Alone


Madara swept his katana to one side, then resheathed it in a perfectly smooth motion.

In front of him, the Shinju tree that had withstood the entirety of the chaos thus far toppled to the floor.

He was a little frustrated with himself actually; panic at Naruto's progress combined with uncertainty about the shape of his Susanno had prevented him from going for the perfectly vertical slash for fear of missing. He had been about five degrees off, resulting in a slash that cut the tree diagonally from one end of the base to the opposite side of the tip, leaving the head of the flower completely intact.

The same could be said for Naruto Uzumaki, in fact.

Madara considered going for the finishing blow on the remnants of the boy (two separate chunks still falling through the air, with a big purple sword spinning off to one side), but instead concluded that it was a safer bet to turn around and face the one remaining threat of the trio.

The killing intent coming off the tiny girl far below him was very impressive, all things considered.

"If your teammate had tapped the tree at the flower, he would have been able to drain incredible amounts of sage chakra. Maybe enough to content with me." Madara called down to her. "But I do not need it to maintain the Infinite Tskuyomi, and I do not need it to maintain Six Paths Sage Mode. This is not an infinitely sustainable state of being for me: In a few hours I will have to give up maintaining one or the other. Or regrow the tree, which will take but a minute of concentration. Killing you, however, will take orders of magnitude less time than that." He looked down at her pityingly. "It was a good attempt, but you have lost."

He had hoped for a quiet acceptance from her, and would have offered once more to return her to the dream if he had seen it.

He had expected defiance, some bluster or swearing or quips that he could roll his eyes at.

He hadn't expected her to start laughing.

Hinata leaned back and guffawed, arms dangling to either side, before shaking her head and sighing. "You really don't get it, do you?"

She pointed past him. "His brain is still working." Back behind herself, in the rough direction of Sasuke. "So's his." Spread her arms out, "So of course we've not lost. This is, what, the third or fourth time Naruto has basically died this war? You're only special because it's happened to you more than once before he beats your ass."

She shoved her hands into the pockets of her slacks (which at this point were ripped to absolute shreds from all the fighting) and smirked up at him.

"And of course, if there's one thing I've learned from this, it's that Naruto will always, always, come back for me. Gonna have to pay him back for that at some point. Suck his dick or something. Point is, all I have to do is sit here and delay you until he does."

Madara changed his mind on the matter of landing the finishing blow on Naruto, electing instead to do it as quickly as possible.

However, it didn't look like Hinata Hyuuga was going to let him.


With an Earth-shattering boom, the Shinju tree (or at least, a diagonal slice of it) crashed to the ground.

A few moments later, the first piece of Naruto hit the ground with a much quieter thump.

Shortly after that, the part of him that contained his head followed.

Naruto had been burned, broken, pierced and hurt more times than he could count. He had lost fingers, teeth, arms, legs on more than one occasion.

This was the first time, however, he had found himself in possession of less than half of his body.

The sword had cut cleanly from just below his left hip all the way up to between his neck and his right shoulder. He had no legs, one arm, one lung, half a small intestine, and no heart.

No heart? Wait, which side is the heart on? Which arm do I still have again? Heh, Sasuke's gonna be so jealous. I've gone full Anakin Skywalker.

Oh my god I don't have a dick. Madara fucking cut my dick off.

Wait, did Darth Vader still have his dick, or did that get burned off?

These were the thoughts he used to not go into shock, as he stuck his one hand to the stone beneath him with chakra and dragged himself forwards.

Behind him, he could still hear booming explosions, and the darkness ahead of him was occasionally lit up with flashes of bright light, inevitably followed by hails of rubble and clouds of dirt.

Come on Hinata, he thought, before putting the matter out of mind entirely, focusing on robotically pulling himself further along the ground. Reach out, stick hand to the rock, pull forwards. Reach out, stick hand to the rock, pull forwards. Reach out, stick hand to the rock, pull forwards. And so it repeated, and so he went, leaving a red smear along the ground behind him.

How was he not dying? The answer to that was fairly simple. He was dying, very rapidly. It was just that 'very rapidly' meant 'brain death in almost two seconds' and that was fucking ages for him.

