Interlude: Ze Var
War...war never changes.
...
Actually, it does, buckle up.
Look, the evolution of ninja warfare has been an absolutely wild ride, okay? One of the reasons lots of ninja in the 4th war had so much trouble with the wide variety of reanimated opponents they encountered was because those enemies were from a completely different era and fought in a completely different way. Here's a (brief) overview of just the last few hundred years.
So, warring states period. Now back then there were no hidden villages, no ninja academies, no formal training. There weren't any clanless who'd had the chance to learn anything and prove themselves, so you learned what your mum and dad taught you, and all the fighters were out there in heavy armour with war weapons. Look at Hashirama's scythe thing, or Madara's war fan. Kenjutsu was 'The Shit' in the founding of the villages, most people only really knew one or two jutsu from their clan. Like, your average Uchiha would have great fireball and maybe the Sharingan, that was it. Some ninja had some real chakra reserves, and they were essentially siege weapons. They sat in the back and spewed massive area of effect murder powers, but weren't prepped for close combat. Like these dudes had bodyguards. War wasn't really fought by ninja as we know them today; the ones who learned infiltration and illusion were almost a totally different thing.
Now, I cannot stress enough how much the face of warfare was changed by Tobirama Fucking Senju. This man literally reinvented the concept. Remember how he made it so the water dragon could be used with four hand signs rather than twenty? Yeah, he did that for so many jutsu. Great fireball, buffeting wind, all sorts of other elemental murder blasts. They were all way more complicated before he applied his principles to them. And he didn't even have the nature transformation to use half of these, he just did it anyway. When he was bored. Not to mention all the new techniques he invented.
Anyway, point is, suddenly you could use ninjitsu fast, and that shifted the meta so much. Now the big chakra flex wasn't coming from an easily identifiable guy hiding away, it was coming from a dude right in your face. Katanas were the absolute dog's bollocks for this because they were big, and effective, and you could sheathe them in a split second, weave some hand seals, then draw them again. Konoha was pioneering this in the first war but by the second everyone was doing it. It was still information warfare; 'can I work out his clan's hidden jutsu before he works out mine', that's gonna be around as long as the clans are, but generally, 'fast with lots of power' was considered the top dog, since armour wasn't so useful against giant lightning bolts.
Now in the third war there was an issue, namely that everyone was dead. Like we've had two world wars already and all the previous fighters are old. Means that even though this is the first war where most of the fighters had actually been through the ninja academies, the average troop quality had dropped a mile. Clanless were stepping up to make up most of the numbers cos so few clans had enough people to contribute. Like we're recruiting seven year olds here. You ever tried to talk to a seven year old? They're barely even sentient at that point, even ninja kids.
Anyway, the name of the game in the third war was versatility. This was when the humble kunai was popularised as the primary combat weapon (by Minato the-sun-shines-out-of-his-ass Namikase, of course) when it had functioned as a backup for your sword before. It's fast, it's small, you can hold it in one hand, you can throw it, you can stick explosives to it, tie wire to it, carry a bunch of them, good stuff.
And people's strats were cheap, quick and nasty, too. The rare jonin who actually had competence with a nature transformation or a strong clan technique were slaying these kids like crazy, at least at first. Issue is that if you chuck thirty genin at the shadow paralysis guy, one of those genin will figure out to let off a flash grenade, and now the guy's dead. They were teaching kids a few basic jutsu, drilling them in a few taijutsu kata, and throwing them out to die.
Most historians agree it was the worst war out of all of them.
Now, we thought we knew what the fourth war was going to emphasise:
Specialisation.
It's been a while since the last three. Long enough for a new generation to be born, taught, reach young adulthood. Everyone was so goddamn prepared. We were making teams, putting the girl with earth style defences together with the lightning one-hit-KO blaster and the genjutsu specialist, strats like that. People had had time to really knuckle down on getting good at something, and then ganging up with their teammates to cover their weaknesses.
