Aftermath 8: Just Screwing Around


"Hamura Otsutsuki." Hinata deadpanned. "The brother of the motherfucking-" she stopped when she realised the two others beside her had immediately dropped to their knees.

"Hanabi." She hissed. "What are you doing?"

"He's, like, a super big deal!" Hanabi stage-whispered back. "Toneri said-"

"From now on if you start another sentence with 'Toneri said' I'm going to just hit Toneri." Hinata interrupted.

"Please, do not hit Toneri." Said Toneri.

"None of you need to be bowing to me." Hamura cut in, chuckling. "DNA of a dimension-hopping-alien-space-witch aside, I'm not a god. Just a man, same as any of you."

"But Toneri said you helped make the moon!" Hanabi shouted excitedly, standing up.

(Hinata punched Toneri, who went "Ow!")

"Okay, so I am pretty badass." Hamura smiled, "but regardless, no bowing. Over-deifying me is how this whole mess started, as I understand it."

"Right, the start, what a great place to start." Hinata stared at him. "Exposition me, please. It's been two weeks since I knew what was going on."

"Of course." Hamura sat down on the moon's surface, and pat the rock with his hand. One after another, they all sat facing him.

"So, several thousand years ago, my brother and I had just finished sealing the Ten-Tails into the moon. He would go on to absorb it into himself and split it into the nine Bijuu, but before that, there was something much more important we had to get to."

"Which was?" Toneri tilted his head.

"Getting laid."

The pale young man broke into a coughing fit, while Hinata reprimanded "Hey! Child in the audience!"

"Oh come on, I'm thirteen." Hanabi stated, sticking her tongue out. "I know what sex is."

"How!" Toneri demanded. "I never-"

"Uh, you let me into the library. There's all sorts of books in there. Even these ones with orange covers where-"

"How the hell did Icha-Icha end up on the moon!" Hinata shouted.

"Neji and Itachi put them there while Toneri wasn't looking." Hamura told them. "But we're not there yet, be patient. So, big save-the-world party, lots of alcohol, everything was crazy for a while, and long story short me and my bro both got hitched. His children were Indra and Ashura, who went on to cause literally all the problems for everyone ever forever." The old man scowled for a moment, then sighed. "Loved those two. Anyway, I also had two children. One lived her life out in the human world, had her own family and her own descendants, spreading across the globe. One remained here on the moon, with me, as did his family. And so was my bloodline split; never again to meet."

"Well damn." Hinata muttered. "Orochimaru's crazy theories were almost dead-on...so what happened?"

"Time passed." Hamura said. "And these idiots-" he pointed at Toneri, "decided they were going to massively overanalyse everything I ever said."

"Hamura left us a celestial decree." Toneri defended, which merited a laugh.

"'Celestial Decree? What kinda-when did I ever leave you one of those?"

"You said-" Toneri coughed, "well, all the interpretations are different. It has been several thousand years."

"Uh-Huh." Hamura raised an eyebrow.

The pale boy cleared his throat. "The most accepted translation is:

'When misrule takes its place in the five nations of the world,

When the beasts rampage across the kingdoms of man,

When the inheritors' duel carves wounds into the land,

When the greatest of conflicts strike thrice, and the combatants have not learned,

When the Husk of the Ten-Tails is missing from it's imprisonment,

The Tenseigan wakes, and the wheel turns upon the accursed humanity'."

Hinata couldn't help the shiver that ran across her skin, cross referencing the predictions against the events she remembered.

"But, uh." Toneri coughed. "We're actually pretty sure that most of that was made up, or changed due to linguistic drift and semantic context. When I looked, the oldest actual record of it translates to something like 'when in doubt, slay a human'."

"Oh for my sake..." Hamura growled. "I said 'when in doubt, LAY a human'! I was drunk! Drunk and horny!"

"But-" Toneri looked horrified. "But I found it underneath the Gedo Statue when it vanished a few years ago!"

"That was graffiti! My son wrote it there as a prank!"

"...the 's' in the slay was pretty faint..." Toneri muttered to himself, very quietly.

Hanabi started giggling.

"Anyway." Hamura sighed. "The plan was that they would live on the moon, guard the Tenseigan and the Gedo statue, and help out if the world needed them to. Not crash an orbiting body into the planet!"

"You were going to what?!" Hanabi looked up at Toneri, aghast.

"I thought God was telling me to! Cut me some slack!"