He looked up, blinking through grit that his tears and sweat had coated to his face. Up ahead loomed the flower of the Shinju tree. He had been crawling alongside the trunk of the thing; dwarfed by its shadow. Thank fuck I landed close to the top...Get to the flower, drain the sage chakra, make sage shadow clones. Heal self, heal Sasuke, help Hinata win. Easy. Just gotta...get there...

Reach out, stick hand to the rock, pull forwards.

The fact that he was hurting didn't really need to be stated. It was like a line of fire had been drawn through his body, and his brain didn't seem to have realised that most of him was missing. Instead, it had apparently decided that the rest of his body was definitely still there, just in absolute agony, and had informed the charred remains of his nervous system of that fact as well. His vision was blurry and his head was throbbing. He couldn't breathe, and wasn't sure if he would even be able to do anything with oxygen if he got any, but his body had decided to make him suffer for that, too.

It was like...well. You can reach certain point where continuing to describe how much pain you're in becomes a bit too masturbatory, even for Naruto.

Don't worry about it. You can fix it once you've got all your power back, no problem. Just get to the flower.

Reach out, stick to the-

The last shreds of his chakra cut out completely. A wave of exhaustion tore through the remnants of his body, and his chin hit the ground, as his arm scrabbled uselessly against the sheer stone beneath him.

He was on a slope, actually, which he only noticed when he started to slide backwards-

Naruto let out a guttural scream, pulling his arm up and stabbing it down into the stone. He crushed a hole into the rock, and used that to halt his movement backwards. Then he yanked himself forwards again, raising his bloodied fingers with broken nails to repeat the process.

Reach out. Break floor. Grip floor. Pull forwards. Reach out...

The scream had been a mistake. Wasted what little oxygen he did have left. Not that he had enough blood left to transmit it up to his brain, of course. And practically no chakra there either, which was bad. Those were the two things the brain needed, he was pretty sure. He didn't even know if his eyes were open anymore, everything had just gone black. Sound was gone, too, nothing was coming in through the ears. Smell and taste check? Uh, blood. That was what those were telling him. But that was fine. All he needed was his sense of touch to know he was still going. But that was slowly numbing as well...

Reach out. Break floor. Grip floor. Pull-

Sag. Arm shaking horribly now. Grip floor. Pull forwards-

Come on, come on. COME ON. Hinata's out there fighting for her life, what are you doing? Wasting her time! You useless, fucking, useless, USELESS little orphan BASTARD! COME ON!

Reach out. Break floor. Fail. Hit again. Break floor. Grip floor. Pull forwards. R-Reach out-

His hand hit something that wasn't rock. It was...soft. Folding under his fingers.

The flower.

He gasped (a mistake, no air but more pain) and gripped onto it like a lifeline.

Alright! Come on, you fucker, what have you got for me?

He reached out with his senses. Or rather, sense, since touch had failed him by that point as well. The only things he could still process were the pain, and the sixth sense he'd cultivated not so long ago. His sense for Natural Energy.

He stretched that sense out, deep into the flower, it's brilliant, vibrant red petals, then deeper, deeper, into the wood of the tree itself, to where it still touched the greater root system of the tree below it, through every fibre of the great God Tree.

...But there was nothing.

Not a shred of energy, anywhere in the tree. It was dead. Madara had killed it.

Naruto felt nothing but ash.

The last of his strength left him, then. He simply lay there and sobbed.


Hinata breathed out.

Yeah, sure, delay. Solo. Against Madara Uchiha. No problem.

She looked back up at him.

The Susanno...it was just a bit fucking ridiculous at this point, really.

It looked like Madara had tried to make his Perfect Susanno, and then that had just sort of exploded from the sheer mass of energy it was trying to contain.

Pure white light burst out of the purple armour at the seams, and erupted out of the back. Each of its wings, laid down flat, could have spanned the distance from Konoha to the valley of the End. It's helmeted mask was lifted up, revealing a bright white face with glowing eyes. Without her Tenseigan, she wouldn't have even been able to find where Madara was inside of it.

Matter of fact, without her Tenseigan, she would probably have just gone blind from looking at it. It could have made the sun cough and awkwardly try to cover its face out of embarrassment.

TL;DR: big 'n' scary.