Everyone was pumped for world war four. We were gonna have team fights, everyone thought, we were gonna have 9000 IQ plays, we were gonna have the most difficult, most classy war in history.
We were idiots, and we were wrong.
The fourth shinobi war wasn't about strategy. It wasn't about your clever gimmick, or how hard you'd worked. Sure, fun little fights were happening, but they didn't matter.
This war showed us that you only matter if you're a fucking God among men. You only matter if you're Madara Uchiha, or Naruto Uzumaki, because if you are then you can tear through entire armies without even thinking about it. Naruto could literally make enough clones to take on the whole army if he wanted to, and he didn't even understand why we were all so afraid.
If there's ever a fifth war, I can tell you right now that there isn't gonna be a meta. It's going to be very simple: each village is going to pick the three or four most promising kids, and lavish all their attention onto those alone and turn them into the most terrifying creatures possible. Quality makes a joke out of quantity, especially when the power cliffing at the highest levels makes fighters who are to Kage what Kage are to academy students.
There are plenty of people who would prefer the third war, I imagine. You might have been ordered to 'run on sight' from the yellow flash, but at least running was an option.
Now? Ever since Madara pulled a meteor out of the sky, it's been clear that your only option is to pick a god and pray.
-Extract from Sasuke Uchiha's personal notebook, from some time during the war.
"...What?" Said a Naruto clone in sage mode, as the fuuninjutsu experts moved to seal the third Raikage's charred body, prevented from regenerating by a liberal application of chakra chains. "The Rasenshuriken is the highest attack potency jutsu I've even heard about, and it's buffed by senjutsu, and it's wind, which supereffects lightning. If he could tank that, he'd have taken over the world."
"SOME...BO-"
"NO!" Temari's shock got overrun with rage almost immediately and she whirled around to shove her hand over an obnoxious blond's mouth. "Naruto? What the fuck are you doing here?"
"Mrrbl hrrbl." He replied, eloquently. She removed her hand, and he continued intelligibly. "This isn't me. Shadow clone. Real Naruto is totally on the warfront, just not here." He looked over her shoulder and waved. "Hey Gaara!"
"Hello Naruto." Gaara smiled back. "Apologies for actively deceiving you about your friends being in danger."
"Nah, it's fine." Naruto waved. "You had a totally sensible reason for it."
"...But you're still here?"
"Yeah, because I'm not even vaguely sensible." He walked past her, paused, and pointed. "Hold on, is that fucking Madara?"
A few hundred metres away, stood on top of a cliff glaring at the fourth division, was a man in red armour with long black hair.
"Yes. That's him." Gaara said. "Worryingly, he's just been reanimated. Meaning that the person who claims to be Madara actually isn't."
"Oh, not good." Naruto put his hands together, and something poofed in front of him with no observable effect. "Just told that to the Naruto coalition. So we gonna go kick his ass?"
"Hell no!" Temari vetoed. "The other Kage are on their way. This is the guy that was considered an equal to Hashirama. We're not taking him on unless we have all our strongest fighters here."
"Oh, that won't work." Naruto snorted. "Important bad guys only die in 1V1s. Unless it's the biggest big bad, in which case you can kill them with an Avengers-style team up. But that needs all the main characters, which the Kage aren't. Best case scenario most of them get taken out early leaving one left to have a desperate showdown and then they win, and that's best case. He'll probably just kill them all."
"The real world doesn't run on anime logic!" Temari snapped, causing Naruto to snort. "And if you wanna try and fight this guy on your own, be my guest!"
"Okay-"
"No! Stay here and wait!"
Naruto stopped, looked out. "He's jumped down."
"I know."
"He's, uh, he's slaughtering our ninja."
Temari pinched her forehead.
"Go." Gaara said, prompting his sister to turn on him, but he quickly forestalled her with "He's a clone. There's no risk in him being the one to stall for time." The Kazekage looked back, "You go out, I'll-"
Naruto was already gone.
"Run!" Screamed a ninja, who was, funnily enough, running. "Run! He's-"
Fugaku Uchiha grabbed the man by his jacket, glaring at him from behind a medical blindfold. "Run from what, Chunin?"