"So, what went wrong?" Hinata asked. "Why was there never any moon-throwing?"

"Neji." Toneri growled, spitting the word out with almost as much hatred as Hinata had in her earlier years. "He...Look. Lord Hamura's Tenseigan, The Tenseigan, rests in the centre of the moon. It grants us light and power, and has done so for thousands of years. But, it cannot do so without fuel." He pointed to his own empty eye sockets. "It is tradition to sacrifice the eyes of every child born to preserve the eye's lustre."

"Wow." Hinata shuddered. "I'd call you all crazy, except my family put the caged bird seal on over half of the clan's members, so I can't really talk."

"Yeah, it's pretty nasty." Toneri grimaced. "At one point there was a bit of a scuffle about that, and, well, whoever had the giant laser-eye sort of won."

"I don't suppose you talked it out like reasonable adults?"

"No, we wiped out over 90% of our population."

"Oh, great."

"Indeed. Now I am the Last of the Otsutsuki. At least of those that maintained our family name here in this celestial system..." Toneri looked down, expression grim. "There was little hope. However, there was another prophesy. And this one I know is true. You may have noticed that when bloodlines are combined, the results can be...potent."

"When Danzo combined Senju and Uchiha DNA, he could spam an instant-mind-control jutsu." Hinata told him. "So, yeah."

"Well, it was said that by combining our bloodline with that of Hamura's earthly descendants, we would recreate the power of the great lord himself, granting us our own Tenseigan."

"The 'great lord' is right here, and for once Toneri is right." Hamura said. "Such is a delicate dance, however. The purer the bloodline, the easier it is for such effects to appear. On the other hand, incest is...well, first thing, gross, and second thing, tends to produce defects that stop the special powers from showing up. It's like eye colour in ordinary humans, for example. Genes come in pairs; plenty of people will carry one gene for brown eyes, and since brown is a dominant colour, that's all it takes. That's why the Sharingan and Byakugan are very common in children, if their parents had it. But some bloodlines like the Wood release are much rarer because you need to be lucky enough to get both genes in the pair to be 'wood-positive', which is why your First Hokage was the first and last in a long time with the power."

"There's a lot more Sci in my Sci-Fi than I'm entirely comfortable with right now." Hinata warned.

"Then I'll -Fi it up some more." Hamura extrapolated, "Chakra and DNA are deeply intertwined. My brother always believed it was a force for connecting people, after all. And Tl;DR: If Toneri sticks a Hyuuga's eyes in his face he gets the Tenseigan."

Toneri took over. "And with your clan's...peculiar practices..."

"You can call them barbaric, it's alright, I agree."

"Excellent. Your hideous, disgusting, borderline racist, barbaric practices left me with the unenviable task of kidnapping one of five or so people from the hardest ninja clan in the world to sneak up on. And then, things got even harder."

"The massacre..." Hinata muttered.

"Huh?" Hanabi, who had been following the conversation mutely so far, looked up in confusion. "The what?"

Hinata looked sharply at Toneri and thought You didn't tell her?

What was I supposed to tell her? He sent back, that her cousin murdered her whole family? How well did you take that at age 13?

I...left the village to join a terrorist, fair point. But we're telling her soon. Whatever, keep talking.

"Nothing, Hanabi." Toneri continued, aloud. "This was the point at which you arrived, alongside Neji and Itachi. They subdued me and my puppets with relative ease, interrogated me for everything I knew. The following events were...strange."

Hinata thought about it. "You could have just...used Hanabi's eyes to crash the moon. But if you had you wouldn't have needed to wait for Neji to die...but her eyes are gone, so what gives?"

"Quite." Toneri scowled. "Use your eyes on us. Notice anything?"

Hinata frowned, activated her Byakugan, and looked. It took her a second to catch it, but... "Genjutsu?" She noticed, glancing between him and Hanabi. Then, after another moment, "Kotoamatsukami?"

"That's the bitch." Toneri grumbled. It was hard to notice, but it was there; thin strands of chakra floating around his mind. Floating about him, Hanabi...even across to her. "They used a Mangekyo Sharingan they were just carrying around, apparently. Originally from someone named Shisui, I believe? Itachi placed an enchantment on both of us."

"On both of you?" Hinata frowned. "I thought it would only affect one person."

"So did I, but then they said-"

"Let me guess." Hinata interrupted. "Fuck you, we're Itachi Uchiha and Neji Hyuuga, we can do whatever we want'."