But while she had every incentive to stand around gawking, Madara did not. He redrew his sword.

Hinata reaches one hand out, and called to hers.

She had been tracking Samehada's fall ever since Naruto had let go of it, and guided it down towards her.

As Madara raised his katana, she dropped into a low stance, back foot sliding in an arc around her.

First, she activated her Vishnu. That had become majestic in its own right; two gorgeous wings, white exterior marked with elegant, intricate black patterns, and an Opal halo hovering up above her head.

Next, Samehada came spinning down from the heavens, and slammed into her outstretched hand. Neither of them wasted any time, and it melted in her grip and spread across her body, giving a lavender tint to the white of the Vishnu and a feathered texture to the surface. All the chakra it had collected from the Wood clones, sage and otherwise, flowed into her. She used the momentum gained from the catch to throw herself further round in a circle, legs stepping around each other and coiling like a spring.

Wait for it, one and a half rotations...now.

"FIFTH GATE OPEN!"

Her body flashed, the lavender tinting red, hair whipping out, and she used the momentum to hurl herself in a circle faster and faster. It amused her, to a degree, that the furthest she had progressed with the gates in four years of training was the same level Lee had reached when he was twelve.

Up above, Madara's sword had reached its peak. He twisted his footing, brought the blade down behind him, and then swept it through, building momentum and and tearing through the air straight towards her, edge burning as the air in front of it it didn't have time to get out of the way and simply caught fire.

Down below, Hinata's eyes flashed further, and she activated her Tenseigan cloak. Her body lit aglow, white, blue, and purple, hair flying through the air around her, as she channeled chakra through every tenketsu in her body.

"Edacious, Voracious, Obdurate, Adamantine." She declared. "TENSEI-SENJUTSU HEAVENLY SPIN!"

The dome built up around her, a sphere of perfect swirling white.

Then Madara's sword hit it.

The earth split, and the heavens burned, and blue flames spun up around her defence into a firewhirl that tore up into the sky.

The blade struck her head on, but wa tilted to the right. Then, eventually, it went grating along the exterior of her defence, slipping past and swinging onwards through the air beyond her.

Through the Tenseigan, she was able to see Madara's shocked look as he realised that she had just directly withstood his full power.

And then she flew up and punched the Susanno in the face.


Naruto floated in a void.

He supposed that this was probably his mindscape, though it was looking a little different. Hey, at least the sewer's gone. He spun his viewpoint around...

Nothing.

Sheer, unadulterated nothing.

Not blackness, for black is a colour. Naruto could not see colour. There was simply...nothing at all.

Medically, death occurred when the brain no longer functioned. Certain ninja knew that, more accurately, death occurred when one's soul left one's body, to one destination or another.

Naruto has his own personal definition, however. Because of course, people could be called back from the Pure Lands, or the belly of the Reaper. True death occurred when all hope of being saved was gone. When nobody wanted to bring you back, nevermind knew how. When the world would rather you simply did not exist.

True death occurred when one was alone.

In that sense, Naruto had been flirting with death his entire life.

And now he was finally at her door.

He couldn't feel his body, so he couldn't cry. Thought was all that was left, and even that was fading.

This was it. It was over.

And all that glitters is gold...only shooting stars...break the mold...


Naruto!

The shout jolted him out of his reverie. Then he jolted again, because shout? What?

He turned, nothing, nothing, nothing some more-

Not nothing. Oh, that was not nothing at all.

Floating in front of him was a glowing golden light.

It was a spark, really. Barely noticeable. If he hadn't been reduced to sensory deprivation on this scale, he would never have been able to sense it. But it was there, alright.

He saw another glimmer, looking right to see a deep red light next to the first one. He turned in a circle, seeing sparks of green, white, cyan, orange, blue, black, brown...

It's the bijuu. Naruto realised. But that's not possible, all the Bijuu are in Madara, how are-Oh. It's the little bits.

Kurama had been trying to do something with their chakra, back when they had been trying to fight Madara and gotten cucked by Limbo.

Nine tiny flickers of Bijuu chakra. And, looking down...

A small, blue glow. His chakra. Of course. As long as I'm still here, it can't all be gone.