The rank had been an educated guess, but if he was wrong, the ninja didn't feel the need to comment on it.
"One of the reanimated ninja!" He explained, "Sharingan! Everyone he looked at turned against us, he's massacred half the company already-"
"Noted. Go." Fugaku dropped him, sighed, and started running forwards.
He reached the scene of the chaos quickly, which he noticed because he could smell the blood on the air, and also because he was being attacked.
He dispatched the few dozen remaining ninja nonlethally (they weren't even jonin) and then paid attention to the only other person nearby he could hear breathing. "Hello, Shisui." He said, tiredly.
"Hey, Uncle." Shisui's voice confirmed his identity. "You're still alive. And you had a Mangekyo, didn't know that. Might have put some dampers on the plan...hey, I have no real idea what's going on other than that I'm being compelled to kill my own people, can I get a recap?"
"Hyuuga got massacred and are mostly dead, Itachi and Neji schemed a lot and are dead, Danzo schemed a lot and is dead, and Sasuke's the new clan head." Fugaku recounted, briefly.
"Oh, okay. Good, I think?" Shisui hummed. "Shame about Itachi, good kid...are you still a bad guy?"
"No, I was a misunderstood anti-hero and now I'm going for redemption."
"Oh, okay. Wanna talk more about it?"
"Yes, I think I would." Fugaku chuckled. "Funny, how I happen to find you of all people. Almost like it was planned for people to encounter those who held the most thematic importance to them."
"Mm." Shisui replied. "I've only talked to Kabuto for about five seconds, but I'm pretty sure he's doing it deliberately. Anyway, how do you plan to fight me? You're blind. I can't Kotoamatsukami you but you're still screwed."
"Amazing." Fugaku mused. "Only one of those last three statements was true."
He reached up, and tore off the medical blindfold.
The genjutsu hit immediately, but Fugaku just glared at it and tore it apart as it came. Whatever this Shisui had in his sockets, they weren't his real eyes. Maybe zombie Kotoamatsukami didn't have the ten year time limit, but they were far weaker.
"Oh, hot damn." Said Shisui. "Where did you get those?"
"It turns out that we can just swap eyeballs." Fugaku explained, taking a long look around with his new Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan. "Funnily enough, two Uchiha getting them at the same time and actually being willing to try that wasn't all so common. I imagine the fact that you have to murder a loved one to get them (or so we thought) puts a bit of a damper on trust like that."
Shisui went "Huh. Whose were they?"
"These were Sasuke's, originally."
"He let you do that?"
"Well; he told me that he'd kill me if I tried anything. And we were preparing for war, after all." Fugaku shrugged. "You could probably make it out to be some symbolic olive branch or hatchet-burying, but nobody could be bothered to write a flashback about that."
"Sounds fair." Shisui was suddenly enveloped in green as his Susanno flared to life, the giant armoured guardian wielding a wicked spear in one arm. "So, shall we?"
Fugaku smiled as his own blood-red Susanno formed around him. "Yes. Let's."
Madara paused in his total devastation of the ninja forces when a giant blast of wind crashed into him.
He let it take him, amused, listening to a woman shout "DAMMIT NARUTO STOP OUTDOING ME!" as he was flung across the battlefield, before lightly coming to a stop on the sand and killing a few more people. There was an incoming storm of kunai, which he blocked with a katana he'd taken, and then (oh?) a swarm of golden chains that he tore apart with similar ease. "Adamantine chains." He remarked, aloud. "Chakra suppression. Not bad, Uzumaki."
The next thing to come was a storm of wind blades, and those Madara couldn't block with the same ease; he channeled his power and (hmm, we'll stick with armoured for now) his armoured Susanno sprung to life around him. The elemental attacks crashed into it with no visible effect, and he got an opportunity to actually see his attacker.
Blond, messy hair. Young, only sixteen or so. Eyes narrowed. I like him.
"You're the Kyuubi's host?" Madara asked.