"Exactly that, yes." Toneri nodded. "Here's the gist of it: They removed Hanabi's eyes. And they hid them somewhere." Hinata looked across at Hanabi but there was no surprise on her face; clearly this was something her sister knew.

"The only one that knows the eyes' location, now that those two are dead...is Hanabi." Toneri continued. "Only, she does not know that she knows it. It is locked away in her mind until one of many 'conditions' are met that would cause her to remember. Not that they would tell me what those conditions were...their hope was that I would be forced to spare her life and put off any doomsday plans, while also giving her a safe place to stay. And in doing so, keeping the power of the Tenseigan available in case they needed it." He grimaced. "They also hoped I would get...attached to her. It worked."

"Toneri's been really nice to me." Hanabi declared. "You're not allowed to attack him anymore, you understand?"

"I...fine." Hinata allowed. She gave Toneri a glare, realised he couldn't see it, and sent him a genjutsu of her giving him a glare. "But he'd better not get any...ideas."

"I'm twice her age." He deadpanned back. "There will be no ideas."

"Well alright then." Hinata turned to Hamura. "And finally...why are you here?"

"I'm not." He replied, simply. "I died many thousands of years ago. But me and my brother did not only pass on our chakra to our descendants; we gifted it to the whole of humanity. Which we did with some finesse." He spread his arms, and then waved one through Hanabi's head to demonstrate his intangibility. "This is a geas, of sorts. When you drained Toneri's chakra just recently, it combined with yours, and temporarily recreated a facsimile of mine. Thus, something approximating my consciousness was able to appear to speak to you."

There was a pause, while everyone realised they didn't have any more questions left.

"So...what now?" Hanabi asked.

"Now..." Hinata frowned. "I was expecting to murder some overconfident fool and reclaim Neji's eye, not...well, reunite with my sister." She smiled across at Hanabi. "Not that I regret it, this is...well, quite possibly the best day of my life so far. But...I don't think I'll be able to spend much time getting to know you. Actually," she gulped, "I don't think I'll be able to bring you back with me, Hanabi. Not even to visit."

"What?" Hanabi looked downcast. "Why?"

"Because we're at the end of the two week time skip." Hinata told them. "There's...a war about to start. Someone's going after my friends. I have no idea how strong they are, but worst case, they can fight the entire shinobi world. And you're safe here. Safer than you'd be in Konoha, or anywhere on Earth, given the Byakugan he has..."

"But...you cant just..." Hanabi shook. Then she stood up, and ran across to wrap her older sister in a hug. "I missed you!" She cried, and oh, was she crying. Tears were wetting the blindfold. "It was, it was so long! And I was so lonely, Hinata, and I was worried, and-"

"I missed you too." Hinata gripped her sister as tight as she could without hurting her. "I missed you so much. But I need you to stay safe for a few days, okay?"

"I...I know." Hanabi sagged. "You've gotta tell me all about what you've been up to, understand? Like who are your friends, and is old man Sarutobi still Hokage, and is...is cousin Neji really dead?"

"We lost Hiruzen, and Neji's dead too, yes." Hinata stood up. "And my friends...they're amazing. I promise I'll come up and introduce you to them the moment we're finished, you hear?"

"You promise?" Hanabi demanded.

"I promise." Hinata replied.

"Well, okay." Hanabi stepped back. "But you've got to bring me loads of cool presents! And teach me ninjutsu!"

"I will, I swear. Cross my heart."

Hinata separated herself, and breathed out. "O-Kay...Toneri, if she gets so much as a skinned knee, you die. Ghost of ninjas past, thanks for the exposition. Hanabi? See you soon." She looked up at Earth. At her home. "So, do I go back through the tunnel, or..." The Vishnu flowed painlessly over her body, and the angelic wings sprouted from her back. "can I just fly straight there?"

"...Not to burst your bubble," Hamura said, gently, "but I can't even begin to list all the reasons that wouldn't work."


Konan walked, slowly, out onto the lake. She was absolutely exhausted, had barely got twenty four hours of sleep total since the attack two weeks ago...

And was acutely aware of the fact that the only reason she'd noticed the intruder was because he'd allowed her to.

That hubris was her only real chance to not die in the next five minutes.

"It's over." She called across the water's surface. "Nagato is dead, and with him the Rinnegan. The Gedo Statue and the first seven bijuu are gone, along with our dreams. I'm sorry, but the Akatsuki is finished."