"So, here you all are." He said. It didn't quite register with him in the moment that he was saying, rather than merely thinking, but he was doing it nonetheless. "All stuck in here with me. Nine tailed beasts brought together, kinda like-"

He stopped. Frowned. It didn't quite register with him in the moment that frowning required that he had a face, but he was doing it nonetheless. "Kinda like what Madara did..."

He kept spinning, looking between them all in turn. "Madara has sage mode. But he couldn't gather sage chakra. Obito certainly couldn't. They only got the Senjutsu when they merged with you guys. Because..." he remembered. "Because Hagoromo said you are the tree. Or, well, you're the tree but mixed with his mum. The ability to get so much of the stuff...Madara's getting it from you! From putting you all together!"

He cracked his knuckles together, grinning. That was when he realised that his body was back. Good. I'm gonna need it.

"Ohoho. That's what the Fox meant, the powerup he was trying to get me! Oh, shit, that's what Hagoromo was gonna say! Gathering all the Bijuu in here, so that I could-" he hesitated on the next word. "...Not absorb you. No, that's not me. You're all people. You're all just people, here with me, with hopes and dreams and names, and...Names. I bet Madara never even bothered to learn your names, did he?"

He turned to one of the lights; the golden brown of a particle of sand. Smallest, yet burning fiercely. "Shukaku?"

It flashed, and flew towards him, spinning around his own chakra.

And Gaara. You're here too, even if you're stuck in a dream. So it falls to me to wake you up.

"Matatabi?" It flashed, and flew towards him.

Same as Sakura, Tenten...

"Isobu." Ino, Shikamaru, Choji,

"Son Goku." Gai, Lee,

"Kokuo." Neji, Itachi,

"Saiken!" Haku, Sai,

"Chomei!" Iruka, Killer B!

"Gyuki!" Jiraiya, Orochimaru, Tsunade,

Kakashi! Sasuke! Hinata!

"KURAMAAAAA-


Hinata's body was breaking apart around her, and she damn well fought like it.

Her form, a tiny, insignificant pinprick, slammed into the back of Madara's Susanno's head, making it stagger. It whirled around, flaring its wings, and she flew around with it, charging and firing a beam of energy towards its chest, digging a small hole in the surface.

His sword swung, and she barely had time to get out of the way, but she stomped her feet down on the blade, stuck herself to it, and rode the thing around.

A dozen bolts of light streaked from her position, striking it's face and exploding, as she sprinted down the blade to the hilt. There, she stretched her arm out, manifesting a giant, ethereal replica of Samehada. She took it in both hands, coated it in every buff she could think of, jumped up, and swung it upon his wrist.

The flash she got in response was highly encouraging.

The giant sword crashed to the ground as the Susanno's hand was severed at the wrist.

Hinata didn't waste time, flying up to the breast of the avatar behind which she knew Madara was hiding, holding her weapon like a lance and letting out a war cry-

The Susanno's other fist hit her.

The shockwave practically shook timespace. She went careening backwards, leaving a trail of shimmering lights in her wake before crashing into the ground.

The Tenseigan cloak was gone. She stumbled to her feet and called out "Heavenly spin!" again, but Madara just wound up with another punch, slamming his fist into her defence. Even without the Tenseigan her defence was barely able to hold, though she was dug about halfway into the stone beneath her.

By that point, the hand she had cut off had reformed. He punched her with that, too. When she still survived, he hit her with his other fist. Then the other, then the other...

She survived about ten strikes before she couldn't hold it any longer, the blood vessels in her arms rupturing to the point where they no longer obeyed her commands.

The dome of chakra (at this point at the bottom of a large new pit) shattered, and the remaining momentum of the Susanno's fist carried it through, slamming into her body and crushing her into the stone.

She tried to scream, as the titan's hand retracted, but found that she couldn't.

He'd...he'd fucking pancaked her.

Her head had been spared, but all of her body below her neck was practically mulch. Her bones were visible, stabbing through all the fleshy parts. You could charitably compare her to that bony one from Attack on Titan, and just like the anime, she was practically 2D at this point.

Hehe, that was a good one. Sasuke would give me a hi-five for that. Sweet lord I'm in pain.

