding in the mist jutsu. Maybe look it up?"

Mei spun, seeing a figure completely covered in a thick sheen of ice, ice that was melting rapidly, sure, but it only needed to last a second or so to let it's occupant-

Haku smiled, his ninja headband covering his eyes. "Demonic ice mirrors jutsu."

The prison flashed into existence around Mei, and she barely had time to start making hand seals before dozens of senbon slammed into her arms, legs and back. Her muscles froze up, and she hit the floor.

"Now be a good little Mizukage and stay on the floor where you belong." Haku told her, from within one of the mirrors. "I'm going to save my boyfriend. Try not to ruin your country's reputation any more while I'm gone, okay?"

He paused, whispered "Hoooh that felt so good." and jumped away.


"We need to teamwork harder." Sasuke decided. "That's the morale of the story, right? If we teamwork harder we win instantly."

"Sounds good. How?" Gaara asked.

Impacts successively smashed against the wall of sand he'd set up between them and their opponents.

"Uh. I don't know. Move!" Sasuke reached across and yanked Gaara to the left, just in time for a beam of white light to disintegrate a section of the sand wall and a good chunk of the floor where he'd been stood.

"We're both badasses but there isn't much room for our skills to overlap! Against anyone else you'd be able to control the terrain so I could fight them all individually, but-"

"These ones can fly and run stupidly fast, I know." Gaara refilled the hole. He was looking remarkably calm for the situation. "So what do we do? I can't keep up this wall for much longer."

"We beat this the same way I beat Kimimaro." Sasuke sighed. "By being smart. Kami, it's too early in the morning for this-"

With a shout of "Alright, round two start!" The sand wall exploded outwards, and Sasuke was charging forwards, aiming for Onoki.

The Raikage came in out of nowhere, with a spinning kick that took Sasuke's head off at the neck.

Obviously-not-Sasuke promptly disintegrated, not in the burst of a shadow clone, but instead revealed itself to be an animation of sand that quickly latched onto A's body in every place it could.

This sand wasn't imbued with wind to make it lighter; it was saturated in earth release, making it as heavy as physically possible.

The Raikage wasted a moment trying to remove it by force, before more sand from the surrounding area latched onto him, pulling him downwards and attempting to smother him.

That stopped him for...about half a second, in total.

A basically flexed and it was off; lightning has advantage over earth, and it's sheer explosive power in a confined space blew the entire prison apart. But Sasuke, the real Sasuke, had already sprinted past him at that point, jumping upwards onto a levitating platform of sand. He was carrying Kubikiribōchō, Zabuzza's sword, and began to contemplate the dimensions of Onoki's neck as the sand flew him closer. The Tsuchikage hadn't been wasting his time, and fired off a blast of particle release that would have disintegrated Sasuke if he'd stayed on a constant path, but the sand he was stood on launched him upwards, such that the white light only obliterated the sand and the soles of Sasuke's footwear.

By that point, the Raikage was already blurring up towards him, hands positioned to grab and crush his throat.

Sasuke let go of his sword.

With a poof, Sasuke had been substituted with another of Gaara's sand clones down below, and the Raikage's fists buried themselves into it. Again, it attempted to forcibly lock his hands together, as Sasuke reappeared on the ground and Ōnoki leaned casually left to avoid the thrown sword.

"Fire style! Big Fuckoff Fire Dragon jutsu!" Sasuke shouted, feeling his chakra reserves dip to about a quarter as the largest technique he could fire blasted out towards his two opponents.

"Oh, that's just unfair! Why's yours so much bigger than mine!" Shouted Haku, from some distance away.

"Bow-chika-bow-wow." Gaara said in the most deadpan voice possible.

"I've got this." Onoki said, grabbing onto the Raikage with one hand and reaching the other outwards. Sweat was beading on his forehead. "Particle style! Obliteration barrier!"

A large cube of light appeared, and as the fire dragon crashed into it, it just blinked out of existence, like the attack was paper being fed into a shredder.

What Onoki did not notice, was that Kubikiribōchō hadn't simply fallen to the ground behind him, but paused in midair.

Gaara made a tiny motion with one finger, and the blade began flying towards Onoki's exposed back.

Magnet release. If the opponents don't have metal you can control, bring it to them yourself.

There was a tiny glint from the light on the metal, and the sword (inches from Onoki's skin) came into the Raikage's peripheral vision.

He swore, grabbed Onoki, and flung him towards the box of particle style, using the momentum gained to fling himself upwards and catch the sword.

Onoki was forced to dispel the barrier to prevent himself from being disintegrated by his own technique, but that still left him being caught by the tail end of Sasuke's fire technique.