"I prefer 'partner'." Said the boy. "Some of us befriend the monsters rather than mind control them. I'm Naruto Uzumaki."
"How nice." Madara put his hands together, and his Susanno mimicked him. "Well, that makes all this easier. Wood release, great forest emergence."
"Oh, shit." Naruto muttered, before raising his voice: "MASSIVE CHAKRA DICKFLOP! EVERYONE BACK UP!"
Most people didn't need his advice. The gigantic wave of writhing vines was tearing towards the alliance at a rapid pace, breaking apart the ground and impaling (or simply bludgeoning) anything in its way. It was hundreds of metres wide and tens of metres tall, and moving faster than most of the escaping ninja could run.
Kyuubi, Naruto thought, I gotta outflex him otherwise I'll have to admit he has a bigger chakra dick than me.
He has unlimited chakra, and you're being infantile.
Unlimited chakra, but limited magnitude. We can't outlast him, but we can overwhelm him. Besides, do you want to show your power off to this asshole or what?
Heh. Naruto could hear the fox grinning. Fine. I'm keeping most of my power in reserve for when Prime needs it, but I can give you more than enough to pull this off.
Wait, you can just transfer your power to whichever clone?
Yep. And if we merge fully, our whole combined chakra pool will be shared between every clone who wants it.
So...so the one weakness of my already bullshit jutsu will be completely gone?
Yup. Merry Christmas. Now kick his ass.
Naruto put his hands together, golden chakra suffusing his body. "Multi shadow clone jutsu!" He shouted, and was echoed by hundreds of cries of "Big Ball Rasengan!" from his new army.
As one, the wave of Naruto charged forwards, forming a wall of wrathful blue destruction that tore the wood release constructs into so much disintegrated plant matter.
"Holy shit." Temari breathed. "Does Naruto have a bigger chakra dick than Madara?"
"And this is just a clone." Gaara muttered. "One of many. I wonder how big his dick is when they're all combined?"
"There is a precedent." Said an old voice from behind them. "Historically, clans such as the Senju and Uzumaki had notoriously big dicks, while the Uchihas weren't particularly impressive."
Gaara turned around and nodded. "Onoki. Glad you could make it. Your thoughts?"
"That this isn't the end of it." The Tsuchikage warned, floating up next to them. "Madara's dick was unusually big, big enough to rival Hashirama's, though apparently the Hokage did have him beat for sheer size. Naruto's is certainly impressive, but I get the feeling that right now, Madara is only showing us the tip. We need to be prepared in case he whips out the whole thing."
"...We're still talking about Chakra, right?" Asked Temari, feeling distinctly uncomfortable.
Out on the battlefield, the primary Naruto clone was running forwards behind his 'wall of condensed teenage violence' (TM), golden cloak glowing around him from the Kyuubi's residual chakra.
There was a flash, and the first wave of clones disintegrated from a swing of the Susanno's swords, and Naruto was able to see Madara's face. He looked surprised, but not unduly so.
Let's change that. Can I have a bijuu bomb?
We're not well synced enough yet.
Ugh, fine.
Two or three shadow clones were able to flee the Susanno's ring of terror, dropping back into meditative poses, and the cloaked clone charged in. With his increased speed, he was able to outright jump over one swinging blade, moving into a spin and generating a big-ball Rasengan in his off hand. He swung it in mid air and batted the glowing blue sword (itself the size of a bloody tree trunk) just after it zoomed past beneath him, propelling it further around to the other side. He landed and stretched out with his other hand, reaching out with chakra chains to ensnare Madara's other arm as his feet stuck themselves to the floor.
Kyuubi-amped-Naruto trumped suppressed Susanno, and he was able to pull the arm over across the titan's chest, anchoring it to the floor.
The avatar's hands were, quite literally, tied.
But it's occupant's weren't. Madara looked Naruto in the eye, Mangekyo Sharingan flashing.
He tried to genjutsu Naruto, and the Kyuubi broke him free.