She could still see Madara staring down at her broken form, and watched him open his mouth.

Her voice wasn't working, so she vaguely threw outwards a genjutsu that said 'if you're about to make another boring-ass speech, please for the love of Kami just punch me again instead'.

His mouth clicked shut. Then he said "Aight." and pulled his fist back.

Hinata braced, running through possible methods of escaping this and priming her telekinetic flight-

When Madara froze in place.

She froze too.

Wind blew across the battlefield.

It brought with it a sound.

Specifically, strummed guitar chords, in the pattern of G, D, A minor, and C, repeated.

Madara, for the first time Hinata had seen, looked genuinely flabbergasted.

"No." He said, quietly. "That...that just isn't possible."

"The universe does not care what you believe to be impossible." Hinata replied, with a grin. She used her telekinesis to pick up her own broken body and fly away. Madara didn't care, turning back to the tree, and the growing glow behind it.

The guitar music stopped. There was an intake of breath.

"Some-" the stump of the Shinju tree exploded as an enormous, golden, three headed, six armed avatar tore past it "BODY ONCE TOLD ME THE WORLD WAS GONNA ROLL ME-"


The Indra Susanno and the Ashura Avatar both wound up a fist and punched. Their knuckles met between them, with an explosion of force that sent every cloud nearby rocketing away. Above them, a circle of perfectly clear sky appeared, above which the bright red moon waited and bore witness.

Madara Uchiha was absolutely incalculably furious. "Why." He grit out. "Must Ashura's children never just DIE THE FIRST TIME!"

Naruto Uzumaki, floating within the avatar, grinned up at him. The boy hadn't had the matter to regenerate his whole body. Everything beneath the cut that Madara had made earlier was a shoddy Wood release creation, welded onto the rest of him with nothing but sage chakra and spite. And oh, was there sage chakra. How in Kami's name did he manifest a miniature Ten-Tails within himself? Is that even what that is?

But he had done something, and now he was sucking in natural energy like he was a Juubi Jinchurikki himself. Even if he only had a tiny fraction of the chakra, it was enough. The tree (and with it, Madara's monopoly) was destroyed, and the only thing that mattered to amount absorbed now was force of will.

Apparently, Naruto's matched Madara's own.

No. Don't question it. He's Hashiramaing. Kill this twirp the same way you killed the man you loved: Don't let him get inside your head, react calmly to his chaos, and pummel him with brute force until he goes down.

"I CAN'T DIE!" Naruto shouted at him in response. "NOT AS LONG AS I'M NOT ALONE!"

...Staying calm was harder than it sounded when Madara's enemies came out with shit like that.

Madara roared, and struck again. Naruto had the advantage in terms of sheer number of arms; he kept two up in a guard about his face and used the other four to pummel Madara for all he was worth.

Madara's Susanno took two more hits to the face and a knee to the groin before realising Hold on. I'm still half again as big as he is, and several times more powerful.

He spun, brushing off Naruto's attacks and delivering a back kick that sent the avatar sprawling to the floor, and Oh, bollocks, I let him make distance-

"MULTI SHADOW CLONE JUTSU!" And oh, wonderful, there were thousands of the things. A few spread throughout the battlefield, far too many to keep track of, but the vast majority of them simply flew (They fly now? They fly now.) straight towards him, charging Rasenshuriken.

"INFINITY FLAME!" Madara shouted, bringing up his hands to his mouth and belching a ridiculous mass of blue fire out in front of himself, vaporising clones in their thousands. He began making more hand seals, then stopped as an enormous Rasenshuriken created by the avatar came flying towards him "TURNBACK!"

Time rewound, and instead of making seals he held his hands out to the side, re-manifesting his blade. When the Rasenshuriken came tearing through the remnants of his fire breath, he slid to the side and swept his katana right through it. The two halfs separated, tearing valleys into the earth some distance away. Madara ignored them, charging forwards and lopping two of Naruto's avatar's arms off, then cracking the butt of the blade into his head to stagger him. He brought it back into a high guard, ready to swing down-

Stopped, when he heard a very specific word he had primed himself to pick out of the chaos.

"Get up, Sasuke!" Shouted one of the miscellaneous clones on the battlefield. "This is no place to die!"