Across from her, Tobi tutted. "Konan, Konan, Konan...you and I both know that that's not how the Rinnegan work."

She noticed that he was not wearing his Akatsuki cloak. That was worrying. It meant he wasn't pretending they mattered to him anymore.

"The Rinnegan don't just vanish when their owners die," he continued, "otherwise they'd never have been put in dearest Naggy-kun in the first place."

"You're right." She replied. Alright, deception one is down, now I'm a traitor. "They were intact. Right up until I took a kunai to them."

"As if you would be willing to defile your dearest husband's corpse." Tobi chuckled.

"Oh, I think you underestimate the lengths I will go to." Konan told him. "Nagato puppeted Yahiko's body for years. I think I can follow that example."

"Hmph. Yes, I imagine you can." Tobi leaned backwards and shoved his hands into his pockets. "Yeah, I imagine you did try. And try. And escalate, and try again." He giggled like a schoolgirl. "How long did it take you to figure out that you were attempting the impossible?"

Konan's fists tightened by her sides. Deception two down, now I'm an incompetent traitor. But she had tried. Tried everything in her arsenal, and handed the eyes over to everyone she trusted and gotten them to try as well.

Nothing had worked.

The Rinnegan might not be invincible, but they were bloody close to it.

"You will never find them." She warned him, holding out a hand. Paper began to flake off her. "None know their location but me, and I will never tell you."

"Why are you fighting this?" He asked her, condescendingly. "This was the plan, Konan. You've done an absolute 180 here."

"I'm doing what Nagato wanted." She answered, calmly.

"Wow, you're literally only doing anything because it's what your man tells you to? Ninja Tumblr would tear you apart, girl-"

"Leave. Now. Or I will kill you."

He sighed. "You really should tell me. If not, I'll kill your whole village."

"And if I give the eyes to you, you'll kill the world. I will not be blackmailed."

"But you might be broken." He reasoned. "Do you have any idea how much pain I can expose you to?"

"Nothing you do could possibly hurt more than losing him." She looked at him with hard eyes.

He tilted his head. Tilted it back. "You know what? I believe you."

He moved.

She flicked a wrist and explosions tore up the area between him and her, and then she was already backing up and flinging a set of paper shuriken at him and he was just running through the explosions, and the shuriken, and he held a hand out towards her face and-

She flicked her will and the outer layer of paper armour around her exploded.

Tobi was forced to choose between a) grabbing her and obliteration, or b) dipping, and so he dipped. He flew right through her as the explosion reigned around them, and the inner layer of paper protected her from the burning heat even as she jumped upwards. The paper formed around her shoulder blades and she batted her new wings once, twice, stabilising at twice what she thought was his maximum jump distance.

When the explosion ended, he was stood on the surface, unharmed. His one red Sharingan stared up at her. "I'm genuinely curious, how long do you expect to survive now? Unless the answer is five straight minutes, in which case I guess you're safe, but otherwise you're pretty fucked here."

"I think I'll take my chances." She said, coldly.

"Alright, fine, whatever. Again, you literally cannot kill me. Like, is there anywhere you'd prefer me to stand? Any attack you want me to use first?"

"Actually," she waved an arm, "could you move, maybe, two metres to the left?"

"Sure." He walked a few steps. "Like this?"

"Perfect." She snapped her fingers, and the lake was gone.

Well, not gone, only vapourised instantly by a set of bombs designed specifically to produce as much heat as possible.

Not even Tobi could water-walk on hot steam, and he had to phase into Kamui anyway to avoid burning to death. So, naturally, he started falling.

Into the sea of paper bombs beneath him.

"FIVE MINUTES?" She shouted, adrenaline pumping, I can't believe this worked- "TRY DOUBLE THAT! FROM TEN FUCKING BILLION PAPER BOMBS!"

He dropped into the abyss, and the explosions roared.

She remained floating in the air for the full period, arms tense, eyes carefully scanning the area, mind spinning as she tried to think of all the ways he could escape.

When that time elapsed (actually about twelve minutes, just in case) and the explosions ceased, she kept looking, as the ringing in her ears ceased and the rumblings stopped. Still nothing.

She flew slowly downwards into the pit she'd created, ready for anything. She had hardly expected to find a corpse; the bombs would have shredded any remains, and the rain was already falling again, beginning to refill the lake.

Yet, at the bottom, she saw it.

Submerged in water, cracked, covered in mud, lay a single, red, mangekyo.