It was a highly singed Onoki that crashed down onto the floor of the building. "My beard..." He groaned, "you burned my beard!"

Sasuke, exhausted, shouted over to him, "Well maybe if you hadn't grown it so damn long that wouldn't be a problem! Even Hiruzen never had a beard that crazy and he-"

"Look out!"

There was a snap, and a sonic boom.

Gaara pulled up sand in front of them both, but a pair of projectiles blasted through the wall like it wasn't even there, taking Sasuke in the right leg and Gaara in the chest. Both fell to their knees, bitching loudly, and Sasuke looked down and realised that he had been impaled by a shattered half of Kubikiribōchō.

"Not bad." A called to them, walking up slowly. "But you're both still-"

"Far too young to be picking fights like this?" Sasuke interrupted. "Yeah, shut your patronising ass up, old man."

"Hm. Fine then." The Raikage blurred towards them.

He was met by a purple shield, one much larger and much stronger than the ribcage that had briefly appeared earlier in the fight.

Sasuke staggered to his feet with a shout of rage and pain, offering one hand to Gaara and pulling him up too, as the armoured Susanno came into being around them.

"Fuck the power of teamwork and tactics." He spat out some blood. "The power of bullshit dojutsu spamming, that's where it's at. Gaara?"

The ex-Jinchurikki looked away from the sword still stuck in his chest and up at his partner. "L-Listening?"

"New plan. Flail wildly at him with your sand. I'll set it all on fire with Amaterasu."

Haku and Sai dove into the relative safety of the Susanno just before the entire building began to tear itself apart.


The bridge sagged. Mud dripped to the ground from either side, and Hinata and Naruto clashed on top, duelling on the unstable and viscous surface like it was smooth stone.

"Stop it!" Naruto begged. "Turn it off, Hinata, you're killing yourself-"

"Like hell!" She shot back. With the Vishnu she was almost as fast as him, and with the four arms she was outclassing him in Taijutsu again (as it should be.) Not to mention he'd told her there were limits on how many shadow clones he could summon in sage mode, and she was not going to let him make those hand seals.

Of course, this entire strategy had one flaw. Naruto wasn't shutting up.

"Didn't he order the murder of your own damn family? That doesn't bother you?" He shouted at her, even as she punched him on the face.

"I hated my family! My parents cared nothing for me besides my position as their heir!"

"What about-" (She kicked him in the ribs, making him grimace) "-Hanabi? Your sister! You cared about her, right?"

Hinata laughed in his face. "Hanabi? I made her up! I just needed an excuse to follow through with killing Itachi!"

"Fuck, he did a real number on you didn't he?" Naruto landed a lucky hit to her gut, and seemed to change tack. "So he doesn't trust you not to betray him? That's what you think the genjutsu's about? Even-" (she hit him again.) "-ngh-even in the fantasy world he's set up for you, he doesn't trust that you'll be able to hurt me?"

Oh, that touched a nerve, and her laugh was gone. "Shut up!"

"Because he knew that if he reset your memories entirely they'd clash with reality inside of five seconds! He had to make you think you were double-triple-tricking yourself, just to try and get around the fact that you would never hurt either me or Sasuke!"

"You're delusional!" She kicked him into the air and punched him with all four fists at once, sending him flying backwards across the bridge again. "And just because I know you believe something doesn't mean it's true!"

"Heh. You're right." He wiped some blood off his face. "I believe you care about me."

She froze for a moment, stricken, and he grinned. "Hah! See that? I didn't even mean anything by that statement, but the moment you thought your feelings were in doubt you were terrified-"

"Enough!" She ran for him again.

He went to a kneel, and punched downwards, hard. Enough force to stop a small meteorite slammed into the bridge and was the last straw for the structure; it began to collapse into the canyon with an agonising groan.

Hinata slipped as the floor broke apart beneath her, and Naruto jumped forwards, catching her with a kick that threw her into the canyon wall. She landed and kicked off back towards him, landing on a falling piece of masonry, and the two continued their duel as the bridge fell apart around them.

"You think you love him?" Naruto accused her.

"Yes!"

"You think he believes that?"

"Yes!"

"Then take that goddamn genjutsu off and fight me without it!"

She swept low, forcing him to disconnect his legs from his piece of stone or lose them, and she grabbed his head with two of her hands and buried it in the brick.

"How stupid do you think I am?" She howled, bringing down an axe kick to catch him in the stomach and rocketing him downwards.