Madara turned within his defence, and saw the clone flying an unconscious Uchiha across the battlefield, channeling life-giving chakra into the young man.

"OH NO YOU DON'T-" Madara turned to intercept them, but got rugby-tackled by Naruto Prime, the golden avatar keeping it's weight low and straining to try and overbalance him.

Fool.

Madara let his Susanno be lifted off it's feet. Then he beat his wings, kicked Naruto in the face, and flew even higher.

All three faces of the thing looked up at him dumbstruck as he rocketed into the air. One wingbeat, two, three, and then he turned and propelled himself downwards.

The avatar jumped backwards, managing to avoid as Madara's Susanno slammed into the ground hard enough to cause a literal ripple in the earth. But he wasn't mobile enough to avoid Madara's followup swing with his Katana. The gold avatar braced, bringing up arms it knew couldn't withstand his attack in a vain attempt to defend itself.

But withstand it it did.

Madara swore loudly as a shield of purple armour grew up in front of the arms, which his blade grated along without penetrating.

HEY DICKWAD! Shouted Sasuke Uchiha, via genjutsu. His arm was still gone, leg still broken, tongue still missing, and he was leaning on Naruto's shoulder for support. But he was conscious, and protected by the avatar. LOOKS LIKE YOUR 'SWORD' JUST DOESN'T CUT IT WHEN IT COMES TO AN UZUMAKI! GUESS WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT OUR CLAN'S SIZE ISSUES IS TRUE, HUH?

"DIE!" Madara replied, eloquently. He swung his sword six times in quick succession, launching giant waves of lightning chakra at his target then charging after them.

Naruto blocked one in each arm, dodged preemptively left and just past Madara's downwards sweep, "TURNBACK!", and this time when Madara came in he angled his blade left, falling to a knee, such that the katana sliced through the golden avatar's leg, making it crash to the floor.

He brought his sword up, preparing a downwards stab to the head-

A massive blast of white light launched up from it's face, melting a giant hole through his Susanno's hands and causing the blade to crash uselessly to one side.

The avatar fired again, and Madara forced the giant mass of his Susanno to dive roll to one side, avoiding the attack that swept upwards through the area he'd just occupied. Sweat began to run down his forehead.

"GET YOUR FILTHY HANDS OFF MY BOYFRIEND!" Hinata Hyuuga shouted, also now having been retrieved and brought within the avatar. She, too, looked ready to keel over at any moment, with massive organ failure and a shattered body. But her Tenseigan was clearly working just fine.

It was Naruto. He was the backbone of the team. He was the only reason either of them were still alive.

So I just need to kill him. Shocker.

Madara rolled back to his feet, manifesting an enormous blue greatbow in his hands and drawing the string back. Senjutsu enhanced Yin-Yang chakra built up in his hands, warping gravity and bending light's travel around it. Come on, take the bait, take it, take it. If you're anything like Hashirama, you won't be able to resist an epic final clash...

They took it.

As the Ashura avatar regenerated it's leg and returned to it's feet, the three members of Team Seven looked at each other and nodded.

It raised it's arms above it's head, and began marshalling a swirling mass of chakra.

And just like that, Madara had won.

In order to counter him, they would have to each contribute their own unique powers to the attack. But that was impossible.

Two ninja combining chakra equally to form a ninjutsu was difficult even for Jonin.

Two ninja combining chakra from two separate elements, especially ones that mixed explosively like fire and wind, was even harder. Only Kage could perform feats like that, or ninja who had spent their entire lives with each other.

Combining a combination nature transformation with a dojutsu power? Even he and Hashirama working together had never been able to effectively combine Madara's Susanno with Hashirama's larger Wood release structures, and he was not gloating when he claimed that they were two of the most synchronised ninja in history on the battlefield.

(Madara, of course, had never actually heard of Neji and Itachi.)

But these children desired to combine completely different chakra types, and do so equally between three people! Powers granted by god or not; it couldn't be done. They weren't even eighteen.

Their technique would fail, or explode in their hands. And Madara's attack would punch through the avatar's head and kill all three.

In the end, he decided it was highly poetic. They would ultimately fail because their powers of teamwork, cooperation and trust simply weren't enough.