He tried to genjutsu the Kyuubi, and Naruto broke him free.
Then, sighing, Madara lunged forwards. The Susanno disintegrated as the Uchiha flew towards Naruto with his hand outstretched, using the fact that Naruto too had tied hands to get a free kill-
Naruto vanished, and was substituted with another clone, which was laden with explosives tags that detonated (harmlessly, to people of this level) the moment Madara got close.
The three shadow clones that had been gathering sage chakra (the toads were dumbasses. Using two people to drain the area drains it twice as fast, duh.) stood up, and flung Senjutsu-Rasenshurikens.
The primary clone leaned back against one of the stone pillars, and smirked as the attacks crashed into their target.
Kankuro groaned as his advance scout drones started to disappear. 'No, team seven, it's fine, you lot all go do your own thing. No, Gai, it's fine, you go report to the Hokage. I'll just travel alone, I'm sure nothing will happen.'
Why do my bad choices have to have consequences, huh?
He stopped, and began summoning his puppets.
A few seconds later, Chiyo appeared in the clearing in front of him, which briefly gave him a bloody heart attack because what the actual hell?
"What the actual hell?" He said aloud.
"Reanimated to come kill you." Chiyo replied, wrinkling her nose as she looked at his defences. "What are those?"
"They were Chikamatsu's ten puppets." Kankuro explained. "Then I took them apart to see how they worked, and put them back together again. Uh, also that one used to be Sasori's body, same concept."
"Oh, well done!" Chiyo clapped, once. "Now, lets see what they can do!"
The smoke cleared, and the figure in red armour was fine.
"What the fuck?" Naruto shouted. "Bullshit, how are you still alive?"
"Because I'm Madara fucking U-" Madara paused, then glared into the middle distance. "No, dammit, I refuse to pick up Hashirama's ticks."
"Wait, Hashirama came up with the 'I can do whatever I want' thing?" Naruto asked.
"Oh, indeed. But I always thought that if you're trying to avoid revealing how your powers work, you may as well just keep your mouth shut." Madara shook out his hand. "That was a very strong technique...but to answer your question," he looked up, and let his eyes shift pattern. Naruto gulped as the Rinnegan became visible. "I absorbed it with the Preta path."
"But the Preta path can't absorb sage chakra!" Naruto protested.
"Oh it can, but that doesn't mean the person who's trying to absorb it has any idea how to handle it. I have killed enough sages to be proficient in using it, though I can't gather it myself..."
"And where the hell did you get Rinnegan from anyway?" Naruto asked, carefully walking backwards as he stabbed down rapidly on the 'increase threat level' button in his brain.
"They're mine. I developed them in the first place." Madara shrugged. Then he put a hand to his eyes and frowned. "Or...no, these aren't mine, thank you for bringing that to my attention. The originals I put in a boy named Nagato, so I imagine these are some scientific replica constructed from my DNA, built for use in this body."
Ha! Said the Kyuubi, that WAS all Madara, fucking called it-
Madara stopped musing, which Naruto noticed because the killing intent he was emanating tripled in a moment. "Now. Let's test my summoner's limits, shall we? Tengai Shinsei."
There was a subsonic boom, as Madara resummoned his Susanno and started weaving hand seals, and Naruto had the good sense to jump the fuck backwards, grouping up with Gaara, Temari and Onoki again.
A few seconds passed, as the fourth division grouped itself back together and Madara didn't move.
"Uh." Naruto looked between his friends. "Is he just screwing with us?"
"No." Temari said, gulping. "Guys? Look up."
They did.
"...AAAAAAAAAAAH-"
"HOLY SHIT-"
"WHAT THE FUCK-"
"RUN! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!"
The giant fuckoff meteor continued, despite their screams, to plummet towards them with terrifying rapidity.
Naruto's jaw was hanging open. "What kinda Majora's Mask bullshit is this?"
"Enough panicking!" Onoki snapped. "We can do this! I'll use my particle style to decrease its weight! Gaara! Summon some some sand and catch it!"
"Will that work?" Temari asked, desperately.