She left it there to be buried, as the sludge fell in.

She got her bearings and flew, taking a circuitous route. Half a league east, two leagues north, an hour flying aimlessly in circles checking for pursuit and then finally doubling back on herself and travelling on foot for a few hundred metres. She pulled one boulder among many to the side, and walked through the illusory wall behind it.

The torches lit themselves at a flick of her will, and she walked over to the grave in the centre of the room.

Nagato stared up at the ceiling, unblinking.

"It's over." She told him, clenching shut her eyes to hold back tears. "He's dead, and...and you can rest, now."

And then, from the corner of the room, "Amazing. Everything you just said, was wrong."

Konan's heart plummeted. Of course. "When did you catch me?" She asked, numbly.

"When you first flew up with the wings." Tobi replied. "You're lucky I cant cast genjutsu while I'm Kamui'd or I'd've got you sooner. That carpet bomb was pretty crazy, but you do realise that I could have just...walked out of the blast zone while I was intangible, right?"

"I had to try." She said, voice hoarse. Looking up, she saw him leaning casually against the wall. One hand was juggling the Rinnegan, tossing them up into the air and catching them. On a check back, Nagato's eyes were gone from his head.

"Oh, I know." Tobi sighed. "You remind me of a girl I knew, once. Absolute maniac, she was. Dead now, of course, I got to watch my best friend kill her. Hey, speaking of dead-"

The Rinnegan vanished, possibly into that pocket dimension of his, and he stood up properly.

"Please don't." She asked. Begged, really, and Kami wasn't that pathetic. "You have what you came for."

"You prepared ten billion paper bombs specifically to kill me. I think we're beyond duty and into the realms of spite. Like, seriously, how long did that take?"

"You don't need to do this."

"Not really no, I just kinda feel like it-"

"I'm carrying his child!" She screamed.

That made Tobi pause, for a moment. Then, "Well you know what they say. There's only one thing worse than a murderer-"

"A child."

"No. Wait what the fuck-"

Konan had not been the one to speak.

Tobi looked up at the stranger in the doorway, and groaned. "Oh, you're shitting me."

"Nope." Said the stranger, stood outlined by the light coming into the cave.

"Can I get, like, twenty seconds alone with her here?"

"Nope."

"Oh for-" Tobi sighed. "If I wasn't supposed to be starting a war in the next hour, and if I didn't know I'll need that time to adjust to the dojutsu, I'd kill you both right now. Konan, you are very lucky that you're so paranoid with where you hid this thing..."

For a moment, Konan felt a horrifying burst of hope. Then one of realisation. "You're...not even afraid of us, are you? You won't get killing us out of the way now, even though it would stop us warning our allies. Even though it means you'll have to fight us in a bigger group later. Because...all because it might make you five minutes late to the start of the war."

"Yup." She had a feeling Obito was smiling under the mask. "And the only thing I plan on doing at that time is pontificating a bit to Kabuto. What you're witnessing, Konan, is called 'flexing'. Ciao."

With a swirl of distorted space-time, he vanished.

Konan sagged in relief against Nagato's coffin, and the moment she was done with the relief she let out a low growl of frustration. "Dammit. Dammit, dammit, Dammit!"

"Easy." Said the newcomer, walking over to lay a hand on her shoulder. "You did everything you could."

"Did I?"

"Well you didn't make any stupid mistakes I noticed, and we're still alive. Take the win."

"He's toying with us." She spat. "Did you hear him? World War Four's starting and look at him! He's having the time of his life!"

"Then we'll make him pay for it." The newcomer let her sit for a moment, then gave her arm a tug. "Come on. We've got work to do."

Konan gave one last glance to Nagato's body, and nodded. "Right. I need to regroup with the shinobi alliance, tell them what I know. He can't have let the name 'Kabuto' slip by accident, but we can still use it."

"You do that. And I'll come with you." The newcomer cracked his neck both ways. "I need to regroup with my team."


Haku heard his tent flap open, and sighed. "What is it?"

"What, can't I come say hello?"

He turned round and grinned, seeing Tsunade in the doorway. "Well, you certainly could have come sooner. How's it going, Hokage-sama?"

"Drop the honourifics, Mizukage-sama. We're the same rank now remember?" The medic-nin walked in, held her arms out, and Haku ran in for a hug. "And I'm doing pretty good." She continued. "Though I'm disappointed that waking up to find myself at war has only lead to more paperwork."