"WITH THIS, I SNUFF OUT THE WILL OF FIRE!" Madara cried out. "WITH THIS, I BRING PEACE! SAGE ART: HAGOROMO'S ARROW!"

He loosed his attack. The projectile tore across the ground between them, whipping up a tornado in it's wake that carried all the wreckage of the battle along with it. One attack, to render all others meaningless. It was an extension of his own will.

He watched the spinning chakra above the avatar's head. Watched as it grew larger, stronger, a throbbing mess of black and gold that grew until it resembled the boy's Rasenshuriken, yet on an even greater scale.

Watched the technique shudder, as Sasuke channeled energy into his teammate's body and purple energy coagulated around it.

Watched it shake violently, as Hinata did the same from her side and white-blue streaks appeared in the spinning orb.

He grinned, when Naruto Uzumaki attempted finally to add his Senjutsu. The technique shook one last time...then split. The perfectly horizontal plane of rotation tore itself apart, shattering into dozens of different chaotic swirls.

Madara chuckled to himself, closed his eyes, and waited for the end.


He opened them again when he heard whoops.

What he saw made his jaw drop.

It was...it was intact.

It was a complete mess. Swirls within swirls, circles within circles, spikes and blades and power and...and it was working.

Each individual component flowed into and out of all the others. Naruto to Sasuke, Sasuke to Hinata, Hinata to Naruto, and the reverse. Each of the three alone, and then, in the core, all three combined...

How? I...I don't understand. How can they know each other so well? How can they dare to reveal so much? How...how can they bear to face being known?

"BEHOLD!" Shouted Naruto, arm in arm with each of his teammates.

"THE ULTIMATE JUTSU! THE TENSEI-RINNE-YIN-YANG-SUSANNO-VISHNU-SIX-PATHS-SENJUTSU-BIJUU-RASENSHURIKEN!" The avatar pulled it's arms back, stomped both feet down onto the floor.

"OR, AS WE PREFER TO CALL IT..."

Team Seven spoke in unison. "THE ALL-STAR!"

The avatar heaved, and sent the attack flying through the air.

Madara watched in horror as it shred his own jutsu like tissue paper.

Then he whited out.


When Madara reawoke, he was falling. Curiously, he didn't seem to be any pain.

His Susanno was gone, obviously. Everything around him just seemed to be glowing with light, as though he was falling through the greatest fireworks display the world had ever seen.

Above him, Team Seven was falling too. Or more specifically, they were flying. Towards him. Each had a hand held out, as they drew ever closer to that one spot in his stomach beneath which the Ten-Tails writhed. He wanted to defend himself, yet...couldn't seem to bring his body to move.

That's it, then. I've lost.

Time seemed to slow.

"It's a bitch, isn't it?"

Madara turned his head. Naruto was there, floating in the air next to him. Or rather, a copy of the boy was. The real one was still preparing to tear his chest open. A genjutsu, then. He could have dispelled it effortlessly. Didn't.

"What is?" He replied.

"Losing." Naruto shrugged. "Happens to you enough, you get used to it, but the sting never quite goes away."

"I wouldn't know." Madara replied, hoarsely. "I've never lost a real fight before."

"Oh yeah?" Asked a different voice. Madara looked, and saw Sasuke sat in the empty space with his legs crossed. "What about Hashirama?"

Pain swelled in Madara's gut, along with rage. "I killed Hashirama."

"I'm not saying you lost to him." Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Although, you know, you definitely did."

A different voice appeared, along with Hinata. This one softer. "You didn't lose to him. But you did lose him, didn't you?"

Madara closed his eyes, and sighed. "Yes. Yes, I suppose I did." He reopened them, and looked between them. "So what is this? Some last attempt to gloat?" He focused on Naruto. "Or is this one going to try and use his Talk no Jutsu to-"

"Can everyone, just-" Naruto raised his hands frustratedly, then sighed himself. "Can we stop calling it that, please? It's not a fucking jutsu." He smiled sadly at Madara. "It's not mind control, it's not a superpower. It's just what happens when I try to understand someone when nobody else dares to try. There's so much you can do if you're just willing to extend that hand."