"If it doesn't, that thing's going to teamwipe the whole division." Gaara held his arms out, concentrating. "I will not allow this attack to kill my friends. Onoki, go."
"Right!" The diminutive Kage flew upwards, and a giant pillar of stand began to form and mushroom outwards above them.
"I'm sorry." Naruto said, face scrunched up in anguish, "I don't have enough chakra to help out, with all the madness happening to Prime-"
"Naruto, for once in your life." Gaara bit out, with some effort. "Shut up, and let us carry the team for a moment, okay?"
Naruto nodded, and did as he was told.
Onoki hit the boulder, and the boulder hit the sand. The resulting sound was deafening, everyone on the ground stumbling as the giant object collided into its sand 'umbrella' and began to push downwards, slowly shedding momentum over a hundred metres or so as it moved inexorably closer to the ground. Gaara grit his teeth, and more sand supports rose up from the ground, as with a grinding noise, the meteorite sloooowly...
...came to a stop.
There was a long pause.
"Got it." Gaara winced. "Hardening the sand now, it should hold indefinitely on its own after I'm finished."
"Woo!" Naruto grinned, slapping his back as the tension broke. "Go Gaara! That was amazing!"
"Impressive indeed." Came a booming voice. Madara was stood some distance away, watching them casually. "I'll admit, I didn't even think you'd stop one meteor."
"O-one?" Temari asked, tentatively.
And then the second meteorite crashed into the first.
It is a common misconception that shadow clones cannot feel.
This isn't exactly true. They obviously don't have souls (which is known, because you can't rip said soul out of them) but as a mirror of their creator, they can think and feel emotions in line with the way their creator would.
Naruto's shadow clone was able to feel shock, when it realised it hadn't popped. Relief, when it realised it was currently inside an insulated sand cocoon, which it could easily punch out of in order to get back onto the battlefield.
And then, once it started seeing the corpses, it was able to hurt.
"What." It said, hoarsely, looking out at a sea of dead and broken ninja, crushed under chunks of stone, screaming-
"Gaara, what-why me?" He turned around to see the Kazekage staggering out of his own cocoon, looking ragged. "What did you-Gaara, it's not really Naruto, I'm not a person, why did you save me and not them?"
"Because you're worth more." Onoki grunted, emerging from behind him. "Even, ngh, even if you're just some construct, boy, you're more useful here than a hundred of these men."
"But I-"
"So get out there and prove you're worth it. Save a hundred more."
Naruto grimaced, looking out across the devastation. In the distance, Madara was already regenerating.
There was a small noise, and appearing on the ground beside them was a large squad of ninja. Assorted jonin, who began running to assist the wounded, and...
"Took you long enough." Temari growled, getting up. She looked the arrivals over and frowned. "Where's Tsunade?"
"She had a prior commitment." Said Konan, walking up alongside A, Haku, and Mei. "Class reunion party. We're all you get."
"Well we'll have to make it work." Haku cracked his neck. Then he paused, touched his neck again, and said "Oh, fucking finally..." the small black diamond there expanded, stretching into myriad patterns across his skin. "Strength of a hundred seal is done! Now we're in business. Hey, can we get a powers check? I have a bunch of ice and mist ninjutsu."
"Lava, water, steam fire and stone." Mei raised a hand. "If I catch him in the boil release he's dead."
"Lightning cloak. Melee violence." A added.
"Mass sand manipulation." Gaara chipped in, and "Flight, instakill lasers." Onoki summarised.
"Flight, paper summons, traps and explosives." Konan provided. "And if anyone here can actually seal him, it's me."
"Shadow clones, chakra suppression chains, sage mode, Rasengans." Naruto added, starting to feel glimmers of hope. "Hey, this is a solid team! What's he got on this?"
"He's Madara." A answered.
"Oh. Yeah. Fuck."
Together, the (not exactly) five Kage turned to face the undead god.
The undead god started running towards them.
Hehe, i made penis jokes.
see you next week for the fight continuations!