Haku rolled his eyes. "Ugh. Tell me about it. And I had to add a semi-hostile takeover to that bureaucracy pile."

"Uh-Huh. You know, when I implied you could try for Mizukage, this wasn't quite the manner I expected you to do it in."

Tsunade looked down her nose at him, and he shrugged. "What? I had to improvise, there was a problem."

"Let me guess. Were you related to the problem?"

"Oh, ha, ha. But no, it's gone over pretty smoothly. Only one or two assassination attempts each day. I kept Mei on as an advisor, which I imagine helped; as much as I want her in a dank cell for the rest of her life, I really doubt we can manage without her." He tilted his head to look towards the doorway. "We ready?"

"We are." Tsunade blew out a breath. "Wanna come see?"

He did, so he did.

Outside the Kage's personal tents, the rest of the camp was a flurry of activity. Ninja were everywhere, practically tripping over each other, moving around like ants if ants had super speed, made a shitton of noise, and also really wanted to kill each other. Haku followed Tsunade, joining her, Gaara, A, and Onoki (plus their aides) on a raised platform where they could look out on it all. As they watched, the ninja were being all herded into various groups.

"How many are there?" He asked nobody in particular.

"About 80,000 frontline combatants." Sai said, walking up to him from Tsunade. "With about 10,000 more in communications, oversight, and organisation. Hi, by the way."

"Hey gorgeous." Haku replied, smiling. "And...wow. That's a ridiculous number. How have they not all killed each other already?"

"Something about the part where we're fighting a guy with seven bijuu who honestly believed he could take all 5 Kage at once." Sai shrugged. "It has them all terrified enough to suddenly be super into jolly co-operation."

"Tobi versus the five Kage? Seems far fetched, think he'd win?"

"Maybe. Probably a YouTube video about it, if we look." Sai paused, and looked down. In the few brief interactions Haku had had with him over the last two weeks, his behaviour had been...off. Understandable, really, he'd just come off a frankly terrifying level of mind control. But his previously unflappable calm had been replaced with a distinct look of...insecurity.

"Hey." Haku told him, putting a hand on his shoulder. "If there's something on your mind, you can say it. It's me, I'm a Kage now, I can take it."

"It's nothing. Or, well, it's..." Sai sighed (had he ever done that before?) and then, quietly, "...Do you want to go and grab coffee some time?"

...That's it? Haku couldn't help the laugh. "That's what you were afraid to ask me? Sai, we've literally fucked."

"I know, it's just..." he pointed to his own head. "For the first time, I'm certain I'm alone in here. I know that if I make a decision, I'm the one who's making it. So, as I speak now, declaring myself to be sound of mind and body...would you like to go on a date, at some point?"

Haku smiled wider than he ever had, and had to work very hard to not cry. "Yes. Absolutely. But it's going to have to be after the whole 'war' thing. Still, shouldn't take long. We've got the biggest fighting force in ninja history!"

"Ahem." across from them, Gaara stepped up to a microphone and tapped it a few times, getting everyone's attention.

"Esteemed ninja of the Great Shinobi Alliance...

Kick his ass."

The applause was deafening, as were the chants like "KONOHA!" And "HIDDEN MIST!" and "FOR THE RAIKAGE!"

Gaara stepped back and bowed low. A enthusiastically pat him on the shoulder, while Onoki nodded in approval.

"I retract my previous statement." Haku said, calmly. "We're all going to die."


B stared.

Gai stared.

Kankuro (sorta) stared.

Naruto stared.

Sasuke shifted awkwardly to the left so as to block the exit to the canyon.

There was a pause.

"Funny weather today." Naruto remarked. "Lotta water."

"Freak rainstorm." Sasuke replied, casually.

"I was under for five minutes and it was up to my torso." B added.

"Very freaky rain." Sasuke nodded.

Naruto stared.

"Okay fine." Sasuke explained. "I was practicing with some water jutsu and it got out of control."

"You don't have water release." Naruto pointed out.

"I learned it."

"Oh yeah? Do a water technique right now."

Sasuke didn't move.

Naruto stared. "Where's Yamato, Sasuke?"

"Went home." Sasuke replied. "Uh, he got ill."

"I'm feeling pretty ill too. Can I go home?"

"...No."

"Okay. Well I'm done with the Kyuubi training."

"Prove it."

There was a flash, and Naruto was bathing the entire area in a glowing yellow aura. The golden light suffused his entire body, and his eyes were red. Now B was staring at him.