"Sometimes the hand gets bitten." Madara countered.

Naruto shrugged. "Sometimes." A smile broke out on his face. "But I've always been a fast healer."

"We're here because you have time to cast a jutsu before we can kill you." Hinata replied, simply. "No matter what you try to do with it, it won't be able to stop us from beating you. Though if you're feeling spiteful, and clever enough, you could probably get one of us killed."

"But, we were thinking, maybe you could use that last jutsu on something more productive." Sasuke offered. "Like, oh I don't know-"

"Rinne Tensei." Madara laughed, hoarsely. "Of course."

"You're still the Juubi Jinchurikki." Naruto pushed. "Still the most powerful person alive. If you use it now, your range will be incredible. You might be able to bring back everyone who died in the war!"

"You want me to use my last breath to apologise?" Madara glared at him.

"No." Naruto admitted, frankly. "You still think you're right, we clearly haven't changed that. But if you really want to minimize human suffering, this is the play you can choose to do it. Everyone's coming out of the Infinite Tsukuyomi whether you like it or not; you've already lost. You just get to choose how many people died while you were doing it."

Madara shook his head, vehemently. "What kind of disrespect is that? Those people died for what they believed in, and you would simply undo it? Render their choices meaningless? You are committing exactly the 'evil' you accuse me of."

There was a short silence.

"My cousin's name is Neji." Hinata said, after a moment. Looked at Sasuke. "And he has a big brother called Itachi. They were both partners. Both fought for what they believed in, and both died for it."

"They say there are two types of people." Sasuke nodded his head, speaking quietly. "The ones that think 'I suffered, why shouldn't they?', and the ones who think 'I suffered so that they don't have to.'" He looked up. "I'm the latter, and they were too. They did so much to keep us safe, keep us happy. You think if they were given the opportunity to watch us enjoy what they worked for, they wouldn't take it?"

Madara looked down, and didn't say anything.

Naruto paused, then walked up through the air, and crouched down next to Madara's head. "Aight, look." He said. "The story's over now. It's written, conflict over, done and dusted. But now you get to decide the genre."

"That's not how writing books works..." Madara groused.

"In one genre, eveything's hopeful, but still gritty." Naruto continued. "I go back and I bury Kakashi and Obito. I attend Killer B's funeral. Countless of us do something similar.

In another, it's happy. Toothache inducing levels of happy. The dead come back to life at the end. Everyone gets a happily ever after. And when the book comes out, the critics go 'there were no stakes! None of the sacrifices meant anything! Shoddy work! It isn't fair.'"

He leaned in, grinning. "But you know what I say? We're ninja. Fuck 'fair'."

He spread his arms. "Who gives a toss? I sure don't! We have a once in a lifetime opportunity here! A bloodless war! Death and suffering are awful, and horrible, and they aughtn't even exist, and you can stop some of that!"

He fell back onto his arse, sighing. "Or don't. That's fine. But someday, maybe not soon, but someday? We are going to crack the rules of this world. We are going to find out what it is that makes all these people war with each other, and we're going to fix it. We're going to give them the freedom to choose, and they're going to choose the right thing!" He smirked. "And then one day, when we tear down the wall to the pure lands, and spread throughout the stars, and everyone who's ever died comes back and nobody ever has to do it again...you're going to get to have another conversation with Hashirama. That, I promise you, unconditional. What's up to you, right now? Is what you'll be able to tell him you did when you were asked to put human life before your own pride."

Madara stared him down for a long moment. Then calmly said, "Are you quite finished?"

Naruto stared back at him, and then nodded. He glanced up and shared a look with his three allies, and all three of them vanished.

Time began to speed back up.

Madara was falling again, and they were falling towards him.

He put his hands together.

So many options...

They were right about one thing, though. He couldn't win.

Looks like I'm going to be coming second, Hashirama. He thought to himself, much calmer than he thought he'd be. Heh. But I guess you're more than used to that happening, you short fused bastard. Bow-chika-wow-wow...

When I do see you again, old friend? We really are going to need to have a good long talk.

"Samsara of Heavenly Life Technique." He said, aloud. "Fine, you smug bastards. Rinne Tensei."


The next chapter will be at the regular time next Saturday.