He landed hard on the river down at the bottom of the ravine, sending a two metre wave outwards but barely avoiding breaking the water's surface. "Oh yeah? What have you got to lose? Rasenshuriken!"

She threw herself sideways to avoid it, hitting the canyon wall, shouting "You're not even trying to pretend you're not manipulating me!"

"Of course not! You'd see straight through that, and I'm a crap liar!" He smiled, and charged another Rasenshuriken. "My gambit's perfectly honest, out in the open! I dare you to take it off. Because if you really care about your 'master', you don't need it, right?"

She sprinted down the canyon wall, overtaking the falling debris and replying with "I'm not betraying him!"

"If you have it on, you can't prove you wouldn't, and he'll always doubt you!"

"It would be a betrayal to take it off!"

"It's weakness not to!"

"QUADRUPLE CRYSTAL CHIDORI!" Hinata had no idea if her Kesshotoketsu was even meant to work the way she was using it, but her white eyes were more than willing to comply. Each of her arms lit up with lightning, and then that lightning was fed into a crystal lattice that built up in each hand, blades of white opal forming with electricity charging and charging inside until they were lit up like Christmas trees. She threw herself off the wall down towards him.

Naruto's eyes narrowed. "UZUMAKI RASENSHURIKEN BARRAGE!" He countered, conjuring up three more of himself, all of whom charged a Rasenshuriken in one hand. All four thrust their attacks upwards right at the moment Hinata met them.

There was a brief moment of deja vu.

And then there was an explosion, and all the water within fifty metres evaporated and all the grass and leaves fried and all the dirt hardened and cracked and all the stones glowed red-hot and millions of tiny holes pockmarked every surface around them.

In the end, the two techniques cancelled out, and it was momentum that won. Hinata flew forwards and crashed into Naruto, and since he didn't have any more water to stand on, both were sent tumbling into the bottom of the riverbed. They hit the ground hard, and rolled eventually to a stop, as the remains of the bridge crashed to the ground around them.


Naruto's sage reserves had run dry. Hinata knew it because he suddenly stopped in his attempt to get up, flopping flat onto his back on the ground. Without the borrowed senjutsu chakra, there was nothing to keep him moving despite his blocked tenketsu.

I won't give him the time to get any back.

Hinata, on the other hand, was able to get to her feet. Her Vishnu body was cracked in many places, the false arms had disintegrated in the clash, and the numbness was spreading slowly towards her core, but she still stood, and walked over to her teammate.

There was a quiet whoosh, as Danzo dropped lightly to the ground nearby.

"Put him out." The man said, almost boredly.

"Yes master." She replied, reaching with one hand towards Naruto's temple. One small pulse of chakra into his brain would be all it took to send him unconscious. Once he was there, she could keep him there for as long as was needed.

He coughed; bruised, broken in a few places, and unable to open one eye, but he still worked his mouth enough to say "...Breast...Pocket."

She blinked. "...What?"

"My...breast pocket." He said. "At least, I...think that's what it's called...the weird zipper, on, ngh, on my left-"

"I know what the fucking breast pocket is." She hissed.

"Open it."

"Why?" Was what she said, but she was already moving to unzip it. She could see what was in there before she ever opened it, obviously, but it was something held inside a sealing scroll. One of the high quality ones, too, designed to keep something protected from the outside world for long periods of time. She picked the scroll up, prepared herself for it to be some kind of bomb, and broke the seal.

There was a small poof, and something small and light dropped into her hand.

She looked at the thin metal plate, sewn onto a blue fabric, and blanched. It was a Konoha forehead protector. Why would he-

...Oh.

"Is this..."

"Yours." He grinned up at her. "I kept it. You asked me for a favour, remember?"

The hand holding it shook. The unblemished Leaf symbol glinted in the sunlight.

"You promised me that once you were done with Orochimaru, and done with Neji, you'd wear it again."

"I..." Hinata had no idea what to say. "You can't...this doesn't mean-"

"You swore on everything you've ever cared about that you'd come back." Naruto accused her. "Now if you meant that you were going to come back and join Sai's freaking dark master, then go ahead. Do whatever you want with me. But don't you dare do it with some genjutsu telling you what to think."

"Hinata." Said Danzo, from behind her. "He's trying to manipulate you. Ignore him. That is an order. Continue your objective, and do not betray me."

Hinata brought one hand up to her face. She hadn't thought it was possible, but despite her opal exterior, she was crying.

"I will not betray you, master." She said. Her other hand clenched around the headband, almost hard enough to break it. "I love him. I admit that. But you...you're my world. And this moron doesn't seem to believe it." She inhaled. Exhaled. "So I'm going to prove it to him." Her hand rose up to her forehead.