"Huh." Sasuke replied. "Dope."

"So can I leave?"

"...No."

Naruto stared.

"You see that boulder?" Sasuke pointed to a rock, some distance away. "I like that boulder. That is a nice boulder. We should, uh. Look at it."

"What's going on, Sasuke." Naruto replied, deadpan.

The Uchiha broke, and sighed. "An asshole declared war on us. Wants you and B. We're trying to keep you here to keep you out of the fighting."

"Goddamit Sasuke." Kankuro sighed. "One secret. You had-"

"Hey, they literally kidnapped Yamato, bandage-face, they already know we're here." Sasuke shot back.

"So, what now?" Naruto continued. "When's the war start?"

"About-" Sasuke checked his watch. "Fifteen minutes."

"Awesome, we can be right on time."

"You're not-"

"You lied to me." Naruto took a step forwards, hurt plain on his face. "You and Hinata and everyone else, you lied to me for 'my own good'. Remember how well it went down when people did that about the Kyuubi."

"I know." Sasuke replied, voice breaking a little. "I'm sorry. For all we know the world ends the moment he gets you, and I was blind, and he'd just knocked out A with a look, we couldn't...I didn't know what to do. But I should have told you the truth. I should have trusted you."

Naruto looked down. Then looked back up with an easy smile. "Nah, it's fine. You knew exactly what I was gonna do, and you were right. But I mean, they know where I am now, so we're gonna have to go fight them sooner or later."

"Hn." Sasuke muttered. Then he tilted his head up. "Alright then. But you'll have to pass a test, first."

"Really dude? Right now?"

"Do you want an epic moment or not?"

"...Go on."

Sasuke reached up behind his head, and began to untie his medical bandage. "I'm not letting you fight against anyone I wouldn't. Meaning, if I'm going to let you out..." he yanked the bandage off, letting it flutter away in the breeze.

His Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan flashed red-black. "Then you'll have to prove yourself against me."

Naruto grinned, and his chakra cloak intensified. "Aww, little baby's eyes have finally grown up. You're on."

Everyone else wisely moved out of the way.

And then Naruto was gone.

He slammed into Sasuke, and the Rasengan he'd built up his palm slammed into the purple surface of Samehada and then black fire wrapped around it and Naruto disengaged and-

Kankuro leaned in towards B, between flashes, and asked "Can you...do this?"

Killer B looked at the two teenagers crashing into each other faster than the Raikage could move, tearing through duplicates and forming glowing orange claws and setting everything ablaze with black fire and surviving said black fire and purple armoured giants swinging purple Magatama...and found that he really wasn't sure.

Especially since the two just seemed to be...messing with each other.

The brief combat ended when a casually thrown senjutsu-rasenshuriken crashed into a casually thrown Amaterasu-rasenkunai, and the resulting explosion tore a giant hole in the cliffside, forcing the people on the inside to jump away from falling debris as boulders slammed into the ground and crashed into the sea.

Naruto and Sasuke landed on the (miraculously still intact) jetty, once again facing each other in fighting stances.

Both glanced to the boat on Naruto's left.

Then Sasuke readied another Rasenkunai and-

There was a flash, and a line of crystal appeared in front of each of them, blocking them off from each other.

A white figure blasted down headfirst from the sky, turning around and flaring its wings at the last possible moment.

Hinata Hyuuga landed in between the two, delicately-as-you-please.

"Hello, boys." She smiled. "What did I miss?"

Naruto and Sasuke exchanged glances.

"Our Brand-New-High-Risk superpowers aren't High-Risk anymore." Sasuke filled in.

"Oh, great, mine too." She told them. "Also I went to the moon and fought a descendant of the brother of ninja Jesus. Also my sister is alive and I finished my character arc."

There was a pause.

She clapped her hands together and smiled. "So. Shall we go fight a war?"


You can tell I was tired when writing when the quantity of references jumps up by like 300%. Also, how in the seven hells is this my longest chapter so far at 6K words? It's not even that big of a deal. We've only got massive lore revelations and mysterious strangers and hidden subtleties and-

Okay, fair enough. But like, there was more meant to be in here. Guess it's gonna come next arc.

And hey, by next week, we're in motherfucking Christmas! Any sane person would take some time off writing to spend more time with their family.

...

*distant, muffled laughter*

NEXT CHAPTER NEXT ARC WARTIME BABIES WOO-