"Hinata no-"

"Hinata yes!"

"Hiragekoma!"

The world exploded into colour. The threads of chakra throughout her head were laid out to her in painstaking detail, and she pinched onto just the right spot and pulled.

The entire structure came loose all at once, and her mind was her own again. She brought the arm back down towards Naruto, preparing to finish the job-

And stopped.

"Oh, fuck." She said, aloud. "That was fucking close."

"Yeah, I know right?" Naruto chuckled. "Genjutsu is an ass."

And then Hinata realised that she was about to die.

She turned around and blocked the shuriken that Danzo had thrown at her back with pitiful ease, and then staggered, because the numbness had almost overtaken her entire body, it was spreading deep within her, into her heart, and she immediately tried to cut out the Vishnu entirely but everything inside her seemed to have frozen and it just wouldn't start again-

"First. Gate. Open." She bit out, snapping the chakra point within her temple, and that did the trick.

Alongside possibly the worst pain she'd ever experienced in her life, her body essentially jump-started itself, white flaking off her skin as she crumpled to her knees with a scream and her eyes returned to their normal shape and size.

But she was free, and she was alive, and so she batted away the next set of shuriken Danzo threw. And she stood back up again. "You made one crucial mistake, puppet-master." She declared. "There is nobody, and I mean nobody, who can overcome Naruto's talk-no-jutsu."

"...I'll make a note of that." Danzo told her. "I would ask, after I am gone, that you please do the best you can to look after my village."

"I'll make a note of that." She told him, fastening her headband back around her forehead where it belonged.

And then she splattered his brains across the canyon wall.


Yamato blinked as the Kotoamatsukami was released, and said "Yo, holy shit."


Mifune blinked as the Kotoamatsukami was released, and said "Yo, holy shit."


A large group of officials, clan heads, and influential figures in Konoha blinked as the Kotoamatsukami was released, and said "Yo, holy shit."


The entire roster of ROOT blinked as the Kotoamatsukami was released, and said "Yo, holy shit."


The Fire Daimyo blinked as the Kotoamatsukami was released, and said "Yo, holy shit."


Fugaku Uchiha (sat in a jail cell) blinked as the Kotoamatsukami was released, and said "Yo, holy shit."


Mei Terumi was passed out on the floor as the Kotoamatsukami was released, and didn't say anything, but probably would have blinked and said "Yo, holy shit." if she could have.


Gaara, Onoki and A blinked as the Kotoamatsukami was released, and said "Yo, holy shit."

This was a serious surprise to Sasuke, who for a critical moment didn't squish those latter two's heads in with the gigantic fists of his Susanno while he had them both held still. Immediately afterwards, the pain in his eyes peaked to a maximum, and then ceased. He saw the Susanno wink out, and then only blackness.


A hooded man, alone in the woods, blinked as the Kotoamatsukami was released, and said "Yo, holy shit."

Then he went "OH, you sly son of a bitch, that was why!"


Sai blinked as the Kotoamatsukami was released, and said "Yo, holy shit."

Then he paused. Blinked again. A childlike expression of wonder came over his usually deadpan face. "I'm...free."

"Truce! Everyone truce while we figure out what the fuck just happened..."

Sai's brain, entirely unused to functioning without the deeply embedded genjutsu, basically decided it wanted a full system reboot. His eyes rolled back into his head, and he collapsed on the floor, and despite all the circumstances it would be the best sleep he'd had in years.


And that ends that.

I wanted to make Danzo really feel like a manipulator here. This guy was practically the inciting incident for this whole story, and I didn't want him to go down without a fight, but again. His whole modus operandi is hiding in the shadows and pitting other people against each other. Once he lost all his puppets, there wasn't much else he could do, at least not against someone as powerful as Hinata, Naruto or Sasuke.

And no, Naruto couldn't talk no jutsu so hard that he 'broke through' the Kotoamatsukami, in case that's unclear. The fact is that Hinata's unique ability to tell if a statement is true meant that whatever he made her remember, it couldn't clash with reality as Naruto knew it, or she'd realise he was lying to her.

He had to convince her that despite all her memories of time spent with team seven, she was still willing to kill him. Also, he couldn't make up Naruto could disprove, and also, he had to give her a reason not to remove the genjutsu she would know was in her brain.

Even with a total memory rewrite, that's a big stretch, and Naruto was able to piss Hinata off enough to find a loophole.

Next week; more events come to light. This next bit would be it's own arc, but since the kage summit and the training with Kurama are both pretty short in book form, I've put them together in one act.